Chapter 456: I Want The Case Opened

Eve reached across the table and laid her hand over his. He turned his palm up and held on.

"How is Isabella?" she asked quietly.

"They give her the first dose."

"Will she be all right?"

"The doctor thinks so."

"And Dante?"

"He’ll stay with her the whole time." Dimitri’s thumb moved over her knuckles. "Whatever else he is, he’ll do that."

Eve nodded. She looked out at the city, bright under the afternoon sun, and didn’t say anything else.

...

ANTONIO’S POV

He sat for a long time after his son had gone.

The shears in the grove had stopped. The room was very still. A square of afternoon light lay across the carpet where Dimitri had stood, and Antonio looked at it as though it might tell him something.

I accept.

He turned the words over. He had expected a fight. He had expected a long, cold silence, a set jaw, a shut door. He had expected his son to refuse him to his face, as he had walked out of this room three days ago without agreeing to anything. Instead Dimitri had come in on the hour, in a good suit, with his face composed, and given him exactly what he had asked.

It was too easy.

In thirty-two years, Antonio had never once seen his son yield without cost. Dimitri argued. He pushed. He made every concession pay.

Today he had simply said yes.

Antonio picked up the phone.

"Signore," the aide answered.

"The shipment from Frascati. It is moving tonight."

"Yes, Signore. The truck is arranged for ten."

"When it arrives, I want it brought to the laboratory directly. Not to the vault. To the workroom."

A pause. "The workroom?"

"I want the case opened." Antonio’s voice was very calm. "Every ampoule. Every seal. I want it checked against the manifest by someone I trust, before it goes anywhere."

"The case has been sealed for years, Signore."

"I am aware."

"Is there a concern?"

Antonio looked at the empty carpet.

"There is a coincidence," he said. "And I do not like coincidences."

"Understood."

"Report to me the moment it is done."

"Yes, Signore."

He set down the phone.

The room settled around him. He sat with his hands folded, looking at the photograph on the corner of the desk, the woman in the white dress, laughing at something outside the frame.

The hunt along the coast had been quiet all morning. His thirty men had reported nothing but shuttered villas and empty fishing houses. Lorenzo had called twice, hoarse and weary, to ask whether there was anything new. There was not. There was only a boy who had said yes.

He accepted too easily, he thought.

And then, very quietly, to the room: "Tonight, we shall see."

***

*FEW HOURS LATER*

The laboratory lay in the hills east of the city, at the end of a road that did not appear on any map.

Antonio’s car reached it a few minutes before midnight. There was no sign at the gate, no light over the door. The building itself was low and windowless, built into the slope of the hill so that from above it looked like a shelf of rock. Most of it was underground. He had designed it that way eight years ago, standing on this same road with an architect who had since retired to the coast and never asked a question.

A guard opened the gate. Another opened the door. Antonio walked through them without a word.

The corridor was white and silent. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and cold metal. At the far end, behind a second door, the workroom was lit like a surgery. His aide was waiting beside a steel table. On the table lay the gray case from Frascati, its lid closed, the green band bright under the lights.

A technician in a white coat stood a respectful distance away, with his hands folded.

"Signore," the aide said.

"It arrived?"

"Forty minutes ago. It has not been opened."

"Open it."

The aide nodded to the technician. The man stepped forward, gloved, and broke the cold seal with a small tool. The lid came up with a soft hiss. A breath of chilled air rolled off the foam.

Antonio did not move.

Twelve ampoules lay in their cradle, in two neat rows. Clear glass. Clear liquid. Each stamped with a small green mark.

The technician lifted one, turned it to the light, and frowned.

"What is it?" Antonio asked.

"The label is correct, Signore. The seal is identical. But the glass is a different weight."

"Different how?"

"Slightly lighter. And the stamp is not quite sharp." The man set it down with great care and picked up another. "May I run a test?"

"Do it."

The technician crossed to a bench at the side of the room. He broke the neck of an ampoule, drew a drop of the liquid onto a slide, and slid it beneath a small instrument. The room was very quiet. The compressor hummed in the wall.

Antonio waited, with his hands folded behind his back.

It took ninety seconds.

The technician straightened. He did not turn around immediately. When he did, his face was pale.

"Sodium chloride, Signore," he said. "Pure. Nothing else."

No one spoke.

"Saline," Antonio said.

"Yes."

"All twelve?"

"I would have to test each. But the weight is the same. The seal is the same." The man swallowed. "I believe so."

Antonio looked at the case. At the clean gray lid and the neat green band, the exact stamp, the little black gauge reading four degrees. Someone had copied every detail. Someone had cared enough to get the temperature right.

"Leave us," he said.

The technician went out. The aide lingered a moment, and then, at a small movement of Antonio’s hand, followed.

The door closed.

...

He stood alone in the white room for a long time.

He did not shout. He had never been a man who shouted. He had learned, early, that anger was a kind of noise, and that noise was a form of weakness, and that the men who ruled were the ones who could stand in a silent room and think.

So he thought.

A lapse in the camera feed. Eleven minutes.