He crept toward the bedroom. The queen-sized bed was neatly made. The night tables bare. Something tickled his nose. His eyes began to water. He buried his face in the lee of his arm and muffled the sneeze, and the one after it. On the terrace were two bowls, one with water, the other dry food. London Li was a cat lover. But where was the cat?
He continued down an abbreviated hallway. In an alcove, he found a home office. The desk was immaculate, not a single paper, pen, or rubber band in sight. Several drawers were not entirely closed. A cursory check showed them to be empty…and the file drawer cleaned out. Not her doing. Already he knew that.
Simon kneeled to look under the desk and noted a piece of paper that had fallen over the back. He stretched his arm and freed it. He switched on a reading lamp. The front page of a prospectus for a Malaysian investment fund called Future Malaysia being led by Harrington-Weiss. He was not surprised. A reporter of London Li’s reputation would jump to investigate fraud of this magnitude. Rafa had chosen well.
Then he saw it. On the desk’s matte-black surface was a hair. Blond, slightly kinked, short. He didn’t require confirmation, but there it was.
He sneezed again, blinking back tears.
A door at the end of the hall led to a bathroom. He turned on the lights. A look. A gasp. He shut the door. He had found London Li’s cat. It lay in the toilet dead, its head turned all the way round.
Chapter 40
Ingolstadt, Germany
Razor wire.
The first thing Mattias noticed was the tall, forbidding mesh fence surrounding the complex of stucco buildings and the dense coils of razor wire running from end to end atop it. It took him a moment to spy the second fence inside the first, this one not as tall, and with doors cut into it. Security guards stood nearby—no weapons but sturdy white batons hanging from their belts. He didn’t know how many people wandered the enclosure—hundreds, maybe a thousand. Some men had gotten up a game of soccer, playing on a patch of grass run to dirt. They were mostly black, though he saw a few white faces.
Omar, his midnight chauffeur, found the parking lot. A sign on the main building read, IMMIGRANT PROCESSING AND ANCHOR CENTER, INGOLSTADT.
Mattias walked into the building alone.
“We are full.” A young bearded man sat at a metal desk littered with notebooks and papers. “You must go to the police station and register. They will take you to another camp at the far side of town. Not as nice, I’m afraid. We do what we can.”
Mattias showed his Swedish passport. “I’m not here to register. I came to visit a friend.”
“Three hours,” said the young man.
“Excuse me?”
“Visits are not to last more than three hours. If your friend leaves now, he may miss lunch. The cafeteria closes at one p.m. No exceptions. Dinner is not until five o’clock. We are not responsible.”
“We plan on having lunch together,” said Mattias.
“Name.”
Mattias gave the name of his friend and his refugee number.
“Sit,” said the man. “I will notify his barracks. It will be a few minutes.”
Mattias took a seat. Thank God, he thought. The sheikh had found him.
He’d approached Mattias five months earlier at the local mosque, one of just two in Gothenburg. It was after Friday prayer; the Iman had preached a sermon on sacrifice and forgiveness. Mattias was collecting his shoes, dreading the bitter cold of the December afternoon that awaited him outside.
“A fine sermon. There is another verse I might add. A verse particular to you. ‘Nothing you’ve ever given has gone unnoticed. Every sacrifice you’ve made, Allah has seen it.’”
The man was sixty, of medium height, with a trim beard and deep-set mournful eyes, and by his dress, wealthy. From his accent, Mattias placed him as a Kuwaiti or, perhaps, a Saudi.
“Me?” said Mattias. “But I’ve made no sacrifices. Allah has blessed me with abundance.”
“But it was not always so, was it.…Ibrahim?”
Mattias regarded the man with interest. How had he known his true name? Why was he, Ibrahim, of interest to this rich stranger?
“You have suffered greatly,” the man continued. “It is only right that Allah bless you with what you kindly speak of as ‘abundance.’”
“I’m sorry, but we have not met.”
