The Burial Hour

by Jeffery Deaver

  Sachs, Ercole and the two castle guards walked quickly over the promontory and into the throngs on the island. The officers were scanning the grounds and docks where hundreds of pleasure craft bobbed lazily at their slips. Looking for a slim, dark-haired woman, probably by herself, dressed in Western clothing and carrying a package or purse or backpack. Of course, Sachs reflected, here they were in a region brimming with slim, dark-haired women, dressed Western.

  Scanning, scanning the crowds.

  Impossible...

  Rossi came on the line. "The fire's out and the car is being moved aside. Michelangelo's men will be ten or fifteen minutes."

  Just in time for the detonation.

  Rossi now said, "Ah, I've heard from some undercover officers. They were investigating a smuggling case on the dock, coincidentally. They are nearby and moving in. They're aware of you and Ercole. They should be there now. They have Fatima's picture."

  Sachs told Ercole about the undercover officers--and just at that moment one young man in a leather jacket and tight jeans caught their eye. He moved aside his jacket and displayed a badge. He was with a woman in her thirties. She, too, nodded. They, the two castle guards and Sachs and Ercole met near the entrance to a seafood restaurant. They agreed to split up and go in three different directions.

  It was 1:40.

  She and the lanky Forestry officer were moving quickly west, toward the side of the castle that jutted farthest into Naples Bay. The tourists here were listening to a street musician, playing guitar and singing what sounded like an Italian ballad from the last century. She saw couples embracing, teenagers flirting and joking, a young blonde pushing a baby carriage, families strolling, men walking side by side, their wives arm in arm behind, children in giddy orbit, boys with soccer balls unable to resist showing off their crafty footwork.

  No one who looked like Fatima, even in Western clothing.

  And as for the bomb?

  It could be anywhere. In one of the trash receptacles, under a table in one of the restaurants or bars, behind a kiosk, near the raised stage for the fashion show.

  Perhaps in the potted plant she was walking past just now.

  C4 explosive, known officially as RDX, Research Department Explosive, travels outward at nineteen thousand miles per hour, nearly sixty times the speed of sound. The vapors and blast wave annihilate anything in their path. Skin, viscera and bone simply disappear into a crimson mist.

  She sent Ercole to the left, toward the stage were the fashion show was about to start. Reporters were taking random shots of some of the more beautiful woman--and a beautiful man or two. In a soft voice, as if not wishing to startle her, Rossi spoke into her earbud, "Detective Sachs, Michelangelo and the other officers are almost there. We have to evacuate now. It's thirteen fifty."

  Ten minutes to two.

  Ten minutes till the bomb.

  "I do not want to, Detective. I know there will be a panic. But there is no choice. I'll send the officers in--"

  "Wait," she said. A thought: The woman with the baby carriage...it was out of place. There was a park nearby, at the western end of the Via Partenope. The pretty place, nicely landscaped, had pathways and gelato stands and gardens and benches. Ideal for a mother with a carriage. But the Castel dell'Ovo, with the crowds and warren of docks? No.

  And she'd had a backpack over her shoulder. Where better to hide a bomb?

  Blond, though? Well, if you were going shopping for a baby carriage for a prop, why not buy a wig too?

  Turning abruptly back to where she'd seen the woman: "Give me just a minute more," she whispered into the headset. "I have a lead."

  "Detective, there's no time!"

  Rhyme's voice said, firmly, "No. Let her run with it."

  "But--"

  Spiro said, "Si, Massimo. Let her."

  Sirens were sounding now, growing closer. Heads were turning toward the mainland. Smiles cooling to frowns of curiosity...and then concern.

  Sachs continued south, in the direction she'd last seen the woman and the baby carriage. Hurrying over the stone paths, hundreds, perhaps a thousand years old. Her head swiveled, eyes squinted.

  Her hand? Inches from the grip of the Beretta.

  1:55.

  Where are you, Fatima? Where?

  And then the answer: At the southernmost wall of the castle, the blonde with the carriage emerged from the building's shadows near the docks. She stopped beside a pier, at which were tied a half-dozen gorgeous yachts, white as cold moonlight, ropes coiled perfectly on the decks and silver fixtures glinting. On the boat: older beautiful people, tanned and coiffed--"jet-setters" in an earlier era.

