The Etruscan Connection (Darren Priest Mysteries Book 2) | Book by Dick Rosano

Nov 4

Nov 4 The Etruscan Connection (Darren Priest Mysteries Book 2)

Book summary

Investigators Darren Priest and Alana Weber delve into the suspicious death of a scientist at a Tuscan archaeological site. Their investigation uncovers links to the Etruscan civilization, ancient Lydian coins, and a potential historical upheaval concerning the Roman Empire's origins. As they unravel a web of secrets, international intrigue, and revenge, Priest and Weber face the daunting task of deciphering a historical mystery that could forever alter humanity's understanding of its past.

Excerpt from The Etruscan Connection (Darren Priest Mysteries Book 2)

Kasai Ristorante

Amalfi Coast

It could have been better. It should have been better.

Not the food. The food was terrific. A label-less carafe of local red wine, a basket of fresh bread still hot from the oven, and a plate of steaming frutti di mare—fried catch of the day—literally “set the table.” The string of twinkling lights laced through the trellis overhead brought the stars in the heavens down to our table.

We were at Kasai, a restaurant perched on a ribbon of road in Praiano, a romantic and iconic little village on the Amalfi Coast. We sat at sidewalk tables overlooking the sea, but Kasai’s small dining room inside the establishment was across this narrow roadway and pressed into the rocky rise of the mountain above. The tables there were snuggled close together between vases of lavender and an unkempt display of ceramics on the walls in a dimly lit scene that could have been a paragraph or two from a long-lost Hemingway novel.

But the sidewalk tables were infinitely better, lined up at the railing overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in the cool evening air under a canopy of the sparkling night sky.

Waiters from the kitchen across the road showed no hesitation in dodging Vespas and tour buses careening around the curve to get to our table. The scent of fresh lemons—a staple of the Amalfi Coast—was in the air, and even the occasional squeal of tires as vehicles of all sizes rolled past in careless haste added to the operatic essence of the evening.

It was glorious.

But the call I got from Aggie earlier that afternoon could have been better.

“I need your help,” was all he said.

Normally, I would have hoped for more detail than that. Even a “hello” or a simple, “How are you, Darren?” But Aggie didn’t spin long sentences, for me or anyone else. Just “I need your help.”

Seated across from me at Kasai, Alana paused with her fork held over the plate of steaming seafood and looked up at me. Even in the dim glow of the party lights overhead, her brown eyes sparkled and brought a pleasant thump to my heart.

“Everything alright?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s okay,” I lied. Alana and I were celebrating our final evening in Praiano before returning home—she to Vienna, Austria, and me to Washington, D.C. The blissfully limpid night, the fragrance of summer flowers, and the aromas of seafood and fresh bread on the table made parting even harder. We never seemed to have enough time together, which is why I planned this week for us at the Villa Poesia just down the road.

We worked through our plate of seafood and shared glasses of wine and humorous recollections of our week together. The fried calamari had a hint of red spice, and the red wine was a welcome chaser for the oil-scented dressing that dappled the plate of tiny fish and mussels.

But I was a little distracted, and Alana could tell.

The waiter swung in our direction once again—mere seconds before a minibus sped down the road—and settled a plate of truffled pasta between us. The broad tagliatelle noodles glistened with a coating of melted butter and olive oil, and the shaved, paper-thin discs of black truffle gave off a savory aroma that trailed behind the waiter and turned heads from other tables. I lifted my fork to load some of it onto my plate as Alana watched.

“Is your friend okay?” she asked, pressing her point.

Alana knew of Aggie but had not met him. Not during our time in Vienna and not since then. But she knew that he was a part of my complicated history. Officer Alana Weber was an Austrian police investigator, and she was quick to pick up on telltale signals in my behavior.

