The Disappearance of Grace

by Vincent Zandri

  The pressure behind my eyes grows so intense, I feel like my eyeballs are about to pop out of their sockets. The vision before me begins to go gray and then black. Like my eyelids are made of steel. The steel curtains have come down and bolted shut. I fall forward and feel the cool, damp of the cobble-covered bank, and the sharp shards of shattered glass and splintered brick that pierces the skin on my cheek.

  Knowing that all is lost, I fall into a deep, dark unconsciousness.

  Chapter 74

  WHEN I COME TO I am lying in a bed, my now-seeing eyes slowly focusing in on a white ceiling. Hospital white. It takes a moment or two for reality to sink in. For my skin to shed the sensation that makes me want to think I’m waking up from a long and vivid nightmare about my Grace being abducted and killed. But when I feel the pinch of the intravenous line having been needled into the blue vein on my left forearm, and a nervous Detective Carbone standing at the end of my bed, I know that I have not been dreaming.

  I have, in fact, been living this nightmare.

  “Grace,” I whisper, my voice feeling as though it’s physically peeling itself away from the back of my throat. “Grace. Is she alive?”

  Carbone’s eyes go wide. He approaches me.

  “Grace was not there,” he says, his eyes peering into mine.

  “She wasn’t there,” I repeat. “She wasn’t in the building?”

  “It was a trap. A—how you say in America—a setup. Neither Grace nor the overcoat man were inside the building when the explosive was detonated. That bookstore has been empty for some years now. No one was inside. There are no more books to be found in there, other than a few scattered editions. It was an empty space, which made it all the easier for Hakeemullah to access it with no one knowing.”

  I feel at once relieved and at the same time horrified that this Taliban agent still has my Grace, and has the means to set off IEDs in the middle of tourist-filled heaven on earth like Venice.

  “That bomb was meant for me.”

  Carbone nods.

  “Perhaps,” he says. “But it killed three others instead.”

  “Alessandra Betti,” I whisper.

  Another nod.

  “Lowrance,” I say.

  A final nod.

  “They were all in the lead boat that traversed the feeder canal. They were killed instantly when the bomb exploded only a few feet away from them.”

  I lie back on the pillow and feel the weight of three innocent deaths bearing upon my soul. My life is measured in the amount of casualties I can cause. My life. A soldier’s life.

  “Hakeemullah,” I say after a beat. “Have you heard anything from him since the blast? Did he claim responsibility? Has he attempted to make contact?”

  “He has thus far been silent. But we are scouring Venice for him without trying to alarm a daily stream of seven thousand or more visitors. The blast has, of course, made international headlines. Nothing like this has happened since a bomb was detonated outside the Uffizi in Firenze in ’91. Now the story of your missing fiancée is spreading all over the world. Also the story of your operation in Afghanistan.”

  An image of the Afghan village as it appeared after the bombing fills my head, the dead and wounded scattered about the village center. The scene is replaced with the first floor of a Venetian building exploding in a white-hot blast.

  An eye for an eye.

  “Revenge,” I say, sitting up, the needle in my left arm pinching my flesh. “That’s what this is about. Revenge.”

  “What happened in that village, Captain?” Carbone begs. “What happened after the bombs went off?”

  I picture a bearded elder standing at the far end of the village square, his back pressed up against the stone well. He’s fumbling around inside his robe, reaching for something hidden inside there. I see the black barrel of an AK raised up, aimed for me and my squad. Pointblank. I see a dozen robed elders standing on either side of him. They are doing the same thing. Reaching for weapons hidden under their robes.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss what happened after the bombing,” I say.

  “But it was bad, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Worse than you can imagine.”

  “I am old enough to recall your Viet Nam. The things that happened there;to some of the villages. The people who lived in them. Women. Children.”

  “It’s a hard thing to live in fear, Detective Carbone. And in war, you live in fear all the time.”

  “I have been to war. And I have now witnessed the things it can do to people like you.”

  “And now Grace.”

