She pushed inside, raising the light and the gun.
There was a startling crash; the door had struck a table, spilling a large bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water.
“He’s here!” Ercole whispered.
“Not necessarily. But assume he is. He may have set up the table to warn him somebody breached. We have to go fast.”
The entryway atmosphere was pungent, the walls covered with graffiti. It resembled a cave in some wilderness, rather than a man-made structure. A stairway led down two flights. They went slowly. The halogen would give them away but it was their only source of illumination. A fall down these steep stones could be fatal.
“Listen,” she said, pausing at the bottom. She believed she’d heard a moan or grunt. But then nothing.
They found themselves in an old brick tunnel about eight feet wide. The aqueduct, a square-bottomed trough about two feet across, ran through the middle. It was largely dry, though old iron pipes overhead—the ceiling was six feet above them—dripped water.
Ercole pointed to their left. “The reservoir would be there, if the map is correct.”
A rumbling began in the distance and grew in volume. The floor shook. Sachs supposed that it was the subway, nearby, she recalled from the map, but it also occurred to her that Naples was not so very far from Mount Vesuvius, whose volcano she’d read might erupt at any time. Volcanoes equal earthquakes, even the smallest of which might pin her under rubble—and leaving her to die the worst death imaginable. Claustrophobia was her big fear.
But the roaring rose to a crescendo, then faded.
Subway. Okay.
They arrived at a fork, the tunnel splitting into three branches, each with its own aqueduct.
“Where?”
“I am sorry. I do not know. This part was not on the map.”
Pick one, she thought.
And then she saw that the left branch of the tunnel contained not only an aqueduct but a terracotta pipe, largely broken. Probably an old sewer drain. She was recalling the scatological trace from the Composer’s shoes. “This way.” She began along the damp floor, the smell of mold tickling her throat and reminding her of the uranium-processing factory in Brooklyn, site of the Composer’s first murder attempt.
Where are you? she thought to the victim. Where?
They pressed on, walking carefully in the aqueduct until the tunnel ended—in a large, dingy basement, lit dimly from airshafts and from fissures in the ceiling. The aqueduct continued on arched columns to a round stone cylindrical structure, twenty feet across, twenty high. There was no ceiling. A door had been cut into the side.
“That’s it,” Ercole whispered. “The reservoir.”
They climbed off the aqueduct and down stone stairs to the floor, about ten feet below.
Yes, she could hear a gasping sound from inside. Sachs motioned Ercole to cover the aqueduct they’d come down and the other doorways that opened off the basement. He understood and drew his pistol. His awkward grip told her he rarely shot. But he checked that a round was chambered and the safety catch off. And he was aware of where the muzzle was pointed. Good enough.
A deep breath, another.
Then she spun around the corner, keeping low, and played the light through the room.
The victim was fifteen feet from her, sitting taped in a rickety chair, straining to keep his head raised against the upward tension of the noose. She saw clearly now the mechanism the Composer had rigged—the deadly bass strings running up to a wooden rod hammered into a crack in the wall above the victim’s head, then to another rod and finally down to a bucket filling with water. The weight in the pail would eventually tug the noose tight enough to strangle him.
He squinted his eyes closed against the brilliance of the flashlight.
The room had no other doors and it was clear that the Composer wasn’t present.
“Come inside, cover the door!” she barked.
“Sì!”
She holstered her weapon and ran to the man, who was sobbing. She pulled the gag out of his mouth.
“Saedumi, saedumi!”
“You’ll be okay.” Wondering how much English he spoke.
She had gloves with her but didn’t bother now. Beatrice could print her later to eliminate her friction ridges. She gripped the noose and pulled down, which lifted the bucket, and then she slipped the noose over his head. Slowly she lowered the bucket. Before it reached the floor, though, the stick wedged into a gap between the stones gave way and the pail fell to the floor.
Hell. The water would contaminate any trace on the stone.
But nothing to do now. She turned to the poor man and examined him. His panicked eyes stared from her to the tape binding his arms up to the ceiling and back to her.
“You’ll be okay. An ambulance is coming. You understand? English?”
He nodded. “Yes, yes.”
He didn’t look badly hurt. Now that he was okay, Sachs pulled on latex gloves. She removed her switchblade once more, hit the button. It sprang open. The man recoiled.
“It’s all right.” She cut the tape and freed his hands, then feet.
The victim’s eyes were wide and unfocused. He rambled in Arabic.
“What’s your name?” Sachs asked. She repeated the question in Arabic. All NYPD officers in Major Cases who had occasion to work counterterrorism knew a half-dozen words and phrases.
“Ali. Ali Maziq.”
“Are you injured anywhere, Mr. Maziq?”
“My throat. It is my throat.” He took to rambling again and his eyes darted once more.
Ercole said, “He doesn’t seem too injured.”
“No.”
“He is, it seems, quite disoriented, though.”
Tied up by a madman and nearly hanged in an old Roman ruin? No surprises there.
“Let’s get him upstairs.”
Chapter 19
The tactical team arrived.
A dozen SCO officers. They appeared in deadly earnest and were fully confident as they scanned the area and gripped their weapons like true craftsmen.
Sachs stopped them at the entrance. She was wearing the NYPD shield on her belt, gold for detective, which gave her some authority, ambiguous though it might be. The commander asked, “FBI?” A thick accent.
“Like that,” she said. Which seemed to satisfy him.
The man was large of body and large of head, which was covered with a fringe of curly red hair, about the same shade as hers. He nodded to her and said, “Michelangelo Frasca.”
“Amelia Sachs.”
He vigorously shook her hand.
She gestured past him to the arriving medical team, a burly man and a woman nearly as imposing—they might have been siblings—and they sat Maziq on a gurney and took his vitals. The medic spent a moment examining the red ligature mark and said something in Italian to his partner and then to Sachs: “Is okay, is good. In physicalness. His mind, very groggy. Drunk I would say if he was not Muslim. Maybe it is being drugs the assaulted used.” They assisted Maziq into the back of the ambulance and had a conversation with Ercole.