The Disappearance of Grace

by Vincent Zandri

  “What were the results of your print analysis?” he asks.

  “There’s a third set of prints on the ring besides Grace’s and Captain Angel’s,” Betti says. “They belong to a man named Heath Lowrance. An American. A professional solider turned Interpol war crimes agent. He’s befriended Captain Angel while under the guise of a waiter named Giovanni who works in the café where Grace went missing. He’s been pretending to assist the Captain while he goes in and out of blindness.”

  “How do you know for certain this man is a fake?” the detective poses.

  “We just made a check on his café. He’s not employed there. Not in any official manner anyway.”

  The detective works up a smile.

  “You are doing some excellent detective work for a man who has limited use of his eyes. I applaud you.”

  “Detective Carbone,” Betti goes on, “why do you suppose an investigator from Interpol would be attaching himself to Captain Angel? And why would it happen concurrent with the disappearance of his fiancée?”

  “That seems to be the major questions, doesn’t it, Ms. Betti?”

  I feel her left hand take hold of my forearm. Feel her squeeze it. Without her having to say it, I sense the purpose of the squeeze. It tells me the police are hiding something.

  Detective Carbone lights another cigarette.

  “Captain Angel,” he says, exhaling his initial drag of smoke, “might I have a word with you alone?”

  I look over my shoulder at Alessandra.

  She nods.

  “I’ll be outside the door,” she says, slipping out, closing the door behind her.

  I shove my right hand into my trouser pocket, feel Grace’s engagement ring.

  “What’s happening here, Detective?” I say.

  “Captain Angel,” he says, “it’s time you stopped looking for your Grace.”

  Chapter 61

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” I say, after a stunned beat. “Why would I even consider such an option?”

  The detective’s face has gone from public relations cheery to sullen and drained of blood. He appears oddly comfortable with this new visage, as if his more common smiley demeanor were nothing more than a mask designed to hide the lies. Or the real truth anyway. And I must admit, it makes him appear far more believable to me. More trustworthy perhaps.

  He smokes, exhales, nervously flicks the growing tube of gray ash onto the floor.

  “Your fiancée did not leave you of her own accord,” he says, his voice almost a whisper, but somehow screaming. “You must forgive me for having to lie about it. But those have been my orders. I did not want to speak freely in front of the journalist.”

  My heart beats.

  “The overcoat man.”

  He nods.

  “A few days ago when you first reported Grace missing, we had no leads to go on. You two had been reported as arguing in a café in the late afternoon before her disappearance. You were just returning from an extremely traumatic war experience. With no tangible leads and no witnesses coming forward to corroborate your story of abduction, we could only assume you might have had something to do with her sudden disappearance.”

  I recall my conversation with the American man this morning. He claimed to be a witness and to have personally spoken with Carbone. It’s exactly what I tell him now.

  “That man did come forward. But not until nearly forty-eight hours after the fact. And by then it was too late. I thanked him for his time and told him that if he should continue with interfering in a police matter he would be detained. The US Embassy told him the very same thing.”

  “I would never do anything to harm Grace.”

  “Of this I am now certain. But let me assure you, Captain, it’s not all that unusual for a seemingly happy relationship to go violently wrong, even in Venice. I’ve been in the position of investigating murders of passion before. Yours would not have been a unique situation had it turned out to be the case.”

  “Is that why Interpol is watching me?”

  He shakes his head. Smokes.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Why then?”

  Coming from behind me, a door opening. A door opening in a place where there seemed to be no door, but instead a wood-paneled wall. A secret door in a room that is no doubt equipped with audio/visual surveillance equipment, just like any other police interrogation room.

  “I’ll prefer that Agent Heath Lowrance answer that question himself, Captain.”

  Chapter 62

  HE’S THE SAME MAN whom I’ve known for the past couple of days. Tall, thin, smooth shaven, round-faced, thick black hair, brown eyes, and a friendly smile. Only he is not the café waiter, Giovanni. He is an American born and bred professional solider now under the employ of Interpol. And he has been assigned to me.

  He holds out his hand for me. I’m not sure if I should take it. But then, I realize, it would be futile for me to fight these men. Like the elders in the hills of Tajik country, better to work with them first. Fighting them should only come as a last resort.

  I take the hand in mine, shake it hard.

  “Your eyes are being kind to you now,” he says with his usual smile.

  “Today has been a good day,” I say. “I suspect the periods of blindness are becoming less and less frequent. The doctors told me that would happen. Sooner than later.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “Why are you assigned to me? And what does it have to do with Grace’s disappearance?”

  “Captain. The village you ordered an airstrike on in Afghanistan. I am of the understanding that the difficulty there didn’t end with the bombing. That something else happened there. And it is perhaps the source of your emotional troubles.”

  In my head, I see the village, parts of it still burning and smoking in the moments following the strike. Wounded men and women crying, confused animals running around. A small boy lying on the ground by a stone well in the village center.

  “Yes,” I say, while wondering if Lowrance has followed me all the way from Frankfurt. “There was some difficulty.”

