Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

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 afternoon. 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 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.

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.

She was, of course, more than an associate. She was Euterpe, his muse, the woman guiding him on the path to Harmony.

‘These men will explain what we need to do, Stefan. I’ll tell you later everything that’s happened. But for now, please do what they say.’

His head rose and fell slowly.

She looked at Rhyme, who said, ‘We have a recording, Stefan. Would you listen to it and tell us all the information you can figure out? We need to find somebody and we think the background sounds might be able to lead us to them.’

‘A kidnapping phone call?’

Rhyme said, ‘No, a call between two people who’re planning a terror attack.’

He looked at McKenzie, who said, ‘Yes. One of the people we were after. I made a mistake and we got the wrong one. There’s someone else. We need to stop her.’