Cries of the Lost (25 page)

“Van at the Spaniards’ house. Minutes away from show time.”

She grabbed a chair and pulled it close to the screen.

“This is a little creepy, but I sort of like it.”

“It’s totally creepy, and I love it,” she said.

It took longer than I thought it would for the door to open. When it finally did, it was only because a crowbar had been used to pry it open. In walked four men I’d never seen before. One was maybe late thirties, with close-cropped dark hair and a rough complexion. Two were younger, probably twenties. The fourth was much older, with grey hair and a fleshier face. They were dressed in regular street clothes, though they moved as if informed by intense training and experience: nasty little rifles pointing in opposite directions, eyes squinting down the sights, jaws set and shoulders bunched.

In a few seconds, they were off-camera. It was many minutes later that I heard the Spanish equivalent of “Clear!” repeated frequently as they moved through the house.

After that, I saw them move in and out of the villa, carrying black canvas bags slung over their shoulders. Gear and supplies.

It was easily an hour before one of them spoke, clearly in a phone conversation, with long pauses between words. In Castilian Spanish.

“Villa secured. Yes. Preparing the area and taking positions. Probably an hour at most. Yes. Do you have more intelligence on the target? Okay, understood. We’re good on logistics. Maybe you could send over some sexy women.” He laughed. “Okay, central command gets first pick, we get the discards. I understand.”

At that point, conversation broke out among all four of them. The first speaker giving commands, allocating living quarters, setting watches and mess rotations, reminding everyone to keep weapons clean and operational, respectful questions from the troops about timing and duration, none answered—all the patter you’d expect to hear from a combat operation in the field.

“Who are those guys?” Natsumi asked.

“Spaniards. Probably military. That’s all I know.”

“No uniforms?”

“Special forces? Operating under cover in a foreign country? I think. My only reference point is
Guns of Navarone.”

The conversations dwindled down to talk of sports, women and music celebrities, the great universal themes.

“Theories?” Natsumi asked.

“It’s an ambush.”

“That’s what I was thinking. I should’ve just said it, damn.”

“I believe you.”

“Who’s getting ambushed?”

I turned in my chair and looked at her.

“The safe-house people, I assume,” I said. “Interesting dilemma for us.”

“Oh, no. Laudomia.”

My mind launched into creating scenarios, each of which ended in some form of disaster, whether for our project, or much worse, for us and those of innocent people. I jumped out of my chair and stalked around the room, a proven way to accelerate the thought process. Natsumi sat and watched me.

“She was just there a few days ago,” I said. “I doubt she’ll be back again that soon.”

“But what about cleaning people? Gardeners?”

“I know.”

“We have a line into the safe-house people. We could warn them.”

“People who want to kill us? Who already tried to kill me? The ones in the house might be our best friends.”

I sat back down at the computer and stared at the real-time view of the front door. No one came in or went out.

“Warn them. The ones in the house,” she said.

“They might want to kill us, too.”

“Who doesn’t want to kill us?”

“The astronomer, Mirabella McPherson. She had contrary designs.”

That caused her to run a hand down my back and give me a thumbs-up.

“We’ll always have Spottsworthy.”

I had an idea. Urgency prevented me from sharing it with Natsumi. I just held up a finger while I dialed Laudomia, and she nodded with understanding.

“Buon giorno
,” I said, when she answered. “We’re having strange thoughts.”

“Strange thoughts are far more interesting than everyday thoughts.”

“We like the Spaniards’ vineyard. The other villas are all so beautifully decorated and cultivated. The vineyard is unadorned. A blank canvas upon which we can paint our own unique vision. In keeping with Lombardian aesthetics, of course. For that, we would seek your counsel.”

“You know it’s not for sale.”

“Yes, but things can suddenly be for sale if the right price is suggested,” I said.

“Interesting.”

“Do you know when they’ll be back in Como?” I asked. “I’d love a chance to speak with them directly.”

“No idea. But they were only just here a few weeks ago, so it will be a while.”

“Of course. But it’s so disappointing. Is there a phone number or email address?”

“There are, Signore, but giving them out would violate confidentiality.”

“Okay—then would you mind contacting the gentleman and giving him my number? Then it’s up to him.”

“That I can do,” she said, taking down the number.

I thanked her, hung up and filled in Natsumi.

“So the boys in the villa didn’t contact her,” she said. “Do we know what that means?”

“They’re counting on surprise. Or they don’t know she exists. Or something else.”

“Maybe we should listen to the recordings again. Might learn more.”

“That’s it,” I said, jumping out of my seat again. “Of course.”

“What’s it?”

I retrieved a fresh CD off a stack and stuck it in the computer. Then I opened the audio files from the hidden mics and downloaded the men’s conversations.

“Ah,” said Natsumi, as she watched me work, “if they find out the villa’s bugged, they’ll assume the ambush is blown.”

“And not knowing anything else, they’ll most likely get out of there in a hurry.”

“Great idea, only how do we deliver the CD?”

“Very carefully.”

It was about an hour away from nightfall. I used that time studying the villa with Google Earth and aligning the satellite images with the GPS on my smartphone. Natsumi was off on a separate mission, which she completed more quickly than I thought she would.

“It’s a pretty boomy boom box,” she said, setting it down on a table. “The guy at the store was mortified when I tried it out. Lady Gaga at full volume.”

I had about an hour’s worth of recordings, which I looped to fill the CD to capacity. I took the player outside and had Natsumi tell me via cell phone how far I could get from the house before the voices became inaudible. I counted the number of paces on the way back.

I put on my all-black outfit, and rigged up a connection from the audio feeds in the villa to my smartphone so I could listen on earphones. There was very little of substance being spoken, but at least I’d know the mood inside the house.

