The Burial Hour

by Jeffery Deaver

  She was, of course, more than an associate. She was Euterpe, his muse, the woman guiding him on the path to Harmony.

  "These men will explain what we need to do, Stefan. I'll tell you later everything that's happened. But for now, please do what they say."

  His head rose and fell slowly.

  She looked at Rhyme, who said, "We have a recording, Stefan. Would you listen to it and tell us all the information you can figure out? We need to find somebody and we think the background sounds might be able to lead us to them."

  "A kidnapping phone call?"

  Rhyme said, "No, a call between two people who're planning a terror attack."

  He looked at McKenzie, who said, "Yes. One of the people we were after. I made a mistake and we got the wrong one. There's someone else. We need to stop her."

  "Her. Ah. I kidnapped her husband, and it was really the wife." A smile. "Who stole my shoe."

  "Yes."

  Intelligent. Good.

  Spiro asked, "Would it help to shut the lights out?"

  "No, I don't need that."

  Ercole played the audio. Now that he was aware of its potential value, Rhyme listened carefully. He made out a few noises that he hadn't noticed in the first or second hearing but not much.

  "Again." Stefan's voice was firm. He wasn't the least deferential. Odd how even the most insecure grow assertive when practicing their special art.

  Ercole played it once more.

  "And again."

  He did so.

  "Can I have a pen and paper, please?" Stefan asked.

  Spiro produced them instantly.

  "It is hard, I am sure, to hear past the voices," Rossi said.

  Stefan responded with a bemused frown. Apparently he could hear past the voices just fine.

  "Sound is better than words. Sounds have meanings that are more trustworthy. Robert Frost, the poet, talked about the sound of sense. I love that, don't you? He said you could experience a poem recited on the other side of a door without hearing the words. The sounds alone would convey the intended emotion and meaning to you."

  Not exactly the ramblings of a madman.

  He began to jot notes in perfect script. Beatrice Renza would approve of it.

  As he wrote, he said, "The caller was not far from the harbor. I hear Klaxons and warning and announcement horns. Passenger and commercial vessels. Tugboat diesels."

  "Not from trucks?" Rossi asked.

  "Of course not, no. They are clearly echoing off undulating water. You can hear the horns and liner diesels too, right?"

  Rhyme could not. They were hidden in a morass of noise.

  Stefan scribbled quickly, then stared at the sheet. Closed his eyes. They sprang open and he crossed out what he'd just inscribed and then started again.

  "I need to control the playback." He scooted close to the computer, nudging Ercole out of the way.

  "These keys can--"

  "I know," Stefan said brusquely and typed. He rewound the audio and replayed certain parts, jotting notes. After ten minutes, he looked up.

  "I can hear transmissions downshifting and increasing in volume, as the cars get closer to the phone. That means the caller's on top of the hill. The hill's steep. They are mostly cars, mostly small ones, both diesel and gas. One has a muffler about to go. Some vans, I think. But no large trucks."

  Another playback. Staring at a blank wall. "Birds. Two different types. First, pigeons. There are many of them. I can hear their wings flutter from time to time: once, when a roller board--those things boys ride on--went by. Once, when children, about four or five years old, ran after the birds. I can tell the age from their footfalls and the laughs. The pigeons returned at once. They didn't fly off when cars went by. That tells us that they're in a square or plaza. Not a street."

  Their eyes went to the map of Naples, where Spiro had circled the docks with a red marker. He now put X's near a number of public squares and piazzas in the general area of the waterfront and on what he must have known were hills.

  "The second birds are seagulls. They'd be everywhere in and around Naples, of course, but here there are only four, I think. One is giving a copulation call. He's some distance. The three closer to the phone are giving assault calls and alarm calls. They're fighting aggressively, probably over food, since they wouldn't be nesting there. And because there are only three, I think they're fighting over trash in a small bin, behind a restaurant or house. They are farther away from the waterfront; closer, there would be more and there would be a lot of sources for food--fishermen and trash--so the fighting would not be as vicious."

