“The others who were on the raft. Allah has chosen you to honor him.”
“How can we do that?” said Mattias, unable to disguise his bitterness. He was hiding an important fact from the sheikh. He was no longer a believer. Yes, he had survived a terrible ordeal, but he had come to view his survival as a matter of luck, not divine providence. Certainly not a reward for his piety. What he had done on the raft flew in the face of all that was pious. He had abandoned the bounds of accepted human behavior. He had fought, he had killed, and worse. He had become inhuman, a savage, a primitive far beyond the Prophet’s purview.
Mattias rose, upset. The sheikh placed a hand on his. “Please. I understand. I do.”
Mattias heard something in the man’s voice he had not heard before. He sat. “All right.”
For an hour he listened to the Saudi. The sheikh’s voice had a hypnotic quality, his eyes beacons of faith. Mattias quickly forgot about his job. The sheikh told him a story about a hero called to perform a task far beyond his abilities. The hero was a common man, a man born to faith but who over time, beaten down by life’s broken promises and failed dreams, had grown estranged from God. He was not a brave man, but when presented with adversity, he had responded bravely. God could not judge him for doing what any of his creatures would do to survive. Was God not in some way responsible?
“Are you speaking about me?”
“You are a hero.”
“I am not.”
“Not yet, perhaps. I wish to give you a chance to become one. A chance to turn your suffering to the advantage of others.”
“But how?”
And so the sheikh told him.
Mattias was too stunned to give an immediate answer. He promised to consider it. To his surprise, he needed only a short time. He agreed. Days, not weeks. The fact was, he had been looking for an avenue of escape for years.
A chance to be a hero.
Thanks be unto him, the Prophet.
An hour later, Mattias had collected his friend. For a while they drove in silence. Ingolstadt was behind them. They’d passed the cities of Augsburg and Ulm. Paris was a further six-hour drive.
For the first time Mattias acknowledged the butterflies in his stomach, the cord of unease tugging at him. The trip could end only one way. Strangely, he was not at all frightened. He’d seen too much for that. If anything, he felt exhilarated, eager, optimistic even.
He turned in his seat. “So,” he said, “how was it?”
“Not so bad, I guess,” said Hassan, the new arrival. “If you like sausage.”
A moment. A look all around. The men broke into laughter.
Chapter 41
Naples
If Rome was bad, Naples was a catastrophe. Not because refugees crowded the streets, but because trash did. Trash everywhere. Piled on sidewalks in heaps ten feet high, overflowingcassonetti,clogging gutters.
Luca Borgia placed a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as they passed through the Spanish quarter, the city’s worst, and turned down the Via Santa Chiara toward the harbor. Sometimes he thought the entire country was falling apart. It would be easier if he stayed at the Castello dell’Aquila and tended to his roses, rode his horses through the magnificent countryside, and made love to his mistress.
And then?
Sooner or later the country’s ills would land on his doorstep. Perhaps not a trash strike. The Camorra didn’t control Umbria, not yet anyway. But the tide of unrest and unemployment, the degradation of decent family values, the forfeit of native culture, and the adoption of foreign ways. Yes, one day it would arrive. Italy was being invaded, as surely as if the Goths had returned to her shores, bringing with them their barbarian ways. Borgia saw himself as his country’s staunch defender, standing at her borders with sword and shield to drive them back.
They turned onto Calata della Marinella and drove along the docks. At the sight of the water and ships and the boats crisscrossing the harbor, he felt a shell form around him, a second skin to keep the dirt off him.
Sicily had the Mafia. Calabria, the ’Ndrangheta. And Naples, the Camorra.
The Port of Naples was one of the oldest and largest in all the Mediterranean, built around a crescent-shaped harbor many considered one of Europe’s finest natural anchorages. Seventy thousand vessels came and went each year. Five hundred thousand shipping containers loaded and unloaded. Thirty million tons of cargo. And not a single thing moved without tribute being paid.
Borgia continued past the passenger terminal—shiny and new, buffed to a gleaming white perfection, four cruise ships at dock. Past the automobile terminal, crowded with the five-story-tall oceangoing ferries that connected Naples to Palermo, Corsica, and Sardinia. And into the gritty heart of the port, the commercial cargo and container terminals. An iron and steel jungle of cranes and winches and tractors. Nothing shiny and new here.
“Number 37,” said Borgia to his driver as they passed one warehouse after another, old brick buildings, no two alike.