Natsumi drove me to Cardano. I knew she was nervous about the plan, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice. On the way, we decided on codes from the phone, either voice or text, that would give her my status, and a short list of if/ then scenarios.

“If you’re dead, I might do a little improvising,” she said.

“That’s why we push decision-making down to the field.”

She took me to a point on the map about a hundred yards from the villa entrance. From there, it was relatively easy to follow the GPS on the smartphone through the grapevines. It was a nearly moonless night, and I couldn’t risk a flashlight, so the greatest danger was running into something or falling in a hole. That and the armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary in the villa over the hill.

I slowed my movement to a near crawl and made irregular footfalls, vaguely remembering that was a good idea in this situation. I made a mental note to study Native American tracking skills.

I was still out of range, based on our volume test, when I ran out of grapevines. The villa was dark and the chatter picked up by the mics was restrained and banal. I had no way of knowing if they’d posted a watch, but I had to assume so. I stared into the darkness and willed my pupils to let in maximum light. Which must be possible, because I saw the shape of an outbuilding emerge from the gloom. It was about twenty yards from where I stood and well within the volume range. I walked back into the grapevines, texted Natsumi an “okay so far” code, and moved to where the little building was between me and the villa.

Judging as well as I could in the dark, it seemed as if I’d have about thirty seconds of full exposure if I just ran for it, factoring in my run, which was more like an awkward lope.

I thought about it for about that long, then loped.

The ground was covered in something resembling grass, close-cropped, so the sound was minimal. I knelt in front of the outbuilding, turned on the boom box, pushed the play button and loped back into the grapevines.

Seconds later the voice of one of the Spaniards opened up into the night. I realized some of my precautions were way over-engineered. The voices seemed thunderously loud, and I had the worthless thought that I should have built in some delay. I was nearly at the grapevines when the world around me lit up, a brilliant beam coming from a forty-five degree angle.

“Fermati o sparo
! ” a man yelled. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

I ran faster and he shot.

The rounds chewed up the ground all around me, but hit nothing but soil. Once I crossed into the vineyard, I put every bit of energy I had into getting as deep into those rows of grapevines as I could. I heard more yelling, but the shooting stopped.

Through my headphones, I could hear the other men in the villa scramble, the leader yelling out orders and the others acknowledging them and muttering barely audible curses.

Seconds that felt like minutes later, all I could hear was the recording of their conversations echoing through the darkness. I pictured them standing over the boom box trying to process what they were listening to. Then suddenly all sound ceased.

I called Natsumi and gave her a one word code in a loud whisper. She yelled back the appropriate response and I clicked off the phone.

The next sound was something like the spatter of raindrops, followed a millisecond later by the roar of gunfire. I dove to the ground as hundreds of rounds from automatic rifles mowed down the grape trellises. Dirt, wood chips and grapevine debris sprayed across my back. Voices in Italian and Spanish rose between the gun bursts.

Then it stopped again. I waited, listening intently. When it seemed quiet for a reasonable amount of time, I stood up and continued running. I stopped every few minutes and listened, but heard nothing. In my mind, I saw the leader commanding the team to pack up everything, destroy all evidence of their presence, and load the van. I wondered if they’d search for the mics, or go with expedience and just get the hell out of there.

I made it to the road, and right on cue, Natsumi drove up and I dove into the Ford. Before I had the door closed she was hurtling down the winding road.

“I heard guns,” she said, a trifle louder than necessary.

“I’m okay. Just a little close for comfort.”

“Will they chase us?”

“They only have one vehicle. Need to get it loaded. I’m actually surprised they fired their weapons. Not very professional.”

“Spooked by the CD?” she asked.

“I think so. Who wouldn’t be?”

“Better professionals.”

She slowed down to the standard Italian suicide speed, though it wasn’t long before we were back at our own villa on the lake. We went immediately to the computer to view the footage from the nanny cam, which had a poor, but adequate audio function.

I went to real time. Predictably, there was a lot of yelling and hustling in and out the door. We could see one of the men with his rifle at the ready; the others had theirs slung over the shoulder. There was little talk about the hows and whys of the boom box, conjecture presumably overwhelmed by the urgency of the moment.

It took about a half hour and they were gone. That was less time needed to properly scrub the place, but they likely didn’t care at this point.

When the clamor subsided, Natsumi and I re-engaged with each other.

“That was really brilliant and really scary,” said Natsumi.

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

“My bum leg is killing me. I really can’t run.”

“I should have done it. I’m a smaller target and I run like a deer.”

“You’re probably right. It’s just hard for me to put you in danger.”

“Too late for that. Next time we discuss it.”

“Okay. Meanwhile,” I said, eager to change the subject, “we got those guys out of there and still have the mics and cameras in place.”

“So we stick here for now.”

“Of course. We have a dinner party to go to.”

C
HAPTER
15

I
felt a strange sense of exhilaration the night of Laudomia’s party. I knew from a study I once did of a drug designed to dampen the effects of adrenaline overload that a near-death experience, or equally triumphant moment, can have lingering, often euphoric effects. This can translate into grandiose, potentially self-destructive behavior by the victims of this syndrome. In my case, it presented as a particularly loud tie.

“You’re going to wear that?” Natsumi asked.

These were the only words ever spoken by Natsumi that I’d also heard from Florencia. Leading me to think it was gender-based.

“I shouldn’t?”

“Well, not necessarily.”

“It’s pure silk,” I said. “Famously woven right here in Como.”

“Was I there when you bought it?”

“Not exactly.”

“It’s very bold and lovely,” she said, straightening the knot. “I’m sorry if I sounded less than entranced.”

I had nothing to criticize about Natsumi’s wardrobe—a tightly fitted black thing and toeless high heels. Not that I ever would anyway. She looked like a million bucks and I told her so.

“Thank you. And no worries about the tie, black goes with everything,” she said.