Forgive No More

by Seb Kirby

  “Call it, that’s what journalists do – talk to people. Call it anything you like. You know there are questions that need answers.”

  “Like why did you render my brother James to the United States and set him up as a target for a hit man sent by one of Italy’s most notorious crime families? And don’t tell me it was all about national security.”

  She wasn’t fazed. “It’s not something I would have authorized.”

  “No, you have Craven to do that. Did he send you here after me?”

  “Craven is my boss. He gives an order, I follow it. That’s what was happening at the Warren Stevenson. But, no, he didn’t send me down here. The questions I have are mine and mine alone.”

  “What makes you think I should believe you?”

  “Give it a try. You might be surprised.”

  There was something about Debbie Miller that made Miles want to believe she was not here to trap him. But he knew he had to be careful. “OK. So, you’re wired and you’re going to relay back everything we say to the folks in Washington. Where’s that going to get me?”

  She opened her hands in exasperation. “And I might just as well say you have a hidden recorder and you’re going to put anything I say into one of your articles. Where’s that going to get us?”

  He smiled. “We both spy on each other?”

  “Trust me and I’ll trust you. You have my word.”

  It wasn’t enough. There was risk in this but without taking this chance, Miles would never know if he’d passed over the opportunity to get at the truth. He looked into her eyes for a long time. She did not blink or look away. “OK. So, start by telling me if the Agency has a fix on where James is now.”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’ll level with you, as a sign of good faith. James has been seen in London. I can’t tell you any more.”

  “OK, what I asked before. Why did you render my brother James to United States and set him up as a target for a hit man sent by one of Italy’s most notorious crime families?”

  “It was the best way to protect Elmore Ravitz. To draw out the assassin.”

  “Didn’t work too well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ravitz died. Along with his wife and too many other poor souls.”

  “That was something else. Ravitz was campaigning on increasing the war on terror and winning the argument. The terrorists got to him at Town Lake. It was unconnected to what was happening with your brother.”

  “You don’t believe that?”

  She was trying to hide her anger now. “Careful what you say, Mr. Blake. I was there. I saw the destruction, first hand. When the second bomb went off, I thought I was going to die along with everyone else. I lost good colleagues that day. Don’t you dare say anything that takes away the sacrifice they made.”

  “What if I know it was different? What if there was a way of proving it?”

  “Then that would be a good reason why we’re talking. Even if I’m going to find it hard to believe you.”

  “What if I told you it was Wolfgang Heller who planted the bombs at Town Lake?”

  “I’d be even less inclined to believe you. What allows you to say that?”

  “Because it makes sense and you’ll know it makes sense the more you think about it. Heller knew all about the trap you’d set for him by setting up James as bait in the Warren Richardson. So he used that as a diversion while he planted the bombs. Then, when the bombs went off he was ready to take out James at the hotel. We escaped from him but only just. There are bodies to prove it.”

  She still seemed unconvinced. “At the abandoned railway station. I know about that. There’s nothing to connect it to the Town Lake attack, even if it played out as you say it did. It’s separate. Heller chasing you, trying to kill you. Craven has evidence implicating East Africa jihadists for Town Lake.”

  “So it’s a coincidence that the Town Lake bombs go off just as you and the rest of Craven’s team are protecting Ravitz from a threat not connected to East Africa, is it?”

  “Ravitz campaigned on the war on terror.”

  “You know that’s not enough.”

  “You don’t think I haven’t thought about that? No one likes coincidence but it’s a fact of life. It happens. Get used to it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as Fleming leaves one of his specimens and a mold infests it and he plays a hunch on finding out what effect the mold might have on one of his samples, discovers antibiotics and saves the lives of a few hundred million people. That kind of coincidence. Or, I don’t know, Mark Twain was born the same day as Halley’s comet appeared and he died seventy-five years later on the very same day as the comet next appeared. You tell me?”

  Miles was not going to be diverted. “We’re not talking that kind of coincidence and I think you know it. We’re talking convenience. We’re talking cuo bene. And that’s something I’ve learned as a journalist. Whenever you see an incident that can’t be explained, ask the question. Who benefits? There’s always someone there to pick up an advantage. And in this case it’s Craven.”

  “How so?”

  Miles could see from her downcast expression that he’d hit a mark. “You’re worried about Craven. I know it. I can tell.”

  “I’m not going to agree with you. Just how do you think Craven benefits if it’s East Africa terrorists? You could say it was still his fault they got in and planted those bombs. And that includes me. I’m part of the same team.”

  “Except, there was never any real doubt that a terror attack would have to be accommodated within your system. Because it was unexpected. You should have seen it coming but with best efforts you didn’t. You don’t get sacked for that. You get to be called heroes.”

  She gave him a warning stare. “But?”

  “But if there was another motive – to obscure Heller’s role as the real perpetrator – the idea of a terror attack would be perfect cover.”

  “For what?”