“My name is Abdul Al-Obeidi. You are Ibrahim Moussa, survivor of the Medusa tragedy. It is an honor. Would you believe that I have traveled all the way from Jeddah to speak with you?”
“Truly, I would not,” said Mattias. It had been a long time since he had heard his given name and he was uncomfortable at being the subject of undeserved flattery. “But you are here, so I must. I hope I do not disappoint you, Sheikh Abdul.”
“You? You do not have it in your heart to disappoint another.”
“I try my best,” he said earnestly. “For my family, at least. I’m afraid I fail Islam.”
“You are here for Friday sermon. That is what is most important. I am a man of the world. I know that our earthly commitments make piety—at least as the Prophet defines it—difficult.” A smile. A complicitous pat on the shoulder. I am not perfect either. “Will you join me for tea?”
“I cannot, Sheikh. I must return to work.”
“Please. I will not keep you long.”
Mattias checked his watch. He was due back at the counter in a quarter hour. “But quickly.”
The two men crossed the street and entered a nearby café. The sheikh ordered tea for the both of them. He returned from the pastry counter with two mille-feuilles. “I cannot resist them,” he said. “Please join me.”
Mattias thanked him but declined. He no longer had a sweet tooth. The sheikh ate one of the cream-filled pastries in three ravenous bites, leaving a rime of custard on his beard. “I can’t help myself,” he said. “A treat.”
Mattias relaxed at the show of informality.
“I will be brief,” the sheikh went on. “I need your help, Ibrahim. It is for something I know you have never considered but for which only you and a few others are qualified.”
“What others?”
“The others who were on the raft. Allah has chosen you to honor him.”
“How can we do that?” said Mattias, unable to disguise his bitterness. He was hiding an important fact from the sheikh. He was no longer a believer. Yes, he had survived a terrible ordeal, but he had come to view his survival as a matter of luck, not divine providence. Certainly not a reward for his piety. What he had done on the raft flew in the face of all that was pious. He had abandoned the bounds of accepted human behavior. He had fought, he had killed, and worse. He had become inhuman, a savage, a primitive far beyond the Prophet’s purview.
Mattias rose, upset. The sheikh placed a hand on his. “Please. I understand. I do.”
Mattias heard something in the man’s voice he had not heard before. He sat. “All right.”
For an hour he listened to the Saudi. The sheikh’s voice had a hypnotic quality, his eyes beacons of faith. Mattias quickly forgot about his job. The sheikh told him a story about a hero called to perform a task far beyond his abilities. The hero was a common man, a man born to faith but who over time, beaten down by life’s broken promises and failed dreams, had grown estranged from God. He was not a brave man, but when presented with adversity, he had responded bravely. God could not judge him for doing what any of his creatures would do to survive. Was God not in some way responsible?
“Are you speaking about me?”
“You are a hero.”
“I am not.”
“Not yet, perhaps. I wish to give you a chance to become one. A chance to turn your suffering to the advantage of others.”
“But how?”
And so the sheikh told him.
Mattias was too stunned to give an immediate answer. He promised to consider it. To his surprise, he needed only a short time. He agreed. Days, not weeks. The fact was, he had been looking for an avenue of
escape for years.
A chance to be a hero.
Thanks be unto him, the Prophet.
An hour later, Mattias had collected his friend. For a while they drove in silence. Ingolstadt was behind them. They’d passed the cities of Augsburg and Ulm. Paris was a further six-hour drive.
For the first time Mattias acknowledged the butterflies in his stomach, the cord of unease tugging at him. The trip could end only one way. Strangely, he was not at all frightened. He’d seen too much for that. If anything, he felt exhilarated, eager, optimistic even.
He turned in his seat. “So,” he said, “how was it?”
“Not so bad, I guess,” said Hassan, the new arrival. “If you like sausage.”
A moment. A look all around. The men broke into laughter.
Chapter 41
Naples
If Rome was bad, Naples was a catastrophe. Not because refugees crowded the streets, but because trash did. Trash everywhere. Piled on sidewalks in heaps ten feet high, overflowing cassonetti, clogging gutters.
