Dante leapt to his feet. "How did they do it?"

"Santiago's sister used my cell phone. High intelligence must be a family trait."

"Watch your mouth, puta," Santiago snarled.

Colomba ground her teeth. "What'll you do to me if I don't?"

Dante grabbed Santiago and Colomba each by an arm to separate them, the way you do with children when they fight. "How are we going to get out of here?"

"You can't," Santiago replied, continuing to stare at Colomba. "My boys downstairs say that the cops have surrounded the building."

"And no doubt they've set up roadblocks on all the roads leading to the area," said Colomba. "At least, that's what I would have done. Or better yet. I'd have put the apartment building under surveillance and waited for the suspect to emerge. Or at least I'd have waited for the light of day. They certainly must be in a tremendous hurry to catch me," she added bitterly.

Santiago slapped Dante on the back. "Sorry, compadre. I hope that you'll respect our agreement and tell them that I had nothing to do with it."

"Yes, of course I will," Dante replied mechanically.

Jorge had started dismantling the computer workstation, and Santiago went over to give him a hand.

"How much time do we have before they arrive?" asked Dante.

"All the way up here? Maybe half an hour if no one helps them. They found me by tracing my cell phone, but they don't know anything about Santiago, otherwise they'd have made a targeted raid instead of coming en masse. They're going to have to go through all the apartments."

"Then add a few more minutes: it's not going to be that simple," said Dante.

He was right, because at that very moment, six floors below, a group of officers from the Mobile Squad, dressed in riot gear, were facing off with a compact mob of screaming, furious tenants filling the lobby and the stairway. Between the two formations Chief Inspector Infanti was yelling himself hoarse, trying to make himself heard.

"People, please! Don't interfere with the work we're here to carry out. We're looking for a person who doesn't live here! This has nothing to do with you!" he shouted. As he did, he pondered the fact that until just a few months ago the woman they were looking for had been his direct superior and that he still couldn't believe that she was guilty of the things they accused her of. A bit of a nut, no doubt, but capable of planting a bomb in Rovere's apartment? That wasn't possible. As for the evidence, someone on the Forensic Squad must have screwed up. It would hardly be the first time. Still, no one had asked for his opinion on the matter, and most of his colleagues were less disposed to defend her innocence.

A stout woman stepped forward, banging on a saucepan with a spoon to silence all the others. She was wearing a heavily teased-out wig and a dress with vertical stripes that made her look like a barrel. "Who is it you're looking for?" she asked in a strong southern Italian accent.

"Signora, that's not any of your business. You just need to let us do our jobs."

"You're looking for him in our homes, so it's definitely our business now. Do you think we're just going to let you in like this?"

"We're trying to find him, that's all. None of you are going to have any problems."

An old woman stuck her head down the stairs. "Liar!" she shouted. "That's what you always say! And when you took my son away, you said it was just for a routine check."

"Signora, I swear it's true," said Infanti, increasingly worried about the turn the situation was taking. He wondered why he hadn't just called in sick that evening. Especially once he found out that the judge who had issued the arrest warrant was De Angelis. That college-educated donkey.

At that very moment, the educated donkey in question was leaning against an unmarked police car parked across the street from the front entrance of the building. He was uneasily watching the kids in the glare of the floodlights as they stared back at him from behind the line of armored cars. They couldn't have been any older than twelve, and they already seemed eager to grab handguns and start shooting, he thought with a faint sense of disquiet. Santini, a couple of yards away, was talking in a low voice into the radio.

"What the fuck is going on?" De Angelis asked him. From what he could see, the officers who should already be searching apartments were just standing, half in and half out of the apartment building entrance, while from inside bursts of shouting and cursing could be heard rolling out at intervals.

Santini held the radio away from his ear. "There's a problem with the tenants," he said. "This isn't an easy neighborhood."

"We aren't easy either. Let's give them a wake-up call."

"Caselli can't go anywhere. Let's wait until things calm down."

"Let's wait, my ass."

"Are you sure, Judge?"

"Stop asking questions and get going," said De Angelis, irritated.

"Yes, sir."

Making his way through the officers, Santini emerged alongside Infanti, who was still trying to negotiate. "Why aren't we moving?" he asked.

"You can see for yourself, Deputy Chief," said Infanti, sweaty-faced. "They're afraid we want to take away one of their people."

