“I’m with you now.”
“You know what I mean. No more shadowing, just stay here, make a home. Be with me forever.”
“We have discussed this, this ‘forever’ business.”
“You love me, I love you. What is left to discuss?”
“You know the reason for my caution. I refuse to be destitute. I have promised myself I will never struggle for money. I’ve seen the ugly sacrifices being poor requires.”
Manfred was silent.
Gerda said, “You are uncomfortable discussing your finances. I know that, and I won’t press.”
“As I’ve told you, my finances are more than adequate,” he said. “In fact, in a short while I will complete a transaction that will make me one of the largest olive-oil producers in all of Italy.”
“Truly?”
“It is nearly done. A few documents to sign.”
“And what then? You’ll move out of these quarters into a house?”
“Of course. A villa large enough for a family, many children, a maid, a chef, everything you could want.”
Gerda stared up at the blank ceiling. “Tell me please this is not a fantasy, a fairy tale you want me to believe.”
“It is true, Gerda. I’m very close.”
Gerda was rolling onto her side to kiss Manfred when the phone beside his bed rang.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I told Pagolo to call only in an emergency.”
Gerda said it was fine, business came first.
He answered, spoke a few words, and listened.
“I will come down,” he said. “Tell her to look around if she likes.”
He set the phone aside and told Gerda he had to go downstairs.
“A woman?” Gerda said. “Who is this woman who interrupts us?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Should I be?”
“Of course not. In any case, I’ve never met this woman before. She’s an inspector from OLAF, the European antifraud commission, the olive-oil task force. I must go and answer her questions.”
“Will this be trouble for you?”
“Oh no. There is no fraud here. The mafia is scared of me. I will not play their games, so I have nothing to hide.”
“Good,” Gerda said. “I will leave now too and return tonight, and perhaps then we can discuss your finances in greater detail.”
Manfred gave her a patient smile and nodded. “I will open my books, show you every number, if this is what will make you happy.”
She watched him climb from the bed and amble across the room, his naked body still lean and supple from his years of pole-vaulting. She’d observed him hundreds of times during training and at meets—the sprint down the forty-meter runway, the plant, the takeoff, the deep bend of the pole, Manfred uncoiling, launching upward, his powerful arms rippling as he thrust his body into a beautifully timed, perfectly controlled flight, sweat glistening as he flew like a meteor across the empty sky.
Later, as Gerda dressed, she heard an angry argument in the street below. She stepped over to the front window and peered through the slats of Manfred’s blinds at a view of the front of the mill, the busy street, the trucks lined up with their loads of olives, a small bar directly across the avenue, a plaza with stone benches and pigeons and a fountain where children splashed water on one another.
Gerda had to tilt the slats wider to see the source of the altercation. Two truck drivers vying for a position at the head of the line. Both were shouting and waving their fists out their windows, neither giving an inch.
As she was turning away from the window, her eye was caught by a man sitting on a park bench. His stillness seemed out of place next to the frolicking children and the angry truckers and bustling street.
He wore a baseball hat tucked low and sunglasses, and he pressed a cell phone to his ear. He was staring across the street at Manfred’s mill.
Gerda felt a shudder of recognition. What was he doing here?
Only a few days ago in Madrid, this same man, along with Harper McDaniel, had chased her down the hallway of the university hospital and out into the parking lot, where she’d lost him.
Even that night, his face had seemed familiar, but she hadn’t been able to place where she’d seen him before or in what context. Now she remembered. This was Adrian Naff.
He worked for Gerda’s mother and Lester Albion as chief of security. She’d met him only once, a brief encounter in the elevator at the Albion Building when Albion, her mother, and she had been leaving for lunch. They’d ridden together down to the lobby. Introductions were made, and Adrian Naff shook her hand and said he’d heard a great deal about her. He even congratulated her on her Olympic success, but there’d been a tiny smile on his lips that suggested he found her somehow amusing.
Gerda finished dressing, draped her black scarf once around her neck, and hurried down the back stairways to the rear of the mill, then took several minutes to circle the block so she could approach Naff from behind.
Had Lester Albion dispatched his head of security to take Gerda down? She considered that but found the idea impossible to imagine. Albion desired her. Of that she was certain. And Albion had sent her on a mission to defend his empire. The only logical explanation for Naff’s presence in Madrid and here in Italy was that he had defected and now was working with Harper McDaniel.
Which made him as much of an enemy as McDaniel was. Fair game.
McDaniel’s damning words echoed in the chambers of her memory. She’d claimed Gerda had never learned to be free. That a lifetime of obeying the strict discipline of her sport had conditioned her to mindlessly follow the orders in her employer’s texts and her mother’s endlessly repeated adages.
It had the ring of truth, but was it true?
Gerda drew a long breath and steadied herself. McDaniel was the enemy. It was only natural that she would try to plant the seeds of doubt in Gerda. Gerda had experienced the same trickery employed by countless opponents, the seemingly innocent remark made in passing whose only intent was to fuel insecurity and undermine her confidence.
