Foreign Affairs (13 page)

S
tone went back upstairs and poured himself some coffee from the buffet.

“What was that all about?” Dino asked.

“Chocolate.” Stone placed the huge chocolate bar on the table and told him the story.

“Bizarre,” Dino said.

“The story?”

“The chocolate. Why would Casselli want three tons of chocolate?”

“Maybe his minions thought the truck was carrying something more readily marketable.”

“No doubt.”

“Perhaps it would have been more marketable if he had not chosen an honest man to try and sell it to.”

“There's a thought,” Dino said.

“What thought?”

“Having failed to sell it to the honest baron, maybe he's looking for a less honest customer.”

Stone got out his phone. “Jim? Dino had a thought. Having failed to unload the chocolate on the baron, maybe he's looking for another buyer. Perhaps the police would like to know about that. Thank you, Jim.” He put away the phone. “Jim will speak to the police.”

“There's somewhere I'd like to go,” Dino said.

“Where?”

“The emperor Hadrian's villa. It's about an hour from Rome, near Tivoli.”

“I'm game,” Stone said. He called Jim and asked if they could use the car again. After a brief conversation, he hung up. “The car is ours for the day, but he can't send our bodyguards. They're out, probably looking for chocolate.”

“Suits me,” Dino said.

“He also recommended a restaurant in Tivoli for lunch. Viv, you want to join us?”

“No, I think I'll go find Mike Freeman and pretend to work.”

“As you wish.”

—

T
he GPS in the Fiat knew all. They reached the entrance to the villa in an hour. There, they bought tickets and prepared to walk up a long hill. Dino had a better idea: he went
back, flashed his badge, and they opened the gates so that they could drive to the villa.

At the top of the hill, at a visitors' center, they saw a large model of the villa, which was now an elegant ruin.

“Not bad, for a weekend place,” Dino said. “It would look good in the Hamptons.”

They left the visitors' center and walked onto the grounds of the villa, past lakes and baths and a theater. “This place is enormous,” Dino said. “I wonder what kind of a staff he needed to keep it running.”

“Slaves, I expect.”

They toured the grounds for two hours, then got into the car, entered the address of the restaurant into the GPS, and followed the directions back into Tivoli. The GPS proceeded to conduct them through impossibly narrow streets, in a large circle. They found themselves back in the town.

“There's a large parking area over there,” Stone said. “Let's park there and take a cab to the restaurant.”

They could not find a parking place. Eventually, they drove to the top of a hill near a large arch and found a space where they could abandon the car.

“There,” Stone said. “Jim said it was next to a temple.” He pointed at the restaurant.

“Unfortunately,” Dino said, “there appears to be a deep gorge and a river between us and there.”

They went back down the hill to the open plaza; Stone got
out his iPhone and went to Google Maps. He pointed at a bridge. “We cross the bridge and take a right. It's not far.”

Presently, they found themselves at the door of Restaurant Sibilla, where a small electric cart was parked. Shortly they were seated on a large terrace, covered by a grapevine with a trunk like an oak, with the Temple of Diana nearby.

They had a superb lunch, but went easy on the excellent wine, since they had to drive back. They spent a good two hours there, then Dino had an idea and asked if they could have a ride back to their car. The electric vehicle was brought up, they got aboard, and began to move. Back at the main street, two young men took more than a normal interest in them. As they crossed the bridge, Dino looked back. “Those two guys are chasing us,” he said.

Stone looked back, too; Dino was right. “Fortunately, they're not gaining on us.”

They were driven to their car, tipped the driver of the cart generously, and drove back down the hill. On the way back, they passed the two young men walking up the hill. One of them pulled a gun from his jacket as they passed.

“Uh-oh,” Dino said. He glanced into his rearview mirror. “They're getting into a car.”

S
tone was behind the wheel. “Don't drive fast,” Dino said.

“You want them shooting at us in town?”

