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Chou Chet’s help has revived him a little, but a recent development in the prison has also greatly boosted his morale. For the past few days they’ve been working on the exterior wall at Prey Sar. Kasper didn’t consider it very important at first. The workers were using a very tall ladder to restore the plaster and to replace the traditional barbed wire with the kind invented by the South Africans: triangular ribbons of metal, three-edged, razor-sharp.

  In the evening, after the workers have gone home, the ladder is still there. At least three meters long. No longer propped against the wall but flat on the ground, not far from one of the guard towers.

  Kasper asked Chou Chet how long the work on the wall would go on.

  “No idea,” the guard said with a chuckle. “Here is always same, government work take forever.”

  It’s like being in Italy, Kasper thought, with growing excitement.

  A ladder under the wall.

  To help him jump over it. To help him fly away.

  Of course, the ladder by itself isn’t enough. If he’s to have any hope of getting over that wall, he’ll need something else besides.

  He’ll need Chou Chet.

  His favorite jailer has become indispensable to him recently. Kasper has succeeded in diverting part of the money he receives from Italy to Brady Ellensworth, who takes care of paying Chou Chet without the torturers of Prey Sar finding out. The money has already changed Chou Chet’s life. His normal salary is fifty dollars a month, perhaps a bit more. Just a few payments from Italy have brought him at least twenty times that much.

  “We friends,” the guard assures Kasper, repeatedly, in broken English.

  Good, Kasper thinks. The moment has come to measure the depth of that friendship. He asks Chou Chet, “Do you want to earn ten thousand dollars?”

  The guard opens his eyes wide and recoils as though punched in the chest. He looks around. He falters. “What you saying?”

  “Ten thousand dollars. All at one time.”

  “What…what I have to do?”

  “I need some special help. But you can do it.”

  “What you want?”

  “A pistol and a hand grenade.”

  That one’s a left hook to the liver, even harder than the right to the chest. The one-two punch nearly lays the guard out. He’s bent over, mumbling something. “Crazy” is the only word Kasper understands. “I’m not crazy,” he hisses, moving in very close to Chou Chet. “But I’ll never get out of here. You know that. They’re going to see that I die. I swear to you, I don’t want to kill anybody—”

  “For me, I don’t care, you kill them all,” Chou Chet interrupts him. “But if you try escape, they cut me in pieces.”

  “No one will ever know anything. Not even if they torture me.”

  “Torture, you say?” He laughs. “You not see any torture yet. You never been to infirmary. They never taken you to Bang Klong.”

  Bang Klong.

  Hell’s lowest depths. The human slaughterhouse erased from all the maps. The prison on the Cambodia-Vietnam border that makes Prey Sar seem like an upper-class resort. A place of certain, atrocious death.

  “You have to help me,” Kasper insists. “Fifteen thousand dollars…”

  “Gun and hand grenade. You crazy…”

  “And a cell phone.”

  Chou Chet’s eyes open wide again. He looks terrified. Then he nods and says, “Don’t know. Maybe find something. Twenty thousand.”

  —

  “Who’s Manuela Sanchez?”

  Marco Lanna wants to study his reaction, but Kasper doesn’t react. Barely raising his eyes, he replies to the honorary consul’s question with a shrug and two words: “A friend.”

  “A very good friend, I suppose.”

  Kasper nods slowly. “She takes care of my mother. What do you want to know?”

  “I wonder why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why a woman like that?”

  “A woman who’s decided to dedicate her life to others?”

  “Is she doing some kind of penance?”

  “So what if she is? When I first met her, she knew the narcos were going to put a price on her head before long and she’d have to make her life over. She was familiar with the accounts of the big drug-running organizations, and she wasn’t sure she’d survive from one day to the next. And she still helped me. Without her, I would have had a much harder time building up my network of acquaintances. Manuela Sanchez made commitments to the criminal justice system and fulfilled them all.”

