Fanatics

by William Bell

  I searched the waypoint file again and displayed them on the map. Sure enough, there were points marked along the Trent waterway toward Lake Couchiching, proving that the owner accessed the camp by water. That explained both the ATV tracks and the fact that the way I had come in had shown no sign of human traffic.

  I brought up the waypoint I had been seeking. A lot of tracks led to that spot from different directions. It was off to my right.

  I got to my feet, hit the Go button, and followed the compass into the bush, away from the cabin and the ATV trail. The forest was thick, and pushing through it was hard work. After ten minutes of slogging I came upon a huge granite outcropping, like a stone kneecap protruding half a metre above the leaf-mantled ground. A fissure cut across the rock at a jagged angle.

  I looked around and saw only the rock surrounded by a wall of trees. Why would the guy come here so often? I wondered. To be alone? Was this a hiding spot during the war games? A place to ambush “enemies” and shoot them with a ball of paint that would explode on impact and mark them as dead?

  I circled the granite kneecap, thinking. This was no hiding place. Here, you’d be out in the open, an easy target. My eyes were drawn to the fissure snaking through the rock. Near the crest, juniper branches poked out. I carefully pushed the prickly boughs aside. Something down in the hole reflected the light. I reached deep under the shrub. My hand closed on a plastic bag.

  Sealed inside it was a cellphone.

  V

  BEFORE I COULD OPEN the bag I heard the wavering rumble of small engines in the distance. The noise swelled gradually until I could distinguish four or five motors, their individual rackets rising and falling as the drivers worked the throttles. The clamour seemed to converge on the cabin.

  I scrambled off the rock, skinning my palms, and darted into the trees, my heart leaping around behind my ribs. Instinctively I crept deeper into the forest. I called up “mc” on my GPS, punched Go, and began to walk as quietly as I could-the GPS only worked when it was moving. The compass rose appeared on the screen, rotated casually, and pointed toward the Hawk.

  As I walked, placing every step cautiously, pushing branches carefully aside and releasing them slowly as I passed, I heard voices in the distance, laughter, and the commotion of a group of men out for sport. Then the motors fell silent. Someone barked an order and the horseplay ceased.

  I made my way through the trees as quickly as I could without snapping twigs underfoot or breaking off branches. After what seemed like an hour of fighting the urge to run, I spotted the glint of sunlight on the polished aluminum frame of my motorcycle through the branches. My knees wobbled with relief.

  Then I realized I still held the bagged cellphone in my hand.

  I unlocked the saddlebag and tossed the cell inside and swung my leg over the bike, snapping the GPS into its cradle and pulling on my helmet. A few centimetres from the ignition, my hand, holding the key, stopped. Now that I felt safe, my curiosity began to get the better of me. I could sneak back and take a quick peek, I told myself.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” cautioned my logical angel. “A gang of strangers finds you spying on them? Is this a pretty picture?” But I got off the bike, pocketed the key, perched my helmet on the saddle, took the GPS out of its holder, and headed toward the clearing, following the line I’d travelled earlier.

  Once I’d made about half the distance I slowed and sneaked, eyes peeled for movement, ears alert for the slightest noise. I stopped when I spied shapes through the screen of leaves, gliding back and forth. Voices in a strange language floated in the warm air. No laughter now. The talk seemed serious and purpose-driven. I peered through the thick foliage. A droplet of sweat trickled down my rib cage.

  I bent into a half crouch and crept forward until I reached a spruce tree a couple of metres from the edge of the clearing. Through the fragrant boughs I could make out the cabin and, nearer to me, nine men dressed in camo, right down to the caps and boots. They were erecting tents, also with a camo design, in the same place I had seen the trenches and peg holes. They spoke occasionally but didn’t waste words. I couldn’t place the language.

  A tall man came around the corner of the cabin, a gun slung diagonally across his chest. He snapped off a couple of commands. The men speeded up their movements. Sunlight detailed the tall man’s gun, the canteen on his belt, the long knife in a calf-scabbard, his thick moustache. Like all the others he had brown skin, and the black hair under his cap was cut short.

