The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (27 page)

“Because I have just become a fugitive. I need to get out of Italy.”

De Luca stared without speaking, waiting for the rest of the story.

“And because… because that’s where I’m going to find something I need to save my daughter’s life.”

We stood at a crosswalk in the street next to the chapel. De Luca looked me up and down for a moment in silence. When he finally spoke, I realized that I truly had no idea how to read people. I would never have predicted his response at that moment.

“
Buona fortuna
,” he said, and he turned and walked away.

I watched Aldo de Luca go, and as the distance between us grew my stare in his direction became increasingly absent. I wondered if I was making the right move.

As if to answer, the familiar tri-tone of a new text message rang through from my purse. I reached inside and extracted Jeff’s iPhone. On it was a text message from John.

Please hurry. The first patient just died.

And so I have come to Egypt.

I suppose that, subconsciously, I had known all along that my quest would bring me here. Two Muslim women on a Naples bus juxtaposed incongruously with a nasty bottle of Naples tap water had been the force that channeled me, like the flow through a Roman aqueduct. But in retrospect, I had actually learned two days earlier that Egypt, not Italy, was where I would find the nardo.

This answer was presented to me in Pompeii, and in Naples. It had come to me in so many ways that I could not believe I had missed it.

How did I miss it?

As I stood in the garden at the House of the Faun, how did I not see it?

Now, it was so obvious.

The last time Katrina Stone was seen, she was entering the Arab Republic of Egypt through Cairo International Airport. After that, there was just another woman in a niqab.

For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her… but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible… something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter; to most of them she spoke herself.

-Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Plutarch (ca. 46–120 CE)

If one tries to navigate unknown waters, one runs the risk of shipwreck.

-Ancient Egyptian proverb

Chapter Eighteen

Passing through security in Naples was the most terrifying moment of my life. And when I arrived in Egypt, I held my breath at passport control and jumped when I heard the loud strike of the entrance stamp. I approached the customs kiosk wondering if I was charging head-on into a Middle Eastern prison.

At a cash machine in the Cairo airport terminal, I drained my bank accounts, taking a moment to study the large wad of Egyptian pounds before dispersing it into various locations in my pockets and bags. I buried my passport, my credit cards, and every other form of personal identification in my possession within the depths of my luggage. Then I shut off both iPhones, with their GPS tracking features, and buried them in my luggage as well. With that, I erased my own existence.

Following the example first set two millennia ago by Cleopatra, I began creating a new identity. Where Katrina Stone had been, a new, anonymous woman began to emerge.

I inquired at an information booth for transportation to Alexandria. The lady at the booth advised me kindly and in good English that it was too late in the night to travel to Alexandria. In the morning, I could fly or take a bus from the airport or a train from the Ramses station downtown. I asked if there were hotels near the airport.

“Of course,” she said. “The Cairo Traveler’s Inn is just next to the airport. Would you like me to help you reserve a room?

“No, thank you,” I said and smiled politely as I collected my luggage and stepped away. Because I knew that to assist me she would need my passport.

I gathered a few tourist pamphlets and maps of Cairo and stepped outside. The automatic doors had not yet closed behind me when I was assaulted by stifling heat and at least a dozen cab drivers. I struggled to think through the avalanche of broken English pelting me.

“Where you going?”

“Where you from?”

“Which hotel?”

“English?”

“American?”

“Cairo Traveler’s Inn,” I said, and the taxi drivers universally lost interest. They were looking for a fare into downtown.

Only one driver stayed with me. “Fifty pound,” he said, and I was sure it was a considerable rip-off.

“I will give you one hundred,” I told him. “But you have to wait outside for me. Do you understand?”

“
Mesh mushkela!
” the driver said enthusiastically, and then, “No problem!” But I was not convinced.

Oh… my… God…

Whatever chaos I had experienced in Naples traffic paled in comparison to Cairo. It was now the middle of the night, yet my taxi pulled out into traffic that was unlike any rush hour I had ever seen.