"Just one of them? They don't understand a thing. Let me explain something to them." Santini signaled a member of the squad to hand him a small megaphone and took a couple of steps forward. He switched on the device, and it emitted a piercing electronic shriek. "Now, then," he bellowed into the microphone, and his voice, transformed into the voice of a robot, echoed all the way up to the top floors. "Either you get IMMEDIATELY out of our way, or else we'll cart you all off for resisting the orders of public authorities and interfering with the duties of law enforcement officers. Is that clear? You all need to DISPERSE THIS UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY RIGHT NOW." He lowered the megaphone for a second, and the place was silent as a graveyard. Then a bedside lamp flew down the stairwell and shattered half an inch from his feet. "Who threw that?" he shouted, red in the face, forgetting he was holding a megaphone. "Who the fuck threw that?"

"Your mother did," someone shouted back from two stories up. There was a round of laughter.

Santini tried to figure whose voice that had been, unsuccessfully. He went back and stood next to Infanti. "Charge them," he ordered.

"We'll wind up in the newspapers, sir," he replied.

"So much the better. Maybe they'll think twice about it next time."

Infanti took his helmet off his utility belt and put it on. He hadn't worn a riot helmet since the G8 summit in Genoa, and things hadn't gone well for anyone back then. He gave the signal.

The sounds of distant shouting reached the roof of the building. Colomba was still standing next to Dante by the sofa. "You need to hide, they don't know you're with me. And if you're lucky, once they've caught me they're not going to waste a lot more time around here."

"What then?"

"Then you continue."

Dante shook his head. "That won't work, CC."

"We've already talked about that, I think."

"But I wasn't comfortable with it then, and I'm much less okay with it now." He broke away from Colomba's side and went over to Santiago and Jorge, who had now been joined by Tattoo-Hands. They'd almost finished breaking down all their equipment, and they were stuffing it into two large backpacks. He leaned close to Santiago and whispered into his ear. "You need to get her out of here."

Santiago angrily threw the Phillips-head screwdriver he'd used to dismantle the dish antenna to the ground. "How dare you come ask me such a thing? No es suficiente el caos que has causado?" He pointed at the dismantled computer. "Mira! My office has been destroyed. It's how I made my living! And now I have la polica en mi casa!"

"You always knew this could happen, Santiago. But try to understand that it's going to be better for everyone if they don't catch her. Better for you, too."

Santiago turned his attention back to the equipment. "There's no way."

"If there's no way, then why are you putting your computers into backpacks? Where are you planning to take them?"

"That has nothing to do with you."

Dante forced Santiago to turn and look at him. "You can't let them catch her."

"Dante. If I show her how to get out of here, she'll tell all her cop buddies! And I'll have to find another place. Entiendes?"

"I promise you she won't tell anyone anything," said Dante, knowing it was a lie. Colomba was intractable when it came to certain things.

Santiago was about to retort when Colomba shouted, "The helicopter! Get under cover!"

Dante looked up over the roofs. A shaft of light was dropping out of the sky toward the street and moving toward the apartment building, accompanied by a swelling noise of rotors. In the give-and-take of the discussion, he hadn't even noticed.

Colomba came sprinting over.

"Is it going to land up here?" Santiago asked her, clearly worried.

"No, it's going to continue to circle overhead, mainly to make sure no one gets away in the dark. But if they see us they'll tell the cops to come straight up here."

Tattoo-Hands pointed to the lower shed roof, on the far side of the roof from where they were. "Over there!"

The shed roof, about ten feet long, sheltered in its overhang a dozen or so rectangular planters full of dirt, from which not so much as a green sprout was growing. It had been an experimental home-grown marijuana plantation, which Jorge had undertaken a few months earlier. The reason for the dismal results might have had something to do with the fact that the canopy was made of corrugated metal, instead of translucent plastic like most others. Tattoo-Hands and Santiago hastily grabbed their backpacks and made for it at a dead run, with the others hard on their heels. They crouched down around the planters as the shaft of light raked over the roof and the sound of chopper blades grew deafening.

Dante couldn't believe that this was actually happening, and to judge from Colomba's expression she was thinking the same thing.

"Santiago!" Dante shouted to make himself heard above the racket. "You have to make up your mind! Tell us how to get out of here!"

"Is there a way?" Colomba asked. "How?"

Santiago said nothing, and Dante, at the risk of being spotted by the helicopter, scooted over and crouched down in front of him. "Santiago. You understand what CC and I are doing."

"I don't care."

"If you really didn't care, you wouldn't have helped us. I haven't paid you enough for the risks you've been taking. You know who we're hunting, you know what he does to children. And I know you. We may not be in agreement on a lot of things, but we are on one: you don't touch kids."

