“Hold on.” She heard him giving some commands to another officer. Then, coming back on the line, he said, “Good work. Leave the search team to finish up there and get back to Venice.”
As they drove down the autostrada, Panicucci looked across at her. “Do you think we’re closing in?”
“It certainly feels like it. But those mountains are incredibly remote. Assuming that’s where he’s holed up, I’m guessing it’ll take a while to pinpoint the exact location.”
Panicucci said hesitantly, “What kind of dongle do you suppose he has?”
What do you mean?”
“I bought an internet dongle myself when I went on holiday, so that I didn’t have to pay hotel rates for wi-fi. But even though it was pay-as-you-go, I still had to show ID when I bought it. I asked why – apparently it’s a regulation, so the dongle could be linked to my TIM account. All these films he’s been uploading… he must have needed to top up the data allowance, and probably more than once. If he has a mobile phone account, perhaps the dongle will be registered to it too.”
“That’s a good suggestion. Add it to the TIM request, will you?”
Back in the operations room, she noticed that people were now looking at her in a different way – no longer with a kind of sly, surreptitious disapproval, but with curiosity, as if reassessing her, and even the odd blatant flash of professional jealousy. But Saito himself was frustrated.
“There are over sixty Caliaris in Alto Adige – it’s a common surname up there. And TIM are saying it’ll take at least a day to get back to us about the dongle.”
“A day!”
He nodded. “It’s crazy.”
It was extraordinary, she thought, that she’d managed to get hold of Caliari’s Facebook traffic faster than his phone company could identify whether they had any records relating to his mobile broadband. She hesitated. “There might be a quicker way.”
“Such as?”
“When we were first trying to trace Mia’s phone, Second Lieutenant Boland got Daniele Barbo to look it up on TIM’s system. He did it within half an hour.”
Now it was Saito’s turn to look appalled. “Dear God.”
“We could do the same thing now,” she suggested.
He looked torn. “There’s no way I can authorise that, Captain.”
“I understand, sir. I’ll be back as soon as I find anything.”
As she was leaving the operations room, she saw a new film flashing up on the screens. Evidently Carnivia had managed to get itself back online.
The footage showed Mia, apparently recovered, tied to a chair. The caption read:
CIA-FUNDED RESEARCH AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY SHOWED THAT SENSORY DEPRIVATION USING GLOVES, GOGGLES AND EARMUFFS COULD INDUCE HALLUCINATIONS WITHIN 24 HOURS AND COMPLETE BREAKDOWN AND DISINTEGRATION OF PERSONALITY WITHIN 48 HOURS.
ACCORDING TO THE USA, SENSORY DEPRIVATION IS NOT TORTURE.
AT 9 P.M. TONIGHT SHE WILL NOT BE TORTURED.
“Daniele,” Kat said when she reached the prison. “This beautiful fucked-up mess just got a bit uglier and more fucked up.”
She told him what she needed from him, and he nodded. “I can do that.”
Opening the laptop she’d brought with her, he logged on to the TIM website. “This is how I did it before,” he explained as he typed some code into the “Email address” and “Password” boxes. “I doubt they’ve got round to fixing the vulnerability yet.”
Sure enough, within moments he was inside TIM’s system. Then he frowned.
“What is it?”
“I can’t access the account details.” He typed some more code.
“It’s blocked?”
“No,” he said, puzzled. “There’s someone else in here. Someone who opened the database before I did.”
“Can’t you open it too?”
He shook his head. “Not until they’re gone.” He waited, then typed the command again.
“That’s better. And we’re in luck. Your sottotenente was right – there’s a pay-as-you-go dongle linked to his main account.”
“Can we trace it?”
“He hasn’t used it in the past twenty-four hours. But if he uses it again, we should be able to get the cell area, just as if it were a mobile phone.”
By noon, using conventional methods, the Carabinieri had managed to eliminate only six Caliaris from their list. At this rate, Kat thought, it would take them weeks.
The problem was that the area was so mountainous, and the villages so scattered, that checking out even one address took several hours. The local units had put all their available manpower onto it, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Wait,” Kat said. “How are they choosing which addresses to check?”
“They’re doing the quickest ones first – that is, the ones that aren’t too remote, so that we can cross as many as possible off our list.”
“We need to flip it round. If he’s got an old family property he thinks is perfect for holding Mia, it’s because it’s unusually inaccessible. It may even be listed as derelict. We should start prioritising the places that are the hardest to get to.”
They made the change. But by six, darkness was falling in the mountains, making the task of checking any more addresses almost impossible.
And then, finally, the investigators had the tiny sliver of luck that had so far eluded them.
Somewhere high in the Alto Adige, Frediano Caliari topped up his wireless broadband dongle, ahead of the data-heavy upload he was planning to make later that evening. Although he used a pay-as-you-go card, the SIM in the dongle checked in with the nearest cell phone mast to make sure it could find a connection before authorising the new capacity. The tiny packet of data was automatically linked to the account registered to the ID Caliari had showed when he made the original purchase.
Instantly, Daniele forwarded the information to Kat.
The phone mast was situated on top of a two-thousand-metre-high mountain and covered nearly thirty square kilometres around the village of Frisanco.
