The Unpredictable Page 2

  “Good morning Steve, can I have a word?” Nino started.

  “Sure, come on in.” Helson replied, in his authoritative manner.

  “So, have you thought about my suggestion from last week?” he continued, as they walked along the neon-lit hallway.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Yes, I can do it. I’ve talked it over with Sara, too. You know, after Algeria I was afraid that this would be too much for her.”

  “Ok, listen up, I don’t need to emphasize again how important and delicate this business is. You’ve had the chance to stand at the margins, now I want you to take charge of the situation. You’ll have to leave as soon as possible, meet the deputy minister for petroleum, Khaled Al-Fadiri, in Tehran and verify the state of the Naft Shahr and Andimeshk plants. We can’t sit back and let some old fox sneak into the business. This is the study group’s report, on the analysis of the potential profitability of the Naft Shahr field and our logistic service. You’ll find some highlighted provisions, those are the boundaries placed by the Iranian government. We’ll go over them, I expect to hear your thoughts on them. Don’t underestimate this assignment: based on the first estimate, the logistic side has an added value for Swiss Exploration of 300 million dollars. Study it thoroughly.”

  “Ok, Steve. I’ll come back to you with a schedule and my first impressions. I’ll get straight to work. Have a nice day.”

  “Bye Nino, say hello to Sara for me.”

  The thick file on the Iranian field in one hand, in the other a cup of unsweetened coffee he had just taken from the automatic dispenser, he walked into his office, sat on the black leather chair and, turning to the desk, he opened the file whose cover simply stated: “Naft Shahr”.

  At the end of a tough day he realized that the commercial situation was far more tangled than he had expected. Thoughts and options flashed in his mind and kept getting more complicated and abstruse. By 9 PM he noticed that his brain cells were overworked and that it was time to unplug and allow himself to relax.

  After spending four days fully immersed in the lines of that file, both in the office and at home, having no idea whether the sun was shining or the rain was falling, he was able to see a tiny crack, a solution. He felt relieved and understood the mistake he had made. He had withdrawn in himself, the world of Naft Shahr had completely swallowed him in a vortex of clauses, percentages, numbers and evaluations. He had neglected her horribly. Sara had involuntarily turned into a stranger who shared his living space. He probably hadn’t as given her as much as a tender and caring look in those past few nights.

  He opened the door to his house, trying not to make any noise, he placed the keys on the table in the hall and delicately closed the door behind him. In his left hand was a bouquet of twentyone red roses. He could hear sounds coming from the TV in the living room.

  Slowly he lifted the bouquet and stepped into the room. Sara was startled. The first surge of adrenaline was followed by complete reassurance when she saw Nino’s face.

  “Honey, forgive me. In the past few days I’ve been hypnotized by those damn problems in Iran, so much that I couldn’t see what was around me. I love you, baby.”

  “My love, come here! This time you got away with a wonderful bunch of roses, but next time…” her arms wrapped around his neck and their lips gently met and opened into a deep kiss.

  His hands slid down her sides, undoing the belt of the red cotton robe that was tied in a simple knot on her left hip, and rested on her silky skin, still warm and moist from her evening shower. Their burning, throbbing bodies met, passionately entwining on the sofa, pushed by a smoldering desire. Love guided them in unison in that sweet interchange, where each became a part of the other.

  NOTE I

  I had known Steve Helson for many years, he was an incredibly charismatic man, he was always able to get the best out of his coworkers. I respected him, he was one of the few superiors I had at Swiss Exploration that I considered to have earned the position. After all, I think that over time he had built an equally high opinion of me, otherwise he wouldn’t have put me in charge of such an important assignment. Let’s say that we shared a mutual respect that had never made way to an excessive familiarity. He was still the boss, and I was a collaborator, someone who “got his hands dirty”, an operative, always at the forefront. That was the way I liked it. I was and am not cut out for sitting behind a desk watching the years go by and waiting to reach a pensionable age.

