The Cross of Lazzaro

by John Harris

  The town was dead and devoid of any kind of communication with the outside world. Food was short and water was short and there was a hysterical, unhealthy atmosphere among the soaked ruins because of the danger of typhoid suddenly flaring up. Hundreds of people were still lying in the wet grass on the slopes of the mountains, afraid to come down, and nobody knew what was under the new floor of the valley.

  A loudspeaker in the square was warning people to beware of cyanide washed away from the dye-works, and the radio was full of appeals for blood plasma. A newspaper, brought over from Trepizano, had been thrown aside and lay in the gutter, saturated and muddy, and the headlines blared up at Henry as he passed – ‘Justice will be done,’ the solemn promise of some clean, dry official from Rome. ‘It had better be,’ the newspaper had added in an equally solemn threat.

  The birds were singing with heart-breaking happiness over the bell of Madonna del Piano tolling a Miserere as they approached the improvised jetty that had been thrown up. Knee-deep in the water of the lake, three soldiers were dragging out the corpse of a man, and there was a woman nearby watching, her face thin and ancient-looking with grief. Then Henry saw a television van and a boom-lens directed at him, and a man with a flash-camera stood up in front of him and half blinded him as the bulb went off.

  He saw Mornaghini walking slowly towards the boats, his head bent, hatless and coatless. He had lost his home and his family, and his reputation had vanished. As he climbed into the waiting launch, someone called from the shore: ‘Murderer! Assassin!’

  There had been no demand for an international rescue operation. There was nothing to find and the valley could never be restored. Nothing would ever grow again in the muddy subsoil and among the piled rocks – only the coarse mountain grass and stunted pines leaning towards the lake in the winds that blew down the valley, stark and grey as dead limbs. It was as bare and featureless as the higher slopes of the mountains and just as cold-looking, even in the sun.

  Here and there he could see a tent erected in a garden, as the occupants of the house tried to clean out their wrecked home, and occasionally a shop with the inevitable Business as usual sign in the window. Father Gianpiero was in the middle of a small group of people who stood with their hands together and their heads bowed. His face was white, his head bandaged, and his voice sounded thin and reedy over the noise of the bulldozers and mechanical shovels doing rescue work by the lakeside.

  ‘Troppo li abbiamo noi meritati avendo peccato contro di Voi–’

  Of Father Anselmo nothing more had been seen. He had disappeared with his church in the first awful roaring of the flood.

  Henry put his hand out to Maggie and drew her to him and they stood aside as the nuns packed the children into the launches to he taken out to the Citta di Trepizano, then they walked slowly, hand in hand, down the improvised jetty themselves. The launch was already full of people with pale drawn faces, all of them, it seemed, with black-covered buttons sewn on their lapels. Maggie and Henry took their places with them among the archaeologists with their suitcases and packs, their shoulders draped with cameras and diving gear. There was no longer anything for them to do. They had offered to help but the police had politely requested them to go home. There was no food for anyone but the helpers, they said, and since they no longer had any work, they had had no option but to leave.

  There was no Customs Shed and no boats, and no treasures from the bottom of the lake. No Church of Lazzaro di Colleno. Not even Bishop Lazzaro himself, because the church had collapsed across the crypt and even the bones had gone as everything had been scoured clean. There was not even any Dei Monti to complain because his body had been found in the wreckage of his hotel. There was nothing. Nothing at all – only Arcuneum at the Punta dei Fiori, untouched and undamaged by the flood.

  Just Arcuneum – discovered, as everyone had wanted it to be, undisturbed, as they’d wanted it to be, still waiting to be picked clean when anyone had the courage or the stomach to investigate it again. One of the finest relics in Europe, they’d called it – as unharmed and unmarked as it had been a thousand years before, left there untouched in the disaster around it, like a symbol of the smallness of man.