  Stefan played the tape back once more and paused it. "There is a school nearby, grade school, we'd say in America. I would guess it's a parochial or a private school--many of the children have leather soles. I can hear no running shoes. Leather soles would mean uniforms. So private or religious. It's a school because they're laughing and running and playing and then, almost as once, it stops, and the sound of their feet changes as they all walk at the same pace back to class." He looked at the others, all staring at him. "They're grade school--I can tell this because of the sound of the voices and the interval of their footfalls. I said that before. There is construction going on not far away. Metal work. Cutting metal and riveting."

  "The ironwork of a building," Rossi said.

  "I don't know if it's a building," Stefan corrected. "It might be anything metal. A ship."

  "Of course."

  "Now, we can't ignore words. Do you hear that American voice? A man's asking, 'How much?' Speaking slowly and loud, as if that will improve understanding. Anyway, he'd be speaking to an outdoor vendor. Or, possibly, a shop with an open window.

  "There's a man vomiting. Then he receives angry comments. So, I would think he's a drunk, not somebody who's sick. Somebody ill would get sympathy, and we'd hear a siren. This means there might be a bar not far away. I hear scooter engines starting, then running for a few minutes, then stopping. They seem, some of them seem, to be misfiring. The sound of tools."

  "A repair shop," Ercole said.

  "Yes." He listened to more of the tape. "Church bells." Stefan replayed it. "The notes are D, G, G, B, G, G."

  Spiro asked, "You are able to tell?"

  "I have absolute pitch. Yes, I know those notes. I don't know what they are playing. We have to find out."

  Rossi asked, "Perhaps, can you sing it?"

  Without referring to the tape again Stefan sang the notes in a clear baritone. "I'm an octave lower," he said, as if that were important information.

  Ercole was nodding. "Yes, yes, it's the Angelus, l'Ave Maria del mezzogiorno, I would guess. The midday tolling."

  "A Catholic church," Rhyme said.

  "Not very close but no more than a hundred yards, I'd think. Perhaps connected to the school."

  Dante Spiro marked churches in the area they'd been focused on.

  Stefan listened to the tape once more. Then he shook his head. "I'm afraid that's about it."

  Spiro asked, "That's all you can hear?"

  Stefan laughed. "Oh, no, I hear much more. Airplanes, the trickle of gravel, a gunshot very far away, a glass breaking--a drinking glass, not a window...but they are too general. They won't help you."

  "You've done fine, Stefan," Rhyme said.

  "Thank you," McKenzie said to the young man.

  Spiro exhaled. "Sei un'artista. That is to say, you are a true artist."

  Stefan smiled, shy once more.

  Spiro was then leaning forward, his dark, focused eyes staring at the map. His finger stabbed a spot. "Ecco. I think Gianni had to be here. Monte Echia. It is not far from here. A large hill downtown overlooking the bay. That would explain the gear shifting. It's largely residential but below are shops like the one that could be the scooter repair place and the bar where the man was sick. With the vistas, it is a tourist spot, so there could be vendors there, selling food and souvenirs. The docks are not that close but within hearing range. And there is a church j
ust below it, the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Catena."

  "Tourists?" Rhyme asked. "It might be a good target."

  Rossi said, "It's not a major tourist attraction but, as Dante says, there are many residents and some restaurants. The gulls might have been fighting at one of their trash bins."

  Ercole then said, "Ah, there is a possible target for Fatima: the military archive, Caserma Nino Bixio."

  "I don't know that it's still open," Spiro said. "But, even if not, there would be residents and tourists nearby and bombing a state building would get the attention of the world."

  Rossi was already calling the SCO team.

  Rhyme looked at the digital clock: 12:50.

  An hour and ten minutes until the attack.

  Amelia Sachs was pushing Ercole's poor Megane to the limit once more, though this time not speeding; the unfortunate lower gears were struggling to ascend the steep slope of Monte Echia.

  They breached the top and saw ahead of them two dozen tactical officers from the SCO, as well as a number of regulars from the Police of State and the Carabinieri. The Naples Commune Police was present too, along with soldiers from the Italian army.

  Towering Michelangelo, the tactical force commander, gestured angrily for two police cars to back up and let Sachs pull closer. He smiled as Sachs jumped from the car and they played the Dirty Harriet/Make My Day game again.

