by Thomas Locke
Midway down, Charlie noticed a movement behind them and said to Julio, “Go back and keep any more people from entering. We can’t let them seal off the exit.”
“Dude, in case you didn’t notice, I don’t speak the lingo.”
“Do your best.”
By the time they reached the front, Gabriella was flushed and could not stop smiling. She tried to tuck her hair back into place and told Charlie, “I never expected anything like this.”
Her mike was still on, and the result was a burst of laughter from those who understood English.
Charlie reached over and covered the lapel mike with his palm. “Short and sweet. We don’t know if we’re safe, or if so, for how long.”
That sobered her. “Should I tell them what has happened?”
“This is your crowd and your call. But I’d say, absolutely.”
“Dor Jen, will you translate for Charlie? I want him to understand what is going on.” Gabriella stepped to the center of the stage.
Charlie stood by the podium’s side stairs and gave the auditorium a constant visual sweep. Dor Jen slipped up beside him and quietly interpreted as Gabriella first apologized for being out of touch, then explained about the unexpected danger they had faced, the need to flee Florida, and the uncertainty regarding precisely when they would resume testing. She spoke with the calm ease of a professional speaker, though her face remained flushed and her hands trembled slightly. She then said she needed to pose a few questions to her former test subjects, and asked for those in the audience who had successfully taken part in her experiments to raise their hands. She asked everyone else to please remain silent, and when she was done she would answer a few questions.
All the while, Charlie kept trying to get his head around what he was witnessing.
He had protected his share of stars in music and film and politics. He knew the fractious hunger that fame could produce. But this was something else entirely.
The students were young and intelligent and mostly beautiful in a scraggly student manner. They did more than listen. They breathed with her. There was something Charlie could only describe as brightness.
He stared out over the auditorium, back to where Julio stood by the entrance, keeping the faces crammed in the doorway from moving inside. Beyond that, Gabriella’s voice resonated through unseen speakers to hundreds more. And he realized, this was it.
The reason why the enemy could not leave them alone.
Right here.
Watching this mass of students drinking in every word Gabriella spoke, Charlie knew he was staring into the face of change.
When Gabriella asked for questions, every hand in the audience shot up. A thousand voices clamored for attention. Again, there was no sense of threat. Only hunger. Raw, yearning, desperate.
But the threat was there, Charlie was certain of it. Maybe the gun wasn’t aimed. Perhaps it was not even in this room. But the menace was real enough for Charlie to walk over and say, “We need to be leaving.”
Obviously a good percentage of the audience understood English, because their clamor only became stronger. Gabriella stared at him. Charlie showed as much concern as he could via his eyes only, backed away, and mouthed, Five minutes.
When Gabriella addressed the crowd again, Dor Jen translated, “She is saying that they will begin new trials as soon as it becomes safe to bring subjects into the lab, and when they have established where the lab will be. Because time is so limited, Gabriella says only those who have been test subjects should ask questions.”
A unified sigh of resignation rushed through the hall. Almost all the hands dropped. The students’ regret was a palpable force.
Gabriella called on a woman. She came to her feet in a series of jerky motions. As soon as she started talking, Gabriella stiffened in alarm. She looked over at him. Then back to the woman.
Charlie said to Dor Jen, “What is she saying?”
“This woman, she has done a bad thing. Before, she studied finance here at the university. Now she works for a brokerage. When she ascended, she looked forward at what was going to happen inside the markets.”
Charlie said, “Hang on a second. She was ascending without anybody’s help?”
Gabriella must have been thinking the same thing, for she shot Charlie a startled look. The woman asked something, which Dor Jen translated as, “She cannot ascend anymore. She asks Gabriella how to break free.”
Gabriella responded with a soothing sorrow. She started to gesture toward Charlie, then caught herself and turned the motion into an open-handed shrug.
The woman who had asked the question was crying openly now. Her fingers clutched at whatever was in reach. Her sweater. The strap of her purse. The seat back in front of her. The air before her chest.
Dor Jen translated, “How was she supposed to know she could not use it for her own gain? This was, after all, her profession. This seemed a logical step.”
Gabriella looked at Charlie and said in English, “We cannot help you.”
The woman responded in Italian. The crowd remained silent, totally absorbed. Dor Jen translated, “She has given all the money she made from looking ahead to charity. She will not do it again. She asks for the key. She feels that her life is a prison now.”
Gabriella waited until the woman had finished, then said very softly, “Coraggio.”
The woman seated herself and wept into her hands.
Gabriella answered a few more questions. Charlie was about to walk over and shut things down when a young man rose and began speaking. Whatever he said now caused Dor Jen to stiffen in alarm.
The student was tall for an Italian. Charlie put his height at well over six feet. He spoke with a tenor’s bell-like quality. At center stage, Gabriella appeared to stop breathing.
Dor Jen translated, “They are elevating without guidance. They ascend and they are meeting.”
Charlie realized how shaken Gabriella had become by what the guy was saying. He walked across the stage and whispered, “Everything okay here?”
