Kill the King

by Sandrone Dazieri

  Colomba shook her head. “I don’t want to offer an easy target to a sniper. Let’s wait for dark.”

  Dante suggested spending the hours remaining before dark at the bar, so they went with a group of contractors in search of one. They were within sight of the bar they’d chosen when Colomba heard her phone buzz.

  Alberti’s voice was so shrill, sobbing, and shocked that at first she had a hard time recognizing it.

  When he told her what had happened, Colomba was forced to sit down on a low wall and catch her breath.

  4

  D’Amore reached the site of the incident while it was still light out.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the deputy chief of the correctional police who was in charge of the investigation and the manhunt told him.

  “Isn’t it great that the world still manages to surprise us, every so often?” D’Amore replied, his thoughts elsewhere.

  “Not like this, sir. This way, please,” the other man said, inviting him to follow him down to the banks of the Aniene. The ambulance was still in the water, but next to it was a Zodiac belonging to the correctional police, and aboard the inflatable craft were a couple of officers from the forensic team in white overalls, snapping pictures. “The corpses are all still inside, if you’d care to see them.”

  “I don’t care to, but I have to,” D’Amore replied.

  With a wave of his hand, the deputy chief asked the pilot to steer the motorized dinghy over to the bank, and in a short while they were both transported to where they could look in through the open rear door of the ambulance. D’Amore realized that the correctional officer hadn’t been exaggerating: the gurney was still where it belonged, but the handcuffs that had held the German in confinement were dangling empty, except for the pair that he’d stabbed into the eyes of the dead MOG officer, who was now bobbing in the fetid water. A second officer had his head twisted at a ninety-degree angle, and the third had been beheaded completely. The last MOG officer was wrapped around the paramedic, maybe because when the ambulance plummeted over the side of the bridge, they’d been thrown together. They both showed signs of gunshot wounds.

  “The German did all this on his own?” asked D’Amore.

  The deputy chief nodded. “He opened his handcuffs with a piece of twisted metal, probably taken from a food tin.”

  “And your colleagues didn’t notice?”

  “I think he only opened one handcuff, at first, the one that was covered by the oxygen tanks. The boys were tense, they were locked and loaded, even if that’s against regulations.”

  “And once he got free he grabbed the gun,” D’Amore said, acting out the scene. “Then he fired at your colleague and at the driver. And while the ambulance was falling into the river, he did the rest.”

  “He must be strong as a bull, even if he seemed like he was on his deathbed,” the deputy chief murmured.

  The Zodiac took them back to shore. D’Amore almost slipped in the mud while getting out of the boat, but he turned around and helped the deputy chief to get out. “What is it that he ate?”

  “Something toxic that altered his heartbeat and caused diarrhea and hemorrhaging. Probably arsenic.” He showed him a picture on his cell phone of a few shreds of wet paper. “It was a postcard. He tore it up and flushed it down the toilet, but we found it in the sewer lines. We think that’s where the arsenic was. We’re trying to figure out who sent it to him.”

  In one of the fragments an entire face could be seen. D’Amore recognized it even though it was badly faded. “Very good,” he said wearily to the deputy chief. Then he shook his hand. “Keep me informed.”

  “Naturally, sir.”

  D’Amore had parked just outside the area marked off by police barriers, and as he got into the car, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to call Di Marco. He’d just sat down when he felt a sudden terrible pain in his left leg. He looked down: there was a pair of scissors sticking out of his thigh. A hand that reeked of swamp water clamped over his mouth. “We need to talk, cop,” said the German.

  5

  Oh Jesus,” Dante murmured when Colomba told him about the German.

  “We’re protected, Dante,” she said, trying to reassure him.

  “Protected?” Dante had turned the color of the outside of the bar. “He killed six people while strapped to a gurney! How the fuck do you think it’s possible to protect us from him?” Until Dante discovered the Father’s true identity, he’d always believed that his jailer had been the German. He’d seen the German through a crack in the wall of the silo as he led another prisoner through the fields. Dante had never found out who that boy was, but it was 1989 and the only survivor of the prisoners of that period had been Dante, even though he now believed that the King and Leo formed part of that group.

  “We’ve already caught him once,” said Colomba.

  Dante pressed his hands over his ears, walking in a circle. A couple of the customers from the bar who had stepped outside to smoke looked at him curiously. “What if he let us catch him on purpose?”

  “Dante … calm down.”

  “What if he’s the King?”

  “He was under surveillance twenty-four/seven,” Colomba replied. “He couldn’t exactly go around tossing corpses into the woods.”

  “Maybe he had accomplices. Other puppets who had no idea they were puppets.” Dante took off his jacket: his shirt was drenched with sweat. “And do you think it’s an accident that he escaped today, of all days?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” asked Colomba, who once again was beginning to feel an unpleasant pang of pain in her lungs.

  “It’s because I called him,” Dante persisted. “He understood that I was getting close to the truth.”

  “Why would he have cared? They’re all dead.”

  “Except for the King. Let’s get out of here, CC. Let’s drop everything.”

