Malli looked thoughtful. “If it was some kind of spear-phishing exercise—” He caught Kat’s expression. “That is, if the hacker sent Major Elston an email warning him about the dangers of letting his children access the internet unsupervised – making it look like it was an offer from a bona fide computer magazine, say, along with some spurious five-star reviews and a link to their recommended product – then when he downloaded it on his own computer and installed it on Mia’s, it could have infected both of them.”
“It’s that easy?”
“Oh, yes. The neat thing, though, is using the father as an intermediary. Most teenagers these days are pretty clued-up about not downloading unverified software, but their parents are a much easier touch. Is he a protective dad?”
“Very, where Mia’s concerned.”
“Which suggests the whole exercise was specifically tailored to them. That’s a sophisticated operation. As are the films, incidentally. That trick with the embedded link isn’t something your average computer geek could set up.”
A sophisticated operation. She’d made a similar observation herself, she recalled, about the way the kidnappers had snatched Mia from the club. And now here was further evidence of their cunning. But what did it mean? It was exactly the kind of vague but promising lead that, once upon a time, she would have loved to have discussed with Aldo Piola.
Back at her own computer, she did a search for the skull-and-wings symbol she’d seen tattooed on the woman’s arm in the Club Libero tapes. It was, she learned, a symbol that had been used many times throughout history, from the Harley-Davidson logo right back to seventeenth-century gravestones, where it symbolised the transition between the physical and the spiritual worlds. For a similar reason, it had frequently been used by Freemasons and other secret societies.
It was always tempting to look for some kind of weird, esoteric meaning in a symbol, but somehow she doubted that was the right thing to do here. The artwork on the woman’s arm was crude – hardly the kind of thing you’d use to mark your induction into some cabbalistic cult.
Then she came across another reference.
The first combat mission of the 490th Bombardment Squadron was flown in 1943 in B-25 Mitchell bombers bearing the “Skull and Wings” emblem, an adaptation of the personal insignia of the commanding officer. For this reason it is sometimes referred to as “Death from Above”.
Death from Above… The phrase seemed familiar somehow. Something she’d glimpsed on the base, perhaps? She tried to wind her mind back to the shopping mall on Camp Ederle’s Main Street. But it was no use, the memory had gone.
It was after nine, and she was exhausted. The operations room had long since emptied. It was time to go home and get some sleep.
She was reaching for her computer to turn it off when she saw that her browser was showing an updated newsfeed.
MIA: FOURTH FILM RELEASED
Shit. She brought up a news site.
Mia, wearing the orange jumpsuit, was once again standing, her shackled arms stretched above her newly shaved head. Her eyes gazed at the viewer. They were dull with pain and fatigue, but there was also something in them Kat hadn’t seen there before: a mixture of defiance and pride.
Kat recognised that look. It was the expression she herself wore when she was taking too much shit and didn’t intend to take much more. It was a look that said, You can do what you like to me. But you won’t take away my self-respect.
The image cut to a title.
THE DETAINEE IS PLACED IN THE VERTICAL SHACKLING POSITION TO BEGIN SLEEP DEPRIVATION.
The rope attached to Mia’s wrists was tightened, pulling her arms up so that she was lifted almost onto her toes.
THE MAXIMUM DURATION OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION AUTHORIZED BY THE CIA IS 180 HOURS, AFTER WHICH THE DETAINEE MUST BE PERMITTED TO SLEEP FOR AT LEAST 8 HOURS.
A third title faded up:
GOOD NIGHT!
Her own exhaustion vanished instantly. If Mia wasn’t going to get any sleep, then neither would she. She’d get some food, then come back and continue trawling through what slender leads they had until something shook itself loose.
