The Disappearance of Grace

by Vincent Zandri

  “Let’s go now,” I say. “I fear I need some rest.”

  “Your eyes,” Alessandra says.

  “Yes, my eyes,” I say. But then, I’m blinded in so many other ways, I want to tell her. Blind to the possibility of rescuing my Grace. Blind to the future.

  She takes hold of my hand.

  “I’ll lead the way,” she says.

  Chapter 65

  ALESSANDRA AND I ARRIVE back at my apartment. I am not entirely blinded but I still feel the overwhelming need for rest. While she sets up her laptop on the harvest table behind the couch, I swallow another sleeping pill. Lying down on the bed, I quickly fall into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  I see Grace.

  Grace is standing all alone in the center of a gondola, her long dark hair draping her pale face and shoulders like an angel. She’s wearing a black gown covered with sequins. The gown doesn’t match the rich glossy black finish on the narrow boat, so much as it blends into it, becomes one with it. Wrapped around her wedding finger is her engagement ring. The square cut diamond sparkles brilliantly in the daylight.

  The canal is calm, the water as clean and clear as newly drawn bathwater.

  Hers is the only boat on the water while the old buildings and stone canal banks are empty of people. Empty of life. Framing Grace is an arching stone bridge and as the dream progresses, Grace begins to float backwards, under the bridge. I’m not in a boat. I am treading water. I find myself floating calmly at first, but then desperately towards my fiancée, my hands outstretched like I’m trying to grab onto her.

  But she’s moving away from me far too fast, her boat sinking, filling with the clear canal water, her black-gowned body being swallowed up by Venice.

  I too am sinking no matter how hard I try to stay afloat by kicking my feet and slapping at the water with my hands and arms. Then I am underwater and so is Grace.

  We lock eyes underneath the silent veil of water. Her expression hasn’t changed at all since she began to sink and drown. She just peers at me with her blue eyes and a slightly open mouth.

  I can’t breathe.

  Can’t. Breathe.

  The more I sink, the more my lungs constrict and I feel the need to open my mouth, take a breath. But I know that if I do it, I will drown. I will die.

  Grace stares at me. Into my eyes. She knows I’m about to die. She knows it.

  “Breathe, Nick,” she says through the water. “Breathe.”

  I do it.

  I do what my Grace tells me to do.

  I. Breathe.

  And I die.

  Chapter 66

  WHEN I COME TO, Alessandra is again sitting beside me on the bed, once more holding my hand.

  “You were dreaming again,” she says softly. “A nightmare.”

  She dries my forehead with a warm washcloth and presses the back of her hand against my face like she’s taking my temperature.

  “I saw Grace,” I whisper.

  “In your dream?”

  “She was floating on the Grand Canal. In a gondola. I was swimming for her. We both sank under the surface. We both drowned.”

  She pats my forehead.

  “It was just a dream,” Alessandra consoles. “Just. A. Dream.”

  I sit up, my face close to her face, her deep-set eyes looking into my own. For a brief moment, we are desperate figures caught up in a still-life. It takes me a while to realize our hands are still locked together. Until I pull mine slowly away, and stand.

  “How are your eyes, Captain?”

  “Fragile,” I say, looking out over the easel, out the open French doors and onto the fading afternoon sunlight. “I needed rest. That’s all. Rest and sleep.”

  My gaze shifts from the doors to the harvest table and her laptop. It’s open, a sheet of notes set beside it, a pen sitting on top of the notes, her cell phone set beside the pen.

  “And your article?”

  “Finished,” she says. “Submitted to my editor, and posted. Thank God for the digital age, Captain.”

  “Let me read it.”

  She sits down before her computer. Clicking several commands she turns the computer in my direction.

  “Please,” she says.

  I sit myself down, read the piece from off the CNN website.

