There was some back and forth in Arabic between the hostage and Ramiz, who blurted out several things quickly. He spoke with great animation and shook his head in Alex’s direction. He indicated that he had issues with Alex being there.
“What’s his problem?” Federov asked. “Doesn’t he know he’s not allowed to have problems?”
Ramiz turned back to Federov. Ramiz spoke with a very precise brand of English, almost too perfect, as if he had been educated at British schools, same as Peter.
“Signor Ahmet has informed us,” Ramiz said evenly, “that he feels he is being mistreated here. He further adds, and I quote directly here, that he refuses to speak at all in front of this woman.”
“Why not?” Federov asked.
The hostage must have understood the question because he offered several utterances in Arabic. Ramiz gave it a moment, as if he were trying to add some delicacy to it. Then he translated.
“Ahmet says he has no desire, sir,” Ramiz said, “to be put on display for one of your cheap filthy whores.”
Alex blinked. So did Rizzo. Federov nodded pensively. A second passed, during which the prisoner appeared as if he thought he had scored an important point.
In one movement, Federov pulled back his enormous fist and blasted Ahmet in the side of the face. He held him in place with one hand and then delivered a second blow right after the first. Same location.
Never in Alex’s life had she seen such a pair of devastating punches thrown by a bare hand. She had gone to prize fights a couple of times with friends in Los Angeles, had sat close to the ring, and had seen the fists land. She had been at hockey games when players had squared off right on the other side of the glass. But she had never seen a one-two punch like this.
The force of the blows crunched into the side of the man’s face with hard cracking sounds. Federov let go of Ahmet after the second hit. The man flew over backward onto the bed and bounced. He landed hard against the wall then dropped onto the mattress like a sack of potatoes. Federov’s long arms followed him, picking him up, holding him, and walloping him in the gut, and then slamming him backward against the bed and the wall a second time, leaving a pale bloodstain on the wall.
Peter and Rizzo tried to intervene, but not very hard and not very successfully. Alex knew better. Ahmet was cowering now, yelling in terrified Arabic. Federov grabbed him again, by his shirt and by his throat, ripping his clothing as he pulled him upward. Then Federov dragged him across the room. He slammed him down on a hardback chair at the table.
“My guests are personal friends!” he roared in English. “They have come a long way. The lady is a personal friend in particular and works for the government of the United States of America. Not only will you talk to her, but you will answer any question that she asks.”
The man sat there stunned for a moment, listening to Ramiz’s translation.
“Is all this clear?” Federov bellowed.
The Arab nodded, now in fear for his life. He was bleeding from the corner of his eye and a massive welt had already emerged over his cheekbone.
“Tell him to apologize!” Federov said to his translator. “Now!” Ramiz relayed the request.
“Yuri. It’s all right,” Alex said.
But the Russian was blind with rage.
Cowering, Ahmet said his only word of English for the evening, looking at Alex. “Sorry,” he said. There was blood in his mouth. He sputtered. Part of a tooth came out.
Peter reached in his pocket, found a handkerchief, and tossed it to Ahmet. Ahmet gave him a trembling nod of thanks.
They all settled in at the table. Alex sat between Peter and Rizzo. The hostage had Ramiz to his right and Federov to his left, in case he needed to be encouraged to talk again. There were several empty chairs.
In a surreal touch, Dmitri-all seventy-four inches tall of him-appeared again with a tray. He spread bottles of water around the table, a bowl of fruit, and some chips.
Federov lit one of his cigarettes, waved the match to extinguish it, and threw the match to the floor. He turned back to Ramiz.
“Tell him to speak Italian,” Federov said. “I understand it some. Two of my guests,” he added, meaning Alex and Rizzo, “are fluent.”
Ramiz brought the prisoner up to speed.
Peter leaned to Alex and whispered, “You’re my lifeline on this one. I don’t understand any Italian.”
“I’ll fill you in afterward,” she said. Rizzo gave a slight nod to the two of them also, underscoring that he was working the same side of the street. Federov stared at Ahmet, barely appeased. The trip had been long and the prisoner finally began to talk.
FIFTY-SEVEN
VILLA MALAFORTUNATA, ITALY, SEPTEMBER 16, 10:18 P.M.
His name was Ahmet Lazzari, he said, switching into Italian. He was a Turk by way of Sicily. His parents had been laborers, his father a bricklayer, his mother a picker in a vineyard. More recently, he and his brother had moved to Genoa, where they had found occasional work on the docks. Eventually, they had worked for one of Federov’s shipping companies.
His accent was thick and guttural.
He talks like a goat, Federov had warned back in Geneva. Alex wasn’t so sure of that, but Ahmet did have the breath of one.
All of Federov’s business had come out of Odessa, Alex knew, but his bases of operation had expanded heavily into the Middle East and the Mediterranean. He thought of himself as a poor man’s Aristotle Onassis, with the ships but without the ex-first-lady wife who could give him the big time social and political clout and solve problems for him.
As Ahmet began, Alex quietly brought a notepad and pen out of her purse. Peter sat with his arms folded, elbows on the table. Rizzo sat next to her on the other side, his arms folded across his chest, his facial expression a tight scowl.
Ahmet Lazzari had a stricken look as he launched into his story. He had a prison pallor about him and behaved at times like a stray dog, not knowing whether he was going to be fed or whipped. But he had worked for Federov’s companies since 2001, he said, as a warehouseman first, then as a deck hand, and eventually as a member of a crew on the outbound freighters. He’d been clear of trouble for the entire time of his employment, up until about two months ago.
“That’s when hell broke loose,” he said. “That’s when we made some mistakes, my brother, Hassan, and me. Bad mistakes. I regret them.”
His eyes darted to Federov and then around the table. Hell breaking loose, he explained next, was when he, his brother, the shipping company, and a ship known as El Fuguero-Liberian registry-all came together under the same unlucky star.
Ahmet and Hassan had worked together for several years, each one watching the other’s back, working intermittently as merchant seamen for various companies. They were in Genoa two months earlier when the Fuguero was signing on crew. They signed on together. The bursar and much of the staff were Arabs, many Libyan, a few Saudis. The brothers had Sicilian names and Italian passports but were Arabs. So they got special treatment and were hired.
Two nights before sailing, the purser, a man named Abdul, approached them in a café near the docks. He wanted to put an offer to them, Ahmet recalled, something that would earn them some extra money. Ahmet had drawn his attention because he was an Arab and because he had experience working in shipyards and knew how to weld the inner structure of a ship. So would they be interested in listening? And would they be able to keep their mouths shut if they said no.
The brothers looked at each other and didn’t think too much about it. Extra money was important, whatever the job, so they said yes. It had to do with taking some panels off the wall and sealing some material back in. The brothers looked at each other and laughed.