The Abduction: A Novel (18 page)

FORTY

PIOLA CAUGHT A
vaporetto
for the five-minute hop across to the island of La Giudecca, where he booked himself into the Molino Stucky Hilton. There were cheaper hotels in Venice, but he wanted to stay somewhere large and anonymous. And besides, he liked the view back over Venice from the upper floors.

He’d last been there a couple of years back, and remembered thinking at the time what a good job they’d done of converting the huge Stucky flour mill into a hotel. Once, La Giudecca had been home to Venice’s heavy industries, the decline of which had left the area derelict, its former rope factories and boatyards a haven for drug addicts and petty criminals. The Hilton’s dollars, and their confidence, had helped the whole area turn the corner, bringing economic regeneration at a time when no Italian company would touch it.

At the desk they told him bookings had fallen by thirty per cent since news of the kidnap was announced. American families already here on vacation had simply packed up and gone. There was no particular reason to think the protestors would snatch another teenager, but no one wanted to take any chances.

Predictably, the papers this morning were full of nothing else. Most were still going with the line that Mia was as innocent as apple pie. One had even printed a recipe for that dish, which it claimed was Mrs Elston’s own, while the Berlusconi-owned
Il Giornale
– part of the same group that once caused an international furore by publishing topless photographs of Kate Middleton, the future British queen – had dubbed Mia “
la Vergine Rapita
”, “the Stolen Virgin”, its cover splashed with a picture lifted from the first kidnap video on which her bare breasts were clearly visible; the whole image, perhaps unconsciously, redolent of Michelangelo’s
Madonna and Child
.

One paper, though, had scooped them all. “KIDNAPPED MIA A SWINGER?” screamed
Il Gazzettino
’s front page, the question mark an indication that the paper itself couldn’t quite believe its own luck, let alone its own story. Underneath was a second, scarcely smaller headline: “SEX CLUB BURNS AS TEENAGER HELD”.

Piola scanned the article. As he’d expected, an “anonymous source close to the investigation” had exclusively revealed where it was that Mia had been abducted from. The Carabinieri, the article said, were now investigating “whether Mia’s secret life had any bearing on her kidnap”. Lurid pictures from Club Libero’s website accompanied the piece.

Piola remembered how quickly the Italian press had turned twenty-year-old Amanda Knox into “Foxy Knoxy” after the Meredith Kercher murder. He had little doubt the same thing would happen here. Journalists loved nothing better than a sexual enigma, and the question of whether Mia was a saint or sinner would surely occupy them for days, if not weeks.

He brought up Raffaele Fallici’s blog. Evidently, the politician had also been sent the walling video: there was already a link to it on his website.

The decision to incarcerate Daniele Barbo was a typically ill-thought-out move on the part of the Carabinieri, an attempt to play to the gallery of public opinion with a quick, meaningless gesture more rooted in the world of politics than the harsh grind of real policing. When will they learn that there are no easy shortcuts? Mia will only be found through real intelligence – which means, in this modern age, employing the full panoply of electronic surveillance measures. One only hopes that the Americans themselves have not been so tardy.

Puzzled, Piola clicked on the archive – hadn’t he recalled Fallici saying almost the exact opposite the day before? But that day’s entry had been deleted. He clicked on the one for the day before that.

The situation at Dal Molin is a complicated one, requiring finesse, and is in danger of being bungled by the authorities. That is why I have been offering myself as a neutral conduit through which negotiations between the protestors and the authorities might be conducted – an honest broker who can be trusted by both sides, while holding no political view myself as to whether the Americans’ presence here is a good thing or not. I only wish that, in this situation which could all too easily become a dangerous one, democracy should prevail, and prevail peacefully.

Piola snorted. Given the partisan speech he’d heard Fallici make at the peace camp, he doubted very much whether he was looking at a contemporaneous account.

To one side were links to other websites and bits of film – all the Mia videos were there, as well as the film Luca Marchesin had made when he’d broken into the camp. Piola clicked on it, watching again how the grainy night-vision footage jolted and jiggled over the rough terrain as Luca ran for the truck. The section in which he was abruptly brought down by Sergeant Pownall was just as filmic as Piola remembered. As Luca had said, he was good at this kind of thing.

A phrase came back to him, something the boy had said the first time Piola interviewed him.
“I had to move fast – the MPs were after us within seconds.”

Well, of course. But why did that particular phrase strike him as significant now? He thought again. Pownall had said something similar, he recalled, when Piola first arrived at the site. What was it, exactly? He tried to picture the scene – he’d been in Pownall’s Jeep, bumping through the mud, the pre-dawn mist shredding in the vehicle’s headlights, that colonel’s hat on his knee…

Yes, that was it:
“The gates are alarmed, and our cameras have night-vision capability, so we were well prepared for them…
”

He called Kat.

“You were right,” he said when she answered. “There’s more to this. The Americans had someone inside Azione Dal Molin. Someone who was telling them what was going on.”

“Who?”