Gerda had learned to brush aside such ploys and refocus on her singular mission. And now she did so once again. Staying within the boundaries, the rules and regulations of any event, produced all the freedom Gerda would ever need. Cheaters like Tatiana—the rule benders, the freelancers—they weren’t free at all. Their achievements came too easily, their victories false.
She walked on, and as she approached the park, she slid off the scarf and readied it in her right hand. But when she stepped into the plaza, the bench where he’d been sitting was empty. Naff was gone and the plaza was vacant.
Even the children and pigeons had vanished as though they’d all been summoned away. A dark feeling swept across her, the same uneasy sensation she’d had so many times before: the sense that everyone in the world, even the creatures in the forests and birds in the sky, were attuned to a frequency that for some reason she was unable to hear.
TWENTY-THREE
Bari Milling Works, Bari, Italy
Harper had twisted her shoulder-length black hair into a low, flat bun, suitably conservative for posing as an EU investigator. She wore a gray tweed blazer with a black skirt and simple white blouse. In a pharmacy near her hotel, she’d found a pair of blue-tinted glasses with black frames. With the glasses and heavy makeup, including severe slashes of rouge along her cheekbones, she believed she looked the part of a graceless bureaucrat, in keeping with the credentials Lavonne had provided.
Earlier that morning, she’d read through the OLAF guidelines she’d photocopied in Madrid. According to the antifraud agency’s protocols, OLAF investigators were charged with probing a wide range of illegal activities: embezzlement, fraud, misspent public funds, and a host of other financial crimes. The olive-oil business had long been a prime target for OLAF investigations because it was so heavily subsidized by the EU. With all that cash sloshing around, corrupt officials and their mafia partners were forever lurking close b
y.
Although OLAF didn’t have the power to arrest or even charge an individual with a crime, the offenses their investigators uncovered often resulted in prosecution. So they weren’t cops, but close.
From the same xeroxed documents, she’d studied the fact-finding techniques OLAF investigators used in past cases to bring criminal charges. Then, relying on the confidential banking information Daniela Aguilar had shared, Harper had sketched out her attack plan.
But despite being well prepared, when she arrived at the front door of Knobel’s mill, she felt a twinge of panic. If things went badly and her con was exposed, the only plan B she had was to make a run for it.
After she entered the mill and presented her OLAF credentials, a worker pointed her toward the floor manager, a short, barrel-chested man who identified himself as Pagolo. Pagolo studied her ID, examined Harper warily, grunted something to himself, then telephoned for the boss. When he finished, he turned to Harper and said, “Attenda qui.”
So she waited there in front of the glassed-in office and observed the milling operation humming around her. The plant floor was the size of a basketball gym, and the walls were lined with stainless steel tubs and conveyor belts and the noisy hammer mill, centrifuges, and blowers. Despite the half dozen trucks lined up outside, the plant seemed to be operating at no more than a third of capacity. Perhaps Albion was carrying through on his threat to withhold the fruit from his trees.
Such hardball bargaining would threaten the bottom line of any business, but from the looks of Knobel’s flashy operation, this guy was even more vulnerable. From the trade journals Harper’d studied, she had a rough idea of the cost of the technology arrayed before her. Well more than a million euros. If those machines sat idle throughout the harvest, it would mean certain ruin.
What had never made sense was why Albion would use his extensive landholdings as leverage to coerce Manfred Knobel into purchasing those groves for roughly the same price Albion had paid for them.
After a ten-minute wait, a door near the owner’s office opened, and Manfred Knobel appeared. He stood a few inches over six feet with a shaggy mop of blond hair. Wide shoulders, narrow waist and hips, and long legs. He wore a rumpled green T-shirt and tight-fitting charcoal jeans and black canvas sneakers. Even if she hadn’t known he was a former Olympian, she would have guessed he was a hardcore athlete. For a big man, he moved with the tightly coiled grace of a jungle cat and the sureness of one who had devoted years to defying the pitiless laws of gravity. Like Gerda, Manfred was a jumper.
His smile was stiff, and the hand he extended in greeting was more rigid than welcoming. In his hazel eyes, Harper saw a quick calculation, then his mouth relaxed, as if he’d dismissed her as unworthy of concern. Exactly Harper’s intention.
“Irene de Jong,” Harper said. “OLAF investigation team. Would you like to see my papers?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Manfred said. “Are you French?”
“Dutch,” Harper said. “Shall we proceed in English? My German is adequate but not fluent.”
Manfred told her English was fine. “I suppose you would you like a tour of the mill?”
“Not necessary. I’ve had a chance to observe while I waited.”
“I’m sorry to have delayed you, but I was engaged in a personal matter in my living quarters upstairs.”
“How convenient for you, living above the mill. No commute.”
Harper smiled and Manfred responded with a curt nod.
“I see your plant is not in full operation.”
“The harvest is just beginning. In the next week or two, we expect to see a sharp increase.”
Manfred shifted uneasily and looked over to Pagolo, who was loitering nearby as if he might soon be needed.
“I’ve never had an OLAF investigator at the plant before. I’m not quite sure how you proceed.”
“Perhaps we should go into your office and I’ll explain.”
“Of course.”
Manfred held the door and she stepped inside.
