by Karen Dodd
Pezzente looked chastened, but at the same time, he was firm. “We couldn’t be sure, given your relationship with Ms. Calleja and the fact that you lost that recent case—what with your flawless record, we couldn’t know whether you’d thrown it on purpose.”
“This is bullshit. I don’t know what game you’re playing, Pezzente.” Nico turned to leave. “I’m sorry, Inspector, but I’m not going to listen to any more of this.”
“Please,” Mifsud replied. “I’m confident you’re going to want to hear this. It concerns Miss Calleja’s assassination.”
At that instant, Nico feared his heart had stopped dead in his chest.
* * *
Over the next hour, Mifsud and Nico listened as Roberto Pezzente unraveled the moving parts of the sting he’d been working on since Italy’s former prime minister was ousted.
“As you know,” he said, “I was kept on by the new anticorruption PM. My team was all but ready to expose the identities of the oligarchs and dictators who were on several European countries’ watch lists. Baldisar, who had been just another link in Malta’s chain of corporate corruption, inadvertently ended up playing a much more significant role than perhaps he’d planned.”
“How so?” Mifsud asked.
“Well, like so many men who come from monied families, Baldisar’s ego caused him to think he was more important than he really was. He’d never been as successful or as respected in certain circles as his father and grandfather, so he compensated by playing the big man.
“Vanity and greed caused him to throw his lot in with people much more diabolical than he was accustomed to dealing with. Crimes that would have landed him in prison for insider trading and money laundering, ended up throwing him into the deep end of an international shark tank notorious for devouring its own.”
Nico was getting impatient. Right now, he wanted some quick answers. Otherwise, he’d sooner be making plans to travel to London. “What does this have to do with Ariana’s assassination?” he asked.
“Baldisar had met Dr. Anna Braithwaite,” Pezzente continued. “Initially, it looked like they were having an affair—it was well known she and her husband had been having problems—but Baldisar knew he’d hit it big, and based on her stellar reputation for cutting-edge cancer research, he invested heavily in the pharmaceutical company that funded her.”
“Heritage Pharma,” Nico said. So far, Pezzente hadn’t told them anything they didn’t know already. “Get to the point.”
“Yes. But when news was about to get out that her medical trials were flawed regarding the miracle drug Baldisar had touted to some of the world’s most dangerous people, his world turned upside down. It wasn’t that the autocrats and warlords who’d invested with his bank feared the potential monetary losses—for many of them it was mere pocket change—it was the harbinger of international exposure that they took personally.
“We had all of Baldisar’s communication devices tapped. He started receiving so many death threats we couldn’t keep up. He fired most members of his inner circle and pulled the few that remained closer.” Pezzente paused, as if considering his next words. “That’s where I came in.”
Mifsud had been patiently listening without saying a word, but now he interjected. “With all due respect, Investigator, why would the new prime minister have kept you on when you had been part of the former PM’s administration? The corruption in his predecessor’s inner circle was well known. Wouldn’t he have wanted to wipe the slate clean?”
While Pezzente acknowledged the inspector’s comment with a single nod of his head, his expression was one of defiance. His eyes were the color of carbon, and the relaxed smile he’d tried in vain to engage Nico with was a thin, straight line.
“My employer was never our prime minister. Neither the former, nor the current one.”
Nico and Mifsud stared at him.
“I am, and have been for some years, employed by a joint task force between the Guardia di Finanza and the Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia.”
Nico let out a low whistle. Mifsud’s mouth hung open.
“Neither prime minister that I served was aware that while they might have signed my paychecks, I wasn’t in their employ.”
With that one revelation, all the doubts and questions Nico had about Italy’s special investigator had finally been answered. Well, all but one, but he held his tongue for now.
“But for the record,” Pezzente said, “I believe our new prime minister is who he claims to be: someone determined to wipe out Italy’s decades-long history of corruption.”
