She was setting the stack of documents on her desk when her phone trilled. A text.
Located McDaniel. Instructions?
Same as before. Take her at first opportunity.
All right.
And one more thing
Yes?
Bixel had worked for days on the phrasing. Something that would entice the girl without scaring her off. The sort of stilted diction Lester Albion might use, an opening gambit in their courtship.
I would like to present you with a gift of gratitude for your excellent service. Would diamonds please you?
Gerda did not answer immediately. Larissa Bixel could imagine her struggle—weighing a future of wealth and comfort against her aversion to Lester Albion, a repugnance she had shared with her mother more than once. Bixel had the good sense not to argue with her daughter over the matter, for she was convinced Gerda’s feelings would soften once Manfred Knobel was ruined.
At this early stage, all she hoped was that Gerda would not dismiss the overture outright.
Bixel set the phone aside and began to organize the signed contracts before taking them down to legal for a final review.
As she was departing her office, her phone trilled with Gerda’s response. Larissa Bixel set aside the stack of documents and read the message, then exhaled a long breath and smiled.
What girl doesn’t love diamonds?
THIRTY
Weinegg District, Zurich, Switzerland
Bonnie was lying in bed, watching suicide videos.
They were posted in clandestine sites on the dark web, but she had tracked them down without a great deal of difficulty.
The hanging videos had been recorded by the victims, left behind, she supposed, as cinematic suicide notes. Apparently, they’d been uploaded later by friends or relatives.
Hangings were neither quick nor final, and there was often writhing at the end when the rope went taut, as if the victim had miscalculated and not dropped from a sufficient height to break their neck, or else their squirming indicated a last-second change of heart. Alas, too late.
In the videos of wrist slitting, the victims mostly sat in bathtubs filled to the brim. Warm water, of course, to hasten blood flow. Some of the videos played quiet music, some loud rock and roll, one Beethoven. Candles surrounded the bath in some. Those had a pretty golden glow, but for Bonnie the slow leakage of blood, the gradual darkening of the bathwater, seemed messy and unappealing. The deaths came so slowly that victims sometimes had time to reconsider their decision, and a few rose from the water, their naked bodies glistening, stumbled from the tub, and collapsed onto the floor. To Bonnie, these seemed like unsuitable complications.
Two videos had been shot by onlookers. Those were the roof jumpers. One was a woman, another a teenage boy with long hair. The woman was dressed in a skirt and blouse, and she walked slowly to the edge of the roof and looked down for several seconds, then simply fell forward into the air as though her knees had given out. The teenage boy, wearing only white underpants, took a running start and kept running through the air all the way down, his long hair trailing upward.
Bonnie found the idea of flying through the sky during her last moments quite appealing. But the images of the bodies on the ground after impact, the splatter, crushed faces, the woman’s arm torn loose and lying several feet from the body, no, that didn’t seem like the way she wanted to begin her afterlife.
Gunshot suicides were the ones she preferred. They were quick and decisive, and although it made a mess of the walls and the floor, the method seemed more dignified than the other ways. She watched a dozen of those, some with the muzzles pressed against temples, some with the barrel thrust into mouths or pressed under chins. She liked the temple press the best.
Bonnie’s only fear about suicide was that her brain might survive for some period of time after the rest of her body died. Her brain had proven so robust that it seemed entirely possible it would still be functioning long after her heart ceased pumping and her lungs no longer drew air.
A pistol against the temple would solve that concern. Also, she knew her father had several pistols in his gun safe, which made that avenue feasible. She didn’t have the combination to his safe, but she doubted that would prove a hurdle. Her father wasn’t supersmart. He had skills, of course, because otherwise he would not be a successful businessman, but high intelligence wasn’t one of them. Bonnie believed her father was, in many ways, more childish than she had ever been herself.
So it was decided. A pistol to the temple, using one of her father’s weapons. The only decision left was to pick the day and time. In that regard, she knew only that it had to be soon. Already her legs were so shaky, her stamina so low, her vigor in such decline that if she waited much longer, pulling the trigger might be beyond her capabilities.
