The Abduction: A Novel

by Jonathan Holt

  “Someone very determined to take the truth with them to the grave.”

  “But why—” she said, and stopped dead. “Those nuns.”

  He nodded. “A man who believes that he’ll get his just reward in heaven. A man who thinks he’s protecting his Church.”

  Back at headquarters, the forensic reports had come through – page upon page of diagrams and photographs from Caliari’s farmhouse. Kat went through it, cross-checking it against the feed they’d watched from the SWAT team’s helmet cams. It was heavy going. The forensic units never knew when a conclusion might be challenged in the courts, and therefore aimed to make their reports as scientifically detailed as possible.

  “Ah, Capitano Tapo. May I have a word?”

  She looked up. It was Colonel Lettiere. Behind him was his sidekick, Endrizzi, holding a stack of files marked with Post-it notes.

  “Another victim, I take it?” she said.

  “Not exactly.” Lettiere smirked. “General Saito has asked me to go through my notes on your case one more time. On reflection, we may not have been quite as diligent as we should have been in protecting young officers like yourself from Colonel Piola’s advances.”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’m withdrawing my complaint.”

  “Really?” Lettiere affected to look shocked. “That is of course your prerogative. But it will make little difference to my investigation, which has now broadened to include Colonel Piola’s affairs with other subordinates.” He gestured to Endrizzi, who opened a file and handed it to him. “The affairs you yourself told us about, if you recall, the discovery of which prompted you to consider breaking off your own relationship with him. It seems he is something of a serial offender in that regard. And the Carabinieri takes very seriously indeed the need to provide a safe and harassment-free working environment for female officers.” He walked off, barely suppressing his smirk.

  Prick. She could see exactly what Saito was doing. The moment Piola’s investigation into the kidnap threatened to become an embarrassment, he’d use Lettiere’s report to have him suspended, and probably Kat as well, leaving Li Fonti with nothing to base a case on.

  She turned back to the papers from the farmhouse search, flicking through until she found the autopsy reports. Neither Caliari nor Capon had any tattoos. In the margin she wrote, Tattooed Girl? Dreadlock Guy? Where are they?

  Then, buried deep in the document, she found something else that had her reaching for her pen. Caliari’s location had been identified when he topped up his wireless broadband dongle. The report noted that he’d added a gigabyte of extra data on that occasion. The total amount of unused data on the dongle when it was analysed was just under 5GB – the maximum possible.

  Which meant, she thought, that the curious thing about Caliari’s fateful top-up was that it hadn’t even been necessary.

  She thought back to Daniele’s puzzlement when he’d discovered someone besides himself hacking into Caliari’s TIM account. When she’d heard that the Americans had been spying on the Carabinieri investigation, she’d assumed it must have been them, following the Italians’ evidence trail.

  But what if it was more than that? What if the trail itself had been laid by the Americans? Could someone have decided it was time Mia was rescued – and, equally, that it was time for the kidnappers to die?

  She went back to the autopsies. Both men found at the farmhouse had died from gunshot wounds to the head, fired from a distance of a few metres. Guns were also found near both bodies, confirming statements by the rescuers that they’d heard gunfire as they entered the property. But, curiously, no member of the rescue team had claimed the kills as their own.

  She went back to the helmet-cam feed and went through it frame by frame. It was odd, she thought: first bullets were flying everywhere, and then there was footage of Special Forces soldiers standing over dead bodies. But those bodies were never actually seen alive.

  Could both victims have been shot just before the rescue, by another kidnapper? A kidnapper who fired some shots and then melted away, forewarned, just as the rescuers approached? In all the confusion, the rescuers would simply have assumed that the kidnappers were killed in the crossfire.

  She went through the report one more time. There was nothing else that either confirmed or contradicted that theory. But at the very least, she had her discrepancies.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  HOLLY TRANSFERRED HER spidergram to a wall of her sitting room. Then she sat on the sofa opposite, staring at it.