“You said you have a lead on Ariana’s assassination?” Nico said. If that was true, it begged the obvious question: why wouldn’t Pezzente have reported it immediately? His suspicions came crawling back. This man was used to being duplicitous. Of playing both ends against the middle.
Pezzente nodded. “Yes, we have the one person who knows who killed Clarence Braithwaite.” He paused. “And may have ordered Signorina Calleja’s murder.”
* * *
Mifsud was limping badly and looked about ready to drop from sheer exhaustion as the three men left the hospital. On the way to the safe house where this so-called witness was being kept, he’d told Nico privately he thought it prudent that, for now, they wait before advising any other authorities. Nico knew the police inspector was livid at not being kept in the loop in his own jurisdiction, but if what Pezzente had told them was true, his witness was potentially in enough danger to warrant the highest level of security. For now, the fewer people who knew of their existence, the better.
Upon arrival, Nico observed at least four men in plainclothes who were clearly guards. And that was just around the perimeter of the nondescript safe house. Two more were posted outside the front door. Under their civilian clothing, Nico detected the bulkiness of bulletproof vests. He’d observed the same scenario many times when witnesses had turned state’s evidence and were awaiting trial. For those guarding them, it could be a hazardous line of work. In less than a heartbeat, a drive-by shooter or hidden sniper could take them before they even realized what was happening. Nico had seen more than one such soul never make it home to their families. Judging by the security, it would seem this witness was of critical value.
Inspector Mifsud acknowledged each of the guards as they stepped aside to let them enter. Once inside, they were asked to put their weapons on a tray. As Nico didn’t have one, only the inspector’s gun was collected. After abject apologies, they were both body-searched and after one of the agents gave the OK, they stood in silence and awaited the appearance of Pezzente’s witness. Nico tingled with anticipation, but at the same time a sense of dread descended over him. Would he finally know who was responsible for Ariana’s murder?
They heard approaching footsteps and some muffled conversation. Nico and Mifsud looked at each other questioningly, the atmosphere in the room heavy with tension. Pezzente nodded to the agent who stood in the dining room that had been set up as a command center. From out of the shadows stepped a diminutive figure, maybe five-two or five-three. Wearing an oversized gray hoodie and baggy sweatpants, the person looked like the whisper of a breeze could lift them off their feet. As they stepped forward, a small hand reached out and pushed the hood back from their face.
“Allow me to introduce you to Dr. Anna Braithwaite.”
You could have heard a pin drop as Nico and Mifsud stood in stunned silence.
She pushed a stray lank of reddish-blond hair from her face.
“Dr. Braithwaite,” Pezzente said, “this is the special prosecutor from Tropea, Nico—”
“Mr. Moretti,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I understand you knew Ariana Calleja personally.”
Rather than acknowledge her remark, Nico just stared. This was Pezzente’s witness? The woman who had covered up her faulty research and tried to pin it on her husband? And whom, by all accounts, had been complicit in his murder. Nico clenched his hands by his side, trying to tamp down the rage th
at boiled within him.
“Please sit down,” Mifsud said, as if sensing what was about to happen. “Why don’t we all sit down, and perhaps Dr. Braithwaite can start at the beginning?”
Anna looked to Pezzente, who nodded. “Please call me Anna,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“I was the one who told Ali . . . Alesandru about the drug trials. We’d started a . . . personal relationship—my marriage wasn’t going well, and he’d invested heavily in—”
“Dr. Braithwaite,” Nico snapped, “I’m really not interested in your love life, nor what role you might have played in insider trading. That will be for the authorities to deal with—”
Mifsud put a hand on his arm.
Anna nodded. “Alesandru was being blackmailed. He didn’t know by whom.” She clasped her hands in her lap so tightly Nico could see the whites of her knuckles. “He eventually told me that he was behind the car bombing that killed my husband. He said he’d done everything to keep us,” she made air quotes, “from being exposed.”
Everything he’d done. Nico’s heart skipped a beat. Did that include ordering the assassination of… ? But he couldn’t get the words out. In the background, he could hear someone speaking, but it was garbled as if he was underwater. Mifsud tightened his grasp on his forearm, jolting him from his revelry.
