He paused again.
“They’ll go for the kill, is what I mean.”
Diana tilted her head slightly on one side and nodded slowly.
“And when there’s blood, then that’s it. Bam, gulls are gone for good.”
There was another silence.
“I see,” Diana said at last. “And…?”
“Technically it would be illegal,” Ivo continued. “Gulls are a protected species. It’s one thing for Queen to herd them away, another for Darko to—”
Ivo stopped himself in midsentence, grabbed Queen’s carrier box and made for the door.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ivo. Gulls in this city are pests. It says so all over the internet,” Diana said forcefully. She felt by now she had gained the right to call them that. “We are the ones who should be protected from them!”
“I know. But that’s the way it is. I didn’t make that law. You’ll just have to be patient.”
He gave Diana a look that meant Say no more and closed the door behind him.
Maybe gulls did have a redeeming quality, after all. They mated for life—she remembered reading that on her first online search—and they were considered one of the most loyal species in the animal world. So, what was she doing, thinking of hiring a killer?
But whatever instinct had stirred in Diana since Queen’s arrival, it wasn’t going away. She knew she had entered a new realm and that something tectonic in her world was about to shift.
* * *
Diana and Mark continued to speak on the phone every day, like students grudgingly doing their homework. She could tell Mark was always doing something else while talking to her. Different sounds betrayed different activities. Either he was making himself a sandwich, watching TV or working on his computer. Once she even heard a toilet flush. Their conversations were becoming more and more unfocused. Diana had attempted to revive his interest by telling him about her adventures with Ivo and Queen. She wanted him to admire her ingenuity and resolve, maybe to be concerned about her safety, or simply to be excited about the hawk. But he sounded removed, as though all that was happening in Rome were a blur and irrelevant to him. He told her he had been suffering with a particularly severe headache, which he described as a cold blade cutting his brain into very thin slices. He had gone to see an Ayurvedic doctor, who told him he was depleted and needed to revive some of his pitta.
“What’s that?” Diana asked.
“Pitta is ‘heat’ in Ayurveda. Apparently I’ve lost my inner fire.”
That felt like an accusation, as if Diana had something to do with this loss. Later that night she kept turning in bed, wondering what exactly she was going back to in three weeks, when she returned to New York.
Once Mark regained his fire he’d fall again for someone else—it was inevitable. Probably his previous affairs hadn’t worked out because his choices had been poor, but what would stop him the minute someone new, and with a charming sense of humor, appeared?
She was going back to a languishing experiment, an inert agreement. Someone had to be brave and pull the plug.
She processed this concept for a while. Then one morning she woke up, steadfast. The message was absolutely clear, as if it had come to her from a loudspeaker.
To pull the plug was an act of mercy. It meant relieving Mark by taking on the job he didn’t want to do. It would only enable him to rise again from whatever ailment had flattened him so that his so-called pitta could give new fuel to his narcissism. No, that’s not what she needed to do. It was the hypocritical pact, the lie, that had to be destroyed for good.
What she needed wasn’t mercy; it was more rage.
* * *
It was April and the daffodils were in full bloom on Diana’s terrace; on weekends the young crowd sat in the sun outside Caffè Perù, and Ivo was feeling optimistic. At the end of another flying day he announced the gulls were beginning to lose hold of their territory. There were only a few left.
“One or two more interventions and they’ll be gone for good.”
Diana should have been relieved. But she wasn’t. She wanted more drama. The nest, she felt, had to be completely destroyed. It had become her mission, and she needed to see it fulfilled now and to the end. A grand finale, that’s what she longed for.
Diana watched Ivo walk down the nautilus staircase holding Queen’s carrier. He had almost reached the third floor when she leaned over the bannister and called his name. His footsteps came to a halt as her voice echoed down the marble stairs.
“I want the peregrine falcon,” she commanded. “Bring Darko.”
* * *
It was dusk. Queen flew out first, then Ivo released Darko. He was bulkier, his plumage a lighter blue-gray. He was scarier, with his stare mad and feral. He soared behind Queen and Diana could feel a new determination in their flight, as though both birds knew they were going in for the kill. She watched Darko draw his wings back and turn into a streamlined shape that cut through the air like a rocket. The gulls were scattering more quickly than she’d ever seen them do before, sending warning cries all around them. In just a few seconds Darko climbed higher than Queen, until he became a tiny spot in the sky. Ivo grabbed Diana by the arm and pressed his fingers around her wrist in the same way Queen’s talons had gripped his glove. She was surprised by his touch but she realized they too had become a team now.
“See? He needs to attack from above in order to gain speed and surprise while Queen distracts them,” he said, entranced.
Diana held her breath. She felt how Ivo had switched on his telepathic connection with the hawks; she sensed an almost shamanic transformation come over her. Half bird, half human herself, she squinted into the last rays of the sun that was setting behind the river, zeroing in on Queen circling in the air as she pushed the gulls a bit farther away. Then, before either Diana or Ivo could perceive his intent, Darko opened his wings and began a steep descent from way up in the sky.
“Here we go. Watch him now,” Ivo said under his breath, tightening his grip on her wrist.
It took no time.
A final lunge, a supersonic dive and in one sweep Darko seized a gull in the clutch of his claws. Then a crash not far from where Ivo and Diana were standing.
Darko, followed closely by Queen, landed with his prey. With synchronized precision and focus, they started tearing at the gull, just as Ivo had predicted. There was the sound of thin bones snapping, white plumes floating, a burst of dark red. The gull was still alive, still wailing, raucously.
Diana closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the frenzied flapping of wings, the cracking of ribs, the desperate cawing. She conjured the bird’s blood staining the terra-cotta tiles.