  “I wonder why, in this situation, you’re putting so much trust in her and not somebody else. Your girlfriend Patty, for example…”

  All Kasper’s irritation is in the grimace that parts his face, but Lanna doesn’t back off. He adds, “After all, your girlfriend’s been here. She knows these places and—”

  “She can’t.” Kasper’s voice, interrupting him, is suddenly aggressive. Too much so. He notices this, and tones it down somewhat. “Patty must stay out of this. And I mean out. She belongs to another world, that girl.”

  “But she knows where you are, and she knows your life’s in danger. She has met Manuela. It was Patty who contacted the lawyer.”

  “I know she did. She did too much,” Kasper says emphatically. “Don’t try to get her any more involved than she already is.”

  “All right. I just wanted to understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “How you met each other. Because a girl like that…”

  “Like what?”

  “One who has nothing to do with…your world…”

  “Are we through?”

  —

  Understand? What’s there to understand? Kasper wonders as he goes back to his prison quarters. And furthermore, why should he explain to Lanna or anyone else what a woman like Patty represents for him?

  Of course, she has nothing to do with his world. Isn’t that what makes her special? Isn’t it her rectitude, her practicality, her love of life that make her a special person? Her kind, determined eyes when she talks to the animals she’s treating, when she takes them under her care, knowing that at the same time she’s caring for their owners as well? Exactly like the pediatrician who can feel the parents’ anxiety vibrating through their child.

  Kasper has often thought back to the day he met Patty.

  His big old dog Bendicò seemed to be at death’s door. A snake had bitten him, he was struggling to breathe, the pain contorted his body. He was really in bad shape, his big old dog. And therefore Kasper was in bad shape too.

  At the clinic Patty examined the huge English mastiff at length and scheduled immediate surgery; Bendicò, she said, would make it. After a few days, although he was still hooked up to an intravenous drip and required supportive therapy, she had Bendicò back on his four feet. He fell in love with her. So did Kasper.

  Kasper kept going back to the clinic for weeks. There was no lack of excuses for doing so. But it took some time before he could persuade the doctor to go out for a pizza with him.

  And that was how their love story began, the way the stories of so many normal people do. Patty’s the exceptional person tethering Kasper to the normal world. It’s the world he wants to return to now, embrace fully, and never leave again. To distance himself from his past and its shadows.

  But that shouldn’t be any of Lanna’s business. Not his, and not anyone else’s.

  17

  The Bad Boy from Florence

  Kasper’s Mother’s House, Florence, Italy

  November 2008

  “Where can he be now? What are they doing to him? I haven’t heard from him in so long….”

  The former schoolteacher is sitting in her elegant blue velvet armchair. She looks at Barbara and then turns to Manuela, who’s on her feet, leaning against a window. The filtered light makes her look like some otherworldly creature, diaphanous. Like an angel, in fact, and probably as far as Kasper’s mother is concerned, that’s what she really is. If Manuela weren’t
there to help, the elderly lady’s illness would be an even greater ordeal for her.

  Barbara’s seated across from Kasper’s mother on the antique sofa in the middle of the living room. Paintings of Tuscan landscapes and photographs from her past hang on the walls. There are a great many books of every kind.

  This is the home where Kasper grew up.

  “When was the last time you talked to him?” Barbara asks her.

  The old lady moves her head slightly and turns her eyes to Manuela, who supplies the answer: “Three weeks ago.”

  “Three weeks, that’s right. He called me on the Italian consul’s phone. My son told me not to worry. He said he would get out. He always says that. He never loses hope.” She turns to Manuela again. “It’s true, remember? Even when he wound up in jail for that incredible business, when the judges wanted to frame him for what happened in Milan, he kept believing he’d get out. Although he certainly had many reasons to despair.”

  “What happened in Milan?” Barbara interjects.

  “You explain it, Manuela, please,” the old lady says with a sigh.

