White Shotgun Read online

  ALSO BY APRIL SMITH

  Judas Horse

  Good Morning, Killer

  Be the One

  North of Montana

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2011 by April Smith

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by

  Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smith, April, [date]

  White shotgun : an FBI special agent Ana Grey mystery / by April Smith. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-59679-6

  1. United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation—Fiction.

  2. Undercover operations—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.M467W55 2011

  813′.54—dc22

  2011011385

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket images: (woman) © Sean Murphy/Getty Images; (dirt road) © Jan Stromme/

  Getty Images; (skyline) © Tim Gartside Travel/Alamy

  Jacket design by Patrick Sullivan

  v3.1

  For Molly Friedrich

  True friend, incomparable agent

  In bosco nasce,

  In prato pasce,

  In città suona,

  Il vivo porta il morto

  E ’l morto suona.

  In the woods it is born,

  In the pasture it grazes,

  In the city it plays,

  The living carries the dead

  And the dead plays.

  “The Riddle of the Drum”

  Folk poem from the Palio of Siena

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Monte San Stefano, Italy

  Prologue

  London

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Rome

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Siena, Italy

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Il Palio

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Siena

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Monte San Stefano, Italy

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The South–La Famiglia

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  San Luis Obisbo, California

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  MONTE SAN STEFANO, ITALY

  PROLOGUE

  The Chef drove easily in the dark, anticipating the turns with pleasure, having been in the woods often enough to know the road by heart. The playlist he’d made of his personal favorites was a mix of Italian pop music with interludes of a folksy mandolin. The feel was upbeat. He drove a well-kept silver van with the company name in red lettering on the side and plenty of room in back. The entwined rosaries hanging from the rearview mirror jostled softly, and the black and white Australian sheepdog beside him kept an alert watch through the windshield. It was a cozy drive for Il Capocuòco—the Head Chef—known for his ability to mix chemicals like a master.

  When they passed the barn and turned onto the dirt track, the dog stood up in anticipation. When the Chef got out and unlocked the gate, the dog followed and then jumped back into the front seat to wait. The Chef paused to appreciate the stars. It was silent except for the idling engine. Exhaust fumes spoiled the scent of juniper.

  They continued through dense trees until the headlights picked up a half-burned abandoned house and, behind it, a prefab shack where sacks of lye were stored. The Chef’s day job was delivering chemicals along a busy route of Tuscan farms. He still wore the dirty jumpsuit that was his uniform. The charred ruins of the old house came closer into view. The headlights cut out, the door opened, and the dog scrambled down into the pine mulch.

  A steel vat encased in wood stood on a platform high off the ground. The odd hiker would have thought it a water tower. Underneath the vat was a row of burners, connected to a tank of propane. The Chef lit the gas fire and waited for the chemicals inside the vat to heat.

  For the past hour he had been putting off his hunger, eager to get to the site. Now he unwrapped a stick of salame sopressata, sliced off the tip with a sharp folding knife, and methodically scored and peeled the outer casing, cutting off slivers of meat, which he shared with the dog. The smell of garlic made him even more ravenous, and he went through the potato chips, orange soda, and packaged cream puffs as well.

  The Chef sat behind the wheel with both doors open to the night, counting his money by the dashboard glow, until his pleasantly full belly contracted with venom. Once again, the pèzzo di merda who delivered his pay had skimmed 10 percent off the top, and there was nothing he could do about it. They must consider him an idiot, he thought with rage, and threw the empty soda bottle into the bush. The dog’s tail went up and he continued to bark at nothing, while the Chef stalked around the back of the van and lugged out a large plastic bin. This time it was the body of a woman, and it was light. Facile. Easy. He slipped on goggles and gloves. When the temperature was right it would not take long for the corpse to dissolve in la minèstra, the soup.

  The woman, Lucia Vincenzo, beautiful, a player both in money laundering and drug dealing, had vanished on a trip to the local market. Her car was left in the parking lot, containing bags of groceries and no evidence of struggle. In the language of the mafias, a murder where the body is never found is called lupara bianca, or white shotgun. To disappear with no one knowing how they killed you is a warning to the enemy meant to echo in the most lasting way—in the stark silence of the imagination.

