by Kai Meyer
She groaned. “We’re both chasing the shadows of our dead fathers. And as if there wasn’t enough shit in our lives anyway . . .” She went up to him and caressed his cheek. “If Thanassis and Danai find out that the tomb is in that valley, and the lake has been drained, they’re going to insist that we turn ourselves over right away.”
He took her hand and kissed each fingertip separately. “We have to get out of here before they’ve studied Mori’s papers. We still have an advantage—we know more than they do. Or were you really planning to go along with this game of theirs?”
She shook her head with a bitter smile. “But the stupid part is that more than likely they know that very well.”
“They’re having the villa watched,” he said. “But we’ll get out of here.”
“And then what? This is an island, and they have one hell of a large ship.”
He buried one hand in the damp hair at the nape of her neck and drew her close. Their lips touched.
There was a knock on the door—once, twice—and suddenly Cristina di Santis was standing in the room.
“Sorry,” she said, seeing the two of them in the steam from the shower. She looked at the floor, moving backward to the door. But wasn’t she sneaking a surreptitious glance at Alessandro?
“Why does everyone just come wandering in when I’m in the bathroom?” asked Rosa.
Cristina straightened up and put her hands on her hips. Now she was looking openly. “You didn’t lock the door.”
“So?”
“That’s what doors have locks for.”
“It’s a bathroom,” said Rosa. “A place where you do private things. Bathroom things.”
“So I see.”
Alessandro cleared his throat. “I’ll just go and get dressed, then.”
“Good idea,” said Cristina, and when they both stared at her she added, “I have to speak to Rosa. Alone. That’s why.”
Alessandro gave Rosa a kiss and whispered, “Hurry up. We’ll be off. I’ll think of something.”
Before she could reply, he had passed Cristina, who by chance was standing in the doorway so that her breasts brushed against his bare chest as he left. If Rosa had been one of the Panthera, her claws would have shot out on the spot. But she didn’t even have poison fangs. Lamias were useless.
“What do you want?” she asked when Alessandro had closed the door and she was alone with Cristina.
“Can you put something on?”
Rosa pointed to the bathrobe hanging behind Cristina. “Do you by any chance want me to have to squeeze past you too?”
The attorney took a step to the side, but Rosa shook her head. “Okay.” The things she had taken from her wardrobe before showering lay on the second sink. Black jeans, black top, a close-fitting black leather frock coat. She would hate to lose that if she had to shift shape somewhere and leave these clothes behind.
As Rosa slipped into her underwear. Cristina took a deep breath. “Those archives down in the bunker . . . there’s something else you ought to know.”
“But not Alessandro?”
“That’s for you to decide. First and foremost, it concerns you.”
Rosa did up the jeans and put her thin arms through the armholes of the shirt. All of a sudden she didn’t know why in the world she had laid out a leather jacket in a tropically hot bathroom. “Come on, let’s go next door.”
Cristina followed her into one of the bedrooms. The villa still had the same bizarre seventies-style furniture that Alessandro’s mother had liked so much. The bed was made of transparent lucite, like clear Saran wrap.
Rosa closed the door. “Sit down.”
Cristina stayed on her feet. “The papers down there weren’t complete. The file folders are numbered, and a lot are missing. About half, I’d say. Any idea where the rest could be?”
Rosa thought of Fundling, who had taken up residence in the Hotel Paradiso, tracking down his murdered parents. It was possible that he had found part of the documentation somewhere else and taken it to a safe place.
“No idea at all.”
Cristina took something out of her pocket. “This is from a folder with your family’s name on it. I hid it before the hybrids packed everything up and took it on board the ship.” At this very moment, Danai and some of the hybrids closest to her would be combing through the material for references to Lycaon’s tomb.
Cristina handed her a photograph, with the yellowed back of it facing up. For a moment they both held it, before Cristina finally let go. Rosa wasn’t sure whether she really wanted to see the photo. For the first time there was sympathy in Cristina’s eyes. That worried Rosa more than her air of mystery.
Finally she took the photo, but she didn’t turn it over. “What is it?”
“That video,” began Cristina, “the one that Trevini sent you—”
“That you sent me on Trevini’s behalf,” Rosa corrected her.
“That man was in it—not Tano Carnevare, the other man. Apollonio.”
“My father.”
“I compared some of the pictures. The likeness is really startling.”
Rosa’s fingers began to tremble as they held the photo. “Cristina, the man was my father! My own father stood there while Tano was raping me. He gave him the contract to do it!”
“Possibly.”
She didn’t like this conversation at all, but that wasn’t entirely Cristina’s fault. Slowly, she turned the photograph over.
It showed a metal bedframe in front of a white wall, maybe in a hospital. A woman in her midthirties with long, blond hair was lying on it. A woman who resembled Rosa herself much more than she liked—her grandmother, Costanza Alcantara. She recognized her at once from photographs and the oil painting that had gone up in flames with the palazzo.
Beside the bed stood a man with his hair cut short, wearing nickel-framed glasses. He was tall and burly, with broad cheekbones and a flat nose. He wore a white medical coat, and he had a clipboard in his hand.
