“Alessia Di Lorenzo. The last person to see Julia at twenty-two hundred on Friday, October twenty-first. They were hanging out at the San Calisto bar in Trastevere, a central neighborhood of Rome.”
Blackwell scribbled on a legal pad the first entry in a timeline of Julia’s abduction.
“Di Lorenzo is a renowned painter and socialite.”
The next picture to come on screen was one of Di Lorenzo’s paintings called The Penance. A naked woman lying in a poppy field with her legs spreadeagle, orgasmic eyes, and a fighter plane lodged in her vagina. Blood splattered on her thighs and belly made the image disturbing on multiple levels.
“I’m sure you haven’t seen one of those in many years, Mr. Blackwell, but that thing between her legs, in that painting—” The other agents started to giggle at his expense.
“That’s a German Stuka dive bomber.” Nishimura winked at Blackwell, and he couldn’t help but smile back at the rookie.
“Di Lorenzo told Italian police Julia went out for a smoke and was approached by a man of Middle Eastern appearance.”
“A more specific description?”
“Nothing useful. We showed her footage from this morning but she wasn’t able to confirm if our hostage-taker was the guy who had nabbed Julia.”
The man outside the bar asked Julia for a light and chatted with her briefly, Nishimura explained. Then out of the blue, according to Di Lorenzo, the stranger and Julia kissed like they had hooked up. Julia signaled to Alessia she would call her later and left quickly with the man, leaving her purse with her wallet and phone at the bar.
“She was scheduled to fly on Alitalia 614 to Boston, eleven o’clock on Saturday morning. The hotel confirms she checked out late Friday morning.”
“Her luggage?”
“She left everything, including her passport, at Alessia’s apartment. And she never got on that flight.”
A silence descended on the room.
Blackwell understood how Julia’s erratic lifestyle hadn’t fazed her parents, but he wanted to know why it took a week for the Italians to inform the FBI a senator’s daughter had gone missing on their soil.
“Alessia had no idea who Julia was. They’d only met a week earlier. When she filed the missing person’s report, she showed Italian police Julia’s passport and they photocopied it. Italian law prevents authorities from sequestering foreign passports, even that of a convicted criminal.”
The implication was clear. Because the Italians don’t make use of machine-readable passports, a person of interest could land at a local police station and walk away without ringing any bells. Like Julia Price, who Italian police must have assumed was one of many Americans reported missing each year, only to turn up drunk by the fountain at Piazza del Campo in Siena.
“When were we first notified?” Blackwell said.
“Wednesday afternoon.”
“What happened?”
“On the same night Julia was reported missing, another incident occurred close to the bar.”
A satellite map of the scene of the crime appeared on center screen. Nishimura fiddled with the remote control like it was an extension of his fingers and zoomed by a few factors.
“The blue dot you see there is the bar in question in the high traffic and touristy San Calisto square. Now move six hundred feet away—right here you see the red dot on Via di San Francesco a Ripa—and the scenery changes dramatically.”
“How so?”
“Quiet, residential and typically very uneventful.”
“What’s the red dot?” Blackwell inquired.
“A small bank with an ATM machine.”
A baby smile escaped Nishimura’s lips like things were about to get juicier. “The same night Julia disappeared, an elderly lady who lives across from the bank reported hearing a woman screaming at around ten forty-five.”
Blackwell scribbled another entry on his makeshift timeline.
Nishimura played the audio from the security cameras at the bank.
A hair-raising scream echoed in the room, its effect sparing none of the people huddled around the table.
“That’s all we got from the ATM cameras at the bank. Nothing happens on the video. By the time the elderly woman looked out of her window, the screaming was drowned out by loud, industrial music.”
A 3-D reconstruction of the scene of Julia’s abduction replaced the map on the screen. Back when Blackwell was still active, this level of sophistication would have taken a week to render.
“The witness said she saw a white van with a man standing outside, with his back to her. Another person was inside the vehicle wearing what she described as a Venetian mask.”
“We’re not certain that’s what it is,” Monica jumped in.
“That is correct. The old lady said the mask was smiling, which may be significant.”
Blackwell caught Nishimura discreetly rolling his eyes. Perhaps a rift between him and Monica was pitting them at odds. Or maybe he just plain disliked her. Either way, the kid may actually have some balls.
Nishimura said the man in the mask saw the older woman spying on them and formed an imaginary gun with his right hand, which he pretended to fire at her face in a menacing way. Mortified, she retreated.
“When did she file the police report?”
“Saturday morning at the same station Alessia Di Lorenzo had reported Julia missing. The police dispatched a car to the scene. They found a silver pendant on the ground, near where the woman had seen the van the night before.”
The case details were coming hard and fast at Blackwell and he was struggling to keep the timeline he was scribbling updated. Yet before Nishimura came full circle, Blackwell was sensing how the connection would ultimately be made.
A close-up image of the pendant popped up on the screen. The phrase The Price of Freedom is the Freedom of a Price was engraved around it.