Aggie Darwin was an old friend. We met at a rural commune just hours from Washington, D.C., after our tours of duty in Afghanistan. Tall Cedars was a way station for battered souls. Returning from the war zone where I served as a military intelligence interrogator, I needed the uncomplicated, undulating rhythms of the Tall Cedars lifestyle, a veritable wind chime for a settled life. There, I encountered Aggie, who was there in search of the same therapy.

“He said he needs help,” I told Alana, turning the tagliatelle on my fork as I turned the conversation back to the phone call I got that afternoon. She and I had just risen from a pleasurable midday nap and moved lazily to the late-afternoon sunlight on the terrace when my cell phone had buzzed on the table beside me.

The terrace of the Villa Poesia—and the villa itself—offered numerous delights. Relaxing and sunburst in the afternoon, cooled with gentle Mediterranean breezes in the evening. The white-washed walls of the villa were brilliantly accented with ocean blue and green flourishes, a gorgeous palace on the edge of the coast. The vast terrazza provided privacy as well as views that seemed to stretch forever. Through long, languorous days and quiet evening hours, we sat there on the reclining lounges and gazed out at the endless sea.

“What kind of help?” she asked, bringing my attention back to Kasai, to Alana, and to the evening meal.

“He said a friend of his, a guy named Dielman or something, died in an archeological dig.”

“Where?”

“In Tarquinia,” I replied. “Don’t know where that is, except Aggie said it’s just north of Rome.”

“How did he, this guy Dielman, die?”

“Not sure. Aggie didn’t want to give too many details over the phone, but he was clearly in a bit of shock.”

“And you can help with this?” Alana pursued.

“Aggie thinks it wasn’t an accident.”

Alana lifted some of the tagliatelle and truffles with a combination of fork and serving spoon and lowered the bundle onto her plate.

“You’re not a bank examiner,” she said with a wry smile. I, too, had to smile at her obvious jab.

When Alana and I had first met in Vienna, I was posing as a bank examiner, reluctant to give away my true identity, while I sorted out a strange series of coincidences for the American president.

Well, sorta true identity. After claiming to be a bank examiner to justify my interest in the DFR-Wien bank that was central to the President’s concerns, I had to reset my bio to explain to her that I was actually a wine and food writer. True enough, since I had published articles for The Wine Review and was in Vienna at the time to attend a formal tasting of Italian wines. But when she doubted even that ruse, I realized that I wasn’t far from admitting my even truer background. Her piercing gaze convinced me that her natural abilities or police training made Alana adept at divining the truth in a forest of lies. She saw through my layers of deception. Fortunately, our evolving personal relationship made her reluctant to force me to reveal more.

So, at dinner, I didn’t have to reply to her comment. But I knew the time would come when I would have to tell her who I really was.

Darren Priest, my current name, served nicely as an adopted identity. As a writer, I could pass it off simply as a nom de plume. But I kept it for grander purposes, with a Social Security card in that name, tax records, and abundant other references—thanks to an assist from the U.S. government. I didn’t have to return to my birth name, Armando Listrani, unless I wanted to. And with Alana—at least for now—I didn’t want to.

And the U.S. government strongly agreed with that decision.

“Armando” might have been too much for Alana to handle at this point in our relationship. As him—or should I say, as the “really truly me”—I had worked in military intelligence, in a special squad used in the interrogation of particularly difficult subjects, from both sides of the conflict. Together with five other men who shared my odd ability to find truth amid a subject’s lies, I had carried out interrogations in secret, weeks or months at a time as circumstances required. I had been able to break down the subjects with mind games and psychological tricks. No physical contact or threats; no menacing comments about their own lives or that of their family members. Just psy-ops—and what Sergeant Randall called “penetrating perceptions of nonverbal signals.” Despite his penchant for obtuse verbiage, we got what Sarge was describing: the inexplicable talent for translating minor quirks, muscle twitches, dryness on the surface of the eyes, and skin temperature into signals that could be used against the subject and lead him to break down his defenses against the truth.

