The Abduction: A Novel (21 page)

FORTY-NINE

HOLLY MADE THE
briefest of stopovers at Camp Ederle before heading north again. Joe Nicholls, the soldier invalided out of Red Troop, lived right up by the Swiss border. There were no east–west roads up there, so she drove inland first, before beginning the long journey into the mountains.

She drove alongside Lake Lecco, the road winding in and out of tunnels hewn through the rock as it climbed. Once again, she was soon above the snow line, the road signs – which were in three languages now – pointing her onwards to St Moritz and San Bernardino. At Chiavenna, she turned onto an even smaller road towards Passo dello Spluga, the Splügen Pass.

Nicholls lived at the base of Bocchetta del Pinerocolo, a massive col of snow-encrusted black rock that towered over the tiny village below like an ocean liner over a skiff. Technically, this was still within Italy, but she noticed how even the blackboard outside the village bar proclaimed tonight’s specials in Swiss francs as well as euros.

She’d called ahead, so as to give him some warning but not too much. When she rang the doorbell at his isolated chalet he opened it readily enough, greeting her with a nod and a quick “Boland, right?” before leading the way past racks of skis and snow shoes into a pretty kitchen with a view of the mountain. Despite the snow outside he was wearing just a T-shirt and sweat pants, as if he’d been working out. He still had the muscular physique of a professional soldier, although he walked with a pronounced limp.

He made her coffee in a stovetop Bialetti while she explained why she was there.

“I’ve been following the news about Mia,” he said when she was done. “Sent the major a message of support when I heard. This must be killing him.”

She nodded. “It is.”

“And you think his family may have been singled out for some reason?”

“That’s overstating it,” she confessed. “All I know is it’s a possibility we should be considering.”

“Major Elston saved my life twice,” Nicholls said flatly. “Once in combat, when he got hold of my femoral artery and wrapped it around his finger to stop me bleeding out. And again a year later, when he helped me get clean from drugs. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. But I can’t think of anything that could be relevant. I’m sorry, you’ve had a wasted journey.”

She asked him about Carver, and he shrugged. “RSTA, you’re out in the field mostly. Carver’s crew were based at Bagram. But people who worked with him said he was an OK officer. Not one to let red tape get in the way of the mission, unlike some of those other guys with silver eagles on their pockets.”

“Since I’m here, mind telling me about the drugs?”

“It’s the usual story. I started using to mask the pain, plus I was bored out my mind without the troop. Once the heroin had hold of me, it wouldn’t let me go. The major heard about it. He came and found me, tore me a new one. Said I was a disgrace to Red Troop – which I was – that he’d get me into a programme if I supplied the will-power. Put like that, I realised I had to get my shit together.”

“So you didn’t start using while you were in the army?”

He shook his head. “My problem started after I got back – Italy’s awash with the stuff.” He stopped. “Look, I don’t know if this is relevant, but…”

“Yes?” Holly prompted.

“Last time me and the major spoke was about two months ago, right after his last tour. He came up here to visit when he got back, check on how I was doing. And the answer’s ‘pretty good’, as you can see. I asked if there was any special reason he was here, and he said he’d just wanted to remind himself what it was all about. I got the impression he was pissed at something.”

“Something in the army?”

“He didn’t say. But yeah, maybe.”

“I’ll speak to him,” Holly said. “Ask him what he meant.” Nicholls nodded. “Do that.” He gestured at the mountain. “Hey, if you don’t mind, I’m late for my cross-country training.”

“You do it every day? That’s impressive.”

He shrugged. “It’s one reason I live up here. Nobody limps on skis, right?”

“Sure. Have a good one,” Holly said, accepting defeat. She glanced at her watch. She’d been in Joe Nicholls’ home less than thirty minutes. “Thanks anyway.”

“No problem. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

FIFTY

BACK IN THE
men’s prison on La Giudecca, Daniele listened without comment to Kat’s explanation of how Ethereal had gained access to her deleted information. “Have you brought the laptop?” he asked when she was done.

She indicated. “It’s in my bag.”

“Off, or standby?”

