“Cassie, I love you. I really do. But what the hell have you done? This is different. I’m scared for my husband and I’m scared for my children. Tell me what sort of trouble you’re in.”
“I’ve done nothing,” she said. She told herself this wasn’t lying. This was staying on message. “I spent the night with an interesting man in Dubai. When I left, he was still alive. After that? I have no idea what happened.”
“Except we do have an idea,” her sister said. “Someone practically cut off his head. And as for him being interesting? I have a feeling the FBI would use a very, very different adjective.”
* * *
? ?
The front door was unlocked, and Enrico led them into the apartment without knocking. They walked through the dark, immaculate living room and kitchen, and out onto the terrace. His uncle was in a white dress shirt and light blue suit pants, no necktie, sipping Cointreau neat on the private terrace and reading the newspaper beneath a small pergola. His suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair. The terrace had a four-foot-high fountain with a goddess holding a pitcher, and two raised beds with tomato plants. There were lemon trees. It was a lovely, private oasis in the middle of a city.
Cassie guessed that Piero Bianchi was in his midforties, and when he stood to greet her she detected a wisp of verbena. He was Enrico’s mother’s youngest brother, and he worked for a bank. He was trim, like his nephew, but his hair had receded and what was left was more salt than pepper. Still, Cassie found the reality that she was much closer to Piero’s age than to Enrico’s disconcerting. Enrico had texted his uncle to make sure he was home, but he hadn’t said why they were coming. He had told Cassie that she was not to bring up the gun or say a word about it. He’d said firmly that he would take care of it.
“And you’re a flight attendant,” Piero said when they were settled around the table. His accent was almost nonexistent. “I have friends who fly for Alitalia and American.”
“Pilots? Flight attendants?”
“Both. But mostly the latter.”
“I like the lifestyle.”
“As do they. You’re sure I can’t get you two something to drink?”
“No. I’m fine,” she said. She looked at Enrico, and he shook his head, too.
“Where is your base?”
“JFK.”
“Among my least favorite airports in the world. It’s a dinosaur.”
“It really is.”
Abruptly Enrico stood up and said he was going to the bathroom.
“So, tell me: how did you meet my nephew?”
“The airline was staying at his hotel. He made me an excellent Negroni.”
“I’m not surprised. Someday soon, I believe, I will be bankrolling a bar for him. A restaurant and bar. First, however, he needs a partner who can cook. Can you cook?”
“My refrigerator is nothing but leftover Indian food and yogurt that’s gone bad.”
“I am guessing that means no.”
“A very good guess.”
He finished the last of the Cointreau. She stared at the empty glass when he put it down, and she had a feeling that her longing was so powerful that Piero could sense it. “Enrico’s a good boy,” he said, and Cassie couldn’t miss the way he had used the word boy. She couldn’t decide whether he was chastising her or teasing her—giving her a little good-natured grief—or merely referring to his nephew the way any uncle would, even when the child was a grown man.
“He is,” she agreed simply.
“When he said he had someone he wanted me to meet, I was expecting something different.”
“Something…younger?”
He gave a loud, reflexive laugh. “No. Italian.”
“Really?”
“Of course not. I’m kidding. I don’t know why, but I heard something in his voice when he called that led me to believe he wanted to tell me something important, and I was thinking this was it: I am about to meet a person who does something exquisite with wild boar or scallops or zucchini, and he wanted to start a restaurant with him or her.”
“Sorry.”
“Good heavens, why should you be sorry?”
“I’m not that person. You sounded disappointed.”
“Not at all. But I am still trying to understand why he wanted me to meet you. Are you two dating?”
“No. We’re just friends.”
“Well, now: that does surprise me. Even if you weren’t dating, I assumed there was more to the relationship than friendship. I know my nephew’s hobbies well.”
“Maybe in another life.”
“Maybe.”
A moment later Enrico returned. She noticed that he had untucked his shirt. He smiled at her, leaned forward, and pretended to scratch his lower back. She glanced there and saw that he was pulling tight his shirt with his thumb and forefinger so she could see the outline of the grip of the pistol he had slid into the back of his jeans.
29
Elena watched Cassie and Enrico emerge from the apartment’s front entrance. The bartender’s uncle stood for a long moment in the doorway beneath an overhead exterior light, the glass amber, as the couple strolled away from him down the street. He didn’t wave because their backs were turned, and his shoulders were stooped and he looked a little sad. She wondered why. She tried to decide why Enrico had brought the flight attendant here. If he wanted to introduce her to his family, he would have brought her first to his parents, not to his uncle.
She hadn’t needed any clandestine tools to research Piero Bianchi while she waited for them to emerge. She only wanted the basics. She learned he was a banker, though he didn’t seem to have much to do with foreign currencies or hedge funds or international banking. Mostly he financed local real estate—new commercial construction inside the Roman ring. This was comforting, though not conclusive. After all, much of the fund Sokolov ran was in real estate. It was possible that the manager had told Bowden something about his day job and Bowden had told the bartender, and the two of them had now gone to Uncle Piero for a tutorial. Any banker with Piero’s experience could answer basic investment questions or explain the bare bones of what Sokolov did at Unisphere.
But if Bowden had questions, she’d had plenty of opportunities to talk to bankers while she was home in Manhattan. Wouldn’t that lawyer of hers have been tracking them down? Wouldn’t Bowden have gone to speak to someone in America instead of going to the animal shelter or the zoo or hooking up with that actor?
No, Elena decided, the two of them had gone to see Uncle Piero for some reason that had absolutely nothing to do with the hedge fund.
She thought of something her father had told her: a smart girl is nobody’s pushover and nobody’s foe. A smart girl is both sword and smile. (At the time, she had considered countering that his ex-wife was all sword and seemed to do just fine, thank you very much, but she understood his message.)
Her handler in Abu Dhabi had postulated a theory to explain the connection between Sokolov and Bowden.
“Is it possible that this flight attendant is actually a whole lot smarter than the average bear?” he’d asked her. “Maybe she was working with Sokolov on the grift the whole time, and their inebriated debacle was a hoax.”
“Play this out,” she’d said to him.
“Okay. Bowden isn’t even in the room when you phoned five-eleven. She got there just before you did, and she and Sokolov concocted the ruse when they were caught. They portrayed their meeting as just some drunken debauch.”
“No, they were wasted,” she assured him. “They weren’t playacting.”