  Just Arcuneum, and the Cross of Lazzaro. It had been discovered among the wreckage of the church, very little damaged, protected from destruction by the collapse of a group of beams which had formed an arch above it and held it in place like a vice against the roaring waters, with the great oak timbers from over the doorway, Gebet Gott was Gottes ist, jammed against it like a warning to interfering humans – Give to God what belongs to God. Apart from a few scars, the cross was as undamaged as when it had first been raised from the water, as though its own apparently magic properties had protected it. But this time, there was no one to say it was a miracle, no one to produce red velvet and floodlights, and the cross remained in its splintered bower of fallen beams, almost forgotten, catalytic, stark and black and gaunt, like the stamp and seal of the tragedy that had followed it.

  There was nothing else, just that long scar running up the side of the valley to where the Catena di Saga closed in, and the gap by La Fortezza where the dam had been, like a hole in a great gum where a tooth had been extracted. Nothing else but the magnificent sky and the pearly spires of the mountains.

  Synopses of John Harris Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

  Army of Shadows

  It is the winter of 1944. France is under the iron fist of the Nazis. But liberation is just around the corner and a crew from a Lancaster bomber is part of the fight for Freedom. As they fly towards their European target, a Messerschmitt blazes through the sky in a fiery attack and of the nine-man crew aboard the bomber, only two men survive to parachute into Occupied France. They join an ever-growing army of shadows (the men and women of the French Resistance), to play a lethal game of cat and mouse.

  China Seas

  In this action-packed adventure, Willie Sarth becomes a survivor. Forced to fight pirates on the East China Seas, wrestle for his life on the South China Seas and cross the Sea of Japan ravaged by typhus, Sarth is determined to come out alive. Dealing with human tragedy, war and revolution, Harris presents a novel which packs an awesome punch.

  The Claws of Mercy

  In Sierra Leone, a remote bush community crackles with racial tensions. Few white people live amongst the natives of Freetown and Authority seems distant. Everyday life in Freetown revolves around an opencast iron mine, and the man in charge dictates peace and prosperity for everyone. But, for the white population, his leadership is a matter of life or death where every decision is like being snatched by the claws of mercy.

  Corporal Cotton’s Little War

  Storming through Europe, the Nazis are sure to conquer Greece but for one man, Michael Anthony Cotton, a heroic marine who smuggles weapons of war and money to the Greek Resistance. Born Mihale Andoni Cotonou, Cotton gets mixed up in a lethal mission involving guns and high-speed chases. John Harris produces an unforgettable champion, persuasive and striking with a touch of mastery in this action-packed thriller set against the dazzle of the Aegean.

  The Cross of Lazzaro

  The Cross of Lazzaro is a gripping story filled with mystery and fraught with personal battles. This tense, unusual novel begins with the seemingly divine reappearance of a wooden cross once belonging to a sixth-century bishop. The vision emerges from the depths of an Italian lake, and a menacing local antagonism is subsequently stirred. But what can the cross mean?

  Flawed Banner

  John Harris’ spine-tingling adventure inhabits the shadowy world of cunning and espionage. As the Nazi hordes of Germany overrun France, devouring the free world with fascist fervour, a young intelligence officer, James Woodyatt, is shipped across the Channel to find a First World War hero…an old man who may have been a spy…who may be in possession of Nazi secrets.

  The Fox From His Lair

  A brilliant German agent lies in wait for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occ
upied France. While the Allies prepare a vast armed camp, no one is aware of the enemy within, and when a sudden, deadly E-boat attacks, the Fox strikes, stealing secret invasion plans in the ensuing panic. What follows is a deadly pursuit as the Fox tries to get the plans to Germany in time, hotly pursued by two officers with orders to stop him at all costs.

  A Funny Place to Hold a War

  Ginger Donnelly is on the trail of Nazi saboteurs in Sierra Leone. Whilst taking a midnight paddle with a willing woman in a canoe cajoled from a local fisherman, Donnelly sees an enormous seaplane thunder across the sky only to crash in a ball of brilliant flame. It seems like an accident…at least until a second plane explodes in a blistering shower along the same flight path.

