The Abduction: A Novel

by Jonathan Holt

  There was a silence. “Air Force, as a matter of fact,” Mazzanti said. “Came out five years ago. Why are you so interested?”

  “So you’re still, technically, a reservist?”

  Mazzanti leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “Good luck to them if they ever want to call me up. I’m done with that shit. People change, Colonel.”

  “And sometimes people move on to more interesting things. Like undercover work.”

  Mazzanti didn’t reply.

  “So what are you then, Ettore? Defense Intelligence? CIA? INSCOM? Because the one thing I’m absolutely certain of is that you’re not just another student agitator.”

  “This is paranoid bullshit,” Mazzanti said. “Wow.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, Colonel, but I want some.”

  Piola looked straight into the other man’s eyes. “Come on, Ettore,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “An American teenager has been abducted – the daughter of one of your own. Operational secrecy is all very well, but what matters now is helping us to find her.”

  “If I could help, I would. But I can’t. Sorry.”

  Kat said, “There’s a girl, isn’t there, Ettore?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have a girlfriend in the Azione Dal Molin group.” She indicated Piola. “My boss here remembers her sitting on your lap when he came to the peace camp. That’s taking the under-cover thing to a whole new dimension, isn’t it? But I can see how it must be hard not to. After all, there comes a point where it would look suspicious if you didn’t have a partner.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Mazzanti said with a grin. “What does Lucia have to do with all this?”

  “Because if you don’t give us what we want, the next person we’ll go to will be her. I wonder if she’s ever noticed anything suspicious about you? Any absences she can’t explain, perhaps, when you’re off talking to your handlers? Any little deceptions you may have been forced to carry out?” She leaned forward. “Of course, we’ll explain to her that undercover agents are often married. Taking a girlfriend from amongst the protestors is just for a little extra cover. And then, if she can’t stop crying enough to help us, we’ll go to the others and ask them if they’ve ever noticed anything odd about you. Given how high-profile this case is, I’d be surprised if your picture isn’t on the front page of Il Giornale tomorrow. That should be handy, in your line of work.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Jesus,” Mazzanti said disbelievingly. “What a bitch.”

  “What do we call you?” Piola said quietly.

  “You can call me Mazzanti.” He hesitated. “Sir.”

  “Thank you,” Piola said. That one word, with its tacit admission that they were both military people, had changed everything. “So let’s say you were tasked to infiltrate the protestors at Dal Molin. But you were much more than an observer – I saw that for myself. You were a leader; an agent provocateur, even. That’s why the break-in was so well organised. And now I’m looking at a kidnap that was equally well organised. And I’m asking myself, what’s the connection?”

  Mazzanti hesitated again. Then he said, “I was giving them an outlet.”

  “Giving who?” Piola pressed.

  “The protestors. When I first joined them there was all this talk about escalating it to another level. Flash mobs, sit-ins… crazy, random stuff, but some of it might have been quite effective. I thought if I organised a small break-in, it would make them feel like they were doing something.”

  “But you warned your handlers they were coming.”

  “Of course.” Mazzanti smiled thinly. “Couldn’t have them doing any serious damage. Those builders are on a schedule.”

  “And an American child was kidnapped anyway.”

  “Yes, but…” He looked puzzled. “I swear none of my protestors had the brains, let alone the balls, to do such a thing. Sure, there was some sounding off about stuff like that, but it was just wishful thinking.”

  “By Luca Marchesin, for example?”

  Mazzanti nodded. “I knew he’d never have gone through with it. He wasn’t even particularly serious at the time. It was more like, ‘It would serve them right if we renditioned one of their kids.’”

  “But you put it in your report?”

  “Of course. But not as something that might actually happen, you understand. Just as an idea that had been discussed. So that they’d know how strongly people were starting to feel about Dal Molin.”

  “Who’s ‘they’, Ettore? Who did you send the report to? Your handlers in Rome?”

  Mazzanti shook his head. “Rome doesn’t run this one. I’m on a short-term secondment here, building up my cover. My reports go direct to Colonel Carver and the Director of Transformation, Sergio Sagese.”

  FORTY-ONE

  THEY MET HOLLY at the Stucky, in a quiet corner of the rooftop bar, under the guise of getting an update on her conversations with Daniele the night before. When she told them that he believed the kidnappers had recruited a freelance hacker, Piola and Kat exchanged glances. It seemed to support what they were already thinking: that the kidnappers were too well organised to be what they claimed.

  “There was another reason we asked you here, actually,” Piola said quietly. “It’s possible the kidnappers themselves may have links to the US Army.”

  Holly stared at him. “What?”

  “One of the Azione Dal Molin protestors is an undercover agent,” Kat said. “He was sending reports back to Colonel Carver and the man who runs the construction consortium, Sergio Sagese. One of his reports mentioned an off-the-cuff remark by a young activist about kidnapping an American child.”

  Holly shook her head. “That’s crazy. It’s unthinkable – unthinkable – that we would ever be part of such a thing. Not to one of our own.”