Luca Borgia placed a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as they passed through the Spanish quarter, the city’s worst, and turned down the Via Santa Chiara toward the harbor. Sometimes he thought the entire country was falling apart. It would be easier if he stayed at the Castello dell’Aquila and tended to his roses, rode his horses through the magnificent countryside, and made love to his mistress.
And then?
Sooner or later the country’s ills would land on his doorstep. Perhaps not a trash strike. The Camorra didn’t control Umbria, not yet anyway. But the tide of unrest and unemployment, the degradation of decent family values, the forfeit of native culture, and the adoption of foreign ways. Yes, one day it would arrive. Italy was being invaded, as surely as if the Goths had returned to her shores, bringing with them their barbarian ways. Borgia saw himself as his country’s staunch defender, standing at her borders with sword and shield to drive them back.
They turned onto Calata della Marinella and drove along the docks. At the sight of the water and ships and the boats crisscrossing the harbor, he felt a shell form around him, a second skin to keep the dirt off him.
Sicily had the Mafia. Calabria, the ’Ndrangheta. And Naples, the Camorra.
The Port of Naples was one of the oldest and largest in all the Mediterranean, built around a crescent-shaped harbor many considered one of Europe’s finest natural anchorages. Seventy thousand vessels came and went each year. Five hundred thousand shipping containers loaded and unloaded. Thirty million tons of cargo. And not a single thing moved without tribute being paid.
Borgia continued past the passenger terminal—shiny and new, buffed to a gleaming white perfection, four cruise ships at dock. Past the automobile terminal, crowded with the five-story-tall oceangoing ferries that connected Naples to Palermo, Corsica, and Sardinia. And into the gritty heart of the port, the commercial cargo and container terminals. An iron and steel jungle of cranes and winches and tractors. Nothing shiny and new here.
“Number 37,” said Borgia to his driver as they passed one warehouse after another, old brick buildings, no two alike.
He rolled down the window of the van and let a blast of sea air into the compartment. The morning was exceptionally clear. In the distance, Vesuvius, the volcano whose eruption had destroyed the city of Pompeii, appeared close enough to touch, its blue-gray slopes iridescent beneath an admiring sun.
Ahead, a squadron of vehicles was parked at odd angles at the water’s edge. A half-dozen men milled beside them. Slobs to look at: blue jeans, shirts untucked, beards that hadn’t seen a razor in days.
The van drew to a halt. David, his driver and bodyguard, turned to face him, blazer hanging open, holster and weapon visible. “You need me?”
“Thank you, David, but I’ll be fine. After all, I haven’t paid them yet.”
Borgia climbed out of the van. May the ghost of Zeffirelli look down upon me, he thought as he threw out his arms and muscled a smile into place.
“Toto, Peppe! B’giorno!”
Hugs all around. Kisses, even, as Borgia greeted each in turn. The names typed on their files at police headquarters were Salvatore Rinaldi and Giuseppe Nassa. Both were captains, or capi, in the Camorra. Unlike the Mafia, which was organized vertically, with one capo—the capo di tutti capi—overseeing all elements of the criminal trade in Sicily, the Camorra was organized horizontally, numerous clans operating independently, and often in competition with one another. This made doing business unpredictable and dangerous.
It seemed like an hour passed with the men talking about soccer and the trash strike, now in its sixth week, but not their concern. Toto and Peppe worked the ports. Trash collection was someone else’s business.
Talk turned to shipping. Business was not good. European economies were faltering across the board. Even Germany. And then, to make matters worse, the Chinese, undercutting them all with cheap transport costs, the price per container at a historical low.
Finally, they got down to business. Shipments from the Middle East. But not before a tirade against the Americans and the ongoing sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran. It turned out Iran was a big buyer of Italian olive oil.
“And Libya,” said Toto. “What a mess!”
