“Then why are we just sitting here?”

Then why don’t you look out the damn window and see? “There’s a car in our way, sir. That Audi up ahead, it’s blocking Rosmini. It just backed out of the church parking lot, and it takes a while to get straightened out in these little alleys.”

Achille said something but Enrico didn’t hear. He had made another one of his automatic rearview mirror checks and this time there was something there; a gray Opel hatchback with one man in it had drawn up behind them, no more than ten yards away.

Now they were blocked front and back. An edgy little prickle slid up the nape of his neck. Not that there was anything really unusual about the situation-this kind of thing was bound to happen all the time on Stresa’s constricted old streets, and often did-but it was exactly the kind of predicament that he wasn’t supposed to get into, the kind of predicament he was paid to avoid: a narrow, virtually windowless alley hemmed in by walls of stone and stucco, a car in front and a car behind, and no room to get by either one of them.

He tapped the horn. “Come on, come on, let’s go!” he yelled to the one in front, still jiggling its way into a position from which it could drive forward. That one, he saw now, had two men in the front seat. He got a little edgier. This had been really stupid of him. The hell with the kid’s French class. He’d known better, he should have used his head. They should have waited it out with everybody else on the Corso.

“Enrico, for Christ’s sake,” Achille said angrily, with his hands to his ears, “you could at least warn me before you blow that thing. With these stone walls-”

“Shut up,” Enrico said. “Get down on the floor.”

Achille was shocked into stuttering. “Wh-wh-what is it? Those men-”

“Get the hell down! Now!” Enrico snapped when the boy didn’t move, and Achille hurriedly dropped out of sight behind him.