  “For the fact that the people who sent Heller after Elmore Ravitz know things about Craven that he’d do everything in his power to conceal.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as Craven is making it rich big time out of the drugs traffic out of here. Out of Tijuana. Such as the Lando family who sent Heller know all about it since they’re involved in the same traffic themselves.”

  “And you have evidence for this.”

  He nodded. “I have it from someone inside the Soto cartel.”

  She was not convinced. “Show me him. Let me hear it from him.” It was Miles’ turn to look downcast. “I can’t. A man, a man I trust, died at my side in East Texas. Before he died he told me. I believe what he said.”

  “You’re not going to convince the world with the second hand testimony of a dead man.”

  “I know that. Doesn’t mean what he said is any less true. It’s why I’m here. To gather the evidence.”

  She was dismissive. “That’s what you have to go on?”

  “And the fact that I know where the explosive used at Town Lake came from.”

  “And you know that from where?”

  “From the man who died in my arms in East Texas.”

  “How’s it going to help?”

  “You must have analyzed the residue of the explosive used in the blast. It will have its own signature. If I can show it matches explosive from here in Mexico, would it convince you?”

  “It would depend on how good the evidence was.”

  “But you could access the report on the Town Lake explosive?”

  She nodded. “That wouldn’t be difficult. Finding your proof is a whole different matter.”

  Miles was becoming more certain this was not a set up and he decided to try to show it. “I’m sensing there’s more here than you’re telling me. The fact that you’ve come down here on your own.”

  “I didn’t say I was here alone.”

  “But it’s right, isn’t it? And why would you say the questions you
’re asking me are yours and yours alone? Doesn’t it mean you have your own doubts about Craven’s version of events?”

  “I don’t know how you can think that. As I said, I’m part of his team. I’m loyal to him.”

  “Yet you know I’m right. You don’t think Craven is right. You’re here to find out for yourself what happened at Town Lake.”

  She smiled. “You’re not going to get me to agree to that. But I’ll make you an offer. I’ll do what I can to help you test your theory. I’ll file no report on what you’re doing here. In exchange, you agree to include me in everything.”

  Miles agreed. “OK. On condition that when I come back with the evidence you need, you help me deal with Craven.”

  She said nothing. Her silence was enough to say she agreed.

  Chapter 34

  Inspector John Hendricks was baffled when he received the message from DI Franklin. Someone had called the operation room the night before to say that persons of interest connected to the killing at the Allegro Hotel could be found in Wapping Wall in the East End. When the police squad was sent there, they found three Italians lying in the street, hands and feet secured by the plastic snap-on bands.

  Franklin was not being precise enough for the inspector. “They were the worse for wear, sir.”

  “What does that mean, Franklin?”

  “They’ve been beaten, sir. Looks like they’d been battered with something blunt like a baseball bat.”

  “Italians?”

  “Yes sir. Two of them match images taken from the Allegro security cameras. They were there in the hotel the day Craig was killed.”

  Hendricks was beginning to think this was his lucky day. “Hold them. I want to question them about Craig’s death. Take prints and DNA and run both against the evidence collected from room 301 in the Allegro.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “And while you’re at it, Franklin, run the prints and the DNA profile against the evidence from the murder scene in the warehouse.”

  “Where DI Reid was tortured, sir?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Any good reason to do that, sir?”

  “Call it a hunch, Franklin. Just one of my hunches.”

  Hendricks closed the line. He was looking forward to interrogating the suspects about the killings of both Craig and Reid. Something told him he was going to wipe more than one name off the list of unsolved murders on his patch. One thing that worried him was the nagging question of who knew enough about the Allegro killing to send that message linking the beaten-up Italians with the murder committed there.

  Chapter 35

  Zella DeFrancesco agreed to meet at the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery in Venice, the place we first met three years before when I’d been searching for Julia in order to release her from Alfieri Lando’s grip. Perhaps the symmetry of events appealed to her. Perhaps this was where she felt more anonymous, most secure.

  She would not speak at first. One by one, she introduced me again to each and every painting in Peggy Guggenheim’s collection, standing with me before them, taking in their beauty in silence. She spent longer in front of one of the paintings – Max Ernst’s The Attirement of the Bride – the painting that summed up her life, as she’d told me. She took me out into the sculpture garden and again we stood in silence before each piece.

  When we’d finished, we sat on chairs overlooking the Grand Canal beneath the Mario Marini statue.

  The three years had not been kind to her. I’d imagined that with the lifting of the stress and concern of being within the Lando family and doing their bidding, she would look younger but that was not the case.

  She started with a question. “You know the worst thing?”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Having survived. Having come out unscathed when so many around me have perished and will never sit like this again and look out at the beauty of such a place. Why should I have survived when they have not? There is guilt and shame in that.”

  I tried to reassure her. “It’s because you had the courage to stare evil in the face and not look away as so many do.”

  “I think about the women I betrayed, using and exploiting them to serve the Lando name. To play the Lando game. To stifle whatever hope of happiness they had in their lives.”

  “You had to stay strong to overcome such evil. You had to win the Lando’s trust so you could denounce them.”

