I sit back in the chair, run my hands through my cropped hair. “Do you really believe this will work?”
“It’s common knowledge the police always claim to never negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers. Publicly, that is. But I think if Grace was taken by a member of an angry Afghan faction or Taliban as payback for what you had to do to their village, then I believe they will want their demands to be heard. Even if that demand is simply one woman’s or one man’s life. Like any politician or religious fanatic, they crave the soapbox.”
“But will we get some kind of proof of Grace’s life?”
“We have to wait and see,” she says, setting her hand on my shoulder.
She quickly removes it when the phone rings.
Chapter 60
I jump up from the chair. Run to the wall-mounted phone, grab the receiver. In my mind I know now that the only way this creep could have gotten this number, and even acquired a cell phone from some poor soul who lost it weeks ago, is that he has inside help. Taliban sympathizers living in northern Italy.
“Pronto,” I bark into the phone, aware the police will record the conversation.
“I see,” says the gruff, almost indiscernible voice. “I see.”
“Who is this?” I ask. “Do you have Grace?”
“I see,” repeats the voice.
“What do you want? Do you want money?”
“I see.”
“Please. Tell me. Do you have Grace?”
“Yes. Grace. Yes.” It’s the first thing he’s said to me other than “I see,” and what’s remarkable is that his voice is without accent. While it’s coming through the line shrouded in static, it could be the voice of an American if I didn’t know better. But my gut tells me he is the one. He is the one who took my Grace away from me.
My legs turn to rubber. “Is she alive?”
“I see,” the overcoat man repeats, before cutting the connection.
Chapter 61
My cell rings. I hang up the wall-mounted phone and go to it.
“Yes!”
“We have confirmation of the call, Captain,” Detective Carbone says. “It’s from the same cell as before, but this time we are more prepared to track its location. We are trying to trace the location now via GPS.”
“Thought you weren’t equipped with the Hollywood high-tech.”
“Given enough time, we can perform a sophisticated maneuver or two. And you’ve seen our situation room firsthand. Not exactly a low-tech operation either.”
“I’m waiting for the location,” I say, my eyes locked on Anna’s.
There’s some commotion coming from the background. Police yelling at other police. Until Carbone comes back on the line.
“It’s Venice, Captain,” he confirms. “The call has come from inside Venice. And we have an address.”
He pauses, then recites the address to me.
I nearly drop the phone, but manage to hang on.
“Captain,” he says. “Captain, are you there?”
“I’m here, Detective. I’m sorry.”
“You need to come to the station as quickly as possible, so that we will discuss how to handle our next move.”
“On the contrary, Detective Carbone,” I tell him. “Perhaps you should meet me here. The address is mine.”
Chapter 62
The detective orders us to vacate the apartment, get ourselves to the station immediately. Anna packs up her computer. I grab my coat and my keys. As we leave the studio apartment and head out onto the stair landing, I resist the urge to grab a kitchen knife and begin making a search of the entire building. I know that would be foolish and dangerous. It could result in getting Grace killed, not to mention myself.
We make our way down the stairs to the first floor, all the time feeling as though we are being watched. And my guess is that we are being watched.
Detective Carbone is there to greet us as soon as we come through the wooden doors of the police station. He’s smoking, which is par for the course, and he is clearly agitated.
“Something to show you,” he states, while leading us through the vestibule, through the security doors, and into the heart of the operation. “Come . . . Now . . . Come.”
We enter into his office, where Agent Lowrance is already standing before Carbone’s big wood desk.
“New developments,” the Interpol agent says. “Important developments.”
“Not the least of which is this.” Carbone comes around his desk, flips up the screen on his laptop.
He turns the laptop so that Anna, Lowrance, and I can clearly see the image. It’s Grace. Still dressed in the same black sweater and skirt she was abducted in four days ago, her dark, almost black hair parted down the center of her forehead, her eyes bloodshot and exhausted, but very much alive. In her two hands she grips a newspaper. The International Herald Tribune. The date printed above the headline is today’s.
“Grace is alive,” I say.
“Alive,” Anna repeats as if she too only now believes it.
“Did he send this?” I ask, my voice barely able to exit my mouth.
“The ‘he,’” Anna interjects. “The ‘he,’ as in the man who just called you in your apartment? The overcoat man?”
“The overcoat man,” says Carbone.
“He is Taliban,” offers Lowrance. “He’s calling himself Hakeemullah. No last name. Tajik resistance, most likely. From the village you bombed, Captain. As we suspected.”
I shift my eyes to Lowrance. “You got all that from his last phone call just a few minutes ago?”
“And more. But not from the phone call. From this photo of your fiancée.”
“He identified himself?”
“In transmitting proof of life, he also forwarded a statement. Interesting that it’s written in English. Perfect English, like he went to school in the UK or maybe the United States.”
Carbone removes a sheet of paper from a file on his desk. Hands it to me.