“I don't think they'll do that.” As it turned out, Dino was right; they were on the autostrada back to Rome before the car pulled up next to them and shots were fired in their direction. Stars appeared on their armored windows; Dino climbed into the backseat. “I'll bet they don't have an armored car like ours,” he said. “Let's find out.” He rolled down the window a couple of inches and fired two rounds at the front seat passenger. Their window glass shattered. “I was right,” he said.

It soon became clear that their pursuers were under-equipped in the armor department.

“What are they doing?” Stone asked.

“They've dropped back behind us, and one of them is on a cell phone.”

“You think they're calling for reinforcements?”

“I think we should behave as if they are.”

Stone checked the rearview mirror and saw the car rapidly approaching in the fast lane. He slammed on the brakes and cut across two lanes to an exit, while the pursuing car was forced to continue down the autostrada.

“Now we're lost,” Dino said. The woman in the GPS was demanding that they make a U-turn as soon as possible.

“She'll recalibrate in a minute,” he said.

“I think we should follow her advice and get back on the autostrada. The other guys will be getting off at the next exit.”

“Good idea,” Stone said, slamming on the brakes and executing a U-turn, then gunning it. “I don't know what kind of engine they've got in this car, but it works,” he said, accelerating rapidly back onto the autostrada.

“Don't go too fast, we don't want to catch up to them,” Dino said. They passed the next exit. “Now go fast, they'll be on surface roads, looking for us.”

Stone quickly achieved 180 kph. “It flies,” he said. “You want to get back up here?”

“I think I have a better field of fire from back here. I've only got the one magazine, though. Give me your gun.”

Stone handed back his pistol and the spare magazines. They continued unmolested to the end of the autostrada, where they had to stop and insert a credit card for the toll.

“Uh-oh,” Dino said, “I think their buddies are laying for us.
You've got a car coming up fast, and there's a shotgun sticking out a rear window.”

“Let me try something,” Stone said, accelerating, but not so fast that they couldn't keep pace. He checked for nearby traffic, then slammed on his brakes and let the other car drift past; then, when they were just a little past him, he turned into them, smashing his left front fender into their right rear. The car spun, smashed into the guardrail, and came to rest athwart the fast lane, pointed in the opposite direction.

“The pit maneuver,” Dino said. “You've been watching
Cops
on TV.”

“How'd you guess?”

They managed to make it back to Marcel's compound without incident. Jim Lugano's people made much of their bent fender and bullet-scarred glass.

—

U
pstairs, Stone found the liquor and poured them both a drink. “That was fun,” he said, raising his glass.

“It was, at that,” Dino said. “It's been a long time since I shot at anybody.”

Lugano came into the room. “I hear you've scarred up my car a bit.”

“Isn't that what it's for?” Dino asked. “It's not like we went looking for those guys.”

“I can't disagree.”

“Question,” Stone said. “If those guys were tailing us, how come they waited until we were on the way back before they started shooting?”

“What's your point?” Lugano said.

Stone found a pad and paper and wrote something on it, then handed it to Lugano.

The only time we discussed where we were going was in this room. I also made a phone call from here to book the table at Sibilla.

Lugano read the note and nodded. “Give me your cell phone,” he said, then left the room. He came back ten minutes later. “The room is clean,” he said, “but is your cell phone the original or the new one?”

“It's the old one.”

“That's how they knew where you were,” Jim said. “They waited until you stopped at Hadrian's Villa, then sent somebody to intercept you. By the time they got there, you had already moved to the restaurant, and they picked you up when you left there, right?”

“Right,” Stone agreed. “I guess I'd better start using the new SIM card in the new phone.”

“Don't throw the old one away,” Jim said. “It might come in useful later.”

H
edy swam up through a fog into something like sunlight, coming from the glass-brick window. They had been feeding her well, she thought, but they had also been drugging her. They had taken away her bonds, too. She was free within the room's space of about eight by eight feet. She figured it was a maid's room, but it showed no signs of having been occupied; the paint was fresh, the furniture new. She heard the door open. The woman came into the room and set a tray down on the table next to the bed.
“Mange,”
she said.