THIRTY-THREE
AS SHE LEFT the Carabinieri building, Kat hesitated. In her life, she had tackled armed men and been blown up. She cleaned sexist insults off her locker on a regular basis, and worse things too from time to time. She had no difficulty approaching a man she liked the look of and telling him she wanted to go to bed with him, or telling one who wouldn’t take no for an answer to crawl back up his mother’s vagina and fuck her instead. But she found herself reluctant to do something most Italian men did almost without thinking: to eat alone in a restaurant. It was something Italian women just didn’t do.
Screw it. I’m hungry.
There were a dozen trattorie within a hundred yards of Campo San Zaccaria. Most carabinieri went to the nearest, Da Nino on Campo San Provolo. For that very reason, she headed a little further away, to Alla Conchiglia on Fondamenta San Lorenzo. She took along a file of paperwork, so she could occupy herself while she ate.
As she stepped inside she saw Aldo Piola at the nearest table, a fork in his hand and a similar file open in front of him. He looked up, and saw her too.
Quickly, she turned to leave. But then she turned back.
“I don’t see why I should go somewhere else just because you’re here,” she told him. “And it’s going to be really strange if we sit at different tables. Besides, I want to talk to you. So I might as well sit down, and if you don’t like it you’ll just have to get up and walk out. Which would be crazy when you’ve already got your food. Are those moleche? I didn’t know the season had started.”
He didn’t tell her she was talking too much, or that they weren’t allowed to do this. He just gave a wry shrug and gestured to the chair opposite, which she still hadn’t quite had the courage to pull out.
“Not that I mean anything else by this, of course,” she added as she sat down. “We’ve both moved on, as they say.”
Given the havoc their affair had wreaked on both their lives, it perhaps wasn’t the most tactful way of putting it. But he didn’t point that out either, just pushed the bowl of moleche towards her.
“Have some.”
She speared one and took an experimental bite. The shell of crisp batter – sprinkled with salt and a squeeze of sharp lemon – exploded in her mouth, the rich, sweet crab juices bursting down her throat. For a long moment she said nothing, concentrating on the flavour that, more than any other for her, marked the end of winter.
Twice a year without fail, Kat’s grandmother Nonna Renata would head off to the market to buy a basket of live spider crabs during the all-too-brief season known as la muta – “the change” – during which the tiny crustaceans shed their shells in order to grow a larger one. Like most Venetians, she usually served this delicacy stuffed, with the unusual proviso that it was the crab, not the cook, which did the stuffing, the crabs having been placed in a bowl of batter mixture to gorge themselves for a few hours before being tipped into a pan of hot oil. It might be cold and dark outside, but the first moleche of the year were as sure a harbinger of spring as the coming of Lent or the changing of the clocks. It meant that soon the market would be full of crunchy castrauri, tiny artichokes nipped off the stalks to make room for their larger brethren. There would be bruscandoli shoots too, the first sproutings of the hop plant, and then sparasini, tender white asparagus, and finally the fresh peas, grown in the salty soil of Sant’Erasmo, so crucial to a Venetian summer risotto.
Piola speared another crab himself. The restaurant owner, unbidden, came and poured Kat some wine. It was Vespaiolo, sharp and acidic; the perfect counterpoint to the rich, salty crab.
It seemed wrong to be eating and drinking like this while Mia was suffering. But it also made the food more important, somehow: a reminder of what really mattered.
“The thing is,” she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m desperate to impress General S
aito, but I don’t have anyone to tell me what’s important, what I should be prioritising. I can feel myself getting frustrated, and that makes me even more aimless.” She looked him in the eye. “I want you to be my boss, Aldo. Like you were before we screwed things up.”
She thought he was going to tell her to leave. But he only said, “If I’m to be your boss, you’d better start calling me ‘sir’.”
“It’s a deal. Sir.”
He poured himself more wine. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on a case that’s more horrific, or one so cleverly constructed to have us chasing our own tails. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned, and I’ll do the same?”