  “Yes. And now Grace.”

  * * *

  Soon a nurse comes in, excuses herself in Italian. Carbone nods in her direction, takes a step back as she checks the levels on my drip and then proceeds to take my temperature.

  “I’m not sick,” I mumble over the electronic thermometer.

  But this young, brunette nurse merely gazes up at me and smiles like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. And she doesn’t.

  “I’m not sick,” I repeat as she removes the thermometer after it beeps. I say it directly to Carbone.

  “You’ve been through a lot,” he says. “You passed out. Your eyes. Your nerves. You are here to recover. But all you have found is turmoil, threats, attacks, and now death. Rest here while we figure out our next move, Captain.”

  The nurse reads the thermometer, makes a note on my chart which hangs on the end of the bed by a metal hook. She then tosses me one last smile and exits the room.

  “What is our next move, Detective?”

  Carbone crosses arms over chest. I sense that he’s jonesing for a cigarette right about now. But you can’t smoke in the hospital. Not even in Italy.

  “Another Interpol agent will no doubt be assigned to this case. Perhaps even a team, now that the situation has gone public and involved a bombing which resulted in the death of a journalist along with one of their own.”

  “That can take how long?”

  “Hours. Perhaps a day. Like I said, this is a very public and sensitive situation for them now. If it’s discovered that a threat of a terroristic event already existed and law enforcement wasn’t notified, there could be public relations problems for both the Italian government and Interpol.”

  “Meanwhile, Grace is still out there. With him. The man in the overcoat. Hakeemullah.”

  “She is alive. That’s what matters. Believe me, Captain, he will make contact with us again and it will be soon.” He gathers his overcoat and his hat. “I will let you get some rest for now. In a little while I will come back to check on you and perhaps have a plan in place for finding Grace.”

  “Please,” I say.

  “No more bombs,” he says as he leaves the room.

  “No one else dies,” I say.

  Chapter 75

  THE DETECTIVE ISN’T GONE for more than a full minute when I lie back on the bed, my head sunk deep into the pillow, my body drowning in a sea of exhaustion. Soon I am once more climbing that hill to the bombed-out village. The dream fast forwards so that I am not yet up the hill but somehow I’ve reached the spot where the boy lies on his back, staring up at me with wide blue eyes and a round rosy-cheeked face covered in a thin layer of white dust. His arms are spread out over his head, his fingers curled up into fists. His hair is jet black and wet with crimson blood. His white shirt has been forced up beyond his waist, and his short pants are smeared in blood and mud and torn from the violence. My eyes drift farther down to his legs. Pale thighs untouched by age or war, but only a few more inches down, his shins and feet do not resemble anything human. They look more like the legs of a big insect or maybe an alien. Like the charred limb from a tree that burned in a firestorm. Blackened sticks for legs, and burnt twigs for toes and feet.

  The memory shifts then, and I am no longer standing over the boy.

  Now the village elders are all lined up against the stone wall at the far end of the village center. There must be a half d
ozen of them, standing over their dead. Lifeless veiled women dressed in black burkas. Dead dogs, their bowels spilling out between their hind legs. A dead pig. A dead rooster. A dead horse.

  My squad of twelve men is lined up shoulder to shoulder. The butts of their M4s pressed up against their shoulders, barrels aimed directly for the elders.

  “On three!” someone shouts out. “We send these Haji mofos to paradise on three!”

  A pause ensues. It’s filled with the sound of the wind whipping through the valley. Its chill evokes the presence of both God and the devil.

  “One!” shouts the voice. “Two…”

  But something happens then. Between two and three.

  The elders reach into their robes, raise up the barrels on their hidden AK47s, begin blasting away…

  * * *

  I wake up, startled, breathing heavily. But then I fall back to sleep after a time, and when I wake up again, it is full night. The room is dark, with the only visible light coming from the space between the wood door and the tile floor and from the small square-shaped glass embedded into it towards its top. I lie on my back, my mouth pasty dry, a profound thirst making me feel like I’m back in the Afghan desert instead of inside a Venetian hospital.