  She smiled. “Try telling that to the women whose lives were ruined. Try telling that to the ones who did not make it.”

  My mind turned to thoughts of Julia’s sister, Emelia, but I knew that remorse for her death would not help at this moment. “You can’t blame yourself. It was beyond your control.”

  A deeper sense of sadness came upon her. “I have never had control. Not even to save my own family.”

  Nothing would take away the loss she’d suffered when her husband and children were killed when their vehicle had been caught in crossfire in the Lando-Rossellini turf war. Only she had survived.

  “I feel shame and guilt also about that. It is why you should not be talking to me, Signor Blake. I can only demoralize you. You should look elsewhere for the answers you seek.”

  I looked away, at the fine buildings across the waterway. “I need your help, Zella. I need you to help me to save my family.”

  I told her how we’d been targeted once more by the Landos, about the loose ends Alessa and Matteo Lando were now seeking to clean up. And I told her Wolfgang Heller was their paid assassin.

  She shot back in shock. “Heller! He’s more than an assassin. I thought they’d finished with him.”

  “You know him?”

  She nodded. “As much as anyone could know a man like that. He was close to Alfieri, almost like a son to him. Almost like the son Alfieri wished Matteo to be but couldn’t be because of Alessa’s opposition.”

  “He’s killed many people. Many who will not again be with their families. If you know anything, please help me find a way through this threat to the existence of my family. I’m begging you to tell me.”

  She shivered. “James, there are things Alfieri was capable of that no one should know. Just knowing about these things can corrupt even the most determined. You’re sure you want to hear this?”

  “I need to know. Nothing else matters.”

  “Then, I have to begin at the point that is the most painful for you. If you are to understand the true depth of evil of the Landos and all they represent. I have to tell you what happened to your wife.”

  “To Julia?”

  She nodded. “Something I’ve told no one to this day. Alfieri Lando used me as his handmaiden. He made me become Hypnos to his Zeus.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It goes back to the painting, to Leda and the Swan. What it represents. Why the myth was so important for Michelangelo.”

  I was out of my depth but not afraid to admit it. “I don’t see where this is going. What does this have to do with what happened to Julia?”

  “Then I must tell you. In the moment Alfieri appeared to Julia, he believed he was all powerful, that he was Zeus, the most powerful of the gods and that he could have anything he wanted. As in the myth he could take on any form he wanted and take any woman he wanted. He wore a flowing red cape and a mask to conceal his identity, just as Zeus had concealed his identity to Leda. And just as in the myth Zeus was helped by Hypnos, the goddess of sleep who charmed Leda into submission with the sound of dripping water from the river Lethe, so Alfieri had me as his handmaiden, only the drugs I used were more powerful. Cocaine and heroin. Available from the Lando drugs trade.”

  “You were there when Julia was raped?”

  She hung her head. “I did warn you there were things I would have to tell you that you would not want to hear. It was expected. It was a test of loyalty that I was there.”

  I tried to hide the distaste of what I was hearing. I tried to drown out the image forming in my mind of Julia being raped by Alfieri Lando
while Zella DeFrancesco held her hand and wiped her brow. “You had no choice.”

  “You begin to understand now the evil of the Landos. How they taint all they touch. How I still struggle to come to terms with what I did to stay inside their world as long as was needed to gain revenge for my family. The fact is that in the end the revenge I won was not enough to compensate for what I put your wife and all those other women through.”

  “There were others?”

  She nodded. “Too many to remember. I try to forget them all but there are some, like Emelia, I cannot shake from my mind.”

  “Julia’s sister. He did the same to her?”

  “In the same way. To my shame, I have to tell you I was there as his handmaiden as she was raped too.”

  I was holding back the tears. Tears at the thought of what Julia had been through. Tears at how inadequate were my own attempts to understand how Julia was able to overcome these horrors of the past and start a new life.

  She could see the tears in my eyes. “If only I could cry. I gave up trying to cry long ago.”

  I was finding it difficult to hold onto the logic of what I needed to achieve here in Venice, talking with this woman. I found myself thinking about my conversation with Julia’s adopted parents before leaving for Florence. “Zella, let me put this to you. It was no accident that Julia Blake and Emelia Rossellini were in Florence at the same time and that Alfieri targeted them both.”

  “Yes, Signor Blake. You are beginning to know the true nature of the evil of the man and what he represents. Yes, it was no coincidence that they were both here. And yes, before you ask, it has everything to do with the fact that they were twins.”

  She waved her arm across the scene to indicate its scale and beauty, the shimmer of the sun on the glinting waters of the Grand Canal and the Renaissance buildings lining its banks. “We have to hold onto beauty, Signor Blake. In the end, it is all there is between us and the ugliness, the death and destruction of a world made in our own image. It is what art insists upon, that we force beauty into the face of evil and demand that the ugliness of the world is overcome. No one gets to choose the world we inherit and struggle to make sense of. It is the tragedy of our lives. By the time we start to work out how it should all be, we are caught up in the corruption we inherit.”