by Sam Christer
Overhead, an Augusta-Bell helicopter hovers menacingly.
The 412 CRESCO is fitted with high-powered video cameras, infrared lenses, ground and surveillance radar and advanced heat-seeking thermal devices. Its eagle-eyed ops team is all primed and ready to track any sudden runners.
The crew watch paramedics stretcher an injured man into the back of an ambulance and then disappear with their sirens blazing.
Across the Trastevere back streets, troops spill from soft-topped Land Rover Defenders and start to stake out a dragnet.
No one is going to escape.
Public stabbings and gunfire in churches don’t go down well in Rome, as some jokers are about to find out.
From his command vehicle, Major Lorenzo Silvestri, the head of GIS – the Gruppo di Intervento Speciale – processes in information from his men, then calmly gives word for the operation to begin.
His team is the cream of the Carabinieri. Special-ops troops, specifically trained in hostage release, hijack situations and counter-terrorism.
Right now, they’re moving faster than the blink of an eye.
They enter in a cloud of tear gas, bursting through three main windows above the church and along two specific ground-floor routes.
Lorenzo’s soldiers move with startling synchronism. They sweep the sacred aisles with a deadly mix of Heckler and Koch MP5s and Berettas.
In less than two minutes they establish that the vast church floor and its side rooms and upper galleries are clear.
Lorenzo scratches his stubbly silver-grey hair and watches feeds from helmet cameras as his team enters the crypt. If anyone is still hiding, this is the place they’ll be.
The church lights are cut.
Soldiers slip on night-sight goggles and slide unseen into what they call the black zone.
Lorenzo knows the crypt well; it’s a riot of rich colours from ceiling to floor, with spectacular statues and innumerable marble pillars that create an amazing array of painted arches.
But none of this shows on his infra-red camera feeds.
Just the odd glowing movement of soldiers and blurred backgrounds.
He crosses himself and prays that a gun battle doesn’t break out down there. The crossfire would be horrendous.
The ROS veteran glances at his watch. Three more minutes have passed.
His radio feed crackles. ‘Clear!’ shouts one of his men.
‘Clear!’ confirms another.
‘Clear!’ The final confirmation rolls into Lorenzo’s earpiece.
They’ve all drawn blanks.
Every nook, niche, corner and confessional has been searched and they’ve found no one.
Lorenzo sits back from the monitors and stretches his long legs.
Where the hell did the bad guys go?
He has to see for himself.
He steps from the warmth of his ops vehicle and walks through the wind and rain of the piazza.
He enters the church courtyard, questioning whether the operation was necessary.
Maybe it was a bad case of crowd hysteria.
Perhaps the congregation heard a nearby delivery truck backfire and panicked.
Then he dismisses the notion.
It wouldn’t explain the stabbing, nor the eye-witness accounts of hearing shooting in the church and a woman identifying herself as a police officer.
But he’s still not satisfied.
Neither the Carabinieri nor the Polizia have been able to confirm that they had any officers in the church or even on duty anywhere near the building.
Was the woman one of the criminals?
Lorenzo doesn’t rule it out.
Crooks have long known that pretending to be a police officer is a good way of emptying a building. The public see a gun and they’re relieved to learn it’s being held by an officer of the law so they do whatever they’re told.
The major makes the sign of the cross as he enters the centre aisle and bows his head.
He has worshipped in this church.
He’s sat and knelt in here with his wife and children and he’s furious that he’s been forced to return in full combat gear with a gun dangling from his hip.
On the left-hand side of the church, a third of the way from the main entrance, he notices the pews have been disturbed.
Two of them are splayed open into a big V.
Between them is a pool of blood.
The furthermost pew is stained red.
He’s seen people faint in church – it isn’t that uncommon – but light-headed fallers get away with a bruise and a bump. They don’t bleed like a haemophiliac in a razor-blade factory.
Lorenzo’s radio crackles again.
He answers it, looking apologetically towards the altar. ‘Silvestri.’
His lieutenant comes online and has to shout over loud crowd noise and honking car horns behind him. ‘Major, we have a man outside who seems to have an explanation for all the trouble.’
Lorenzo looks to the giant crucifix over the altar. ‘Thank you, Lord, I was beginning to believe you had deserted me.’
105
They cover Valentina’s eyes.
Not in any sophisticated way. They don’t use a hood or a blindfold. They just throw a coat over her head and tie a belt around her neck to keep it there.
For a professional like Valentina, it’s the kind of action that gives away a lot of clues.
For a start, they seem more bothered about her not seeing where they’re going than the fact that she’s already had a good look at all their faces and can identify them.
She’s not sure if this is a good thing or not.
It’s good if they’re as disorganised as she hopes they are. If they’re simply coping with things as they blunder their way along.
But it’s bad – very bad – if they’re not so amateur. If they’re thinking that once they’ve questioned her about where Anna is, they’re going to kill her rather than let her go.
A sobering thought.
Only one thing brings Valentina some comfort. For now they want her alive.
She has time on her side.
Not much. But time enough.
Time to think. Time to bluff. Time to escape.