  I see a surviving elder standing amongst a group of elders. I see him reaching for something. Reaching under his tunic. I hear the sound of an M4 being cocked behind me. Hear myself ordering, “Hold your fire.” Hear the sound of a round being discharged and the elder falling flat on his face. I hear it all happening again, just like it did a month ago…an hour ago…a moment ago…

  “We believe the overcoat man you spoke of on the day of Grace’s disappearance is a man who comes from that same village. He’s somehow traced your movements from Frankfurt to Venice and, in retaliation for what happened in the war, has kidnapped your fiancée and is now holding her hostage.”

  I feel the breath knocked out of me, the floor under my feet going soft. Behind my eyes I feel a kind of pressure building. I can see, but I sense the onset of blindness once more. If it’s possible to hold it back, I will.

  “Captain Angel,” Detective Carbone breaks in, while pointing to one of the wood chairs set in a far corner. “Would you like to sit down?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ll remain standing. Is she still in Venice?” I beg. “Or has this man smuggled her out of the country?”

  “Thus far, we have no reason to believe he’s taken her anywhere. But that would most likely be the plan. That is, if she’s still alive at all.”

  Now in my head, I see my Grace floating in the Grand Canal, her lovely hair swimming in waves like the tentacles on a jellyfish. I try and drown the image as quickly as possible.

  “How can you be sure this man…this overcoat man took her?”

  “We’d like to show you how we know,” Lowrance says.

  The door behind me opens again, and this time, David Graham of the US Embassy appears.

  “Hello, Captain,” he says, in his chipper voice. “Would you care to follow me, please.”

  I agree to follow Graham. But only under one condition. That Ales
sandra Betti accompany me.

  Graham gives Carbone a look.

  Carbone nods like, What choice do we have?

  “You may ask her to join us,” Graham says. “It’s all bound to go public anyway.”

  Chapter 63

  ALL FOUR OF US enter into a room through the secret door set into the wood panel. In contrast to the interview room, it’s a room that’s outfitted in black acoustical wall and ceiling tiles, and black rubber mat flooring laid upon a computer subflooring system. Just about every square foot of space is occupied with computer and surveillance equipment of one kind or another. Several flat-screened LED TVs are mounted to walls, along with stacks of electronic equipment too complicated and high-tech for me to recognize even as a professional soldier in the digital age.

  Graham and Carbone lead Betti and me to a laptop computer set up on a counter. Carbone sits down in a tall black leather swivel chair before the computer, swiftly types in several commands, then sits back in the chair contemplatively. After a few seconds an image appears on both the computer screen and every wall-mounted digital monitor in the square-shaped room.

  It’s a clear black-and-white shot of Piazza San Marco shot from a few dozen feet above the hard stone surface. Included in the shot is the café where Grace and I sat for our last lunch together. What’s also included is the table we occupied. In the video, we are seated at the table.

  “What you’re viewing here,” Carbone begins to explain, “is a surveillance video shot from five meters up on the north corner of the cathedral. It took some doing to sort through the video, but we eventually narrowed it down to the twenty or so minutes from your arrival at the café to Grace’s disappearance. What’s even more unfortunate is that it took us a couple of days to get our hands on it from the cathedral authorities.”

  “You don’t have your own surveillance equipment set up in a busy tourist zone like that?”

  Carbone nods. “Naturally. We just don’t have every single angle covered, no matter how hard we try. Cameras and equipment are getting smaller, to be sure, but you still have to maintain a degree of stealth and invisibility or else people get nervous and start yelling about their human rights.”

  Alessandra steps forward, her stocking-covered thighs pressing up against the counter.

  “Detective Carbone,” she says, “are we about to witness the kidnapping of Grace Blunt?”

  “Just keep watching,” Graham breaks in while crossing long lanky arms over his narrow chest.

  On the monitor, Grace assists me with taking my seat at the table since, at the time, I was blinded. She then makes her way around to the opposite side of the table and takes her own seat. A waiter approaches us, takes our orders, and brings us our drinks. That waiter is not the man I would later come to know as Giovanni. But another man altogether. A true employee of the café. It’s then that Grace seems to become distracted. She’s not looking at me, even though I am clearly speaking to her. She’s instead looking over my left shoulder at someone who must be standing behind me.

  The overcoat man.

  “I’m going to speed things up a bit here to save time,” Carbone says, hitting a key that makes the video fast forward. But he stops when a key figure enters into the scene.

  “There’s the overcoat man you spoke of, Captain. You can see him standing only a few feet behind you. He appears to be staring directly at Grace and he’s getting away with it too because of the massive amount of people already crowding the café.”

  The detective is right. Despite hordes of people moving all around the café perimeter and even rudely walking in between the tables, the overcoat man seems to present a formidable figure. Tall, dark, bearded, wearing sunglasses, and slowly approaching our table. He eventually comes so close, Grace is visibly shaken up and looks almost like she’s about to scream in alarm. Or, at the very least, alert me to the presence of this strange man.

  “You can see the overcoat man approach the table,” Carbone observes. “He doesn’t stand behind you for more than a few seconds, Captain, before making his move.”

