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“I’m sure that was because he had such a good friend to be there for him,” Leonardo said with a smile.
“I was sorry I had to leave him.”
“Really,” Fausto said in a tone that indicated he didn’t believe me at all.
“Well… obviously I was happy to get out early… but yes, I was worried about him.”
“Worried?” Fausto asked. “You just said he was doing well.”
“San Vittore isn’t quite as… refined as your house here, Signor Rosolini.”
Fausto smiled in amusement. “I’m sure.”
“You think he’ll be all right, though?” Leonardo asked, his forehead creased with worry.
“Yes. I taught him everything I know about hand-to-hand combat over the last three and a half years. He’s the best fighter in San Vittore.”
“Now that you’ve left,” Fausto said coolly.
I looked Fausto straight in the eyes. “Yes. He’s the best fighter in San Vittore now that I’ve left.”
“Stop harassing him,” Leonardo ordered his brother. “He’s our guest.”
Niccolo addressed his uncle. “Lars was the one who requested Ianelli not make too much noise, so he obviously wasn’t trying too hard to get out of San Vittore.”
I recalled that Ianelli was the name of the expensive lawyer who’d looked into my case three years before.
“Yes – why was that, exactly?” Fausto asked me. “Why didn’t you want Ianelli to probe too deeply?”
“First,” I said, addressing Leonardo, “thank you for doing that. From what Dario said, I know Signor Ianelli wasn’t cheap.”
“It’s nothing – nothing at all,” Leonardo said, waving my comment away with his hand. “The very least we could do.”
“Still – mille grazie.” A thousand thanks. Then I looked at Fausto. “Second, the reason I asked that Signor Ianelli not probe too deeply into my case is because my last name isn’t Andersen. I was afraid that if he tripped any alarms, it might make the government look closer at my case and unearth some things I didn’t want brought to light.”
“Bene, bene,” Leonardo said. Good, good.
Neither he nor anyone else seemed particularly surprised at my revelation.
“Did Dario already tell you?” I asked, slightly perturbed. The prison telephone line was recorded and listened to by the authorities – but Dario knew that, so he shouldn’t have said anything.
“No, he was discreet,” Fausto said. “But when we checked up on you, we couldn’t find anyone matching your background with the name of Lars Andersen. What is your real last name?”
“Henriksson. With a ‘k’ and two esses.” I assumed they would check up on me, so I made sure they knew the correct spelling. “Honestly, though, I’m not sure you’ll find too much under that name, either.”
“Why?”
I sighed. If they were going to hire me for a job, it was better the truth come out now than later – and from me, not someone else.
“I was in Swedish Special Forces, which I’m pretty sure Dario told you. What he couldn’t tell you – what I asked him not to tell anybody – was that I briefly worked for British Intelligence. MI6. I was told they wiped any identifying details off my record.”
The mood in the room shifted perceptibly.
Leonardo sat up straight, Niccolo looked stunned, and Fausto went from relaxed to high alert.
“I was on a mission for them in Lake Como when I got stopped with unregistered guns and silencers in my trunk. The condition for MI6 hiring me was that if I ever got captured, I couldn’t tell my captors who I worked for. So I went to jail instead.”
Leonardo and Fausto exchanged a look.