“Fully off.” Zara had told her that if she simply put it in sleep mode, Ethereal could wake it at any time.

“Good. Let’s assume he doesn’t actually know you’re Carabinieri yet. If we’re going to turn the tables on him, we have to do it before he finds out.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’ll bury a file in your hard drive and make it look as if you’ve tried to hide it. When he opens it, it will upload a trojan directly to his machine.” He paused. “I’ll need to do this quickly – he may have an alert set up to notify him as soon as you turn the laptop on. Ready?”

“Absolutely,” Kat said, uncertain exactly what she was meant to be ready for.

Daniele covered the webcam lens with a piece of card, turned on the laptop, and immediately accessed the internet. He appeared to be downloading and modifying some files, but it was all done so fast Kat couldn’t follow it.

“That’s the file set up,” he said. “I’m nearly done.”

A box appeared on the screen.

Why are you hiding from me, Kat?

“Finished,” Daniele said, stepping away from the laptop and uncovering the webcam.

Good afternoon, Kat.

As her face appeared on the screen, she reached out and turned the laptop off.

“Why did you do that?” Daniele asked.

“I’ll turn it back on later. Trust me, he won’t go away.”

As the time for the live webcast drew near, it was clear that once again the kidnappers had shown an innate understanding of how to make their material viral-friendly. By eight, the trailer announcing Mia’s upcoming live appearance had travelled all round the world.

Shortly before nine, Malli set up a computer and a screen in the operations room so that the
carabinieri
could watch it. Within Carnivia itself, what looked like a giant cinema screen had been erected at one end of St Mark’s Square. At 9 p.m. exactly, it flickered into life.

The screen showed Mia standing on a small box. She had some kind of blanket draped over her, with a hole cut for her head, and she was hooded. In each outstretched arm she held what looked like electrical wire.

Kat recognised it instantly – there could be no mistaking a re-creation of one of the most iconic images to have emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

STRESSFUL STANDING IS DESIGNED TO INDUCE THE MILD DISCOMFORT ASSOCIATED WITH TEMPORARY MUSCLE FATIGUE. IT THEREFORE FALLS OUTSIDE THE PROHIBITION ON TORTURE.

The camera held on Mia, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot on the flimsy box. Someone behind Kat said, “Are those electrical wires?”

“It’s something that was done in Iraq,” another voice said quietly. “The prisoner was told that if he fell off the box, he’d be given a shock.”

Compared with previous days’ films, this was slow; uneventful, even. Its impact came from knowing that what you were seeing was unedited, live footage – that Mia was experiencing that abuse now, in real time. It gave the webcast a horrible, almost voyeuristic immediacy.

The screen went black.

#TORTURE?

#NOTTORTURE?

YOU DECIDE.

As the operations room erupted into discussion, Malli picked up a remote and switched over to Rai News24, the state news channel. The film was already being reported. A scrolling title along the bottom added that the number of people visiting Carnivia.com during the webcast had reached six million. Reactions to the film were easily the number one subject on Twitter.

Within moments, the channel had also put the original photograph and the re-creation featuring Mia side by side. They were almost identical. It was, thought Kat, a neat visual trick; one the kidnappers had almost certainly anticipated.

The female newsreader was explaining that Abu Ghraib had been a prison in Iraq famed for abuses by American guards, when she hesitated and put a finger to her earpiece. A new picture flashed onto the screen behind her: the masthead of the newspaper
La Stampa
. Underneath was a picture of Mia and the headline “REWARD: 1M EUROS”.

“Turn it up,” someone said to Malli.

“… has been revealed exclusively in tomorrow’s edition of
La Stampa
. The reward, which is being offered by Marco Conterno on behalf of Costruttori Conterno SpA, is for any information leading to Mia’s safe return…”

On every side of the operations room, a groan went up from the assembled Carabinieri.

“
Brutto bastardo figlio di puttana
,” Piola said heavily. “Now we’re really screwed.”

