Shrouded in Silence (21 page)

No movement.

"Jack, I'm here with you."

His breathing continued in an interrupted steady pumping of his chest up and down. Slowly. Struggling. Suffering.

"Jack?"

No sound.

Michelle withdrew from his bedside and looked at the machines around his body monitoring his heart, breathing, and vital signs. A quick glance said the pattern was regular on the low side. She gestured for the nurse to follow her outside the drapery.

"Jack's in serious condition," Michelle said.

The nurse nodded.

"Will he live?" Michelle asked with a firmness in her voice that conveyed she wanted a straight answer.

"No one can say for sure right now," the nurse said soberly. "Obviously, the blast was substantial. The next twenty-four hours is crucial." The woman looked Michelle in the eye. "Jack won't be conscious for a period of time."

Michelle sat down in the wheelchair. "Please take me back to my room," she said. "I need to rest." She closed her eyes and held her face in her hands.

Michelle could feel the tension building as the nurse wheeled her down the hall. Never in a million years would she have imagined her husband dying. Even the hint of such an idea overwhelmed her and started pumping wild emotions through her mind. The longer it took to get to the room, the more anxious she became. An avalanche of hysteria seemed ready to roll down on her, compounded by the absolute terror that Jack might die.

Once inside her room, she insisted she be allowed to sit alone in a chair. The nurse rolled the wheelchair out the door and left. Her knees turned wobbly once more. Flashing visions of the city of Cerignola blipped through her mind. Michelle could feel her emotions shifting and becoming like a child's descending into the darkness of a stormy night. A speeding gasoline truck surged toward her and the room began to shake. The side of the chair started to lift. For an instant, her father's face came out of the darkness and then receded. Her mouth turned dry and her hands became sweaty. A roaring noise erupted in her ears and drops of sweat slowly ran down her cheeks. Her entire body felt clammy and the muscles in her arms became rigid. She was about to be swallowed.

With the deepest breath she could take, Michelle grabbed the chair and clung fiercely. Another thought arose beyond the landslide of fear. She, and she alone, was all they had left at this moment. Jack couldn't do anything for who knows how long, if ever. No matter how difficult it might be, she couldn't allow her childhood experience to control her life. Even if the memory of the car collision had worked its way into the fiber of her very being, she couldn't let it take over her life. The hallucinations had to stop, and that wouldn't be easy. When the trauma surged, it always began in her body before she even grasped it was coming. Michelle had no idea how to control what occurred physically within her, but she couldn't let anxiety win. It might take everything in her, but she would no longer be ruled by the fears from the past. Loud noises, banging, gunshots couldn't be allowed to dominate. Whether she liked it or not, she would have to take control of their eruptions and keep their project moving while Jack recovered . . . if Jack recovered.

26

A
cold wind blew down from the top of santa Maria Church sweeping rubbish across the back yard of the church. Workmen had already been separating debris from the foundation of the bomb-scattered house. A few people hung around watching the workers sift through the devastation. Guido Valentino stood on the sidelines talking to a detective and observing several men stacking the ruins of the bombed house in a pile to one side. Windows had been completely blown out and the roof cratered with shingles blasted away. The front porch had sunken and the door completely disintegrated.

"Strange about bombings," detective Alfredo Pino made casual conversation. "They don't explode in a consistent direction. Some of the house was blown away while other parts remained surprisingly intact. I guess the one guy was standing right over the bomb when it went off. Got hit straight on. Horrible." The detective shook his head. "Worst I've ever seen."

"Why would someone bomb these people?" Guido pressed.

"Doesn't make any sense," Pino said. "They're not political. I guess the fact they were Americans with a Jew working for them might be part of it. Just don't know what to think. Confounds me. Everyone is speculating that this group called The Scorpion set it off. Seems they don't like Americans." The detective shook his head. "Bizarre. Don't see any connections between those two explosions, but they might be related."

"I work with the Townsends and, of course, wasn't in the office," Guido said. "I can't see any reason for any of this destruction either. The Townsends have been the best people I've ever been around. Yet, I can't believe this was a random act."

"Like that subway explosion. No good explanation."

Guido noticed a well-dressed figure walking around from the side of the church. The man stayed bent over as if desperately searching for something. Wearing elegant clothes, the man looked completely misplaced wandering through the rubble. Swaggering into the rubble, he started kicking boards around as if he owned the place.

"Who is that guy?" Guido pointed at the figure. "Strange-looking fellow."

"I don't know," Pino said.

"Looks like he's trying to ransack the wreckage." Guido watched him more closely. "I've been around here working with the Townsends for several weeks, and I've never seen the likes of him. He's not somebody you'd forget."