  Someone had tortured Major Elston by kidnapping his daughter. The agonies Mia had been subjected to might have been mild by comparison with what real detainees suffered, or even with a SERE exercise, but a man like Elston would have heard the screams from detention cells in Afghanistan and Iraq. He would know how much worse it could get. His imagination could be relied upon to do the rest.

  A decorated war hero. A man of firm principles who was revered by his men. What had he been doing, or threatening to do, that generated such an extreme response?

  There was, she realised, only one logical explanation.

  She went straight to Gilroy.

  “I should have realised sooner,” she told him. “Elston’s a whistleblower.”

  “A whistleblower?” he echoed, trying the thought for size.

  “Or was threatening to be. Right at the beginning, when the first film came out, he said something like, ‘How do I get in contact with them?’ He meant, ‘How can I tell the kidnappers that I’ll do a deal?’”

  “It’s a good question, though. How did he?”

  “Through me.” She shook her head, annoyed at her own stupidity. “I was giving Colonel Carver regular updates on Elston’s condition. And then I told Major Elston I’d been to see Joe Nicholls. I suspect that may have been what prompted the major to go direct to Carver, to tell him that he’d do whatever Carver wanted, if it meant getting Mia back. I even saw them together – I overheard Carver doing the deal.” She paused. “I think whatever the major discovered, it has something to do with drugs.”

  “Well, he certainly won’t risk speaking out now Mia’s safe and sound. The best we can hope for is to find the evidence some other way.”

  Holly thought. “I need to speak to Mia.”

  She called Nicole Elston and asked if Mia would like to see some of the thousands of cards and gifts that had been flooding into Civilian Liaison since her rescue. Nicole said she’d just go and check. She sounded like any mother consulting with a busy teenage daughter over her schedule, Holly thought. It was hard to believe that this chatty, bright woman was the same person as the near-catatonic, medicated shell who’d endured the torment of her daughter’s kidnap.

  Nicole came back on. “Sure, she says to come round.”

  It was hard to believe, too, that the teenager Holly met at the Elston’s house was the same girl she’d last seen on film suffering the kidnappers’ abuses. Mia was wearing a woollen skiing beanie when they first sat down, but when she took it off Holly saw that the shaved hair was already growing out, and her voice was firm and strong. Thank heaven for the resilience of the young.

  It was Mia who began talking about the kidnap. Holly let the teenager do it her own way, merely prompting with the occasional question.

  Mostly she talked about Harlequin. It was clear that, while the teenager had deliberately forged a bond with him, the attachment had gone two ways.

  “My friends say he was a monster,” she said with a shy laugh, twisting the beanie in her hands. “But I know he wasn’t all bad.”

  She needed permission to grieve for him, Holly realised. Aloud she said, “Caliari made his own choice, which was to deprive you of your liberty and mistreat you. But it’s always too simplistic to divide people into monsters and heroes. Some of the very worst acts are done by principled guys. And maybe some of the heroes who rescued you are scumbags.”

  “I guess.” Mia didn’t sound convinced.

  “Are you getting any counselling
?” Holly asked.

  She made a face. “My parents want me to see the school counsellor, Mr McConnell. ’Cos we already know each other.”

  Holly nodded. “I met him. The one who stares at your legs, right?”

  Mia laughed. “Right.”

  “If it would help…” Holly hesitated. “A friend of mine sees a psychiatrist who’s also a priest. My friend says he’s very good. I could put the two of you in touch.”

  “Thanks. I’d like that.”

  “And your father?” Holly prompted gently. “How’s he?”

  “Dad’s OK. He’s not one for the big emotional homecoming, but we had a hug and a long talk, so…” She nodded. “He wants me to repledge – that whole purity thing? Not sure about that. But we’ll work something out.”

  “Can I ask something, Mia?”

  The teenager shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Was there a period recently when your father became especially protective towards you?”