  I try and reach for the water cup on the table beside me. But I find I don’t have the strength to lift my arm. It’s then I realize I must be medicated. Sedated. Makes sense too. I am already a casualty of war. The victim of severe PTSD. I suffer from an unexplainable temporary blindness. And now I have become the casualty of another kind of war.

  The door opens.

  A person steps inside, closes the door behind him. Not all the way, but only partially, so as not to disturb my sleep by letting the light in. With open eyes I watch the figure approach me. This is not the brunette nurse of this afternoon. This is a man, dressed in green scrubs, a matching green surgical mask covering his mouth and a cap on his head. He does not bother to see if I’m awake or not. He does not speak to me. He goes straight for the drip, unplugging it at the top and adding another clear vial tube to the line, and then reconnecting the line.

  “Hey,” I try and say. “Hey.” But my mouth is so dry all I can manage to utter is a pathetic grunt.

  I attempt to move, but it’s impossible. I want to scream, shout, pull the thin cable that will activate the alarm. But I can’t reach it. I can only lie on my back and pray that this man is doing something that will help me. Not kill me.

  His job completed, the smocked man turns, goes for the door. Opening the door, he shoots me a look over his left shoulder. In the light from the hallway, I see that he possesses a cropped black beard and short black hair. He smiles at me.

  “I. See.” he whispers before walking back out into the corridor.

  Chapter 76

  I’M SEEING BLACK SKY when I open my eyes. Black sky filled with brilliant stars. I wonder if I have died and this is what it looks like to be travelling to heaven. It’s precisely the way I imagined it as a child. Leaving my earthly body and becoming an angel who soars through the time and space on a pair of wings made of white feathers.

  But I am not travelling through space and I am not dead.

  I am instead lying flat on my back, all one hundred eighty pounds of my body pressed against the flat bottom of this wood boat. Wrists duct taped together. Ankles duct taped in the same manner. A duct tape gag covering my mouth.

  I am the newest hostage of the man who is driving this boat. I am looking up at him. I see him plain enough in the dim, bow-mounted red and white lights. He is tall and bearded. His black hair is cut close to the scalp. He wears a long overcoat which has become his signature trademark. Wears it in direct defiance of the police who, by now, must have memorized his physical description.

  He is the overcoat man.

  His name is Hakeemullah.

  I bombed his village.

  He took my Grace.

  Now, he has taken me.

  Chapter 77

  THE WATER BENEATH THE boat is rough. Choppy.

  I’m straining to get a bearing. But for the time being, all I see is night sky. I try and gather some clues, make a logical determination as to my position relative to Venice. We seem to be riding on open water. Unsettled open water. The basin comes immediately to mind. Makes sense too. The overcoat man would want to drug me, sneak me out of the hospital under the apparent blind eyes of police security, under the cover of darkness. He would want to transport me off of the main island as quickly and efficiently as possible. He’s transporting me in a wood, flat-bottomed boat out over the basin, in the dark, to one of the smaller islands.

  Precisely which island he’s taking me to doesn’t stay a mystery for very long. It takes only a few minutes for the night sky to be interrupted by a structure. Lifting my head up off the boat floor I’m able to make out the top of a tower made of brick and clay tile. A tower that’s lit up with lamps from top to bottom.

  The church tower of San Giorgio Maggiore.

  It’s where I’m heading.

  An ancient island that’s dedicated to a saint.

  The overcoat man pulls up to a dock, the water never still.

  Several men are there to greet him.

  One of them jumps down into the boat. He drapes a thick black cloth hood around my head so that I am once more blinded even if I can see. He and the other men lift me out of the boat and quickly carry me over the dock and out over cobbled-covered ground. They do not speak, but I make out the soles of their boots slapping against the cobbles. We travel like this for what seems like an hour, but what must constitute only a few minutes.

