by Thomas Locke
“It is not my birthday or our anniversary.” She planted her hands upon the starched linen. “So what is it?”
Alessandro took a long breath. “I am thinking of taking early retirement.”
“Good.”
“You don’t want to first know the reason?”
“I don’t care why. I’ve been waiting for this moment since we left Naples.”
“Nothing is certain. Yet. But I wanted you to know that I am thinking of it. Very seriously.”
“It could not be serious enough for me. Nor come too soon.” She paused while the waiter poured their wine. She lifted her glass and said, “To freedom.”
“I have never considered my profession to be imprisoning.”
“I know.” They drank. She set down her glass. “Do you want to tell me what has happened?”
“Yes.” This was as clear an indication of coming change as anything that had happened, for Alessandro never spoke about his work. The shadows were already too close, the fears too great. But this time he needed her to understand. Or rather, know as much as he did.
Carla was an exceptional mother and a far better wife. Hers was a caring nature. Her heart was made for love. Her laughter was a chime strong as Alpine winds. Her eyes were dark and deep, made to swallow a man whole. As he spoke, Alessandro found himself seeing his wife anew. He talked through the entire meal. He held nothing back. He spoke of the meeting after church, the call from Edoardo, the visit of Antonio D’Alba, the discovery in the Evidence vault, everything. Carla listened with the patient intensity of a woman who had waited thirty years for this conversation.
Over coffee, he said, “Edoardo phoned last night. The American woman is indeed a retired homicide detective. Irma Steeg is held in the highest esteem by her colleagues. Which adds credence to their story. It is impossible, I know, and very hard to accept . . .”
Alessandro stopped because his wife had leaned across the table. She gripped his arm and said, “I want you to listen very carefully.”
“Very well.”
“You will help them. But on one condition.”
“And that is?”
“They will let me do this thing. Ascend.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Look at me, Alessandro. Do I appear to you like a woman who’s joking? You must do whatever it takes for them to allow me to experience this. You must.”
“I don’t understand. Why ever would you wish to have such an experience?”
“I have my reasons.”
Alessandro sat and stared across the table at his wife and lover. Carla’s face was set in immutable lines. He had no interest in arguing with her. He changed the subject with, “Would you like to know what they have asked me to do for them?”
She replied with the clipped tones of a very determined woman. “I assume it is something that on the surface challenges your concepts of right and wrong. And the fact that you are willing to agree means that you are needing to leave your current work behind.”
He shook his head. Her ability to see to his deepest core was astonishing. “Charlie Hazard says I am crucial to their future safety. Exactly how, he does not know. But this absence of knowing does not affect his certainty that it is true. He claims this impression comes from such an ascent.”
“Which means they will hardly be in a position to refuse anything you ask of them.”
“Very well, Carla. I will ask.”
Her grip only intensified. “Soon?”
“This very afternoon.”
She released both him and her building tension. She leaned back in her chair and turned to face the window. Finally she asked, “Do you know what I heard as I listened to you speak?”
“I have no idea.”
“The chance to regain what our life has stolen away from me. I heard the sound of hope.”
39
Just before noon on Sunday, Gabriella entered the kitchen. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt and no makeup, her hair gathered back in a simple band. The smudges under her eyes suggested she had not slept. In Charlie’s mind she had never looked more beautiful.
Rain beat a steady pattern upon the window, and daylight held to its customary grey. The kitchen felt slightly cramped for the first time since Charlie’s arrival. Gabriella took the seat at the head of the table, while Charlie leaned on the wall behind her. The scientists assumed their customary places around the table. The Italian students perched on the fireplace’s massive lip or leaned on the cabinets next to Irma and Julio.
Gabriella said, “Yesterday Charlie told me of a plan he has designed to keep us safe. He left it to me to decide how much to tell you. We are a team. I want to tell you everything.”
She repeated her words in Italian and kept up the same dual cadence throughout her explanation. Before she had finished speaking, Brett exclaimed, “This is insane!”
Elizabeth, the white-blonde pharmacologist, smirked across the table. “What’s the matter, big boy? Afraid?”
“Elizabeth,” Gabriella said.
“I was just asking—”
“You’re not helping.”
Elizabeth flushed. Charlie waited for the outburst, but when she spoke again it was to say, “This is a good plan.”
Brett said, “It’s nuts, is what it is.”
Dor Jen said, “Elizabeth is right, Brett.”
“Not you too.”
“Yes, me.” She turned to Gabriella. “Thank you for trusting us with this.”
Milo was as pale as the day beyond the window. He followed the exchange with rabbit’s eyes. “When do you think they’ll attack?”
Charlie replied, “We have no idea. Gabriella and I have been unable to ascend.”
Gabriella added, “But we are hoping our new guests can find that out for us.”
Massimo said, “Please, we did not come here to be guests.”
“I don’t like anything about it,” Brett said. “The whole thing stinks of unnecessary risk.”
