She reached into the pocket of her jeans and produced a single key, handing it to him. “The latch sticks. You have to pull the door as you are turning the key.”
They looked at each other in the pale moonlight. Her brown eyes were fearful but determined, and her full lips that tasted like ripe strawberries were pressed into a line.
“Five minutes. You understand?”
He marked the time on his diving watch, which glowed weakly in the darkness. “Yes, I understand.”
She leaned in and kissed him lightly on the cheek, then disappeared from view. He knelt there watching the inexorable progress of the second hand on his watch, thinking about the people waiting inside the house, the people he planned to kill. He thought about the Holy Ghost—the speargun, not the third person of the Holy Trinity—and wished he’d had the forethought to bring it along, but he hadn’t, and he would have to make do with the handgun, which, though not as familiar, was a good deal more practical. He removed the clip, confirmed there were plenty of 9mm rounds left, and snapped it back into place. He’d already done this several times on the boat; it was more of a way to kill time than anything else—kill time and avoid thinking about the previous hour, filled with the harsh reports of gunshots and the screams of dying men, and the next hour that promised more of the same.
Elena opened the gate that let out onto the road above and slipped through, closing it quietly, avoiding the place where it scraped noisily against the stone. She jogged up the road, spurred on by a profound disquiet. She just wanted to see her daughter sleeping in her bed and listen to her breathing. She had made many bad choices in her life, and she was deeply afraid that her daughter and her sister were about to pay for them. It had never occurred to her to be ashamed of the person she’d become, but she understood how shame felt at this moment, as the breeze blew through the untended vineyards above her, and the waves roared against the rocks below.
She stopped in front of a makeshift gangplank between the road and a small rooftop porch. Taking her gun out, she snapped off the safety and stuffed it in her waistband, then walked across the gangplank and let herself in. She slipped off her shoes and tiptoed down the circular stairs that descended from the landing.
The door to her daughter’s bedroom was ajar, and she nudged it open and went in. Even in the dark, she knew Gianna wasn’t there; there was no smell of the lavender shampoo with which her daughter washed her hair, and she couldn’t hear the sounds of her small chest heaving.
But she wasn’t panicked yet. Her sister slept in the downstairs bedroom, and Gianna usually slept with her when Elena was out at sea. She pulled the gun from her waist and went down the main stairs, feeling her way. How often had she done this after coming home from work in the dark, guiding her way by feel so as to not wake her sleeping family?
The men who had been keeping her family captive had been staying in the living room; she lifted her gun, ready—hoping—to kill them both as they slept on the couches, but the room was empty. She started toward the bedroom, but the slight squeak of a chair on the kitchen tile stopped her. Perhaps her sister was waiting up for her to come home safe. She walked into the kitchen, arm behind her back so as not to frighten whoever was there. She need not have bothered. There was no way her daughter, gagged and bound to a kitchen chair, could be more frightened than she already was. Her brown eyes were wide with terror, and an ugly bruise covered her right temple.
Something hard smashed into Elena’s head, and she crumpled to the floor. She tried to get up, but she felt a sharp pain in her ribs, and the breath left her. Strong hands wrenched the gun from her grasp and sat her up against the wall.
“Mohammed warned you, Elena.” The man’s voice was pregnant with malice. “But you ignored him.”
He walked over to the kitchen table and sat down behind Gianna. He produced a knife and held it to her neck. The blade bit into her skin, and blood streamed down, staining her white blouse with splotches of crimson.
“He is not the sort of man you should ignore.”
Elena made a move to get up, but he lifted his gun, and she sank back against the wall.
“I have very little time, so I will make this short. I will give you two minutes to tell me what happened. If you tell me the truth, I will kill you and spare your daughter.” He ran his fingers through Gianna’s dark hair. “If you refuse, I will make this cut on her neck deeper until you talk.”
To illustrate his point, he put the knife back against Gianna’s neck and pressed harder, causing the dribble of blood down her neck to become a small stream.