On the Carabinieri’s list of properties registered in the name of Caliari there was just one in the area of Frisanco: a former farmhouse. It was listed as derelict, and was perched halfway up the mountain, well away from any other houses.
There was a moment’s stunned silence as they realised what it meant.
“Listen, everyone,” Saito said urgently. “This isn’t the end, not by a long chalk. Now we have to work out how to get her out of there safely.” He lifted the phone. “But first, I should update our partners.”
He spoke for several minutes. But Kat saw how, almost from the start of the conversation, his expression was clouding. By the time he put the phone down his face was dark.
“The Americans are already in the air,” he said heavily. “Officially, it’s a joint operation. In practice, there are a few of our Special Forces with them purely for political cover. The USAF want to get Mia back themselves.”
“How did they know?” Kat asked. “If they’re already in the air, and we hadn’t told them about Caliari?”
“It seems we’re not the only ones carrying out surveillance,” Saito said bitterly. “Clearly, they’ve been listening in on our investigation all along.”
SIXTY-SIX
SHE DIDN’T KNOW what had happened. She could remember the pain – the panic of suffocation, and the searing agony as her lungs battled for air that wasn’t there. She could even remember the sense of vertigo as unconsciousness rushed towards her. But of her resuscitation by Harlequin, she could remember nothing.
Only that when she eventually surfaced, there was a sharp pain in her chest. She later realised that he’d cracked a rib, restarting her heart.
She’d thought, after that, that this had to be the end. They’d nearly killed her, and by some miracle she’d survived. She’d sensed Harlequin’s terror even after she came round. So now, surely, they must see sense and release her.
The Skype incoming-call sound had bubbled on the
laptop, again and again. Each time, Harlequin had ignored it.
Eventually, from her cell, she’d heard a vehicle climbing up the mountain, the sound gradually getting louder as it tacked back and forth up the steep roads. She heard a door bang, then shouting.
“L’ho quasi uccisa!” That was Harlequin’s voice.
Another, calmer voice had replied, “Si, questo è ciò che accade.”
I nearly killed her.
Yes, that’s what happens.
Then Harlequin yelled what sounded like an ultimatum – a long stream of Italian, increasingly angry, culminating in him switching to English. “Fuck you. I’m quitting. Do what you like. But I’m getting out of here.”
The reply was in English too. Because the speaker wasn’t shouting, she had to strain to hear. But it sounded like, “Fine. Your choice.”
Then she’d heard some strange noises, not loud, but what could have been a scuffle. Whatever it was, it was over in seconds. A third voice – a rasping Italian male that she guessed was Bauta – shouted, “Che cos’ hai fatto? Ma sei matto!”
There was a pop, like a bottle being opened, then silence.
She heard nothing more for half an hour. Then she caught the sound of something heavy being dragged across the rough floor. It was followed by the rattle of the chain at her door.
The man who came in was wearing the Harlequin mask. But it wasn’t Harlequin. He was whistling under his breath.
He gestured for her to stand up, then to unzip her overalls.
When he’d walked all round her he put his hand just below her breast. She flinched, then forced herself to relax. He was checking her ribs. She cried out when he came to the cracked one. He kneaded it for a few seconds, like a doctor, but rougher.
She cried out again, but he seemed not even to notice. Apparently satisfied, he pointed to the overalls again. Then he tied her to the chair and filmed her for a few minutes.
“Where are they?” she said. “What have you done to them? Where’s Harlequin?”
Without hesitation he drove his fist into her solar plexus. She doubled up, winded.
As he left, he put his finger to his lips. No talking.
Through her cell window she heard him moving around outside. Then came banging, the sound of a hammer on wood.
Later still, he opened the door and gestured for her to precede him into the larger barn. In the middle of the room was a wooden box lined with blankets.
Silently, he handed her a pair of earmuffs, then a heavy felt hood. She felt her wrists being secured. Thick, soft mittens were pulled over her hands. She was pushed, firmly but without violence, into the box.
As she lay down, she sensed some kind of lid being placed over her. She could dimly hear nails being hammered in – she counted four.
Then there was silence. The deadest, most absolute silence she’d ever known.
She tried to concentrate on the pain in her solar plexus. It was at least something to hold onto, something that existed. But after a while even that seemed to ebb away from her.
Strange patterns danced in the darkness in front of her. She tried opening and closing her eyes, but it didn’t make any difference to what she saw. After a while, she couldn’t even tell whether her eyes were open or closed, and she started to panic.
I will not go mad, she told herself. I will not.
She began to hallucinate. She was on a fairground ride, watching the stalls below as she spun round and round. She was in a small boat at sea, feeling seasick. She was already dead, and this was her coffin. She was underwater, slowly sinking to the bottom. Distantly, she heard popping noises, like firecrackers, and couldn’t tell if they were real or just another figment of her brain.
SIXTY-SEVEN
THEY’D BEEN PERMITTED to share the live feed from the Americans’ drones and helmet cameras. In the crammed operations room, Kat watched along with the rest as the twelve-man Special Forces team flew low and fast in two helicopters up the quiet Alpine valleys.