She told him everything. Just the simple act of putting it all into words – of gauging from his expression when he was intrigued, or thoughtful, or puzzled; of seeing from his quick nods when he approved of various decisions she’d made, or from his frown when he disagreed – helped her to sort and order events in her own mind. His phone buzzed several times as she spoke, but he ignored it.
“But I keep wondering,” she concluded, “if this whole thing isn’t just too slick. Hackers, films, fires, masks… It just seems incredible that a bunch of amateurs could execute something as complex as this without making a single mistake. Am I being crazy, or is something more going on here?”
He looked at her. “I’ve been asking myself the exact same thing,” he said quietly. “The link between Azione Dal Molin and the kidnappers, for example: if I hadn’t been called to that investigation over the skeleton, I’d probably never have questioned it. But the more I think about it, the more suspicious I become. Was the break-in a simple publicity stunt, ahead of Mia’s kidnap? Or a sleight of hand to make us think we know exactly who’s behind this, when the reality is rather more complex?”
“But if it isn’t the protestors, then who?”
He shrugged. “Terrorists? I doubt it – they wouldn’t hide behind some local protest group; they’d want to claim it for themselves. The Mafia? Hardly – they’d be after a ransom, not a referendum. But who else is there?”
She said slowly, “The Americans themselves?”
He shot her a glance. “Are you serious?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “But there was a woman at the club who might have been one of the kidnappers, who had what might be an American military tattoo on her arm. And it seems to me there must have been more than one team tailing Mia, too.”
“Military precision,” he said, almost to himself. “And who’s better at that than the military?”
“But if it is them, I don’t see why they’d kidnap one of their own children, let alone subject her to what most people would call torture.” She looked at him. “Should we take this line of enquiry to Saito? Ask him if we can investigate further?”
“No,” he decided. “Saito’s a political animal: I saw how nervous he got about upsetting the Americans over that skeleton investigation. If we go to him now, he’ll simply order us not to pursue it.”
She nodded, remembering how quickly Saito had offered her own services to the Civilian Liaison Office as a favour, and how he’d caved in to a request by Major Elston to have her reinstated.
“Better to follow up these leads ourselves, then go to him as soon as we find anything concrete,” he added. “If we find anything concrete, that is. They’ve given us precious little to work with so far.”
She hesitated. “What about Holly Boland?”
“Your American friend? How could she help?”
“I don’t know,” Kat said truthfully. “She’s certainly no maverick. But she wants to get to the bottom of this just as much as we do.”
They discussed the case late into the night. The carafe of wine was emptied and replaced by one of grappa; and that was almost finished, too, before they were done.
THIRTY-FOUR
SHE WOULD NEVER have believed that standing still could be so painful.
It had been bearable for the first forty minutes or so. Then her muscles had started to cramp. To relieve the pressure in her legs, she sagged as far as the rope would allow. But that only put more pressure on her arms. After just a few seconds, the pain in her shoulders felt like white-hot blades. So she raised herself up onto tiptoe to ease that pain, which made her legs cramp all over again.
She tried to devise a programme of stretches, kicking out with first one leg, then the other, and jumping, so far as she was able, up and down on the spot. It worked for about twenty minutes. Then the pain returned, worse than ever.
The room was in darkness now, apart from the pool of light from one portable arc lamp. Sometimes she thought she glimpsed Bauta in the shadows, filming her, the red light of the camera a tiny dot in the blackness.
After two hours she was exhausted. She wanted more than anything to sleep. But if she relaxed her position even slightly, her weight pulled on her arms and the pain flashed through her shoulders and neck again, waking her up.
Hearing a sound, she opened her eyes. Harlequin was standing there, watching her, his masked face in shadow.
“Let me go,” she begged him.
For a moment he didn’t reply. Then he said, so quietly she could barely hear, “Your country believes that it is acceptable to do this to someone for seven days without letting them sleep.”
“But I don’t do those things,” she wailed. “I’m not America. Why take it out on me?”
