Tempio Israelitico in the Ghetto.
“This picture was circulated internally. Within the Carabinieri. It was not shared with the municipal police. Or with any other of your agencies.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
“We had it analyzed by our forensic people in Maidenhill. It was compared with file photos of Micah Dalton, and they came to the intriguing conclusion that the subject of this photo was not quite reliably dead at the time the shot was taken.”
Galan smiled, inclined his head, and lifted his eyebrows.
“Fascinating. A marvel. And how did they determine that?”
“As it was explained to me, when a man dies, at the moment that his body begins to undergo the various processes, there are immediate changes in such things as muscle tissue, skin cells. Nothing that would be obvious to an untrained observer but present nevertheless.”
“For example?”
Mandy gently took the Canon back and slipped it into her purse before she replied. She lifted her glass, placed her red lips against it, looking at Galan over the rim, her eyes bright, her expression one of teasing enjoyment.
“You’re going to make me run through the whole silly thing, Mr. Galan. How boring.”
“Call me Issadore.”
“Issadore. You may call me Mandy.”
“Mandy, then. You were about to explain . . .”
“The muscles of the face begin to tighten. They lose flexion. Density. Cohesiveness. The expression changes. Life, as an animating force, an organizing principle, releases the tissues, drifts away, and the face assumes what we call the death mask, a certain rigidity. This is why morticians have such a difficult time making the dead look as if they were merely asleep. Our people did a graphic overlay—some computer thingy they have; bores me to tears—but somehow it showed them that Dalton’s face in this photograph is not the face of a Micah Dalton in real death. Actually, they feel he may have been heavily sedated, drugged. But he was not dead when this photo was taken.”
Galan said nothing. His hooded eyes studied the glass of Chablis before him with perfect stillness, as if he were a wizened Buddha contemplating a disappointing lotus. Mandy reached out and pinged the side of his glass with the lacquered nail of her index finger.
“Really, Issadore, love. We know he’s not dead. You might want to ask me why we think you’ll admit this eventually.”
Galan lifted his eyes and fixed her with a look. Mandy resisted the reflexive desire to sit back, to disengage from the force of that glare. Galan ran a dry, white-tipped tongue over his lower lip, took another sip of his Chablis. A flight of pigeons fluttered overhead, making a noise like flags snapping in a strong wind. The sun was now well below the roofline, and there was a damp chill rising from the old stones of the square. If the day had been mid-September, the evening was late November.
“It was resented, you know?” he said, after a silence.
“What was . . . resented?”
“The taking of Omar. In Milan. In 2003. It was arrogant. A slap in our faces. Collectively. We—I personally—resented it. As you would resent it if we came to”—here he searched for a place-name that would convey the American heartland—“to Topeka. Came to Topeka, and took a man off your street there? In front of your own people?”
Mandy held his look.
“We—London—had nothing to do with that. You know that.”
Galan was gracious enough not to pull the lie apart, there and then. Perhaps, he thought, Anthony Crane, the calculating Oxford aristocrat who was the current chief of London Station, had not told Mandy Pownall about their involvement in the operation. If he had not, there may be other things she did not know. For example, that many of the CIA’s Clandestine operators involved in the rendition had actually used their own personal credit cards to book hotel rooms in Milan. Why? To get the air miles. And that two of these people had come directly from
“This picture was circulated internally. Within the Carabinieri. It was not shared with the municipal police. Or with any other of your agencies.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
“We had it analyzed by our forensic people in Maidenhill. It was compared with file photos of Micah Dalton, and they came to the intriguing conclusion that the subject of this photo was not quite reliably dead at the time the shot was taken.”
Galan smiled, inclined his head, and lifted his eyebrows.
“Fascinating. A marvel. And how did they determine that?”
“As it was explained to me, when a man dies, at the moment that his body begins to undergo the various processes, there are immediate changes in such things as muscle tissue, skin cells. Nothing that would be obvious to an untrained observer but present nevertheless.”
“For example?”
Mandy gently took the Canon back and slipped it into her purse before she replied. She lifted her glass, placed her red lips against it, looking at Galan over the rim, her eyes bright, her expression one of teasing enjoyment.
“You’re going to make me run through the whole silly thing, Mr. Galan. How boring.”
“Call me Issadore.”
“Issadore. You may call me Mandy.”
“Mandy, then. You were about to explain . . .”
“The muscles of the face begin to tighten. They lose flexion. Density. Cohesiveness. The expression changes. Life, as an animating force, an organizing principle, releases the tissues, drifts away, and the face assumes what we call the death mask, a certain rigidity. This is why morticians have such a difficult time making the dead look as if they were merely asleep. Our people did a graphic overlay—some computer thingy they have; bores me to tears—but somehow it showed them that Dalton’s face in this photograph is not the face of a Micah Dalton in real death. Actually, they feel he may have been heavily sedated, drugged. But he was not dead when this photo was taken.”
Galan said nothing. His hooded eyes studied the glass of Chablis before him with perfect stillness, as if he were a wizened Buddha contemplating a disappointing lotus. Mandy reached out and pinged the side of his glass with the lacquered nail of her index finger.
“Really, Issadore, love. We know he’s not dead. You might want to ask me why we think you’ll admit this eventually.”
Galan lifted his eyes and fixed her with a look. Mandy resisted the reflexive desire to sit back, to disengage from the force of that glare. Galan ran a dry, white-tipped tongue over his lower lip, took another sip of his Chablis. A flight of pigeons fluttered overhead, making a noise like flags snapping in a strong wind. The sun was now well below the roofline, and there was a damp chill rising from the old stones of the square. If the day had been mid-September, the evening was late November.
“It was resented, you know?” he said, after a silence.
“What was . . . resented?”
“The taking of Omar. In Milan. In 2003. It was arrogant. A slap in our faces. Collectively. We—I personally—resented it. As you would resent it if we came to”—here he searched for a place-name that would convey the American heartland—“to Topeka. Came to Topeka, and took a man off your street there? In front of your own people?”
Mandy held his look.
“We—London—had nothing to do with that. You know that.”
Galan was gracious enough not to pull the lie apart, there and then. Perhaps, he thought, Anthony Crane, the calculating Oxford aristocrat who was the current chief of London Station, had not told Mandy Pownall about their involvement in the operation. If he had not, there may be other things she did not know. For example, that many of the CIA’s Clandestine operators involved in the rendition had actually used their own personal credit cards to book hotel rooms in Milan. Why? To get the air miles. And that two of these people had come directly from
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