  The Chef dragged the bin up the ramp that led to the vat. He drew off the tarp and backed away as toxic vapors rose from la minèstra. No one appreciated the quality of his work. How smooth, complete, undetectable.

  LONDON

  ONE

  It was only another good-bye. Sterling McCord was lying on his back, staring at the lace-curtained window that looked out on the sidewalk. I was up on an elbow, studying the green in his eyes. Rainy light floated around us like the aftertaste of a kiss.

  “Hello, cupcake,” he murmured.

  “Don’t go,” I said.

&nb
sp; We had been camping out in a borrowed flat in South Kensington while I was on vacation status from the Bureau. The place had belonged to the deceased relative of a friend—four rooms in the basement of a Georgian mews house just off Old Brompton Road. The air smelled of mildew and face powder, and we found frilly candy wrappers balled up on the dresser. Sterling called it “the old-lady hooch.” We’d had to push two narrow cots together, along with their wobbly headboards of padded roses, but we managed. After a couple of weeks of coming and going, it was starting to feel less like a tomb and more like a place to live. Keys on the table. Eggs in the refrigerator. Then Sterling got the call.

  “Do you want to do something interesting?”

  That was the way it always began. The voice on the phone. A deep Welsh accent. Sly, as if the reason he was calling wasn’t all that interesting. An hour later, Sterling would disappear on a mission he couldn’t discuss.

  Sterling McCord worked for a private security firm called Oryx. His gear was stowed in a corner of the bedroom, laid out for quick departure, the black rucksack hanging from a doorknob. He did not travel with a weapon, preferring to improvise when he arrived. His first stop would be to purchase a Leatherman multi-tool—he must have left dozens in the field. With not much more than a canteen, a poncho, and GPS, it would take less than five minutes to dump his stuff in the rucksack and be gone.

  “Is there at least time for a good-bye drink?” I asked, drawing my toes along his leg. Even at rest, his calf muscle felt like a knot of hardwood.

  He played with the bracelet on my wrist. “We’ll have time.”

  Sterling liked to say the only thing that made sense in the world was horses. He grew up in Kerrville, Texas, and learned the cowboy arts from his dad—how to train a cutting horse and weave tack, like the fine leather bracelet he had made for me, an eternity knot that would never come off. I had no intention of taking it off. Things were different with Sterling. It was the peaceful way we went to sleep together; deep conversations at three in the morning, someone always willing to rub the kink out of someone’s hip. I knew I had fallen in love when I woke up one morning in a white sun-drenched hotel room in Madrid to the scent of baking chocolate. Sterling had ordered his idea of breakfast in bed: two cafés con leche and one fresh, sweet-smelling dish of molten chocolate cake with powdered sugar on top. We laid against the pillows feeding each other spoonfuls of bittersweet chocolate. That was it.

  Oryx is a type of antelope, but also a helicopter, and Sterling’s aircraft of choice. He piloted an Oryx during the war in Sierra Leone, after he left Delta Force, where he learned how to blow a door open without waking the cat. But the most essential skill in the top echelon of Special Forces is the ability to work in absolute secrecy, below the radar of the Pentagon and the FBI. The invisible warrior without boundaries is essential to our security—and a pain in the ass if he happens to be your lover.

  I didn’t even know to which continent Oryx was sending him, but it was a familiar trek: the rucksack over his shoulder and my hand in his, the touch of our palms unable to deny the sweaty tension of leaving, as we walked the five blocks to Baciare, a neighborhood bistro where you could get a good plate of pasta after midnight; neither one of us expected anything more than a stiff drink to numb the coming separation.

  London was on high alert. It had been an explosive spring. Two separate plots to blow up airliners were foiled at Heathrow. A Muslim student at the University of Nottingham was stopped for being in possession of an Al-Qaeda handbook he had downloaded at the library. He died in custody, stabbed by another inmate. University students clashed with gangs of teenage neocons, and dozens of cars were burned during three days of rioting in East London.

