Spiro looked from Ercole to Sachs. He said, “On that condition. Complete silence other than to interpret the Forestry officer’s words. If there is no need, you will remain in the car.”

“Fine.”

Spiro walked to the doorway. There he paused and turned back to Sachs. “Hal tatahaddath alearabia?”

She eyed him evenly. “Nem fielaan.”

Spiro met her gaze for a moment, then pulled a lighter from his pocket and, clutching it and his cheroot together, continued into the corridor.

Rhyme suspected that with those two exchanges, the prosecutor had used up a good portion of his entire Arabic vocabulary. He knew Sachs’s numbered about two dozen words.

He swiveled to see Thom standing in the doorway.

“And we’re going to the hotel,” the aide said firmly.

“I need—”

“You need rest.”

“There are a dozen unanswered questions.”

“I’ll unplug the controller and push you to the van.”

The chair weighed close to a hundred pounds. But Rhyme knew Thom was fully capable of doing just what he’d threatened.

A grimace. “Fine, fine, fine.” He turned the chair and headed out into the hallway, leaving it to Sachs to say good night for both of them.

Chapter 23

Close to 11 p.m.

Stefan was driving outside Naples, edgy. Anxious. He wanted to start the next composition. He needed to start the next composition.

Wiping sweat, wiping. Stuffing the tissues into his pocket. So very careful to avoid that DNA crap.

He was aware of noises, of course, always. But tonight they didn’t calm him or dull the anxiety: the car’s hum, the shush of rubber on asphalt, the two dozen tones from one dozen insects, an owl, no two. An airplane overhead, imposing its imperial growl over everything else.

Evenings are best for listening: The cool damp air lifts sounds from ground and trees, sounds you’d never otherwise hear, and carries them to you like the Wise Men’s gifts.

Stefan was careful to drive the speed limit—he had no license, and the vehicle was stolen. But there were no daughters, or sons, of Greek gods close on his trail. A Police of State car passed him. A Carabinieri car passed him. Neither driver paid him, or anyone else on the crowded road, any mind.

The meds humming through his system, and his muse, Euterpe, hovering in his heart, helped, but still he remained unsteady. Shaky-hand, sweaty-skin.

As for his most recent participant in the composer’s art, Ali Maziq, he thought nothing at all. The skinny little creature no longer existed to Stefan. He’d played his part in Stefan’s journey to Harmony—and a fine contribution he had been.

He hummed a bit of “The Waltz of the Flowers.”

Gasp, two, three, gasp, two, three…

The car rose to the crest of a hill and he pulled onto the weedy shoulder and stopped. He gazed over the fields of Capodichino. This district, now a suburb of Naples, had been the site of a heroic battle: the Neapolitans against the Nazi occupiers on the third day of the famed—and successful—uprising known as the Four Days of Naples in 1943.