"He's picking up pieces of paper and books," the detective said. "Might be some sort of hack trying to find materials he can sell to a secondhand bookstore. We can't have any of that monkey business." Alfredo Pino started stepping over pieces of board to get to the man.

Guido followed from behind, watching closely.

"What's going on here?" the detective demanded. "Do you have any identification?"

Pushing a few strands of his blond hair aside, the man looked at Guido and the officer suspiciously.

"Why are you asking?" He sat the books down and looked harshly at them.

"I ask the questions," Pino fired back. "If you don't have identification, you will be charged with trespassing as well as stealing and taken into custody."

"I work with the Townsends," the man said indignantly. "I am a PhD from Tübingen, Germany."

"Let's see your paper," Pino said impatiently. "I won't ask again."

"My name is Dr. Albert Stein." He reached for his billfold. "When I heard of the explosion, I volunteered to be of assistance. Opening the billfold, he pulled out a driver's license. "I don't carry my passport when I am doing physical labor."

Guido looked over the policeman's shoulder. "I work with the Townsends," he said dogmatically. "I have never heard your name mentioned once. Not once! Can you explain that?"

Stein leaned forward, studying the face before him. "How long you been there?" he asked skeptically. "A matter of weeks?"

Guido flinched. "Not long," he said. "But I would have expected them to have mentioned you."

"Well, your expectations were wrong," Stein barked.

"Officer, I cannot vouch for this man. I'd suggest you take his information and send him on his way."

"You running the project now?" Stein sneered. "I also have a
Permesso di Soggiorno
for study purposes, but don't carry the papers on archaeological digs."

Guido said nothing, but the detective was already copying the information down on his notepad.

"We don't allow anyone in at a crime scene," the officer said. "This certainly is not an archaeological site. You obviously didn't check in with us when you arrived. I'm not going to arrest you, but your information will be examined and better add up. I'd suggest you leave now."

Stein looked back and forth at the two men for a moment with a fierceness that left the impression he might bite one of them. Guido felt his fist tightening and had to force his fingers to relax.

Without saying a word, Stein stomped out of the wreckage and marched away down the path between the church and building next door. In a matter of moments, he was gone.

"Strange-looking individual," the officer said.

"More than strange," Guido said. "I have no idea who that character is, but he obviously was more than a little interested in whatever he could pick up.

Guido Valentino stayed throughout the day, observing the workmen, the detective, making sure nothing was carried away that might have value. Slowly, the wreckage of the broken walls and the dilapidated roof were pulled back. The house looked like it had been over a hundred years old with pieces of molding from around the ceilings that might have antique value. Beyond a few old remains, nothing else had any value. Computers and bookcases had been destroyed. By noon, a truck rolled in with a backhoe and started tearing down the rear of the house. The work went much faster, and the pile of splintered boards continued to grow higher.

The new priest who had been appointed to Santa Maria Church came and went several times, standing quietly watching, saying little. Guido introduced himself to Father Alberto Kajetan and told the priest the name of the hospital where he could find the Townsends. The priest assured him that he would visit this afternoon.

By mid-afternoon, a few shadows had started to fall across the ruins. The roof had been completely torn away, exposing the floor and a few remaining walls. An ugly jagged hole in the middle of the front office exposed the deadly spot where the bomb had gone off and Dov Sharon had been standing. No one said much when they walked around the hole that exposed the dirt beneath the house.

"Hey!" one of the workmen suddenly shouted. "I need help deciphering what we've found.

Guido joined the officers huddling around the man standing with one leg on the broken flooring and the other on the ground. A board had been turned over with wiring running along its length.

"What is this?" the workman ask. "It's got an apparatus of some kind attached to this board. "Looks like the piece was in this conference room somewhere and got torn loose."

The policemen gathered around and stared. "Don't know, but it looks like a transmitter of some kind," one of the men said.

"This house was bugged!" another policeman said. "Don't touch it. We should check it for fingerprints."

Guido stood up. "Whoever planted this device could have set off the explosives."

"Yeah. We've found something important," the workman said.

27

T
he 11:00 A.M. flight of the Lufthansa Fokker 100 landed smoothly on Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport runway, turned around, and headed back to the terminal. A cold wind blew rain across the window and left dampness in the air.

"Now that we are back in Rome," the detective said, "Klaus Baer can once again become Klaus Burchel. You can forget about that frightening grandfather of yours and go back to being just an everyday crook." The man laughed.

Klaus bit his tongue. He'd had enough of Stein's envoy to last six lifetimes. Big and strong, the man was inescapable and was the only one who enjoyed his asinine jokes.