“That guy took me for the standard-issue old gent with a young lover in tow,” the senatore chortles. “I should have bought you the whole bouquet.”
“Please, that’s enough,” she replies, and thrusts the rose into the first trash bin they come across.
Barbara hasn’t wasted any time since her meeting with the two women. That name—Manuela Sanchez—catapulted her fifteen years into the past, before the senatore was actively engaged in politics, back when he was simply a Roman lawyer with a thriving practice where Barbara took her first steps as a working attorney. It’s a name that warrants more than the standard infrequent e-mail or phone call.
They find an unoccupied café table on the edge of Piazza del Pantheon and sit down. For a few seconds they enjoy the spectacle offered by the piazza; then they check their respective cell phones, smile at a street photographer who wants to immortalize them, preferably in an embrace, and indicate the best way for him to get lost.
Then the senatore begins: “I haven’t heard from Manuela Sanchez in quite some time. I haven’t heard from her in years.”
“How do you figure that two apparently normal women would—”
“I figure it only one way: the guy who’s been kidnapped in Cambodia knows Manuela Sanchez. And pretty well, too.”
“Oh, I suppose it’s possible. If he’s really an ex-Carabiniere.”
“Indeed. For now, we’ll assume the two ladies gave you an accurate version of the events, even though I suspect they’ve left something out. This guy could be anybody. You have to try to find out more about him. It was surely his idea that they should contact Manuela. And he did it because he knows she knows me. Because through me, as a senator of the republic . . .”
“They need to get to the Italian government,” Barbara concludes. “To get to it fast and without making too much noise. Far away from the media.”
“Exactly,” the senatore agrees. “But Manuela would never expose herself personally. Especially not in a situation like this. Therefore she had them take the easiest route to yours truly: she sent them to you. And she got the desired result. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were watching us at this very moment from some corner of this piazza. You know her, she’s an exceptional woman. . . .”
The senatore raises his glass of chardonnay as though for a toast. He murmurs some enologically appropriate comment and nods to himself. “Yes, I do believe I’ll go out for some sushi this evening. Care to join me?”
Barbara smiles at him from behind her empty glass. “I have a husband and two children waiting for me at home. Most of all, I’m facing a terrifying weekend at the seashore, and I’m going to have to work while I’m there. What shall I say to my two ladies?”
“That you have an appointment with a government official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
“All right, that should calm them down for a while. But in the meantime . . .”
“In the meantime, keep the appointment. Monday morning, nine-thirty, at the ministry.” He smiles and hands her a card with a telephone number written on it. “The official will be expecting you. That’s his cell phone number. Call him if you get lost.”
Barbara takes the card and slips it into her wallet. Next to the other one, the one with the number to call for Manuela Sanchez.
—
The sea off Circeo is heart-stopping.
The playful voices that come up from the shore, torture.
It’s a Saturday in May with the smell of high summer, and she must stay here, shut up inside four walls, while her husband, their two sons, their friends, and a few thousand other Romans live it up on the beach, practically under her nose.
Barbara tries to go online but can’t connect. Again. The DSL’s acting up. She rises from her chair and declares she’s had enough. Her work won’t suffer if she spends a few hours in the sun.
She’ll do it. The moment has come for her to change into some beachwear.
She undresses and examines herself in the bedroom mirror. All of herself. She can officially conclude that her sacrifices were not in vain. The results aren’t all she could wish, but they’ll do. What a shitty winter she’d had without wine, without cheese, with very little bread and hardly any pasta. Lots of salads. An infinity of salads.
She goes for the two-piece. It’s May, the spring sun is marvelous, it demands thorough exposure. But when she returns to the living room and glances at the computer screen, the DSL is working again.
Barbara sits back down in front of the keyboard, opens the browser, and resumes her search. She types in the name of the “prisoner” and adds some possible keywords. She looks for the newspaper articles she’d linked to earlier. About ten articles in all, taken from the major Italian newspapers, except for one from the Phnom Penh Post. She jumps from one article to another, from one name to another. There’s one that recurs several times in the body of the last article: Kasper.
Agent Kasper.
Something tells her she won’t make any appearance at all on the beach today.
7
The Hospital of Horrors
Preah Monivong Hospital, Prison Ward, Phnom Penh, CambodiaJuly 2008
“Everything all right.”
The physician stands up, puts his dirty stethoscope into an even dirtier canvas bag, and tosses it into its case. “You are well,” he repeats in his scratchy English.
Kasper looks at him through half-closed eyelids. Fuck you, he thinks. If I’m so well, why do I feel so awful? Why can’t I get back on my feet? But don’t breathe a word of that to this so-called doctor with the parchment face. Kasper watches him blathering in Khmer with an officer of the guards. He sees him nod: he’s well, he’s well.
Four months.
That’s how much time has passed since his capture.
Since then he’s lost about twenty pounds, he suffers from dysentery and extremely high fevers, and he lives in a state of permanent exhaustion. When he’s weaker than usual, he can barely drag his feet. His eyes are lost in the void. He’s like a zombie. One of the many zombies shut up in this hospital.
The smell of “lunch” heralds the arrival of the guard who distributes food. A privilege reserved for few. If you want to eat decently, you must pay your guards, and to pay your guards you must have money. Those who have none survive on the watery swill provided by the hospital: vegetable scraps and substances it’s useless to scrutinize, swimming in some thin liquid.
It’s always better than when meat’s on the menu.
Kasper has stopped wondering what strange kind of animal goes into the stew they serve him every so often. Some say it’s dog, some say rat. Whatever it is, it makes him puke.
Before arriving here—Preah Monivong Hospital