  “It’s a rather strange story,” Manuela begins. “He was supposed to intercept this Swiss man who was carrying a very special suitcase….The man was going to be in the central train station in Milan at a certain time. I don’t know what he was carrying. As far as I was able to find out, the operation was set up by a U.S. intelligence agency, probably the CIA. In any case, the bust never happened, because at some point beforehand the Guardia di Finanza came out of nowhere and hauled Kasper away. Some Roman magistrates accused him of attempted robbery. So he wound up in Regina Coeli prison, where he stayed for a couple of months. Little by little, the charges against him were reduced, and in the meantime he met a lot of people in jail, including the priests who run the Island of Brotherly Love. And that’s the whole story.”

  “The whole story.” Barbara nods. A pretty scanty summary, she thinks, but she makes no comment. At any rate, one thing’s clear: Kasper’s like a bottomless wardrobe. If you rummage around, you’ll always come up with something.

  The elderly lady half closes her eyes in an affectionate smile. “That bad boy of mine has always done whatever he wanted. When he was little, he dreamed about becoming an airplane pilot, and so he did. He wanted to be a parachute jumper, and he did that too. He loved dogs, horses, animals in general; now the place where he lives looks like a farm. And he’s even engaged to a veterinarian. A fine girl with a good head on her shoulders. He’s a bad boy, but he knows how to be lovable. He used to dream about doing something heroic, and now…”

  Her voice cracks and tears suddenly well up in her eyes. But she recovers quickly and says, “Do you know why he joined the Carabinieri?”

  “I was about to ask you that,” Barbara replies.

  “It was me. I made him. He was on a slippery slope, and I didn’t want him to slide all the way down. Down into right-wing extremism.”

  “You were afraid he’d become…”

  “A terrorist. Exactly. Florence was one of the most turbulent cities in the ’70s. We certainly weren’t a right-wing family,” Kasper’s mother declares. “My husband was a university professor of entomology. He came from a family of landowners in the province of Lucca. They were conservatives, yes, but moderates. As for me, I was just an ordinary schoolteacher. My family was aristocratic but not right-wing—some of our relatives fought with the partisans against Mussolini. In short, we never had much in common with the Fascists. I think you can imagine how my poor husband and I felt when we realized what direction our only son was headed in. He joined the Fronte della Gioventù, a right-wing youth group. He was a judo champion, and when he got involved in a few street fights, he didn’t hold back. To say the least, we were worried. Mind you, up to that point he hadn’t gotten into any real trouble. He still studied hard. He did well in every subject in high school, except possibly mathematics….And he even had a leftist girlfriend. I can still remember her name: Rossana. He adored her. Her friends teased her about him, but they weren’t too mean, and in the end they accepted him. But one day my husband and I saw him deep in conversation with…with certain people. Awful people. Real neo-Fascists, the kind who carried guns and used them. And shortly afterward, in fact, they wound up in jail. And then I said to my husband, We have to make a move now, because soon it will be too late.”

  She stops and addresses Manuela. “Shall we have some tea?”

  “I’ll make it,” Manuela says, heading for the kitchen.

  “Some of our family friends were judges,” Kasper’s mother goes on. “One of them understood our situation and told us in cases like this there’s only one thing to do, and it must be done quickly. As soon as the boy graduates from high school, enlist him in the Carabinieri. It will solve the problem. At the time, it did.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Afterward is another story. I don’t really know much about his later career. I never wanted to know about it. He was working for the government, and that was enough for me. But I’m sure of one thing. My son is where he is now because he discovered something illegal. And the people who put him in prison are afraid. Afraid of the truth.”

  18

  Merry Christmas, Kasper

  Prey Sar Correctional Center, near Phnom Penh, Cambodia

  December 2008

  He’s started training again. Nothing extraordinary: abdominal moves, stretches, push-ups, biceps exercises. If he’s really going to get to the top of that wall, his arm muscles will have to do most of the work. And then he’ll jump over and fly away.

