Midnight in Venice (21 page)

 

They were going to die.

Olivia sat huddled on the bench between Orlando and Marco. Her anger at her cousin had shifted into sadness and fear for them all. Her thoughts turned to her mother and Claudia. She hoped that when the authorities told them how she died, they left out the worst of the details. At least her dad wouldn't know.

Alessandro would, though. Would he take her death as hard as his wife's? She loved him and couldn't bear to be the cause of so much pain.

Her knees were drawn up to her chin, and her bound hands were looped around them. Cold, dark water swirled menacingly around the bench's legs. Their only light came from the single hissing bulb that cast menacing shadows around the room.

She watched in horror as a large rat, its fur black and oily, slithered out of the water and climbed onto a shelf. It looked at them with its beady eyes glinting red in the flickering light before dropping back into the water and swimming toward them. She gestured at the rodent with her hands, but her screams were stifled by the tape over her mouth. Orlando aimed a kick at its head. He missed, and the rat swam closer, undeterred. Marco's kick hit the mark, and it let out a high-pitched screech before diving under the water.

Holding their breaths, they waited for the rat to resurface, relieved when it did that it squeezed out through a crack over the door to the street. Orlando nodded encouragingly at her, and Olivia returned the gesture, but she knew that rat or no rat, they were still going to die.

She'd heard the demands their captor had made of Alessandro, and she'd heard the anguish in his voice when he'd cried out her name.

It would be the last time she'd ever hear his voice.

After Alessandro's call, she'd thought their captors would move them from this flooding room. But now she knew that was never going to happen. Alessandro would make the drop, they would flee with his money, and he would get nothing in return but three drowned corpses. They never left witnesses. Just like Katarina and Vanessa, she, Orlando, and Marco were going to die.

Knowing the men weren't going to come back, at least she could take her gag off and scream for help. She started working away at the heavy tape, the glue pulling painfully at her skin and hair. Orlando and Marco followed her lead.

Scarcely had they succeeded when a sudden loud gurgling came up from the floor. Black water gushed in, creating a dirty white froth that surged ravenously toward them.

“What's happening?” Olivia asked.

“The storm sewer must be backing up,” Orlando said grimly. “And that door to the street is so tight, this room is going to fill up like a swimming pool.” He struggled to his feet and, now standing on the bench, did his best to assist Olivia, her legs so weak and numb she couldn't manage it on her own. She stumbled, almost knocking Marco off the bench as he too fought to get up. Stifling a sob, she looked at him helplessly. How could this be happening to them?

The three of them huddled on the bench, hanging on to each other with their bound hands, the freezing black water already swirling around their knees.

How long would it take for the water to bury them? How long would they last?

Oh God, she was so scared. Scared of dying, scared of pain.

Scared of the moment her lungs would fill with water.

 

Maria was still talking, but Alessandro barely paid her any attention until the doctor, putting his hand on his shoulder, said, “You might want to listen to this.”

“ . . . three of them,” Maria said. “I could tell right away they bad guys.
Albania, you give me honor, give me the name Albania
,”
she quoted solemnly, her hand on her heart. “
They dishonor my country, Albania. I spit on them and all their like. But they pay no attention to me and talk loud. No one think a blind beggar woman can hear anything. ‘Keep an eye on her for me, Maria.' That what Alessandro said. And I do a good job. And the man with the squeaky voice say, ‘This is bad luck, kidnapping cop's girlfriend and his cop friend. You think he pay?' And the one with the old voice say, ‘Of course he pay, after what happened last time. Just leave damn paper and let's go.' You see, I remember every word, and then I follow them.”

Alessandro kept his head in his hands, but now he was hanging on to Maria's every word.

“You getting this?” the doctor asked him quietly.

Alessandro nodded.

“I might be blind and born in Tirana, but I know Venice like old gypsy witch's cat. So I follow them. They go into alley, knock three times on door. I sit down in alley. Man answer door and say, ‘Get in here before anyone sees you. We got her. That fool Marco upstairs too.'”

“Can you find the house again?” Alessandro asked quietly, wondering if the Marco Maria was referring to could possibly be Olivia's cousin. Was he the missing link in all this?

“Of course. It is house across canal from Signorina Olivia. First door in Calle dello Squero.”

Move over Bruce Willis, there's a new kid in town
,
Alessandro thought absurdly. Jumping up from Maria's bed, he took her wrinkled face in his hands and kissed her.

“You make old woman blush, Alessandro,” she said with a smile.