We didn’t attempt to find out the truth about the subject; the truth was less important than knowing the lies. We only cared to know when he was being misleading or deceitful. Simply by leaning in or staring blankly at him, I could convey my skepticism about what he was saying. This, and a series of carefully worded questions, led him to worry that I knew more than he did and more than he was admitting to. Which in turn led him to expose everything he was trying to hide.

A rising pink glow on his forearms, an inconspicuous bristle of his eyebrows, a gulp or a stare that seemed forcibly non-blinking always gave him away.

It was called Operation Best Guess, a unit that foreswore the Medieval torture practices favored by misguided goons with rubber hoses and water buckets. Word play and a keen awareness of physical “tells” allowed us to peel back the layers of untruths to discover the nuggets of worthwhile information.

It worked every time.

But after separating from the U.S. Army, I was warned by the government officials to whom I reported that continuing as Armando Listrani might pose some difficulties that I would rather avoid. “You’ve been places that you should forget and dealt with people who won’t forget,” they told me. So, they offered help in abandoning that identity and assuming my new one, as Darren Priest.

That step was particularly hard on my family. With both mother and father deceased, I had only to break it to siblings. But they could only know that I was no longer Armando, not that I had become Darren Priest since they were not allowed to know where I had gone. I softened it a bit by maintaining regular communication, even occasional in-person visits, but generally had to divorce myself from my earlier life to remain safe.

Why safe? I had not committed any crimes while an interrogator. But I had spent too much time with too many people who wouldn’t mind getting revenge for the role I played in their capture and imprisonment.

Some parts of the world were especially dangerous for me, so the Department of State flatly refused to let me travel there, even as a civilian. Fortunately, the Amalfi Coast was not one of those places.

But once you adopt a new identity, you can’t keep changing it. I couldn’t be Armando Listrani while at the Villa Poesia in Praiano, then resume Darren Priest when I returned to Washington.

So, Alana knew me as Darren Priest, the wine and food writer whose “cover” career she only barely believed. She easily discarded my ruse of being a bank examiner in Vienna and, when she found out I had posed as a journalist for The Washington Post at another point in time, she scoffed. I was convincing to most people; I knew a lot about the identities I assumed and the subjects they embodied. As a wine and food writer, I had published numerous articles and a few books, but anyone with Alana’s perceptive skills—not to mention the emotional proximity I allowed her—would know that there lurked something else below the surface.

As the pistachio gelato and espresso appeared at the table, my mind went back to Alana’s comment.

“No, I’m not a bank examiner,” I smiled. I wanted to tell her more and knew that I would, in time, but not right now.

Alana smiled back and slipped a spoonful of gelato into her mouth.

“Aggie said he thinks Dielman’s death was not an accident,” I repeated.

“An archeological dig?” she asked with skepticism. “What kind of skullduggery goes on at those places?”

“Don’t know,” I replied. “And he’s a little jumpy now and then. Aggie, I mean. But this sounded different.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Well, the week at Villa Poesia ends tomorrow…” and this drew a sigh from Alana. It had been a spectacular escape for both of us. She from her duties as a police investigator; me from my double-life as a writer and as a too-often sought-after investigator for the American power center. In Praiano, and at Villa Poesia, we had forsaken all that, forgotten it all even. We had become Alana and Darren, lovers with only these infrequent getaways to remind us of our attraction to each other.

Work of the old kind had not intervened until Aggie’s call.

Alana would be returning home to Vienna anyway, to work, and to her young daughter Kia. And I was returning to my condo in the suburbs of Washington. Aggie’s call for help might create a detour for us, though, a delay in facing the real world again. So, I dipped my spoon into the gelato and turned my eyes toward Alana.

“Would you like to go to Tarquinia for a few days?” I asked.

“I would go to the Arctic with you,” she said quickly but added, “well, maybe not there,” and she smiled.

“But yes, I can spare a couple of days for that,” she added. “It’s only Friday, and I don’t report back to work until Monday. If we check out tomorrow and head north, we’ll have most of Saturday and all of Sunday. I can catch a train from Rome to Vienna on Monday morning.”