“Charlie kept us safe before,” Jorge said quietly.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Brett,” Elizabeth said. “For once in your life, do what she asks without the lip.”
Gabriella gave that a beat, then went on, “The last time we were all together Charlie told us something else. If the opposition stops our research, they don’t need to kill us because we are effectively dead. We need to focus on our work. On our future. Beyond this threat. On the reason we are here at all.”
Elizabeth said, “Now you’re talking.”
“We must accept that our preliminary phase is concluded. We have achieved irrefutable success.” Gabriella ticked off her fingers. “Subjects can and do ascend. A significant number of these subjects erase temporal and spatial boundaries. What is more, some subjects manage to ascend without external stimuli. And they manage to gather together.”
Brett objected, “We don’t have the documented evidence to substantiate any—”
“The boss is on a roll,” Elizabeth said. “Let her finish.”
“No. Brett is correct. We must prepare a clearer method of scientific documentation. But that is for later. What is most important is how these seven newcomers reveal something we must acknowledge. We are supposed to be in the lead on this, but these students represent the fact that we risk being left behind. We must refocus our aim. We must begin preparing the next stage of our studies. We must look beyond tomorrow.”
“I like this,” Jorge said. “I like it a lot.”
“We must assume that Charlie will once again do his job. Fine. Then what happens after? All of you know what awaited us in Milan. It is no longer an issue of finding willing subjects. As soon as we put out word that we seek to begin phase two, we will be invaded. Which means that right here, right now, we must use these final moments of solitude to prepare.”
Elizabeth asked, “Did you come up with anything specific during your nighttime ruminations?”
Gabriella had clearly been expecting this. “Some
of you know the limbic system is the portion of the brain that regulates emotions and social bonding. Over the past several years, three noted psychiatrists have been studying the complexity of human love. They have determined that it includes the hippocampus, which is involved in the sorting and maintaining of memories, and the amygdala, which assigns intensity to emotions and regulates how emotions are held by past experiences.
“This has now broadened to include the concept of social intelligence, which shows how the brain develops physically as an individual deepens his or her understanding and usage of compassion and concern for others. There is a documented alteration of the brain’s chemical and neurological functions, which mirror an individual’s ability to bring peace into situations of conflict and build intergroup relations where none existed before. This study has become known as ‘the movement from I to we.’ ”
She began rolling her empty cup around its base. “I am certain our own work dovetails with these findings. I want to use SPECT scans, which are a refined version of the PET brain-scanning systems, to develop images of the brains of various people in these periods of controlled ascent. What I expect to find is that there is a marked decline in energy within the parietal lobes, which process information about our physical orientation within space and time, while there is a heightened intensity within the prefrontal lobes, which is consistent with intense concentration. Taking this one step further, using the students here as our first test cases, we may be able to offer concrete proof of an interweaving of human lives, as well as a recognition that life and time and space all have definable boundaries that must be reconfigured to match the nonphysicality component of life.”
“I am liking this,” Jorge said softly, “more and more.”
“I want each of you to design your ideal next goal. Your optimum objective. We will then meet and begin designing a formal structure for phase two. I want us to incorporate the best and the highest potential objectives. And then obtain them.”
At Charlie’s request, Gabriella sent Brett to guide the students through a mass ascent. She remained in the kitchen while Charlie reviewed the next steps with Irma and Julio. Brett and the students were back in the kitchen so fast, Charlie knew the plan had failed. Even before Massimo grimaced in apology. Even before Brett slumped into the chair. He knew.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Massimo said. The other students filed in dejectedly and sprawled about the table. “It did not work.”
Brett scowled at the two of them. “Don’t look at me.”
Gabriella said, “No one is blaming you, Brett.”
Charlie said, “Tell me what happened.”
“I followed the standard procedures we used with all subjects. I walked them through the objectives step-by-step. They said they didn’t need the equipment, which was good, because we’re not wired to do multiple ascents. I told them to go to Base Level. I read out the same objectives. Then I called them back. Nada.”
“Massimo?”
“He counted, we went. He said go . . .” Massimo shrugged. “We were trapped.”
Charlie glanced at Gabriella. “All of you?”
“Yes. None of us could move at all.”
One of the two women students spoke softly from her place beside the chimney. Massimo translated, “She says to tell you, even if this is permanent, she is glad to come. As I am. But also afraid. For to ascend has become a triumph.”
“Let’s hope these barriers are temporary. For all our sakes.” Charlie rose from the table. The day loomed like yet another storm.
Gabriella asked, “Where are you going?”
“I need to go have a word with a bailiff.”
At three that afternoon, Charlie stood where Como’s main piazza met the lakefront road. An approaching squall was mirrored on the lake’s surface, a vivid reflection of every cloud, every ribbon of rain. Strips of grey lace draped about the mountains and the water. Rain dimpled the lake and the streets, and the Sunday strollers harvested a citywide crop of colorful umbrellas. Birds sang from emerald trees. The rain fell and fell.