“I’m not certain, but I have a pretty good idea.”

He gave her a series of instructions, and told her he’d meet her in twenty minutes at Campo San Zaccaria.

They had their subject placed in an interview room, then went in together .

“Ettore Mazzanti,” Piola greeted the ponytailed young man. He consulted his notes. “Thirty-two-year-old student. Writing a PhD on political studies. When did you last see your doctoral supervisor, incidentally?”

Mazzanti looked wary. “I check in with him occasionally. Why?”

“You didn’t mention last time we spoke that it’s the American College in Rome you’re enrolled at.”

He shrugged. “You didn’t ask. Is it important?”

“How come the American MPs were ready for the break-in at Dal Molin, Ettore?”

Mazzanti stifled a yawn. “I don’t know what you mean.” With his long hair and baggy college sweatshirt, he was the very picture of a perpetual student. But Piola noticed how his thin frame was padded with muscle, as if he worked out. And there was that Betty Boop tattoo, poking out from under his shirtsleeve. A strange tattoo for an anti-American protestor to have.

“Do you speak English?” he asked in that language.

“Some,” Mazzanti replied, also in English. “Why?”

“You speak it with an American accent.”

“Well, I lived in the US for a while.”

“And joined the US Army when, exactly?” Piola enquired politely.

There was a silence. “Air Force, as a matter of fact,” Mazzanti said. “Came out five years ago. Why are you so interested?”

“So you’re still, technically, a reservist?”

Mazzanti leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “Good luck to them if they ever want to call
me
up. I’m done with that shit. People change, Colonel.”

“And sometimes people move on to more interesting things. Like undercover work.”

Mazzanti didn’t reply.

“So what are you then, Ettore? Defense Intelligence? CIA? INSCOM? Because the one thing I’m absolutely certain of is that you’re not just another student agitator.”

“This is paranoid bullshit,” Mazzanti said. “Wow.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, Colonel, but I want some.”

Piola looked straight into the other man’s eyes. “Come on, Ettore,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “An American teenager has been abducted – the daughter of one of your own. Operational secrecy is all very well, but what matters now is helping us to find her.”

“If I could help, I would. But I can’t. Sorry.”

Kat said, “There’s a girl, isn’t there, Ettore?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a girlfriend in the Azione Dal Molin group.” She indicated Piola. “My boss here remembers her sitting on your lap when he came to the peace camp. That’s taking the under-cover thing to a whole new dimension, isn’t it? But I can see how it must be hard not to. After all, there comes a point where it would look suspicious if you
didn’t
have a partner.”

“You’ve lost me,” Mazzanti said with a grin. “What does Lucia have to do with all this?”

“Because if you
don’t
give us what we want, the next person we’ll go to will be her. I wonder if she’s ever noticed anything suspicious about you? Any absences she can’t explain, perhaps, when you’re off talking to your handlers? Any little deceptions you may have been forced to carry out?” She leaned forward. “Of course, we’ll explain to her that undercover agents are often married. Taking a girlfriend from amongst the protestors is just for a little extra cover. And then, if she can’t stop crying enough to help us, we’ll go to the others and ask them if
they’ve
ever noticed anything odd about you. Given how high-profile this case is, I’d be surprised if your picture isn’t on the front page of
Il Giornale
tomorrow. That should be handy, in your line of work.”

There was a long silence.

“Jesus,” Mazzanti said disbelievingly. “What a bitch.”

“What do we call you?” Piola said quietly.

“You can call me Mazzanti.” He hesitated. “Sir.”

“Thank you,” Piola said. That one word, with its tacit admission that they were both military people, had changed everything. “So let’s say you were tasked to infiltrate the protestors at Dal Molin. But you were much more than an observer – I saw that for myself. You were a leader; an
agent provocateur
, even. That’s why the break-in was so well organised. And now I’m looking at a kidnap that was equally well organised. And I’m asking myself, what’s the connection?”

Mazzanti hesitated again. Then he said, “I was giving them an outlet.”

“Giving who?” Piola pressed.

“The protestors. When I first joined them there was all this talk about escalating it to another level. Flash mobs, sit-ins… crazy, random stuff, but some of it might have been quite effective. I thought if I organised a small break-in, it would make them feel like they were doing something.”

“But you warned your handlers they were coming.”

“Of course.” Mazzanti smiled thinly. “Couldn’t have them doing any serious damage. Those builders are on a schedule.”

“And an American child was kidnapped anyway.”

“Yes, but…” He looked puzzled. “I swear none of my protestors had the brains, let alone the balls, to do such a thing. Sure, there was some sounding off about stuff like that, but it was just wishful thinking.”

“By Luca Marchesin, for example?”

Mazzanti nodded. “I knew he’d never have gone through with it. He wasn’t even particularly serious at the time. It was more like, ‘It would serve them right if we renditioned one of
their
kids.’”

“But you put it in your report?”

