Calabria is the very tip of the boot of Italy. This region is known for its fiery pork paste, stoccafisso dried cod and many types of preserved foods, owing to the hot climate, which traditionally meant that meats and seafood should be cured to avoid spoiling.
Calabria is known too for the 'Ndrangheta, the famed organized crime outfit. The name "'Ndrangheta" means "loyalty," and it was a well-known fact that the six thousand members of the organization were true to their comrades, who made up the 150 or so small cells within Italy. But that didn't mean that members might not strike out on their own--they could, and did, as long as no conflicts of interest existed.
This was especially the case when the member was affiliated not with a crew in Calabria itself but with one of the satellite operations, such as those in the UK or the United States. The 'Ndrangheta had, in fact, been active in East Coast criminal activity for more than a hundred years. A gang in Pennsylvania mining country had extortion and protection rackets in the early 1900s, and the organization had been involved for years in U.S. drug and money-laundering operations, often working with transplanted members of the Mafia and Camorra, as well as local Anglo and Caribbean gangs. (Senior 'Ndrangheta officials in America were reportedly angered by The Godfather, as they felt the Mafia was far less glamorous and clever and ruthless than they were.)
Big, dark, hairy and intimidating, Luigi Procopio was one such freelance operator. His good language skills, military and trade union contacts, and willingness to do whatever he needed to had let him carve out a specialty as a middleman, putting together deals among interests in southern Italy, North Africa, Europe and the United States.
His instinct let him walk the delicate high-wire between self-interest and the 'Ndrangheta's, and he'd become successful.
Anywhere there was money to be made, Procopio had a presence: the old standbys, of course, arms, drugs and human trafficking, as well as newer twenty-first-century markets.
Say, terrorism, for instance.
He had just called Ibrahim at the Happy Day coffeehouse in Tripoli to update him on the developments here in Naples, and was now smoking and looking over the massive square.
Glancing up the street he happened to see black vans and marked police cars speeding his way. Lights were flashing but the vehicles' sirens were silent.
Close, closer...
Then the entourage zipped past him, not a single driver or passenger looking his way.
Instead, the law enforcers sped across the square and skidded to a stop in a semicircle around a trash container. They jumped out, highly armed men and women, and scanned about them for their target.
Which was, of course, him.
Or, to be more accurate, the mobile phone on which he'd just called Ibrahim. Procopio had left the phone live in a paper bag at the foot of the trash bin. A young Police of State officer carefully examined the container--a bomb was a possibility under the circumstances--and then found the phone. He held it up. One officer, apparently the commander, shook his head, undoubtedly in disappointment, if not disgust. Other officers looked at nearby buildings, surely for CCTV cameras. But there were none. Procopio had made sure of that before leaving the bait phone.
He now stubbed out his cigarette. He had learned all he needed to. This, in fact, was the entire point of the call to Tripoli. He needed to see just how far along the police had come in their investigation.
So. They knew about Ibrahim's existence, if not his name, and that there was an operative here. And they were scanning the landline and mobiles.
It would be total phone silence for the time being.
He settled into the car's comfortable seat and started the engine. He wanted to find a cafe and enjoy another cigarette, along with an aperitivo of a nice Ciro red wine, and some hard, dried Calabrian salami and bread.
But that would have to wait.
Until after the bloodshed.
Chapter 62
The street was colorful.
Some tourists, but also many people who seemed to be true Neapolitans--families, women with strollers, children on bicycles...and preteens and teen, boys and girls. They strutted and shied and revealed themselves, wearing proud boots and bold running shoes and high heels and patterned tights and languid shirts, and they displayed, with understated pride, their latest: necklaces and clever purses and anklets and eyeglasses and rings and ironic mobile phone covers.
The flirts seemed harmless and charming, the youngsters innocent as preening kittens.
Oh, and the view: beautiful. Vesuvius ahead in the distance, the docks and massive ships. The bay, rich blue.