  The idea’s like a drug for him, a continuous transfusion of endorphins. His plan keeps him awake at night. Assessing every detail, every possible hitch. He can do it. He just needs a little luck. He’ll take care of the rest. Especially if Chou Chet gets him what he ordered.

  “I have found Nokia for you.”

  A few days have passed since Kasper’s request, and the Cambodian guard is checking in. He looks quite pleased with himself. “Now you can make phone call.”

  “A cell phone, great. How about the rest?”

  “For rest, have to wait.”

  Kasper slowly shakes his head. Time is a luxury he can’t afford. Surely he doesn’t have to explain that to Chou Chet. And in fact, the guard nods. “Couple days,” he says. “Not many. You have patience, better so.”

  The ladder’s been moved a few meters.

  Now it’s farther from the guard tower, but the workers continue to leave it out at the end of the day. They lay it on the ground at the foot of the wall. Three meters of bamboo ladder that no one so much as glances at. If he were armed, Kasper thinks, he’d make a break on the spot. The pistol would be enough. If a hand grenade can’t be found, he’ll do without it. But a fucking pistol—there must be one loose around here somewhere.

  He curses Chou Chet and his slowness. “Phnom Penh not like years before,” Kasper’s “friend” explains. “Now much harder find gun.”

  Kasper looks at him askance, but he has to admit there’s some truth in what the guard says.

  In the 1990s, Phnom Penh was an open-air armory. Kidnappings were the order of the day. Without being too diplomatic about it, the Americans obliged Prime Minister Hun Sen to impose some regulation on the system. Now weapons are still circulating anyway, but in greater moderation. And, above all, they cost a lot more.

  Naturally, a large portion of the arsenal is of American manufacture.

  —

  “I saw your friend Brady Ellensworth. He’s worried about you.”

  Kasper nods. He couldn’t agree more. He just hopes whatever Lanna’s got to say doesn’t have anything to do with his escape plans. Brady knows he’s not to speak about it with anyone.

  When Kasper makes his big jump, Brady will have to be there, waiting for him on his Yamaha right outside Prey Sar. They’ll make a dash through the ricefields and run full speed for the Cardamom Mountains. Exactly like the plan they had for Preah Monivong Hospit
al. But this time, there won’t be a suicidal Cambodian upstaging him.

  “Brady’s one of the few who haven’t disappeared since I’ve been in this fix,” Kasper says.

  “It looks to me like he’s helping you a lot.”

  “He does what he can.”

  Lanna nods and hollows his cheeks, weighing his words.

  “Involving him in some stupid shit means getting him in serious trouble. You’re aware of that, of course.”

  “What kind of stupid shit?”

  “You know very well what I’m talking about. You think I haven’t noticed the change in you these past few days? You’re too cheery. Therefore, one of two things: either you’re planning something big, or you’ve found a very intriguing pusher.”

  Kasper chuckles sardonically.

  Lanna stares at Kasper and asks, “What do you have in mind?”

  “Staying alive. A remarkable project in this place, I can assure you.”

  “Bravo,” Lanna says. He nods, sighs, and opens a briefcase, from which he extracts a couple of sheets of paper. He quickly runs his eyes over them, puts them back in the briefcase, and closes it again. Then he asks, “How did Operation Sinai end?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “You didn’t tell me whether or not you actually made that flight. You left off the end of the story.”

  “Listen, Mr. Consul,” Kasper sighs, “I appreciate your efforts. Answering your questions probably helps me keep my spirits up, but not today. I don’t feel like wallowing around in my memories today….”

  “I’ve got someone who can help you.”

  “Help me how?”

  “I can’t tell you yet. But I’m explaining your situation to him. I’m persuading him. It works like this: the more I know about you, the more persuasive I can be with him.”

  “Is he with the Italian government?”

  “I can’t talk about him for now. But in any case no, no government. He belongs to another parish, so to speak.”

  “But what kind of bullshit—”

  “Stop it and tell me the rest. What happened in ’97, after you met the Irish drug trafficker in Zurich?”