was simply snapped over his head and then jerked tight, the knot biting into the nape of his neck. Then he was silently lifted to the side and carefully lowered into the freezing water.
He gasped, the change in temperature winding him. Treading water, he looked up at the boat, not understanding why they had tied the rope so long, its loose coils snaking through the water around him. The three men, however, hadn’t moved from the side rail, an expectant look on their faces as if they were waiting for something to happen. Waiting, he realised as he drifted a few feet further away from the boat, for the current to take him.
Without warning, the river grabbed on to him, nudging him along slowly at first and then, as he emerged out from under the bridge, tugging at his ankles with increasing insistence. He drew further away, the rope gently uncoiling in the water, the steep angle of the cord where it ran down from the bridge’s dark parapet getting closer and closer to him as the remaining slack paid out.
It snapped tight. Choking, his body swung round until he was half in and half out of the water, the current hauling at his hips and legs, the rope lifting his head and upper body out of the river, the tension wringing the water from the fibres.
He kicked out frantically, his ears flooding with an inhuman gurgling noise that he only vaguely recognised as his own voice. But rather than free himself, all he managed to do was flip himself on to his front so that he was face down over the water.
Slowly, and with his reflection staring remorselessly back up at him from the river’s dark mirror, Cavalli watched himself hang.
‘The die has been cast’
Julius Caesar
(according to Suetonius, Divus Julius, paragraph 33)
Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC 17th March - 10.58 a.m.
One by one, the limousines and town cars drew up, disgorged their occupants on to the sodden grass, and then pulled away to a respectful distance. Parked end-to-end along the verge, they formed an inviolable black line that followed the curve of the road and then stretched down the hill and out of sight, their exhaust fumes pinned to the road by the rain as they waited.
A handful of secret service agents were patrolling the space between the burial site and the road. Inexplicably, a few of them were wearing sunglasses despite the black clouds that had sailed up the Potomac a few days ago and anchored themselves over the city. Their unsmiling presence made Tom Kirk feel uncomfortable, even though he knew it shouldn’t. After all, it had been nearly two years now. Two years since he’d crossed over to the other side of the law. Two years since he’d teamed up with Archie Connolly, his former fence, to help recover art rather than steal it. Clearly it was going to take much longer than that to shake off instincts acquired in a lifetime on the run.
There were three rows of seats arranged in a horseshoe around the flag-draped coffin, and five further rows of people standing behind these. A pretty good turnout, considering the weather. Tom and Archie had stayed back, sheltering under the generous spread of a blossoming tree halfway up the slope that climbed gently to the left of the grave.
As they watched, ceremony’s carefully choreographed martial beauty unfolded beneath them. The horse-drawn caisson slowly winding its way up the hill, followed by a single riderless horse, its flanks steaming, boots reversed in the stirrups to symbolise a fallen leader. The immaculate presenting of arms by the military escort, water dripping from their polished visors. The careful securing and transport of the coffin to the grave by a casket party made up of eight members of the 101st Airborne, Tom’s grandfather’s old unit. The final adjustments to the flag to ensure that it was stretched out and centred, the reds, blues and whites fighting to be seen through the tenebrous darkness.
From his vantage point, Tom recognised a few of the faces sheltering under the thicket of black umbrellas, although most were strangers to him and, he suspected, would have been to his grandfather too. That figured. Funerals were a vital networking event for the DC top brass - a chance to talk to the people you normally couldn’t be seen with; a chance to be seen with the people who normally wouldn’t talk to you. Deals were done, handshakes given, assurances provided. In this city, death was known to have breathed life into many a stuttering career or stalled bill.
There was perhaps, Tom suspected, another, more personal reason for their presence too. After all, like them, Trent Clayton Jackson Duval III had been an important man - a senator, no less. And as such it was in their shared interest to ensure that he got a proper send off. Not because they cared about him particularly, although as a war hero, ‘Trigger’ Duval commanded more respect than most. Rather because they knew, as if they were all party to some secret, unspoken pact, that it was only by reinforcing these sorts of traditions that they could safeguard their prerogative to a similarly grand send off when their own time came.
‘Who’s the bird?’ Archie sniffed. In his midforties, about five foot ten and unshaven with close cropped blond hair, Archie had the squareshouldered, rough confidence of someone who didn’t mind using their fists to start or settle an argument. This was at odds with the patrician elegance of his clothes, however; a three-buttoned, ten-ounce, dark grey Anderson & Sheppard suit, crisp white Turnbull and Asser shirt, and woven black silk Lewin’s tie hinting at a rather more considered and refined temperament. Tom knew that many struggled to reconcile this apparent incongruity, although the truth was that both were valid. It was only a short distance from the rain-lashed trestle tables of Bermondsey Market to Mayfair’s panelled auction rooms, but for Archie it had been a long and difficult journey that had required this expensive camouflage to travel undetected. Tom rather suspected that he now deliberately played off the contradiction, preferring to keep people guessing which world he was from rather than pin him down to one or the other.
‘Miss Texas,’ Tom answered, knowing instinctively that his eye would have been drawn to the platinum blonde in the front row. ‘Or she was a few years ago. The senator upgraded after meeting her on the campaign trail. He left her everything.’
‘I’ll bet he did, the dirty old bastard.’ Archie grinned. ‘Look at the size of those puppies! She’d keel over in a strong wind.’
The corners of Tom’s mouth twitched but he said nothing, finding himself wondering if her dark Jackie O glasses were to hide her tears or to mask the fact that she had none. The chaplain started the service.
‘You sure you don’t want to head down?’ Archie was holding up a Malacca-handled Brigg umbrella. A gold identity bracelet glinted on his wrist where his sleeve had slipped back.
‘This is close enough.’
‘Bloody long way to come if all we’re going to do is stand up here getting pissed on,’ Archie sniffed, peering out disconsolately at the leaden skies. ‘They invited you, didn’t they?’
‘They were being polite. They never thought I’d actually show. I’m not welcome here. Not really.’
The empty caisson pulled away, the horses’ hooves clattering noisily on the blacktop, reins jangling.
‘I thought he liked you?’
‘He