“Everything points to Baldisar being responsible for the bombing that killed Miss Calleja,” Pezzente said. “We just don’t have proof.”
Anna’s eyes glistened with tears. “I’m sorry, Mr. Moretti. I tried, but I just couldn’t get him to admit to it. When I told Alesandru I was going to tell the police everything”—she took a ragged breath, “he gave Mr. Pezzente here the order to kill me.”
Nico sat back in his chair. Stunned. “You were Baldisar’s fixer.”
* * *
Days before the fateful day that Anna had met up with Baldisar at his palatial island home, Roberto Pezzente, knowing Anna was being investigated by the securities authorities in both the UK and Malta, contacted her and made a deal she literally couldn’t refuse. If she did, she could potentially go to prison for the rest of her life. Initially, she’d said no. That all she was guilty of was insider trading and she’d take her chances of receiving a lesser prison term. However, when Pezzente spelled out to her that they believed Baldisar, or someone he knew, had ordered Ariana’s assassination, and she could be charged as an accessory, she capitulated and agreed to wear a wire. The blackmail call was made, and then they waited.
Like a hound to the scent of blood, Baldisar did exactly what they’d hoped for. He reached out to the only person he could confide in. Anna Braithwaite.
Pezzente had replaced Baldisar’s helicopter pilot with one of his own people. Anna wore the wire as planned, and the rest fell into place exactly as planned. Pezzente made the arrangements for her to be taken off the island by helicopter, after which he placed her into protective custody. Then Pezzente reported back to his “boss” that the job had been done.
“It was after that,” he said, “that Baldisar found out who I was and . . . Well, you know the rest.”
“Why did you go back?” Nico asked. “You were free, you could have just put an end to it.”
The investigator absently touched the stitched gash on his scalp. “Number one, I needed absolute proof that he’d ordered Ariana… Miss Calleja’s assassination.”
“And number two?”
“I needed one more piece of the puzzle—the identities of the foreign players Baldisar was in bed with. He was in way over his head. Some of the individuals his bank was laundering money for would make him look like a saint.”
Nico had to agree. Even though he now considered Baldisar as a low-life piece of slime, he’d seen the names on Ariana’s list. They included some of the most tyrannical despots on the planet. “And by staying on the inside you thought you’d have enough to take him down.”
Pezzente nodded. “It was a risk. But it was something I had to do.”
Nico looked at the investigator’s bruised and swollen face and thought of his twin daughters and his wife who’d been murdered in cold blood. What more did the man possibly have to lose?
Chapter Thirty
Following Anna Braithwaite turning state’s witness, every police force in Malta joined in the manhunt for Baldisar. On an island twenty-seven kilometers long and fourteen wide, Nico would have thought it wouldn’t be that difficult to locate a fugitive. Knowing he could virtually be anywhere, on land or off, police orchestrated simultaneous raids on both his country and island homes, as well as his private yacht. The latter resulted in them taking Baldisar’s captain and crew into custody, but they provided nothing on their boss’s whereabouts. If they knew anything, they certainly weren’t divulging it to police, and without charges to hold them, they were released. With Baldisar still at large, they might have been safer being arrested and held in jail.
“Is there anywhere else he could be?” Pezzente implored Anna Braithwaite. “The police have searched everywhere they can think of. I suspect his wife would give him up in two seconds, she’s pretty pissed off at being under house arrest in Valletta. But we have questioned her and she says she has no idea.”
Anna shook her head. “The only place we ever met was on the yacht or the island.”
Where does a rat go when he is out of places to hide? Nico wondered. “Roberto, would there be any point in going back to the area around the warehouse? It’s odd that even with infrared, the police haven’t found them yet. I’m wondering if he could have gone underground. Literally, the way we’ve seen certain Mafia leaders do.
Pezzente shrugged. “We’ve tried everything else. What have we got to lose?”