DAY FOUR

FIFTY-ONE

THE SWITCH TO
live webcasts, and the million-euro reward from Conterno, turbocharged still further a story that had been dominating the headlines even without those refinements. The Italian prime minister cut short a foreign visit to convene a meeting of the National Disasters Committee. The American Secretary of State gave an interview on the steps of an aero-plane, pointedly stating that finding Mia was a matter for the Italian authorities but that the United States was “ready to offer any assistance that might be required”.

Whilst no one finds their methods more abhorrent than I,

Raffaele Fallici wrote on his blog,

there is a serious question raised by this protest which has so far been ignored. Last night on Twitter, a million people agreed that what they were witnessing was #torture. Let us not be too squeamish to say it out loud: if these “enhanced techniques” might be used at American bases in Italy, should we not have some say over whether those bases are situated here? The Americans choose to do their torturing abroad, in places such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, precisely because they believe it gives their interrogators some protection from their own Constitution. Why should it be one law for US soil, but another for Italian?

Il Gazzettino
, not to be outdone, published a double-page photograph of Mia with the headline “MISSING”, and asked its readers to put it up all over the country. Since there could scarcely be a person in Italy unaware of the story, Piola suspected it had more to do with distributing the logo of the newspaper itself, prominently displayed in the bottom right-hand corner.

The kidnappers simply released another film. It was short – just seven seconds, making it easy to share on social media sites like Vine and Instagram. Mia, sitting on the mattress in her cell, waiting. And a title that said:

WALL STANDING IS NOT TORTURE.

AT 9 P.M. THIS EVENING, SHE WILL NOT BE TORTURED

WATCH IT LIVE ON CARNIVIA.

It was clear that a senior member of the Carabinieri team was going to have to go and ask Marco Conterno to reconsider. No one expected that the request would be successful, so Piola wasn’t in the least surprised when his offer to do it was accepted by General Saito.

Costruttori Conterno was headquartered in Treviso. Smaller and quieter than Venice, and situated a little way inland, the town attracted far fewer tourists than its larger sibling. Piola had no trouble finding Conterno’s office: the sleek, Renzo Piano-designed cube loomed over the surrounding suburb like a spaceship in a public park. Whisked to the topmost floor in a steel-and-glass lift, he stepped out onto a carpet as soft and muffling as a duvet. In front of him, a wall of glass framed a view over the Sile river towards the distant Venetian lagoon. An assistant told him that Signor Conterno would be with him in a few minutes.

While he waited, he examined yet another display of photographs of the firm’s founder, Ambrogino Conterno. They showed him as an older man than the ones at the internment museum, still remarkably handsome in a louche, leonine way, even after his hair had gone white, and still exuding charm and success. It was curious, Piola thought, how these big companies made such personality cults of their founders; almost as if the more faceless and corporate they became, the more they clung to the charisma of their past. He recalled the slogan that supporters of Juventus, the football club owned by Gianni Agnelli, used to chant at matches: “Agnelli is Fiat. Fiat is Turin. Turin is Italy”. There was no doubt that, at its heart, Conterno was still Ambrogino.

In one of the cabinets was a sash embroidered with a motif he recognised, a cross with a stubby downbeam that turned into the blade of a sword, and the motto “
Fidei in Fortitudo
”, just like the ones at the museum. His Latin was rusty: should that be translated as “My faith is strong” or “Faith in strength”?

“Good morning, Colonel,” said a thin voice behind him.

He turned. Even though he knew that Marco, Ambrogino’s grandson, was only thirty-nine, Piola’s first impression was how ordinary he seemed. His suit was expensive – Brioni or Zegna, Piola guessed enviously – and almost certainly made to measure, and his glasses looked as if they not only cost more than Piola’s car, but contained more precision engineering as well. But the eyes behind the glasses were blinking nervously, and the man inside all these beautiful accessories seemed somehow more like a bland, middle-ranking manager than the head of one of Italy’s largest corporations.

They sat in two armchairs, either side of that endless view. Piola declined coffee but accepted water. A secretary, or perhaps a PR minder, poured iced San Pellegrino for them, then sat discreetly just out of their line of sight, tapping at her BlackBerry.

“You’ve come to talk about the reward, I take it,” Marco Conterno began when they’d exchanged pleasantries.