The street was about two lanes wide, but four to five cars traveled abreast at any given time. They traveled bumper-to-bumper at top speed, screeching, honking, and weaving around each other like bleating goats in a panicked herd. My taxi swerved between two cars that were not occupying any lanes I could identify, and we passed into an intersection at which eight different streets converged.

My stomach lurched.
Oh, no, not again
, I thought, as the inevitable motion sickness hit me. But then, we arrived.

After a five minute language struggle, I had to place my bags back into his cab to make the taxi driver understand that I wished for him to wait for me. With that hurdle behind me at last, I stepped inside the hotel.

“Hello,” I said at the reception desk, as sweetly as I could. “I am looking for a room.” I extracted a handful of cash from my pocket.

“Passport, please,” the attendant said and held out his hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have lost my passport traveling. I was planning to go to the embassy tomorrow.”

“Driver license,” he said.

I grimaced apologetically. “I’m afraid I lost all of my identification.” I began rifling through the money and then extending it toward him with no attempt at subtlety.

“I am sorry, madam,” he said without a glance at the cash. “We have no rooms.”

It took several tries and significant downgrading of standards before I found a hotel with rooms available for a woman with money but no identification. It was in a dark alley in downtown Cairo. The staff spoke virtually no English. As I looked around the lobby, and then my room, I wondered if perhaps I should have slept at the airport.

That night, I became my dead husband.

I dropped my suitcases off in my filthy hotel room and stepped out. Now reluctant to turn on my phones for fear of being tracked, I found an Internet café just a few doors down from my hotel.

I first went into my own e-mail account and handled the pressing business from my lab in San Diego, replying to a selection of correspondence from colleagues and employees. Then I logged off and entered Jeff’s e-mail account, from which I did the same.

There were two new e-mails from John. Both asked why Jeff had not been responding to his text messages and phone calls. The second message ended with:
I have test results. Call me.

I stared at the message for a few moments, and it occurred to me that my suspicions of John were off base. At the very least, he had not killed my husband—John had no idea Jeff was dead.

Unless the texts and e-mails are a cover
, my forever skeptical mind prodded me.

I clicked the “reply” button and stared at the blinking cursor for a few moments longer. Then I typed:
What can you tell me about the dead patient? Autopsy?
I sent the e-mail.

I finally went into Jeff’s other e-mail account—the secret one he had created without my knowledge. I located the names and contact info of a number of scientists employed by Jeff to operate a new chemical biology facility in Naples. I began scanning through the correspondence between Jeff and a chemist who appeared to have the highest position.

His name was Romano Moretti. It seemed familiar. Although not a chemist myself, I was reasonably certain that Moretti was somewhat famous among his peers. I clicked into PubMed—the international database for peer-reviewed scientific publications—and searched for him. An extensive publication record appeared. I skimmed through a few of Moretti’s most recent papers and saw that the majority were in the world’s top chemistry journals. This was the man Jeff had hired to run the chemistry lab in Naples in his absence. Jeff had selected the best.

I e-mailed Moretti from Jeff’s account. I instructed him to begin processing the mounds of samples that had appeared in the lab the previous day, although I had seen for myself that the work had already been initiated.

I paused as a thought struck me,
Was the whole day I spent collecting those samples a wild goose chase?

I was sure I would find the nardo in Egypt, if at all. But the environment in which the isotope was produced—the soil, the air, the elements—could have been Italian. Or they could have been Egyptian. Or even Nepalese, had the nardo originated in the Himalayas. I shrugged, sighed wearily, and pressed the “send” key for the e-mail.

Just before leaving the café, I ran two Google searches. One for my own name. The other for Jeff’s. No evidence of anything amiss popped up. Despite his promise to the contrary, Shuman had still not turned me in.

I stood up from the computer and paid the dark-skinned attendant. Then I stepped out again into the Cairo night.