“When we interviewed Senator Price, he confirmed this exhibit was his daughter’s pendant. A family thing they all wear. The women have pendants and the men wear rings.”
Blackwell studied the piece of evidence but found nothing remarkable about it. “What happened next?”
“Fast forward to Wednesday morning. The clerk at the police station was logging evidence from the previous days and was baffled by something she found.
“The keyword Price was showing up on two separate cases filed on the same day, a few hours apart. One, the last name of the missing American woman, Julia Price, and another on the pendant found near where the old lady had reported suspicious activity.”
“She figured it was a careless mistake, right?”
Nishimura nodded with a smile laced with some sort of admiration. He explained how the clerk went to report the anomaly to the police commissioner, who upon further inspection discovered the two events were connected and informed the US consulate in Rome. When the consulate ran Julia’s passport details from the photocopy the Italians had on file, they realized who she was and Monica as the Legat was engaged.
Monica thanked Nishimura and motioned for him to take a seat.
“Any idea who we’re dealing with?” Blackwell scanned the group again for a sense of whether a cohesive theory had emerged.
Monica was the first to respond. “The official line is it’s anybody’s to claim. The Iranians, organized crime or a homegrown option. Even Anonymous.”
“Hackers?”
“They’ve evolved since you left. They like to call themselves hacktivists. Assuming the person in the van was wearing a smiling Guy Fawkes mask, yes, there’s a chance.”
“Has anything spiked in the intel chatter to suggest one over the other?”
“Nothing,” Nishimura said.
“Which brings us to the unofficial assessment, Alex. We have no fucking idea.”
Robert Slant raised his hand to speak. A
few years past sixty now, he was a little rounder on the edges than when Blackwell had first met him nine years ago at a joint task force of the federal agencies. His gray eyes were still impenetrable, once-upon-a-time his window to the mayhem he witnessed across the world responsible for turning every hair on his head as white as a polar bear’s.
“This is not the work of organized crime, let alone a bunch of ass-wipe hackers. Islamic Jihad is written all over this.”
“How about Julia’s family? Both her dad and uncle are huge sitting targets,” Blackwell conjectured.
As if he had read her mind, Monica chimed in. “Thought you’d never ask. Liam, Mr. Blackwell’s dying to hear a quick overview of the Price boys.”
“Both Navy, like their dad. Oldish money. Ivy Leaguers. Mark worked the weapons industry until he hung out his own shingle. William Price preferred to follow the campaign trail like his old man. Squeaky clean all his life until last year.”
“Let me guess, a dead intern fell out of his closet?”
“If only he were that lucky. WikiLeaks released a cable from the US mission in Iraq suggesting the senator had tried to pull some strings for his kid brother.”
“To get him more business?”
“Nah, to cover up for him. Three years ago, a convoy carrying American and European democracy activists was ambushed in Baghdad. Twenty people obliterated with a nasty improvised explosive.”
Blackwell traveled back to 2008. Even if the incident had resonated globally, he had missed it. He didn’t have a radio or a television back then, let alone an interest in the world or its affairs.
Nishimura explained how Exertify had been hired by a group called the Global Democracy Institute to protect their staff in the green zone. According to the leaked cable, Iraqi intelligence was concerned a few months before the attack by Exertify’s termination of the contract of a thoroughly vetted Scottish driver assigned to GDI. They replaced him with a cheaper local hire.
“Care to guess what happens next, Mr. Blackwell?” Nishimura said.
“That’s easy. He was infiltrated and enabled the ambush.”
“Al Qaeda.” Nishimura nodded in approval to the rest of the team, as though there had been many doubters Blackwell still had would it took.
“The cable implied the Americans and the Iraqis colluded to protect Exertify from negligence, and to write off the attack as just another day in Baghdad.”
“How is William Price connected to all of this?”
“Listen to this recording of the US ambassador to Iraq, speaking at the meeting in 2008 from which the cable was transcribed. The recording is courtesy of our friends at Langley.”
Nishimura winked at Slant, then played an audio recording of a male voice with a unmistakable Texan drawl.
“Senator Bill will be grateful if you don’t hang his brother out to dry. Do the man this favor and he’ll scratch your back at the Senate when the Iraq stimulus package is up for renewal. Y’all catchin’ my drift?”
Slant’s eyes dashed away, as if he personally carried the shame of the CIA spying on US diplomats.
Blackwell remained skeptical.
“It’s hearsay. Diplomatic rambling. Doesn’t prove anything.”
Slant raised his hand once again to interject, but this time didn’t wait for Monica’s approval to speak.
“It’s beside the point. For a political animal like Price who’s not shy about his ambitions to nab the Republican VP nomination in 2012, hearsay’s just as harmful.”
“How harmful?”
“As harmful as a red-hot vote to expel him from the Senate, many would argue.”
EIGHT
Saturday, November 5, 2011—8:01 p.m.
Manhattan, NY
Blackwell rotated his neck and rolled his shoulders to loosen his body in the chair. He closed his eyes, hoping to strike an interim truce with his nerves and sprawling heart. Sweat erupted from every pore on his skin as a precursor of disruptive tension waiting to rush through the rest of his machinery.