  Our escape from Algeria had been very trying for Sara, hadn’t it been for the unconditional love I feel for her, I would have stayed. I would have defied my destiny, reclaiming the right to a spot on that barren, scorched ground that had adopted me, that had polished my skin with the thin, stinging desert sand and had given my limbs the typical olive color of those who are born and raised there.

  I was excited about that new challenge, Helson’s proposal was an important professional accomplishment. Although I was Italian, I had lived my whole life, except the short interlude of the military service, in Northern Africa. I felt like an “Italian bedouin” and I loved that land, I felt that I belonged there, beyond any recognizable political border. The true value of that new assignment was that it would allow me to leave Milan, a cold, chaotic, anonymous city that had robbed me of my smile and peace of mind and had swallowed me into a gray daily routine. I was desperately searching for another road, that would allow me to leave the shell that had enfolded me in the past two years, to live a different reality, my own. Needless to say, I wanted to do this together with my love of all time, the love of my life.

  CHAPTER 3

  Hagelloch (Germany) , 11/07/2011 07:30 A.M.

  -“The abduction” -

  Nicholas had recently turned ten years old. That morning he woke up very early, shortly after his dad had come by to say goodbye before leaving for work. He went downstairs into the kitchen, his blonde hair ruffled, eyes still half-closed, bothered by the vivid light of the spotlights on the ceiling. He was still wearing his light blue flannel pajamas and yawning endlessly.

  That morning, once again, he had woken up feeling unbelievably hungry, as if he had run and played the whole night through.

  “Ada, where are the chocolate cookies?” he asked, raising his voice so that it would echo in the whole floor.

  “Coming, Nicholas! I’ll get them for you,” she answered kindly.

  Ada had been working in the Wharz household for approximately nine years, ever since Lisa had passed away, leaving an unfillable void in the lives of her son and husband. Since that day, all the lightheartedness and the joviality that had once filled the house had disappeared forever. Ada took care of everything, especially of Nicholas, as Alexander had asked her to do when he had first contacted her. The task wasn’t a difficult one, he was an exceptional kid, but despite showering him with attentions and care she knew that she would never be able to help him write those blank pages of his life, the pages that had been left empty due to the lack of maternal love. Pages that would never be filled and that would remain ink-free in the depths of his soul.

  Nicholas was just over a year when his mother passed away. Rather than real memories, he was left with feelings, sensations he had felt since he was barely a cell inside his mother’s womb. The feelings were incomplete, since Lisa had passed so soon, but still they were permanent, indelible, because they were created by the love between mother and child, a love that is born but has no end.

  Despite everything, he now was a peaceful child and sometimes, with his friends, he was able to make room to express his joyful personality.

  The school bus made its daily stop at 08:05 in Entringer Str., that intersected the street in which he lived. When Nicholas was running late like that morning, after saying goodbye to Ada, he’d take the usual shortcut, even though his father had forbidden him from doing so. To reach the point where the bus would pick him up in the shortest possible time, rather than normally exiting through Wahlhau Strasse, turning the corner to the l
eft and walking down Entringer Strasse on the same sidewalk, he would shorten the route by crossing the house’s backyard and climbing over the wall.

  “Bye Ada, gotta run, I’m late!”

  “Bye kiddo. Don’t run through the garden, the bus will wait for you, don’t worry,” she recommended, peeking out from the kitchen window.

  As soon as she’d heard the front door close with the usual sound of the steel lock snapping in place, she saw the Nicholas’s small shape running through the snowy garden towards the low wall. She saw him place his food in the juniper bushes, hoist himself up with his hands on the edge of the wall and jump over it with the agility of a kitten that still shows some awkward clumsiness in its dexterity.

  The bus arrived at the same time, stopped a few meters ahead and the sliding door opened. The young girl climbed the two steps down to the sidewalk and let Nicholas in.

  “Good morning, Nicholas.”

  “Good morning, miss Marta,” the child answered.