“A warehouse!” Anna jumped from her chair so quickly both men were startled. “Was it near water?”
“No,” Nico said. “It was about twenty kilometers from the Albert Town dock. Inland, why?”
“Ali had a storage unit on the water somewhere out of town. He took me there once when we had to pick up something before going out for a weekend cruise.”
Pezzente seized on the information. “Do you know the address or how you got there?”
“No, we pulled in by boat. His captain offered to go, but Alesandru insisted on going himself.”
“So you tied up at a marina?” Nico asked.
Anna paced the sitting room in tight circles, twisting a lock of her hair around her index finger. “We took the launch from the yacht and . . . Oh, God, why can’t I remember?”
Nico took her gently by the shoulders and led her back to the chair. “Anna. I want you to sit down and close your eyes.”
She looked at him as if he were mad.
“Please, just trust me. Close your eyes.” She sat and did as she was told. “All right, now visualize coming into the harbor. What time of day was it?”
She brought a shaky hand to her chest, then both hands to her temples. “It was late afternoon, the sky was turning dusky and the wind was getting up—that’s why Ali didn’t want the yacht to go in too close.” She squeezed her eyes tighter. “A high-rise. There was a tall building in the background, then a row of low-rise—maybe blocks of flats—in the foreground.”
Nico looked at Pezzente, who shook his head.
“OK, a tall building and some low ones. Can you remember anything distinctive? Maybe a statue or—”
“No! It wasn’t a marina or flats.” Her eyelids were fluttering and Nico worried she was becoming hysterical. He needed to keep her focused. “It was a nightclub. On the beach! All along the beach were these huge cubes of blue.”
“Cubes of blue? Like cement blocks? Buildings painted blue? Anna, what?”
“No, they were enormous blocks, all topsy-turvy.” Her eyes flew open. “They were blue lights. I remember hearing the music pounding as we got in near the shore. The lights were pulsating to the beat of the music.”
Pezzente was already on his phone. Nico could hear him questioning whoever he was talking to
about a nightclub on the beach with huge blue-light squares out front.
“We’ve got it! The Blue Dragon, about thirty kilometers from here. Let’s go!”
“Hang on, wait,” Nico said. “Anna, you said there was a warehouse there. Was it part of the beach club?”
“I don’t know, he made me wait at the bar while he went inside. I don’t know where he went from there. But I heard the captain tell him whatever he was picking up was in the warehouse.”
* * *
Fortunately, their driver knew exactly where to take them. “How long?” Pezzente asked from the back seat of the unmarked police car.
“In this traffic? An hour or more.” Nico’s hopes plummeted. “But for you, sinjur, thirty minutes.”
Nico fastened his seat belt while Pezzente worked the phone, calling Mifsud and requesting backup.
“They’ll meet us there,” he said, buckling his own seat belt as they went the wrong way down a one-way alley.
Nico wouldn’t have been remotely able to explain how they got to their destination. They’d woven in and out of so many streets and flown through alleys that if it not for the digital compass readout on the rearview mirror, he’d have had no idea in what direction they’d been traveling. Tires screeching, their driver suddenly swerved off the road and hurtled down a long driveway toward the sea. As they got to a long, low-rise building, he looked for a place to pull over. But a solid line of enormous luxury coaches parked end to end, took up the entire length of the curb.
People were emerging from the coaches, all decked out in formal wear, each wearing a name badge around their neck. Minchia! This was not the place for a police showdown.
“Let us out here!” Pezzente said. “And stick around—we might need you.”
They leaped from the car and raced past the incoming guests, trying to avoid colliding with anyone. The doorman tried to stop Pezzente, but even after his injuries, he flew past him like a heat-seeking missile. Nico attempted to keep up with him but his side was throbbing. By the time they made it to the front desk, however, there were six uniformed security guards standing shoulder to shoulder, forming a human shield. Pezzente flashed his ID. One guy looked at it and nodded, but while they moved aside to provide an opening, they abruptly closed it when Nico tried to follow.