  It’s not much of a piece. But that’s not the point. It’s the spin Alessandra has put on the piece that counts. What to most people will seem like a follow-up to the “American Woman Missing in Italy” story published yesterday, this piece states that after further investigation, it’s been determined by the Venice police that Grace Blunt was indeed abducted from the café in the Piazza San Marco in broad daylight. While no one has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, the police welcome open contact with the abductor or abductors in order to “consider their demands.” The piece ends with the police phone number and website contact address.

  I sit back in the chair, run my hands through my cropped hair.

  “Do you really believe this will work?” I pose.

  “It’s common knowledge that the police always claim to never negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers. Publicly, that is. But I think if Grace was taken by a member of an angry Afghan faction or Taliban as payback for what you had to do to their village, then I believe they will want their demands to be heard. Like any politician, they crave the soapbox.”

  “But will we get some kind of proof of Grace’s life?”

  “We have to wait and see, Captain,” she says, while setting her hand on my shoulder.

  She quickly slips it off when the apartment phone rings.

  Chapter 67

  I JUMP UP FROM the chair. Run to the wall-mounted phone. Grab it off its cradle.

  “Pronto,” I bark into the phone. In my head I’m aware of how the police will record the conversation since the phone has been tapped.

  “I. See.” says the gruff, almost indiscernible voice into the phone. “I. See.”

  “Who is this?” I ask. “Do you have Grace?”

  “I. See.” repeats the voice.

  “What do you want? Do you want money?”

  “I. See.”

  “Please. Tell me. Do you have Grace?”

  “Yes. Grace. Yes.”

  My legs, turning to rubber.

  “Is she alive?”

  “I. See,” says the voice of the overcoat man again.

  And then he hangs up.

  Chapter 68

  MY CELL RINGS. I hang up the wall-mounted phone and go to it.

  “Yes!” I bark.

  It’s Detective Carbone.

  “We have confirmation of the call, Captain,” he says. “It’s from the same cell as before, but this time we are more prepared to track its location. We are trying to trace the location now via GPS.”

  “I’m waiting,” I say, my eyes locked on Alessandra’s.

  There’s some commotion coming from the background. Police yelling at other police. Until Carbone comes back on the line.

  “It’s Venice, Captain,” he confirms. “The call has come from inside Venice. And we have an address.”

  He pauses, then recites the address to me.

  I nearly drop the phone, but manage to hang on.

  “Captain,” he says. “Captain, are you there?”

  “I’m here, Detective. I’m sorry.”

  “You need to come to the station as quickly as possible, so that we will discuss how to handle our next move.”

  “On the contrary, Detective Carbone,” I tell him. “Perhaps you should meet me here. The address you just spoke about is my own.”

  Chapter 69

  THE DETECTIVE ORDERS US to vacate the apartment, and get ourselves to the station immediately. Alessandra packs up her computer. I grab my coat and my keys. As we leave the studio apartment and head out onto the stair landing, I must resist the urge to grab a kitchen knife and begin making a search of the entire building. But I know that would be foolish and dangerous. It could also result in getting G
race killed.

  We make our way down the stairs to the first floor, all the time feeling as though we are being watched. And my guess is that we are being watched.

  Out the front door onto the cobbles, we begin the short trek to the station house, and what I pray will be the plan to rescue my Grace.

  Chapter 70

  DETECTIVE CARBONE IS THERE to greet us as soon as we come through the wood doors of the police station. He’s smoking, which is par for the course. But instead of his usual calm and collected demeanor, he is clearly agitated.

  “Something to show you,” he states, while leading us through the vestibule, through the security doors, and into the heart of the operation. “Come. Now. Come.”

  We enter into his office where Heath Lowrance is already standing before Carbone’s big wood desk. The leather-coated Interpol agent stands as we enter, offers his hellos.

  “New developments,” he says. “Important developments.”

  “Not the least of which is this,” interjects Carbone as he comes around his desk, flipping up the screen on his laptop.