  There was no target here--it wasn't that crowded--but there was a solid archway that would protect her from the blast.

  Fatima--Sachs could see her face clearly now as she looked back nervously--was wheeling toward this archway now. The dull-toned blond wig clashed with her olive skin. The backpack was over her shoulder still. It wouldn't contain the bomb any longer. No, she would have planted it in a more populated part of the island.

  Sachs drew her weapon but kept it hidden under her arm and jogged forward. She was thirty feet away when the woman saw her and froze.

  Speaking softly, Sachs said slowly and in a low, clear voice, "You have been tricked, Fatima! Ibrahim is not who you think. He is using you. He's lied to you."

  Fatima frowned, shook her head. "No. No trick!" Her eyes were wide--and damp with tears.

  Sachs walked a few feet closer. Fatima moved back, turning the carriage and keeping it between her and Sachs.

  "I don't want to hurt you. You'll be safe. Just put your hands up. Let me come talk to you. You don't want to do this. You'll be hurting people without any reason. Please!"

  Fatima stiffened.

  Sachs said, "I saved your husband. I saved his life. Remember?"

  Then Fatima lowered her head. A moment later she looked up with a smile. "Yes. Yes, miss. Yes. Thank you for that. Shukran!" The smile twisted into a look of profound sorrow and Sachs saw tears. Then Fatima shoved the baby carriage toward the water. There was no barrier, or even a low lip, on the pier and it tumbled, as if in slow motion, twenty feet into the water.

  Sachs caught a glimpse of blankets and black hair rising inside as it landed with a loud splash. The carriage settled and sank fast.

  Sachs, however, didn't do what Fatima hoped. She ignored the buggy and went into a combat shooting stance as the woman dug for her phone to call the mobile wired to the detonator.

  "No, Fatima, no!"

  Above them, screams pealed from the top of the castle, fifty feet above her, where tourists had seen the carriage go into the water.

  Fatima yanked the phone free. It was a flip phone. She opened it, looking down at the keypad, reaching a finger out.

  Amelia Sachs inhaled, held her breath and squeezed the trigger. Three times.

  Chapter 66

  Non siamo riusciti a trovare nulla," the scuba diver said.

  Ercole Benelli translated. The man was sorry but he and his colleagues in the Italian navy had found nothing in the water below the looming castle.

  "Keep searching," Lincoln Rhyme said. He, Ercole, Sachs, Spiro and Rossi were near the spot where Fatima had shoved the carriage into the water, in the shadow of the blunt, ruddy castle. Curiously, much of the entrance route to the edifice, centuries old, was disabled-accessible.

  The diver nodded and walked backward along the pier--he wore flippers--then turned and, stiff-legged, strode into the water. Rhyme glanced at the half-dozen eruptions of bubbles on the surface of Naples Bay from the aquatic search party below.

  A wail sounded to their left, a woman's keen of despair. The sixtyish-year-old matron pointed at Sachs and fired off a vicious fusillade of words.

  Ercole started to translate but Rhyme interrupted. "She's upset that my Sachs here was so devoted to stopping a terror attack that she ignored a drowning baby. Am I in the ballpark?"

  "Ballpark?" A questioning frown.<
br />
  "Am. I. Correct?"

  "You are close, Captain Rhyme. But she didn't raise any question of devotion to stopping the villain. In essence she accuses your partner of being a child killer."

  Rhyme chuckled. "Tell her what really happened. If it'll shut her up."

  Ercole gave the woman the story--a very abbreviated version of the full tale, which was that it wasn't a baby in the carriage, but a doll.

  Sachs had known all along that Fatima's and Khaled's little girl, Muna, was not in the carriage. When she'd been to the Capodichino Reception Center earlier that day, after Fatima had vanished, Sachs had seen Muna in the care of a neighbor, in the vacant lot beside their tent. And among the boxes inside their tent was an empty carton that had once held--from the picture on the side--a dark-haired doll, the size of a large baby. Sachs had caught a glimpse of the toy in the carriage.

  A clever diversion. Rhyme had to give Fatima credit.

  He glared at the agitated tourist until she fell silent, turned and left.