When he spotted Alessandro approaching, Charlie rose from the bench and said, “I thought Italian springs were hot and beautiful. Sun every day, all the people smiling, great food, the works.”
“That is a different Italy. Come, let us walk.”
Alessandro led him north, along the lakefront and away from the old city. Past the Piazza de Orchi, traffic was halted and the pedestrians filled the road as well. He led Charlie over to one side, away from the market stalls fronting the lake. “Before coming to Como, I was senior bailiff in Naples. Did you know that?”
“I told you, I didn’t know anything beyond the one moment of our meeting.”
“I heard the words, but still . . .” He waved it aside. “During much of that period I was involved with the Camorristi trial, which resulted in the imprisonment of the region’s most high-profile mob bosses. The mob in Naples, by the way, is called Camorra. Not Mafia. The trial dragged on for four years. During much of that time, outside the courtroom, Naples was trapped in a war between various mob groups that sought to fill the vacuum. The war claimed four thousand lives. Much of the violence was controlled by the men under arrest. I learned to hate during that trial, watching the men in the docket pass notes to their attorneys, smiling at me and the judges as they did so, behaving with the arrogant brutality of princes.”
The street market was over a mile long. The crowd was defiant of the miserable weather, particularly the children. It reminded Charlie of a carnival. He walked alongside the bailiff, content to let Alessandro set the direction and the pace.
“After each segment of the trial finished, I confiscated as much of their wealth as I could find. I auctioned their villas. I traveled to Switzerland and Luxembourg to track down their hidden millions. I refused the offers of bribes and ignored the threats against myself and my family. When it was all over, I was reassigned to Como. It is a rather bitter irony to land here, as the region is filled with rich people who do not deserve to be rich.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Alessandro stopped and faced Charlie. “Because as bailiff, I cannot do what you ask.”
“I understand.”
“My vow to remain honest is the only thing I have left from all the ideals I brought into my profession. It is not enough to appear honest. All of Italy takes great pride in maintaining this appearance. Wherever there is even the slightest question, I must lean toward the strictest order of the law.”
A trio of young children approached the nearest stall and began selecting from the rainbow assortment of sweets. The thrill of choosing from such a vast array left them breathless and shrill. They splashed the puddles with little yellow boots as they danced and pointed and called.
“And yet, I find myself wanting to help you.” Alessandro watched the children with Charlie. “I am drawn to this.”
Charlie struggled to fit the pieces together. “So you are leaving your position?”
“I see no other option. For that reason, I must know that what you have told me is the utter truth.”
“I have given it to you as straight as I know how.”
“I believe you.” The bailiff pointed the hand holding his umbrella. “Come. There is someone I want you to meet.”
As they continued along the lakefront market, the air became spiced with odors from a very different place. One whiff of the all-too-familiar scents and Charlie was transported. Away from the rain and the cold. To another continent, one far hotter and drier and deadlier.
“This section of Como’s market has been taken over by Africans and Caribbeans. Gradually they extend their reach. One by one, the Italian stallholders are giving up, moving on. Their places are always taken by more from this darker clan.” The music was now reggae and calypso, the chatter Jamaican and African. “They sell everything. You understand that word, everything?”
“Absolutely.”
Alessandro signaled to a slender man tending
a stall selling African masks. “I will ask. You will listen. I do not know if he speaks English. If he does, he may pretend not to understand. You will speak with great care.”
“Roger that.”
“This is Bene. He is from Bamako. Perhaps you have heard of this city?”
“Capital of Mali. I have been there. Twice.”
There might have been a flicker of interest from the Malian, there and gone in a flash. Up close the man bore far deeper scars than merely the tribal markings slashed down both cheeks. His gaze was a liquid wall.
Alessandro said, “In Italian, the word bene means ‘good’ or ‘okay’ or ‘fine.’ His name is a joke. Because for Bene, very little is okay or good or fine.”
He switched to Italian. The pair spoke for a time. Then Alessandro said, “Bene says that the men who attacked you were from two different groups, but they are joined together because they both traffic in women. The Russians are involved, especially with the women. The other group operates a large corporate security firm. All this I already know. But it is very interesting that word has passed to this level of the local underworld.”
Charlie nodded. “The information is not common knowledge. Which means that whatever else Bene has to say is valid.”
Alessandro glanced at him. “It is very good to work with a man who understands the unspoken.”
He and the African spoke at length. “Bene says word has come from hunters outside Italy. They say to look for a group of scientists. The scientists travel from America, and only one of them, a beautiful woman, is Italian. The hunters will pay, and pay well. But all they want is the address where these scientists live. The hunters say do not approach, do not strike. Just supply the information and accept payment.”
Charlie ran that forward. “Our first attackers must have twisted these orders around. They probably figured, get the scientists under lock and key, then up the ante.”
“Bene thinks the same. As do I.”
The African spoke a question, his gaze hard on Charlie.
“Bene asks, why were you in his country?”
