Gunar was in the doorway, blotting out the light from the corridor.
“Come now,” he repeated.
“I think he wants us to come,” Zuliani said.
“What’s going on?”
“I guess we’re going to find out.”
They clamored up the stairs where Gunar was waiting for them in the main salon. He tried to hand Zuliani a small revolver.
Zuliani wouldn’t take it. He used his best English and reached into his waistband, “Don’t need. Big gun. See?”
Gunar persisted. “Little gun—twenty-two—little blood. Less to clean.”
“What’s going on, Teo?” Rizzo asked in Italian.
“I think this guy wants us to shoot someone.”
“We didn’t sign up for that, did we?”
“We were paid for a snatch job, that’s all.”
“Tell him.”
Zuliani tried his hardest to get the point across, but Gunar said, “Part of job. You paid lot of money.”
He led them out to the stern deck where Jesper and Elena were seated on a bench, hoods over their heads, zip-ties still binding their hands.
Above them on the bridge, the captain turned up his playlist.
Elena was sobbing, Jesper was silent, his chest heaving.
Elena snapped her head off her chest when she heard Rizzo asking Zuliani in Italian if he was going to do it.
“Do what?” she cried. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” Zuliani said, shooting Jesper in the head.
Elena started screaming. She stood up and blindly ran forward, bumping into the wall that was Gunar’s chest. He pushed her back onto the bench where she made contact with Jesper’s body.
“Kill me but don’t hurt my babies!” she screamed. “Please, not my babies!”
“Will you please shut the fuck up,” Zuliani said, firing into her hood.
Gunar took the revolver back and pointed the Italians to two piles of anchor chain.
“Wrap them good. No one find.”
*
The afternoon sun was blazing hot when the yacht made port in Valencia. It was a busy marina and Gunar told Zuliani and Rizzo to stay inside the boat, out of sight.
Gunar carried two duffel bags down the dock and into the parking lot where a large camper van was idling with the air conditioning on.
“Let me see them,” Ferrol said. “Are they okay?”
“They okay,” Gunar said. “Had to give more drops when they almost wake.”
Ferrol eagerly unzipped the bags, but when he saw fair skin and golden-brown hair, he became alarmed.
“These aren’t Italian children,” he said.
“Kidnappers say they American,” Gunar replied.
“No, no, no. They’re supposed to be Italians. Poor Italians.”
“I don’t know, boss,” Gunar said. “They took mother and father too. We dump them in sea.”
Ferrol clasped his head in his hands and told Gunar he wanted to talk to the kidnappers. They left the girls in the cool camper in their unzipped bags and boarded the yacht.
“You sure you want them see you face?” Gunar asked.
“It won’t matter,” Ferrol said. “Make sure the crew stays on the bridge. I don’t want them to see me.”
Ferrol spoke five languages. Italian was one of them. Zuliani and Rizzo were stuffing themselves on thick sandwiches in the galley when he entered and demanded, “Tell me about the two girls. Where did you find them?”
“Who are you?” Zuliani asked.
“I’m the one who paid you,” Ferrol said.
Zuliani yawned and told him that a friend heard about these kids in a little place called Filarete and when he checked the house out it was perfect for all these reasons.
“What was the house like?” Ferrol asked.
“A beautiful villa. Unbelievable. I’ve never seen a place so big and so nice.”
“So, this was a rich family.”
“Very rich. Money coming out of their asses.”
“And they’re Americans, I understand.”
“Well, the mother was Italian. Calabrian, for sure. I guess the father was American. What does it matter?”
Ferrol was seething. “You were supposed to get me poor children. From the slums. Low-profile, where the media attention goes away quickly. I know you were told this.”
Zuliani got red in the face. “You don’t know what the fuck I was told, okay? You wanted two kids less than ten years old, you got two kids less than ten years old. Don’t be busting our balls. Now, give us the rest of our money. And since we’re talking to the big cheese, you should pay us for shooting the parents. That wasn’t part of the deal. That should be extra.”
Ferrol put up his hands and said, “All right. You boys delivered. Gunar, give them their money. I paid you a fortune. It’s enough. Have a good trip back to Italy.”
Gunar passed them a tote bag and Zuliani told them to wait while he dumped it out on the table and had Rizzo count it.
On the dock, Ferrol told Gunar, “This is bad for us. Rich Americans, for Christ’s sake. This is going to be big news all over the world. We’re going to have to be extremely careful. Go talk to the captain. Tell him the bag of money you gave those boys is for him. Tell him to feed the fish some Italian food.”
33
Victoria and Elizabeth woke up in a gleaming white room, each on a soft bed with a white pillow and a white duvet.
“Where are we?” Elizabeth said.
Ferrol had been watching from his office on closed-circuit cameras.
“Celeste,” he said through an intercom. “Suit up. They’re awake.”
They had drilled for this moment, but now they were faced with last-minute linguistic changes. They had planned on Italian-speaking kids and Celeste had spent a year learning Italian to the point where she was semi-fluent. Gressani, of course, would have had no issues. With two so-called American kids with an Italian mother, they didn’t know what language or languages they spoke and Gressani’s English was basic, at best.
While Celeste got prepared, Ferrol thought back to the day he introduced her and Gressani to this small part of his larger plan.
*
He opened the box and said to them, “When you work with the children, this is what you’ll wear.”
They took it as a joke, something to lighten the mood, but he was serious. The full-head latex masks were in the plastic bags of a
