The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme 13)

"More coffee? You really should try the croissants. The ones filled with prosciutto and mozzarella are the best."

I could really get used to this...

Now, breakfasted and caffeinated, Sachs sat back and looked below the plane, on final. She got a clear view of the Capodichino Reception Center. From here it was a messy sprawl, much bigger than it appeared from the ground. Where, she wondered, would all those people end up? In ten years, would they have homes here? In other countries? Or would they have been sent back where they had come from--to meet a fate merely postponed by their voyage here.

Would they be alive or dead?

Her phone hummed--the crew didn't require mobiles to be powered off--and she answered.

"Yes?"

"Detective Sachs...I am sorry, Amelia. It is Massimo Rossi. Are you in Milan still?"

"No, just landing, Inspector."

"In Naples?"

"Yes."

"Good, good. For we have received an email on the Questura website. The writer says that he--or she, there's no name--saw a man on a hilltop near the camp the night of the murder of Dadi, just afterward. He was beside a dark car. The Italian is bad so we are certain he used a translation program. I would guess he is one of the vendors and Arabic is his first language."

"Does he say where?"

"Yes." Rossi gave her the name of a road. He'd gone to Google Earth and found a footpath to a hilltop that overlooked the camp. He described it to her.

"I probably just flew over it. I'll stop on the way."

"I will have Ercole Benelli meet you there. In case translation is necessary." He chuckled. "Or a real badge must be shown to loosen tongues."

She disconnected. Well, a concerned citizen had come forward.

A somewhat concerned citizen.

Would there be any evidence?

Maybe, maybe not. But you never missed any opportunities for the collection of even a microgram of trace.

Amelia Sachs sat in the back of Mike Hill's limo, the cheerful driver flirting once more and regaling her with additional details of Naples. The eruption of Vesuvius was today's topic, and she learned to her surprise that it was not ash or earthquake or lava that killed. It was poisonous fumes.

"In only, it was, a few minutes. Poof. You would say poof?"

"Yes."

"Poof and then: dead! Thousands dead. That certainly makes you think, does it not? Never waste a moment of life." He winked, and she wondered if he regularly used references

to natural disasters to seduce women.

She'd given him the destination and the Audi limo wound through hills north of the camp. In a tree-line gully, she found Ercole Benelli, and asked the chauffeur to stop.

They greeted each other and she introduced him to the driver. The men shared a brief conversation in Italian.

"Can you wait here? I won't be long," Sachs said to the driver.

"Yes, yes! Of course." The big man smiled, as if anything a beautiful lady asked would be granted.

"That's the path?" she asked Ercole.

"Yes."