by John Harris
Caporelli’s voice came, slowly, as though he were startled.
‘Aynree,’ he called. ‘Come in here.’
In the beam of the torch, standing petrified over a fire he’d been attempting to build, was the slender frightened figure of Giovanni, the missing boy from the orphanage, a pocket knife in his hand, his face taut and terrified, the hair lying in thick plastered curls across his forehead.
Sixteen
The boy was standing against the wall, his eyes wide and scared. Beyond him Henry could see the old wood-and-iron sluice gate, black and slimy with age. He’d been trying to light a fire, but the sticks were wet and it was just a heap of smouldering twigs on the stony ground alongside the sluice. There was a dirty saucepan sitting crookedly on top, full of tepid brown water.
Caporelli put the torch down on a stone, placing it carefully so that it wouldn’t roll, then he knelt and pulled the boy towards him, staring up into his face with a wondering expression.
‘What are you doing here, Giovanni?’ he asked.
Giovanni tried to meet his eyes, but failed, and his head hung. ‘I was trying to make the fire go,’ he muttered. ‘I was trying to boil some water.’
‘To drink?’
The boy nodded and Caporelli’s eyes were full of compassion.
‘Listen to me, boy,’ he said gently. ‘Down at the orphanage they are all in tears because you are missing. Down there they are praying for you because they don’t know what has happened to you. Sister Agata herself came to see me. She couldn’t speak for crying.’
The boy’s expression shut down at once, resentful and sullen, and he stood in front of Caporelli, his head low, the black hair hanging over his eyes.
‘Why, boy? Why did you run away?’ Caporelli’s voice was soft and soothing and Henry was surprised at the sudden change in him.
‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘Why did you do this to those good Sisters?’
Giovanni raised his head, his eyes glistening, his face full of desolation and bitterness. ‘Because there was nothing to stay for,’ he said. ‘Sister Ursula – Sister Ursula–’ he choked on words suddenly, and Caporelli swept him into his arms and held him against his breast, not speaking, holding him close while the boy sobbed out his grief.
‘They killed her, Signore,’ he moaned. ‘They killed Sister Ursula and she loved me. I know she loved me. And I never had anybody who loved me so before.’
There were tears in Caporelli’s own eyes as he spoke. ‘But what did you hope to do, boy?’ he asked. ‘What were you going to live on up here?’
‘I don’t know, Signore. I had some matches and I found an old pan and I was going to boil some water. I was cold and I thought it would make me warm. I knew it was all right to drink water if you boiled it first. I read it in one of Sister Ursula’s books.’
‘That was very intelligent of you,’ Caporelli said. ‘But what were you going to eat?’
The boy’s shoulders moved. ‘I don’t know, Signore,’ he muttered. ‘Berries, perhaps. Something like that.’
‘Did you know which berries to eat?’
‘No, Signore. I just hoped. I was going to try to get over the mountains to the north.’
‘But why, boy? Mamma mia, why?’
‘I – I – they told me once that that was where my mother came from. I don’t really know, Signore.’
Giovanni broke down and sobbed again, bewildered and helpless. He had had no plan, no certainty about what he was doing. In his grief and anger he had fled in the only direction that was open to him, without any sure knowledge of his route, without clothes or food or money.
Caporelli held the boy against him, speaking over the top of his head. ‘I have no food with me now, Giovanni,’ he said. ‘Not now. But I’ll find you something as soon as we get back.’
Giovanni’s face lifted to Caporelli’s, thin and pale and like an old man’s in its white weariness. ‘Did you come up here to look for me, Signore?’ he asked.
Caporelli’s eyes caught Henry’s above his head, questioning and worried. ‘What are we going to do with him?’ he seemed to be asking. ‘How can we go on with what we wanted to do now?’
He sighed deeply, looking into Henry’s own hopeless face for help, then he pushed Giovanni away from him. ‘No, Giovanni,’ he said briskly. ‘We didn’t come up here to look for you. We came up here to do some work.’
Giovanni looked puzzled. ‘Work, Signore? Up here? In weather like this?’