He followed her into the tidy room with empty bookshelves lining one wall and a long oak desk consuming most of the floor space. Several computer monitors sat side by side on the desk.
Manfred swept a hand toward the single visitor’s chair wedged into a corner of the office.
“I’ll stand,” Harper said.
“As you wish.”
Manfred fit his lanky frame into a high-backed desk chair and settled into an insouciant slouch. He brushed a hand across the sleek desktop and gave her a complacent look.
On the wall behind him hung an array of photographs. A few were snapshots of the mill before it had been updated, a dusty, empty space with broken windows and jumbles of roofing tiles and other building materials scattered about. Then a few photos showed stages of the remodeling: gangs of workmen smiling for the camera, holding up the tools of their trade. Finally came the spotless mill, floors polished, windows clear, gleaming new machinery, and Manfred Knobel with his arms outstretched, as if to say “Look at this marvelous place I’ve created.”
Beside the photos of the mill were studio portraits of an older couple who appeared to be Manfred’s parents—a stern father with the same blond thatch and strong jaw as his son, and a delicate mother who had passed on her hazel eyes but not much else.
There were also track-and-field photos. Manfred as a strapping teenager sailing over hurdles and standing proudly on the Olympic medal platform, his hand over his heart as his national anthem played.
A single framed photo sat on his desk, facing away from Harper.
“You started as a hurdler, I take it?”
When Manfred turned around to follow Harper’s gaze, she drifted forward to the desk and turned the framed picture around. It must have been a publicity shot taken a few years earlier. Gerda Bixel was posed with a hand beneath her chin, a broad unnatural smile that had probably been bullied from her by the photographer.
“Ist das deine Freundin?”
Manfred swung back around. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m an investigator,” she said. “I’m investigating.”
“She’s a friend.”
“Must be a special friend, to look at you all day while you work.”
“Just a friend,” he said more firmly. “Now, Ms. de Jong, what brings you to our humble mill?”
“An allegation.”
His bored look vanished. Eyes tightened, chin tucking in.
“I’m sorry?”
“Do I have your full attention?”
“Allegation?” he said. “What kind of allegation?”
“Let’s start with money laundering.”
“What! You must be mad.”
“As you said, you’re unfamiliar with OLAF’s procedures. For one thing, we don’t drop in on businesses at random. Someone must make a credible allegation of malfeasance or a crime. Then it becomes our duty to pursue this allegation to be certain that EU funds are not being misappropriated in any fashion. Either through fraud, corruption, embezzlement, or other means.”
“Who made this outrageous allegation?”
“If we were to reveal the identities of our sources, it would have a chilling effect on information flow, so I’m not at liberty to do that.”
“Anybody can simply walk in off the street and make a claim and that sends you auf einer wilden Jagd.”
“No, we try not to waste our time on wild-goose chases.”
He spread his hands. “Well, there’s no money laundering here. We mill olives, make extra-virgin olive oil, and that is all we do.”
“That may be,” she said. “But we need to discuss your loan from Crédit Agricole in Rome.”
Manfred Knobel’s face lost its color, and he came slowly to his feet and stepped around the desk.
“Let me see that ID,” he said.
Harper drew it from her jacket pocket and held it out. Knobel studied it carefully, then backed away, walked to his desk, and settled into his chair again.
A sheen of perspiration gleamed at the edge of his scalp.
“Tell me about Lester Albion and his real estate proposal that sent you to Crédit Agricole for that substantial loan.”
Knobel closed his eyes and leaned back against the leather headrest. The last of his nonchalance had drained from his face. With his eyes still shut, she couldn’t tell if he was frightened or angry or both.
“If anyone is laundering money, it’s Albion, not me.”
“All right. I’m listening.”
He opened his eyes, sat up straight, pressed his palms on the desktop, and stared hard at her. His features were a rigid mask of bitterness.
“I’ve never spoken with the man, yet I’m certain of one thing. Lester Albion is a ruthless bastard.”
Harper sighed. She felt the tension in her body subside. She turned and took a seat in the visitor’s chair.
“Yes, let’s start there,” she said. “Anything and everything you can tell me about Lester Albion.”
“You’re after him, not me, is that what you’re saying?”
“Let’s put that aside for now, shall we? What we know, Mr. Knobel, is that Mr. Albion has coerced you to purchase a large tract of land, thousands of hectares of olive orchards. The price for this sale is quite curious. It has raised red flags.”
“I know, I know. I’m paying more or less what he paid for the land. It feels like some kind of sleight of hand.”
“Has he asked you for a Schmiergeld? Some kind of kickback to make the deal go forward? Money under the table.”
“Nothing like that, no. It’s just a straightforward transaction. I buy his groves, or . . .” He hesitated and looked off.
“Or he withholds his olive harvest and torpedoes your business.”
“Where did you hear all this?”
“Is it true?”
He flinched, then nodded.
“I’ve not done anything illegal.”
“No,” Harper said. “So far you haven’t.”
“The bank has approved the loan,” he said. “I sign the papers this Friday, four days from today. If this is illegal, please let me know now.”
“If you want to buy his land, you have every right.”
When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2) Page 17