The sea breeze whistled with unusual vigor for this time of year, almost December-like in its strength. As a consequence, the breakers crashed with ferocity, creating a din loud enough to drown out the staccato hammering of his heart as Marco watched the last seconds tick away. When the appointed time came, he switched off the safety on his gun and ran along the wall until he reached the house. Crouching down, he made his way along the front of the building, passing beneath the windows that looked out onto the quiet street, the village beneath it, and the sea below that. He stood up once he had passed the last window, extracting the key from his pocket. Before he inserted it, he put his ear to the door and listened, but all he could hear was the hiss of his own breath as it drew in and issued forth.
He inserted the key and pulled the handle as he twisted; the latch released, and he opened the door wide enough for him to walk through. Elena’s voice spilled out from the kitchen to his left. He tried to discern the words, but even if she had been speaking Italian—which she wasn’t—her rushed cadence would have thwarted his efforts. But he didn’t need to understand the words to appreciate what had happened: she had been captured, and now she was trying to cover the sound of his entry with a breathless monologue.
He slipped through the open door and slid across the wood flooring in the direction of the kitchen. Elena’s voice, ripe with terror, was clearly audible as he crossed the living room, trying to get a better angle. He took two more steps and stopped; in the dim light afforded by a small lamp, he saw exactly what he’d feared seeing.
Elena’s daughter was tied to a kitchen chair. A gag obscured her pale face, and her eyes were large with fear. A man stood behind her, holding a knife to her throat. Blood seeped from a wound in her neck. Marco stepped back quickly lest the man see him, but his gaze was focused straight across the kitchen, likely centered on Elena, who was out of view. Elena had mentioned that there were two men, but there was no sign either of the other man or of Francesca. Marco craned his neck around, searching the interior of the house, but saw no one else.
The seconds ticked away, bearing witness to his growing paralysis. He needed to act, but action eluded him. Then inertia grabbed him and flattened him against the wall. There were two people on the other side of the plasterboard whose lives depended on him, and they were all going to die if he didn’t do something. He closed his eyes, trying to conjure up an image to motivate him, but all he could see was the lifeless form of Karim lying on the floor of the Bel Amica, oozing blood from multiple gunshot wounds.
Basim watched the seconds wind down on the silver dial of his watch. Elena was still speaking, spewing drivel in clear, firm Arabic about a priest killing Karim and Tariq and the others. He couldn’t believe the woman wasn’t telling the truth; perhaps she realized he was going to kill them both anyway.
“You have ten seconds, Elena. Tell me what really happened, or say goodbye to your daughter.”
“I have told you what happened.”
He found her conviction profoundly disquieting. In the course of his bloody and brutal career, Basim had extracted many confessions. One particular interrogation came to mind as Elena reiterated her fantastic tale for the third time without changing so much as a single detail. He had been in Palestine, in the small kitchen of an Israeli informant who had betrayed him. The woman had held stubbornly to her story until Basim had choked the life out of her child in front of her, at which point t
he truth had spilled out of her mouth like a raging torrent.
The final seconds dissolved, and he set down his knife and wrapped his thick fingers around the girl’s neck. Elena stared at him with a silent fury that excited him on some primeval level.
“Tell me the truth now, or I will kill her.”
Marco understood the man’s threat clearly, despite his ignorance of Arabic, causing a fresh layer of sweat to dampen his brow. There was an undertone to the words that needed no translation. He had to act now.
He tiptoed across the living room floor, gripping the handgun with both hands, envisioning himself wedged between two rocks, darting out to snap a shot at a passing fish. He spun around the corner, leveling the weapon as he wheeled. His eyes searched for the target, ignoring everything else. He saw a patch of brown skin below a well-trimmed beard and squeezed the trigger. He heard the dull thud of the suppressor and felt the recoil of the gun against his sweaty palm.