  She rigged her headset, and she and Ercole walked into a square beside the large red stone building that was the archive. At the western edge, where a sheer cliff descended to the street below, there were tourist stations--a sketch artist who'd do a portrait of customers with Vesuvius in the background, vendors of gelato and flavored shaved ice, a man behind a pushcart, selling Italian flags, limoncello liqueur in bottles the shape of Italy, Pinocchio dolls, pizza refrigerator magnets, maps, and cold drinks.

  Though the day was sunny, the temperature moderate, the area was largely deserted.

  Now that Rhyme had told her of Stefan's analysis of the phone call between Fatima and Gianni, she too was aware of the sounds that he'd identified--the pigeons, the gulls ganging over a garbage bin nearby, cars downshifting to make the summit, as she'd just done. Much dimmer were the other sounds--the ships at the docks in the far distance, south toward the volcano, the scooter repair shop, other vendors, tourists, children in a parochial school yard.

  She and Ercole joined in the search, and the Forestry officer told Michelangelo that they would survey the vendors and the customers, since the police soldiers had the archives covered.

  "Si, si!" the massive man said and plunged toward the archives with his men, his face registering disappointment, as if peeved that there was no one yet to shoot. The big, dun-colored building was not, in fact, open at the moment, but there were many alcoves and shadows and doorways where a bomb might be hidden--and that would kill or injure dozens, as Dante Spiro had pointed out.

  Ercole and Sachs canvassed up and down the streets, she displaying the picture of Fatima, he asking if anyone had seen her, adding that she would be dressed in Western clothing and without the head covering, most likely. Since the photo, though, depicted the woman in hijab, the tourists and vendors surely thought that terrorism might be involved and they gazed at the picture with the eager intent to remember seeing her.

  But none had.

  The two walked up and down the winding street, stopping at residences and questioning people they passed, while uniformed police officers and Carabinieri swept the cars lining the curbs, some using mirrors on poles to look beneath them for the explosive.

  And how much time?

  Sachs's phone showed: 1:14.

  Forty-six minutes till the attack.

  They returned to the top of the plateau, where Michelangelo was talking to a Carabiniere, obviously a commander, to judge from the medals and insignias on his breast and shoulder. His hat was quite tall.

  The tactical commander saw Sachs and shook his head, ringed with fuzzy, red hair, with a grimace. He returned to the search.

  She called Rhyme.

  "Found anything, Sachs?"

  "Nothing. And, you know what? This doesn't feel right."

  "As in, it doesn't seem like a target?"

  "Exactly." She was looking around her as wind stirred up shrapnel of crisp food wrappers and plastic bags and newspapers and dust. "The archive's closed and there just aren't that many people around."

  Rhyme was silent a moment, and then: "Odd. Gianni said the target would be crowded today."

  "It ain't going to get more crowded in forty minutes, Rhyme. And no press. No reason for any press."

  Then: "Ah, no. Goddamn it."

  Sachs's pulse quickened. This was his tone of anger.

  She gripped Ercole's arm and he stopped quickly.

  Rhyme was saying, "I made a mistake." He was then speaking to the others in the Questura--Charlotte McKenzie, Spiro and Rossi--but she couldn't hear the words.

  He came back on the line. "Monte Echia isn't the target, Sachs. I should have known that!"

  "Didn't Stefan identify it right?"

  "He did fine. But I didn't pay attention to what Gianni told Fatima. He didn't say he was at the target. He said he could see the target. He was standing there and looking it over."

  She explained this to Ercole, who grimaced. They caught Michelangelo's attention and Sachs gestured him over. The man stalked closer and Ercole told him about the mistake.

  He nodded and spoke into his microphone.

  Sachs was staring over the vistas. "I can see the docks, Rhyme."

  He was on speaker and Spiro had heard. He said, "But, Detective, they are filled with security. I do not think she could get close."

  Ercole said, "We see the Partenope walkway and street. It is somewhat crowded."

  Then Sachs's eyes slipped to the stony island in front of Via Partenope. "What's that?"

  "Castel dell'Ovo," he answered. "A popular tourist attraction. And there are, as you can see, many restaurants and cafes."