Monica must have smelled his plummeting confidence and stood behind him, gently touching his arms. The subtle gesture was unexpected but surprisingly not inappropriate. Focusing on Monica standing behind him helped distract Blackwell from what would have been a certain downward spiral back to Hermosa Beach.
Invoking the mind exercises he had harnessed in the past to retract himself from the brink, he focused not on the death toll to his debit, but every soul alive today as a result of his actions during an otherwise illustrious career. Prospecting with a fine-tooth comb within his soul, Blackwell stumbled across the tiniest speck of strength and determination and latched on with all his might.
Eyes closed, breathing steady, he visualized every molecule of oxygen penetrating his red blood cells to nourish his confidence. The certainty of his ineptitude melting, a warm wave of quiet confidence began to sparkle through him like the morning sun. He was back in Anguilla, lying on the beach across from his house, hypnotized by the lapping waves. Water foamed at his toes. Jacky was by his side, sprinting across the beach then back to lick his hands. Through his slow-heaving chest and Jacky’s panting, another sound came through. A ring tone in his ears.
It’s showtime.
He opened his eyes to a different world.
“This is Alexander Blackwell. You asked to speak to me.”
A short silence.
“You made it.”
The voice was not familiar, but it was natural and not scrambled or altered in any way. A first sign of confidence.
“I no longer work for the FBI. What do you want from me?”
More arctic silence.
Come on, now. Keep talking.
“The Lord said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel? I do not know, he replied. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Blackwell scribbled these words furiously before they dissolved away in the cornucopia of his mind. The accent was Arabic for sure. Egyptian? Iraqi? Syrian? Jordanian? Hard to tell. Natasha would pinpoint him later.
“Why did you ask for me and how do you know me?”
“How I know you is of little consequence. What’s more important is what we share.”
“I can’t imagine what.”
“A pursuit of justice.”
A cold, opaque veil was frosted over his voice. Something deeply unsettling about it threw Blackwell off-kilter.
“Do you have a name I can call you, other than the identity of the many you assumed when you entered the building?”
“Seth.”
“How many hostages, Seth, and is everyone doing okay, including yourself?”
“Twenty-five heads, still intact.”
“Do you need food, or does anyone need medication of some sort? Insulin shots perhaps or—”
“No,” he tore into him. “I said we’re fine. Are we done with this moronic script?”
Blackwell’s face stung like he’d been slapped repeatedly. “There’s no script, Seth. You are talking to a civilian. But there are people in this room who need to know what your demands are and why you’re doing this.”
“There’s a tactical response team positioned on top of my building, ready to fast-rope down and take me out at your command. Before we go any further, I want you to evacuate it. Then we talk.”
Blackwell swirled his chair to face the rest of the team for visual cues.
How the hell did he know, and what do I tell him?
“There’s no way he has eyes on the building,” Nishimura whispered.
Blackwell agreed. With the sort of evacuation enforced on midtown, a flock of birds would be shredded if they glided through without proper authorization.
Lightning suddenly bolted through Blackwell’s veins. The voice, the confidence and what he had just revealed all pointed to the same conclusions. This was like nothing Blackwell had experi
enced before. Every hostage-taker he had ever prevailed against had launched their opening line with the nervous energy of someone taking a huge gamble. This one, however, had come to the range prepared to dictate the outcome of the day, rather than wait for someone else to force it upon him.
“It’s FBI standard procedure. Don’t give us a reason to invoke the tactical response team and I promise we won’t. It’s that simple.”
Oh shit.
Blackwell’s heart stopped momentarily when he realized he had slipped and confirmed the presence of the team.
“Seven-hundred billion dollars.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Seven-hundred billion dollars, you heard right.”
“What is it?”
“Your country’s annual military budget. Add another forty billion spent on foreign aid to fix what the wars destroy. Yet somehow, despite everything you spend on wars and meddling disguised as philanthropy, fifty million of your countrymen live in poverty. How’s that even possible? Ever seen an inner-city weekend child care center?”
A spasm tightened in Blackwell’s belly.
“Human dumping stations for parents desperate to make ends meet by working forty-eight hours. And they call it the American dream.”
“It’s better than begging or stealing.”
“What beautiful lies you Americans can weave.”
Churning harder unto its bitter juices, Blackwell’s stomach seemed to know something ahead of his spinning mind.
“Listen carefully. Four of these facilities in undisclosed locations across your country have been wired with explosives. Evacuate your men off my building in thirty minutes, or one of them will be detonated remotely.” Seth hung up.
A sharp splinter from the pencil he’d been using cut through the soft tissue between Blackwell’s thumb and index finger and stung like hell. He must have snapped it unwittingly.
“No way,” Monica clamped, jumping up with a foregone decision installed on her face.
“Our options?” Blackwell said, tiptoeing, hoping no one else had caught his slip-up.
“Stick to the first rule,” Monica snapped.
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