‘Yes, Giovanni.’ Caporelli indicated the sluice gate behind them. It was spouting jets and leaks that shot water across the tunnel against the stone wall with the tremendous pressure behind, filling the narrow space with mist.
‘Giovanni,’ he said gently. ‘During the war I learned how to use explosives. Here, in these very mountains, I learned how to blow things up. We have come up here today, the Doctor and I, to blow that gate off. And more, if we can.’
Giovanni looked startled. He stared at the gate, black and rotten with age, then at Caporelli, who tried to explain. ‘There are stupid men down in the valley,’ he said slowly. ‘In Cadivescovo. They are good men, you understand, but they are not very clever and they are lazy. They are not very big men, although they think they are, and they will not take responsibility for things that ought to be taken care of. Not because they are wicked, but because they are stupid. Now the Doctor here’ – he indicated Henry – ‘he is a very clever man. He knows all about dams and bridges and things like that. He goes all over the world looking at them. He writes books about them and knows exactly when they are safe and when they are dangerous, and he says this dam is not safe and that with all this rain it is in danger of collapsing. You remember he spoke to you and to Sister Ursula about it? You had noticed that there were many leaks.’
Giovanni nodded and Caporelli went on slowly, containing his impatience to get to work for fear of frightening the boy.
‘We have tried many times to persuade these stupid people in Cadivescovo that the dam must be drained,’ he said. ‘Before the great wall collapses and washes away the town – and the orphanage and all the farms and houses and all the trees and flowers.’
Giovanni’s eyes flew to Henry’s face. ‘Would it do that, Signore?’
Henry nodded. ‘It would do all of that and more, Giovanni,’ he said soberly.
‘And what are you going to do, then?’
Henry nodded at the gate behind the boy, the dripping slime on it shining in the light of the torch.
‘There’s only one way to drain the dam, Giovanni,’ he said. ‘We must blow that gate out. That one and others too, if we can. If we don’t the main wall may collapse.’
Giovanni stared from Caporelli to Henry and back again, as though he were trying to assess their honesty. Then he looked at the gate and at the brief-case in Henry’s hand.
‘Is that the dynamite?’ he asked.
‘Not dynamite, Giovanni,’ Caporelli said. ‘We have better things than dynamite these days. It’s pentolite. It’s very powerful. They mix it with oil to make it into a plastic that you can mould round things. Like putty. It’s much easier to work with. That’s what we’ve got.’
Giovanni looked interested. ‘Signore, may I watch?’ he asked.
Caporelli gave a sigh of relief and managed a brief smile at Henry. ‘That, Giovanni,’ he said, ‘was what I was going to ask you to do. We haven’t time to take you down to the town and we just can’t leave you to run away again. You must stay with us now until we’ve finished. Afterwards I’ll take care of you, I promise. You may stay at the Stettnerhof and eat all the food you can tuck away. I’ll arrange it with the Mother Superior. Will you do that?’
‘Yes, Signore. If I may watch the explosions?’
Caporelli grinned, as though all the tension had drained away from him.
‘You may even be able to help a little,’ he said. ‘But you must do exactly what you are told and nothing more, because what we’re going to do is dangerous.’ He gestured at the brief-ca
se. ‘The pentolite is in there and the energy contained in the small amount in that bag is released in the form of gas which reaches a speed of several thousand feet per second. The strongest steel is incapable of withstanding the splintering effect of this sudden expansion. You understand all this? It has to be set off with detonators and these detonators can blow your hand off if you don’t handle them carefully. You see why I’m telling you to be careful? I have told the Doctor this, too, and he knows the dangers.’
Giovanni nodded gravely. ‘I will do exactly what I am told, Signore,’ he said.
Caporelli patted his head. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘And when it is all over you must keep it a secret. Nobody is to know what has happened but us. You understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘You may even have to lie a little in case people ask where you have been. They don’t want us to drain the dam, so we have to do it in secret. I will tell them a story about finding you on a mountain and you must remember it and say exactly the same. Do you understand that, too?’
‘Yes, Signore.’
