The Exchange: After The Firm

Chapter 16

Giovanna was fourteen years old when her parents divorced. She loved them both and they adored her, their only daughter and youngest child, but when the marriage began to crack Luca and Anita thought it best to remove their children from the hostilities. They sent Sergio, their son, to a prep school in England and Giovanna to one in Switzerland, and when they were out of the way the parents fought some more, then grew weary of it and signed agreements. Anita moved out of the villa and gave up all claims to it. It had been in Luca’s family for decades and Italian matrimonial law leaned heavily in his favor.

Anita took some money and a vacation home on Sardinia, and left Rome to try to put things back together. By the time she left, Luca had already arranged for his girlfriend, and future wife number two, to move in. The transition was another good reason for Giovanna to stay away.

She watched this from afar, grateful to be in Switzerland. She still loved her father, but at the time she didn’t really like him. They had never been close, primarily because of his ambition to build the greatest law firm in Italy. His drive kept him at the office or on the road far too often. Her brother, Sergio, was so turned off by Luca’s routine that he vowed never to become professional at anything. Currently he was living in Guatemala, drifting and painting street scenes in the city of Antigua.

Nor had she been close to her mother, Anita, who was a beautiful woman and watched with growing envy as Giovanna became just as beautiful. She competed with her daughter in fashion, style, weight, height, almost everything. Anita could not accept the realities of aging and grew more resentful as her daughter blossomed and grew taller and thinner. They had great mother-daughter times together, but there was always the undercurrent of competition.

When Anita realized her husband had a girlfriend, she was crushed and ran to her teenage daughter for support. Giovanna wasn’t prepared to deal with such chaotic emotions and pushed her away. For a long time she avoided her father, but there was always the nagging suspicion that she really couldn’t blame him for looking around. To get away from both of them, she embraced the idea of boarding school.

When Luca’s second marriage blew up, Anita was elated and wished him even worse luck. Giovanna was turned off by her mother’s gloating and tried to ignore both parents. During her last two years of boarding school she did not see either one. When they mentioned attending her graduation, she vowed to disappear and hide.

With time, most of the pain and anger dissipated. Luca, always quite the statesman, managed to patch things up with Giovanna. He was, after all, paying her college bills. When she started talking about law school, he was elated and made sure the right doors were opened. Anita found happiness in a serious boyfriend, a slightly older man with more money than Luca. He was Karlo, a wealthy Greek, and he had been through enough marriages to understand the need for tranquility. He would never marry again, but he, like Luca, would always adore women. He insisted on meeting Luca, and eventually brokered a truce between the exes.

Luca and Anita sat on the veranda, under quilts and sipping tea as the sun set. The night air was chilly but pleasant. The wide doors were open and, just inside them, in the breakfast room, Karlo played backgammon with Bella, Luca’s current companion. All spoke in low voices, and for long stretches of time the only sound was the tumbling of dice across the board. It was all so civilized.

As always, Luca had not been entirely forthcoming with Anita. He admitted he had pulled strings to get their daughter assigned to the Lannak case, but he had said nothing about encouraging Mitch to take her to Tripoli. Nor would he.

For Anita’s benefit, he was projecting the image of the wise old veteran who knew Libya inside and out and was confident Giovanna would survive this ordeal. Whether or not this soothed her mother was not clear. Anita was high-strung, emotional, and overly dramatic. Perhaps age, along with Karlo’s steady influence, had softened some of the edges and settled her down. Perhaps it was the pills she was taking in the bathroom. Whatever the reason, she had surprised Luca hours earlier with the phone call, said she was in Rome with Karlo and thought it was important for the parents to support one another. Could they stop by for a visit and maybe dinner? Luca thought it was a wonderful idea.

And so they sat together as the day turned to night, and recalled warm and funny stories of their little girl. They did not dwell on what was happening to her now; that was too awful to contemplate. With long pauses in their conversation, time to reflect and remember, they dwelt on the past. And they had regrets. Their tumultuous breakup was entirely Luca’s fault, and he had said so before. He’d made a mess of his family. His selfishness had led to Giovanna’s desire to leave home and get away from them. Contrition, though, was not his strong suit, and he would not apologize again. So much had happened since then.

At least she was alive. And she was no longer being held in a tent in the desert. Her first two nights in captivity had been unpleasant; sleeping on a dirty mat on top of a dirty quilt that served as the floor; watching the sides of the tent ripple and shake in the howling wind; surviving on one bottle of water and nothing to eat; cowering when her masked kidnappers entered her little space. After that they wrapped a coarse fabric around her head and led her outside to a vehicle where they shoved her under boxes and began moving. They drove for hours, the only sounds being the engine and transmission grinding away. When they stopped she heard voices, the quick, sharp exchanges of men under pressure. When they stopped again the engine died and the men dragged her out quickly and led her a few steps to a building. She could see nothing, but there were sounds. The honk of a car horn. A radio or television in the distance. Then they untied her hands and left her so she could remove the shroud. Her new room had a floor that was not sand. There were no windows. There was a narrow bed of the size and design of a military cot and a small table with a dim lamp, the only light. In one corner there was a large tin pot where, she guessed, she was expected to relieve herself. The temperature was neither warm nor cold. The first night she assumed it was dark, though she had no idea. She slept off and on but hunger pangs kept her awake. Occasionally she heard muted voices in the hall, or whatever was out there.

A door opened and a veiled woman with a tray of food entered, nodded, and placed the tray on the table. She nodded again and left the room. The door lock clicked as she pulled it. A bowl of dried fruit — oranges, cherries, figs, and three thin slices of a bread that was similar to tortillas.

Giovanna ate like a refugee and drank half the bottle of water. The hunger pangs dissipated but she needed more food. Evidently, they had no plans to starve her to death. She hadn’t thought much about their plans because of her hunger, but now that her body felt more normal her thoughts returned to the possibilities. None were pleasant. There had been no hint of physical or sexual assault. Other than a few grunts here and there, they had not spoken to her in the past twenty-four hours. She had heard no language other than Arabic, of which she knew almost nothing. Did they plan to interrogate her? If so, what did they hope to get? She was a lawyer. She could discuss their legal strategies, but it was difficult to believe that these guys cared much about the law.

And so she waited. With nothing to read, see, do, and no one to talk to, she tried to remember the most important cases in American constitutional law. First Amendment — freedom of speech: Schenck, Debs, Gitlow, Chaplinsky, Tinker. Second Amendment — right to bear arms: Miller, Tatum. Third Amendment? It was useless because it protected citizens from being forced to house soldiers, barely a footnote in history. The Supreme Court had never considered a challenge to the amendment. Fourth Amendment — unreasonable searches and seizures: Weeks, Mapp, Terry, Katz, Rakas, Vernonia. The Fourth had always been laden with controversy.

She had aced Con Law at Virginia not too many years ago, primarily because she could memorize almost anything. During her final exam, she cited three hundred cases.

Law school was now far away. She heard voices and braced for a knock on the door. The voices faded and disappeared.

She had no idea what had happened to the others. After the horror of watching Youssef get shot in the face, she was thrown to the ground, handcuffed, blindfolded, dragged away, and thrown into the back of a truck. She was aware that other bodies were nearby — live bodies grunting, groaning, breathing. Probably the Turks. She lost all concept of time, but not long afterward she was removed and separated from the other hostages.

She could only hope and pray they were safe, but she had doubts.