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4

The Prisoner

Attorney Barbara Belli’s Office, Quartiere Prati, RomeFriday, May 9, 2008

Barbara stretches out her legs under the desk. She’d like to take a goddamned cigarette break, like in the good old days when she was a law student and spent nights poring over legal textbooks. A thousand pages in her head, and in her lungs a nicotine level that the Institute for Health and Preventive Care would have assessed as “interesting.” She dutifully reminds herself that she quit smoking ten years ago, when she got pregnant with the first of her two sons.

She’s quit doing a lot of things over the past ten years. And her passion for her work is also becoming a thing of the past.

She examines the two women in front of her. They dropped in unannounced, no call, no appointment of any kind. “An urgent matter,” they explained.

She made them sit in the waiting room for a good half hour before having them shown in.

Then she listened to them. She didn’t interrupt them with many questions, and the ones she asked were those strictly necessary to her understanding of the situation. But she hasn’t yet figured out whether the case that’s just landed on her desk sounds like something of great significance, something vastly more important than what she usually gets, or an enormous pain in the ass.

She’s leaning toward the latter assessment.

The two women study her in silence, clearly tired but still combative. In the brief introductions that preceded getting down to business, they—the elderly Florentine lady and the young woman with the Roman accent—identified themselves as a retired mathematics teacher and a working veterinarian. Two normal women, involved against their will in something not even remotely normal. They’re the mother and girlfriend of a man who’s gone missing, who disappeared about a month ago. In Cambodia.

The prisoner, they say.

Her cell phone rings. Barbara looks at the screen and snorts: Marta again. The babysitter. Her third call, and it’s not yet noon. Barbara murmurs, “Excuse me,” and answers the phone. “No, they’re not allowed to watch television in the morning. I said no. Play a game with them, help them draw. Invent something, for Christ’s sake!”

The elderly Florentine lady doesn’t bat an eye; the younger woman shows a slight smile of measured sympathy. She clears her throat and says, “Signora Belli, we’d like to know if you think you can do anything.”

“But of course!” Barbara replies automatically, obeying the first commandment of such enterprises as hers: a client is a client; don’t send anyone away. “Of course we must do something,” she says to clarify. “It’s just that I have to have a good understanding of the case. I have to get into it a little more. I’ll need some further details. . . .”

“I don’t think there’s much else,” the young woman murmurs, shaking her head.

“We’ve told you all we know,” says the older lady, summing up.

“Let’s go over it again.” Barbara’s gaze settles on the younger woman’s black eyes. Two wells of authentic trepidation. They can’t lie. “A little more than a month ago, you receive a telephone call from your boyfriend. He’s in Phnom Penh, right?”

“Right.” The young woman nods and sweeps her dark hair from her forehead. “Cambodia.”

“And he tells you . . . can you repeat it to me?”

“He tells me he’s leaving the city because there might be some problems.”

“Problems. What kind of problems?”

“He didn’t give details. He said he’d call again as soon as he could and told me not to worry.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. He’s never been much for talking on the phone.”

“Your boyfriend owns a place in Phnom Penh, a bar called Sharky’s, right? His co-owners are two American friends, one of whom—a certain Clancy—supposedly left the city with him. Do you know this Clancy? Is that his real name?”

“Clancy’s his nickname, but everybody has called him that forever,” the young woman says, nodding. “They’re like brothers; they’ve been close friends for many years. I believe . . .” She pauses and lowers her eyes slightly. “I believe they’re prisoners together.”

“All right, now we come to the essential point. Yesterday, out of the blue, the second telephone call from your boyfriend. He tells you . . .”

“He says he doesn’t know exactly where he is. He knows only that he’s been taken prisoner by some special unit of the Cambodian army, one of their militias. . . . They’re moving him around from one village to another, and he says they’ve taken all the money he had with him—”

“Seventy thousand dollars, right?”

“That’s the amount he said. Then he told me, ‘These guys want more money. That’s the only reason they’re letting me call you. If you don’t pay, they’ll kill me.’”

“And he also asked you to inform the Italian authorities.”

“That’s why we’re here. We were advised to . . . we thought it might be a good idea to engage a lawyer to represent the family. What we’re talking about here is plainly a case of kidnapping.”

Barbara nods and leans against the back of her big leather chair. She looks at the older lady. She’s serious and stiff in her dark blue dress and hasn’t stopped scrutinizing Barbara since she arrived.

Turning back to the young woman, Barbara says, “You’ve told me that your friend is an ex-Carabiniere and an ex-pilot for Alitalia. You said he’s a businessman in Phnom Penh, and he has also founded a branch of a Catholic philanthropic organization, the Union of Faith Brothers. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Based on the story you’ve told me, we’re not dealing here with a kidnapping carried out by common criminals. It sounds more like something political. You say he mentioned soldiers. . . .”

“I’ve been there with him,” the young woman says. “I came back from my last visit several weeks ago. Cambodia has a regular army, and then there are these paramilitary groups. . . . Actually, there’s everything you can imagine down there.” She shakes her head again. “But none of them has the power to kidnap Westerners without the approval of the government. Do you understand what I’m saying, Signora Belli?”

“I think so,” Barbara reassures her. “Now for a question that you may find unpleasant, but I must ask it—”

“My son isn’t telling tall tales,” the elderly lady interrupts her. “Don’t even think that.”

“Look, Signora, I just—”

“If he says he’s a prisoner, then he’s a prisoner. If he says they want money, then they—”

“Want money,” Barbara says, humoring her. “But how can you be so sure? I understand, you’re his mother, but—”

“Forget mothers,” the woman snaps, cutting her short. A characteristically Tuscan grimace of intolerance creases her mouth. “The situation is what he says it is because whenever he’s been locked up, he’s always told the truth.”

“Locked up . . .”

“In jail. In prison. Locked up.”

The old woman casts a knowing glance at the young one.

She takes a deep breath, as though preparing herself for an underwater dive. “You see, Signora Belli, it’s not the first time he’s been in trouble. He’s had problems in Italy because of his work.”

“What work?”

“As a former officer in the Carabinieri, he did consultation work . . . went on some missions. We don’t know much about it.”

“We don’t know anything about it.” The mother’s admonitory tone evokes the stern teacher she once was.

“In fact, we don’t,” says the young woman, nodding in agreement. “He’s spent months locked up, and only very rarely has he ever asked his family for help. But the times when he did . . .”

“He was really in trouble,” Barbara finishes for her.

“Exactly.”

“All right. May I ask you why you came to my office? Why me?”

“A friend recommended you.”

“A friend . . .”

“Manuela Sanchez.”

Some names aren’t just names. They’re gusts of wind. They blow doors open and slam them against the wall a few times. For the attorney Barbara Belli, the name Manuela Sanchez is a particularly strong gust.

“Is everything all right, Signora Belli?” asks the former teacher.

“Yes, yes . . . everything’s fine,” Barbara says softly. “And how is Manuela?”

“She’s pretty well, I think,” says the younger woman, handing her a card. “That’s her new phone number. If you can find the time to give her a call, I know she’ll be glad to hear from you.”

Barbara murmurs, “Thank you,” and clears her throat. “I’m going to plot out a strategy and get back in touch with you soon. Very soon. Sometime in the next few hours.”