Chapter 6

The day dragged on and Levon felt they weren´t getting anywhere with the investigation.

Las Vegas airport had confirmed that Barberi and his thug Donati had taken a flight back to Chicago. The other man by the name of Paolo Morone had vanished. As had Giulietta Disanto. Michael LaFiamma had been in contact with her father and learnt that she had not returned with the other women of her group. She hadn´t been in contact with anyone. No demand for ransom had been issued. Either she had run away or Barberi had killed and dumped her somewhere. Or this Morone guy was with the two abducted people, wherever they were held. But when Levon thought about it he came to the conclusion that Barberi wouldn´t kidnap his own fiancée. The marriage was scheduled for the next month. So he would have had her and there just was no point in burdening himself with her as a prisoner now.

The PI, who Greg had set about finding the pilot, hadn´t been successful so far. But he was working on it.

It was going to be a long wait.

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Paolo Morone cursed his luck. If anyone had ever told him he would be trying to find his way around a wilderness like this he would have laughed. But actually this wasn´t funny.

He had at random picked a direction and set out. But after two hours his feet were covered with bloody blisters and he could hardly walk. His nice expensive shoes with the thin genuine leather soles were torn to shreds. The stony slope of the mountainside was hell to walk down and if there had been a path leading away from the cabin he had lost it long ago. Everything looked alike and if he hadn´t still been descending, he would not even be sure he wasn´t walking around in circles. He was thirsty and there was no creek in sight.

Maybe he should have stayed with LaFiamma. They could have smoked the pot and in the end he would have shot the guy and then himself. Would have been better than to die in the woods.

He got up and gritted his teeth. The first steps hurt like hell, but he ignored it. There just was no use. With a curse on his lips he resumed his journey.

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For Joe the day passed slowly. He was hungry, felt cold and every bone in his body was aching. The weather was windy and cold. So he stayed inside, tried to sleep. But sitting or lying on the hard cold floor was extremely uncomfortable. So he got up from time to time, stretch as far as his injuries would allow and tried to generate warmth by walking around. But nothing really helped.

To divert his attention he looked out of the single small window. There wasn´t much to see. No signs of planes or helicopters, no sounds from any sort of vehicle. He seemed to be totally cut off from the outside world.

He was alone with his thoughts. And those were not positive. He had no illusion about his own situation. The more time passed the greater became his doubts. Perhaps he should have asked Paolo to stay with him. The guy wasn´t all bad, he had proved that alright. And he had a gun. A gun could be used to take one´s own life in case there wasn´t another option left. And dying side by side with a mobster was perhaps what fate had had in stall for him all along.

When it grew even colder in the evening and the impenetrable dark set in Joe crawled under the torn up laundry sack to sleep. But sleep wouldn´t come. He thought of Paolo and how far he might have gotten in his search for help. Joe tossed and turned and at last he sat up again. He reached into the pocket of his shirt to retrieve the lighter and the joints. But his fingers touched something else, something plain, a piece of paper? He pulled it out, it had one papery and a glossy side. It was too dark to see and at last he decided to use the lighter. It flicked on and he realized that he was looking at a photograph of Julia. It was a recent one and she was laughing. She was incredibly beautiful. He turned the picture over and on the back she had written something. The three words sprang out at him. He recognized them from his childhood. It was the mystical spell they had frequently quoted, the charm that had embodied the fulfillment of all their hopes and dreams for a common future.

Dio sol sa – only God knows

The place where they would live as lovers, hidden away from the world, happily ever after.

Funny thing, now only God knew where he was – Dio sol sa.

He put the picture back into the breast pocket of his shirt and instead pulled out a cigarette, lit it and started to smoke. While the cold retreated and the pain eased, his mind wandered back to his childhood. All of a sudden the drug induced relaxation took him back in time to when he had been six years old.

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"Nonna Maria, tell us about that castle again." The two six-year-old kids had come to keep the old woman company on this rainy and dark November day. She knew they had sought her out because they couldn´t play outside and they were bored. But she did not mind.