But Fatima Jabril paid little attention to any of this.
Her focus was on her mission.
And pushing the baby carriage with care.
"Ah, che bellezza!" the woman of a couple, herself pregnant, cried. And, smiling, she said something more. Seeing that the Italian language wasn't working, she tried English. "Your daughter!" The woman looked down into the carriage. "She is having the hair of an angel! Look, those beautiful black curls!" Then, noting the hijab her mother wore, she paused, perhaps wondering if Muslims believed in angels.
Fatima Jabril understood the gist. She smiled and said an awkward, "Grazie tante."
The woman cast another look down. "And she sleeps so well, even here, the noise."
Fatima continued on, hiking the backpack higher on her shoulder. Moving slowly.
Because of the crowds.
Because of her reluctance to kill.
Because of the bomb in the carriage.
How has my life come to this?
Well, she could recall quite clearly the answer to that question. She'd replayed it every night falling asleep, every morning rising to wakefulness.
That day some weeks ago...
She remembered being pulled off the street in Tripoli by two surly men--who had no trouble touching a Muslim woman not a relation. Terrified and sobbing, she had been bundled off to the back room of a coffeehouse off Martyrs' Square. She was pushed into a chair and told to wait. The shop was called Happy Day. An irony that brought tears to her eyes.
An hour later, a horrific hour later, the curtain was flung aside and in walked a sullen, bearded man of about forty. He identified himself as Ibrahim. He looked her over stonily and handed her a tissue. She dried her eyes and flung it back at his face. He smiled at that.
In Libyan-inflected Arabic, a high voice, he had said, "Let me explain why you are here and what is about to happen to you. I am going to recruit you for a mission. Ah, ah, let me finish." He called for tea and almost instantly it arrived, carried by the shopkeeper, whose hands trembled as he'd set out the cups. Ibrahim waited until the man left, then continued, "We have selected you for several reasons. First, because you are not on any watch lists. Indeed, you are what we call an Invisible Believer. That is, you are to our faith what a Unitarian might be to Christianity. Do you know what Unitarian is?"
Fatima, though familiar with much Western culture, was not aware of the sect. "No."
Ibrahim said, "Suffice to say moderate. Hence, to the armies and the security services of the West you are invisible. You can cross borders and get to targets and not be regarded as a threat."
Targets, she thought in horror. Her hands quivered.
"You will be assigned a target in Italy and you will carry out an attack."
She gasped, and refused the tea Ibrahim offered. He sipped, clearly relishing the beverage.
"Now we come to the second reason you have been selected. You have family in Tunisia and Libya. Three sisters, two brothers, all of whom, praise be to God, have been blessed with children. Your mother too is still upon this earth. We know where they live. You will fulfill your obligation to us, complete these attacks, or they will be killed--every family member of yours from six-month-old Mohammed to your mother, as she returns from the market on the arm of her friend Sonja, who will die too, I should say."
"No, no, no..."
Ignoring the emotion complete
ly, Ibrahim whispered, "And now we come to the third reason you will help us in this mission. Upon completion of the assignment, you--and your husband and daughter--will be given new identities and a large sum of money. You will get British or Dutch passports and can move where you wish. What do you say?"
The only word she could.
"Yes." Sobbing.
Ibrahim smiled and finished the tea. "You and your family will travel to Italy as refugees. A smuggler I work with will give you details tonight. Once you arrive, you will be taken to a refugee camp for processing. A man named Gianni will contact you."
He'd risen and left, with not another word.
They'd no sooner landed in the Capodichino Reception Center than Gianni in fact called her. He explained in a guttural voice, clear and still as ice, that there would be no excuses. If she fell ill and could not detonate the bomb, her family would die. If she were arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and could not detonate the bomb, her family would die. If the bomb did not go off because of mechanical failure, her family would die. If she froze at the last moment...well, she understood.