  Colomba hugged him; Dante was trembling. “And then? Are you willing to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life? They’ll catch him, they’ll catch the German, he won’t be able to get out of Rome. But anything we aren’t able to figure out today is going to torment us forever.” She looked him right in the eyes. “I won’t let them hurt you, I swear it.”

  Dante leaned his weight on her shoulder and brought his face close to hers. It was a slow, endless moment, and Colomba thought he was about to kiss her, but Dante stopped just a fraction of an inch short of her lips and turned aside. “Okay, okay. You’re right.”

  Colomba started, slightly embarrassed now. “Do you want something to drink?” she asked awkwardly.

  Dante nodded. “Yes, please. Could you bring it to me out here, though? I just can’t manage to come inside.” He hunkered down on the ground, using his cane for support. “I’ll sit right here, Three and Four can keep an eye on me. I’ll tell the others that we can get moving as soon as the sun sets.”

  6

  At seven, the area of the former weapons plant was shrouded in darkness, except for the side of the building with the solar panels, where a line of lamps had been installed. Dante checked the padlock on the gate, and then opened it so quickly that Colomba couldn’t figure out how he’d even done it.

  “One,” she called out at that point. “Please leave someone to keep an eye on the road, and then everyone else, inside with us.”

  “We can’t violate private property, Deputy Captain, even if it’s abandoned,” replied the chief of the Shadow agency, smiling apologetically. “If someone reported us to the police, we’d lose our license.”

  “What if something happens in there?” Colomba objected.

  “We’d call the police and then head in to get you. The law is very restrictive on these matters.”

  “At last, I’ve found someone who follows the law,” said Dante. “Even if this wasn’t exactly the right time for it.”

  “What kind of weapon do you carry?” Colomba asked him.

  One showed her the Glock 17 he wore on his belt. “I
can’t give this to you, Deputy Captain.”

  “No, but I can steal it from you. That’s what I’ll tell them if they catch me, and you can report me to the police and tell any story you like. I probably won’t need it—according to the drone this whole place is deserted—but I can’t let Dante go in there without protection.”

  One looked at her for a good ten seconds, his face impassive. “Okay,” he finally said. And, scanning his surroundings for anyone who might be watching, he handed her the gun. “I’m going to trust you.”

  Colomba smiled back, checked the handgun, and slipped it into her pocket. “We need flashlights.”

  “We have something better,” said One.

  * * *

  Apparently, also included in the price of the package, along with the drone, were the latest generation of night-vision goggles. Three showed them how the goggles worked and then helped them to get them fitted comfortably to their foreheads. Dante, who loved electronic gadgets, forgot his fear for a few seconds and started experimenting with the zoom function. “Bionic eyes. Cool.”

  They went in, switching on their goggles once the light from the road was blocked by the surrounding trees. The ground around them suddenly switched into shades of green, with yellowish shadows. The noise of the passing traffic on the Via Paullese had vanished, and now the only sounds to break the silence were their footsteps and their breathing. Dante held his cane out in front of him, and he used it to smack bushes or move garbage out of their path.

  “Everything okay?” One asked over the radio.

  “It’s all good.”

  “Haven’t you invented any cool battle handles?” Colomba whispered.

  “There’s no need, it’s just us. And the communications are encrypted. They have better products than what the police use.”

  A gust of cool wind made the treetops toss. Dante started; Colomba felt a stab of tightness in her stomach. They stopped to wait for silence to return.

  “How many times have you done this sort of thing?” Dante asked.

  “Actually, never. I’m not a marine.”

  They skirted the skeleton of a half-ruined office building, which loomed up gigantic in their night-vision goggles, as if ready to crush them, and they found themselves face-to-face with the warehouse with the round roof.

  “That’s where they stockpiled the weapons,” said Dante. “The Allies never bombed the place, and production went on uninterrupted till the very end. One of the workers who was employed at the plant was killed after the war had ended, on April 25, Liberation Day. The Nazis didn’t yet know the war was over, and when he tried to tell them, they shot him.” He checked the location of the circles on the tablet the contractors had loaned him. “They ought to be around here somewhere, but I can’t see them.”

  Dante went on: “The night goggles work differently from the thermal sensors. And the temperature of the area has shifted, it’s become more uniform.” Dante looked around, amping up the intensity of the infrared projector he wore on his forehead. “But that’s the pile of bricks right there.”

  It was the very same pile they’d seen with the drone. Colomba looked at the ground and bent down and felt it without finding anything, then she took off her tactical backpack and pulled out a folding shovel. “If the circles aren’t going to do any good, then what?”

  “Let’s just look everywhere,” Dante said, “starting with the parts that haven’t been rebuilt. How’s it going?”

  “The ground is hard. You might consider giving me a hand.”

  “I don’t want to get dirty.”

  “I think I’ll just bury you here …”

  About a foot and a half down, the shovel hit something hard. Colomba leaned down to dig with her hands, and Dante knelt down beside her. By the greenish light of the night-vision goggles, they could glimpse something that seemed like the top of a cement chimney, with the vent sealed and loopholes along the sides, roughly the circumference of a serving platter.

