The Abduction: A Novel (17 page)

THIRTY-SIX

ALDO PIOLA WENT
to retrieve his car from the multi-storey at Tronchetto for the drive back to the mainland. It had been a long day, and he knew there would be many even longer days to come, but his mind was not now on the kidnap so much as the conversation he had to have with his wife when he got home.

He had promised Gilda that he would never again be alone with Kat Tapo. That meant not working with her, let alone having dinner with her. And it was no use, he thought ruefully, trying to pretend that conversations about work were different. It was precisely
because
work was different, because he and Kat had shared the all-consuming intensity of a big investigation, that their affair had started in the first place. If only work were more like the mundane, banal reality of marriage and parenthood – the daily grind of laundry and shopping and homework, and telling the kids not to look at their phones at the table – it would probably never have happened.

But Kat was also the best junior officer he’d ever worked with, and he, like her, needed someone to bounce ideas off. The problem with a case as big as this one was that you could end up as no more than a tiny cog in a massive machine, feeding it with scraps of evidence but never seeing the big picture.

For Mia’s sake he needed to work with Kat. For the sake of his marriage, he needed to be honest with his wife.

Gilda would have to understand that this was a purely professional decision. And then, after the case was over, he’d put in for a transfer. It would probably mean moving to Milan or Rome, which would be a wrench for the children. But they’d make new friends soon enough, and it would be a new beginning for Gilda and him. Perhaps he could even wangle Genoa, where her parents lived. That would be the deal he would offer her, although he wouldn’t put it in exactly those terms: he would work with Kat again now, but it would be for the last time.

Without being aware of it, he sighed. Although not a native of Venice, he had come to love this strange, stinking city. Of course, it was full of tourists in the summer, and flooded in winter, but there was something about these mist-filled canals, the improbable Byzantine palaces that floated up out of the black depths of the lagoon as if built by mermaids, that spoke to something poetic in his own soul. In Venice, it was possible to think a man could be a hero. In Milan or Genoa, he suspected, life would be more prosaic.

His phone buzzed. Pulling it out, he saw it was simply reminding him that he had a message. Whoever had called earlier, when he was in the restaurant, had left a voicemail.

Retrieving it, he heard a woman’s voice. “Colonel, it’s Dottora Iadanza. I wanted to tell you that I’ve been in contact with Professor Trevisano, as you suggested, and we think we’ve found something rather interesting. Could you call me back?”

This time it was him who got voicemail. He left her a message in turn saying he’d try again tomorrow. Then he started his engine and headed across the Ponte della Libertà, over the misty waters of the lagoon, towards Gilda.

THIRTY-SEVEN

AT HOME IN
her apartment, Kat logged on to Carnivia and read Daniele’s appeal. The final paragraph now read:

As I write this, the police are downstairs. I have no doubt they will try to take Carnivia offline. I have taken steps to prevent this from happening, but no website is proof against a determined government. If they succeed in closing us down today because of this one case, tomorrow there will be another, and then another. The future of Carnivia is in the balance.

Looking up the anti-terrorism act, she discovered that the authorities could keep Daniele detained without charge for as long as they wished. The measure had been described as a last resort when it was introduced, but without legal precedent to define it, it seemed no one could say what that actually meant.

Kat doubted if anyone in authority really cared whether shutting down Carnivia would help or hinder the search for Mia. The media had demanded action, and since leaving the website up would look like inaction, closing it down had seemed the better alternative.

But then, she found herself on a different side of this debate from Daniele. Whether or not to close down Carnivia was, for her, a pragmatic question. Of course freedom of speech was generally a good thing, and censorship bad – but if what you were censoring included child pornography, drug deals and stolen credit card details, what was the big deal? In her professional capacity she’d had to watch films depicting sexual violence against women so sickening, it was impossible to think that any person who was aroused by watching them should be allowed to go on doing so. Daniele, she knew, would say that no individual should have the power to make such a complex moral judgement. But she wasn’t sure that Daniele’s moral universe was a place she particularly wanted to live in.

Out of habit, she checked her messages. Because she was now logged on to Carnivia, they included anything she’d been sent as Columbina7759. Some were alerts that new gossip had been uploaded about people she knew – since Carnivia could glean from your computer who you worked with and who your Facebook friends were, it could also alert you to any rumours that were circulating about them. Some were messages from strangers who’d come across her profile on Married and Discreet. Three, though, were from Riccardo, the last man she’d hooked up with. She scanned the headers:

Meet again?

Really want to see you

A lovely picture of you and me

Puzzled, she opened the last one.