  Getaway

  An Italian fisherman and his wife, Rosa, live in Sydney. Hard times are ahead. Their mortgaged boat may be lost and with it, their livelihood. But Rosa has a plan to reach the coast of America from the islands of the Pacific, sailing on a beleaguered little houseboat. The plan seems almost perfect, especially when Willie appears and has his own reasons for taking a long holiday to the land of opportunity.

  Harkaway’s Sixth Column

  An explosive action-packed war drama: four British soldiers are cut off behind enemy lines in British Somaliland and when they decide to utilise a secret arms dump in the Bur Yi hills and fight a rearguard action, an unlikely alliance is sought between two local warring tribes. What follows is an amazing mission led by the brilliant, elusive Harkaway, whose heart is stolen by a missionary when she becomes mixed up in the unorthodox band of warriors.

  A Kind of Courage

  At the heart of this story of courage and might, is Major Billy Pentecost, commander of a remote desert outpost near Hahdhdhah, deep among the bleak hills of Khalit. His orders are to prepare to move out along with a handful of British soldiers. Impatient tribesmen gather outside the fort, eager to reclaim the land of their blood and commanded by Abd el Aziz el Beidawi, a feared Arab warrior lord. A friendship forms between the two very different commanders but when Pentecost’s orders are reversed, a nightmarish tragedy ensues.

  Live Free or Die

  Charles Walter Scully, cut off from his unit and running on empty, is trapped. It’s 1944 and though the Allied invasion of France has finally begun, for Scully the war isn’t going well. That is, until he meets a French boy trying to get home to Paris. What begins is a hair-raising journey into the heart of France, an involvement with the French Liberation Front and one of the most monumental events of the war. Harris vividly portrays wartime France in a panorama of scenes that enthral the reader.

  The Lonely Voyage

  The Lonely Voyage is John Harris’ first novel - a graphic, moving tale of the sea. It charts the story of one boy, Jess Ferigo, who winds up on a charge of poaching along with Pat Fee and Old Boxer, the men who sail with him on his journey into manhood. As Jess leaves his boyhood behind, bitter years are followed by the Second World War, where Old Boxer and Jess make a poignant rescue on the sand dunes of Dunkirk. Finally, Jess Ferigo’s lonely voyage is over.

  The Mercenaries

  Ira Penaluna, First World War pilot, sees his airline go bankrupt in Africa and grabs at the chance to instruct pilots in China. But Ira hasn’t reckoned on the beat-up, burnt-out wrecks he is expected to teach his students in, or on the fact that his pupils speak no English. Though aided and abetted by an enthusiastic assistant, an irresponsible Fagan and his brooding American girlfriend Ellie, Ira finds himself playing a deadly game, becoming embroiled in China’s civil war. The four are forced to flee but the only way out is in a struggling pile of junk flown precariously towards safety. Will they make it?

  North Strike

  It is 1939. The Royal Navy urgently needs information about German raiders. There is only one place to get it…the port of Narvik and only one man capable – Magnusson. A story of the daring, outrageous exploits of a spy rescuing British prisoners from the Altmark and swept up in to the German battle for Norway.

  The Old Trade of Killing

  Harris’ exciting adventure is set against the backdrop of the Western Desert and scene of the Eighth Army battles. The men who fought together in the Second World War return twenty years later in search of treasure. But twenty years can change a man. Young ideals have been replaced by greed. Comradeship has vanished along with innocence. And treachery and murder make for a breathtaking read.

  Picture of Defeat

  It is 1943 and Naples has been looted by the Allies and Axis powers alike, its priceless art treasures coveted by some of the most corrupt criminal minds in Europe. But under the orders of Field Security, Tom Pugh must save the paintings of Detto Banti, no matter what the cost. In this tantalising read, one man stands against a tide of wilful destruction and greed, trying to save a past for the people of Naples’ future.

  The Quick Boat Men

  Edward Dante Bourdillon is a man whose fate is linked to the oceans. His parents perished on the waves and, brought up by his uncle who owns a boatyard, Edward leads a life in love with the sea. That is, until he sinks his uncle’s yacht. Soon our hero is bound for Cape Town on an old tramp steamer. From earthquakes to shipwreck, it seems his fortune is turning sour until forgiveness and World War One looms on the horizon.