  It’s night. The middle of the night more than likely. The island is asleep at this hour. The only people awake will be the bums and the drunks. Even the fishermen will still be asleep.

  * * *

  We stop.

  A door is unlocked and opened. I recognize the sound of tumblers dropping, a mechanical bolt releasing and the squeak of hinges that are both old, forced to survive in salty sea air and bear the burden of a heavy wood door. Quickly I am shoved through an opening so narrow, both my arms take a pounding against the heavy wood door frame.

  As soon as I’ve cleared the opening, the door slams shut behind me.

  For the first time, someone speaks.

  I do not know what they are saying, but I recognize the language. It’s Tajik. These are northern Afghans. Perhaps survivors from the hot village I was forced to neutralize. That bombing was just the start of the terrible nightmare that would befall the village. I wasn’t aware of survivors. But the Tajiks, they know how to hide underground. They know how to survive in tunnels and caves. They know how to survive the centuries of invaders. They know how to stay alive. Know how to live behind the black veil of death.

  Now, the sound of a padlock being unlocked, and a heavy chain being pulled out from steel rings that no doubt secure another door or gate. Next comes the squeal of more hinges. I’m moving again, this time at an incline. I’m being transported down a flight of stone stairs into a basement. A basement that immediately surrounds me with cold damp and that smells of intense must and mold. Most of Venice can’t support basements because of the high water table. But this island contains some high ground. Enough for some more centrally located buildings to support some partial basements or crawlspaces. This must be one of those structures.

  When we come to the bottom of the stairs, I am carted another few feet into the interior of the moldy room. I am dropped onto my back onto a wet gravel floor. I collide with the packed earth so violently, it robs me of my breath. A fist grabs hold of the top of my hood and it is suddenly yanked off. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and for a brief few seconds, I’m convinced I’m about to once more lose my eyesight. But I don’t lose my eyesight. I begin to see clearly.

  I’ve been taken to a basement room surrounded by old walls of stacked stone. Ancient stone. The room is as barren as an old woman’s womb and just as cold. But it is not empty. Sitting up against
the far wall, her knees pressed up against her chest, is my fiancée.

  My Grace.

  * * *

  She is dressed only in her black underwear.

  Duct tape covers her mouth and binds her wrists. She’s awake, staring at me with wide eyes, her now filthy hair draping her face like a veil. I can tell she’s trying to say something to me, but she can’t possibly speak through that gag. My heart beats, but not for me. It beats because my Grace is alive.

  Grace. Is. Alive.

  The overcoat man has done something to her, however. Something I can’t explain. He’s painted her legs. Not the entire length of both her legs, but just from the knees down, including her feet. The skin is covered in red paint. Paint that resembles blood. It’s as if he skinned her and left the flesh exposed to the air.

  But my fiancée hasn’t been skinned.

  She’s been painted.

  Why he’s done this to her, I have no idea. Only that he’s done it. And she is alive.

  My Grace is alive.

  * * *

  Coming from above. Footsteps. Footsteps pounding on the floorboards. Then, a door opening. Footsteps making the stone stairs down into the basement.

  It’s him. The overcoat man. Hakeemullah.

  He’s holding a long blade in his right hand. It’s not exactly long enough to be a sword, but it’s too long to be a knife. The blade is wide, shiny, and curved at the end in the shape of a crescent moon. The weapon of a horse-mounted warrior maybe. A mullah.

  He allows the blade to brush his right leg, the sharp edge of the steel grazing against loose trousers. Looking up at him from where I’m lying on the dirt floor, I can see him move his mouth. He’s saying something, but he’s speaking it silently. Until the silence becomes a whisper.

  “I. See.” he says. “I. See.”

  My eyes shift from his face to Grace’s face. She too is watching him, her chest bulging in and out in great heaves of inhales and exhales. I know she’s panicking. She sees the knife. She’s watching it graze his leg. She’s already feeling the pain and the burn of the knife as it enters into her skin and flesh. I cannot see her like this. Not when I am so helpless.