“And you make me very happy, Maria. Thank you.”

He punched Placido's number into the phone.

“I was about to storm the hospital to find you,” Placido said on answering.

“You might still get your chance to storm,” he said. “Find any gasoline?”

“Yes, and if I get hauled in for syphoning gas, I trust you'll put in a good word for me. I'm at the ambulance boat entrance.”

“I'll be right there. Be ready to go.”

Columbo answered on the first ring.

“Okay,” Alessandro said as he ran down the hospital hall toward the entrance. “It's the Bruce Willis commando raid—and this had better go off like one.”

He filled Columbo in, and by the time he reached Placido's boat, the square now ankle-deep in water, they had agreed on a plan.

The fog was as thick as ever, and while Placido drove his boat at a speed that defied the rules of safety and common sense, Alessandro thought the return trip to the Grand Canal was agonizingly slow.

The Customs House glowed in the fog as they passed it, and Placido gave the wooden pilings a wider berth this time. From somewhere far out on the Adriatic, the sound of a foghorn reached them, and the damp sliced through Alessandro's jacket like a knife, but he barely noticed.

Moments later, they pulled into the old rowing club just beyond the Customs House, the meeting place he'd arranged with Columbo.

Pamela was the first to meet him, a bulletproof vest in her hand. He gave her a tight hug. “I'm sorry I thought you had anything to do with this—”

“Hush,” she said, handing him the vest. “Put this on. We have to rescue your girlfriend, so you can live happily ever after.”

 

The icy black water swirled around their necks.

They raised their chins to the ceiling, grasping the overhead beams with their cuffed hands. They'd clawed off their gags, but they knew what cries they could manage between chattering teeth would never be heard through the thick stone walls and over the gushing water.

This was it. Any moment now.

Oh God, let this be over quickly.

Olivia lost her grip on the ceiling, and the bench washed out from underneath her.

She was sinking, sliding into the freezing dark water.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she thrashed around, trying to find something, someone, to grab onto, terror making her forget to hold her breath.

Icy water flooding her nose.

Choking.

Oh God, it hurt.

“We've got to get to the stairs and open the trapdoor!” Orlando gasped, still clinging to the ceiling beams. “Put your hands around my neck,” he instructed Olivia. “Follow me, Marco. One beam at a time.”

Olivia did as she was told, but progress to the stairs was painfully slow. Orlando slipped, and she held him tighter, knowing that she was choking him but unable to lessen her terrified grip as her feet lashed around.

Then suddenly her feet struck wood. The stairs! They stumbled onto them, their cheeks pressed against the underside of the trapdoor, Marco behind her, choking as he emerged from the icy water.

“Push,” Orlando said, his voice now only a hoarse whisper.

“It's locked!” Marco croaked. “We're going to die!”

Alessandro, where are you?

 

The response team, twenty strong, wearing hip waders with Beretta submachine guns at their sides, gathered around Alessandro in the rowing club. Everyone quickly checked their radios, and Columbo handed Alessandro a detailed map of the area, a small gesture that meant he was also handing him his authority.

Alessandro quickly outlined the plan. “Pamela, Columbo, and I, as well as two members of the response team, will take Placido's boat down the Rio Piccolo and enter the Calle dello Squero from the far end of the street. Keep the police boats at the mouth of the Rio de San Vio out of sight and ready. The rest of the team should get themselves into position in the street before the Calle dello Squero and wait for me to give the signal to move.” He counted off four men. “You take the ladders and be ready to go over the balcony. The next four will cover any other exits, four will stay put, four will be ready to join us as soon as the men on the balcony are inside, which leaves two men with the boat. Got it?”

“Yes,” the team sounded in unison.

It was understood that they'd do everything they could to get the hostages out alive.

If they were still alive.

The team moved out together, plowing through the water on the
fondamenta
and piling into the police boats, while Alessandro's group jumped into Placido's boat. Alessandro could see the excitement in Placido's eyes. He knew that excitement—the adrenaline high of a dangerous mission. He'd be feeling it himself if it wasn't Olivia in there.

Placido turned the boat and stopped at the mouth of the street hidden by the fog. Alessandro leaped out and ran as fast as he could through the knee-high water. Pamela and the rest of the team splashed behind him, and Alessandro thought they were as stealthy as a herd of water buffalo.

At the end of the street, he halted.
It is house across canal from Signorina Olivia
, Maria had said.
First door in Calle dello Squero.
But which side of the street?

