"Boss. They put the consigliera on a helicopter at 4:08 a.m. North-northwest. Hudson Valley. Forty miles north of Poughkeepsie. Private estate."
Alessandro goes still.
Luca looks at him.
"No."
"Yes."
"Our father's old hunting estate," Matteo says. "Vittorio's. Sold to a shell in 1999. The shell is Stavros's. Crane held it under federal protection for twenty years."
Alessandro has moved to the window. His back to the room.
"He took her to my father's land because he wants to end the war in my father's land."
He turns.
"All right. We go to the land."
Luca smiles.
The smile of a man who has been waiting fifteen years for this sentence.
"All four of us," Luca says.
"All four of us."
The first time Alessandro saidfour.
I makeone call before we leave. My own phone. Not a Moretti line.
Federal interest will land on this property by Wednesday. The only way the family survives is if the NYPD gets there first.
Captain Sullivan picks up on the third ring.
"Donovan."
"Captain. I need to loop you in on a Stavros surveillance angle."
The pause of a man who has been a cop for thirty-two years and has just heard a tone he has not heard before.
"Talk to me."
I tell him about the property. The federal-protected asset. The active hostage. Victor Crane had a file twenty-nine years long that no one at Treasury could touch because Crane was running the team that would look at it.
"Within the next two hours, there is going to be an event on this property you are going to want NYPD on the perimeter of. Not inside. Inside, there’s going to be something that won’t look like an NYPD scene. You want photographs. Faces. Every Stavros asset on the property in a database before sunrise."
"Donovan. You are going to be inside?”
"I am not going to confirm or deny that, Captain."
"Whatever this is."
"Yes."
"Bring it home clean."
"I will."
