Hardly certain, it was, nonetheless, a reasonable theory worth exploring.

To find out, Sachs sent Luigi’s picture to her snitch, Alberto Allegro Pronti, the homeless Don Quixote of a Communist in Milan. Ercole translating, Pronti verified that Luigi Procopio was the man who had thrown him out of the warehouse.

Ercole had smiled as he’d listened to the man’s words. He said to Sachs, “Alberto asks if the cat-kicker will go to jail.” He turned back to the phone. “Sì certamente.”

Luigi had surrendered to Michelangelo’s second tactical team in the parking lot behind the pensione, where he’d been smoking and texting, as he waited for his boss to finish his liaison with the local call girl.

Dante Spiro had been particularly pleased to nab Procopio. Not only was he instrumental in Hill’s plot to implicate refugees in the fake terror attacks, but he was an international member of the ’Ndràngheta. Spiro explained that Flying Squad officer Daniela Canton, who specialized in gang work, had learned days ago of some ’Ndràngheta operative active in the area. She’d learned nothing more about it. Now the source of the intelligence was clear.

Mike Hill’s involvement changed the entire focus of the plot. It was not an Italian official or member of a right-wing party, like the Nuovo Nazionalismo, who was the mastermind of the fake terrorist plot; it was an American.

Mike Hill’s plan had the purpose they’d originally speculated—though not to derail Italian immigration reform. It was to sway public opinion in the United States and turn lawmakers against the pro-refugee bill in Congress, offering “proof” that terrorists were hiding among immigrants like tainted pieces in a bag of candy.

Hill was not in Naples by coincidence. He’d come here to oversee his operation and make sure that it succeeded. There remained the question as to whether Hill himself was the sole mastermind. His phone records revealed texts to and from a Texas senator, Herbert Station, a staunch opponent of the immigration bill and a nationalist in his own right. The texts were innocent—but too innocent, Sachs thought. “The senator’s guilty as sin,” she said. “It’s code. You don’t text overseas to tell somebody about the best potato salad in Austin and ask at three in the morning when’s UT going to play Arkansas next.”

Time—and the evidence—would tell.

Spiro now walked into the room, cheroot in one hand, his own Louis L’Amour Western-in-progress in the other.

“About our friends,” he said. Referring to Charlotte McKenzie and Stefan Merck.

Now that they’d snagged Gianni and Hill, the case against the Composer was back on keel. That Hill had manipulated her—and her AIS—was irrelevant: Kidnapping is a crime.

And so is wrongful accusation.

Just ask Amanda Knox…

Both McKenzie and Stefan were presently in the lockup, too, in separate cells.

Massimo Rossi walked into the room. “Ah, ah, here you are. Don’t you say ‘y’all’ in America?”

“I don’t,” replied Rhyme.

The inspector continued, “We have interviewed Fatima. She is being held downstairs. It is a complicated case, regarding her. She is accused—and clearly guilty—of terrorism and attempted murder. We cannot ignore that. There are mitigating factors, though. She planted the bomb in a way that it would have been very unlikely that someone would be hurt. And she had taken a job at the refugee camp hospital in part to obtain bandages and medical supplies to help anyone who was wounded in the explosion. They were in her backpack. She has cooperated in finding Signor Hill and Luigi Procopio, and offering information on Ibrahim, or Hassan, or whatever his name might really be. It’s clear that she—like Ali Maziq and Malik Dadi—was forced to do what Ibrahim wished, fearing for her family’s life back in Libya. Those will be important factors in the case against her and Maziq.”