  “Even so, it’s a lead that has to be investigated,” Piola said. He paused. “Somehow. We can speak to Sagese, but Carver…”

  She stared at him. “Oh no. You’re not thinking—”

  “We can’t even get on to the base without authorisation,” Kat said. “We need your help.”

  “My help! I don’t—” Holly stopped short. “‘Without authorisation’? So this isn’t even an official line of enquiry?”

  “Not yet,” Piola said. “But that’s better, isn’t it? Keeping it between ourselves for now… That way, if it does turn out to be nothing, it’ll never reach the papers. Whereas something as big as this, if it were to be investigated officially, would be all over the media within minutes.” He gestured at the copy of Il Gazzettino on the table. “Sadly, these journalists seem to have very good links to some of my colleagues.”

  Holly was silent. She could see that keeping this out of the papers would indeed be beneficial. “What exactly do you think the colonel and this other man might have done?” she said at last.

  “We don’t know. It may even be nothing.” Kat explained how the MPs had known the demonstrators were coming, as a result of Mazzanti’s report. “The point is, it makes Carver and Sagese part of a very small pool of people who even knew of Azione Dal Molin’s existence.”

  “The colonel said something when I was there. About having spent a lot of time and money trying to contain the anti-Dal Molin protests. At the time I thought nothing of it, but I guess it fits with him planting Mazzanti. But why would he get involved in anything like this? Sagese too, for that matter? Surely the very last thing either of them wants is to hand the protestors a publicity coup.”

  “Unless it’s to discredit the protest movement as a whole,” Piola said quietly. “A couple of months ago, there was going to be a regional referendum about Dal Molin. It was cancelled by the courts days before it was due to take place.”

  “I recall that. But so what?”

  “In the local elections, some of the candidates are – or at least were – standing on anti-Dal Molin platforms. If they’d done well in the polls, the protestors would hav
e had a voice in the regional parliament. If enough of them did well, and there was even a majority prepared to vote against the American presence here… effectively, the anti-Dal Molin movement would have a democratic mandate. That could have made things pretty difficult, couldn’t it? Three thousand troops and their families arriving here from Germany, just as the host nation turns against them at the ballot box?”

  Kat added, “And I checked – the reason they’re leaving Germany is because of a similar grass-roots protest movement there. The US is suddenly Europe’s persona non grata, going from country to country looking for somewhere to put its bases. But it wants those bases more than ever: all America’s strategic objectives, from Africa through the Middle East, depend on what they call power projection capability. That is, troops and planes stationed around the Mediterranean, on near-constant standby.”

  Holly couldn’t fault Kat’s analysis. But there was still too much that didn’t make sense. “But it’s precisely the… the so-called torture of terror suspects that’s made us unpopular,” she objected. “Why would we risk making ourselves more unpopular still?”

  “We don’t know,” Kat said. “Maybe they’ve already planned how it could play out in a way that will end up with public opinion on the US’s side. Or maybe they’ve simply misjudged the public mood.”

  “That implies the US would interfere in the domestic politics of one of our own allies. We don’t do that kind of thing. Not any more.”

  Piola spread his hands. “Look, you may well be right. But it’s a lead. And there are precious few of those right now. All we’re asking is that you help us investigate it.”

  She was silent, thinking. “You two aren’t even meant to be working together, are you?”

  Kat and Piola looked at each other. “That’s correct,” Piola said at last.

  “Are you sleeping together again?” she asked bluntly.

  “No,” Piola said. “And nor will we be. You have my word on that.”

  Holly nodded. “All right. I’ll ask some questions for you. But only because I think there’s nothing in it, and I want to help you eliminate this line of enquiry and move on to something more realistic. Something that might actually help us find Mia.”

  FORTY-TWO

  “SO NOW THEY think Carver could have something to do with it?”

  Holly shook her head. “That’s putting it too strongly. They’re professionals – they accept it might be nothing more than a coincidence. But they’ve asked me to find out who else he shared his reports with besides Sagese.”

  “Hmm.” Gilroy pushed himself up from the table he was propping himself against and took a turn around the classroom, his hands in his pockets. “So the implication is, far from it being an anti-American terror group behind the kidnap, it could be some murky scheme we’re pursuing amongst ourselves.”

  She’d updated Gilroy on her abortive date with Daniele, but it was this new initiative from Piola and Kat he seemed most interested in.

  “Could it?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t see how.” He looked at her. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t investigate. Hopefully, as you say, it will be nothing more than due diligence.”

  She sighed. “But what I don’t see is how I actually do this. It’s not like I can just walk up to Colonel Carver and demand to interrogate him.”

  “No. But there are two parts to this hypothesis of theirs. One is that Carver himself could be the link. The other is that Mia wasn’t just picked at random. That might be your way in – tell Carver you’re trying to establish why the kidnappers went to such extraordinary lengths to target her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And the next question,” he continued, “will be what to do if you find anything.”

  “Sir?”

  “Even if you find something that vindicates their approach, it may not be in America’s interest to pass it back to the Carabinieri. If it were something that discredits us, for example, and could thus put troops’ lives at risk…” He paused. “It might be best for the Carabinieri to feel that this isn’t a particularly relevant or fruitful avenue of investigation, at least for now.”