“Of course. But not as something that might actually happen, you understand. Just as an idea that had been discussed. So that they’d know how strongly people were starting to feel about Dal Molin.”

“Who’s ‘they’, Ettore? Who did you send the report to? Your handlers in Rome?”

Mazzanti shook his head. “Rome doesn’t run this one. I’m on a short-term secondment here, building up my cover. My reports go direct to Colonel Carver and the Director of Transformation, Sergio Sagese.”

FORTY-ONE

THEY MET HOLLY
at the Stucky, in a quiet corner of the rooftop bar, under the guise of getting an update on her conversations with Daniele the night before. When she told them that he believed the kidnappers had recruited a freelance hacker, Piola and Kat exchanged glances. It seemed to support what they were already thinking: that the kidnappers were too well organised to be what they claimed.

“There was another reason we asked you here, actually,” Piola said quietly. “It’s possible the kidnappers themselves may have links to the US Army.”

Holly stared at him. “
What?
”

“One of the Azione Dal Molin protestors is an undercover agent,” Kat said. “He was sending reports back to Colonel Carver and the man who runs the construction consortium, Sergio Sagese. One of his reports mentioned an off-the-cuff remark by a young activist about kidnapping an American child.”

Holly shook her head. “That’s crazy. It’s unthinkable –
unthinkable
– that we would ever be part of such a thing. Not to one of our own.”

“Even so, it’s a lead that has to be investigated,” Piola said. He paused. “Somehow. We can speak to Sagese, but Carver…”

She stared at him. “Oh no. You’re not thinking—”

“We can’t even get on to the base without authorisation,” Kat said. “We need your help.”

“
My
help! I don’t—” Holly stopped short. “‘Without authorisation’? So this isn’t even an official line of enquiry?”

“Not yet,” Piola said. “But that’s better, isn’t it? Keeping it between ourselves for now… That way, if it
does
turn out to be nothing, it’ll never reach the papers. Whereas something as big as this, if it were to be investigated officially, would be all over the media within minutes.” He gestured at the copy of
Il Gazzettino
on the table. “Sadly, these journalists seem to have very good links to some of my colleagues.”

Holly was silent. She could see that keeping this out of the papers would indeed be beneficial. “What exactly do you think the colonel and this other man might have done?” she said at last.

“We don’t know. It may even be nothing.” Kat explained how the MPs had known the demonstrators were coming, as a result of Mazzanti’s report. “The point is, it makes Carver and Sagese part of a very small pool of people who even knew of Azione Dal Molin’s existence.”

“The colonel said something when I was there. About having spent a lot of time and money trying to contain the anti-Dal Molin protests. At the time I thought nothing of it, but I guess it fits with him planting Mazzanti. But why would he get involved in anything like this? Sagese too, for that matter? Surely the very last thing either of them wants is to hand the protestors a publicity coup.”

“Unless it’s to discredit the protest movement as a whole,” Piola said quietly. “A couple of months ago, there was going to be a regional referendum about Dal Molin. It was cancelled by the courts days before it was due to take place.”

“I recall that. But so what?”

“In the local elections, some of the candidates are – or at least
were
– standing on anti-Dal Molin platforms. If they’d done well in the polls, the protestors would have had a voice in the regional parliament. If
enough
of them did well, and there was even a majority prepared to vote against the American presence here… effectively, the anti-Dal Molin movement would have a democratic mandate. That could have made things pretty difficult, couldn’t it? Three thousand troops and their families arriving here from Germany, just as the host nation turns against them at the ballot box?”

Kat added, “And I checked – the reason they’re leaving Germany is because of a similar grass-roots protest movement there. The US is suddenly Europe’s persona non grata, going from country to country looking for somewhere to put its bases. But it wants those bases more than ever: all America’s strategic objectives, from Africa through the Middle East, depend on what they call power projection capability. That is, troops and planes stationed around the Mediterranean, on near-constant standby.”

Holly couldn’t fault Kat’s analysis. But there was still too much that didn’t make sense. “But it’s precisely the… the so-called torture of terror suspects that’s made us unpopular,” she objected. “Why would we risk making ourselves more unpopular still?”

“We don’t know,” Kat said. “Maybe they’ve already planned how it could play out in a way that will end up with public opinion on the US’s side. Or maybe they’ve simply misjudged the public mood.”

“That implies the US would interfere in the domestic politics of one of our own allies. We don’t do that kind of thing. Not any more.”

Piola spread his hands. “Look, you may well be right. But it’s a lead. And there are precious few of those right now. All we’re asking is that you help us investigate it.”

She was silent, thinking. “You two aren’t even meant to be working together, are you?”

Kat and Piola looked at each other. “That’s correct,” Piola said at last.

“Are you sleeping together again?” she asked bluntly.

“No,” Piola said. “And nor will we be. You have my word on that.”

Holly nodded. “All right. I’ll ask some questions for you. But only because I think there’s nothing in it, and I want to help you eliminate this line of enquiry and move on to something more realistic. Something that might actually help us find Mia.”