  Mia nodded. “Yep, for sure. It was right after his last tour. After he came back he kept sitting me down for little talks about security. How I mustn’t give my name to anyone online. Be careful when you go out, be careful who your friends are, blah blah. He even wanted me to friend him on Facebook so he could see who my friends were.” She rolled her eyes. “Like that wouldn’t creep them out.”

  “Is that when you got yourself a Carnivia account?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Did the kidnappers ever mention Carnivia?”

  “Only one of them spoke to me at all. The other two… one only spoke Italian, and the other just whistled.”

  “The other two?” Holly looked at her, perplexed. “From what I read, there were only two kidnappers.”

  Mia shook her head. “I know that’s what they’re saying, but I already told them – there was another one who borrowed Harlequin’s mask sometimes. Everyone says I must have been mistaken, because they only found two bodies, but…” She shrugged.

  “And you never saw this man’s face? Nothing that could identify him?”

  “Nope. I could only tell when it was him because he did this whistling thing under his breath.”

  “Like music? A song?”

  “Yeah.” She thought. “At the time I didn’t recognise it. But the weirdest thing is, I heard it on the base radio yesterday. I’m pretty sure it was Springsteen. ‘Born to Run’.”

  Back at her apartment, Holly checked the official reports. They were quite clear: two kidnappers had been shot dead after shots were fired at the rescuers from inside the house.

  On the spidergram she’d transferred from Daniele’s kitchen, she added three stick figures underneath Mia. Two she put crosses through. Under the third she wrote: Whistling Man. Springsteen?

  She wrote a quick email to Kat, telling her what Mia had said. Then she got into her car and headed north, towards the mountains.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  THIS TIME SHE gave no warning she was coming. Joe Nicholls answered the door in gym clothes, a light sheen of perspiration on his face. She’d clearly caught him in the middle of a workout.

  “Boland,” he said, surprised. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got a few more questions.”

  “I thought Mia was safe and sound.”

  “She is.” She gestured at the door. “Can I come in?”

  As he led her past his ski gear into the kitchen, she paused to check out the hall area. Tucked behind the door was a large military backpack. She hefted it experimentally. It weighed at least eighty pounds.

  He turned and saw her. “What are you doing?”

  She flashed a quick smile. “Pack’s pretty heavy.”

  He grunted. “Sure.”

  In the kitchen he sat down without offering her coffee.

  “Well, you didn’t lie to me, Joe,” she said. “You just didn’t tell me anything that really mattered.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said neutrally.

  “Something happened in Afghanistan. Something that involved you and the major. My guess is, you told him about some irregularity or cover-up you’d come across, he checked it out on his next tour, and then he came back here to tell you you were right. Whatever it was, it has a bearing on what happened to his daughter.”

  For a long moment he looked at her, clearly weighing up whether to tell her or throw her out.

  “I know about Exodus,” she added. “I just don’t know how it got Mia kidnapped.”

  “Major Elston’s a hero,” he said at last. “Bravest man I ever met.”

  “I know.”

  He sighed. “We were doing snatches for the intel guys – at least, that’s what we were told. Go into insurgent territory, pick up a target, get the hell out. Routine stuff. We called it the Taliban Taxi. Except they weren’t – Taliban, that is. Not always.”

  He looked at her to make sure she was following him. “Sometimes we took an interpreter along, to defuse any confrontations. Anyway, this one guy we picked up started jabbering away, so we asked the ’terp what he was saying. Turned out he was claiming he’d been snatched because he ran the opium collection point for a local businessman.”

  “Sounds fair enough,” Holly said casually, although her ears had pricked up at the mention of drugs.

  “Maybe, but the US Army didn’t have a poppy destruction programme at that time. Our orders were to leave the farmers alone, so as not to push them into the arms of the Taliban. Anyway, the target started saying the real reason he’d been lifted was because he didn’t work for Karim Sayyaf.”

  “Who was…?”

  “The local big cheese. Warlord, tribal leader, and the guy whose help we’d enlisted to govern the local population.”

