“Maybe I can write something to ensure they’re remembered,” David said, and he wasn’t pleased to hear himself so convincingly imply that he was serious about addressing the Zabdi case in a book, when he had no such intention.
“I’ll show you the place,” said Gurion, and they went inside.
| 36 |
On the ground floor, the large rooms were brought into human scale by antique jewel-tone Persian rugs; Japanese screens and bronzes; Chinese ceramics and painted cabinets; Art Deco furniture, sculpture, paintings by Tamara de Lempicka and Jean Dunand: an eclectic mix that should not have worked, but did.
“It must take quite a staff to maintain this.”
“Yes, it does,” Gurion said. “An even larger staff when . . . when it was lived in.”
“And no one heard anything the night of the murders?”
“The place is so solidly built that sound barely travels from room to room let alone beyond the walls. The estate manager lived in a bungalow at the very back of the property, a significant distance from here. Because Ephraim and Renata valued their privacy, the rest of the staff came to work at eight o’clock every morning and left at five, and no one worked on weekends unless there was a dinner party or other event. The murders occurred on a Saturday.”
A hotel-size elevator served all levels of the residence, but they climbed the long arc of stairs, shoe leather softly shushing them as if they were in a place made sacred by the lives sacrificed under its roof.
The master bedroom, where the bodies had been found, was a large and barren chamber stripped of the rug, furniture, art, and draperies. With nothing to absorb and soften sound, the limestone floors and bare walls lent a hollow ring to their voices, as though they weren’t on the highest floor but deep in a catacomb.
The air was cooler here than elsewhere, suggesting that spirits lingered.
“Even after scoping the place for fingerprints and vacuuming for hairs and such,” Gilbert Gurion said, “the FBI took everything from the bedroom, retreat, and bath for further analysis at their lab, an extraordinary step. They still haven’t returned anything.”
“The FBI? Didn’t the local police have jurisdiction?”
“As far as the public was aware, yes. But they were quietly relieved of jurisdiction and cooperated with the Bureau. Ephraim and Renata’s company had some defense contracts with national-security issues. The press covered it as a typical tabloid murder case, with wild speculations of sex parties, other grotesque nonsense. But the feds think the Zabdis were tortured into revealing vital information about certain sensitive projects. They say this wasn’t just murder, David. They say it was an operation by foreign agents, most likely a team of four. Not mere murder, but a double assassination.”
As David stood at a window with a view of the parklike grounds, the previously still air was troubled by a cool draft that chilled the nape of his neck, as though a lurking revenant had breathed it out when Gurion spoke the word assassination.
“Did they suggest what country?”
“Country?”
“What country these four foreign agents might be from?”
“No. That’s all they said. They were otherwise closemouthed.”
“Gil . . . ?”
“Yes, David?”
“Quicksilver is mostly into developing . . . not drugs but medical products. Is that right?”
“Medical technology. It’s more correct to think of it as a biotech firm that has grown in related directions.”
“As I understand it, Quicksilver owns numerous patents for bioprinting technology.”
“That’s right. Many, many patents.”
“I’m not sure I understand what bioprinting is.”
“It involves bioinks. They contain cells and collagen and other stuff to print layers of artificial tissues, even organs, especially capillaries. Before Ephraim and Renata, capillaries were almost impossible to print.”
“Sounds like sci-fi.”
“It’s not. Quicksilver also has key patents on processes to recellularize donor organs before they’re transplanted.”
“Give it to me in English.”
“I’m trying my best. It’s a little Greek to me, too. The way I understand it—they strip the cells out of an organ, say a kidney or a heart, and repopulate it with new cells from the person receiving the transplant. Far less chance of the organ being rejected.”
The grounds beyond the window now appeared less like a park, more like a cemetery where flat plaques marked the graves.