“Okay. Done,” I said with more confidence than I actually felt. Leaving the Amalfi Coast and heading toward Rome would not be as pleasant as days in the sun at Villa Poesia, but at least I’d still be with Alana.

Villa Poesia

We spent that last evening at Villa Poesia sitting on the terrazza facing the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean a thousand feet below. White-hulled boats bobbed on the soft ripples of the oncoming tide while lights blinked on and off on the bow of small craft in the harbor, riding the surf out into the bay below us.

The lights of the villa behind us were turned low, allowing the twinkle of the heavens to show in all its glory. I held a glass of Prosecco in one hand and cradled Alana’s hand in a loose embrace with my other, resting side-by-side on cushioned recliners. The dinner at Kasai had worked its magic on us, and all was wonderful—except that my thoughts occasionally went back to Aggie.

“He died in a fall, he said,” as I replayed Aggie’s words from memory. “Could’ve been pushed. I don’t know. But Tesa is very upset.”

“Who’s Tesa?” Alana asked.

I didn’t know who Tesa was and didn’t want to press Aggie for details yet. After my conversation with Alana and our decision to go to Tarquinia to see what had happened, I placed a quick call to Aggie to reassure him that we would be there within the day, and he told me about her. Sounded like they were involved and that Tesa was part of the dig in Tarquinia.

But Alana and I wanted to spend our last evening in Praiano in the lap of the villa’s grand hospitality, with no thought of accidents that weren’t, or to archeological digs with unknown findings.

My hand jerked suddenly, and Alana turned her head to ask me what was the matter.

“Nothing,” I said, not totally truthfully.

“Wrong,” she replied. “I can tell whenever your squeeze your fingers a little that your attention has gone from me to something else.”

I had to smile at her keen sense.

“I suppose it’s about Aggie, right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

I paused to gather my thoughts and try to come up with a brief sketch of the man for her. Too many words would confuse the description, and too few would alert Alana that I was holding back.

“Aggie served in Afghanistan, around the time I did, but we didn’t meet until we were back in the States.”

“Where?”

“It’s called Tall Cedars. It’s a refuge for people in search of peace, or a change of heart…”

“Or change of identity?” she pressed.

Alana was sharp enough to know that there were only two types of people who hide their true identities: Criminals and the people who chase them. I had not clarified this with Alana yet, but I hoped she took me to be the latter. But this wasn’t the time to explain in greater detail, so I ignored her question about identity.

I checked my memory quickly before telling her more. Aggie was a drone pilot in the war—“Killing from a distance is worse than killing up close,” he had said one afternoon. “You can’t pay your respects to an enemy you never see.” That information was not classified, so I explained his role to Alana.

“And what were you? In that war, I mean?”

A gentle breeze drifted across the terrazza, a pleasant physical sensation that seemed at odds with the knot that was developing in my stomach.

“We all had special roles.” That sounded good in my head but came out sounding like a dodge.

“Uh, huh,” she replied, recognizing my verbal gymnastics for what they were. “Did you go by Captain Priest? Major? Sergeant Priest?” After a pregnant pause, she added, “Or Sergeant somebody-else?”

Alana had access to Interpol data, but my identity would not have been revealed there. Only Darren Priest, the adopted identity, not Armando Listrani. But somehow, she pegged my rank, and that made me worry that she knew something—or was supernaturally good at guessing. Still, I didn’t think she knew my name and, therefore, she probably didn’t know my assignment.

I consciously softened my grip on her hand, trying to communicate through touch that I was relaxing. Alana smiled at me, sipped from her glass of Prosecco, and returned her gaze to the heavens above us.

***

When the morning sun flooded the bedroom with early light, we rose, showered, and arranged our bags in the large, brightly colored living area of the villa. We grazed on the remnants of food in the refrigerator, finding breakfast breads, espresso, and fresh fruit for a perfect meal, then Alana called Julietta to arrange for a cab to the train station in Sorrento.