“That’s right,” Piola said. “Specifically, to ask you to withdraw it.”

Conterno blinked. “I thought the Carabinieri would be pleased. This could be a paradigm changer for the investigation.”

If he’d really thought that, Piola reflected, it was curious that he, or his advisors, hadn’t checked with the Carabinieri before splashing it all over the newspapers. “It will make the task of finding Mia far harder,” he said flatly. “If not impossible.”

“I don’t see how.”

“It’s effectively offering a ransom to the kidnappers by the back door,” Piola explained patiently. “By linking payment to Mia’s release, rather than to a conviction, you’re circumventing the laws designed to prevent people from profiting from these sorts of crimes. The kidnappers may even try to negotiate the amount upwards, by treating her even more appallingly. But of more immediate concern to us is that we’ll have every conman and lunatic in Italy calling the investigation team in the hope of laying claim to a share. It’ll be all but impossible to sift the useful leads from the chancers.”

“In a purely cost –benefit sense, it must surely be better to have too many leads than too few,” Conterno objected.

Piola noted how the other man slid into business-school jargon whenever he was challenged. “It will cripple our investigation.” He watched Conterno closely. “But perhaps that’s what you intended?”

“That’s an insulting suggestion,” Conterno said, bridling.

“Then withdraw the offer, at least until Mia’s been found. You can say it’s on the advice of the Carabinieri.”

For a moment Conterno hesitated. Then he shook his head. “The deadlock needs to be broken. The Carabinieri have had their chance. If this reward salvages Italy’s reputation – a reputation which your organisation’s failure to find Mia has done so much to undermine – it will be money well spent.”

He spoke firmly enough, but Piola thought his words seemed somehow second-hand, as if they were a speech he’d heard someone else make and was now repeating.

“Well, I can see that you’re sincere, even if we disagree,” he said politely, getting to his feet. “Since you won’t change your mind, I suppose we must hope you’re right, and that Mia is returned safely. ‘
Fidei in fortitudo’
, as it says on your grand-father’s sash over there.”

The effect of his words was extraordinary. For the first time since they’d been talking, Marco’s face lit up – with an expression, Piola thought, of almost innocent joy. “Are you Brethren? You should have said—”

“Brethren?”

Conterno subsided. “I thought that perhaps you were a fellow member. Many senior
carabinieri
are, I understand.”

“Of the Order of Melchizedek?” Piola shook his head, trying to hide his amusement. “Alas, I haven’t had that honour.”

“Well, you mustn’t give up. To be proposed into the first degree, after all, isn’t so very arduous. You only need four supporters – and to show that you are a man of worthy and charitable endeavour, of course.”

“Do I take it that you have the distinction of being eminent in that brotherhood?” Piola said, trying to employ the same tortured syntax as Conterno.

“I have the honour of serving humbly as Master of the House of the Venetians. As my father and grandfather did before me.” The other man smiled wanly. “Both rose even higher in their time, of course. I can only hope I shall do the same.”

“Indeed,” Piola said. “Actually, I recently came across the names of some members your grandfather might have known. Bob Garland, for example?”

“It’s possible – Grandfather knew everyone. If you’re really interested, the archive would be the place to look.”

“The archive?”

“In Palazzo Lighnier, the Order’s headquarters. You must stop by sometime. Apart from anything else, it’s a wonderful place to stay when you’re in Rome. And very convenient for the Vatican.”

“I’ll certainly do so. May I say that you sent me?” Conterno hesitated. “Yes. I think that would be permitted.”

“Permitted” – he sounded like a schoolboy, Piola thought, worried about breaking the rules. “Did you discuss this reward with your fellow members of the Order, by any chance?”

Conterno blinked. “There are many eminent men amongst the Brethren. I’m not at liberty to name names, of course. But our symposia are an unparalleled opportunity to take soundings… I’d be foolish not to take advantage of that. And I have to tell you, Colonel, that out there, amongst men of action, the plan meets with almost universal support.”

Translation, Piola thought: someone put the idea of that reward into your head, and bullied you into going along with it. Rather to his surprise, he found himself feeling almost sorry for Marco Conterno.