  The Metropolitan Police were doing a good job of making the rest of the city seem jolly as ever to the tourists crushing the Embankment, but to the interested eye there was a remarkable number of foot patrols, even in the residential boroughs. Edgewater Crescent was a private square lined with redbrick town houses and cherry trees, a tiny oasis off the main drag, which was constantly jammed with posses of young men and women moving quickly, wave on wave of ethnicities and languages, unruly lines in front of the bars and gelato places. Even in this tranquil area, we saw two pairs of female police officers making the rounds beneath the Victorian streetlamps, hair pulled into scraggly ponytails, wearing bulletproof vests and boxy uniforms built for men.

  Our trek was interrupted when the cell phone rang. Actually, it was a series of maddening electronic notes like a clown on crack playing an accordion.

  After a moment I murmured irritably, “Why do you have such an unbelievably annoying ring?”

  “Not my phone,” Sterling said.

  It was my U.S. cell phone. It hadn’t rung in weeks, although out of a habitual sense of doom I always kept it charged. I dug it out of the bottom of my bag.

  “Ana?” said a familiar voice. “It’s Mike Donnato, calling from Los Angeles.”

  “Mike—?”

  Sterling let go of my hand.

  “—it’s great to hear from you!” I said.

  It wasn’t great. It was a disaster. Donnato had been my handler on a domestic terrorism case in Oregon, where Sterling and I had met; and where it was pretty obvious that my FBI partner and I still had feelings for each other. Donnato’s intrusion into our last moments together in London was an unwelcome surprise.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “At the office,” Donnato said. “It’s daytime in L.A.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “This is not official business, Ana; it’s personal.”

  Oh God, I thought. Now that I’m with Sterling, Donnato is finally going to say he’s getting a divorce.

  “You need to check in with the legat in London,” he said, meaning the legal attaché for the FBI. Although the Bureau has no jurisdiction abroad, we maintain a presence in foreign countries to serve American citizens.

  “Did someone die?”

  “No, but I can’t talk about it on an unsecured phone.”

  “Am I in trouble?” I asked.

  “Go to the American embassy. They’re expecting you.”

  “Mike, why?”

  “I’m only the messenger. Do it tomorrow.”

  I closed the phone. During the call, Sterling and I had not broken pace.

  “What’s that about?”

  “Mike wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Your good ole buddy?” Sterling gave it a Texas kick just to bother me.

  “Don’t be a dickhead. He’s my best friend.”

  “Then why’s he holdin’ out on you?”

  “It isn’t him. It’s the Bureau,” I said grimly, feeling a gut clench, like when you pass your old school packed with bad memories. One day I’ll have to return to the States to testify in that domestic terrorism case in Oregon, and possibly implicate a deputy director of the FBI. Meanwhile, I’m an active duty special agent on vacation—until they decide whether to hang me or give me a medal. Hearing the strain in Donnato’s voice, I’m thinking they’ve made up their minds.

  It was a relief to get to Baciare, our comfort zone in London, our signature place, where the owner knew to bring two Proseccos and a plate of burrata cheese the moment we sat down.

  But not tonight. Our quiet hideaway had been invaded by a raucous birthday party, a long table of shiny-faced Italian men making toasts. Espresso cups and cake plates, bottles of Champagne and platters of biscotti littered the table. The object of the celebration was a sweetheart of a boy—dark-haired and red-cheeked—who had probably just turned twenty-one. His angelic face was filmed with sweat, and he looked completely stewed. Half the men seemed to be older relatives; the others were his age, laughing together uncontrollably from whatever they had smoked in the alley.

  The owner of the restaurant, a lanky fellow named Martin, who wore wire-rimmed glasses and had long gray hair trailing from a bald spot, usually greeted us with a fawning smile, murmuring, “Grazie mille!” between each b
reath. Tonight he turned us away, apologizing that it was a private celebration, but a man from the party, fortyish, fleshy face and dark hair, intervened, putting an arm around Sterling and insisting that we accept two glasses of bubbly. Martin checked his watch and reluctantly waved us to a table in the back. We promised to be quick. Sterling was to be picked up by another operative in fifteen minutes, and Oryx people were precise.

  “Sterling,” I said with some urgency as we sat down, “are we all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  “Just want to be sure,” I said.

  “You say that every time.”

  “It’s no fun being the one who’s left behind.”