  Ride Out the Storm

  The Allies, faced with a shameful defeat, are trapped between the onslaught of the mighty German army and the tumult of the ocean waves. Those that do not die face capture and surrender to the Nazis. But only nine days later more than a quarter of a million men have been rescued and placed safely on the shores of England, saved by an amazing assorted flotilla of barges, tugs, rowing boats and dinghies. This is the incredible story of a mass exodus across the Channel. John Harris tells the miraculous story of Dunkirk.

  Right of Reply

  Struggle, scandal and mutiny run riot in Right of Reply, set in the 1970s in a whirlwind of a political crisis. An invasion is planned by a convoy of British troop ships sighted off the coast of West Africa. A Khanzian base is at stake. The British claim sovereignty but sedition is in the air. Can the British government turn back before it’s too late? John Harris leaves us on tenterhooks.

  Road to the Coast

  It’s South America and a fugitive Englishman is caught in a military revolt against a tyrant. Harry Ash is a wanted man, fleeing the police and revolutionaries. After being bombed, he meets a beautiful woman, Grace Rodrigo, and steals a car to take her with him before realising they have a stow-away who could very well endanger their entire escape plan. John Harris pulls off a triumph of an action-packed narrative full of the kind of tension that will have you on the edge of your seat.

  The Sea Shall Not Have Them

  This is John Harris’ classic war novel of espionage in the most extreme of situations. An essential flight from France leaves the crew of RAF Hudson missing, and somewhere in the North Sea four men cling to a dinghy, praying for rescue before exposure kills them or the enemy finds them. One man is critically injured; another (a rocket expert) is carrying a briefcase stuffed with vital secrets. As time begins to run out each man yearns to evade capture. This story charts the daring and courage of these men, their rescuers and a breathtaking mission with the most awesome of consequences.

  The Sleeping Mountain

  The sleepy red-roofed Italian island of Anapoli, its lazy, leaning buildings pushed against the jagged harbour, dreams on peaceably by the sea. It is here that Tom Patch, an easy-going British artist, finds himself, discarding his mistress and in love with Cecilia. Even the Mayor of Anapoli basks in the sun, listening to goat bells and the rasp of mandolins. But above the unsuspecting residents hangs a malevolent volcano; a terrible destructive power seething below its crust. And the volcano is about to blow.

  Smiling Willie and the Tiger

  The Boer War is finally ending and for three thieves there is the unexpected bonus of stealing an army payroll so large that they have to bury it outside a Free State town until the heat cools
off. But the army choose an officer to help track them down. While the thieves wait for an opportunity to return to the stolen bounty, the officer chases them, giving rise to a riotous set of events. Based on a true story, John Harris’ adventure entertains and delights in a series of incredulous scenarios brought to glorious life against the backdrop of South Africa’s diamond mines.

  So Far From God

  With Europe on the brink of the First World War, Pierce Slattery, a renegade cavalry officer with the British Army, brings an astonishing insight and masterful fighting abilities to the aid of a revolution, led by Pancho Villa. Their army of ill-trained, poorly prepared peasants are fighting for their lives and their freedom – but British Intelligence has an interest in the Mexican Revolution and in the striking Slattery.

  The Spring of Malice

  An assassination attempt of a top American general, a pointed gun and an unpulled trigger cause uproar in Paris. The Spring of Malice tells a story of political intrigue and intent. John Harris digs the depths of an assassin’s mind and discovers a horrifying obsession that drives a man to murder in this gripping account of pride, arrogance and the deadly games of government.

  Sunset at Sheba

  An evocative and moving novel set in the landscape of South Africa, 1914, where a story of courage and bloodlust unravels ‘between the mimosa shrubs and the thin pepper trees’; this is a story which began with fervent patriotism and ended in more bloodshed than anyone ever meant to spill. This is the story of the Battle of Sheba.