When they were two kilometres away from the farmhouse, six men abseiled down from the first helicopter, like spiders dropping from their webs, and continued on foot.
After a brief reconnaissance, their leader gave a signal. Flash-bang grenades were hurled through the farmhouse windows, while men simultaneously entered from the roof, upper windows and doors. There was a brief, confused fire-fight, the bullets appearing like white blotches on the night-vision feeds. One by one, in the terse operational jargon of the Special Forces, it was confirmed that the hostiles were dead.
There had still been no word of Mia. In the operations room, it felt as if everyone was holding their breath.
Then a soldier approached a big wooden box and ripped the top off. Inside was a hooded, gloved figure. The hood was removed, and Mia’s face appeared on the screens, dazed from the stun grenades but alive, her eyes silvery as a cat’s in the green hue of the cameras.
Back in the operations room, an exultant cheer went up from dozens of throats at once. Kat hugged the nearest person, who happened to be Panicucci. Over his shoulder, she saw Aldo Piola sink his head into his hands with relief. General Saito punched the air, then got swept up in a big group of dancing officers, their arms around each other’s shoulders like Cossacks doing the prisyadka. All around the room, men openly wiped away tears.
SIXTY-EIGHT
“GIOITE!” SCREAMED THE Italian headlines. “REJOICE!” echoed the media around the world.
Mia, it was announced in a statement from Camp Ederle, was safe and well but would not be giving any interviews, at least not until she’d undergone a lengthy period of medical and psychological assessment.
Sitting between Colonel Carver and General Saito at a hastily convened press conference, Major and Nicole Elston gave a brief but emotional statement of thanks to the Italian nation; to its press, its people, and above all its security services, whose rescue of their daughter had been a textbook example of international cooperation in the war against terror. They now requested a period of privacy in which to be reunited as a family.
Saito, in a short but statesmanlike speech, emphasised that in the modern world terrorism was no longer a national but an international threat, and that to combat it, global alliances were more necessary than ever. He thanked the many agencies, from CNAIPIC to the US Special Forces, whose help in retrieving Mia unharmed had been invaluable.
Colonel Carver’s statement was even briefer, and was to the effect that America’s enemies should learn from this that there was nowhere to hide.
It was quickly discovered, by journalists with close links to the Vatican, that Caliari had left the Church some time ago because of “problems with spiritual discipline”; it was discovered, too, that he had been in Yemen, working for the International Red Crescent at the time of a controversial missile strike in 2012 that killed a thirty-five-year-old aid worker called Hussein Saleh.
It was equally quickly clarified by the Yemeni government that the missile in question had been fired not by the American RQ-4 Global Hawk drone that troublemakers claimed to have seen circling the target, but by an unspecified plane of the Yemeni Air Force.
In his blog, Raffaele Fallici took the opportunity to point out that,
Sources close to the investigation are saying that it was the CIA, not the Carabinieri, which located Mia; not least through electronic intercepts and surveillance. Once again the Italian security services have been found to be one step behind their American counterparts. This new, online world requires a new, online police force – and we are fortunate that we appear to have the necessary expertise amongst our allies, since our own government has been too incompetent to develop it on its own account.
I notice, too,
he wrote further on in what was quite a lengthy piece,
that Mia is said to have suffered no lasting damage from her ordeal. In part, this is undoubtedly due to her own extraordinary courage and resilience. But it also gives the lie to all those bleeding hearts who claimed that
the processes she was subjected to amounted to torture. For, as we now all know – being, thanks to the media, experts in every aspect of the CIA’s position – “torture” means precisely to “cause to suffer lasting harm or trauma”. I, for one, am not ashamed to admit it: I was wrong. America should not allow the bleatings of its liberals to deflect it from its mission, on which not only its own domestic safety but the safety of the whole free world now depends. We should not forget: America is not the enemy. Radical Islam is the enemy, and it is one against which we must stand undivided.
Within days, the encampment of reporters and anchormen at Dal Molin had delivered their final pieces to camera, many echoing similar sentiments, and the headlines were filled with a scandal involving the Spanish royal family instead.
“It’s perfect,” Piola said. “Absolutely perfect. An ex-priest, a little bit crazy, with a grudge against America. And a dropout who owed him everything.” The second kidnapper had been identified as Tiziano Capon, a former drug addict whom Caliari had befriended whilst working at a centre for the homeless in Verona. “As far as the general public are concerned, the security services are heroes. The American Secretary of State has even praised the Carabinieri’s professionalism, which is code for appreciating that we are somewhat sore at not having been allowed to lead the raid on the farmhouse. The desk clerk at the Stucky tells me they’ve taken more bookings in the past twelve hours than they did in the whole of the previous month. A poster girl is safe, and everyone is happy.”
“You think it’s a crock of shit too?” Kat said.
“Let’s just say, the questions I had during the investigation still remain.” He counted them off on his fingers. “Why such a sophisticated operation? Who was really behind it, and why? What about Dreadlock Guy and his tattooed girlfriend? And, most importantly of all, how did Caliari or Capon know about the formation of this radical Azione Dal Molin group they were apparently part of, if neither Ettore Mazzanti nor any of the other protestors told them about it?”
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