“Adesso non lo so.” Sofri chuckles. Now I don’t know. “I think I felt better before you arrived.”

On the other hand, I am feeling decidedly happier, now that Sterling’s here. His presence conveys confidence in the mission. We’re going to do this together. My mood of caution starts to lift, replaced by the adrenaline rush of engagement and the pleasure of knowing what needs to be done and finally getting down to it.

“This’ll be good.” I’m clearing space on the desk for the yellow suitcase.

“What is in there? A bomb?”

“An electroshock machine,” Sofri quips. “In case we get a heart attack.”

Sterling opens the case to reveal a mini switchboard with molded foam compartments for headsets and a tape recorder.

“It’s to monitor the phone,” he explains. “From now on, nobody talks to the kidnappers unless Ana or I am listening.”

“Nicoli will be the primary contact,” I say. “You’re the one who speaks to the bad guys. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes.”

“We are going to insist they let you talk to Cecilia. Before any negotiation, before anything, you say, ‘I want to hear her voice.’ ”

He snorts derisively. “You know how it is in the coffee business? Liars and thieves! The growers and the shippers and the kids who steal from the cash register. You don’t think someone who deals with these people every day is not capable of saying, ‘Let me talk to my wife’?”

I explain gently that sometimes it isn’t words you hear. “Sometimes there are only screams. They could torture her to get to you.”

Nicosa scratches at his head.

“I can do it,” Sofri volunteers.

“You?” says Nicosa. “You’re the one who will need the electroshock machine. No. It’s me.”

Sterling resumes: “Ana is the negotiator. She sits right next to you and tells you what to say.”

“Buona fortuna,” murmurs Sofri.

“I’m writing you notes. You’re repeating exactly what I write. Sofri, can you simultaneously translate, so we can hear you in our headphones?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Sofri’s listening in and translating. Nicosa’s talking. Sterling’s providing tactical support for how to recover the victim.”

Sofri pats his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “Mio Dio!”

“Any other questions?”

“How long will this take?”

“No way to know,” Sterling says. “Could be hours, could be days.”

Nicosa’s cell phone rings. We look up expectantly, but he waves us off — it’s Giovanni, reporting that he has arrived at the rectory of Padre Filippo.

“You see? He is a good boy,” Nicosa says, opening the refrigerator to a row of glistening wine bottles. “How about a drink?”

“We don’t advise it, sir,” Sterling says, expressionless.

Nicosa glowers. “Nobody made you capo.” But he closes the door.

By four in the afternoon, when the sun has probed each window on its way around the tower, we have turned on the TV and ended up watching Die Hard dubbed into Italian. Not really watching it, just someplace to put your eyeballs. There have been five other calls to the household throughout the day, all noted on the timeline, none relevant. The level of anxiety in the room is holding steady at 80 percent. The level of violence on the plasma screen is downright quaint. It is comforting to watch actors destroy large amounts of phony glass. I wonder what it means to die, hard.

As much as I want to reclaim Sterling, even the slightest touch would be against the professional code of conduct we have tacitly agreed to follow as long as we are working the case. We make sure to sit apart; all of us are sprawled on the couches and leather chairs, with the paradoxical sense of a family held together by the suspension of time, like waiting for a baby to be born, or Thanksgiving dinner to be served.

Yet even across the room I feel it when Sterling’s body stiffens. He jumps up, grabs the gun bag, and unzips a compartment that holds a Walther PPK/S 9mm and a cleaning kit. Sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the TV, he fieldstrips the gun, removing the magazine and the front of the trigger guard.

Sofri and Nicosa watch, fascinated.

“What does a private security company do?” Sofri wonders.

“Whatever the customer wants. Bodyguard. Protect assets. Fight a war.”

“Have you ever been hired on a kidnapping?”

Sterling works a soft brass brush over the residue on the outside of the barrel. “All the time.”

“How do they usually end?”

“It all depends on patience, sir. Patience and negotiation. Mind if I have one of those?”

Sterling reaches for a bowl of chocolates.

“Sure, of course,” says Nicosa, handing it over. “Can I get you something else? You didn’t care for my food?”

“It looked great, but I’m not much hungry these days.”

“He just came back from a mission,” I explain. “Still adjusting to the concept of lunch.”

“Really?” says Sofri, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Can you tell us what the mission was?”

“All I can say is, I quit.”

This is news to me. Anything he says would be news.

“Was it difficult?” Sofri asks.

Sterling doesn’t answer. He’s reassembling the Walther, pulling the slide back onto the barrel and checking the alignment.

Sofri and Nicosa watch every move.

“On this mission,” Sofri continues, “was it too much fighting, people getting killed?”

“Is that why I quit, you mean?”

Sofri nods. “If I may ask.”

Sterling finishes off with gun oil and a cloth. “We quit because they wouldn’t give us holiday pay.”

“Holiday pay?”

“That’s right. Promised, wouldn’t deliver, so we walked.”

Nicosa laughs. “It’s the same in every business!”

But I know that’s not all. That’s not why he showed up in my bedroom in the middle of the night, looking like a refugee, looking like something happened that was powerful enough to permanently take away his appetite.

The phone rings.

Everyone scurries into position. Sofri stumbles over a wire. We put on headphones and move to the desk, where four chairs are waiting. Sterling checks the tape recorder and gives the nod. Nicosa hits the phone.

“Prego.”

The conversation takes place in Italian, with Sofri softly speaking English into our ears.

“Who are you?”

“We have your wife.”

“I want to hear her voice,” says Nicosa.

“Not possible.”

“Why not? If she’s alive, put her on the phone.”

“We want the money.”

“I have the money. But first I hear her speak.”

“We want two million euros.”

“I have it, believe me.”

I write him a note. He hesitates, but I urge him on.

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