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.’