Gabriella did not bother to cup the mike. “We did not plan for this. We did not imagine. They have moved beyond our protocol and are writing their own experiment. And we cannot find a safe place to monitor what is happening!”
The audience seemed to gather its breath, watching the professor talk to a man she had not introduced, a stranger whose density compacted the room’s illumination. Charlie looked out at the student and thought, Those kids will be lucky to survive the night.
He said, “Ask them how many they are.”
The young man called back in English, “So far, we are seven.”
“May I?” Charlie unclipped the mike from Gabriella’s lapel. The cord remained attached to the battery pack in her pocket, which kept him close enough to hear her choked swallow. He asked, “Are the others here?”
In response, five others rose to their feet around the auditorium, while one hand waved wildly over Julio’s head.
“Let her in,” Charlie said, and waited until the young woman squeezed past the others jamming the doorway. “Do you all speak English?”
When several called back a negative, he handed the mike over to Gabriella. “Tell them they are in extreme danger.”
“What?”
“This is real, Gabriella. Tell them they have to leave with us now. Tell the others not to meet together like this until we have managed to contain the threat. Ask the seven if any are married or have children.” He managed a slightly easier breath when the response was a universal negative. “Thank everyone for coming. We are all leaving now.”
37
The National Police occupied the newest building belonging to the Como judiciary. The structure was on the northeast side of the main avenue leading to Como’s central train station. The site had been specifically chosen because of the steep hillside into which it was built. The Alpine granite that formed the building’s foundation had been hollowed. The result was more of a bunker than a basement. This windowless ce
llar was sectioned into a series of chambers. Evidence lockers for ongoing cases occupied a small portion of the total space. The rest was given over to court-ordered confiscations.
Before arriving in Como three years earlier, Alessandro had lived and worked in Naples. During that period, it had been necessary for him to attend mass at a different church every day. He had been driven everywhere by an armored police car. But he no longer lived under the daily threat of bombings or assassins, much to the relief of his wife and son. Como, like every city, had its own share of trouble and danger. But compared to Naples during the Camorristi wars, Como was a playpen for infants.
His work in Naples had centered upon a mob trial that made international headlines. Alessandro’s duty was to identify the assets of all the convicted mobsters, seize them, and auction them off. But nothing in Italy was as simple as it should be. Two years before Alessandro arrived in Naples, the third bailiff in a row was gunned down while performing his duties. Alessandro’s predecessor got the message. Seized houses were valued at a fraction of their actual worth, and the auctions were held in absolute secrecy, with only one bidder. Assets in seized bank accounts and safety-deposit boxes vanished. Jewelry, paintings, boats, and cars were either sold for pennies or simply declared lost and gone forever. When the public prosecutor finally turned his attention on the bailiff, Alessandro’s predecessor fled to a beachfront palace in Rio.
The scandal went public, and the revelations kept mounting. The hue and cry was so overwhelming, the elephantine justice system was forced to act. They sent in Alessandro.
It was not just the local mob that was furious over Alessandro’s refusal to bend under threats. His immediate superiors in Rome were irate over the loss of bribes that formerly had been filtering up their way. They became even more enraged when Alessandro fed their names and their comments to Rome’s chief prosecutor.
The Corriere della Sera, Italy’s finest newspaper, labeled Alessandro Gavi “The Guardian of Italy’s Honor.”
The Italian court system had learned to use the seizure of assets as a principal weapon against the Mafiosi and their lawyers. Long before the judges gave their final ruling, a prosecutor could go before the court and claim that a certain defendant was a flight risk. Over the past two decades the term had been broadened to cover an astonishing amount of territory. Before then, the courts had watched as wealthy criminals facing guilty verdicts suddenly proved to have no assets at all, while their Liechtenstein bank accounts and Swiss villas remained firmly out of reach. So prosecutors started demanding the seizure of assets at the same time arrest warrants were issued.
Everything seized by the courts, everything held against arrest warrants, everything held pending judgments—all this was part of Alessandro’s underground empire. And once the cases had been tried and the appeals exhausted, Alessandro was also responsible for their sale by auction. The opportunities for illegal gain were vast.
The Como crypt covered almost three thousand square meters and was jammed full. Before Alessandro’s time, there had been a constant level of attrition. Things came in the front door and things went out the back. Now much of this had stopped. Not all. Alessandro was, after all, just one man. The underground chambers nowadays held only the most valuable items. Four seized warehouses contained the rest. This being Italy, the largest warehouse was reserved for cars. At last count, Alessandro’s warehouse contained twenty-six Ferraris, nineteen Maseratis, eleven Bentley Continental GTs, and a matched pair of Bugattis. The warehouse had become the favorite lunch spot for the Como police.
Alessandro knew a certain grim satisfaction every time he entered the police cellar. The Roman officials who had ordered him to Como thought they were relegating their pesky but honest bailiff to a mountain backwater. Instead, Alessandro found himself surrounded by many of the same criminals who had managed to elude justice the first time around.