  Prosecutor Spiro approached. "Have they found the phone yet?"

  "No," Rossi told him. "Five divers in the bay. But nothing."

  This was the object of the navy divers' search. They hoped to recover the SIM card from Fatima's new phone and track Gianni's or other numbers that might lead to him, to Ibrahim, or to whoever within the Italian anti-immigrant movement had hired them to derail the pro-immigrant legislative proposal in Rome.

  But the currents in the bay were not, it seemed, cooperating.

  The Carabinieri's bomb team, directed by Fatima Jabril, had found and removed the explosive device, which had been placed deep in a stone recess of the castle, not far from the fashion show reception. It was a bad placement, from a terrorist's point of view. The solid walls would have protected almost everyone from the blast. Dogs had searched and found no other explosives and a team had cleared Fatima's backpack, too, which contained no weapons, but only medical supplies--bandages and antiseptics and the like. An ID badge from the refugee camp indicated that Fatima was a nurse/aide.

  The woman herself was nearby--in the castle, being treated by a medical team. The injuries were minor--two broken carpals, finger bones, and one hell of a bruise. But the 9mm slugs, which had destroyed the phone, had not broken any skin.

  Sachs had not shot to kill.

  After the phone had been so dramatically removed from her hand, Fatima had grown hysterical. She said that--because she'd failed--Ibrahim would now kill her family in Libya.

  But Sachs explained that that was unlikely, given that the plot was not what it seemed. Ibrahim and Gianni weren't terrorists; they were mercenaries being paid to stage phony attacks. Still, to reassure Fatima--and snag her cooperation--Spiro told her that Italian agents in Libya would keep an eye on her family.

  She readily agreed and gave a statement about everything she knew about him: It wasn't much, true, but she confirmed he was a tanned, unsmiling man who smoked foul-smelling cigarettes, was clean-shaven and had thick curly hair, an athletic build. She described him as a man who traveled much, whose hours were not his own. When they spoke he was often out of town and usually on the road.

  Rossi's phone hummed and he answered. "Si, pronto?"

  Rhyme couldn't deduce from the conversation whether the inspector was receiving good news or bad. At one point he lifted a pen from his breast pocket, pulled the cap off with his teeth and jotted something in a notebook.

  After he disconnected he turned to the others and said, "Beatrice. She found one print on the detonator phone. It came back positive. An Albanian--in the country legally."

  "Legally?" Rhyme asked. "Then why was he in the system?"

  "He was required to have a security check because he works at Malpensa airport. In Milan. He is a mechanic for fuel trucks and those big vehicles that tow and push airplanes. All airport workers are fingerprinted. He would have, I think, some connection with the Albanian gangs. He could smuggle drugs without having to pass through Customs. Explosives too, it seems."

  Sachs was looking out to sea, squinting. It was her intense look. Her huntress look. Rhyme enjoyed watching her at moments like that.

  Rhyme asked, "Sachs? Enjoying the view?"

  She mused, "Malpensa's the other airport in Milan."

  "Yes," Spiro said.

  She said, "Didn't Beatrice say she'd found samples of industrial grease at the warehouse in Milan? And jet fuel too?"

  "She did, yes. But we didn't pursue it because it didn't seem there was any connection between the warehouse and the Composer."

  She turned to Spiro. "Everyone in Italy, citizens, has an ID card, right?"

  "Yes. It is the law."

  "With a picture?"

  "That's right."

  "If I give you a name can you get me an image?"

  "If the name is not too common, yes. Or you have an address or at least a commune, a town."

  "It's not that common a name. I'll need the picture sent to my phone and I'll forward it to someone."

  "I will arrange it. Who is this person you wish to send it to?"

  "Do you know the phrase 'confidential informant'?"

  "Ah, so you have a snitch, do you?" Spiro asked, pulling out his mobile.

  Chapter 67

  Amelia Sachs sat beside Lincoln Rhyme in the back of the disabled-accessible van, parked on one of the better streets in Naples, the Via di Chiaia, overlooking the beautiful park that had, in part, tipped her to Fatima's presence. It would be here, not the Castel dell'Ovo, where a single mother would stroll with her child.

  Dante Spiro was with them, listening through an earbud to the operation, which was being run by Michelangelo.