  “So the implication was that your man had really been accused because of some turf war between Afghans? That must happen quite frequently, I imagine?”

  “Sure. We gave the targ a few taps with a rifle butt to encourage him to shut up, delivered him to base, and thought no more about it. But then it happened again – a target who claimed he’d been snatched only because he wasn’t one of Karim Sayyaf’s lot. It happened enough, in fact, that it was starting to look like a pattern.”

  “So you told the major?”

  Nicholls shook his head. “Not at that stage. But I did check the files, to see what had happened to these guys after we’d picked them up. My assumption was, if they were really nothing to do with the Taliban, they’d be given a grilling, sit around in the cells for a while, then get kicked out. But when I looked, I found the first one we’d brought in had been marked ‘Transferred to Project Exodus’. So I checked another, and that was the same. All of the opium guys were marked the same way.”

  “And what is Exodus, exactly?”

  “At first I assumed it was some kind of anti-drugs programme. But in fact, opium production in that area increased five-fold in the time we were there. Mainly because it was all concentrated under one man – Karim Sayyaf. Besides, when I looked through the files, I realised Exodus wasn’t just about our prisoners. Most of the detainees written up for it were medium-value targets who’d been interrogated, told us what they knew, and were now just hanging round the system, waiting for a decision on whether to charge them or send them home. Cell-blockers, we called them, ’cos they just took up space.”

  Holly frowned. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting to hear. “And that’s what you told the major?”

  “Affirmative. He asked me to write it all down, said he’d look into it next time he was out there. I mean, picking up Taliban is one thing, but if we were just helping some local poppy-grower corner the market, then the US Army was being made a fool of, right?”

  “So you wrote your report. Then what happened?”

  “I got shot.” He looked at her, waiting for the inevitable next question.

  “You think, because of what you wrote?”

  “No evidence of that. No evidence of anything, in fact. Except that the
bullet went in my right leg.” He paused. “At the time, it was my left side that was facing the enemy.”

  “And your military career was finished. All because you asked a few questions about a local warlord who was getting too much help.”

  “Pretty much.” He shook his head. “Man, I struggled when I came out. I don’t have family of my own – Red Troop was it. Started taking drugs myself. The rest you already know. The major would have helped me anyway, he’s that kind of guy. But I think he felt responsible.”

  “The pack by the door… that’s some kind of escape kit, isn’t it? In case the guys who shot you come back.”

  He nodded. “On skis I’m as fast as any man.”

  “Where would you go?”

  He pointed a finger into the sky. “Up.”

  She suddenly realised. “That pack’s a skyhook.”

  He looked impressed she’d worked it out. “And a parachute. Prevailing wind here would take me straight over the border into Switzerland. Unless they bring their passports, I should be all right.”

  She thought it over. “But what I don’t get is why anyone would go to such lengths to silence you both. A blue on blue, then a kidnap… I can’t believe Karim Sayyaf’s the first warlord whose support we bought.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, then. Maybe that bullet was a coincidence, and what happened in Afghan had nothing to do with Mia.”

  “No,” she said. She was thinking about her spidergram, and the blank spaces that needed to be filled. “The operation to silence Major Elston was huge. So what they were protecting must have been huge too.” A thought came to her. “How much weight can a skyhook carry?”

  “About two hundred and fifty pounds, depending on conditions. Why?”

  “Nothing.” There was no point in endangering Joe Nicholls further by sharing the suspicion that had just flitted into her mind.

  But he was already ahead of her. “You’re thinking some kind of Iran–Contra thing?”

  She nodded. “Maybe.”

  Back in her father’s time, Iran–Contra was the revelation that rogue US intelligence officers under Colonel Oliver North were illegally selling weapons in Iran and using the money to buy aeroplanes in Nicaragua; aeroplanes which were used to ferry cocaine, which in turn was sold to raise more money for weapons. Was it possible that something similar could be happening here – that the US Army’s support for a pet warlord had extended to getting involved with his drugs business? And if so, how was the money being used?