  I slipped my cell from my pocket, turned it on, and immediately disabled the ringer. I activated the camera, turning off the flash, then took the commander’s picture before I captured a few more snaps at random. Stowing the cell, I turned and, careful to keep the spruce between me and the men, began to creep back to my motorcycle.

  When I had made about twenty metres I stood, looked back, saw nothing threatening, and began to walk.

  And tripped.

  I crashed to the ground, making a racket like a thrashing elephant, and dropped the GPS into the leaves. I scrambled to my knees as a shout rang out behind me. Another shout followed. Boots pounded as bodies crashed through trees. I felt around in the leaves for the GPS. Someone hollered, closer this time. My fingers hit plastic, and I snatched up the unit and got to my feet and began to run.

  If “run” is the right word for zigzagging though dense forest, eyes on the GPS, eyes ahead, then back to the little glass screen showing me the right way, heartbeats thudding in my ears.

  Shouts, snapping branches, and the thump of boots on the forest floor told me the men in camo were closing in. I burst out of the trees, jammed the GPS into my pocket, pulled on my helmet, fumbled out my key, swung my leg over the saddle. “Don’t drop it, don’t drop it,” I chanted, my hand shaking as I jammed the key into the ignition and turned it. Shapes approached through the trees. I pushed the bike off the stand, made a painfully slow three-point turn-why hadn’t I parked the Hawk facing away from the forest?-hit the Start button, kicked the gear shift into first, and roared away, eyes on the rear-view mirror, just as three or four men in military gear broke out of the bush and skidded to a halt in the cloud of dust I had left behind me.

  VI

  ALONG BURNSIDE DRIVE I looked down at the speedometer to find I was fifty over the limit. I cut back on the throttle and tried to do the same to the flow of adrenaline racing through my veins.

  I rode into Couchiching Park, where I bought an ice cream at French’s and took it to a bench by the boardwalk. I watched powerboats come and go from the marina under a blue sky where seagulls scribed lazy circles. People strolled by, kids shrieked and complained on the playground equipment. All was normal.

  Sugar wasn’t supposed to calm people down, but licking chocolate ice cream helped me coax my heart rate back to normal. I had a bad feeling about those guys in the bush. Their appearance and their air of purpose didn’t suggest sport, even though they seemed to enjoy chasing me. They hadn’t seemed like a bunch of good old boys out for a bit of fun shooting paintballs at one another and pouring down cold beer between pretend battles. They were organized and disciplined. And that leader was anything but one of the boys.

  I remembered that during the thunderstorm at the Corbizzi mansion last night, I thought I heard a motorboat out on the water-a strange place to be when the lake was crazy with wind and wave, when lightning flashed every couple of seconds. This morning I had found the GPS. Which had led me to the cabin. A coincidence? I doubted it. The GPS held waypoints stretching from Morrison Landing to Lake Couchiching. I got to my feet, wiped the sticky remnants of ice cream from my fingers with a tissue, tossed the paper into a bin, and walked back to the parking lot where I’d left the Hawk.

  The GPS had probably been lost by one of the camo-boys. Simple.

  Just as simple was the fact that I felt no obligation now to return it. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain to any of those guys, let alone the leader, how I came to possess it. On my way back to the Hawk, I r
emoved the two good batteries and tossed the GPS into a garbage bin. Then I mounted up and rode home.

  The cellphone in my saddlebag had completely slipped my mind.

  RAPHAELLA LAUGHED.

  I called her that night and related my unintentional visit to paintball heaven.

  “I guess it does have its funny side,” I said, aware that my voice was a little chilly. She wasn’t taking the paintballers as seriously as I was. Maybe she was right.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. Then she giggled. “I can just picture you charging through the trees, chased by the Testosterone Kids with their blotchy green-and-brown clothes.”

  “Hardly kids.”

  “All this because you were too conscientious about trying to return someone’s lost property.”

