And then the answer: At the southernmost wall of the castle, the blonde with the carriage emerged from the building's shadows near the docks. She stopped beside a pier, at which were tied a half-dozen gorgeous yachts, white as cold moonlight, ropes coiled perfectly on the decks and silver fixtures glinting. On the boat: older beautiful people, tanned and coiffed--"jet-setters" in an earlier era.
There was no target here--it wasn't that crowded--but there was a solid archway that would protect her from the blast.
Fatima--Sachs could see her face clearly now as she looked back nervously--was wheeling toward this archway now. The dull-toned blond wig clashed with her olive skin. The backpack was over her shoulder still. It wouldn't contain the bomb any longer. No, she would have planted it in a more populated part of the island.
Sachs drew her weapon but kept it hidden under her arm and jogged forward. She was thirty feet away when the woman saw her and froze.
Speaking softly, Sachs said slowly and in a low, clear voice, "You have been tricked, Fatima! Ibrahim is not who you think. He is using you. He's lied to you."
Fatima frowned, shook her head. "No. No trick!" Her eyes were wide--and damp with tears.
Sachs walked a few feet closer. Fatima moved back, turning the carriage and keeping it between her and Sachs.
"I don't want to hurt you. You'll be safe. Just put your hands up. Let me come talk to you. You don't want to do this. You'll be hurting people without any reason. Please!"
Fatima stiffened.
Sachs said, "I saved your husband. I saved his life. Remember?"
Then Fatima lowered her head. A moment later she looked up with a smile. "Yes. Yes, miss. Yes. Thank you for that. Shukran!" The smile twisted into a look of profound sorrow and Sachs saw tears. Then Fatima shoved the baby carriage toward the water. There was no barrier, or even a low lip, on the pier and it tumbled, as if in slow motion, twenty feet into the water.
Sachs caught a glimpse of blankets and black hair rising inside as it landed with a loud splash. The carriage settled and sank fast.
Sachs, however, didn't do what Fatima hoped. She ignored the buggy and went into a combat shooting stance as the woman dug for her phone to call the mobile wired to the detonator.
"No, Fatima, no!"
Above them, screams pealed from the top of the castle, fifty feet above her, where tourists had seen the carriage go into the water.
Fatima yanked the phone free. It was a flip phone. She opened it, looking down at the keypad, reaching a finger out.
Amelia Sachs inhaled, held her breath and squeezed the trigger. Three times.
Chapter 66
Non siamo riusciti a trovare nulla," the scuba diver said.
Ercole Benelli translated. The man was sorry but he and his colleagues in the Italian navy had found nothing in the water below the looming castle.
"Keep searching," Lincoln Rhyme said. He, Ercole, Sachs, Spiro and Rossi were near the spot where Fatima had shoved the carriage into the water, in the shadow of the blunt, ruddy castle. Curiously, much of the entrance route to the edifice, centuries old, was disabled-accessible.
The diver nodded and walked backward along the pier--he wore flippers--then turned and, stiff-legged, strode into the water. Rhyme glanced at the half-dozen eruptions of bubbles on the surface of Naples Bay from the aquatic search party below.
A wail sounded to their left, a woman's keen of despair. The sixtyish-year-old matron pointed at Sachs and fired off a vicious fusillade of words.
Ercole started to translate but Rhyme interrupted. "She's upset that my Sachs here was so devoted to stopping a terror attack that she ignored a drowning baby. Am I in the ballpark?"
"Ballpark?" A questioning frown.
"Am. I. Correct?"
"You are close, Captain Rhyme. But she didn't raise any question of devotion to stopping the villain. In essence she accuses your partner of being a child killer."
Rhyme chuckled. "Tell her what really happened. If it'll shut her up."
Ercole gave the woman the story--a very abbreviated version of the full tale, which was that it wasn't a baby in the carriage, but a doll.