“Unbelievable.”
“This place had everything we needed. They were busting my balls telling me this couldn’t look like a break-in.”
“Why?”
“How the fuck should I know? They paid enough. Whatever they say, right?”
“You got the money?”
“Yeah. I gave it to my father. He’s happy as shit. He’ll pay you out when we get back.”
Near Villa Shibui, they put on balaclavas and gloves to finish the journey. Zuliani hopped out and punched in the gate code. Then he slowly drove down the gravel drive and parked by the barn next to the family cars.
Zuliani tugged on the slide of his pistol and told his brother-in-law that it was only for an emergency. “Remember,” he said, “no violence, no blood. We can scare them, but we’re not allowed to hurt them. Come on, let’s do this.”
It was two in the morning and the house was dark.
Zuliani used the spare house key he had stolen. He was prepared to disarm the alarm at the touch-panel in the hall, but the panel didn’t beep.
“Upstairs,” he whispered.
He led Rizzo to the open door of the master bedroom. There, he turned on his LED torch, barged in and flooded the bed with blinding light.
Jesper and Elena Andreason awoke at the same time and both let out cries of alarm.
When Jesper threw off the bedspread, Zuliani used some of the few English words he knew, “No, stop, gun, gun.” Then he told Rizzo to hit the lights.
“What do you want?” Jesper said, staring into the barrel of a pistol.
“Get clothes.”
“Give them money to leave,” Elena said through sobs.
“I don’t have much cash,” Jesper said fearfully, “but you can take watches, jewelry, our cars. Just don’t harm us. Please.”
“Not money,” Zuliani said, not fully understanding Jesper’s plea. “Get clothes.”
Elena spoke to him in Italian. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. My father-in-law is an important American businessman. My father is a big lawyer here. If you get the fuck out now, you’ll be safe. If you kidnap us, you’ll be running until you’re caught and then you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life. Think carefully.”
“Whoa! Your accent! A local girl and not bad-looking either. Get dressed now or I’ll take you into the bathroom and bend you over the sink. I’m not fucking around.”
When Jesper and Elena threw on clothes, Rizzo zip-tied their wrists behind their backs and sat them back down. Elena’s shouts and cries were grating on him so he told her if she didn’t shut up, he’d shoot her husband.
“What did he say?” Jesper asked.
“He wants me to be quiet or he’ll shoot you.”
“Maybe you should,” Jesper said.
“Where’s the other one? What’s he doing with my daughters?” Elena asked Rizzo.
“Nothing. We promised not to hurt anyone.”
“Who’d you promise?” Elena asked. “Who are you doing this for?”
“One more word and we’ll break the promise.”
Zuliani crept into the girls’ bedroom and took out the stoppered vial he’d been given from his pocket. They were tucked in, sound asleep. He followed his instructions, leaned over each bed, and with the medicine dropper, delivered a few drops into their mouths.
He waited the five minutes and tested the effect of the drops by flicking each girl hard with a finger. When they didn’t wake, he put one of them under each of his huge arms and called for Rizzo to bring the parents.
When Elena saw the two limp figures, she screamed, “What have you done to them!”
“Nothing,” Zuliani said. “They’re asleep. I gave them medicine so they wouldn’t be frightened. I’m a nice guy.”
The four Andreasons were bundled into the back seat of Zuliani’s car. Rizzo put hoods over the parents’ heads and they drove off, after locking the front door and closing the gate.
It was a short drive to Porto di Bagnara where north of the marina, on a desolate stretch of pebbly beach, a tender boat had been dragged onto the shore. Zuliani parked on an access road, carried the drugged girls as before, and had Rizzo wrangle Jesper and Elena.
Gunar was waiting on the beach with a boat driver, his blond hair flapping in the warm wind. With a penlight, he checked to make sure the girls were alive.
“No problem?” he said in English.
“Yes, yes, no problem,” Zuliani said.
Gunar gestured toward the sea and barked, “We go boat.”
The large motor yacht, a sixty-footer, was anchored a kilometer offshore, and once everyone was onboard, and the tender secured, the captain took off to the west at full throttle.
While Gunar was putting the Andreasons below decks, Zuliani went to the bridge and tried to ask the captain a question, but the little English he knew wasn’t sufficient for the task.
In Spanish, the captain asked, “You speak Spanish?”
“No Spanish.”
The captain shifted to Italian and said, “I speak more Italian than you speak English. I learned from charter passengers. What are you asking me?”
“How far are we going?”
“About seven hundred fifty nautical miles. At this speed, about twelve hours to Spain.”
“Is that where we’re going?” the young man asked.
“You didn’t know?”
“No one told us. You’re going to bring us back?”
“That’s what I’m being paid to do. We’ll get some fuel and return to Italy this time tomorrow night. We have a couple of crew bunks below you and your friend can use for sleep. There’s food in the galley.”
“Where’s that big blond guy from?” Zuliani asked. “He looks like his face is going to fall apart if he smiles.”
“I don’t know a fucking thing about him. I don’t know a fucking thing about you or the people you brought on the boat. And I don’t want to know, okay?”
*
“Up now. You come.”
Zuliani and Rizzo woke to the command. They had been asleep for a couple of hours on narrow bunks.
“What the hell?”