"Los nios son bendecidos por Dios," said Santiago, against his will.

"If they catch CC, no one will free the children who've been taken. The way they took me. You know my story. Children the age of your littlest sister. And they'll grow up like animals in a cage."

"And the lady cop can find them?" Santiago replied mistrustfully.

"Yes. I know she can do it. And I'll help her."

"And the chico in the video, too?"

"Yes, him, too. And if we can do it, it's going to be in part thanks to you."

"Don't waste your time listening to them," said Jorge. "They'd say anything to get their asses out of here."

Santiago glared at him. "I know this man," he said, pointing at Dante. "He's not a liar."

"What about the lady cop?" asked Tattoo-Hands.

"The lady cop isn't a cop anymore. She's someone who's on the run. Y no me gusta enviar a la gente a la crcel."

"Well, how do you get out of here?" asked Dante.

"Through the basements," said Santiago. "They're all connected. Our building, the next one over, and the one after that."

"The police have surrounded the whole neighborhood," Dante objected.

"But not the park," Santiago pointed out, gesturing in the direction of the Giardini dei Tre Laghi, a public if somewhat decrepit park not far away. "There's a way to get there from the third building."

"If we reach the park, will we be far enough away from your colleagues?" Dante asked Colomba.

"If we move fast, maybe," she replied. "But once we get there, we're going to need a car."

"Can you take care of it, Santiago?" asked Dante.

"No crees que ests exagerando?" Jorge broke in. "Now you want us to get a car for your girlfriend?"

"I didn't ask anyone for anything," said Colomba.

"I did," said Dante. "It doesn't do us any good to make it to the park and then get caught. And they'd figure out how we got there in a second."

Santiago heaved a deep sigh, then looked over at Tattoo-Hands. "Call Enrico and tell him to leave a clean car at the bend in the road, keys in the ignition."

"You're certainly giving her the full service, this whore," said Jorge, infuriated. "I don't understand."

"Which is why I'm the boss," Santiago shot back. "Tiene usted algun problema conmigo?" he asked ferociously. "Do we have a problem?"

"No," Jorge hastened to reply.

"But we can't get down into the basement," said Dante. "There are cops all up and down the stairs."

"We'll get in through the building across the way. I know how to do it." Santiago nodded in Jorge and Tattoo-Hands's direction. "I'll lead the way for Dante and the lady cop. You two grab las mochilas and bring up the rear."

While Tattoo-Hands was calling Enrico, Colomba studied the movements of the helicopter. It was describing a large figure eight over the three connected buildings and the adjacent streets. If they took off when it was at the far end of the loop, they could get down off the roof without being seen, but it would probably spot them entering the second building. At that point, their only chance was to run as fast as they could.

"Tell us when to go," said Santiago, who understood that Colomba was calculating the timing.

The roar of the helicopter subsided, and the roof fell into shadow. "Just another couple of seconds." Colomba counted in her head. "Now!"

The five of them took off at a dead run, following Santiago's lead. The first stretch was fairly straightforward. An exterior access ladder led down from the roof to the top of the covered walkway joining the two adjacent buildings. They got down it without mishap; among other things it had round rungs, which were easy to grip. Colomba kept Dante right above her the whole way, so that she knew where he was, and she watched him clamber down the rungs with great agility, while she could use only one hand because of her bag of clothing. Jorge and Tattoo-Hands had the hardest time of it, because they had to take off their backpacks and carry them balanced on their heads to keep from getting caught in the safety cage.

Once they were down on the roof of the walkway, they pressed against the wall until the helicopter had gone overhead; then they ran the length of the walkway to the far end, where a rusty door awaited them; it was a little over a yard high and was covered with obscene graffiti. They could hear the twittering of the cops' radios and their voices coming from below. The faraway shouts, on the other hand, had ceased, which meant that the officers had managed to clear the front entrance to the building.

The door was fastened with a massive padlock. Santiago unlocked it with a key, then threw open the door. "Here we go."

Colomba stuck her head in. The darkness was absolute. She asked Dante for his lighter so she could see the interior of the shaft: the guide rails down which the elevator ran were fastened to the walls; fifteen or twenty feet down was the roof of the elevator car. To reach it, she'd have to climb down a ladder much narrower than the one before, and with no safety cage around it. "Does the elevator work?" she asked in low voice to keep from being heard from below. "I don't want to be turned into a pancake."

"It's never worked," Tattoo-Hands replied. "You climb down to the roof of the elevator car, and you're already in the basements."

"I'll go first," said Santiago.