38

Charlie and the ladies took a taxi from the Statale back to Milan’s main train station. Julio followed in a car owned by one of the students. Three minutes into the journey, Charlie turned around and asked, “Did anyone see the housekeeper this morning?”

“I don’t . . . No. But my mind was on other things.” Gabriella blinked. “Charlie, is this something we have to discuss now?”

“Maybe.” He asked the two Tibetan women, “What about you?”

“No,” Daisy replied.

He said to Gabriella, “Call the house. Ask around.”

Two minutes later, she hung up and said, “No one has seen her since last night.”

Charlie watched the windshield wipers thunk back and forth. The fact that he had not thought of this before left him feeling vulnerable. He had been too focused on what the ascents revealed, on the prescient. He had not maintained his standard hyper-alertness. Mistakes like this could get them all killed. He did not speak again until the taxi stopped before the train station.

Charlie sent Julio and the Tibetans to the café on the platform, then walked Gabriella over to where the students were clustered by an empty bus stop. “I’m winging it here, so if you think differently, just sing out, okay?”

“Do what you think is best, Charlie.”

The seven students were clearly freaked to the max by being drawn into the mystery of now. But something they saw in Charlie’s face was enough to calm them. Charlie asked the tall young man, “You speak English, yes?”

“I have been to two basketball camps in your country,” he declared proudly. “One in Miami, the other in Chicago.”

“What’s your name?”

“Massimo.”

“Okay, Massimo. I want you to translate exactly what I am going to say. If you don’t understand something, stop me. Don’t guess. Don’t approximate.” Charlie gave each of the students a ten-second inspection, boring in deep. “My name is Charlie Hazard. I am a former Army Ranger. Right now I am handling security for the scientists. You don’t need to come any farther than here with us. I’m sorry to have dragged you away like that, but I had to get Gabriella out of there. You need to vanish. Right now. Don’t go back to the university. Don’t go home. Give Gabriella your names and contact details. As soon as the danger eases, she’ll be in touch.”

To their credit, none of them gave him lip. Instead, when Massimo finished translating, they clustered in closer. One of the students, a young woman whose rectangular glasses framed eyes of black fire, spoke in Italian. All the others nodded. Massimo translated, “We cannot come with you?”

Charlie glanced at Gabriella, but the woman simply gave him a trusting gaze. He said, “You can, if you are certain that’s what you want. It may be dangerous. Last night we were attacked. We defeated them. This time.”

Massimo said, “Please, excuse me. But you are certain this threat is real?”

“They sent in two hit squads, one of four men, one of five.” Charlie watched their features go as grey as the rain. He was sorry to kill their smiles. But it had to be done. “If you want to take off on your own, that’s fine. It would probably be safer. But you need to make yourselves scarce. You represent the threat they are trying to extinguish. You’ve taken the basic deal and . . .” He stopped because they were talking among themselves. He glanced at Gabriella. She raised one finger. Wait.

Massimo collected firm assents from the entire group, then said to Charlie, “We can help, yes?”

“I have no idea.”

Gabriella addressed them in English. “This morning Charlie and I could not ascend. We were trying to determine where the next attack might come from. Neither of us could do it. So yes, we could use your help identifying the threat and the timing. But remember what happened to the woman banker. What if the reason Charlie and I cannot ascend is because of what we have been doing? There is a risk that if you get involved with us, you might find yourselves in the same state.”

A shudder ran through them. Even so, when Massimo asked the others, they all agreed. He said, “We want to fight your fight.”

Charlie offered the student his hand. “Welcome to the club.”

Gabriella remained intently withdrawn during the journey back to Como. Her gaze was fastened upon the night beyond their window. Occasionally she made terse notes on a pad she held in her lap, then returned her attention to the stream of streetlights and rain. When they arrived back at the villa, she asked Charlie to assign the students rooms for the night, said they all should meet at noon the next day, then vanished before Charlie could ask her what was the matter.

On Sunday Alessandro phoned Charlie and made arrangements to meet him that afternoon. He then walked with his wife through the center of town, taking aim for the lakeside ferry port. The weather played the Italian temptress, promising much, giving little. Tiny slivers of daylight played among the clouds, brief glimpses into a different season, a different world. The ferries all left from piers along the Lungolago, the broad avenue rimming the lake. The street actually changed names seven times as it meandered along the city’s waterfront. Alessandro had made it a point to learn such items upon his arrival, part of acclimating himself to this new posting. Carla neither knew nor cared. For her, like for most of Como’s residents, the one name was more than sufficient.