  After greeting him warmly, she also climbed onto the school bus, one hand holding onto the handle, the other tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder. Nicholas found a seat next to one of his classmates, the bus gradually resumed moving towards its last stops before it reached the school.

  When the bus took a right turn, the black Mercedes CLS 350 that had been parked at the end of Entringer Strasse started the engine, cruised the same street at a low speed and turned in the opposite direction.

  It was a day like every other, the only anomaly seemed to be the strong, warm sun, unusual for a freezing November morning.

  The thick blanket of snow was mottled by shimmers and reflections like forebodings of a spring that was still far away.The rigours of winter would actually last several more weeks.

  The children gathered in the covered atrium, where the bus would appear a few minutes later to begin the usual run and take them all home. The school was a magnificent villa, built according to state-of-the-art standards of eco-sustainability, with its wooden structure, rockwool insulation and photovoltaic system. The building was quite small, and fit in perfectly with the style of the whole town: low houses, three storeys at most with sloping roofs, typical mountain homes.

  Nicholas had always lived in that happy oasis, where the city’s traffic, pollution and deafening noises didn’t exist and seemed far away not only in space, but in time too. It was an enchanted world, where everything was perfect and aseptic, free from deceits and dangers, the ideal place to remain children forever.

  The bus exited through the automatic gate that marked the boundary of the small school’s snowy garden, and started along its route in the opposite direction. Nicholas leaned his forehead on the cold glass pane, as the sunlight, magnified by the reflections created by the surrounding snow, made his bright blue eyes squint.

  He was tired and hungry, the two hours of physical education had taken their toll on him. His school hours were enjoyable, definitely more so than the long and boring afternoons he spent at home with Ada, doing his homework and waiting for his dad to come back.

  He could almost have fallen asleep in that position, but every time the bus braked his head slid forward on the window pane. The bus entered Entringer Strasse at 1:30 P.M. and came to a halt in the deserted street. He grabbed his backpack and stood up, together with his close friend Karl. Miss Marta pushed the button to open the sliding door and stepped down, waiting for them on the edge of the road.

  “See you tomorrow, miss Marta!” the two kids recited in unison.

  “See you tomorrow, kids! Run straight home,” the beautiful girl with the honey-colored hair replied, a covergirl smile on her face. Then she climbed back up, closed the door and waited for the bus to start.

  Karl lived in Entringer Strasse. Nicholas, instead, had to go on for a hundred meters, then take a right down Wahlhau Strasse, where the number 12 marked the gate of his house’s front yard. The black Mercedes was parked at the end of Entringer Strasse, right in front of Nicholas, who didn’t notice it at all. He kicked a small pebble on a stretch of the sidewalk that was not covered with snow, it hit the base of the tree that marked the end of Entringer Strasse and the corner with Wahlhau Strasse right ahead.

  The impact made a sharp sound. He turned the corner. Some twenty meters ahead, a white van with the logo of the company that managed the municipal water supply network was parked, its hazards blinking. On its right, a red and white tape, held up by thin rods, created a temporary barrier that gradually forced him to walk on the left portion of the sidewalk; there was a sort of bottleneck between the van on the left and the tape on the right. The two workers in white overalls were busying themselves over a small manhole, from which the snow had been cleared, at the end of the barrier.

  He came to a few feet from the vehicle that was parked in the wrong direction by the sidewalk, the driver’s cabin was empty, facing him. The side door was partially open, a tool bag was sitting on the sidewalk where the two workers were bustling around. Just a few more seconds, a few more steps, and everything would change, his reality would be completely overturned. Someone would change his life’s path, once more there would be a sudden diversion in his existence, a diversion that didn’t depend on his own decisions but was imposed on him by a fate that owed Nicholas a lot.

