Julia Navarro - The Brotherhood Of The Holy Shroud

Marco woke up the warden and told him to meet him in his office at the prison. Then he called Minerva.

"Were you asleep?"

"Reading. What's up?"

"Get dressed. I'll be waiting for you downstairs in the lobby in fifteen minutes. I want you to go to cara-binieri headquarters, get on their computer, and find whatever you can on a couple of guys we need to know about. I'm going to the prison, and I'll call you from there with everything they've got on them."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute! What's happening?"

"I'll tell you downstairs. Don't be late."

When Marco arrived at the prison, the warden was waiting for him in his office, half awake. Genari was there, too, pacing nervously.

"I want everything you've got on these Bajerais," Marco said without preamble.

"The Bajerai brothers?" the warden sputtered. "What have they done? You believe Frasquello's story? Listen, Genari, when this is over you've got a lot of explaining to do about your dealings with that thug."

The warden pulled the files on the Bajerai brothers and handed them to Marco, who plopped down on the sofa and began reading. When he finished, he talked the information through with the warden and Genari and then called Minerva.

"I'm exhausted. I almost fell asleep on the keyboard," she said.

"Well, wake up. Find everything you can on this family of Turks-they were born here, but their parents were immigrants. I want to know everything about them and their families." He filled her in on what he had. 'Ask Interpol, talk to the Turkish police, let's say three hours for a complete report."

"Three hours! No way. Give me till morning."

"Seven o'clock," Marco snapped.

"Okay, five hours. That's something."

The hotel dining room opened at seven. Minerva, her eyes red from lack of sleep and hours in front of the computer screen, walked in, confident that she'd find Marco there.

Her boss was reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. Like her, he looked terrible.

Minerva tossed two file folders on the table and dropped into a chair.

"I'm dead!"

"I imagine. Find anything interesting?"

"Depends on what you're interested in."

"Try me."

"The Bajerai brothers are the sons of Turkish immigrants, as you know. Their parents went first to Germany and from there came to Turin. They found work in Frankfurt, but the mother didn't like Germany or the Germans, so they decided to try their luck in Italy since they had relatives here. The boys are Italian-they've lived in Turin all their lives. The father worked at the Fiat plant and the mother as a cleaning lady. They were average students in school, no better or worse than most. The older one got into some scraps, seems to have quite a temper, but he's probably the smarter of the two-his grades were better than his brother's. When they finished high school the older one started working for Fiat, like his father. The younger one was hired as a driver for some bigwig in the regional government, guy named Regio, who took him on because the kid's mother had been a cleaning lady at his house. The older one lasted a little while at Fiat, but he didn't like the old eight-to-five, so he rented a stall in the market and started selling fruits and vegetables. Did okay, the both of them, never had any trouble with the cops or anybody else. Nothing. The father is retired, the mother too. They live on a pension from the state and their savings. They've got nothing, really, except their house, which they bought about fifteen years ago, scrimping and saving.

'A couple of years ago, one Saturday night, the brothers were at a discotheque with their girlfriends. A couple of drunks started hitting on the girls-apparently one of them pinched one of the girls' ass. The police report says the brothers pulled out knives and they all went at it. They killed one guy and wounded the other one so bad he can't use his arm anymore. They got twenty years-tantamount to life. Their girlfriends married other people."

"What do you know about their family in Turkey?"

"Just regular people-poor, struggling. They come from Urfa, near the Iraq border. Through Interpol, the Turkish police e-mailed what they've got on the family there, which is very little-absolutely nothing of interest. The father has a younger brother in Urfa, although younger is relative-he's about to retire. He works in the oil fields. There's also a sister, married to a schoolteacher; they have eight children. They're good, decent people, never gotten into any trouble. The Turks were surprised we were looking at them. The truth is, we may have caused these people some problems-you know how their minds work over there."

'Anything else?"

"Yeah. Here in Turin, there's a cousin of the mother's-guy named Amin, apparently exemplary citizen. He's an accountant, been working for years for an advertising agency. He's married to an Italian woman; she works in a high-end clothing store. They have two daughters. The older one is at the university; the younger one is about to graduate from high school. They all go to Mass on Sundays."

"Mass?"

"Yeah, Mass. Shouldn't be a big surprise-this is Italy."

"Yeah, but this cousin-he's not Muslim?"

"I don't know-I guess he is, or was, but he's married to an Italian woman, in the Church. He must have converted-although there's nothing in his file about a conversion."

"Look into him. And try to find out whether the Bajerais belong to a mosque here."

"Mosque?" Minerva asked skeptically.

"Okay-this is Italy. But somebody must know whether they are-or were-Muslims. And if there are others they associate with. Did you get into their bank records?"

"Yeah-nothing out of the ordinary there. The cousin earns a pretty good salary; so does his wife. They live pretty well, although they've got a mortgage on their apartment. No suspicious deposits. They're a tight-knit family; at least some of them go every visiting day to see the brothers, take them food, sweets, tobacco, books, clothes-they're trying their best for them."

"Yeah, I know. I've got a copy of the visitors' log. This Amin has visited them twice this month-when he normally visits them once."

"I wouldn't think visiting them one extra day was anything to get suspicious about."

"We have to look at everything," Marco reminded her.

"Yeah, sure-but we shouldn't lose perspective either."

"You know what strikes me? The fact that this cousin of theirs goes to Mass and was married by the Church. Muslims don't go apostate just like that."

"And you're also going to investigate all the Italians who never set foot in a church? Listen, I've got a girlfriend who converted to Judaism because she fell in love with an Israeli one summer when she was in a kibbutz. The guy's mother was an Orthodox Jew who would never have allowed her darling boy to marry a shiksa, so my friend converted and every Saturday she goes to synagogue. She doesn't believe in anything, but she goes."

"That's your girlfriend. Here we have two Turks who want to kill somebody."

"Uh-huh, but they're the killers, not their cousin, and you can't turn him into a suspect because he goes to Mass."

Pietro came into the dining room and headed over. A minute later, Antonino and Giuseppe joined them. Sofia was the last to arrive.

Minerva brought them up to speed on what had been happening overnight and at Marco's behest handed out copies of the report she'd produced.

"So? What do you think?" Marco asked when they'd all finished reading through the file.

"They aren't pros-if they've been hired for the job it's either because they've got some relationship to our guy or because somebody who does trusts the hell out of them," Pietro observed.

Giuseppe chimed in. "There are men in that prison who'd cut his throat without thinking twice, but die person who's contracted the hit either doesn't know how to get to those types, which means he doesn't have underworld ties, or, as Pietro says, he trusts these two, who seem to be nothing special. They've never been tied to dirty money, never so much as stolen their neighbor's Vespa for a joyride. A stupid bar fight doesn't put them in the big leagues."