  Dirty Harriet.

  The view out one window was a magnificent panorama of the bay, the Castel dell'Ovo to the right and the deceptively placid Vesuvius to the left.

  Like everyone else, however, Sachs was uninterested in the bay; she was concentrating on the considerably more modest sight through the other window: a pleasant, if old, residential abode, stone construction, yellow paint. A pensione--a bed-and-breakfast-style inn. It was gem-like and would have cost plenty per night.

  "We're sure he's inside?" she asked. Referring to the man who had put together the entire plan. Who had hired Ibrahim and Gianni. Who had tried to kill dozens of innocents, solely to turn public opinion further against the refugees, and defeat the pending legislation that might improve their plight.

  All under the perverse banner of nationalism.

  Spiro was listening to police transmissions through a wired earpiece. His head was cocked. He said, "Si, si." Then to Sachs and Rhyme: "Yes, he's in there." A grim smile. "And the assessment is that he's unarmed."

  "How do they know that? Do they have eyes on him?" Rhyme asked insistently.

  He would be thinking, Sachs knew, that if she was walking into the room where the mastermind of the scheme was--as Spiro would say--holed up, they should damn well know for sure whether he was armed or not.

  She was less concerned; she had her Beretta. And a fine piece of work it was, she'd announced. The Italians were good at food, cars, fashion and weapons. None better.

  Spiro replied, "Michelangelo reports that their surveillance has determined he will certainly be unarmed. But that will not last for long. We should move now."

  Sachs glanced at Rhyme, who said, "Don't let anyone shoot anything up if they can avoid it, Sachs. This's important evidence. This's the main bad boy."

  Then she and Dante Spiro were out the van's door.

  They moved quickly to the front of the structure, where four SCO officers met them, led by Michelangelo. Unlike their commander, these men were not large, though they were made bulky because of their gear: body armor, breaching equipment, boots, helmets. The H&K submachine guns favored by the tac teams were unslung and ready to fire.

  Spiro gestured and the men moved through the front door of the pensione and, as quietly as they could, up the stairs to the first floor.

  The ha
llway was dim and hot, the air oppressive. The rooms might have air-conditioning but the hallways did not. Paintings of old Italy dotted the walls, most of them of Naples; a smoking volcano looming in the background. In one, though, Vesuvius was busily erupting as toga-clad citizens stared in horror, though a small dog seemed to be smiling. Every piece of artwork hung crookedly.

  After a pause and a listen to the surveillance control van outside, Michelangelo gave hand signals and the SCO officers divided into two teams. One, crouching below the peephole, moved past the door of the suspect's room and turned. The second team remained on the near side. Sachs and Spiro stopped ten feet short. What was that noise? Sachs wondered.

  Screech, screech, screech...

  Stefan could have told them in an instant.

  Then Sachs heard a moan.

  Of course. A couple was making love.

  That was why the assault team, with the auditory surveillance system, had concluded that the occupants of the room were not armed. A gun might be nearby but it was highly unlikely either one was concealing a weapon on their person.

  Michelangelo heard something through his headset--Sachs could tell from his cocked head. He stepped back to Spiro and spoke in Italian. The prosecutor said to Sachs, "The second team is behind our other target. He is up the street, in his car. They'll move in when we do, coordinated."

  From the room the sounds of lovemaking had grown louder, the grunts more frequent. Michelangelo whispered something to Spiro, who translated his comment to Sachs. "He's wondering if we should wait a moment. Just because..."

  Sachs whispered, "No."

  Michelangelo grinned and returned to his men. He gestured toward the door, his hand making a slicing movement, like a priest blessing a communicant.

  Instantly they went into action. One hefted a battering ram and swung it hard into the door near the knob. The flimsy wood gave way instantly. He stepped back, dropped the ram and unslung his machine gun as the others sped in, their weapons up, muzzles sweeping back and forth. Sachs hurried forward, Spiro behind her.

  In the bed, in the center of the quaint room, a dark-haired Italian woman, no older than eighteen or nineteen, was squealing and frantically grabbing at bedclothes to cover herself. But it was a tug-of-war for the sheet and blanket with the man in bed with her. She was winning.