  He didn’t even have the time to realize what was happening to him: one of the workers grabbed him with his strong arms, lifting him and his backpack, while the other one checked that there was no one on that side of the street to notice the fulminous action, holding the rear door’s handle with one hand and closing it immediately once the man and Nicholas, in the lock of his powerful arms, had entered. The scream -actually no more than a feeble moan that the kid was able to produce just as the door was closing- was heard by no one. The third man, who had been bent over in the front seat, sat up and started the engine, waited for his partner to climb in next to him and slowly drove away. After a few seconds, they took a left turn in Entringer Strasse. Everything had happened quickly, safely, right after the corner between Entringer Strasse and Wahlhau Strasse, in a blind spot, not visible from the Wharz residence. The van had blocked the view from the opposite side of the street.

  The strong and suffocating grip, that closed around the boy’s ribcage like the coils of a boa constrictor, left him breathless and made it impossible for him to cry for help. Everything had been perfectly planned out, not neglecting the smallest detail; the decision, the precision, the speed at which the action was carried out led to a single possible conclusion: “professionals”.

  Devastated by the growing panic, Nicholas squirmed around inside the van, kicking like a foal, throwing punches with all the strength he had left at the dark figure that was holding him down, trying to free himself from the lock in which that man, so much stronger than him, was keeping him. The big man had removed his backpack, that had been thrown into the far corner of the van’s wood-paneled floor. Every one of the vehicle’s walls was covered in sound-absorbing panels, similar to egg cartons. The boy’s screams, before the giant was able to gag him and tie his hands behind his back, were muffled by the soundproofing and by the engine’s noise, so that all attempts to catch the attention of passers-by were vain. He was panting, sweating, terrified by what was happening to him, unknowing of what his fate would be, now he could only moan softly, as a strip of fabric was between his teeth, taped to his head. His hands and feet were blocked by cable ties. He was trembling like a blade of grass in the wind; fear had taken over and made him burst into uncontrollable tears, and the words spoken in a broken German by that giant with short pitch-black hair and olive-tinted skin, who was staring at him with no compassion in his eyes, were useless: “Don’t be afraid, no one will hurt you.”

  The van left Entringer Strasse, turning right onto Hagenloher Strasse, which would quickly take them out of town. The black Mercedes CLS 350 moved in the same direction, giving the van a slight head start. The two men aboard it quickly checked: no one running into the street, n
o window suddenly opening, nothing unusual, nothing alarming. The barrier and the toolbag remained on the sidewalk, soon to arouse the curiosity of a careful passer-by.

  He heard his phone ring, its tone imitating the sound of old bakelite telephones, while he was still on his lunch break. He finished sipping the hot coffee just served to him at the bar, and checked the display:

  –Unknown caller–

  He activated the communication anyway.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning, professor Wharz?” a low male voice asked, in German, with a strong inflection that Alexander wasn’t able to recognize.

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “It doesn’t matter, professor. Listen carefully to what I say: your son Nicholas is with us, and he will stay with us for a while. He is alright, he won’t be hurt, but you must collaborate, and stick to everything I’ll tell you. Otherwise, things might change.”

  “Who are you? What kind of a sick joke is this? I’ll trace the number of this…”

  “You will do nothing at all, professor! You will just stick to what I say,” the man at the other end angrily interrupted him.

  He could hear Nicholas, crying and terrified, screaming in the background:

  “Daddy, daddy… help!”

  Alexander was petrified, blood suddenly freezing in his veins, time seemingly slowing down around him, as all his senses converged into the telephone. Everything he could hear, inside that bar where moments earlier he had heard the clinking of cups and glasses, the voices and murmurs of people nearby, was silenced immediately. The only thing he was able to distinguish was any noise, voice, rustle coming from the phone that was glued to his right ear, nothing else existed.

  “Why my son? What do you want? Tell me what you want! I’ll do anything you tell me to. Let him go, please just let him go!”

  “Professor, prove your collaboration to us and we won’t lay a finger on your son.”

  In that surreal moment, Alexander didn’t recognize the accent of the man he was talking to.