  He turns the laptop around so that Alessandra, Lowrance and myself can clearly see the image. It’s my Grace. Still dressed in the same black sweater and skirt she was abducted in four days ago, her dark, almost black hair parted down the center of her forehead, her eyes bloodshot and exhausted, but very much alive. In her two hands she grips a newspaper. The International Herald Tribune. The date printed above the headline is today’s.

  “Grace is alive,” I say.

  “Alive,” Alessandra repeats, as if she too only now believes it.

  “Did he send this?” I ask, my voice barely able to exit my mouth.

  “The ‘he,’” Alessandra says. “The ‘he,’ as in the man who just called you in your apartment? The overcoat man?”

  “The overcoat man,” says Carbone.

  “He’s Taliban,” offers Lowrance. “He’s calling himself Hakeemullah. No last name we can see. Tajik resistance most likely. From the village you bombed, Captain. Just like we suspected.”

  I shift my eyes to Lowrance.

  “You got all that from his last phone call a few minutes ago?”

  “And more. But not from the phone call. From this photo of your fiancée.”

  “He identified himself?”

  “In transmitting proof of life, he also forwarded a statement.”

  Carbone pulls a sheet of paper from a file on his desk. Hands it to me.

  I am Hakeemullah. I have the infidel’s wife. She is alive for now. But she will die for what the infidel has done to my village. For the death he brought to my Precious.

  I read the note and re-read it several times over. Each time it says the same thing.

  “What does he want?” I pose. “Who or what is Precious?”

  “He’s taunting you for now. Precious could be anything or anyone. Maybe his wife. His dog. His horse. His spirit. Who knows, Captain? You know what war is like. You, better than anyone standing in this room.”

  “What’s he doing? Why so cryptic? Why no demands? Why stay here in Venice at all?”

  “He’s making you suffer. First he made you wait a few days before being flushed out by our intrepid reporter.” He shoots a smile at Alessandra. “Now he’s ready to communicate, but not ready to make specific demands. He took it as a compliment that we were willing to speak and perhaps negotiate with him. It offered him some kind of empowerment and feeling of being respected. He feels like the ball is in his court and he wants to play for a while. Taunt you. Give you nightmares.”

  “Why?”

  “Punishment for bombing his village. For what you did to his Precious. For being an American. For being a Capitalist dog…the usual story, Captain. But the good news is Grace is alive and close by and you are well enough to see her with unblinded eyes.”

  I look at her on the computer screen. Look at the copy of the International Herald Tribune. I see the fear in Grace’s face. I see her hopelessness. If I could jump into the photo and steal her away, I would. But I am just as helpless.

  “Will he make specific demands eventually?” I ask.

  “Almost certainly,” Carbone answers. “And soon.”

  “Not soon enough,” Alessandra adds.

  “But we’re not going to wait for not soon enough,” jumps in Lowrance.

  “You have an address,” I say, recalling my brief cell phone conversation with Carbone not a half hour ago.

  “We know where he is, thanks to GPS.”

  “In the building I’ve been living in for over a week,” I say. “Sounds impossible.”

  “But not improbable,” Carbone adds. “In the empty book store. On the first floor.”

  Mouth goes dry.

  Carbone comes back around his desk.

  “We’re ready to begin our rescue operation now,” he says. “With your permission, of course.”

  My mind spinning, the thought of police raiding the building where Grace is being held hostage is not exactly settling. What if Hakeemullah decides to kill her at the first sign of an incursion?

  I stuff my right hand into my pocket. Feel my Grace’s ring.

  “Will it be safe, Detective?”

  He nods, smokes.

  “We will take every precaution. Surprise is on our side.” Then, going for the door. “Let’s move, people. Let’s go get Grace.”

  I follow, my heart in my throat and my soldier’s gut telling me this is way too easy.