The coat over her head is doing a good job of stopping her seeing, but all her other senses are working overtime.
They’ve walked her downstairs, into the crypt, then walked her some more. Made her stand still. Turned her sideways on and then pushed her through a doorway.
Valentina’s memorised it all.
She can retrace her steps, follow her senses, if she has to. If she gets the chance to.
Now the air is colder.
It smells different too. Not of candle wax and church polish; of something earthier, something much baser.
Damp.
It has the metallic smell of damp and animal droppings, probably from mice or rats.
Someone grabs her shoulders, turns her round and holds her as she walks forward.
She’s guided down three or four wide steps.
They turn her left for a few steps and then right again before straightening her up.
They let go of her shoulders and allow her to walk along the flat again.
The twisting and turning has made her a little unsteady. She puts her hand out to avoid falling over.
It touches stone.
She’s sure it’s stone.
It’s rough, hard and lumpy. Totally unlike the plaster or marble of a church.
She rubs her thumb across her two fingers.
Wet and slimy.
The walls are damp.
She guesses she’s in some kind of underground passageway. Perhaps an ancient bolt-hole for priests or nuns at the nearby convent, a place they would hide from persecutors.
Or perhaps it’s something else.
Tom’s comments spring to mind. Pre-Christian cults, castrated followers of Cybele and Attis, ceremonies and rituals involving human sacrifices.
Is she in the midst of
all that?
She remembers too the writing on the walls of the Sacro Cuore del Suffragio – DOMINA. DOMINUS. TEMPLUM. LIBERA NOS A MALO. Mistress. Master. Temple. Deliver us from evil.
Is that where she’s being taken? To the temple?
Valentina realises that she’s not gagged.
She wishes she was.
It’s not a good sign that they’re not afraid of her screaming or shouting for help.
Maybe it’s because the gun is still on her. Occasionally jabbing into her flesh and often accompanied by a command for her to hurry up. Or is it because they’re now so far underground that she could scream herself hoarse and no one would hear her?
She thinks it’s the latter.
She knows they’re already a very long way below and beyond Santa Cecilia, where her fellow soldiers are now no doubt swarming all over the church.
But that’s where her knowledge stops.
And that’s what frightens her most.
106
Lorenzo Silvestri lights Federico’s cigarette for him.
He has to.
The lieutenant’s hand is shaking too much for him to be able to do it himself.
Federico hasn’t been scared by the gunfire, the stabbing, the sudden influx of Carabinieri troops or even the fact that he now has to explain what he and Valentina were doing at the church.
He’s frightened that Valentina is dead.
He’s scared stiff that he misunderstood what she’d asked him to do and as a result she’s been killed.
‘So tell me,’ says Lorenzo, fresh from learning over his earpiece that Federico and his captain are suspended and shouldn’t be doing anything except staying at home and getting fat on cupboard snacks, ‘what were you and Morassi doing at Santa Cecilia?’
Federico tries to explain. ‘We’d both been working a case involving a psychiatric patient called Anna Fratelli. She’d been arrested in connection with a violent incident in Cosmedin. Subsequent enquiries based on what she said to us also resulted in a mutilated male body being found on the banks of the Tiber.’
Lorenzo senses this is going to get complicated. ‘Hang on!’ He pulls a small notebook and pen from a button-down pocket on the leg of his combat pants. ‘Right, continue.’
‘Anna Fratelli died in hospital last night. The doctor in charge of her, Louisa Verdetti, phoned Captain Morassi. It was a strange call. Valentina worked out that Verdetti was being held hostage by someone who wanted to break Anna out of the psych unit.’
The major’s mind is reeling. ‘I’m full of questions here. Who, what and why being at the front of that queue. But first, tell me, are we talking about someone who wanted to take Anna Fratelli’s dead body, or someone who wanted to kidnap her because they thought she was still alive?’
‘The latter.’
‘Okay. But why did this doctor …’ he glances down at his notes, ‘Verdetti, call your captain? Were they friends?’
Federico shakes his head. ‘No. Far from it. Verdetti was the one who got us suspended. She complained to our top brass that we’d pushed Anna too far during interviews and had made her sickness worse.’
‘And did you push her too far?’
Federico hesitates. ‘No, sir. I really don’t think we did.’
‘Explain something to me, Lieutenant. When my men checked with our control room, there was no record that you and Morassi were attempting this recovery operation. Had neither of you called it in?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘Sir, even before we were suspended there was bad blood between Captain Morassi and our commanding officer, Major Caesario.’
Lorenzo begins to see the picture. ‘Bad blood or not, you still should have called it in. I know what Caesario is like but you should have gone by the book.’
Federico looks penitent. ‘Yes, sir.’
Lorenzo stops him with the palm of his hand. It’s clear he’s taking a radio message in his earpiece. ‘Grazie,’ he says to whoever is on the other end. He looks back to Federico. ‘One of my units has just found Doctor Verdetti. She’s fine. Panicky as hell, but she’s unhurt.’
107
Guilio puts his hand on Tom’s arm. ‘Keep a hold of me. We have a little way to go before I can put a light on.’