“It’s just as easy to get a cab direct to Roma,” she had reminded me the day before, but I said we liked train travel. And this one would get us to Rome, where we would transfer to a rental car that was waiting at the Leonardo da Vinci airport.

Julietta had been part of the romance that was the Villa Poesia. As breathtaking as the villa was, her kind attention and personal touch made it feel like home.

The altitude of the Villa Poesia rewarded visitors with once-in-a-lifetime views, but it also required many steps up the terraced slope of Praiano to reach it. Every step was worth it when we arrived at the summit, so I tried not to think of that when we scaled them each day.

On that morning, hired hands helped us carry our bags down to the waiting cab. We followed along, Alana with her roller bag and me with my rucksack, past La Moressa, the ristorante that we had enjoyed several times during our weeklong stay, and down to the little grocery store on the road below, Tutto per Tutti, which translated to “Everything for Everyone.” When we first stopped in that store for provisions at the beginning of our weeklong sojourn, I saw shelves stocked with bread, cheese, fresh produce, wine, pasta, and more, and I understood the name.

The driver picked us up outside Tutto and loaded our bags into the back of the van-size taxi. It would be an hour and a half to Naples, and the views from the narrow road that hung onto the cliffside of the Amalfi Coast left us spellbound the entire trip. Alana and I were still in the Amalfitani spirit, and neither of us could close our eyes and miss the views that stretched out below as the soaring cliffs of the coast met the rippling waters of the Mediterranean.

We arrived at the train station in Naples just twenty minutes before our scheduled departure. The train wasn’t at the track yet; it was common in Italy with its bustling schedule of trains to arrange arrivals just minutes after another train cleared the track. Ours arrived about fifteen minutes later, leaving travelers only a handful of minutes to find their car, board, and settle in. We did so, in the throng of the morning crowd, and set our sights on Rome.

The club car offered some essentials for the trip, but our breakfast had filled our bellies, so I settled for espresso and Alana for a latte. Then we sat in our assigned seats and stared out the window as the Italian countryside slipped by.

I had tried to find a rental car company near Rome’s main train station but settled for one about ten blocks away. We were traveling light, so after disembarking from the train, the short walk was no problem. In only a brief time, we were in the Hertz office and were assigned a small car for two days, enough to get us to Tarquinia and then back to Rome so that Alana and I could depart to our separate destinations on Monday.

***

While Alana drove, I read aloud from my phone.

“Tarquinia is more than a little village,” I narrated from the Wikipedia references during the trip, “but in Etruscan times, it was a bustling metropolis that traded in many products brought from other shores as well as from the region of central Italy itself. Called Tarchon by the Etruscans, it was an important member of the Etruscan League in the 8th to 6th centuries BCE.”

I was trying to understand the point of archeological digs in the area that Aggie was calling us to. Alana smiled back at my monologue without comment, but her impassive look revealed no great interest. Like many of her counterparts on the continent, I assumed that she was well educated in continental history, more so than most Americans, but I doubted that she knew that much about Etruscan history.

“Tarchon,” I continued, “was connected by trade to the port city of Pyrgi, another Etruscan settlement on the western coastline of the Italian peninsula. Pyrgi was on the Tyrrhenian Sea and received imports from trade centers all around the Mediterranean, even ports as distant as modern-day Egypt, Turkey, and Israel.”

“That’s not right,” she interjected.

“Yes, it is,” I insisted, pointing to the screen of my phone as if this gave my comments more credibility.

“No, I mean that’s not what Wikipedia says.”

“I’m paraphrasing,” I confessed but shrugged my shoulders as if it didn’t really matter. “Besides, how do you know?”

“I read the entire section last night,” Alana said with a grin.

“When?”

“After you dozed off on the terrazza.”

“Oh, okay,” I admitted sheepishly. “So, you know all this?”

“Most of it,” she said, “but I like hearing you read it to me. Why is it called Tarchon?”