Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

Before the cheese, though, an antipasto plate, which they hadn’t ordered, appeared, meats sliced microscopically thin and sausages. Bread too. And the drinks.

She ate a bite of the meat, then more. Salty and explosive with flavor. A moment later the mozzarella cheese came — not slices but a ball the size of a navel orange. One for each of them. She stared. ‘You eat it all?’

Ercole, already halfway through his, laughed at the nonsensical question. She ate some — it was the best she’d ever had, and she said so — and then pushed the plate away.

‘You don’t care for it, after all?’

‘Ercole, it’s too much. I usually have coffee and a half bagel for lunch.’

‘To go.’ He shook his head, winking. ‘That is unhealthy for you.’ His eyes glowed. ‘Ah, here, the pasta.’ Two plates arrived. ‘This is ziti, which we’re famous for in Campania. It is made from our hard flour, but the very finely milled variety, semolina rimacinata . Topped with local ragù . The pasta is broken by hand before cooking. The gnocchi here would be good too — it’s how we get around our Campanian disdain for potatoes — but that’s a heavy dish for lunch.’

‘You must cook,’ Sachs said.

‘Me?’ He seemed amused. ‘No, no, no. But everyone in Campania knows food. You just... you just do.’

The sauce was rich and dense and dressed with just a bit of meat cooked down to tenderness. And there wasn’t too much; it didn’t overwhelm the pasta, which had a richness and flavor of its own.

They ate in silence for a few moments.

Sachs asked, ‘What else do you do in... what’s your organization called?’

‘In English you would say Corps of Forestry of the State. CFS. We do many things. There are thousands of us officers. Fight forest fires — though I myself do not do that. We have a large fleet of aircraft. Helicopters, too, for rescues of climbers and skiers. Agricultural product regulation. Italy takes its food and wine very seriously. You know truffles?’

‘The chocolates, sure.’

A pause, as he processed her response. ‘Ah, no, no, no. Truffles, fungi. Mushrooms.’

‘Oh, right, the ones pigs hunt for.’

‘Dogs are better. There’s a special breed that’s used. They are very expensive and prized for their fine noses. I’ve run several cases of Lagotti Romagnolo kidnappings by truffle hunters.’

‘Must be tough. I mean, without a paw print database.’

He laughed. ‘They say humor does not cross borders but that is quite funny. And, as a serious matter, it’s a shame there is no such thing. Some owners put chips in their dogs, microchips, though I’ve heard that’s not always safe.’

He proceeded to explain about how white truffles from the north of Italy and black from central and south were extremely valuable, though the former more so. A single truffle could be worth a thousand euros.

He continued to tell her a story about his search for a local truffle counterfeiter, passing off Chinese varieties for Italian. ‘A travesty!’ The Composer case had derailed his hunt. A grimace. ‘The furfante ... the villain escaped. Six months of work gone.’ He scowled and finished his wine in a single gulp.

He received a text, read it, then replied.

Sachs lifted an eyebrow.

‘Ah, not about the case. My friend. The pigeons I mentioned, he and I race them together. There is a race soon. Do you know anything about birds, Detective Sachs?’

‘Amelia.’

The only ones she had experience with were the generations of peregrine falcons that had nested outside Lincoln Rhyme’s Central Park West town house. They were beautiful, striking and perhaps the most efficient and ruthless predator, pound for pound, in the world.

And their favorite meal was the fat, oblivious pigeons of New York City.

She said, ‘No, Ercole. Not a thing.’

‘I have Racing Homers. Mine compete at fifty to a hundred kilometers.’ A nod to the phone. ‘My friend and I have a team. It can be quite exciting. Very competitive. Some people complain that the pigeons are at risk. There are hawks, bad weather, man-made obstacles. But I would rather be a pigeon on a mission than one that sits all day on a statue of Garibaldi.’

She chuckled. ‘That’d be my choice too.’

Pigeon on a mission...

They’d taken a long-enough break. Sachs called for the check. He absolutely refused to let her pay.

They resumed their own mission.

And, curiously, the delay for lunch — the delicious lunch — paid off.

At the next town, they stopped at a restaurant in which the server had just come on duty; had they not taken their meal in the previous town they would have missed her. The waitress in Ristorante San Giancarlo was a slim blonde, with her grandmother’s flip hairstyle and very up-to-date tats. She looked at the picture Sachs proffered of Ali Maziq and she nodded. Ercole translated: ‘The man in the picture was dining with a man who was Italian, though not from Campania, she believes. She herself is Serbian so she couldn’t place the accent but it was not like the people in this region talk.’

‘Did she know him? Had she seen him before?’

‘No,’ she said to Sachs, and spoke some more in Italian.

Ercole explained, telling Sachs that Maziq seemed uncomfortable the whole meal, looking around. The men spoke English but would fall silent when she approached. Maziq’s companion — she didn’t think they were friends — was ‘not so very nice.’ The big man, with a dark complexion and thick dark hair, complained that his soup was cold. Which it was not. And said the bill was wrong. Which it was not. His dark suit was dusty and he smoked foul cigarettes, not caring who was offended.

‘They paid with a credit card?’ Sachs asked, hoping.

‘No,’ the waitress responded. ‘Euros. And they gave no tip, of course.’ A sour pout.

Sachs asked how they had arrived but the server wasn’t sure. They had just walked in, from up the road.

Sachs inquired, ‘Did anyone seem to be interested in them? Anyone in a black car?’

She understood the English. ‘ Da! I mean to say, yes.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Fascinated that you would be speaking of that.’

She returned to Italian.

Ercole said, ‘Halfway through the meal a large black or dark-blue car drove by and slowed suddenly, as if the driver took an interest in the restaurant. She was thinking that she might be having rich tourists as customers. But no. He drove on.’

‘The driver might have seen them?’

‘Yes,’ the waitress said. ‘Possible. The two men I am been talking about, they were outside. That tavola , table, there.’

Sachs looked up and down the quiet street. On the other side of the road was a tree-filled lot and, behind that, farmland. ‘You said they fell silent but did you hear them say anything?’

After a conversation with the waitress, Ercole explained, ‘She did hear them mention Trenitalia — the national train service. She believed the Italian said “you,” meaning Maziq would have a six-hour trip and Maziq seemed discouraged by that. Six hours — that means he would be going north.’ He smiled. ‘We are not such a big country. They could almost be at the northern border in that time.’

The woman had nothing more to add and seemed disappointed that they didn’t want a second lunch. The tortellini was the best in southern Italy, she promised.

So, the Composer was cruising the streets looking for a likely target — an immigrant, possibly. And he had seen Maziq. What then? She scanned the hazy street, dead quiet. And then gestured for Ercole to follow her. They crossed the road and ducked through the stand of trees and bushes bordering the empty lot opposite the restaurant.