And what should happen but, of all horrific coincidences, her husband had been snatched by that psychotic American! That in itself had been terrible--she loved him dearly--but the incident had also brought the police. Would they find the explosives and phone and detonator that Gianni had left for her? Would they relocate her and her daughter while they searched for Khaled?
Yet he had been saved.
That was, of course, wonderful. Yet it tore Fatima's heart in two. Because everyone, from Rania to the American police to the Italian officers, had worked so very hard--some even risking their lives--to save Khaled, a man they didn't know, a man who had come to this country uninvited.
Certainly there were those who resented immigrants but, apart from some protestors outside the camp, Fatima had yet to meet them. Why, look at the woman a moment ago.
Your daughter, she has the hair of an angel!
Most Italians were heartbreakingly sympathetic to the asylum-seeker's plight.
Which made what she was about to do, two hours from now, all the more shameful.
But do it she would.
If you fail in any way, your family will die...
But she wouldn't fail. She saw the target ahead of her. Less than two hours remained until the attack.
Fatima found a cluster of unoccupied benches not far from the water. She sat in one that faced the bay. So that no one could see her tears.
Chapter 63
The lead to the Royal Palace had been a bust. Rhyme was sure Gianni had made the call to the Tripoli coffeehouse solely to see how much the police knew and if they were tracking phones. He'd learned that they were and so he'd gone off the grid.
Without any chance of finding him via phones, and no physical leads to Fatima, the team turned to the question of what might the intended target of the bombing be. Speculation, sure, but it was all they had.
Because the refugee camp was near Naples airport, Rhyme and Spiro thought immediately that Fatima was going after an airplane or the terminal.
The prosecutor said, "She can't get a bomb on board an aircraft. But she might cut a hole in the fence, run to a full aircraft about to take off and detonate the device on the runway."
McKenzie said, "These aren't suicide attackers. They're remote detonation devices, using cell phones. I don't see airports. Train station maybe. Less security."
Rossi called security at Trenitalia. After disconnecting he said, "They're sending officers into the stations. We have our history of domestic terrorism too, like you in America. In nineteen eighty a terrorist group left a bomb in the central train station in Bologna--nearly twenty-five kilos. It was placed in the waiting room and because the day was hot--it was August--many people were inside the air-conditioned room. Very few buildings were air-conditioned in Italy then. Over eighty people were killed and more than two hundred wounded."
Spiro said, "And shopping malls, city centers, amusement areas, museums..."
Rhyme's eyes were on the map of Naples.
A thousand possible targets.
Charlotte McKenzie's phone hummed. She glanced at the screen and took the call.
"What?" Her eyes narrowed. "Good, good...'Crypt it and get it to me ASAP. Thanks."
She responded to the querying glances from the men in the room. "We've caught a break. That was Fort Meade again. When I sent them Fatima's phone, the number was automatically checked against the NOI list. That's Number of Interest. The supercomputers snagged a conversation on that phone a few days ago. The bot heard the word 'target' in a conversation between Libya and Naples, where there've been recent terrorist alerts. The algorithm recorded the conversation. As soon as I sent the request with her number, the bot flagged the recording and it went to First Priority status. They're sending it now, the recording." She tapped a few keys, read a screen. She hit a button and placed her phone on a table near them all.
From the speaker: the sound of ringing.
"Yes?" A woman's voice, speaking English with an Arabic accent. Fatima.
The gruff Italian male voice--it would be Gianni--said, "It is me. You are in Capodichino?"
"Yes, I am."
"You'll be getting the package soon. Everything will be inside. Ready to go. A new phone too. Don't take this one with you. Throw it away."
"I will doing that." Fatima's voice was shaky.
"Your husband, when he was kidnapped? He told no one anything that would make them suspicious?"
"What could he say? He knows nothing."
"I..." He paused. There was a great deal of ambient noise--which seemed to be coming from Gianni's end of the line. He continued, "I'm in Naples now. I can see the target. It's good. At the moment, there are not so many people."