Just as he was about to enter the main elevators, his mobile rang. He murmured his apologies to the other occupants and stepped out. “Hello?”
“This is Edoardo.”
“Two calls in one day? Don’t tell me we’ve been handed more thugs.”
“I wish. Can you meet me at what’s left of the Bar Azzurra?”
“Closed for the day, I’m afraid. The owner is currently sharing several bottles of Barolo with the chief prosecutor.”
“Where can we talk that will be completely safe?”
“You sound worried, Edoardo.”
“You think I would drive to Como for the waters, perhaps? For my health? Of course I’m worried.”
“I am about to have a private visit with our mutual friend in Evidence.”
“I will use the lights and siren and be there in half an hour.”
Alessandro greeted his closest ally in Evidence with, “Where is Pietro?”
“Having coffee. He’ll be gone the rest of the day.” Luca Bresco spoke with the deep rolling voice of a cave troll. His skin was bone white. What he did with his spare time, no one knew. Alessandro suspected that he hunted forest mushrooms.
“It takes so long to drink a coffee?”
“It does,” Luca replied, “if he is drinking with his favorite fence. Soon as I said I’d cover for him, I heard him make the call.”
“Old friend, I need your help with a very important matter.”
Few people besides Alessandro would detect just how pleased Luca was with that statement. “What is it this time?”
“I don’t have much to go on.”
“Does it involve evidence or seized assets?”
“I have no idea.”
“Interesting.”
“There is a box. I need it.”
“Will you tell me why?”
“I do not even know what it holds.”
Luca grinned. “And people think this work is boring.”
“Indeed.”
“You know you need it, but you don’t know what it is. Has Pietro or one of the others been heard making one of their deals?”
“No. At least, that’s not why I am here.”
“A mystery, then.”
“One piled upon another. Can you lock up for a time and come join me in the search?”
Luca sealed the basement, shut down the elevator access, then rejoined Alessandro and said, “Tell me what you know.”
“Very little, in fact.” He repeated the description given to him by Charlie Hazard. “I seek a box about a meter and a half long, half a meter wide, the same deep.”
“Sounds like a locker.”
“If so, then a very special one. The hinges and the lock shine like gold. The entire box itself is of highly polished wood, perhaps burl, and it is rimmed in silver or pewter that is intricately scrolled . . .” Alessandro stopped because Luca was shaking his head. “What?”
“It’s not here.”
“My contacts insist that it is.”
“They are wrong. I have worked here nine years. I know all my treasures.”
Alessandro could not completely hide his smile. “Your treasures.”
“I hold them longer than most of their previous owners, they might as well be mine. At least, those not made to disappear by the robbers in uniform who work with me.”
“And yet my sources claim it is here. What is more, they have told me where to find it.”
“Then let us go look so you can return to these mystery people and tell them they are mistaken.”
“The northernmost chamber, against the wall deepest into the cliff. Two shelves from the top.”
“The north rooms hold unclaimed evidence and cold-case archives.” Luca started off. He did not so much limp as rock like a boat in heavy seas. He had been an officer serving under Edoardo in Catania and had taken a bullet in his hip. Luca and Edoardo and the owner of the Bar Azzurra were the only three who had survived that ambush. “Can I ask what this is about?”
“You can. But I know nothing else for certain. Not how, not why.”
“A shred of a rumor.”<
br />
“One that may hold extreme importance. More than that I cannot say. Not now.”
They passed through one concrete chamber after another, ignoring a vast collection of Italy’s splendor all stacked like cordwood and taped with yellow document forms. The entrance to the rear room was flanked by one gold chandelier and a fireplace stolen from a bishop’s palace.
Luca flipped on the lights and said, “As I told you, nothing but evidence boxes and old files.”
“Is there a ladder?”
“You will make yourself filthy for nothing.” Luca drew over a set of metal steps. The wheels made a noisy rattle across the stone floor. “Here. Use my gloves.”
“Hold this thing steady for me.”
The files lining the top shelves had been in the damp chamber long enough to become coated with mold. Alessandro began shifting boxes and coughed as dust was disturbed. Then he stopped noticing either the grime or the stench. “Well, well.”
“You have something?”
“Right size, wrong color.” He gripped one of the handles and tugged. “This thing weighs more than my car.”
“Let me help.”
“With your hip? Don’t be silly.” Alessandro took a two-fisted grip on the handle and managed to pull the locker forward until it stood perched on the edge of the shelf.
The locker was painted a matte black, as though someone wished for it to disappear into the shadows and be forgotten. Alessandro reached in his pocket for the penknife attached to his keychain. Using the smallest blade, he began scraping away flecks of paint. It was not the first time his prey had sought to hide treasures beneath a blanket of enamel.
He took his time, careful not to damage the underlying material, as he cleared a spot about the size of his palm. “What does that look like to you?”
“How can I say, with your head in the way?” Luca squinted as Alessandro leaned away. “As you said, silver or pewter. And burl. Amazing. Hidden here all this time.”
Alessandro cocked his head. “The phone on your desk is ringing.”