  She saw what he was telling her, and was silent.

  He nodded. “In other words, Holly, you should give your friends the impression that the lead Mazzanti has furnished them with – that the USAF itself could somehow be involved with the kidnap – is a dead end. Whilst, of course, continuing to pursue it to the very best of your ability. Can you do that?”

  “I think so,” she said hesitantly. “If I can bring anything I find back to you.”

  “Of course. Share everything with me, and meanwhile let’s be cautious who else we speak to.”

  As she turned to go, he said, “One other thing… How was it that a full colonel of the Carabinieri came to be investigating the break-in at Dal Molin in the first place?”

  “Oh…” She told him about the skeleton. “It seems like that was the only unpredictable thing in the whole operation,” she added. “When Mazzanti sent the protestors into the construction site, he could never have known they’d come across something like that.”

  “Indeed.” He rubbed his hand thoughtfully over his chin. “If I was Colonel Piola, I’d be looking very closely at that.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” He seemed surprised at her question. “Because whoever’s behind this operation, they clearly like and expect things to go exactly to plan.”

  FORTY-THREE

  AFTER THE WALLING, they let her sleep for a few hours. She woke with her shoulders still sore and her arms covered in bruises where Harlequin had grabbed her.

  She unzipped the jumpsuit and, experimentally, felt her back with the tips of her fingers. Nothing seemed to be broken. Like all the techniques she’d been subjected to so far, it seemed to have been carefully calibrated so as not to cause any lasting damage.

  It was that – the considered nature of what they were doing – that almost made it worse.

  The door chain rattled. It was Harlequin, bringing her food. It was real food today, or what passed for it here: a pastry and a can of Sprite. Her reward, she supposed, for enduring the walling he had given her last night.

  “You’re evil,” she hissed as he put the tray down, no longer caring if she angered him.

  “What was done to you less than half a dozen times would be done to a real detainee a hundred times or more in one session,” he said calmly. “And with a great deal more violence.”

  “A real detainee could confess. Then it would stop.”

  “Only if they were guilty.”

  “America doesn’t do this to people who aren’t guilty.”

  “Please, Mia,” he scoffed. “You’re a clever girl. Today you are understandably upset, but if you just think for a moment you will realise what a stupid statement that is. There are currently one hundred and sixty-four detainees in Guantanamo alone who have been interrogated – tortured – for over a decade. Yet in all that time they haven’t provided the authorities with any evidence which would allow them to be tried in a court of law. Are they innocent? Or are the interrogation methods they have been subjected to ineffective? It must be one or the other.”

  “The President’s already said he’s going to close Guantanamo.”

  “Oh, yes.” Behind the mask, she could tell he was smiling bitterly. “The 2009 Executive Order. We had such high hopes of Obama, you know, when he first took office. He said that Guantanamo would be closed by January 22nd, 2010. Such a precise date! You’d think if they were just a few hours late, there’d be trouble. But it’s still open. And do you know why?”

  She shook her head.

  “Because he wasn’t actually going to give the Guantanamo prisoners a trial, let alone release them. He was just going to transfer them to other American jails, but without legal rights. Even your Congress baulked at that. And so they stay in Guantanamo. In limbo.” He leaned closer to her. “A decade, Mia. Think of that. Ther
e are people in that prison who were younger than you when they were taken, and who have now spent nearly a third of their lives in that place. Can you imagine their despair?”

  “Yes,” she said with quiet emphasis. “I can.”

  He stopped at that.

  “Besides, America has the right to defend itself,” she added.

  He recovered. “And so do we.”

  “But if you accept that principle—” she began.

  He stood up. “This is all very amusing, Mia, but it isn’t you we need to convince, and I have things to do. You have one hour before we need to begin.”

  He took the tray and left. She noticed that there had been, once again, a tiny flash of anger – not when she swore at him, but when she’d challenged him.

  He likes the sound of his own voice, she thought. To preach. Not to debate.

  Interesting.

  FORTY-FOUR

  HOLLY WENT TO see Colonel Carver, saying that she needed to update him on Major Elston’s condition.

  It was only partly a pretext. Being told that his daughter was being walled had devastated the major, and hearing that her presence at Club Libero was now all over the papers as well had finished him off. Holly hadn’t seen him break down before – indeed, the granite-hard military demeanour was so much a part of his character that when he collapsed, sobbing, she’d become genuinely alarmed.

  “At one point he grabbed me by the arms,” she reported to Carver. “He was saying over and over, ‘I’ll give them anything. Do anything, whatever they want.’”

  “Hmm.” Carver was thoughtful. “And the Italians? Are they any closer to finding her?”

  Holly shook her head. “Negative, sir. The investigation is getting bigger every day. But the kidnappers don’t appear to have made a single slip since they started.” She hesitated. “One thing the Carabinieri have established is that one of the protestors, Mazzanti, is actually working for us.”

  Carver seemed unperturbed. “I thought that might come out eventually. And if the Carabinieri know about it today, doubtless it will be in the Italian media tomorrow.”