DEPUTY CHIEF ROCCO SCHIAVONE HAD BEEN SITTING ON THE little yellow settee outside Judge Baldi’s door for the past ten minutes. Lupa had dropped off to sleep, and he had already read everything there was to read. A copy of La Stampa that was three days old; two magazines published by the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial police; a pamphlet for a hotel in the ski resort of Courmayeur that somebody had forgotten there; all of the notices posted on the walls and even the label on the fire extinguisher. The door was still closed. There was nothing left for him to do but kill time by studying the swirls and whorls of the knots in the wood, hoping to discover some mysterious hidden figure in them. He was still focusing on this task to pass the time when the door finally swung open. Judge Baldi appeared in a herringbone jacket from the eighties and the gray skin tone of someone who hasn’t had a breath of fresh air in hours. Behind Baldi, Rocco was able to glimpse the bearded Judge Messina sitting in the office and a black uniform bedecked with glittering silver insignia.

“Schiavone! I’m going to be busy with this for quite some time. Can we postpone till later?”

Rocco got to his feet. “I just wanted to make sure everything was taken care of. I’ll go to Varallo tomorrow. Did you talk to the warden?”

“Certainly . . .” He turned around and looked at the room behind him, then slowly shut the door. “This meeting is never going to end. But we’re doing great things, you know that?”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Cuntrera’s papers . . . the documents we found on his person at the border . . . are looking like they’re going to be decisive!”

“Am I wrong, or is there a carabiniere in there?”

“That’s right, a colonel.” And he looked at the deputy chief. “I can’t say much. But this time, thanks to you and that mental defective Cuntrera, we’re going to be able to nab a fair number of people. And as we were saying the other day, very highly placed people, too! So now I’d like you to solve the problem at the prison.”

“ROS?” asked Schiavone.

“Excuse me?”

“That colonel . . . is he ROS? Special Operations Group?”

Baldi nodded. “They’re giving us a hand now.”

“If you need me, you know where I am.” Rocco shook his hand, and then, with a soft whistle, he summoned Lupa. “Shall we go, pup?”

“Schiavone?”

He turned around after walking halfway down the hall.

“Keep your cell phone switched on.”

“You can count on it.”