Good Blood

“Well, not if they name an impossible amount, naturally. But whatever is necessary, yes, of course. And the sooner it’s over with, the better.”

“They may ask a great deal. You’re a rich man, you have a big company.”

De Grazia gave him a wry smile. “I’m not as rich as you might think, Colonel. But this is Italy, and I’m like any other sensible businessman. I have kidnapping insurance. The policy is for ten million dollars—twelve million euros. I’ve been paying regular premiums for years, damned big ones. A Bermudian company, Argos Risk Management. Now it’s their turn to live up to their obligations.”

Caravale shook his head. “All right, I can’t make you hire a negotiator, but one thing you’d better understand right now is that it’s not going to be over and done in a day or two. These people don’t work like that, it’s not to their advantage. Three weeks, a month—that’s more like it. And all kinds of unexpected things are going to happen, because they just do. Believe me, it’s very much to your benefit to have someone who isn’t emotionally involved representing you, someone experienced—”

“I’m not bringing some stranger into it, Colonel, someone I don’t know and don’t trust with my son’s life. I’ll deal with them myself.” The skin under his eyes tightened. “We de Grazias are not known for being overemotional.”

Caravale shrugged. How unemotional would “we de Grazias” be when they threatened to send him one of the boy’s ears to convince him to be more forthcoming? The man was hard, but was he that hard? Well, he just might be. In any case, it was up to de Grazia, not him. Besides, he probably did have enough money to meet their demands, so the chances were that it wouldn’t come to that.

“Fine,” he said. “If you change your mind, let me know. In the meantime—”

“What about you?” de Grazia said.

“What about me?”

“Didn’t you say you had some experience in these things?”

“Yes, I was assigned to the crisis management unit in Cosenza for a year. I handled a few cases.”

“All right, will you negotiate in my behalf? You, I would trust.”

Automatically, Caravale began to jerk his head no. Such a thing was out of the question. Policemen and negotiators had different goals, conflicting priorities. A negotiator was a middleman, a facilitator, a neutral. He wasn’t an adversary of the kidnappers any more than he was an ally of the police. His overriding objective was to bring the situation to an end without harm coming to the abductee or to anyone else. If the prisoner was released without anyone’s getting hurt, he had successfully done his job, and whether or not the kidnappers got the money or got away were distant, secondary concerns. But as a carabinieri officer, the priorities were necessarily reversed. These men were not only kidnappers but murderers, and his primary objective had to be their apprehension.

It was impossible to do both. In Cosenza he’d been part of an experimental unit that had been kept scrupulously independent of the carabinieri’s law enforcement arm. But in Stresa there was no experimental unit. There was only law enforcement.

“I’m sorry, that’s impossible,” had already formed itself in his throat and was on its way to his lips, when he surprised himself by a sudden reversal of gears.

“All right, if you want,” he was amazed to hear himself say.

But on second thought, maybe not so amazed. There was no rule, after all, or at least nothing in writing, that prohibited a carabiniere from negotiating a kidnapping. And Silvestri, his regional commander in faraway Turin, had happily given Caravale his head in just about all matters a long time ago, so there would be no difficulty there. (Silvestri was the nephew of his older sister’s husband, after all.)

Why shouldn’t he try it, then, given that Vincenzo had

explicitly asked him to? Serving as the contact with them would likely provide valuable information for later that he’d otherwise have to try to get secondhand. So where was the problem? If he didn’t take it on, Vincenzo had made it clear that he would do it himself, and surely that was the most dangerous path of all.

One thing was sure. It wasn’t going to get in the way of his catching the bastards.

FOUR

THROUGH the living room’s bay window they watched the gray, red, and white Coho Ferry in the distance, pulling stern-first away from the Port Angeles dock, slowly turning, lumbering into the sunshine, and starting on its stately

5:15 p.m. run around Ediz Hook and across the Strait of San Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island, visible through the sea haze some seventeen miles away.

“Il battello... um... parte a Victoria,” Julie said. “No, per Victoria.”

“Very good,” Phil Boyajian said. “And what about you, Gideon, my man, how’s the Italian coming?”

“Muy bien, gracias,” Gideon said.

Phil shook his head. “Wrong language.”

“Oh. Sehr gut?”

“Um, you’re not quite there yet, Dr. Oliver.”

“Don’t let him kid you, Phil,” Julie said. “He speaks it

almost as well as you do. He has this knack with languages. It’s very annoying.”

“What can I say, it’s true,” Gideon said immodestly. “I spent a couple of summers on an Etruscan dig up near Tarquinia. I guess Italian just stayed with me.”