Hedy got her feet over the side of the bed and looked at the tray. Two fried eggs, pancetta, orange juice, coffee. Which one had they been using to drug her? The eggs weren't scrambled, and they looked untampered with. She stuck a finger in the orange juice and tasted it: a slight bitterness. That one. She took it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet, then she
went back, ate the eggs, bacon, and bread and drank the coffee. The caffeine made a difference.

How long did they take to come back for the tray? Sometimes until they brought lunch. Maybe she had some time. She retrieved the phone from under the mattress and switched it on: three percent left on the battery; it was going to go any minute. She tried calling Stone, but the call wouldn't go through. She hit the text icon:
Running out of juice. Leaving the phone on until it goes. Find me please!
She set the phone on the windowsill for the best chance of getting a signal. She had no idea if he had received the earlier texts. After it sent, she went through and deleted all the texts she had sent and received.

The phone made a weak little noise. She picked it up and looked at it: the battery on-screen turned red, then the screen went dark. It was done.

From outside she began hearing clanging and banging noises. They went on all day, and she finally figured out that they were dismantling the construction elevator. She had been hearing banging and power tools inside the house for what seemed like days. Now all that was silent; all she heard was a vacuum cleaner, maybe two.

At lunch she feigned sleep when they left a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. She ate the sandwich and poured the milk into the toilet and flushed. She put the dead phone back under the mattress; it was useless, but she didn't want them to know she had it.

As daylight waned, the noises from outside stopped. Was the
elevator gone, or were they just quitting for the day? The cleaners in the house were quitting, too, and she heard a new, very faint mechanical noise. Had they replaced the construction elevator with a permanent one? She had no way of knowing.

She took her daily shower and rinsed out her thong and bra, then put them back on to dry on her body, under her jeans and sweater.

It was dark when they brought dinner: pasta with plain tomato sauce and a glass of red wine. She ditched the wine and drank water with her dinner.

Stone tried calling Hedy's phone and texting her, but nothing went through. He checked for texts from her but got nothing.

Jim Lugano turned up and took a sheet of paper from his briefcase. It was a map of Italy, and little red dots had been placed on it around Naples and as far south as Salerno. “These are the buildings with Casselli's company's name on the building permits. Two of them have permits for construction elevators: the one you raided in Naples and one at Ravello, a village on top of the mountain above the Amalfi Coast.”

“Then it must be the building at Ravello,” Stone said. “Let's get down there.”

“Hang on,” Jim said, raising a hand. “I've already got people on the way, but darkness will hamper them. They'll find the building early tomorrow, and we'll have it photographed.”

“Why don't we just raid it, the way we raided the Naples building?”

“First of all, as I've just explained, we don't know exactly where it is, and we won't know until daylight, when the elevator will be visible. Secondly, your raid in Naples was successful because there was nobody there. If they're holding her at the Ravello site, she'll be guarded, and we'll need all the recon we can get before we go in there. Be patient, Stone.”

“I'm running out of patience,” Stone said. “I'm going to explode soon, if we don't get some leads to follow. Anything on the chocolate?”

Lugano laughed. “Nothing on the chocolate. It's in a truck somewhere, and we have no idea where to look.”

“And still no trace of Casselli?”

“He knows we're looking for him. He's hiding, and doing a good job of it. Have you had any messages from Hedy?”

“No, I just checked.”

“On the new phone or the old phone?”

“Shit!” Stone yelled, and went to get the old phone. He turned it on, hit the messages icon and read, then he handed the phone to Lugano. “She's all out of battery. Did your guys get a location? She turned on the phone, at least long enough to send that text.”

Lugano made a call. “Nothing,” he said. “Could be the weak battery or a weak signal, or both.” He closed his briefcase. “I'll see you this time tomorrow.”