Alessandro stood on the steps of the Salute. In just over half an hour, the clock would strike midnight. He had no idea what to do, but he had to do something, anything.
He ran down the steps and across the square to where Placido waited in his boat. “Wait for me,” Alessandro called as he ran to the entrance of the Customs House and found the security guard.
Alessandro pulled out his badge. “Seen anything unusual?”
“I only watch this door, and I haven’t been on duty for long,” the guard said, shaking his head. “Soon after I came on, Maria, the blind woman who begs at the Salute, came out of the church, babbling incoherently. Everybody ignored her, until she grabbed some young punk by the arm. He pushed her off the steps, maybe broke her leg. I called an ambulance, but I don’t think that’s the kind of unusual activity you’re looking for—”
“No. Perfect. Thanks!”
Placido was waiting for him, engine running. “To the hospital!” Alessandro called, leaping into the boat. “And there’s no time for caution. Someone’s life depends on it.”
Placido didn’t need to be told twice. “I’m taking the Pietà canal,” he said. Behind them the Customs House and the Salute were swallowed in fog.
Alessandro called Columbo. “Nothing,” he called into the phone over the racing engine. “There was no phone number.”
Columbo swore.
“The lock was forced,” Alessandro went on. “They must’ve been there. I just spoke with the security guard at the Customs House. He said Maria was babbling about something. She must have heard something. Then someone pushed her, and she was taken to the hospital. I’m on my way there now. Call ahead and tell them I’m coming.”
“Okay,” Columbo said grimly. “Heard from Pamela, and she told me everything. I’m furious with her, but that can wait.”
“I have to go. I have twenty-one minutes to return that call.”
“I know. Try not to get yourself killed in the meantime.”
They were across the Grand Canal now. The sirens hadn’t lied: already the tide was washing over the Piazza San Marco and creeping toward the basilica.
They passed the Bridge of Sighs, no longer looking as if it were suspended between stone buildings but rather floating in clouds.
“There! There!” Alessandro shouted as he saw the opening of the Pietà.
There was a grinding sound, and the boat reared like a horse, pivoting on its stern before crashing down again on the canal. Alessandro felt the shock of the impact through his spine, sure for a moment he was going to fly right out of the boat as it lurched around the corner. Passing under a bridge, the boat’s side scraped along the stones.
Water churned up behind the boat and crashed over the sides of the canal and up against doors, the motor’s roar echoing between the buildings. The boats moored along either side smashed against one another.
Visibility was near zero. The buildings had trapped the fog between them, and Alessandro could only pray there were no other boats on this stretch of canal.
But as he’d learned over the years, it wasn’t the things one worried about that came to pass but the completely unexpected. One moment they were flying down the canal, and the next they were sputtering to a stop.
“We’re out of gas,” Placido said. “There should still be lots—”
13 minutes. An unlucky number.
“Find some and meet me at the hospital,” Alessandro shouted as he jumped out of the boat and into the ankle-deep water that flooded the fondamenta. This stretch led to a dead end at the lagoon, and so he turned, going back in the direction they had come until he reached a bridge.
These were not streets he knew well, but he was pretty sure that if he turned right at the end of this street and then took an immediate left, it would take him straight to Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where the hospital was located. Only somehow he overshot the street’s entrance in the fog and ended up running in a circle before finding the right way.
He careened around the corner, narrowly missing an old woman walking a cat on a leash. She cursed him as he ran on, keeping tight to the wall until he emerged onto the square. He ran past the statue of Colleoni on his horse toward the doors of the hospital.
9 minutes.
Two security guards were waiting for him. “She won’t talk to anyone but you,” one of them said as Alessandro flashed his badge.
“We have to run!” Alessandro called to them as they led the way.
There was another guard outside Maria’s door, and inside a doctor sat next to her bed. “I don’t want you—” the doctor started to say, but Alessandro didn’t wait for him to finish.
“Maria! It’s me, Alessandro. What happened at the church this evening? It’s very important!”
“Oh Alessandro! No one listen to old woman! I told man in square to call police for me and he call me a filthy gypsy, push me down. Push down old blind woman! I couldn’t get up, and woman phoned ambulance. I come here and no one listen to me. They think I crazy and make things up for attention. But I tell them, I work for police, I must talk to you.”
“I’m here, Maria. I’m sorry about what happened today, and I’ll talk to the doctor.” Alessandro could feel the doctor’s eyes on him. “But now tell me what you saw.”
Maria wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her hospital gown, and Alessandro prayed she hadn’t forgotten what she’d seen.
5 minutes.
“Did you find a piece of paper in the church, Maria?” he asked.
She nodded. “The Albanian men, they put it there. After the mass, priest and everyone leave and they start talking about Signorina Olivia. They say they going to leave note there for you. I take it to give to you.”
“Thank you, Maria. May I please have it now?” Alessandro fought to keep his voice under control. He prayed the staff hadn’t thrown it in the garbage along with the other “clues” she filled her pockets with.
