deal.”
“Thanks, Georg.”
“And I still have the tape to remind us of it. Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Professor.”
“Auf Wiedersehen, Georg.”
He put down the receiver and stood, brooding and perplexed, under the indifferent gaze of the fauns and shepherdesses on the ceiling. Unwittingly he had walked into a minefield. One more incautious move and it would explode under his feet.
Domenico Giuliano Francone, chauffeur and man of confidence to His Eminence, was, in looks and character, an original. He was six feet tall, with an athlete’s body, a grinning goat’s face and a mop of reddish hair kept sedulously dyed. He claimed to be forty-two years old, but was probably on the wrong side of fifty. He spoke a German he had learned from the Swiss Guards, an atrocious Genovese French, English with an American accent and Italian with a Sorrentine singsong lilt.
His personal history was a litany of variables. He had been an amateur wrestler, a champion cyclist, a sergeant in the Carabinieri, a mechanic of the Alfa racing team, a notable boozer and wencher until, after the untimely death of his wife, he had found religion and taken a job as sexton in the titular church of His Eminence.
His Eminence, impressed by Francone’s industry and devotion and possibly by his raffish good humour had promoted him into his personal household. Because of his police training, his skill as a driver, his knowledge of weapons and his experience in hand-to-hand combat, he had assumed, almost by natural right, the duties of bodyguard. In these rough and godless times, even a Prince of the Church was not safe from the sacrilegious threats of the terrorists. While a religious man dared not show himself afraid, the Italian government made no secret of its fears and demanded commonsense precautions.
All this and more Domenico Francone elaborated eloquently, as he drove the Mendeliuses and the Franks’ on a Saturday afternoon excursion to the Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia. His authority established, he then laid down the rules:
“I am responsible to His Eminence for your safety. So you will please do as I say, and do it without question. If I tell you to duck, you get your heads down fast! If I drive madly, you hang on tight and don’t ask why. In a restaurant you let me pick the table. If you, Professor, go on foot in Rome, you wait until I have parked the car and am ready to follow you.
That way you keep your mind on your own affairs and let me do the worrying. I know the way these mascalzoni work.”
“We have every confidence in you,” said Mendelius amiably, “but is there anyone following us now?”
“No, Professor.”
“Then perhaps you’d take it a little more slowly. The ladies would like to look at the countryside.”
“Of course! My apologies! .. . This is a very historic zone, many Etruscan tombs. There is, as you know, a ban on excavation without permission, but still there is looting of hidden sites. When I was in the carabinieri …”
The torrent of his eloquence poured over them again. They shrugged and smiled at each other, and drowsed the rest of the way to Tarquinia. It was a relief to leave him standing sentinel by the car, while they followed a soft-voiced custodian through the upland wheat fields to visit the people of the painted tombs.
It was a tranquil place, filled with lark-song and the low whisper of the wind through the ripening wheat. The prospect was magical: the fall of the green land to the brown villages, with the blue sea beyond, and the scattered yachts, spinnakers filled with the land-breeze, heading westward to Sardinia. Lotte was entranced, and Mendelius tried to recreate for her the life of a long-vanished people.
“They were great traders, great seafarers. They gave their name, the Tyrrhenian, to this part of the Mediterranean.
They mined copper and iron and smelted bronze. They farmed the rich lands from here to the Po valley and as far south as Capua. They loved music and dancing and
“Thanks, Georg.”
“And I still have the tape to remind us of it. Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Professor.”
“Auf Wiedersehen, Georg.”
He put down the receiver and stood, brooding and perplexed, under the indifferent gaze of the fauns and shepherdesses on the ceiling. Unwittingly he had walked into a minefield. One more incautious move and it would explode under his feet.
Domenico Giuliano Francone, chauffeur and man of confidence to His Eminence, was, in looks and character, an original. He was six feet tall, with an athlete’s body, a grinning goat’s face and a mop of reddish hair kept sedulously dyed. He claimed to be forty-two years old, but was probably on the wrong side of fifty. He spoke a German he had learned from the Swiss Guards, an atrocious Genovese French, English with an American accent and Italian with a Sorrentine singsong lilt.
His personal history was a litany of variables. He had been an amateur wrestler, a champion cyclist, a sergeant in the Carabinieri, a mechanic of the Alfa racing team, a notable boozer and wencher until, after the untimely death of his wife, he had found religion and taken a job as sexton in the titular church of His Eminence.
His Eminence, impressed by Francone’s industry and devotion and possibly by his raffish good humour had promoted him into his personal household. Because of his police training, his skill as a driver, his knowledge of weapons and his experience in hand-to-hand combat, he had assumed, almost by natural right, the duties of bodyguard. In these rough and godless times, even a Prince of the Church was not safe from the sacrilegious threats of the terrorists. While a religious man dared not show himself afraid, the Italian government made no secret of its fears and demanded commonsense precautions.
All this and more Domenico Francone elaborated eloquently, as he drove the Mendeliuses and the Franks’ on a Saturday afternoon excursion to the Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia. His authority established, he then laid down the rules:
“I am responsible to His Eminence for your safety. So you will please do as I say, and do it without question. If I tell you to duck, you get your heads down fast! If I drive madly, you hang on tight and don’t ask why. In a restaurant you let me pick the table. If you, Professor, go on foot in Rome, you wait until I have parked the car and am ready to follow you.
That way you keep your mind on your own affairs and let me do the worrying. I know the way these mascalzoni work.”
“We have every confidence in you,” said Mendelius amiably, “but is there anyone following us now?”
“No, Professor.”
“Then perhaps you’d take it a little more slowly. The ladies would like to look at the countryside.”
“Of course! My apologies! .. . This is a very historic zone, many Etruscan tombs. There is, as you know, a ban on excavation without permission, but still there is looting of hidden sites. When I was in the carabinieri …”
The torrent of his eloquence poured over them again. They shrugged and smiled at each other, and drowsed the rest of the way to Tarquinia. It was a relief to leave him standing sentinel by the car, while they followed a soft-voiced custodian through the upland wheat fields to visit the people of the painted tombs.
It was a tranquil place, filled with lark-song and the low whisper of the wind through the ripening wheat. The prospect was magical: the fall of the green land to the brown villages, with the blue sea beyond, and the scattered yachts, spinnakers filled with the land-breeze, heading westward to Sardinia. Lotte was entranced, and Mendelius tried to recreate for her the life of a long-vanished people.
“They were great traders, great seafarers. They gave their name, the Tyrrhenian, to this part of the Mediterranean.
They mined copper and iron and smelted bronze. They farmed the rich lands from here to the Po valley and as far south as Capua. They loved music and dancing and
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