More noise. Motor scooter engines, shouts. Voices calling.
Gianni said something else, but the words were drowned out. Birds screeching and more shouts.
"...not so busy now, I was saying. But on Monday, there will be many people. A good crowd and reporters. You must do it at fourteen hundred hours. Not before."
Beside Rhyme, Spiro whispered, "Ninety minutes from now. Cristo."
"Tell me the plan," Gianni instructed.
"I remember."
"If you remember then you can tell me."
"I go to location you have told me. I will go into a bathroom. I will have Western clothes with me and I wear them. I turn on the mobile taped to the package. I leave it where the most people will be. Then I walk to a big doorway."
"The arch."
"Yes, the arch. The stone will protect me. I dial the number and it will go off."
"You remember the number?"
"Yes."
Rhyme, Spiro and Rossi looked at each other. Please, Rhyme thought. Say it out loud! If either of them did, the team could send it to the NSA to hack and disable the phone in seconds of its being turned on.
But Gianni said only, "Good."
Fuck, thought Rhyme. Spiro mouthed, "Mannaggia."
"After the explosion, you will fall down, cut your face on the stone and stumble out of the wreckage. You know stumble?"
"Yes."
"The more injured you are, the more everyone will think you are innocent. Bleed, you should bleed. They will think it was a suicide bomb at first and you are merely another victim."
"Yes."
"I am going now."
"My family..."
"They are relying on you to make sure this happens."
There was the click of disconnection.
Rhyme muttered, "Any location for his phone?"
McKenzie said, "No. The NSA bot wasn't tracking GPS. Just recording."
Again the map of Naples took his attention.
Spiro said, "Can we tell anything more about the site of the attack from their conversation? It seemed like an event of sorts today. Fourteen hundred hours. And something that will draw media. What could it be?"
"In the aft
ernoon. A sports event? A store opening? A concert?"
"On Monday, though?" Ercole asked.
Rhyme said, "There's a stone arch, a doorway she'll hide in. For protection from the blast."
Ercole scoffed. "That is about three-quarters of Naples."
Silence for a moment.
Then Rhyme said, "Dante, you asked if we can we tell anything more from the recording. You meant the conversation. What about what isn't in the conversation?"
"The background sounds, you mean?"
"Exactly."
"It's a good thought." Spiro said to McKenzie, "Can you send the recording to the email here? We will put it through good speakers, so we can hear better." The inspector gave her the address.
A moment later the computer chimed. Rossi nodded to Ercole, who looked over the in-box and downloaded what Rhyme could see was an MP3 file.
The young man typed keys and the conversation played again. Through these speakers the words were much more distinct. But try though he might to hear past Gianni's and Fatima's words, Rhyme could draw no conclusions about the source of the sounds.
"Hopeless," Rossi said.
"Maybe not," Rhyme offered.
Chapter 64
Stefan Merck was a curious man.
Shy, and with eyes that were dark yet glowed in a child's glimmer. An innocence about his round face.
Still, he was large and strong as an engine, Rhyme could see. Just his genes, probably. He didn't have the physique of someone who worked out.
His hands were shackled when he was brought to the situation room. Rhyme said, "Take them off."
Spiro considered this, nodded to the officer with Stefan and spoke in Italian.
The chains were removed, and Stefan had a very odd reaction. Rather than rub his wrists, as anyone else might have done, he cocked his head, closed his eyes and listened, it seemed, to the tinkling of the tiny steel rings of the shackles as they were pocketed by the officer.
Similar to what he'd done in Charlotte McKenzie's house the night they were arrested.
It was as if he was memorizing the sound, storing it away.
He opened his eyes and asked for a tissue. Rossi handed him a box and he plucked one from the top and wiped his face and the crown of his head. When McKenzie said, "Sit down, Stefan," he did, immediately. Not from fear, but as if she were a portion of his conscious mind and he himself had made the decision.