The Dark Room(101)

Harry J. Castelli Sr. was a monster, but it was possible he’d shielded his son from the worst of his inclinations. That wasn’t so unusual. If the ambassador’s crimes had been merely financial, he might have brought his son inside the circle. But this wasn’t simply a matter of cooking the embassy’s books, or using the diplomatic pouch to move black market goods. He’d been trafficking girls and women so they could be raped on film and then disposed of. The ambassador was a man used to keeping secrets. He put on his tailored suits, and carried his calfskin briefcase, and no one around him would have seen the darkness.

But it all came apart in 1985.

A teenaged Harry left London for Berkeley. He’d never lived outside his father’s shadow, and at first, before he pledged Pi Kappa Kappa, he must have felt like the world was awash in light and air. Right away, he met Carolyn Stone. He was eighteen. His head must have ached with the future. Nothing about Carolyn would have struck him as strange. Not the ease of meeting her, not the strength of her immediate interest in him. He was an ambassador’s son; he was rich. He was hardwired to accept every blessing as his destiny. Of course he didn’t understand how extraordinary she was. Of course he didn’t understand how dangerous he was to her.

Cain parked on the street at UCSF and walked up the hill toward the medical center. There was a momentum beneath him now, a groundswell tilting his feet and propelling him. He had put a name to the girl in the casket; he knew why she’d come to San Francisco. The only person he knew who could give him the rest was Angela Chun. If she would wake up, if she could talk to him for ten seconds, she could close the circle.

He went through the main entrance and took the elevator up to the ICU, and stepped out into chaos. There were uniformed cops milling near the duty nurse. He didn’t recognize anyone until Nagata turned around.

“I tried calling you,” she said.

There were black streaks of mascara underneath Nagata’s eyes. Cain looked around the room again and saw three officers in a group huddle. Their arms around each other’s waists, their heads bowed.

“What’s happening?” Cain asked.

“There was a complication—they missed something, in the first surgery. They took her in for a second try. And they botched it.”

“Botched it how?”

“She’s gone, Cain.”

“Just now?”

Nagata nodded, and Cain looked across the hall. The door to Angela’s room stood open. There was no light inside. He walked in and sat in the chair by the empty bed. The room smelled of daisies and roses. No one had thrown away the bouquets yet. He hadn’t asked where she was, and Nagata hadn’t said. Maybe she was still on the operating table. Maybe they’d already zipped her in a bag and taken her down to the morgue. It didn’t matter, because Nagata was right. Angela was gone.

Cain closed his eyes and pressed his thumbs into his temples.





37


FISCHER WAS WAITING on the curb outside the main terminal at SFO. While he brought them back into the city on 101, he told her about his meetings with Susan Fennimore and the man from Special Branch.

“The guys in Washington lied to me,” Fischer said when Cain was finished. “They didn’t call me up there to look at a budget ledger. They wanted to tell me something about Castelli. Not the mayor, but his father. The ambassador.”

“He was under investigation?”

She nodded.

“Short of the secretary of state, he had the highest position in U.S. diplomacy. Yet he was a wildcard. The Counterintelligence Division thought something was wrong, that he was selling secrets. But they could never prove anything.”

“Did they know about the temporary passports?”

“If they did, they didn’t tell me.”

“Then they didn’t know about the girls, either.”

“I don’t think so. But they might not have been telling me everything—counterintelligence guys are cagey. They sit in their dark offices and collect information, but they never share it.”

“Why did they tell you?”

“Maybe to nudge us to look at London connections—they didn’t know how far ahead of them you already were,” Fisher said.

“We’re close now,” Cain said. “We need one or two more pieces, and then it’ll all make sense.”



Cain parked at the valet stand at the Palace Hotel and they went inside to meet Officer Combs in the lobby. He led them down the long marble hallway, past the empty ballroom and to the Market Street doors. The bar was to the left, and Cain saw Mona Castelli sitting there, her back to the entrance.

“She went out two hours ago,” Combs said. “She took a cab, but I called Officer Renton, and he beat her to the bank. He bumped into her going up the steps. Very casual, but then he acted like he just recognized her. ‘Aren’t you Mona Castelli?’ She turned around and got back in the cab—”

“She’d asked it to wait?” Cain asked.

“Yeah—and she got in, and had the driver take her back to the hotel.”

“What was she carrying?” Fischer asked.

“Just her handbag. The small one.”

“Is Officer Aguilar still watching Alexa?”

“That’s right.”

“Anything going on there?”