Chapter 74

WHEN I COME TO I am lying in a bed, my now-seeing eyes slowly focusing in on a white ceiling. Hospital white. It takes a moment or two for reality to sink in. For my skin to shed the sensation that makes me want to think I’m waking up from a long and vivid nightmare about my Grace being abducted and killed. But when I feel the pinch of the intravenous line having been needled into the blue vein on my left forearm, and a nervous Detective Carbone standing at the end of my bed, I know that I have not been dreaming.

I have, in fact, been living this nightmare.

“Grace,” I whisper, my voice feeling as though it’s physically peeling itself away from the back of my throat. “Grace. Is she alive?”

Carbone’s eyes go wide. He approaches me.

“Grace was not there,” he says, his eyes peering into mine.

“She wasn’t there,” I repeat. “She wasn’t in the building?”

“It was a trap. A—how you say in America—a setup. Neither Grace nor the overcoat man were inside the building when the explosive was detonated. That bookstore has been empty for some years now. No one was inside. There are no more books to be found in there, other than a few scattered editions. It was an empty space, which made it all the easier for Hakeemullah to access it with no one knowing.”

I feel at once relieved and at the same time horrified that this Taliban agent still has my Grace, and has the means to set off IEDs in the middle of tourist-filled heaven on earth like Venice.

“That bomb was meant for me.”

Carbone nods.

“Perhaps,” he says. “But it killed three others instead.”

“Alessandra Betti,” I whisper.

Another nod.

“Lowrance,” I say.

A final nod.

“They were all in the lead boat that traversed the feeder canal. They were killed instantly when the bomb exploded only a few feet away from them.”

I lie back on the pillow and feel the weight of three innocent deaths bearing upon my soul. My life is measured in the amount of casualties I can cause. My life. A soldier’s life.

“Hakeemullah,” I say after a beat. “Have you heard anything from him since the blast? Did he claim responsibility? Has he attempted to make contact?”

“He has thus far been silent. But we are scouring Venice for him without trying to alarm a daily stream of seven thousand or more visitors. The blast has, of course, made international headlines. Nothing like this has happened since a bomb was detonated outside the Uffizi in Firenze in ’91. Now the story of your missing fiancée is spreading all over the world. Also the story of your operation in Afghanistan.”

An image of the Afghan village as it appeared after the bombing fills my head, the dead and wounded scattered about the village center. The scene is replaced with the first floor of a Venetian building exploding in a white-hot blast.

An eye for an eye.

“Revenge,” I say, sitting up, the needle in my left arm pinching my flesh. “That’s what this is about. Revenge.”

“What happened in that village, Captain?” Carbone begs. “What happened after the bombs went off?”

I picture a bearded elder standing at the far end of the village square, his back pressed up against the stone well. He’s fumbling around inside his robe, reaching for something hidden inside there. I see the black barrel of an AK raised up, aimed for me and my squad. Pointblank. I see a dozen robed elders standing on either side of him. They are doing the same thing. Reaching for weapons hidden under their robes.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss what happened after the bombing,” I say.

“But it was bad, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Worse than you can imagine.”

“I am old enough to recall your Viet Nam. The things that happened there;to some of the villages. The people who lived in them. Women. Children.”

“It’s a hard thing to live in fear, Detective Carbone. And in war, you live in fear all the time.”

“I have been to war. And I have now witnessed the things it can do to people like you.”

“And now Grace.”

“Yes. And now Grace.”

* * *

Soon a nurse comes in, excuses herself in Italian. Carbone nods in her direction, takes a step back as she checks the levels on my drip and then proceeds to take my temperature.

“I’m not sick,” I mumble over the electronic thermometer.

But this young, brunette nurse merely gazes up at me and smiles like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. And she doesn’t.

“I’m not sick,” I repeat as she removes the thermometer after it beeps. I say it directly to Carbone.

“You’ve been through a lot,” he says. “You passed out. Your eyes. Your nerves. You are here to recover. But all you have found is turmoil, threats, attacks, and now death. Rest here while we figure out our next move, Captain.”

The nurse reads the thermometer, makes a note on my chart which hangs on the end of the bed by a metal hook. She then tosses me one last smile and exits the room.

“What is our next move, Detective?”

Carbone crosses arms over chest. I sense that he’s jonesing for a cigarette right about now. But you can’t smoke in the hospital. Not even in Italy.

“Another Interpol agent will no doubt be assigned to this case. Perhaps even a team, now that the situation has gone public and involved a bombing which resulted in the death of a journalist along with one of their own.”

“That can take how long?”

“Hours. Perhaps a day. Like I said, this is a very public and sensitive situation for them now. If it’s discovered that a threat of a terroristic event already existed and law enforcement wasn’t notified, there could be public relations problems for both the Italian government and Interpol.”

“Meanwhile, Grace is still out there. With him. The man in the overcoat. Hakeemullah.”

“She is alive. That’s what matters. Believe me, Captain, he will make contact with us again and it will be soon.” He gathers his overcoat and his hat. “I will let you get some rest for now. In a little while I will come back to check on you and perhaps have a plan in place for finding Grace.”

“Please,” I say.

“No more bombs,” he says as he leaves the room.

“No one else dies,” I say.