Apparently prosecutors—or this prosecutor, at least—carried more authority than police inspectors when it came to investigations. Rhyme sensed no disagreement on the part of Rossi. He nodded to Sachs. She dug into the shoulder bag and handed the inspector a thick file. Rossi flipped through it. On the top were photos of the evidence and profile charts.
He nodded and handed them to Ercole. “Put this information on the board, Officer.”
Spiro said, “Do you need assistance getting to the airport?”
Rhyme said, “We’ll handle our departure arrangements, thank you.”
“He has a private jet,” Ercole said, still awestruck.
Spiro’s mouth tightened, approaching a sneer.
The three Americans turned and headed to the door, Ercole escorting them—as Rossi’s nod had instructed.
Just before they left, though, Rhyme stopped and pivoted back. “If I can offer an observation or two?”
Spiro was stone-faced but Rossi nodded. “Please.”
“Does fette di metallo mean ‘bits of metal’?” Rhyme’s eyes were on the chart.
Spiro’s and Rossi’s eyes swiveled to one another’s. “‘Slices,’ yes.”
“Fibre di carta is ‘paper fibers’?”
“That is correct.”
“Hm. All right. The Composer has changed his appearance. He’s shaved his beard and I am fairly certain his head as well. He has the victim hidden in a very old location, and it’s deep underground. It’s most likely urban, rather than rural. The building is not now accessible to the public and hasn’t been for some time but it once was. It’s in a neighborhood where prostitutes used to work. They still might. That I couldn’t tell you.”
Ercole, he noted, was staring at him as if mesmerized.
Rhyme continued, “And one more thing: He won’t use YouVid again. He uses proxies to hide his IP address but he’s not good at it and I’m sure he’s smart enough to know that. So he’ll expect your computer people, and YouVid security, to be onto him. You should start monitoring other upload sites. And tell your tactical people to be ready to move quickly. The victim doesn’t have much time at all.” As he turned his chair toward the door he said, “Goodbye now. I mean, arrivederci.”
Chapter 15
Am I dead?
And in Jannah?
Ali Maziq could honestly not say. He believed he had been a good man and a good Muslim all his life, and he thought that he had earned a place in Paradise. Perhaps not the highest place, Firdaws, reserved for prophets and martyrs and the most devout, but certainly in a respectable locale.
Yet…yet…
How could Heaven be so cold, so damp, so shadowy?
Alarm coursed through his body and he shivered, only partly from the chill. Was he in al-Nar?
Perhaps he had gotten everything wrong, and had been dispatched straight to Hell. He tried to think back to his most recent memory. Someone appearing fast, someone strong and large. Then something was pulled over his head, muffling the screams.
After that? Flashes of light. Some strange words. Some music.
And now this… Cold, damp, dark, only faint illumination from above.
Yes, yes, it could be. Not Jannah but al-Nar.
He had a vague sense that perhaps this was Hell, yes. Because perhaps he had not lived such a fine life, after all. He had not been so good. He’d done evil. He couldn’t recall what specifically but something.
Perhaps that was what Hell was: an eternity of discomfort spent in a state of believing you had sinned but not knowing exactly how.
Then his mind kicked in, his rational, educated mind. No, he couldn’t be dead. He was in pain. And he knew that if Allah, praise be to Him, had sent him to al-Nar, he would be feeling pain far worse than this. If he were in Jannah, he would be feeling no pain at all but merely the glory of God, praise be to Him.
So, the answer was that he wasn’t dead.
Which led to: So, then, where?
Vague memories tumbled through his thoughts. Memories, or maybe constructions of his own imagination. Why can’t I think more clearly? Why can I remember so little?
Images. Lying on the ground, smelling grass. The taste of food. The satisfaction of water in his mouth. Good cold water and bad tea. Olives. A man’s hands on his shoulders.
Strong. The big man. Everything going dark.
Music. Western music.
He coughed and his throat hurt. It stung badly. He’d been choked perhaps. The lack of air had hurt his memory. His head ached too. Maybe a fall had jumbled his thoughts.
Ali Maziq gave up trying to figure out what had happened.
He focused on where he was and how to escape.
Squinting, he could discern that he was sitting in a chair—bound into a chair—in a cylindrical room that measured about six or seven meters across, stone walls, no ceiling. Above was merely a dim emptiness, from which the very faint illumination came. The floor, also stone, was pitted and scarred.
And what exactly did this room remind him of?
What? What?
Ah, a memory trickled from a dim recess in his mind, and he was picturing a class trip to a museum in Tripoli: the burial chamber for a Carthaginian holy man.
A brief recent memory flickered again: sipping cold water, eating olives, drinking tea that was sour, made from water shot out of a cappuccino machine steamer, residue of milk in the brew.
With somebody?
Then the bus stop. Something had happened at a bus stop.
What country am I in? Libya?
No, he didn’t think so.
But I am certainly in a burial chamber…
The room was silent except for the drip of water somewhere in the chamber.
He was gagged, a piece of cloth in his mouth, which was covered with tape. Still, he tried calling for help—in Arabic. Even if he were elsewhere and a different language was spoken, he hoped the tone of his voice would draw rescuers.
But the gag was efficient and he made hardly any sound whatsoever.
Ali now gasped in shock as there was sudden pressure against his windpipe. What could this be? He couldn’t see clearly and he had no use of his hands but by twisting his head from side to side and analyzing the sensation, he realized that his head was in a hoop of what seemed to be thin twine. It had just grown slightly tauter.
He looked up and to the right.
And then he saw it—the device meant to kill him!
The cord around his neck traveled upward, to a rod stuck into the wall, then over another rod and down to a bucket. The pail was under an old rusted pipe, from which water dripped.
Oh, no, no! God protect me, praise be to Him!
He now understood the source of the sounds. Slowly the drops of water were filling the bucket. As it grew heavier, it tugged the noose tighter.
The size of the bucket suggested that it would hold easily a half-dozen liters. Ali didn’t know how many kilos that represented. But he suspected that the person who had created this horrible machine did. And that his calculation was accurate enough to make certain that—for reasons only God knew, praise be to Him—the bucket would soon be more than heavy enough to choke Ali to death.
Ah, wait! Are those footsteps?
When his breathing slowed, he listened carefully.
Had someone heard him?
But, no, the sound was only the slow plick, plick, plick of water leaching from the ancient pipe and dropping into the bucket.
The noose tugged upward once more, and Ali Maziq’s muffled pleas for help echoed softly throughout his burial chamber.