As I haven’t heard back from you I thought I’d send you a little reminder of the other night…

Attached was a photo – or rather, she realised, a still from a piece of film; the frame had that telltale letterbox format. A softly lit hotel room. A bed. Kat, naked, on top of an equally naked Riccardo.

Fuck
, she thought as realisation dawned.
The fucking prick filmed it.

Thinking back, she recalled seeing his phone on a table, casually propped against a bottle of wine. Why hadn’t she thought to check it? But doing that would have meant not trusting him, and at the time she’d wanted to believe in the fiction she’d created around that evening – that instead of being a sad, furtive, meaningless encounter with a married man, it had been some kind of exciting, romantic adventure.

You stupid idiot.

Her immediate instinct, after the initial anger and disgust had worn off, was to email him back, arrange to meet, and then arrest him. Or at the very least, show him her Carabinieri ID and put the fear of God into him.

But there was no time for that now. Besides, it had taught her a valuable lesson.

On Carnivia, no one is who they seem.

The fact was, she realised, she’d only met up with men like Riccardo because she’d been bored out of her mind. The website had been an outlet, a hint of risk and danger – just as for Mia, the thrill of going to a swingers’ club to see what went on there had seemed like a cool rebellion against her military family. Mia had been unlucky enough to get abducted; Kat had got away comparatively lightly.

But for her the real thrill came from doing the job she loved. That was far more satisfying, and far more addictive, than any night with a stranger.

Doing the job you love – with the man you love
, a voice inside her head echoed. But the voice was wrong, she knew that. There was nothing between her and Aldo Piola now, nor would there ever be.

She put her hands on the keyboard and, in a few quick strokes, closed down her account at Married and Discreet.

THIRTY-EIGHT

MIA CAME AWAKE
at the touch of a hand on her shoulder. Harlequin was squatting next to her mattress.

“Wake up, Mia. We have work to do.”

Her heart sank. “Work” was his euphemism for the things they did to her.

As if reading her mind he said, “I want you to know that this is not my choice. But your government and mine are leaving us no option.”

She was given a piece of paper with what she had to say hastily scrawled on it. The red light on the camera went on. Facing it, she delivered the words in front of her.

“This is a message from Azione Dal Molin in response to the attempt by the Italian authorities to close down the Carnivia website. They want you to see what will happen if the channel of communication between my captors and the Italian people does not remain open.”

The light went off. She waited.

A little later, she heard thumping from the room next door. It sounded like blows, a body crashing against a wall.
They’re fighting
, she thought anxiously. But what about? Whether to release her? Rape her? Kill her? There was no way of knowing.

Something had clearly happened – something they hadn’t been ready for. Whatever she was hearing, it was part of their response.

The chain rattled and the door opened. She tensed, then saw to her relief that it was Harlequin.

He came in and gestured silently for her to stand.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He put a finger to his lips, telling her to be silent. The he pointed to the zipper of the orange overalls and mimed for her to undo it.

Nervously, she complied. When she was down to her underwear he walked around her slowly, scrutinising her. She tried to force herself not to show fear. She was, she realised, unconsciously mirroring the postures of the fighting men she’d grown up around: standing straight, her shoulders back.

Harlequin chuckled. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he adjusted her position slightly, like a sergeant major on a parade ground.

Suddenly she realised,
It’s not the same man.
The mask might be the same, but the person wearing it was an inch or so shorter than the kidnapper she thought of as Harlequin, and more stocky. All the relief she’d felt evaporated.

As he resumed his scrutiny, he whistled under his breath. At one point he picked up her wrist, examining it carefully.

He’s seeing if the cuffs have done any damage.
“Are you a doctor?” she said nervously. “
Dottore?
”

Almost casually his arm flicked out, his elbow close to his body and the forearm sweeping towards her, so that the back of his hand hit her across the stomach. She doubled up in agony, too winded even to make a sound. As she gasped for breath he put his finger to his lips again.
Don’t talk.

Then he reached for her head, wrapping his strong hands around it as if to snap her neck. She tried to scream, but he wasn’t hurting her, just rotating her head this way and that.

She’d had a physical exam from a doctor once, after a snowboard fall. He’d done something similar, to check her vertebrae.

Evidently satisfied, he stood back, gesturing silently for her to pull up the jumpsuit. He left, returning a few minutes later with Bauta. They were carrying between them a large piece of plywood and some lengths of timber.

She understood then that what she’d heard earlier hadn’t been fighting. It had been
practising
. Whatever the wood was for, the whistling man had been instructing the others in the use of it.