“You are not America,” he agreed. “But you are American. You are what your country calls ‘collateral damage’ and everybody else ‘an innocent civilian’. According to the United Nations, over twenty thousand people like you – twenty thousand! – have been murdered by your countrymen in Afghanistan alone.” He took a step forward, and she could see the light of zealotry in his eyes. “Some were killed by drones sent from bases here in Italy. If your suffering saves a dozen such lives, will it have been worth it? What about a thousand? Ten thousand?”
“I’m sixteen. Doesn’t that make a difference?”
“Oh, yes. Sixteen. In America, that almost makes you a child, doesn’t it? Too young to drink, to vote. But not too young to imprison. Over two thousand children younger than you have been detained without trial during this so-called war on terror. There have been children in Guantanamo, did you know that? There were even two little boys captured by the CIA specifically to be used as levers against their father. Their names were Yousef and Abed and they were aged nine and seven. Or do you think you’re unique because you’re a woman? Then you can’t have read the report by Antonio Taguba, the former US general, saying that in Abu Ghraib prison US guards filmed themselves raping female detainees. That was after they’d photographed their breasts and used their buttocks as paintball targets.” He paused. “Think yourself lucky that we only do the official treatments. The ones that were authorised by your President.”
“I can tell you’re sincere,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “But you’ve already made your point, with the films. Wouldn’t it be even better if you let me go? You’ll have proved you’re different to America; more merciful, more humane.”
He laughed – an incredulous bark. “And? You think your President will say, ‘Oh, they let her go. I’d better close an air base or two.’ Being merciful won’t change anything.”
The intensity in his voice frightened her, but she kept going. “Neither will keeping me here. America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. Everyone knows that.”
“Yes? Then why are you pulling out of Afghanistan?” He shook his head. “They’ll listen – they’ll have to. But more importantly, so will others. You Americans are only in our country because every government we’ve ever had has been too scared and too corrupt to tell them to leave. But the Italian people aren’t so cowardly.”
“Or maybe the Italian people will be so ashamed of what you’re doing that they’ll go the other way,” she said.
The sudden, searing anger in him erupted then. “Shame? Don’t speak to me of shame! It’s America
that should be ashamed! And they will be!”
“What do you mean?” she said fearfully. “Ashamed of what? What are you going to do to me?”
He reached down to a package at his feet and pulled something from it. When he held it up she saw that it was a diaper, one large enough for an adult.
“From now on, you will wear this. It makes it more convenient for the guards, you see? Not to have to unshackle the prisoners during the night. And if it humiliates the prisoners too – well, that was never the intention. Oh, no. Just a coincidence.” He gestured at her. “Sometimes they leave it on for days. Until the prisoner gets sores and broken skin from standing in their own shit.”
She took a deep breath. “Wait. All you care about is what it looks like on film, right? So let me go back to my cell for now, then tie me back up in the morning. It’ll look like I’ve been here all night.”
“Why should I?” he demanded.
“Because you’re not a bad man,” she whispered.
He took another pace forward. She wasn’t sure if he was going to hit her or release her.
For a long moment he did neither. She could see, behind the mask, the black depths of his own eyes; his long lashes.
Reaching up, he untied the rope.
“Thank you,” she gabbled, rubbing her wrists. “I promise you won’t regret it.”
“Don’t speak,” he commanded gruffly. “Go to your cell. If you say another word, I’ll tie you back up.”
THIRTY-FIVE
HOLLY BOLAND TOOK from her closet a little-used Stefanel dress of clinging grey cashmere. Coupled with a bra from La Perla in Vicenza, the stretchy wool somehow gave even her sinewy body a suggestion of curves.
It had been weeks since she’d worn anything but fatigues; months since she’d used make-up or left her blonde hair unpinned. After her big Belleville boots, the kitten heels she also pulled from the closet felt like gossamer. Gossamer that, bizarrely, hurt like hell, whereas her Bellevilles were as comfortable and familiar as slippers.
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