  Spiro said abruptly, "That could be it. Gianni told Fatima to get behind a stone wall before the explosion. Yes, the castle has dozens of alcoves where she can hide."

  "And look!"

  Two large buses were just then pulling up in front of the bridge that led to the island the castle was on. People in suits and elaborate dresses began to climb out. On the side were banners.

  "What do they say?" Sachs asked Ercole.

  "It's publicity for a fashion event here. Some designer or clothing company."

  "And there would have been a press announcement, so Gianni would have learned it started at two o'clock."

  She told those in the Questura what they were looking at.

  "Yes, yes, that has to be it!" Rossi said.

  Sachs tugged Ercole's arm. "Let's go." Into the headset she said, "We're headed there now, Rhyme."

  She disconnected and they jogged to the Megane, which she fired up and put into gear. Michelangelo and the tactical officers were jogging back to their vehicles.

  Sachs skidded in a U-turn and sped down the switchbacks to the street beneath the mountain. She swerved onto the concrete, steered into the skid and floored the accelerator. Sachs was blustering her way through an intersection when she glanced in her rearview mirror, wondering how close Michelangelo was, when she saw a flash of yellow and orange flame.

  "Ercole, look. Behind us. What happened?"

  He turned as best he could and squinted. "Mamma mia! A fire. At the bottom of the road we just came down, there's a car on fire. Sitting in the middle of the street."

  "Gianni."

  "He's been watching us! He's running guard for Fatima. Of course. He broke into a car, I'd guess, and rolled it into the road, then set it on fire."

  "To block the police. They're trapped on the mountain now."

  Ercole was calling in this latest development.

  On speaker she heard Rossi say he would get more officers and a fire brigade to the base of the mountain to the cast
le.

  "Looks like it's just us, Ercole."

  No longer an uneasy passenger, he stabbed his finger toward the road and cried, "Per favore, Amelia. Can you not go any faster?"

  Chapter 65

  Like a hockey player swerving around the goal, the Megane veered onto Via Partenope and screeched to a stop, deftly--and narrowly--avoiding a gelato vendor, two fashion models in neon-green dresses and, by inches, a Bugatti coupe, which Sachs believed was worth just north of a million dollars.

  Then she and Ercole were out and sprinting to the promontory that tied Castel dell'Ovo to the mainland.

  Sachs called, "Fatima's in street clothes, remember."

  "Si."

  "And remember your target. You've got to stop her instantly."

  "Upper lip. Si. Three bullets."

  Sirens cut through the air--the fire trucks headed to clear the way from Mont Echia, and the urgent wail from reinforcements, Police of State and Carabinieri heading to the castle now, to join Sachs and Ercole in the search for Fatima Jabril.

  It was 1:30.

  What a fat target this was: To the left of the massive castle, on the island, there were shops and restaurants and docks, today filled with tourists and locals enjoying the sun and the promise of Neapolitan food and wine and a lazy voyage in a sailing or motorboat upon cerulean Naples Bay. The site was plumped up all the more by the hundred or so fashion industry glitterati. A tent had been set up in the shadows of the towering castle.

  Add the many tourists, and there had to be a thousand people here.

  Sachs jumped as her phone rang, thinking of the bomb, which would have a cell-phone-activated detonator; that her sensitivity to ringtones was unreasonable didn't calm her heart.

  "Rhyme."

  "Where are you?" he asked.

  "On the promontory to the castle."

  Spiro's voice. "Yes, yes, Detective. We see you. CCTV."

  Two uniformed officers--guards at the castle--approached. They had apparently been briefed by Rossi or Spiro and the pair, a blond woman and dark-haired man, hurried to Ercole, who confirmed their identities, as if the badges and weapons left any doubt.

  Sachs said into the phone, "Evacuate the place, Rhyme?"

  Rossi spoke. He explained that they had decided against that approach, at least for now; the castle and the island on which it sat were accessed only by the narrow strip of land, like a bridge, they were moving over now. Panic would create a deadly crush, and more would die from a leap into the water or onto the rocky shore. "At five minutes until two, perhaps we will have no choice. But that will be certain death for a number of people. We will be closing off the entrance now."