Costanza looked weary and exhausted, but a smile hovered around the corners of her mouth. In a surprising way, it veiled the cruelty she had been capable of.
There were two babies in her arms.
“Read what it says underneath,” said Cristina. “That must be Leonardo Mori’s handwriting. At least, it’s all over the place in his papers.”
C. Alcantara. Forward slash. E. Sigismondis. Forward slash. Campofelice di Fitalia. And after it a date that she knew.
“Campofelice di Fitalia is a small town in the west of Sicily,” explained Cristina, while Rosa was still unable to utter a sound. “It’s near Corleone. It’s a little bit of a no-man’s-land out there.”
Rosa stared at the picture a little longer, then looked up at Cristina. “You think they’re twins?”
“That would be possible, wouldn’t it?”
“They’re babies. All tiny babies look alike.”
“But she’s holding them both in her arms. And the date is your father’s birthday. What mother has herself photographed, just after giving birth, holding her own baby and someone else’s?” She reached out a hand and tapped the paper with a fingertip. Sometimes she was more like a teacher than Signora Falchi herself. “Don’t lie to yourself, Rosa.”
“Fuck.”
Cristina raised both hands in a gesture of resignation. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Pleased? I’d only just come to terms with finding out that my father’s the biggest bastard in the world. That I hate him worse than anyone, even worse than Tano and Michele. And now there’s someone who looks just like him? Someone I don’t know, who might not have any problem about arranging for his brother’s daughter to be raped?”
Cristina nodded. When she continued speaking, she sounded dismayed. “If I’d known that you wouldn’t—”
“No,” Rosa said quickly. “No, I’m sorry. I . . . of course I’m pleased. Kind of. It’s just that I thought I was finally sure about something, even if I didn’t like it. Something
that was simply true, no ifs, ands, or buts.”
Cristina smiled. “You have Alessandro to be certain about.”
Their glances locked and held in a silent struggle for conviction.
Then Rosa looked back at the photograph. “Why is Sigismondis with her? I know he got her to supply those furs, but this . . . did he bring my father into the world?”
“Seems like it.” Cristina took a step back, as if to give Rosa more room to face the truth. “I checked the internet just now. At that time there wasn’t any hospital in Campofelice. Wherever that bed stood, it wasn’t in a normal hospital.”
Rosa couldn’t take her eyes off the picture of the two tiny baby faces. “Does that mean they were born in a TABULA laboratory?”
A SEA OF SHARDS
ALESSANDRO WAS STANDING ON the terrace of the villa, on a carpet of sparkling shards of glass, looking out over the sea.
Rosa wore steel-toed shoes, one of the pairs she had left at the villa. The broken glass from the terrace window crunched under their soles. All the bodies had been taken away; the hybrids had probably taken their own dead with them and thrown the others into some hole in the rock.
Alessandro wore washed-out jeans and a close-fitting black shirt. In the days before Fundling’s funeral, they had spent a great deal of time together on Isola Luna, so some of his clothes were in the dressing room. His sneakers were gray and well-worn, bearing the traces of their climbs together on the slopes of lava rock.
It was still early in the morning. Neither of them had really had enough sleep, but Rosa felt more dazed than tired. Sleep wouldn’t help much with that.
She went to stand beside him by the walled parapet. The sun, still low in the sky, made the crevices of the volcanic slope look bottomless. On the horizon, another island rose from the blue sea, a gray triangle like the fin of a shark. To their left, two hundred yards from the coast, the Stabat Mater lay at anchor in deep water. Several of the hybrids’ boats were moored down by the shore. Guards were patrolling in front of the villa, on the pier outside the bunker, and at other places on the island. But from here there were only two that were visible, tiny figures among the rocks farther down the slope.
“I’m not letting them hand you over,” he said.
“Hand us over,” she corrected him.
“They should have injected us with the serum. If we shift shape, they’ll never get hold of us.”
She gave him a doubtful look. “And how about Iole and the others? Never mind what hole in the rock we crawl into, Thanassis only has to threaten to do them harm, and they have us where they want us.”
“We have to get away from here. At once.” He looked darkly over at the Stabat Mater. From a distance, it was impossible to guess what was going on in the interior of the steel giant. “As soon as they find out about Giuliana, they’ll hold us to our side of the bargain. They’ve done their part.”
“It was only the documents they wanted, not Iole,” Rosa halfheartedly contradicted him. She knew she was splitting hairs.
“We’ll never get at the two speedboats by the pier,” he said. “But the satellite picture showed that the third is down in the sandy bay. I didn’t see them take it back to the Stabat Mater. It’s probably still on the beach.”
Surreptitiously, she pushed the photograph to him across the parapet, keeping one finger on a corner so that the sea breeze didn’t blow it away.
He read the handwritten notes at the bottom and looked blankly at Rosa. “From Mori’s archives?”
She nodded and quietly told him what she had learned from Cristina. Her voice trembled a little, though she tried to be as objective as possible. Finally, she said, “I have to go there. Maybe someone will still remember something. If there’s paperwork, documentation of any kind—”
“How long ago was this? Around forty years?”
