by Kai Meyer
Di Santis nodded without looking at her. Rosa thought of Valerie’s dungeon in the hotel basement, and stopped. She took the contessa’s upper arm and made her turn to face her. “What’s this all about?”
“Just a moment more. Please be patient.”
“What’s going on?”
“You’ll understand in a minute.”
“I didn’t come here to—”
“I know why you came here, Signorina Alcantara, and I am doing all I can to help you. I am on your side.” With that, she shook Rosa’s hand off her arm and led her through another door into a corridor paved with white tiles.
A little later they were entering the hotel swimming pool area, an impressive, domed chamber with a huge wall of windows looking out over the sea. Tiles the color of turquoise and terra-cotta dominated the room.
Broad flights of steps on all four sides led down to the spacious pool. It was about nine feet deep in the middle. The water must have been drained away long ago; it didn’t even smell damp anymore.
Trevini’s wheelchair lay, toppled over, in the dry pool. The avvocato himself was crouching several feet away from it at the foot of one of the flights of steps. He must have crawled over to it on his belly. Now he was sitting there, exhausted, half propped on the bottom step, his useless legs twisted. His elegant suit was crumpled, his sparse gray hair drenched with sweat.
Rosa’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the contessa again. “Explain.”
Di Santis didn’t move a muscle. “It’s in your own interests.”
Rosa’s hand slipped into her bag. Her fingers closed around the handle of the staple gun.
“You came to ask him questions,” said di Santis. “This could be your last chance.”
At the bottom of the swimming pool, the old man laboriously raised his head. “Rosa…this is lunacy…”
“What’s going on?” she hissed at the contessa. “Who are you? And what are you up to?”
The young attorney took a deep breath. “I’d hoped to have more time. I would have liked to learn even more from him.”
“He trusted you.”
“It was more difficult than I’d expected. He is a stubborn old man, but after a while he warmed to me. The time came when he couldn’t wait to pour his heart out to me day after day.”
Down in the pool below, Trevini moved. “She knows everything, Rosa. About your family, about Costanza…Kill her, before she sells her knowledge to the enemies of the Alcantaras.”
“Looks like you did that already, Trevini,” Rosa replied coldly.
“Once again,” the contessa told Rosa, “I am not your enemy.”
The handle of the staple gun was slowly warming up in Rosa’s hand. “Those men out there in the lobby—”
“Are being well paid for preferring me to their former employer.”
“She’s out of her mind!” Trevini screamed.
Rosa looked at the contessa. “I don’t think so.”
“Think of it as a kind of job application,” said di Santis, in the composed way that Rosa both disliked and admired. “When all this is over, you’re going to need a new legal adviser, Signorina Alcantara. Someone in a position to carry on with the avvocato’s business in a way that suits you.”
“So that’s what you’re after?” asked Rosa, astonished. “You want to succeed him as legal adviser?”
Di Santis shook her head, amused. “First and foremost it’s a case of reparations. Revenge would be a crude way to put it.”
“Revenge for what?”
“My family was once a highly respected Cosa Nostra clan. Landed property, factories, all kinds of business firms—the di Santis clan had more than enough of all that. My grandfather was one of the most powerful capi in the west of the island. Until he made the mistake of quarreling with the Corleonese bosses.”
Rosa knew about that. The capos from the small town of Corleone had waged bloody war in the eighties against anyone who disputed their claim to dominance of the Sicilian Mafia. Massacres and bombs had assassinated whole families. For years no one could do anything against the will of the Corleonese, and it was generally known that the di Santis family had been among those on their hit list. Only the contessa and a handful of her relations had survived. Since then, it was said, the remaining members of the clan had retired from the Mafia business.
“For years no one knew for sure who had handed my family over to them.” Cristina di Santis walked over to the edge of the top step. For the first time her smooth, serene facial expression changed. The glance she cast at the helpless Trevini was one of deep contempt. “The avvocato has worked for your clan for decades, Signorina Alcantara, and very conscientiously, too. That didn’t stop him from running his own businesses on the side, and during the course of it, unfortunately, my father and brother got in his way. He started the rumor that my family was secretly scheming against the Corleone Mafia: He forged documents, he bribed two state prosecutors—and from then on it all gathered speed. He had only to lean back and wait until the murderers from Corleone had wiped out a large part of our family at a wedding party. Men, women, almost a dozen children. I was a small child at the time; I’d been left at home with my nursemaid, that’s the only reason I survived. My mother was shot—eleven bullets were later found in her body. My elder brother was burned to death when he and several others were herded into the restaurant kitchen, drenched in gasoline, and set on fire. Only a few escaped, including my father, but he was never the same man. For years I had to listen to his whining, hear him justifying his cowardice. When I was finally old enough, I went to northern Italy. But all that time, at university and later, I knew I would go back and find out who was responsible for the extermination of the di Santis family. In the end it wasn’t even difficult to find Trevini’s name. But it was hard to get him to confide in me. For three years I’ve been licking his boots, disowning my family, until at last he came out with parts of the truth. I sold myself to him. And now it’s finally payback time.”
“Why now?” asked Rosa. “Why today in particular?”
“Because otherwise you’d have done it, Signorina Alcantara. Because after all you’ve seen on that video, I suspect you, too, have a number of questions to ask the avvocato. And because there’s someone else who will very soon be demanding satisfaction.”
“Someone else?” The words were hardly out of Rosa’s mouth before she understood. “It was you! You promised Alessandro the evidence that the Carnevares were innocent of the Hungry Man’s arrest!”
“Unfortunately, events have rather overtaken one another,” replied the contessa. “I would have liked to take my time about it, be more circumspect. However, Trevini insisted on sending you the video. Then I knew it all had to be done very fast.”