  On the screen, the overcoat man scurries around the table and makes a threatening move towards Grace. But that’s when he disappears. Rather, he doesn’t disappear so much as his presence is blocked by a group of tourists who suddenly enter into the frame.

  “People,” I say. “All I see is people.”

  “Yes, a Japanese tour group entered into the frame at exactly the wrong time,” Carbone says. “Or perhaps for the overcoat man, at exactly the right time.”

  “But due to the camera placement over the crowd,” Graham adds, “you can eventually make out the overcoat man and Grace as they move away from the table. Watch.”

  On the screen it takes the tour group maybe five seconds to pass by our table. By then you can see the overcoat man, with his right arm wrapped around Grace. He’s forcibly shoving her in the direction of the basin.

  Carbone says, “A closer look shows that the overcoat man is pressing something into her ribs with his left hand. A gun perhaps.”

  He clicks a couple more keys and the scene appears far more enlarged but at the same time, far more grainy and distorted. But there is no doubt in my mind of what I’m witnessing. The taking away of my Grace.

  “From there,” Graham adds, “we believe he boarded her onto a boat or a barge disguised as a supply vessel, and carted her away. Perhaps to one of the islands. Perhaps to one of the buildings on the main island. We just don’t know yet.”

  Carbone turns around in his chair to face us.

  “All we are fairly certain of at this point, Captain, is that Grace has not left the country. There is only two publicly accessible ways out of Venice other than by water, and that’s by train or motor vehicle. Our eyes are constantly monitoring roads, water, and rails and thus far we’ve picked up no sign of their leaving.”

  “What about a chopper?” I pose.

  “We’ve not been alerted to helicopters operating in or around the area since Grace’s abduction,” Carbone answers.

  “We’d know if someone did a hop/skip in and out of one of the islands,” Lowrance adds. Then, shaking his head, biting down on his bottom lip. “I can only wish I’d been on the scene just two minutes earlier. I might have caught the overcoat man in the act.”

  “We also have a solid theory as to why the overcoat man wouldn’t want to cart her away from Venice,” Graham says.

  “And what would that be?” Alessandra poses.

  “We believe the overcoat man wants to eventually flush the Captain out. They want him to find Grace, and once he does, he will kill them both.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Retaliation,” he says. “Revenge for the death that occurred on a hilltop in Afghanistan.”

  Chapter 64

  STANDING INSIDE THAT HIGH-TECH surveillance room, it takes maybe two or three seconds for me to run through the events of that day in my brain. The Warthog cruising across the valley, the thrust of its engines thundering and reverberating against the hillsides, its metal skin reflecting the bright sunlight as it finds its target, dives, and releases its lethal payload. There are the two back-to-back concussions that we feel beneath our booted feet two miles away in our camp and then the dull but distinct pop-pop sound that follows. There’s the rat-tat-tat of the Warthog’s 30mm nose-mounted Gatling gun as it strafes the hillside and village with exploding rounds. There’s the march back up to the hill to a now shattered and burning village, sounds of moans and weeping dripping into our ears like blood as we trek along the two-track road to a gate with a cow chained to it. A cow that one of my men shoots dead. I see it all running through my head like a video played at rapid-fire speed.

  I see it all.

  See. It. All.

  I see a boy lying on his back, his face covered in dust. See an old man going for a gun. See one of my men raising up his weapon, feel the discharge. See all of my men raising up their weapons, hear the sound of automatic fire exploding all around me, and bodie
s dropping onto the gravel…

  “What happens now?” I ask.

  “We wait to make contact,” Lowrance says. “I expect the overcoat man to contact us with responsibility for taking Grace. We’ll ask for proof of life. When we get it, we’ll answer.”

  “Does he want money?” I ask.

  “Most abduction cases involve a ransom,” Lowrance goes on. “I’m not sure what this man will ask for. Whether it will be something as simple as the release of prisoners or something totally impossible like the end of the war. Doesn’t make any difference to us. We won’t negotiate. What we will do instead is to try and get a fix on his location, and then send in a team to rescue your fiancée. Right now, we have no idea where he is.” His eyes now fixed on Alessandra. “And I trust we can keep our conversations here under wraps for the time being?”

  The journalist nods.

  “On the contrary, gentleman,” she says. “Perhaps news of this story is precisely what you need to make our overcoat man show his head.”

  Carbone stands, takes his place beside Graham.

  “The writer has a point,” he concurs. “It could take days or weeks until we hear from the overcoat man or somehow stumble upon his position. By that time, Grace could be dead. But if we were to goad him into making contact, we stand the chance of getting to him much sooner. Perhaps immediately.”

  “I agree with the detective,” Graham offers, biting down on his bottom lip. “Mr. Lowrance, what about you?”

  The tall Interpol agent crosses arms over chest.

  “Maybe you’re right. We’re dealing with a human life here, so I will defer to the Captain.”

  I plant my eyes on Alessandra.

  “How long will it take you to write the piece and have it published?”

  “I can get started right away, if you’ll allow me the use of your apartment.”

  Adrenalin begins to fill my brain. There’s a distinct sound to it, like an orchestra about to reach a climactic crescendo. My eyes are beginning to fade, the sight flickering on and off. From light to gray to dark and back again.