Toto Rinaldi was a lumbering bear of a man, a few inches taller than Luca, a gray stubble covering all three of his chins, hair dyed a black that would make Berlusconi blush, with great hams for arms proudly on display this fine morning.
Toto was Luca’s connection to the Camorra. Somehow it turned out they were distantly related, cousins of cousins and so on. Toto had done ten years for strangling a man with his own hands.
“Total chaos,” he went on. “Everyone fighting everyone else. One’s a warlord, another’s a chieftain. They were better off with Qaddafi.”
“About Libya,” said Peppe Nassa, a short, lithe man dressed entirely in black, with a clean-shaven head, all brooding glances and pained expressions. “There was a problem with the plastique.”
“Ah.” It was the first Borgia had heard of any problem.
“The factory you mentioned was bombed out last month.”
“Destroyed,” said Toto.
“Burned to the ground,” added Peppe.
“I hadn’t heard,” said Luca.
Peppe nodded. “We didn’t learn about it till we showed up and the place was a pile of ashes.”
The factory in question, Società Libica Prodotti Esplosivi, the Libyan Explosives Company, manufactured the plastic explosive called Semtex under license from the Czech manufacturer. There was plenty of Semtex to be had in Europe, but it was essential that Borgia purchase plastic explosive made in Libya. Chemical tags placed in each batch identified the place of manufacture.
“That complicates things,” he said.
“Of course, we didn’t stop there,” said Peppe. “You place an order, it’s our job to fulfill it. It’s what we do, after all.”
“We always keep our word,” said Toto. “Famiglia.”
“But…” Peppe made a face.
“The price,” said Toto.
“How much?” asked Luca.
“Double.”
Toto placed a hand on his heart. “Best we could do.”
Luca had contracted to purchase one hundred kilograms of Libyan-manufactured Semtex at a price of one thousand euros per kilo. The unexpected difficulties in the supply chain would cost him an additional one hundred thousand euros.
“Out of the question,” he said. “We agreed upon a price. I expect delivery at that price. If you come to me to buy a stallion and that stallion runs away or, God forbid, dies in a stable fire, I must find you another equal animal at the same price. You said it is your job to fulfill, then fulfill…but at the price agreed upon.”
“Libya is a war zone, Signor Borgia,” said Peppe. “These are not ordinary circumstances.”
“A war zone,” said Luca, dismissively. “A few skirmishes, perhaps.”
“A true war zone,” said Peppe, offended. “Artillery, machine gun fire, fighter jets.”
“Fine, if you say so. If circumstances were ordinary, I could have flown down myself, knocked on the front door, and placed my order. It is exactly because these are unordinary circumstances that I contacted you.”
Peppe’s face darkened. He was not a man accustomed to being insulted.
“Signor Borgia, I’m sorry, but that is not true,” said Toto, as diplomatically as he knew. “I saw the factory with my own eyes. A bomb from a plane landed directly on it. Many people died.”
“You were there?”
Toto nodded. “With Peppe.”
Luca looked between the men. Both nodded gravely, testifying to the tragedy. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea. My thanks.”
The men bowed their heads. Apology accepted.
“So where did you find my merchandise?” asked Luca.
“We have friends there, of course. They looked around. A little here, a little there. It was difficult, but we get what you want.”
“And the rest?” Semtex was not the only item he’d asked for.
“The rest…no problem,” said Toto. “Very easy.”
“At the price we quoted,” said Peppe.
Luca bit his lip, stepped toward the water, a man forced into making a decision against his better judgment. He had no choice but to pay. He made a note to tell Bruno Melzi. The police could deal with Peppe Nassa later.
“Any other problems I should know about?” asked Luca.
The Neapolitan gangsters shook their head.
“Well, then, gentlemen. I appreciate the risk you took on my behalf.”
Borgia returned to the van.
“How much more?” asked David.
“One hundred thousand.”
“Half what you expected.”
“Family,” said Borgia, and the men shared a look. He opened a briefcase and counted out an additional one hundred thousand euros, placing the bills in a satchel containing the amount originally agreed upon.
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