  “I continue to think that this is just a way into the sewer,” Colomba said, brushing dirt off the narrow vertical apertures.

  “No, it’s an air intake,” said Dante.

  “For what?”

  “A bomb shelter. The construction style looks German, but I’m no expert. It’s not marked in the official plans, because it was a military secret.”

  “And no one ever found it?”

  “The Father certainly did. We just need to find the entrance.” Dante let himself flop down on the pile of rubble. “Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to go in with you.”

  7

  D’Amore had never felt pain like this. It was like burning and freezing at the same time. But there was no flame and no ice: only the German’s hands, and his scissors.

  Flat on his back on the floor of the hut—one of the many that lined the banks of the Aniene—where the German had dragged him after making his way through the various roadblocks in D’Amore’s car, D’Amore couldn’t move. And he kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want to see what that white-haired man had done to him. Only once, an infinity ago, had he dared to look at the arm the German was ravaging. It had been sliced open lengthwise, like in an old anatomy textbook, with the artery intact and the hemorrhage blocked by a tourniquet made out of the laces from his shoes. The German had waited until he was done with his work on the other arm before he started asking questions, and D’Amore had answered every one, promptly, eagerly, better than he had done at school, without reservations, without hesitation. Because every time he hesitated, it just meant another cut, another nerve ending exposed.

  Torture isn’t an exact tool. If the pain is too powerful, you’ll say anything to make it stop, mixing truth and imagination. Your memory is destroyed, you lose any sense of self-awareness. But if the torturer is good at his job, he knows how to keep you right on the edge. And the German was very, very good at his job. What’s more—D’Amore had learned this at the expense of one knee, the bone of which now protruded from the bleeding flesh—the German could sniff out any and all lies.

  Now the German was putting on the clothing that he’d taken off D’Amore before starting to torture him, even though it fit tight over the man’s gorilla chest. D’Amore realized that the torture was over now, but also that that hut was going to be his tomb. And so, why not …

  “Do you know who the guy that Colomba is looking for really is?” he asked.

  The German barely looked at him. “I know who he used to be, but I don’t know who he’s become.”

  D’Amore blacked out for a minute, and another fragment of his life was gone. When he came to, the German was putting his shoes on.

  “Why?” he asked again. “Why …” He stopped: he couldn’t even begin to ask the question.

  But the German seemed to understand anyway. “Do you know how many breeds of dogs there are?”

  D’Amore shook his head.

  “Neither do I. But there are a lot. And once, long ago, there was only one breed. Someone took those dogs and bred them until he managed to produce dogs the size of mice and dogs the size of horses. But before producing a new breed, there were thousands of dogs that came out all twisted and wrong, or else mother dogs died giving birth because the fetus was too big.” He leaned over him. “You tell me, were the dogs happy about this? Did they understand the reasons behind what was happening to them?”

  D’amore shook his head again.

  The German picked up the scissors from the floor. “You see? Even you don’t understand.”

  “But why are you doing it?”

  “Out of love,” said the German. And he cut D’Amore’s throat.

  8

  Colomba had the men send the drone up in flight in the hopes that a view from above might help her, but it was no good: they couldn’t find the entrance to the old bomb shelter. She was about to give up hope when an idea occurred to her.

  “Do you have anything that can generate heat and light?” she asked One, after walking back to the gate.<
br />
  “Like some kind of fireworks?”

  “Exactly, something like that.”

  One pondered for a moment. “We have some flashbangs. Not military grade, naturally. They’re airsoft flashbangs, but they’re pretty loud.”

  “I’ll take a couple, and I want you to get ready to send up the drone when I alert you.”

  * * *

  Colomba went running back to Dante with the flashbangs: to look at them, you’d say they were identical to the real ones, even if they were much less powerful than those used by the army. “Do you like playing with firecrackers?” she asked him.

  Dante gave her a look that required no words.

  “Then grab your shovel and get to digging.”

  Colomba and Dante opened two more chimneys before they found one that wasn’t plugged up with dirt. They broke the cover, then peered inside: there was just an empty tube that ended in nothing.

  “Perfect,” said Colomba.

  “I get what you want to do,” Dante broke in. “It’s a good idea, it seems like something I might have come up with.”

  “It would have occurred to you, too, if you weren’t spending all your time looking over your shoulder for fear that the German’s going to jump you.” She activated the microphone. “Send up the bird,” she said.

  The drone arrived a few seconds later, and Colomba told them to make it climb until she had a panoramic view of the area. She tossed the first flashbang down the chimney, covering the tube with a brick. The bang sounded incredibly loud to her, but from out on the road One said it had sounded like a tiny firecracker. Colomba tossed in the second flashbang, too, and then Dante checked the pictures on the tablet from the moment of the explosion. The drone had managed to intercept a tongue of flame that pointed toward the shed with the round roof, stopping just a couple of yards short, where it spread out into a luminous sphere.