  Chapter 71

  A HELMETED AND FLAK-JACKETED Alessandra Betti and Agent Lowrance occupy the lead outboard-powered boat about five boats up ahead of us. Betti is filming the operation for CNN, and any other network the freelancer can sell it too, with a small video camera. Behind them is a second boat filled with uniformed and heavily armed police. Another squad armed in body armor and helmets converge on the old two-story stone and brick building on foot. Carbone and I stand in the aft of our boat while an officer drives and a second officer records the proceedings on a video camera.

  Alarmed at our sudden presence, the boats, barges and gondolas that traffic the Grand Canal all make way for us as best they can. It doesn’t take long for the train of police boats to arrive at the feeder canal which runs exactly perpendicular to the Grand Canal. Because it’s so narrow, the boat train is forced to proceed one by one with Betti and Lowrance’s police boat taking the lead. We move slowly through the feeder canal, all the time my heart pounding in my throat, and praying I do not lose my eyesight over the strain of knowing that my Grace might be in the line of fire should this thing get ugly. I can only rely on the sight I have now and the assurance that Detective Carbone’s police will work fast and efficiently. That they will save my fiancée and return her to me.

  Alive.

  * * *

  As rapidly as Carbone’s people have organized for this raid, the boat train is now slowed to a crawl as the first boat has reached the canal side of the target building.

  My building.

  Grace’s building.

  Carbone and I are located so far back that he suggests we get out and make the rest of the way on foot.

  “We should, however, maintain a safe enough distance should the lead start flying, Captain,” he adds, while grabbing hold of the rungs on a slightly rusted metal ladder that is thunder-bolted into the stacked stone canal bank.

  Over the radio comes some radio chatter in Italian. I have no idea what’s being said. But as a soldier, I can only imagine that the heavily armed and armored police are announcing their intentions to take their places around the perimeter of the building and that they will wait for a final approval from Carbone before going in. I’m about to follow the detective up the metal ladder when the explosion knocks me off my feet onto the hard boat floor.

  Chapter 72

  THE EXPLOSION RIPS THROUGH the block, sending a shockwave across the feeder canal, lose brick and stone acting like shrapnel, shattering the windshield, causing the two policemen to quickly duck f
or cover. Carbone drops down in the boat, his head and back pounding onto my right side, bruising my ribs.

  The breath is knocked out of me. But I push Carbone away and together we try and get back up on our feet. He pulls his service weapon from inside his jacket, and while the boat bobs on the now unstable canal, he goes for the metal fence.

  “You stay here!” he demands.

  “Not on your life!” I shout, while following him.

  Chapter 73

  THE SOUNDS OF SCREAMS and moans from the wounded are entirely familiar to me. So is the smell of blasted granite, acrid smoke, and detonated C-4 explosive. What’s not so familiar is knowing that my fiancée could very well have perished in the ground zero of the blast. As I run to her, I feel caught up in a nightmare where the stone is quickly turning to mud and my legs are sinking into it, slowing me, drowning me.

  Sirens blare from every direction. They echo off the stone walls and inside my head. Police and innocent bystanders shouting. Screaming. As I approach the building and the site of the explosion, I see the first of the dead lying on the narrow canal bank. I see several bodies lying in the water. One of the bodies is unmistakable. It’s Alessandra. She is floating face down on the canal, her long black hair spread over the water’s surface like a child’s doll that’s floating face-down in a filled bathtub. A policeman who is treading water, is attempting to fish her out.

  “Grace!” I scream. “Grace!”

  I’m running, but I no longer feel like I’m running. The scene before me of smoking rubble, shattered glass, a sinking boat and still-life bodies isn’t real. It’s a made- up dream that is manufactured inside my head. I don’t feel like a participant. I feel like a helpless observer looking in. I make it to within a few feet of the building when I find that I can move no further. I can’t move at all as I drop to my knees and that all too familiar pressure builds and grows behind my eyeballs.

  Once more I want to scream, “Grace!”

  I want to throw myself into the blast zone.

  I want to grab hold of her hand and pull her away from the destruction, but I can’t move anymore.