As Bonnie was rewatching the temple shooters, Miriam, her Siamese, jumped onto the bed and climbed onto Bonnie’s stomach and began to purr. Then Miriam hunched up her back and blocked Bonnie’s view of the screen, as if casting her vote against suicide. Perhaps she wanted to remind Bonnie of the plight Miriam would suffer if left alone with only Bonnie’s father to look after her. Miriam had never taken to her father. He found cats offensive.
But this was not reason enough for Bonnie to reassess her decision. Suicide seemed the best solution to her condition. If she didn’t act while she was still able, she might be trapped and forced to linger in her current state indefinitely, not fully alive, unable to concentrate, incapable of reading her books, her mind continually drifting into sleep or a waking daze.
Already, each day was a grueling battle against the drowsy pull of slumber.
Miriam purred and climbed higher on Bonnie’s body and rubbed the side of her face against Bonnie’s cheek. Maybe she should take Miriam with her into the afterlife. Bonnie wasn’t sure if that was possible. Animals might be shunted off in one direction, humans another. No one knew such things. There had been no research, no reliable witnesses returning from the void. Death was the great mystery awaiting all of humankind.
But none of that frightened Bonnie, because death was a natural state, inevitable, unavoidable. Not so different from being born. Except that suicide offered a choice that being born did not. Bonnie had not chosen to enter the land of the living. She had simply been pushed out into the harsh lights of the delivery room and was supposed to be grateful ever after.
Miriam continued to purr and fell asleep on Bonnie’s chest, her furry head pressed to Bonnie’s heart. It did trouble her greatly, she had to admit, that Miriam might be mistreated after. Her father’s casual cruelty toward the animal enraged Bonnie, the way he’d kick her aside—not a football kick, little more than a nudge, but no matter how gentle it was, the kick was still a kick. Her father was a loathsome man, he truly was.
It wasn’t long before Bonnie’s breath slowed, and she followed her faithful chum down into the foggy chasm of sleep.
THIRTY-ONE
Bari, Italy
After Naff and Harper had separated at Cattedrale di San Sabino, he walked into the warehouse district of the Bari waterfront, listening again to Lucia Campos’s voice mail. The relevant part was exactly as he remembered it: for several months, an American named Dickens had picked up crates of spittlebugs at the Port of Bari and had taken them to Albion’s olive groves.
On the pier, Adrian spent an hour walking from one loading dock to another. If this guy Dickens had worked on the waterfront for months, someone had to know him. He spoke to a dozen different men and three women, asking each if they knew Dickens or maybe they’d heard about crates from America regularly being unloaded from arriving ships.
Some of the folks he approached were dockworkers, a few were managers. All were unhelpful, either blowing him off with a shake of the head and a dismissive backhanded wave or simply turning away from him without a word. Such consistently negative reactions suggested that Dickens was as widely known as he was despised.
After that hour, he gave up on the warehouse d
istrict and—because he had a lifetime of familiarity with soldierly institutions—moved on to the Capitaneria di porto Guardia Costiera, Bari’s harbor Coast Guard.
The local unit was housed in an unimpressive two-story building with a most impressive view of the surrounding terminals, loading docks, and piers.
Naff presented his ID as head of security for Albion International and said he was searching for the whereabouts of an Albion employee named Dickens. That got him through two layers of Coast Guard bureaucracy before he was invited to the upstairs office of a short, pugnacious man with the smooshed-in face of a bulldog. He wore a rumpled white suit that would have fit a man twice his size. Why a civilian was working in a corner office in a Coast Guard building was an issue Adrian decided not to pursue.
“Dickens? First name or last?”
“Last, I believe.”
The man, whose name Adrian hadn’t caught, eyed him suspiciously.
“He work for you, but you do not know his name?”
“He worked for my company, but he was a very junior employee.”
“Yet you come all the way from Switzerland to locate him, this junior person.”