DAY THREE

THIRTY-NINE

AS SHE NEARED
Campo San Zaccaria next morning, Kat saw Piola. He was carrying an overnight bag and his face was unshaven. His wife had thrown him out, then. She hoped it wasn’t because of their dinner, which, after all, had been strictly professional. But she feared it might be.

There was a time when she’d have asked him. But things were more complex now. So she only said, “Good morning, sir.”

“
Buongiorno
, Captain,” he replied, equally neutrally.

In the operations room she went straight to her computer. To her surprise, she appeared to have been logged out. As she retyped her password, she saw that others around her were doing the same.

“Some kind of IT problem,” one of her neighbours told her with a shrug. It was the first time he’d spoken to her in months.

She hadn’t even finished logging in when her screen abruptly went dark. The grinning Carnivia mask appeared, before cutting immediately to a piece of film. Mia, holding a piece of paper.

“This is a message from Azione Dal Molin…”

Around Kat, the same words were playing from every computer. She watched, appalled, as the film cut abruptly to Mia, standing in her underwear in the same room, blindfolded and cuffed, in front of a wall made of wood. A title appeared:

THE DETAINEE IS PLACED IN FRONT OF THE WALLING WALL. THE DETAINEE REMAINS HOODED. THE DETAINEE REMAINS NUDE.

The man in the Harlequin mask entered the frame and placed a towel around Mia’s neck, locker-room style, looping it over itself so it wouldn’t come loose. The action, some of them commented later, was strangely tender in its protectiveness, given what was about to happen – like a parent fastening a scarf around a child’s neck on a chilly morning.

WALLING IS ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUES BECAUSE IT WEARS DOWN THE DETAINEE PHYSICALLY AND CREATES A SENSE OF DREAD WHEN THE DETAINEE KNOWS SHE IS ABOUT TO BE WALLED AGAIN.

With sudden, shocking violence, the man grabbed Mia by the head, one hand on either side, and flung her against the wall, so that she took the full impact against her shoulders. The force of the blow was such that around the room, hardened Carabinieri officers gasped.

As she fell forwards he caught her, pulled her to her feet and threw her back against the wall again. This time, as she rebounded, he slapped her across the face.

IF APPROPRIATE, AN INSULT SLAP WILL FOLLOW.

Almost without a pause, it seemed, Mia was thrown yet again against the wall, as helpless as a rag doll, before the image cut to another title:

A DETAINEE MAY BE WALLED TWENTY TO THIRTY TIMES CONSECUTIVELY WITHIN A SESSION.

As the film resumed, Mia could be seen slumped on the floor.

THE TIME PERIOD BETWEEN SESSION ONE AND SESSION TWO COULD BE AS BRIEF AS ONE HOUR.

THE PROCESS OUTLINED ABOVE, INCLUDING TRANSITION, MAY LAST FOR THIRTY DAYS.

Their screens went blank. A moment later, the regular desktop screensavers were back.

“What the fuck just happened?” the man to Kat’s right demanded. “How is that even possible?”

General Saito gathered them together, his face grim.

“It appears that when Malli connected a copy of Mia’s hard drive to his computer, a virus entered our system, giving the kidnappers limited access to our network. The virus has now been found and removed. Needless to say, no word of this must leave this building.” He paused. “The same film has been sent to
Corriere della Sera
,
La Repubblica
and various others. Therefore we needn’t be specific about how it came to our attention.”

“What will our response be?” someone asked. “Do we let Barbo go?”

“The decision has been taken at the highest possible level. Neither the American nor the Italian government negotiates with terrorists. Therefore, no action will be taken in response to these threats. Daniele Barbo will remain in custody. CNAIPIC will continue to locate and neutralise any servers hosting the Carnivia website.”

“What about Mia?” Kat said, appalled. “What will this decision mean for her?”

“Freeing Mia and arresting her abductors was already our priority. Therefore nothing has changed,” Saito said baldly. He paused. “Look, I’m as disgusted by what I’ve seen as any of you. But these were difficult conversations, particularly in light of the fact that we don’t have any decent leads. We’ll have to spread our net wider. That means locating and interviewing every single person who has supported the No Dal Molin movement since it began.”

He passed a hand across his face, and for the first time it occurred to Kat what a strain this must be placing on him. “You should know that, as of last night, this is now officially a joint operation between the Carabinieri, the Polizia and Military Intelligence. Unofficially, questions are being asked of us – why we haven’t found her yet. Within a day or two we’ll probably be taken off the investigation altogether. I would appreciate your best efforts to find her, and quickly.”