‘It will perhaps mean lying, as I say, and Sister Ursula taught you not to lie. Would you for once lie for me if it is necessary?’
Giovanni nodded briskly. ‘Yes, Signore Caporelli. For you.’
Caporelli pushed him away and, taking off his jacket, slipped it over the boy. ‘Very well, then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ve wasted enough time talking. Let’s get on with it.’
He caught Henry’s eye as he turned away. ‘God help us,’ he said. ‘Making saboteurs of young children.’
Caporelli flashed the torch across the gate and studied it for a second, his face sombre as he stared at the cracks and the hissing jets of water. With the roaring rain outside and the gurgling water in the sluice and the misty dampness in the tunnel, it was icy cold under the stopper wall and they were already soaked to the skin. Henry could feel Giovanni shivering alongside him.
Caporelli seemed to have forgotten the boy already, however, in his absorption with his task.
‘It won’t take long to blow that off,’ he grunted. ‘The water will do what we can’t do.’
After the delay, Henry was itching with impatience, and the way Caporelli opened the brief-case and laid the tools on a stone, one after the other, seemed to be infuriatingly slow. He seemed to read Henry’s thoughts and looked up and smiled.
‘You need to know where things are,’ he said quietly.
He began to work at last, rapidly, moving surely as though he knew every trick and pitfall in the operation. Using the torch, he pawed across the leaking gate, standing knee-deep in the water of the gully, saturated by the jets that played across his body as he felt through the green slime for the weak spots. Then, abruptly, he began to jab with the crowbar, digging into the crumbling cement and stone on one side of the iron frame.
‘It won’t take long,’ he said. ‘It’s already eaten away.’
He unpacked the charges next, and calling to Giovanni to pass him tools, he stuffed the first charge into the hole he’d made, while Henry stood in the sluice alongside him, his trousers plastered against his legs by the rushing water, and worked at the other side of the gate, making a second hole where Caporelli indicated, jabbing with the crowbar, indifferent to his trembling muscles and his skinned knuckles as he scraped them against the stone.
‘Two charges will smash anything this size,’ Caporelli was saying. ‘So long as we place it sufficiently far into the concrete to contain the blast.’
He was talking slowly all the time in an attempt to stop any sign of fear in Giovanni.
‘This way,’ he said, ‘all the force comes outward and wrecks the gate. And we have to mould the plastic against the frame so that it works with maximum efficiency. We don’t need much. We’ll have enough to blow at least three more.’
He moved back from the gate and, picking up the tin of detonators, carefully began to unwrap them. ‘This is where we have to take great care,’ he said slowly, peering down in the light of the torch that Giovanni held. ‘We have to insert these now. They will be linked so that they fire instantaneously. This is a job that demands a cool head and steady hands, as a slip now could make a nasty mess. It is like an electric circuit and each separate element has to be in its proper place. When we’ve done this we must lay out the wire to the battery. After that – whoof!’
He grinned at Giovanni and began to place the second charge, working quickly and methodically all the time, then he attached the wire to the detonators and pressed them firmly into the plastic.
‘A strong charge across that,’ he said, talking like a lecturer, to hold the boy’s attention as he fastened the wire to the gate with string and tape, ‘and up she goes. The way I’ve placed them, they’ll blow the door outwards. No chance of it jamming then – if there’s any of it left.’
He paused and rubbed his fingers, looking up at Giovanni with a bleak smile. ‘Madonna,’ he said. ‘My fingers are cold. It’s all this water. It’s quite like the old days when the Germans were just round the corner.’
He picked up the crowbar and managed a thin smile at Henry.
‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll fix some sort of shelter outside with my cape. Somewhere dry for the battery, round the corner out of the blast. Make sure nothing comes loose. Giovanni, bring that coil of wire. Once the gate’s loose, the pressure behind will blow it out. We’ll need to be outside then. Collect everything ready for the next gate. We’ll not get back in here again when it starts.’