Adrian sighed. He hadn’t worked hard enough on his cover story.
“Maybe I should go see the harbormaster.”
“You know the harbormaster?”
“No.”
“You don’t know the man, so why you think he will be better at helping you than me?” He picked up the stub of a dead cigar from an ashtray on his desk and ran it beneath his nose and set it down again. “Harbormaster won’t help you. I am only one can do that. Anyone work on the piers, I have him in here. Everyone in here.”
He thumped a fat finger against a thick leather binder that was at the top of an untidy pile of similar binders. The room smelled like dust, like tedium, like the stale body odor of overworked and underpaid civil servants who kept thick binders that no one ever came to check.
Was this the moment Adrian was supposed to dig out his wallet? Or had the EU’s anticorruption inspectors managed to put the fear of god into functionaries like this? For all Adrian knew, offering a bribe to this guy might well put Adrian in prison.
The man waited, watching Adrian with disapproval.
“Mr. Albion has been buying olive groves in the area, and this man, Dickens, was working on one of them.”
“I know about Albion and these groves. Not good, not good.”
He rubbed his hands together briskly as if wiping away scum.
“Okay. Appreciate your time,” Adrian said and started for the door.
“I don’t need to look in book for Dickens.”
Adrian stopped and turned back to face the man.
“You know him?”
“Everybody in Bari knows the man named Dickens,” the man said. “You wait here.”
“What?”
“Wait. I will return il prima possibile.”
The little man picked up his unfinished cigar and left.
After pacing the office for fifteen minutes, Adrian went into the hallway. He paced for another ten minutes, then decided his host was taking a lunch break or he’d headed off for an afternoon tryst with his mistress.
Adrian wandered downstairs and out the front door and stood on the sidewalk in the sunshine for another five minutes. Thirty minutes in all, which was as long as he waited for anybody unless he was being paid.
He was proceeding to the headquarters of the harbormaster, a five-story tower that he’d passed earlier, when someone behind him called out his name.
The little man in the baggy white suit was marching down the sidewalk, accompanied by a tall, dark-haired woman in a blue dress and a white apron spattered with what at first looked like blood but, Adrian realized as she came near, was probably tomato sauce.
“You did not wait as I instructed,” the small man said.
“I waited long enough.”
The man said something in Italian to the woman, and the woman nodded and turned to Adrian.
“My name,” the woman said, “is Valentina Lombardi.”
It didn’t sound as though she was introducing herself, more like she was revealing the answer to a secret.
“What is this about?” Adrian asked the bulldog man.
Valentina stepped between them and said, “You know where is Dickens?”
“No, I don’t. I’m looking for him.”
She made a show of smoothing a hand over her belly beneath her sauce-dappled apron, and Adrian could see from the shape of the bulge that Valentina was several months pregnant.
“Your man Dickens is the father,” the little man said. “He made promises to this girl. Now he bring great grief and sorrow to the Lombardi family and much vergogna.”
It was a word Naff didn’t know but assumed meant disgrace.
“Where is Dickens?” Valentina stepped closer to Adrian, so near he could smell rosemary and garlic.
“I’m trying to find him too. It’s why I’m here. To find him.”
“You talk between you,” the bulldog said. “I have done the good deed of my day.”
He turned and headed back toward the Coast Guard building.
“Come,” Valentina said and swung around and marched away.
She was a sturdy woman with a handsome face, frank blue eyes, long lashes, and sumptuous lips, a heavy masculine jaw, and a nose that was more noticeable than noses were supposed to be.
Her stride was long and flowing, and Adrian had to break into a half trot to catch up. In a few blocks she led him inland, into the old town’s shadowy, narrow streets and souvenir vendors, vegetable markets, and shops selling brightly painted plates, straw hats, and baskets.
Valentina cut to her right down an even narrower lane where restaurants and bars pumped out their delicious scents and cheerful music. She halted outside the door of a bar named Lombardi.
