The Puppeteer

The black extended-length Range Rover entered the Campo Verano Cemetery at 5:35 am, just as the sun rose. Constructed in the early nineteenth century, the garden-like two-hundred-and-five-acre cemetery, which was essentially flat except for several hills, the most prominent of which was not far from the entrance, was in the heart of Rome and six miles from Vatican City. Once inside, the Range Rover veered right, robustly passing scores of majestic tombs and mausoleums as it wove its way to the top of the prominent hill, a thousand yards as the crow flew from the entrance. After it stopped, one of the occupant’s two tactical gear-clad bodyguards got out of the bulletproof vehicle, surveilled the immediate area, and after determining it was safe, gave a thumb up to the driver, who was also the second bodyguard, although he couldn’t be seen through the vehicle’s darkened windows. Seconds later, the driver stepped out of the car and opened the door behind him, helping a sixty-four-year-old, expensively-dressed woman carrying a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses, to exit. Pia Lamberti was five feet six inches tall with black hair and brown eyes. She carried herself with an aristocratic stature, meaning how she looked and acted exuded respect, intellect, and privilege. All were accurate descriptions of Italy’s intelligence czar, a position that gave her control of every intelligence function within the government. Surprisingly, her position, established by the previous president, didn’t appear on any organizational chart because Italy’s head of state had classified the position. Therefore, knowledge of it was provided only on a need-to-know basis. Answerable solely to the office of the president and empowered to act in their name, very few ministers, high-level government employees, senior law enforcement officers, and a select number of foreign officials knew of Pia Lamberti’s role in the government and the immense influence she possessed. Nicknamed the witch by most of those with whom she interacted because she was unforgiving and exploited a person’s frailties, she was the widow of the ex-president of Italy and the former lover of the woman whose grave she was visiting. Beginning her career with the Department of Information Security, which oversaw both foreign and domestic intelligence activities, and without outside influence, she worked her way to becoming second in command of that department. However, upon seeing that the lack of coordination between these intelligence functions resulted in intelligence failures and delayed responses to situations of urgency because each organization jealously guarded its turf to retain their bureaucracy and budget, she approached her husband, who was then president, and convinced him to create the off-the-books position of intelligence czar—a position she was asked to retain when his predecessor, President Enrico Orsini, knowing of her extraordinary and unpublished accomplishments, decided to continue the ghost function. The reason for making the office of intelligence czar a state secret was that it shrouded whoever was in that position from scrutiny by the nine-hundred-and-forty-five members of the legislature, which consisted of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. It also allowed her to bypass being second-guessed by the President of the Council of Ministers, the Interministerial Committee, and the Department of Information Security—all of which had some involvement with the nation’s intelligence functions. “If my position of intelligence czar was known,” she told her late husband, “I’d spend my days answering questions, most of those asking questions trying to find a way to politically embarrass you rather than protecting the country. I’ll leave the unenviable burden of working with these bureaucrats to the agency directors below me.” One of her areas of focus was recruiting and directing intelligence assets, one of whom was Carolina Biagi, an undercover operative and her former lover, who was murdered on June 15th while on assignment. On that date, just as she’d done for the past three years, she visited her grave. Getting out of her vehicle, Lamberti walked to the black granite tombstone on which the image of a cameo ring was carved, replicating the one she’d given Carolina Biagi, the top lifting to reveal Lamberti’s photo as a reminder of their secret relationship. The ring, placed in a stainless steel box, was buried with her lover. As Lamberti placed the flowers in front of the tombstone and stood in silence while looking at the grave, Franco Zunino, her driver/bodyguard, positioned himself a respectful distance away and looked intently at the surrounding area for anything that might pose a threat. He was six feet two inches tall with black hair and had an athletic build with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Her other bodyguard, Silvio Villa, was standing beside the vehicle using gyro-assisted 14x binoculars to surveil the area, the optics within making objects appear as if they were fourteen times closer. The gyro was necessary for surveilling locations far away, providing input to image stability sensors that detected even minute vertical or horizontal movements or shakes, afterward sending the mathematics of these changes to a microcomputer, which adjusted the prisms within the binoculars to provide a stable image. This stability enabled Villa to look closely at the numerous monuments and statuaries behind which an assailant could hide and pose a threat. Standing six feet two inches tall, he was three hundred pounds of sculpted muscle, with his thick neck and large biceps constantly threatening to tear the fabric of the shirts that he wore under his jacket. As Lamberti spoke to her lover in a low voice that only she could hear, Villa saw a momentary glint of low-intensity light at the top of one of the two towers flanking the three-arched entranceway to the cemetery but was unable to detect its source despite moving around to look at the tower from different angles. With his military training kicking in, he knew that metal had a strong reflectivity, while that of glass was weak. Subsequently, he had no doubt that the rising sun had exposed a set of binoculars or a rifle scope pointed in their direction rather than a piece of metal that caught the sun. Knowing they needed to get Lamberti into the vehicle as quickly as possible, he planned to alert Zunino and closely precede them to the Range Rover, blocking the person’s shot at Lamberti. However, before he could speak into his wireless mic and tell Zunino what he’d seen, he was struck in the chest by a .338 Lapua round which imparted enough inertial energy to throw his body several feet backward onto the ground, the lack of sound indicating the bullet came from a silenced weapon. A second and a half later, with Zunino looking for threats in the opposite direction of Villa and not seeing what happened to his partner, he was struck in the back by another .338 Lapua round.