Henry glanced at the rotten gate at the end of the tunnel. Water was still pouring through it in jets that splashed on the walls of the misty tunnel and bubbled out into the concrete sluiceway which carried it down the Val Caloroso and away round La Fortezza to the Punta dei Fiori. Crouching in the spray, cold and soaked to the skin, he tried to visualize what might happen to him if the gate gave before they were ready for it. The immense pressure of the two million tons of water behind it would smash it to splinters that would be driven out of the tunnel like a shot from a gun, the fragments crushing the life out of him against the wall. His eyes flickered across the charges Caporelli had placed. Nobody would thank them for what they were doing, he thought, especially not Dei Monti, and if they were caught by the police it would be hard to explain why they were there and where they’d obtained their explosive. It would probably have been much easier to let the dam go, he decided, and take refuge behind a smug ‘I told you so’.
As he bent over the brief-case, strapping it up again round the plastic, Caporelli picked up his cape and a pair of pliers. The crowbar was resting against the tunnel alongside him and Giovanni held the coil of wire, waiting for instructions, his eyes on Caporelli’s face.
Then, as they started for the entrance to the tunnel, Henry caught a glimpse over his shoulder of a figure silhouetted against the pale light of the entrance and Caporelli’s exclamation made him whirl.
‘Alois!’
It was Stettner. He was smiling, his gold teeth glinting brightly in the light of the torch. But he looked different from usual. Like Caporelli, he was wearing kletteschühe and a heavy cape that made him seem enormous in the choked entrance to the tunnel.
He grinned, and then Henry saw young Dittli appear behind him up the slope. He was carrying a rope and seemed scared and pale and without Stettner’s ebullient self-confidence.
‘The Montanari are here,’ Stettner said. ‘We saw you coming all the way. The refuge at the foot of La Fortezza makes a good shelter in this weather and a good point of vantage.’
‘Cristo!–’
Caporelli lunged at once, his arm raised, and Dittli jumped forward and swung with the heavy rope with all his strength. It caught Caporelli across the face and he staggered back half blinded, trying to blink the sight back to his eyes, a livid weal across his nose and cheeks, and almost choking with rage.
Stettner had a pistol in his hand now and he was gesturing with it. ‘Don’t do that again, brother-in-law,’ he
said harshly.
All the eagerness and excitement Henry had felt as they worked had drained away into bitterness, anger and frustration. He knew immediately why Stettner was there and he knew somehow they would never blow out the stopper gate now.
Another figure appeared in the entrance to the tunnel, wearing a bright green rubber cape, and Henry saw it was Wasescha, the bearded little man he’d seen with Dittli on the mountain.
Stettner was watching their expressions with a smile on his face, his eyes merry. ‘Do you usually bring children with you,’ he asked, gesturing at Giovanni, ‘when you get up to your dirty work?’
Henry swept the boy behind him, circling him with his arm, and he could feel his slender body crouched against his own, trembling.
‘Because you were up to dirty work, weren’t you, Herr Doktor?’ Stettner went on. ‘You were going to blow the gate off, weren’t you? You’ve been itching to do it ever since you came to Cadivescovo.’
His smile vanished and he gestured at Giovanni. ‘What’s he doing here?’ he demanded sharply.
‘Leave him alone,’ Caporelli said between his teeth. ‘If you touch him, Alois, I’ll kill you!’
Stettner shrugged. ‘I very much regret there’ll be quite a lot of killing before the day’s out,’ he said. ‘When we’ve finished here you’re going to take a walk up to the dam. Later, perhaps tomorrow, someone will telephone the police to say there are bodies floating in the water. We had it all planned, though we didn’t expect to find a child here. He’s a different matter and we may have to think of something else. An accident, perhaps. A little plastic explosive that went off too soon. However, Sie sterben für eine gute Sache. You’re dying in a good cause.’ He gestured at the brief-case. ‘What’s in that bag?’ he demanded.
Dittli bent over the case and, as he began to unfasten it, Henry stepped forward to stop him. Stettner pushed him back against the wall.
‘Don’t do that again, Englishman,’ he snapped. ‘Your precious English passport won’t save you. They can’t send a gunboat up here to help, you know. I’ll have to do away with you some time, so I shan’t mind when.’