I am Hakeemullah. I have the infidel’s wife. She is alive for now. But she will die for what the infidel has done to my village. For the death he brought to my Dear One.
I read the note and reread it several times over. Each time it says the same thing.
“What does he want?” I say. “Who or what is this Dear One?”
“He’s taunting you for now. Dear One could be anything or anyone. Maybe his wife. His dog, his horse, his spirit. Who knows, Captain. You know what war is like. You, better than anyone standing in this room.”
“Why so cryptic? Why no demands? Why stay here in Venice at all?”
“He’s making you suffer. First he made you wait a few days before being flushed out by our intrepid reporter.” He shoots a grin at Anna. “Now he’s ready to communicate, but not ready to make specific demands. He took it as a compliment that we were willing to speak and perhaps negotiate with him. It offered him some kind of empowerment and feeling of being respected. He feels like the ball is in his court and he wants to play for a while. Taunt you. Give you nightmares.”
“Why?”
“Punishment for what you did to his Dear One. For being an American. For being a capitalist pig, for being free . . . the usual story. But the good news is Grace is alive and close by and you are well enough to see her with unblinded eyes.”
I look at her on the computer screen. Look at the copy of the International Herald Tribune. I see the fear in Grace’s face. I see her hopelessness. If I could jump into the photo and steal her away I would. But I am just as helpless.
“Will he make specific demands eventually?” I ask.
“Almost certainly,” Carbone answers. “And soon.”
“Not soon enough,” Anna murmurs.
“But we’re not going to wait for not soon enough,” adds Lowrance.
“You have an address,” I say, recalling my brief cell phone conversation with Carbone not a half hour ago.
“We know where he is.”
“In the building I’ve been l
iving in for over a week,” I say. “Sounds improbable.”
“But not impossible,” Carbone adds. “In the empty bookstore. On the first floor. Perhaps that’s how he’s been able to tap into your phone line.”
That makes sense. Son of a bitch has been underfoot the entire time. No wonder my soldier’s gut was on high alert as Anna and I exited the apartment only moments ago, the sensation of being watched draping me like a robe.
Carbone comes back around his desk.
“We’re ready to begin our rescue operation now,” he says. “With your permission, of course.”
My mind spins; the thought of police raiding the building where Grace is being held hostage is not exactly settling. What if Hakeemullah decides to kill her at the first sign of a raid?
Shoving my hand into my pocket, I feel Grace’s ring. There’s something more—my soldier’s gut, telling me this is way too quick, way too easy. That I’m not meant to come out of this unscathed. “Will it be safe, Detective?”
He nods, smokes. “We will take every precaution. Surprise is on our side.” He heads for the door. “Let’s move, people. Let’s go get Grace.”
I follow, my heart in my throat.
Chapter 63
A helmeted and flak-jacketed Anna Laiti and Agent Lowrance occupy the lead outboard-powered boat about five boats up ahead of us. Anna is filming the operation with a small handheld video camera. Behind them is a second boat filled with uniformed and heavily armed police. Another squad armed in ballistic armor and helmets converges on the old two-story stone and brick building on foot. Carbone and I stand in the aft of our boat while an officer drives and a second officer records the proceedings on a larger video camera.
Alarmed at our sudden presence, the boats, barges, and gondolas that traffic the Grand Canal make way for us as best they can. It doesn’t take long for the train of police boats to arrive at the feeder canal that runs exactly perpendicular to the Grand Canal. Because it’s so narrow, the boat train is forced to proceed one by one, with Anna and Lowrance’s police boat taking the lead. We move slowly through the canal as I pray I do not lose my eyesight over the strain of knowing Grace might be in the line of fire should this thing get ugly.
As fast as Carbone’s people have organized this raid, the boat train has now slowed to a crawl as the first craft reaches the canal side of the target building.
My building.
Grace’s building.
Carbone and I are located so far back the detective suggests we get out and make the rest of the way on foot.
“We will, however, maintain a safe enough distance should the lead start flying, Captain,” he adds, grabbing hold of the rungs on a rust-covered metal ladder bolted into the stacked stone canal bank.
Looking up, I spot my studio apartment, the open French doors, Grace’s easel and paints set beside them. Over the radio comes some chatter in Italian. I’m having some trouble understanding what’s being said. But, as a soldier, I can only imagine the police are announcing their intention to assume their respective positions around the perimeter of the building, and that they will wait for a final approval from Carbone before going in.
I’m about to follow the detective up the metal ladder when the explosion knocks me off my feet, slams me against the boat’s floor.
Chapter 64
The explosion rips through the block, sending a shock wave across the feeder canal, loose brick and stone acting like shrapnel, shattering the boat’s windshield, causing the two policemen to quickly duck for cover. Carbone drops down into the boat, his head and back colliding with my right side, bruising my ribs.
All breath is knocked out of me. But I shove Carbone away, and together we try to get back up on our feet while the boat bobs on the now-unstable canal. He pulls his service weapon from inside his jacket and goes for the metal ladder bolted to the canal’s stone wall.