“I know. But if there’s even the tiniest chance that Apollonio isn’t my father, how can I do anything else? I can’t hate my father all my life for something that may have been done by someone else who looks exactly like him. Don’t you understand that?”
“I don’t want you to nurture a false hope, that’s all. The hills between Campofelice di Fitalia and Corleone are a wilderness, nothing but abandoned farms and deserted herdsmen’s villages. The district was once called the Mafia graveyard, because the Corleone clan buried their victims there.”
“I thought that was what the Carnevares did?”
“Not for the Corleonese. We never had much to do with those pigs.” After pausing briefly for breath, he added, “At least, not as far as I know.”
She put the photo away, then took his hands and drew him toward her. They held each other close in front of the shining panorama of the Mediterranean. The sun bathed them in its warmth; the wind smelled of salt and the pleasures of a vacation. Only the broken glass underfoot reminded them of what had happened here.
At last she looked into his eyes again. “You really are afraid, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Afraid of what we might yet find out. About your father, my father, everything that happened in the past. Afraid that most of what we’ve always believed was only a deception.”
He searched for words. “I’ve always known what my family does. There was never a particular moment when I suddenly saw through it all, or at least not as far as our business went. It was always taken for granted. Other fathers were mechanics or teachers, mine was a member of Cosa Nostra. There was no mysterious silence at the supper table, no concealed glances and whispers. Business was business, regardless of whether it was legal or dealt in drugs, money laundering, or arms. I always thought there were no secrets. Even when I heard about the Arcadians and what we are, I still believed I’d been initiated into everything.” He stopped and closed his eyes for a few seconds, then said, “But now I feel as if I were walking through a house I’ve known from my childhood—except that there are strange rooms behind all the doors. Rooms that I never in my life went into.”
“And that you don’t want to go into.” She knew exactly how he felt. Everything was fine as long as they agreed on what really mattered.
He kissed her again, smiled, and gave her another kiss. That Morse code was so typical of Alessandro—something only she knew about him—that for a moment she actually felt a little weak at the knees. She had to laugh. It was so silly, and at the same time so wonderful.
“What are you laughing at?” he asked.
“Only myself.”
She laid her cheek against his chest, closed her eyes, and listened to the roar of the sea down below, the wind rushing through the crevices of the volcanic rock, his heartbeat or her own, she wasn’t sure whether there was still any difference. At that moment, the same heart kept them both alive.
Down on the shore, the engine of a boat revved up. Rosa was ready to think it was Danai, who had found what she was looking for and was coming to the island to take them away. But the boat went over from Isola Luna to the ship, with a crew of two hybrids, tiny dots in the cockpit.
“And now there are only six,” said Alessandro. “I went up to the roof and counted them. Four around the villa, two at the pier. Maybe some in the bay. I can’t tell from here.”
“Do you think they know the way down there? The path through the rocks?”
“I’d guess not. They didn’t have time to scout out the whole place. And on the satellite pictures they couldn’t possibly make out the steps down among the rocks. It was all gray on gray.”
“How about Iole and the others?” she asked.
“They come too.”
“Of course they come too. But do we tell them how dangerous it is? They’re of no value to Thanassis. And if the hybrids come hunting us, they could be killed.”
“You think he’d go that far?”
“You know him by now. Thanassis has no scruples when it comes to getting what he wants. He must hate TABULA and the Hungry Man like poison. The minute he knows the location of the
tomb, it won’t make any difference whether we help him voluntarily or he forces us to do it. He’ll only have to hand us over to make sure the chiefs of the clans all assemble at the same place.” She glanced at the Stabat Mater standing out to sea. “I wish I knew what he plans to do then. Do you think he’s going to turn up with his private army?”
“Those pictures taken from the air come from military satellites,” said Alessandro. “Just like the photos of the statues being salvaged that we saw aboard the Colony. These people have links with the army, sources in the supervision control centers of the secret service, how would we know exactly what? But Thanassis is one of the richest men in the world. He must have the best contacts imaginable.”
She started to sigh and repressed it. “Almost all the satellite pictures on which the Stabat Mater could have been seen had been deleted. You think that if he has enough influence to get something like that done—”
“Then he may also have access to other things. Remote-controlled rockets. Armed military drones. All the modern means of waging war at the touch of a button.”
“Meaning that he could blow them all sky-high. While watching in comfort on board the Stabat Mater.”
“And the irony is that our own firms probably supplied him with the material. Or at least the access codes.”
“All the same, he needs us as decoys. Without us, there won’t be any ceremony.” This time she made up her mind without hesitation. “We’ll cut and run. Right now.”
“Talk to the others. But go carefully. We can do without an attorney who always knows best, or that tutor nagging us.”
“They’ll keep their mouths shut when it matters.”
“We’ll meet in the passage to the generator house. In ten minutes?”
She nodded, gave him a last kiss, and hurried back over the sea of sparkling broken glass.
THE PARTING
A NARROW CONCRETE CORRIDOR with a tiled floor. On the ceiling were round lights, and there was a fire extinguisher in a niche in the wall. The musty air had a strong smell of chlorine. The technological controls for the swimming pool were through a side door.