"Come sit down, bambini." The old woman patted the sofa on either side of herself, and the children climbed up to sit beside her on the old threadbare piece of furniture. The girl had dark curls and the boy´s straight hair had a tendency to fall into his eyes. A pair of dark brown and a pair of teal colored eyes looked at her expectantly. The boy was her grandson Joseph, whom everyone called Joey, though his grandmother still used the Italian equivalent and called him Giuseppe. The girl was his inseparable friend Giulietta, known to everyone as Julia.

"Now, Giulietta, Giuseppe, what do you want to hear about that castle?"

"Everything, Nonna," they shouted in unison. She smiled at them benevolently.

"Buono, senti.* A long time ago there was a tiny castle in the woods near the ancient city of Siena." *good, listen

"How long ago?" the girl asked.

"Well, I think the castle was very, very old."

"Even older than you, Nonna?" the boy enquired.

"Si, far older than I am. If you take my years and then go back in time to my Grandmother and the Grandmother of my Grandmother you still will not have enough years to equal the years of just how old that little castle was."

"Who built that castle, Nonna?" Though the little girl was not her own grandchild, it was customary for the children at that age to call all the old women in the Italian community Nonna which meant Granny.

"There was a young nobleman who had that castle built for the woman he loved. The families of the young couple were at war with each other. But the young people loved each other so much that they decided to go away to live at a secret place."

"And that was the castle!" Joey shouted triumphantly.

"Yes, that was the small castle."

"But why was it so tiny, Nonna?" the girl wanted to know.

"You can imagine that their families were very angry that the young people eloped. So they would not give them any money to get by. The young man didn´t have enough to build a larger castle."

"What is elope?" Joey frowned.

"They ran away together to get married against the will of their parents. That is what we call eloping."

The children exchanged glances. "But Nonna, Jules and I don´t have to elope, do we? It will be ok for us to get married." The boy´s eyes were large and his face completely earnest.

"That is right, you won´t have to elope. But you still have a lot of time before you get married, you are still young."

Now the girl spoke up. "But we already know that we want to marry each other."

"Buono, bambini. But do you want me to continue now?" The old woman couldn´t stay serious, these two kids were just too cute.

"Yes, go on," they both shouted.

"Well, as I said, the castle was deep in the forest and it was very hard to find. There was no road leading there, there was just a footpath wide enough for one man on horseback."

"Nonna, the bad parents did not know where that castle was?"

"No, Giuseppe, no one knew where the castle was. That is where the name of the castle came from."

The children looked at her expectantly, of course they had heard it before, but they just couldn´t hear it often enough.

"Tell us the name, Nonna, tell us the name," the boy could hardly sit still.

"It is called il Castiglion che Dio Sol Sa, the castle that only God knows."

"Si, Dio sol sa, Dio sol sa." The little girl repeated the word like a spell.

Joey got hold of Julia´s hand. "We will go there and no one will be able to find us."

"Yes," the girl said with a cute smile, "and we will live there happily ever after."

Nonna Maria smiled, but what went through her mind at that moment she kept to herself.

Only God knows – Dio sol sa.

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Levon hadn´t slept well. His anxiety for the life of his partner had grown considerably during the last twenty-four hours. It wasn´t a good sign that there hadn´t been another message or threat. Could something have gone wrong with Barberi´s plan? But what?

When Greg and Levon arrived at the bullpen there was a message from the PI at Lake Tahoe. Greg called him right away.

"Dean, what have you got for us?"

"Hi Greg, I found the pilot. But he couldn´t tell me as much as I hoped for.

"How´s that?"

"He´s new to the region. He seems to be involved in some shady business, but he´s not familiar with the terrain."

"Meaning?" Levon asked, who had picked up another phone to listen in on the call.

"Well, he said he was supposed to drop Morone and LaFiamma off at a cabin in the mountains someplace, but as I said, he is new to the terrain, and he had difficulties finding the place. Now he isn´t sure anymore that he picked the right one."

"How does he figure?"

"The client came back to him because he could not contact the two. They were supposed to be in touch via radio. But they could not be reached."

There was a pause, Greg and Levon were thinking hard about the implication of the information they had just received.

"I need to go there, at once." Levon smashed down the receiver.

Greg looked up at him, listening to something being said on the other end of the line.

"What?" Levon said with an impatient gesture of his head towards the door.

"He says you need to hurry then," Greg relayed.

"Why?"

"Dean says they are expecting a blizzard front to hit the region in a few hours."