“You stay here!” he demands.
“Not on your life!” I shout, following him.
Chapter 65
The sounds of screams and moans from the wounded are entirely familiar to me. So is the smell of blasted granite, acrid smoke, and detonated C-4 explosive. A scent that’s reminiscent of burnt motor oil. What’s not so familiar is knowing that Grace most likely perished in the ground zero of the blast. As I run toward the building, I feel caught up in a nightmare where the stone is quickly turning to mud and my legs are sinking into it, slowing me, drowning me.
Sirens blare from every direction. They echo off the stone walls and inside my head. Police and innocent bystanders are shouting. Screaming. As I approach the building and the site of the explosion, I see the first of the dead lying on the narrow canal bank. I see several bodies floating on the water. One of the bodies is unmistakable. It’s Anna. She is floating facedown in the canal, her red hair spread over the water’s surface like a doll that’s fallen into a bathtub. A policeman attempts to fish her out.
“Grace!” I scream. “Grace!”
I’m running, but I no longer feel like I’m running. The scene before me—smoking rubble, shattered glass, a sinking boat, and still-life bodies—isn’t real. It’s a made-up dream manufactured inside my head. I don’t feel like a participant. I feel like a helpless observer looking in. I make it to within a few feet of the building when the pressure builds and grows behind my eyeballs. I can move no further. I can’t move at all.
Once more I want to scream, “Grace!” I want to throw myself into the blast zone, grab hold of her hand, and carry her away from the destruction, but I can only fall to my knees. The pressure behind my eyes grows so intense that my vision begins to go gray and then black. Like steel curtains have come down and bolted shut. I fall forward, feeling the cool damp of the cobble-covered bank and the sharp shards of shattered glass and splintered brick that pierce the skin on my cheek.
Knowing all is lost, I fall into a deep, dark unconsciousness.
Chapter 66
Lying on my back, I slowly focus in on a white ceiling. Hospital white. It takes a moment or two for reality to sink in. For my skin to shed the sensation that I’m waking up from a long and vivid nightmare about Grace being abducted and killed. But when I feel the pinch of the intravenous line needled into the vein on my left forearm, and see a nervous Detective Carbone standing at the end of my bed, I know I have not been dreaming.
I have, in fact, been living this nightmare.
“Grace,” I whisper, my voice physically peeling itself away from the back of my throat. “Grace. Is she alive?”
“Grace was not there,” he says, his eyes peering into mine.
“She wasn’t there,” I repeat. “She wasn’t in the building?”
“It was a trap. A—what do you say in America—a setup. Neither Grace nor Hakeemullah were inside the building when the explosive was detonated. That bookstore has been empty for some years now. The empty space made it all the easier for Hakeemullah to access it with no one knowing.”
I feel at once relieved and at the same time horrified that a Taliban agent still has my fiancée, and has the means to set off IEDs in the middle of a tourist-filled heaven on earth like Venice.
“That bomb was meant for me.”
Carbone nods. “Perhaps. But it killed three others instead.”
“Anna,” I whisper, remembering the feel of her small hand in mine.
“And Lowrance,” Carbone says. “They were killed instantly when the bomb exploded only a few feet away from them.”
I lie back on the pillow, feeling the weight of three more innocent deaths on my soul. My life seems measured in the number of casualties I cause. My life. A soldier’s life.
“Hakeemullah,” I say after a while. “Have you heard anything from him since the blast? Did he claim responsibility? Has he attempted to make contact?”
“He has thus far been silent. But we are scouring Venice for him without trying to alarm a daily stream of many thousands of visitors. The blast has of course made international headlines. Nothing like thi
s has happened since a bomb was detonated outside the Uffizi in Firenze in ninety-one. Now the story of your missing fiancée is spreading all over the world. Also the story of your operation in Afghanistan.”
An eye for an eye . . .
“Revenge,” I say, sitting up, the needle in my left arm pinching my flesh. “This is why war never ends. Revenge.”
“What happened in that village, Captain?” Carbone says. “What happened after the bombs were dropped?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss what happened after the bombing.”
“But it was bad, wasn’t it?”
“Worse than you can imagine.”
“I am old enough to recall your Vietnam. The things that happened there. To some of the villages. The people who lived in them. Women. Children.”
“It’s a hard thing to live in fear, Detective Carbone. And in war, you live in fear all the time.”
“I have been to war. I have witnessed the things it can do to people like you.”
“And now Grace.”
“Yes. Now Grace.”
Soon a nurse comes in. In Italian she apologizes for interrupting. Carbone nods politely in her direction, takes a step back as she checks the levels on my drip and then proceeds to take my temperature.
“I’m not sick,” I mumble over the electronic thermometer.
But the nurse merely gazes up at me and smiles like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Maybe she doesn’t.
When Shadows Come Page 19