  “Yeah, well, I misplaced that sense of duty in the bush somewhere,” I replied. “The GPS is in the trash down at the park, and the cell is still in the Hawk’s saddlebag.”

  “You’re not going to try and return it, I hope.”

  “No. It can stay where it is for the time being. I’ll probably end up tossing it, too.”

  “Good idea,” she said, suddenly serious. “They sound like people worth staying away from.”

  We talked a bit more and then signed off for the night. I watched a bit of TV and went to bed. Before I fell asleep, my imagination replayed images of the camo-boys flitting through the trees, converging on me.

  PART TWO

  The Lord has brought me here, and has said to me,

  “I have put you here as a watchman in the centre of Italy

  that you may hear my words and announce them to the people.”

  – Girolamo Savonarola

  One

  I

  THE MORNING AFTER my unplanned visit to the paintball camp I returned to the mansion and went immediately to the library. I sat down at the escritoire, thinking. I hadn’t abandoned the possibility that Professor Corbizzi already had a catalogue of his collection, and I was determined to search the library thoroughly before I started an inventory from scratch. There was no use asking Mrs. Stoppini-she avoided the room. Besides, she had asked me to do the inventory in the first place.

  The absence of a computer or one of those old-style multi-drawer file-card systems like they used to have in public libraries was not encouraging. The filing cabinet yielded nothing but old household bills, tax statements, and other papers, and in the escritoire I found only an old pipe tobacco tin containing a broken pocket knife and a rosary with glass beads and a black wooden cross.

  One of the bottom drawers of the escritoire jammed when I tried to close it. Wiggling as I pulled, I removed it and set it on the desk. On my hands and knees, I took a close look at the track. It was worn but seemed true. I checked the drawer’s corner joints. Sure enough, they were loose, a common problem with old furniture. It would take only a few minutes to fix.

  I emptied the contents-a few loose papers and a package of envelopes-onto the desk beside the typewriter and turned the drawer upside down to examine it more closely. Something rattled, then two small brass keys plopped onto the escritoire. I set the drawer down, intending to repair it later, then looked around, my mind back to the quest for a catalogue. I could see nowhere such a thing might be kept-unless among the books themselves. Finding it would mean taking the books off the shelves and examining them-which Raphaella and I would be doing anyway as we worked on the inventory.

  Then I remembered the alcove on the other side of the room, and the cupboard built into the bookshelves.

  Quickly, I crossed the floor, the little brass keys in my hand. The volumes flung onto the floor by the professor during his last seconds on earth were now stacked on the table in the alcove. I stepped between the table and the shelves on the north wall. The closely fitted cupboard door had a round wooden pull-and below the pull, a brass cabinet lock.

  One of the keys opened the lock. I found a stack of small leather-bound books that would have made my father exclaim “Aha!” as he waggled his eyebrows. He loved old books, and sometimes added them to his collection rather than put them up for sale. I transferred the pile onto the table behind me and opened one book at random. It was a Greek-Latin dictionary, published in London in 1763. Assuming the rest were as valuable-or the professor wouldn’t have kept them under lock and key-I made a mental note to tell Mrs. Stoppini she would need the services of a rare books expert at some point.

  I lifted out a stack of bundled papers, each bunch secured with ribbons, like a parcel. On closer examination, the paper turned out to be vellum-finely polished animal skin. The manuscripts had been penned by different people, and none was in English. Conscious of their value, I replaced them carefully. As I slid them back into the cupboard, my fingernail caught on something. I moved the manuscripts to the table again.

  There was a large round knot in the board that formed the right-hand wall of the cupboard. In an otherwise top-quality bookshelf, why use a flawed piece of wood? Any cabinetmaker knows that knots-especially a big one like this-can come loose and even fall out over time as the wood dries. More important, the old vellum could be snagged just as my finger had been, and damaged. A lapse in cabinetmaking quality like this didn’t make sense.