The man tried to cry out, but the bullet had eviscerated his trachea; his windpipe filled up with blood, and the shout became a gurgle. His hands went limp and slid off the girl’s neck, and he slumped to the floor. He tried to get up, but Marco held him down with his foot until he lay still.
Elena tore at the gag binding Gianna’s mouth. Marco switched on the light and ran into the living room to look for the other man, but all he found was a collection of custom-made furniture and a pair of expensive watercolors. Climbing the stairs, he searched the bedrooms, which were clear as well. When he returned downstairs, Elena had freed her daughter from her bonds. They were standing in the center of the kitchen, hanging onto each other for dear life, sobbing into each other’s shoulders.
“Where is Francesca?”
Elena looked at him with widening eyes and mumbled something to Gianna, who responded with a gush of words in the Ligurian dialect.
“The other man left with her a few hours ago.”
“Where did they go?”
Gianna shook her head, her large brown eyes brimming with tears. Elena sat down on the chair, pulling her daughter onto her lap. It was at once a tragic and heart-warming scene, but one that couldn’t continue indefinitely.
Marco bent over the felled man and examined him in the feeble light of the lamp on top of the kitchen counter. He was medium-sized, with a lean face that might have been viewed as handsome if the blood weren’t drained from it, and a long, almost feminine neck marred by the gunshot wound. He carried no cell phone, wallet, or identification; he had nothing on his person other than a holstered sidearm and a bloodstained jambiya in its sheath.
“Elena.”
Her eyes opened as if against a great weight. Marco could see in them many things, among them relief, understanding, and anger. The anger was more prominent than the other emotions. She knew where they had to go—to the Castello di Giordano, where she had been told to take the men—and she knew what they had to do when they got there.
“I can’t leave her.”
“We can’t bring her with us.”
Gianna’s sobs increased in volume; Marco could feel them resonating in the floor, which shook slightly beneath his feet.
“I have a friend on the Via Gasperti; I will ask her to watch Gianna.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
Elena shrugged, reaching for the phone. It was answered swiftly. She delivered a barrage of Ligurian dialect and hung up without waiting for an answer.
“Let’s go.”
Marco pointed to the dead man, who was oozing a steady stream of blood over the kitchen tiles. “What about him?”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
“What if someone finds him? We may not get back for a while.”
“My neighbors all think I work for the ’Ndrangheta. No one comes near this place.”
Elena retrieved her gun from where it lay on the marble tiles and motioned for Marco and Gianna to follow her out the front door. Her friend was waiting for them on the porch of a narrow row house at the top of the Via Gasperti. If she was put off by Marco’s presence, she didn’t show it, wrapping her short arms around Gianna and ushering her into the house without looking back.
Elena stood watching Gianna until she disappeared, then followed Marco, who was already running down the street. They reached the harbor without seeing anything other than a lone cat skulking across the road in front of them, and splashed into the water. The twin diesels coughed to a start, Marco raised the anchor, and Elena piloted the Bel Amica out into open water.
“There is a stone jetty underneath the cliff upon which the guest house was built,” she said.
Marco nodded, remembering it vaguely from his days as a retreatant. “Can you bring us there without lights?”
“Yes, but they will hear us.”
“Not at high tide. The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks is deafening. And then what?”
“There is a flight of steps hewn into the rock.”
Marco remembered the time he had taken Elena and Gianna for a picnic lunch on a bluff overlooking Vernazza. Elena had not ventured within twenty meters of the cliff’s edge.
“Can you climb it?”
“I would climb to the gates of hell if it meant saving my daughter.”
“Good, because that’s where we’re going.”
Four
The cliff was steeper than Marco had remembered it, and higher as well, the steps zigzagging over one hundred meters in steep ascent before they ended on the back porch of the castle’s guest quarters. The handrail escorting them up the precipice was largely gone, rising only a few meters before it disappeared. Elena went first, and Marco followed close behind, using one hand to probe the rock for handholds and the other to lock around her waist. Their progress was slow; at times, fear stiffened her legs, and Marco was forced to wrap both his arms around her—how good it felt to wrap his arms around her—and push her up the steep incline.