Tom grabs a clump of jacket and allows himself to be dragged into the darkness.
‘We’re going down two steps. Watch that leg of yours.’
‘Thanks.’ Tom can’t see his own hands, let alone watch his leg, but he appreciates the concern.
Within a dozen steps, Guilio brings them to a halt. ‘Just stay still while I find something.’
From out of the pitch blackness comes the rough scraping sound of a match being struck. It takes several attempts before there’s a burst of orange flame.
In the tiny halo of light, Tom sees a paraffin lamp and Guilio concentrating on winding up a wick.
As the flickering flame gradually grows in the dusty glass chamber, the room becomes visible.
It’s fashioned out of ancient stone.
There’s no furniture.
Nothing hangs on the bare walls.
The floor is no more than an endless slab of compressed dirt and grit.
Tom can’t see the ceiling, but he’s sure it’s unsafe and given his luck will collapse any minute.
Guilio seems to read his mind. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going to fall down. This place has existed for more than two thousand years, so it’ll be safe for another twenty minutes.’
‘Where are we?’
Guilio squats beside the lamp and holds his hand near the glass to catch a little heat. ‘It’s an old house. There are two rooms, one to cook and eat in, another for sleeping and breeding.’
‘So it should be part of the excavation out there?’
‘It will be soon enough. The archaeologists are so focused on identifying artefacts that they’ve already recovered they have no current desire to open the dig further.’
Tom gets the feeling that he’s only brushing the surface of Guilio’s knowledge. ‘Do you know lots of places like this – secret hideaways beneath the city?’
Guilio laughs. ‘Most Roman kids do. If you’re brought up here, it’s like living on top of a thousand old building sites covered with boards and sand. Dig a bit and you just find one den after another.’
Tom lowers himself to the floor and rests against the stone wall. His left knee is throbbing. The kick he took has aggravated an old injury.
Guilio watches him feeling the leg. ‘What have you done to it?’
‘It’s been dodgy for years. Every now and again it locks up when I take a knock or a fall. I saw a doc in Paris and he thinks it’s full of gunge, bits of cartilage and gristle.’
Guilio pulls a sympathetic face. ‘You need one of those keyhole ops.’
‘No thanks.’ Tom stretches out his right arm and grimaces. ‘Shoulder might be worse than the knee. I think that guy with the bat has bust something.’
‘Let me feel.’ Guilio kneels in front of him. ‘Say when it hurts.’ He uses his fingers to feel his way from the shoulder to the neck.
Tom flinches. ‘Whoa! You got it.’
Guilio keeps one hand in place and slips the other beneath Tom’s shirt. ‘I can feel a huge bruise. That’s before I even get to the bone.’
‘Then don’t get there,’ urges Tom.
Guilio ignores him. ‘You’ve got a cracked clavicle. There doesn’t seem to be nerve damage, at least not from the way you reacted. When we get out of here, I’ll give you something for the pain and we’ll make a sling. All you can do is rest it. There’s no miracle cure for fixing collar bones.’
‘Impressive diagnosis. You a doctor?’
Guilio smiles. ‘Let’s just say I was taught a lot about the human body.’
Tom stretches out flat.
It feels good to lie down and straighten his spine and shoulders.
He mentally checks off all the aches and pains and reali
ses it’s going to take days for his body to recover from the beating. ‘I need you to tell me something,’ he says into the flickering shadows.
‘What’s that?’
‘Everything. I need you to tell me it all. Let’s start with your relationship with Anna and finish with how come you were at Santa Cecilia at exactly the same time we were.’
108
A black rat runs into the underground cavern and stops.
It’s been drawn by the light, the warmth and the smell of the paraffin lamp.
It takes a beady look at Tom and Guilio, then turns and scrambles away.
Neither of them comments.
More important matters are being discussed
‘It’s difficult to know where to begin,’ says Guilio. ‘Do you or that policewoman friend of yours have any idea what’s going on?’
‘Let’s pretend we don’t – that way I have more chance of understanding.’
Guilio sits cross-legged on the opposite side of the lamp. ‘Anna and I were brought up together, and I don’t mean in the traditional sense.’ He lets out an ironic laugh. ‘I guess you’ve heard about the children in Romania being raised in the Piata Victoriei subways?’
‘I have.’
‘And the slumdog orphans in Mumbai and the homeless street kids in Rio?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘Well, Italy has its own secret child scandal. Anna and myself, along with a number of other kids, were brought up here in conditions like this.’ He gestures to the four walls of the room. ‘We were bred and raised underground in the catacombs and ruins of Rome.’ He picks up the lamp and twists up more of the wick. ‘Only we weren’t free from adult intervention. Just the opposite. They were the reason we were below ground. Only when we were judged to be fully compliant with the demands of the sect were we allowed to live out in the daylight.’
Tom’s not sure he fully understands. ‘You said sect; what are you talking about?’
‘It’s a branch of the cult of Cybele. It has its roots in a pagan movement going back thousands of years.’
‘Phrygian, then Greek and Roman, based around a prophetic goddess and her belief in female powers and male subordination.’