“Across from Olivia's apartment would make it the one on our right,” Alessandro said, though he knew he was splitting hairs. Still, he stared at the door on the left. Water was seeping out over the top.

Columbo noticed it too. “How the hell can the water be higher inside than out?”

“Broken water pipe, maybe,” Alessandro suggested. “But it answers our question—no one can be in there, so it's the one on our right.”

“We could phone the city and see if this is occupied—”

“No time,” Pamela said. “We've got to make a decision now, and I'm with Alessandro on this one. Let's do this.”

Alessandro raised his radio. “Okay, first balcony to the north of the Calle dello Squero. Let's go!” He had barely spoken the words when he saw his men move past the mouth of the street. Pamela took a few steps and, craning her head around the corner, gave them a wave. Alessandro aimed his gun at the lock—there was no kicking these massive doors in—and the shots drowned out the sound of breaking glass as his other men went through the balcony doors.

They were inside and up the stairs in minutes.

What he saw made him stop short, causing Pamela to crash into him. There, sitting on a gaudy floral couch, dressed in bathrobes and bedroom slippers, was an elderly couple watching
Walker, Texas Ranger
dubbed into Italian. Holding shaky hands in the air, wrinkled faces frozen in shock, they couldn't have looked less like Albanian kidnappers if they tried.

Alessandro let out a string of expletives that now had the woman crying, and as Pamela hastened to explain the mistake to the terrified couple, Alessandro shouted into his radio: “It's the balcony on the other side of the street!”

The men who had come through the balcony were already back over the side, and one of Alessandro's men on the ground was shouting into the radio that they'd been spotted by the kidnappers, no doubt given away by the gunshots and smashing glass. “And they're armed!”

So much for the element of surprise.

Alessandro swore again and charged back down the stairs to the ground floor and out into the street. The ladders were already against the balcony and the men over the top. A volley of shots came from inside.

Olivia!
It was all he could do not to shout her name.
Please don't let those shots be meant for her!

Pamela was on the radio calling for an ambulance for the elderly couple inside and then, as the shots rang out, demanded a second.

“We're inside!” the radio crackled, as Alessandro ran down the stairs to the street. “One of our men has been shot in the chest! Suspects have fled to the roof—one's gone over. We're on them!”

“The hostages?” Alessandro shouted.

“They aren't here.”

Alessandro looked at the water running over and down the door on the left.

“Olivia!” he shouted. No reason to be silent now, but no reply came.

Oh God, we're too late
.

“Watch out!” Alessandro cried to his team. He aimed his gun at the lock and fired a dozen bullets into it—a completely useless exercise, he quickly realized. Even with the lock broken, how do you push back a wall of water?

“Get an axe!” he shouted.

One of his men produced not one but two axes. Wildly, he and Alessandro swung them at the door. But several swings later, they still hadn't broken through.

Alessandro handed his axe to Columbo. “I'm going in from upstairs,” he said.

He ran around the corner and was up the ladder in seconds. The shutters and windows had been smashed open and the
piano nobile
was littered with broken glass and splintered wood, a cappuccino maker the only sign that someone was occupying the space.

Where the hell is the door to the ground floor?

He ran through the rooms, wrenching open doors as he went, but none led downstairs. Mystified, he looked down at the terrazzo floor, knowing that trying to axe his way through it would be futile. He could still hear the blows of the axes, while over his radio came a triumphant cry: “We've got one!”

But Alessandro couldn't revel in that victory with Olivia still trapped below. Dejected, he looked down at his feet, suddenly noticing that the rug beneath him was wet.

As he was wondering what that meant, he thought he heard something. Not much, a scratch maybe, but it was enough to make him throw back the rug. A trapdoor!

It was padlocked. Taking his gun, he blew off the lock, careful not to shoot through the wood. Looking up, he saw Pamela. “Help me,” he said.

Grasping the iron ring set in the wood, together they pulled it up to reveal Orlando, Marco, and Olivia huddled on the steps, their eyes closed.

He was too late.

Kneeling down, he and Pamela pulled them out as quickly as they could, their clothes leaving puddles on the marble floor.

“Marco and Orlando are alive!” Pamela cried. “Bring some blankets,” she said into her radio. “We'll need another ambulance too.” She looked at Alessandro. “Olivia?” she whispered with little hope in her voice.

As Alessandro leaned over to listen for Olivia's breathing, her eyes opened, and she coughed.

“Thank God!” he cried, taking her into his arms as she choked a sob into his chest. “I have you now, and I'm never going to let you go.”