If he didn’t call the number on that paper in 4 minutes and 29 seconds . . .
She reached into the pocket of her blue hospital gown. “They want to take it, but I say it was for you. I only give to you.” She looked toward the doctor with her dim eyes. “Alessandro. He a good boy.”
A puzzled expression crossed her face. “I know I put it in this pocket. Where is it?” Her brow wrinkled into even deeper lines as she concentrated. “Did you steal it from me?” she asked the doctor suspiciously.
“Check your other pocket, Maria,” Alessandro answered for the doctor, willing patience into his voice.
3 minutes.
2 minutes and 59 seconds.
58.
57 . . .
Maria shifted in the bed and searched her other pocket. “No, it was nurse who took it. I know she took it from me. She is working with Albanians, Alessandro. You arrest her.”
Alessandro wanted to scream. He ran his hand through his hair and turned to the window. In just under two minutes the clocks would strike midnight.
And when they struck, no one would hear the gunshots accompanying them.
“Olivia, forgive me,” he whispered, imagining her terror as a gun pressed against her forehead, seconds that felt like hours as she waited for the explosion that would rip through her brain.
“I remember,” Maria cried. Alessandro jumped and, turning around, saw Maria pull a crumpled paper from the front of her hospital gown.
“Give it to me!” Alessandro demanded as he tore it from her hand. It was a fifty-euro note.
“No, not that. That from Signorina Olivia.” She reached into her gown again. “Here it is.”
Alessandro took it, then pulled out his cell and punched in the numbers, willing his hand to stop shaking.
1 minute.
One ring. Two rings.
“Come on, answer, you bastards!”
Three rings.
“Pronto,” said a man’s muffled voice.
“Rossi here. You’ll get the money.”
“Cutting it close, aren’t we? The ring almost caused the gun to go off in my hand. Here, someone wants to say a few words to you.”
“Alessandro, I—”
“Olivia!” Alessandro cried.
“That’s enough,” said the muffled voice. “Five-hundred-euro notes in two gym bags. At 2 p.m., a boat will pull up at the Salute vaporetto stop, and the driver will ask for you. Don’t get any ideas of putting sharpshooters on the rooftops. And if you don’t come, the girl and the cop get it. Don’t get any ideas about putting a tracer on the bag, either—we’ll find it. Feel free to mark the bills, though. Where we’re going, no one will care. When we’ve reached our destination, you’ll receive another call, telling you where to find her. But the slightest sign of trouble, before or after you make that drop, she gets it, and the cop too. Understand?”
“Yes, I’ll do exactly as you say,” Alessandro said. He had no choice.
“Don’t try calling this number again—it no longer exists.”
Call Ended flashed across the screen.
He hit Columbo’s number.
“I have no choice,” he said to Columbo after filling him in.
“We don’t pay ransoms,” Columbo said. “Ever. No exceptions. As I said before, it would spark a kidnapping epidemic in this country we haven’t seen the likes of in fifty years. And frankly, Alessandro, I don’t believe for one moment you’ll ever get Olivia back. They’ll take the money and leave you waiting for that phone call forever.”
“If we arrest their boat driver and he doesn’t return with the money, they’ll kill Olivia and Orlando for sure,” Alessandro replied bitterly. “So unless we find out where they are and carry out some sort of Bruce Willis commando raid where only the bad guys are killed, I don’t see how there’s any other choice. I’m going to have to pay the ransom and take my chances.”
As he hung up, Maria was proudly telling the doctor that she was a spy for the police and on their payroll. The doctor looked like he wished he were somewhere else.
Alessandro placed a call to his lawyer. “Gino, get that ten million in five-hundred-euro bills by noon.”
“Five-hundred-euro bills? And I suppose I don’t know that’s the denomination of choice for criminals everywhere,” Gino answered. “Ten million fits nicely into two duffel bags and can be easily carried by a strong man such as yourself. You do know this will immediately raise alarm bells at the bank. As a matter of fact, it might prompt the bank to call the Guardia di Finanza. Convenient, as that would be you. Should I pass on your number? Or maybe you should just tell me what you’re up to so I can start working on your defense.”
Just as Alessandro was thinking his lawyer was taking lessons in sarcasm from Columbo, there was an incoming text from Columbo himself: You have 10 minutes to tell me you’ll follow orders, or I have to report you’ve gone rogue. It’s a lot of years in prison even you won’t be able to buy yourself out of. And it’ll all be for nothing. You know they’ll kill her anyway for fear she knows anything that could give them away.
Alessandro sat on the edge of Maria’s bed and put his head in his hands. Everything Columbo and his lawyer had told him was right.
But he’d made the call on time and bought himself until 2 p.m. Fourteen more hours. Olivia was alive—for now.
He would risk the twenty years in prison if he could bring back Olivia, but he knew they’d take the money—if the bank would even give it to him—and kill her anyway. And even if he could carry out a successful raid, he had no idea where she was in this labyrinth of a city.
And so the outcome would be the same: Olivia was going to die, and he was powerless to stop it.