They rested midway up the cliff in a natural alcove formed by a fissure in the sandstone. He had spent many hours in this spot, trying to hear God’s voice in the roar of the breakers. How many times had he gotten down on his knees and asked if he had made the right choice? The howl of the wind had been the only response, which he was left to interpret as best he could.
“You are sure the key is still there? It was four years ago.”
“Nothing changes in Liguria, Elena. That’s why I like it here.”
A pair of cawing gulls swooped by, which Marco took as encouragement to go on. He turned to nudge Elena, but she was already standing in front of him. Her eyes were wide with fear, but her teeth were clenched, and Marco detected a faint glimmer of hope in the erect bearing of her spine.
“She is alive, Marco. I can see her face in my mind.”
“Keep watching her.”
Up they went, marching to the drumbeat of the breakers and the vocal accompaniment of the gulls. They rested one last time near the top, just underneath the steepest stretch, and Marco used the pause to make sure the safety catch on his speargun was off. He prayed he wouldn’t have to use it, but it was a half-hearted prayer, without conviction. The men he was about to face were men of guns and steel, and he would have to fight them in kind.
The wind whined against the cliff and rose like a thermal, in swirling currents of warm air. A curtain of gray appeared above the black rock, and they ascended the last flight of steps in a crouch and peered over the rim.
The guest quarters were in front of them, a low stone building situated on the edge of the cliff. The castle itself, a huge geometric figure in the murky light, was perched at the tip of the island, at least a kilometer to the south. All they needed to do was cross the short distance to the back door of the guest house, retrieve the old skeleton key from under the clay pot, and they were in. The problem was the sentry pacing back and forth along the narrow strip where Marco used to sit and enjoy the view.
Elena stood up as soon as the guard turned away from them, and shot him in the neck.
He dropped to the ground without a sound, and she kicked him over the side and watched him slide down the polished sandstone face with the self-satisfied look of a woman who had just brought a bag of rank trash to the curb.
A scream emanated from his left. He thought at first it was Elena—the voice was identical—but Elena was still standing in front of him.
“Francesca!”
He bolted across the porch, pushed the clay pot out of the way, and snatched up the key. Turning back to the door, he saw Elena’s back already filling the open frame and heard the thump thump of the muffled handgun. He followed her inside, jumped over the body lying on the floor, and made for the bedroom. The massive four-poster bed was still there, but the decorative draping had been slashed down and pulled to the floor. Elena was ahead of him, pointing her pistol at a man wearing a white uniform, who was holding Francesca fast against him, his gun pressed into her temple. They exchanged words in Arabic, which—other than the name Mohammed—Marco couldn’t understand, and glared at each other murderously, which he understood well.
Mohammed demanded something, likely wanting Elena to drop her gun. Elena didn’t reply, but her pistol didn’t waver from its mark. Mohammed repeated his demand, punctuating his words by pressing the barrel of his gun into Francesca’s temple, creating a bruise that blossomed like a red flower on her olive skin. Marco stepped into the room, watching the stalemate in front of him: neither person spoke; neither person moved.
The strike of the gun against the floorboards sounded as loud as a shot in the silence. Elena stared at the weapon for a second and then kicked it toward Mohammed, giving Marco no choice. He aimed and fired; the spear struck Mohammed in the arm, just below the shoulder, releasing his gun from his grasp. He shoved his hostage out of the way and dove for Elena’s gun with his unscathed arm outstretched.
Marco yanked the handgun out of his belt and fired three times. Mohammed hit the floor and rolled over once before coming to rest, lying supine with half of his face gone.
The Vatican Conspiracy: A completely gripping action thriller (A Marco Venetti Thriller Book 1) Page 3