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He’d risen and left, with not another word.

They’d no sooner landed in the Capodichino Reception Center than Gianni in fact called her. He explained in a guttural voice, clear and still as ice, that there would be no excuses. If she fell ill and could not detonate the bomb, her family would die. If she were arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and could not detonate the bomb, her family would die. If the bomb did not go off because of mechanical failure, her family would die. If she froze at the last moment … well, she understood.

And what should happen but, of all horrific coincidences, her husband had been snatched by that psychotic American! That in itself had been terrible – she loved him dearly – but the incident had also brought the police. Would they find the explosives and phone and detonator that Gianni had left for her? Would they relocate her and her daughter while they searched for Khaled?

Yet he had been saved.

That was, of course, wonderful. Yet it tore Fatima’s heart in two. Because everyone, from Rania to the American police to the Italian officers, had worked so very hard – some even risking their lives – to save Khaled, a man they didn’t know, a man who had come to this country uninvited.

Certainly there were those who resented immigrants but, apart from some protestors outside the camp, Fatima had yet to meet them. Why, look at the woman a moment ago.

Your daughter, she has the hair of an angel!

Most Italians were heartbreakingly sympathetic to the asylum-seeker’s plight.

Which made what she was about to do, two hours from now, all the more shameful.

But do it she would.

If you fail in any way, your family will die …

But she wouldn’t fail. She saw the target ahead of her. Less than two hours remained until the attack.

Fatima found a cluster of unoccupied benches not far from the water. She sat in one that faced the bay. So that no one could see her tears.

CHAPTER 63

The lead to the Royal Palace had been a bust. Rhyme was sure Gianni had made the call to the Tripoli coffeehouse solely to see how much the police knew and if they were tracking phones. He’d learned that they were and so he’d gone off the grid.

Without any chance of finding him via phones, and no physical leads to Fatima, the team turned to the question of what might the intended target of the bombing be. Speculation, sure, but it was all they had.

Because the refugee camp was near Naples airport, Rhyme and Spiro thought immediately that Fatima was going after an airplane or the terminal.

The prosecutor said, ‘She can’t get a bomb on board an aircraft. But she might cut a hole in the fence, run to a full aircraft about to take off and detonate the device on the runway.’

McKenzie said, ‘These aren’t suicide attackers. They’re remote detonation devices, using cell phones. I don’t see airports. Train station maybe. Less security.’

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.

CHAPTER 64

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.’

‘Her. Ah. I kidnapped her husband, and it was really the wife.’ A smile. ‘Who stole my shoe.’

‘Yes.’

Intelligent. Good.

Spiro asked, ‘Would it help to shut the lights out?’

‘No, I don’t need to do that.’

Ercole played the audio. Now that he was aware of its potential value, Rhyme listened carefully. He made out a few noises that he hadn’t noticed in the first or second hearing but not much.

‘Again.’ Stefan’s voice was firm. He wasn’t the least deferential. Odd how even the most insecure grow assertive when practicing their special art.

Ercole played it once more.

‘And again.’

He did so.

‘Can I have a pen and paper, please?’ Stefan asked.

Spiro produced them instantly.

‘It is hard, I am sure, to hear past the voices,’ Rossi said.

Stefan responded with a bemused frown. Apparently he could hear past the voices just fine.

‘Sound is better than words. Sounds have meanings that are more trustworthy. Robert Frost, the poet, talked about the sound of sense. I love that, don’t you? He said you could experience a poem recited on the other side of a door without hearing the words. The sounds alone would convey the intended emotion and meaning to you.’

Not exactly the ramblings of a madman.

He began to jot notes in perfect script. Beatrice Renza would approve of it.

As he wrote, he said, ‘The caller was not far from the harbor. I hear Klaxons and warning and announcement horns. Passenger and commercial vessels. Tugboat diesels.’

‘Not from trucks?’ Rossi asked.

‘Of course not, no. They are clearly echoing off undulating water. You can hear the horns and ocean liner diesels too, right?’

Rhyme could not. They were hidden in a morass of noise.

Stefan scribbled quickly, then stared at the sheet. Closed his eyes. They sprang open and he crossed out what he’d just inscribed and then started again.

‘I need to control the playback.’ He scooted close to the computer, nudging Ercole out of the way.

‘These keys can—’

‘I know,’ Stefan said brusquely and typed. He rewound the audio and replayed certain parts, jotting notes. After ten minutes, he looked up.

‘I can hear transmissions downshifting and increasing in volume, as the cars get closer to the phone. That means the caller’s on top of the hill. The hill’s steep. They are mostly cars, mostly small ones, both diesel and gas. One has a muffler about to go. Some vans, I think. But no large trucks.’

Another playback. Staring at a blank wall. ‘Birds. Two different types. First, pigeons. There are many of them. I can hear their wings flutter from time to time: once, when a roller board – those things boys ride on – went by. Once, when children, about four or five years old, ran after the birds. I can tell the age from their footfalls and the laughs. The pigeons returned at once. They didn’t fly off when cars went by. That tells us that they’re in a square or plaza. Not a street.’

Their eyes went to the map of Naples, where Spiro had circled the docks with a red marker. He now put X’s near a number of public squares and piazzas in the general area of the waterfront and on what he must have known were hills.

‘The second birds are seagulls. They’d be everywhere in and around Naples, of course, but here there are only four, I think. One is giving a copulation call. He’s some distance. The three closer to the phone are giving assault calls and alarm calls. They’re fighting aggressively, probably over food, since they wouldn’t be nesting there. And because there are only three, I think they’re fighting over trash in a small bin, behind a restaurant or house. They are farther away from the waterfront; closer, there would be more and there would be a lot of sources for food – fishermen and trash – so the fighting would not be as vicious.’

Stefan played the tape back once more and paused it. ‘There is a school nearby, grade school, we’d say in America. I would guess it’s a parochial or a private school – many of the children have leather soles. I can hear no running shoes. Leather soles would mean uniforms. So private or religious. It’s a school because they’re laughing and running and playing and then, almost at once, it stops, and the sound of their feet changes as they all walk at the same pace back to class.’ He looked at the others, all staring at him. ‘They’re grade school – I can tell this because of the sound of the voices and the interval of their footfalls. I said that before. There is construction going on not far away. Metal work. Cutting metal and riveting.’