Sunlight played upon the lake as the ferry departed. The passengers were all bundled against the chill and the damp, and much of the conversation was about the lost season. Carla was content to silently hold his hand and drink in the morning. Ancient villages climbed the steep slopes, eventually giving way to the emerald green of Alpine forests. And everywhere rose the lakefront palaces, Medici and Gothic and medieval and Renaissance jewels.

On the best of Sundays, Alessandro watched the shadows dissolve from Carla’s features. She had been deeply stained by his work in Naples, and by her own. Until threats against their son had forced her to relocate to Rome, Carla had served as administrator in a church-sponsored orphanage. Many of her charges had been indirect victims of mob violence. That morning, Alessandro studied his wife’s lovely features and felt he could assign a child’s tragic story to every line.

Novara was one of the lost villages, largely ignored by tourists and thus a delight to visit. The hill was too steep for easy access, the stone cottages too somber. Most tourists preferred the glitz of Bellagio and Cernobbio, with their palatial hotels and ten-dollar coffees. They climbed a rain-slick cobblestone path up into a silence that could only be described as medieval.

Afterward they had lunch in the Imperial Hotel, a distinctly Italian fixture from the age of Victorian travelers. The lakefront dining room had once hosted the likes of Byron and Shelley and Twain.

The clouds were thicker now, the color a more uniform slate. But the atmosphere remained warm and genteel, the chamber filled with the music of Italians determined to wrest a good time from the grey day.

Carla waited until they had ordered to ask, “Are we being sent back to Naples?”

“What? Don’t talk silliness.”

“It is not anything of the sort. You would only bring me here to celebrate or to soften me up for very bad news. Is everything all right with our son?”

Their only child was a banker in La Spezia. “So far as I know, he is happy and well, as is his wife and our granddaughter.”

“It is not my birthday or our anniversary.” She planted her hands upon the starched linen. “So what is it?”

Alessandro took a long breath. “I am thinking of taking early retirement.”

“Good.”

“You don’t want to first know the reason?”

“I don’t care why. I’ve been waiting for this moment since we left Naples.”

“Nothing is certain. Yet. But I wanted you to know that I am thinking of it. Very seriously.”

“It could not be serious enough for me. Nor come too soon.” She paused while the waiter poured their wine. She lifted her glass and said, “To freedom.”

“I have never considered my profession to be imprisoning.”

“I know.” They drank. She set down her glass. “Do you want to tell me what has happened?”

“Yes.” This was as clear an indication of coming change as anything that had happened, for Alessandro never spoke about his work. The shadows were already too close, the fears too great. But this time he needed her to understand. Or rather, know as much as he did.

Carla was an exceptional mother and a far better wife. Hers was a caring nature. Her heart was made for love. Her laughter was a chime strong as Alpine winds. Her eyes were dark and deep, made to swallow a man whole. As he spoke, Alessandro found himself seeing his wife anew. He talked through the entire meal. He held nothing back. He spoke of the meeting after church, the call from Edoardo, the visit of Antonio D’Alba, the discovery in the Evidence vault, everything. Carla listened with the patient intensity of a woman who had waited thirty years for this conversation.

Over coffee, he said, “Edoardo phoned last night. The American woman is indeed a retired homicide detective. Irma Steeg is held in the highest esteem by her colleagues. Which adds credence to their story. It is impossible, I know, and very hard to accept . . .”

Alessandro stopped because his wife had leaned across the table. She gripped his arm and said, “I want you to listen very carefully.”

“Very well.”

“You will help them. But on one condition.”

“And that is?”

“They will let me do this thing. Ascend.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Look at me, Alessandro. Do I appear to you like a woman who’s joking? You must do whatever it takes for them to allow me to experience this. You must.”

“I don’t understand. Why ever would you wish to have such an experience?”

“I have my reasons.”

Alessandro sat and stared across the table at his wife and lover. Carla’s face was set in immutable lines. He had no interest in arguing with her. He changed the subject with, “Would you like to know what they have asked me to do for them?”

She replied with the clipped tones of a very determined woman. “I assume it is something that on the surface challenges your concepts of right and wrong. And the fact that you are willing to agree means that you are needing to leave your current work behind.”

He shook his head. Her ability to see to his deepest core was astonishing. “Charlie Hazard says I am crucial to their future safety. Exactly how, he does not know. But this absence of knowing does not affect his certainty that it is true. He claims this impression comes from such an ascent.”

“Which means they will hardly be in a position to refuse anything you ask of them.”

“Very well, Carla. I will ask.”

Her grip only intensified. “Soon?”

“This very afternoon.”

She released both him and her building tension. She leaned back in her chair and turned to face the window. Finally she asked, “Do you know what I heard as I listened to you speak?”

“I have no idea.”

“The chance to regain what our life has stolen away from me. I heard the sound of hope.”