After Antonella had thanked them profusely for their efforts and the men had gone on their way home, Giulia and Daniela, who had shown brave faces throughout the ordeal, broke down and began to cry. Stern-faced, Antonella motioned for Nunzio and Michele to console her daughters, while she herself paced back and forth, lost in thought. She seemed, to Carter, to be turning something over and over in her mind. What it might be, he could not guess. At last, though, she stopped, and gazed blankly out the window, as if she had finally brought her deliberations to a resolution. Then she turned to Carter and gestured for him to follow her outside. Once the door had closed behind them, she turned to him with desperate eyes.

“Carter,” she began in a hushed, urgent voice, “I did not want to talk in front of my daughters and upset them any more than they already are, but there is no time to lose. Giorgio has been gone for a day and a half. God only knows what has become of him. He might be lying up there injured, with no food or water, and no way to let anyone know. He might die before he is ever found.”

“I know,” said Carter. “But where could he have gone?”

“The men of the village are doing their best,” sighed Antonella, “but they don’t know the mountain like my husband, or what he might have been thinking of when he went off on his own.” She paused, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Carter, there is no one else here that I can turn to, so I must ask of you a favor.”

“Anything,” said Carter.

Antonella paused again and took a deep breath.

“Bene,” she said at last. “Here is what I want you to do. . . .”

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 46

Giancarlo was sitting at his desk, preparing to eat the sandwich he had brought for his lunch, when the telephone rang.

Having hung up the phone just a minute earlier, he was not inclined to pick it up again. It was Henry Sheffield who had called before, to cajole him once more about performing in the charity concert in the spring. Apparently momentum for the event had already started to build, as had the growing consensus that Giancarlo should take part in it. Since the idea first arose back in the summer, Giancarlo had been doing his best, to the point of obstinacy, to politely decline the invitation to play. At the same time, Sheffield had been doing his best, to an equal degree of obstinacy, to politely insist that he accept it.