  I ran my finger across the surface of the knot. It was loose. And it was coated with a waxy substance. I pressed it. As I withdrew my finger, the knot came with it. I probed the hole. I felt something. Metal. I pushed.

  And heard a barely audible click.

  Then nothing.

  Taking a step back, I scanned the shelves and uprights. Everything appeared as it should be-except for a barely noticeable gap that outlined three shelves and their uprights to the right of the cupboard. The gap hadn’t been there moments before.

  I gripped the edge of a shelf between my finger and thumb and pulled. Silently, a section of the shelf unit, books and all, moved toward me like a hinged door, and I found myself looking at another cupboard set into the wall behind the bookshelves, this one secured by a locked metal roll-up door like you’d find on an old writing desk.

  And then I heard a shrill ring.

  Like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the teacher’s purse, I jumped back and snatched a glance toward the library doors, even though I couldn’t see them from the alcove. The ring trilled again.

  My cell.

  It was a text message: conf din arr 6 k? rs

  I sent back k and closed the phone.

  I took a breath and reminded myself that I wasn’t snooping. Well, not technically. I wasn’t prying into the professor’s private life. I was doing what I had agreed to do-make an inventory of the library-wasn’t I? The alcove was part of the library, wasn’t it?

  The second key fit the lock and the door rolled up and behind the cupboard smoothly and silently, revealing two wide, deep shelves. The cupboard was like a strongbox-two layers of metal with insulation between. On the bottom shelf lay a messy pile of papers on top of a file case. The sheaf of paper was as thick as a brick, typed, I was willing to bet, on the old Underwood. The title page bore the word “Fanatics” over “by Professor Eduardo Corbizzi.” I set it aside.

  A wine-coloured book with Compendium Revelationem on the spine in cracked gilt lettering rested on the top shelf beside a small container of inlaid wood. I took up the book, surprised by its heavy weight, and laid it on the table. It smelled of old leather and dust and ancient paper. I flipped through. The language wasn’t English. The last page was stained, but the words “Hieronymvs” and “Ferrara” were clear. Closer to the bottom I made out “Firenze” and “MCDXCV,” then “Ser Francesco Bonaccorsi.”

  I turned back to the cupboard and opened the small, finely made box, finding a crudely cast medal, green with age, resting in a silk bed. On one side a pigeon-like bird with rays emanating from its head hung suspended in the sky, at the edge of a cloud. A raised line bisected the medal, separating the strange bird from a hand emerging from a cloud, clutching a dagger, its tip pointing toward a collection
of buildings. The flip side showed the profile of a man gripping a crucifix with both hands, staring the haloed Jesus in the face. The man, wearing a cape with a hood that covered his hair and ears, had a prominent hooked nose, and the look in his eyes as he glowered at Jesus was anything but reverent.

  Worn, almost illegible block letters in a foreign language followed the outside edge of the medal. I turned it slowly in my hands, squinting at the writing-which, like the lines in the red leather book, appeared at first to be English but wasn’t. Small diamond shapes were visible between some of the words.

  HIERONYMVS SA followed by something illegible, EER ORD FREVIRI, and unclear marks, then DOCTISSIMVS.

  Turning the coin over I read,

  GLADIVS DOMINI SUP TERRA CITO ET

  VELOCITER SPIRITVS ONI SUP TERRA COPIOSE SUDAT

  “Interesting,” I whispered. “ ‘Hieronymvs’ appears on both the medal and in the book.”

  I replaced the medal and carefully fitted the lid, then turned to the last article in the cupboard. It was heavy, wrapped in a black velvet cloth so soft the bulky object it enclosed almost slipped out of my hands. I found myself cradling an ornately tooled cross at least sixty centimetres high and encrusted with jewels. The dusky gold seemed to glow from within. Never in my life had I held something so valuable and beautiful.

  On closer inspection, one of the jewels turned out to be a dome of clear but imperfect glass held to the base with clips, like a gem in a ring. The glass seemed to cover something brownish black, a kind of disk with a hole in the middle, that had been set into the gold.