Free The Geneva Deception by James Twining Page A

feeling for where the trouble was brewing.
    As Foster had expected, the gantries were empty. He took up his position, removed the towel from his back-pack, and unrolled it. Piece by piece he began to reassemble his rifle, the parts sliding into place with a satisfying click echoed by the sound of the roulette ball skipping on the wheelbelow. With the infrared sight fitted he hesitated momentarily, toying with the suppressor before slipping it into his top pocket like a good cigar he was saving for the right moment.
    No suppressor. Not tonight. He wanted everyone to hear the shot, to be paralysed by its angry roar, and then to run. To run screaming.

THIRTEEN
    The Pantheon, Rome
    18th March - 7.41 a.m.
    Allegra was sheltering in the portico, grateful for the coffee Salvatore had conjured up for her and for the fresh air - there had been a strange, curdled atmosphere inside that she had been glad to escape.
    The storm had now tethered itself directly overhead, rain lashing the square, lightning cleaving the stygian sky only for the clouds to crash thunderously back together. But it was the more powerful storm brewing on the other side of the barricades that worried her now. Rising out of the warm waters of political scandal and feeding on the lurid details of these murders, it would quickly spin out of control, blowing them violently towards the rocks until either the media lost interest or they had all been dashed into pieces, whichever came sooner. She wondered if Gallo’smen all knew this, and whether what she could sense inside, what she could almost taste, was their fearful anticipation of the hurricane that lay ahead.
    ‘So it’s the same coin?’ Gallo had materialised at her side, lighting a cigarette.
    ‘I thought you’d given up?’
    ‘So did I.’
    She was reassured that she wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure.
    ‘It’s the same.’ She nodded, not bothering to repeat that it wasn’t a coin but a lead disc.
    ‘So it’s the same killer?’
    ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’
    ‘I’m asking.’ As earlier, the hint of a smile was playing around his lips, as if she somehow amused him.
    ‘There are some obvious similarities,’ she began hesitantly, surprised that Gallo even cared what she thought. ‘The lead discs. The proximity of the two murder scenes. The pagan temples. The connection to Caesar. But…’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘It’s…the way they were killed. I’m not a profiler, but there’s no consistency between the two murders. They look different. They feel different.’
    ‘I agree. Two murders. Two killers.’ Gallo held up photographs of the two crime scenes side by side as if to prove his point.
    Allegra glanced at the photos and jumped. Therewas something in the crime scenes, something she’d not noticed before, but which, when framed within the photographs’ white borders, was now glaringly obvious.
    ‘Where’s your car?’
    ‘Over there -’ He pointed out a dark blue BMW.
    ‘Come on!’ She stepped out into the rain, then turned and motioned impatiently at him to follow when she realised he hadn’t moved.
    ‘Where to?’
    ‘The Palazzo Barberini,’ she called back, her hair darkening. ‘There’s something there you need to see.’
    A few moments later, Gallo gunned out of the square down the Via del Seminario , the Carabinieri clearing a path for him through the crowd, Allegra shielding her face as the photographers and TV crews pressed their lenses up against their windows. As soon as they were clear, he accelerated through the Piazza San Ignacio and out on to the busy Via del Corso, his siren blazing as he carved his way through the rush-hour traffic. Reaching the Via del Tritone he turned right, racing down to where the palazzo loomed imposingly over the Piazza Barberini and then cutting up a side street to the main entrance at the top of the hill. The drive was chained off, although the museum was clearly open, those foreign tourists still able to swallow the