“Tell Father what you do,” Valentina said and waved a hand for Adrian to enter.
It was a cozy grotto, dimly lit, with stone walls and an arched ceiling of limestone bricks. Ten stools lined the leather-covered bar, a half dozen small tables scattered around the tight space. A tall man with a drooping mustache and watery eyes the same ocean blue as Valentina’s was pouring a shot of whiskey for an elderly lady in furs and jewels.
“Papa, this the man,” Valentina said. “Look for Dickens.”
“Do not speak that name in here,” her father said.
He motioned for Adrian to come deeper into the bar and led him into a tiny office at the rear and shut the door behind them.
Adrian tried to explain why he was looking for Dickens, but while Adrian spoke, Mr. Lombardi stared up at the ceiling and tapped a foot as if he were simply waiting for Adrian to finish his useless speech so Lombardi could unleash his fury.
When Adrian stopped, Lombardi wiped his lips with the back of his hand and peered into Adrian’s eyes.
“Dickens work with Pagolo Martinelli in the olive trees. You know Pagolo?”
“No,” Adrian said.
“Pagolo work on the farm of Sergio Bellomo. Pagolo is a bad man. Rough and mean and inaffidabile, or you say, ‘not worthy of the trust.’ Sergio Bellomo is my friend since we are children, and he sold his farm and orchards to this man Albion but did not want to do so. And now it is all sick.”
“Sick?”
“Insetti, how you say? Bug.”
“Bugs? Insects?”
“Insects.”
“Spittlebugs,” Adrian said.
“Name of bug, I not know. But bug come, then later tree is sick. Begin in settembre. Sergio see it. He go into his groves that are no longer his to own. He see it. Una malattia. A sickness of tree.”
“Dickens did this?”
“I warn you. Do not speak that name in my presence.”
“A crime against nature,” Adrian said, recalling Lucia’s words.
Lombardi looked puzzled.
“Sickness of tree,” Adrian said. “Has this been reported?”
“Government is more bad than disease. Better tell no one.”
“So no one knows about this?”
“Bellomo know, Pagolo know. I know. You know.”
“And Manfred Knobel, does he know?”
“Why he need to know? He run mill.”
“So you’re keeping this private—this disease is your secret.”
“Trees sick,” Lombardi said. “Very bad sick.”
THIRTY-TWO
The Olive Groves, Bari, Italy
Down in the open grave, Harper hauled Pagolo’s unconscious body upright, then twisted and shoved him up over the lip. She climbed out, then took hold of his cuffs and dragged him to the Jeep. He bumped across the rough ground without a grunt of complaint. At the Jeep, she settled him in a sitting position with his back against the rear bumper.
She dug around in the bed of the Jeep till she found a length of rope and a spool of thin cord. With a pair of dull wire clippers, she cut two pieces of rope and used the first to lash Pagolo’s right wrist to the rear bumper of the Jeep. When it was secure, she knotted his left wrist, his arms stretched wide in a seated crucifixion.
She took his cell phone from the rear bumper and tried to bring it alive, but found it was locked with a numerical code.
She waited for a while, watching the man’s shallow breaths as the pain from her own injuries faded. From the little she’d witnessed of Pagolo’s behavior, he wouldn’t give up easily. Even in his current state, bound, vulnerable, she doubted anything short of torture would cause him to surrender useful information, especially to a woman.
She dug through the bed of the Jeep again and drew out the spool of cord, a thin-gauge woven rope, no fatter than a common clothesline. Probably used as staking straps for supporting newly planted saplings.
She unrolled it, stretching out a length that would reach from Pagolo to the closest olive tree a few yards away. She wrapped one end of the cord around the trunk, knotting it firmly, then brought the other end back to Pagolo, giving herself a foot of slack to work with before she snipped it.
She had to move fast. If he saw what she was up to, he might be able to keep her at bay kicking with his legs. Of course, she could hammer his skull again, but she didn’t want to risk killing the guy. Not that his life mattered to her, but his information did.
When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2) Page 22