Trevini uttered a hoarse crack of laughter. “You talked to Alessandro Carnevare? Cristina, are you out of your mind? There won’t be one stone left to stand on here once—”
Narrowing her eyes, Rosa stared at the old man. “You gave the Hungry Man away all those years ago? And pinned the blame on the Carnevares?”
He snorted quietly but didn’t answer.
Di Santis nodded slowly. “There aren’t many files and documents in this place—his memory really is as phenomenal as he claims. But there is a letter from the state prosecutor’s office, now thirty years old. It promises him immunity from prosecution in return for his cooperation in the arrest of the capo dei capi. At the time he’d just begun working for your grandmother.”
Rosa groaned. “Costanza was involved in this as well?”
Trevini looked up at her again and seemed to be gathering all his powers. “Why do you suppose the Alcantaras were closer than anyone to the new capo dei capi? Why did Salvatore Pantaleone think so much of your family, Rosa? I brokered the deal with Pantaleone at the time. He, Costanza, and I made sure that the Hungry Man would disappear—to be succeeded by Pantaleone. If not for that agreement, the Alcantara possessions would long ago have been swallowed up by one of the larg
er and more determined clans! You owe what you are today to me and no one else, Rosa. And now show your appreciation and put an end to this farce!”
Fury made Rosa’s voice hoarse. “The Hungry Man is having the Carnevares hunted down, because he thinks they’re the guilty ones!”
“Haven’t you learned anything?” roared Trevini angrily. “Are you seriously going to tell me that you mourn for the New York Carnevares? The same men who had a hand in what happened to you? Or doesn’t their death secretly fill you with satisfaction? Listen to your heart. How do you feel knowing that Michele might fall victim to an assassination attempt? Damn it, Rosa, don’t play the righteous innocent!”
“The Hungry Man has set killers on Alessandro! And now his men are after me as well.”
“I told you to keep away from that Carnevare bastard. If you’d listened to me, everything would be fine.” Trevini gradually seemed to be retrieving his old self-confidence. “It was all planned, down to the very last detail. Who could have expected you to go throwing yourself at a Carnevare, of all people? You can hardly hold me responsible for the consequences.”
The contessa said calmly, “He’s lost, and he knows it. He’d do anything to—”
Rosa didn’t wait for her to finish. With a few bounds she leaped down the tiled steps to the bottom of the drained swimming pool. Trevini raised a protective hand in front of his face as she crouched beside him.
“You’re pathetic, Trevini. If the Hungry Man succeeds, then you’ll have not only the di Santis family on your conscience but the Carnevares and Alcantaras as well. What do you hope to achieve by that, aside from not going under alone?”
Trevini slowly lowered his hand. His fingers were shaking. At close range, she saw that he must be in pain. Had the contessa pushed him down here in his wheelchair? His left leg was twisted more than it had looked from above. Probably broken.
“Everything I’ve done for the last thirty years,” he got out, breathlessly, “was for the good of the Alcantaras. I acted first in Costanza’s name, then in Florinda’s, now in yours.”
“Florinda knew all this?”
“Your aunt had no idea about anything. But you, Rosa, had it in you to revive some of Costanza’s old brilliance. With my help, you could have—”
Rosa placed a finger on his lips, and he fell silent. Then she looked over her shoulder and up at the side of the pool. “Does your job application still stand, contessa?”
“Of course.”
“I assume you’re recording all this.”
Di Santis smiled. “Every word.”
Rosa sighed. “That’s why you brought me here. The document you’ve promised Alessandro isn’t enough for you. You needed Trevini’s confession. Right?”
The young attorney assumed her serene expression again. “I never for a moment doubted that your presence would induce him to talk, Signorina Alcantara.”
“Then you have everything you need?”
“Certainly.”
“You never intended to kill him, did you? For what he did to your family.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary now,” said the contessa, with a small smile.
Rosa turned back to Trevini, whose face had gone even paler. “Good.” And without turning again, she said, “As your new employer, I’d like to ask you to leave us for a moment. The avvocato and I have something to discuss alone.”
“As you wish.” Di Santis turned to go.
“Contessa?”
“Signorina Alcantara?”
“I’m relying on you to see that your microphones and cameras are switched off now.” She laid a hand under the old man’s chin. He was pale as death. “There’s no need for anyone else to watch this.”
THE THRICE GREAT
ROSA LISTENED TO THE sound of the attorney’s high heels moving away from them. In the next moment the door into the swimming pool area latched.
Trevini’s lower lip was quivering. “You have so much more of your grandmother in you than I’d assumed,” he whispered. “It’s you here in front of me, but Costanza looks out of your eyes.”
“I’m tired of you, Trevini. Your constant talk, your attempts to influence me—”
“How are you going to manage without me? With the contessa’s help? By betraying me, she’s betrayed the Alcantaras. And she’ll do it again.”
“You’re responsible for the massacre of the di Santis family, the death of the Carnevares in New York and here in Sicily…and you are warning me against betrayal?”
“I’ve done only what your family paid me to do. I’ve worked out strategies. Tactics. I was loyal. You can’t blame me for any of that!”
“The Hungry Man’s Hundinga are prowling the hills around the palazzo. He wants to kill me to punish Alessandro. For something that wasn’t even done by his ancestors—you did it.”
“One Carnevare or a hundred, they’re no loss. Costanza would not have—”
“My grandmother was a monster, in more ways than one.” She gave him a chilly smile. “But I’ve inherited at least one thing from her.” She opened her mouth very slightly, and licked her lips with the snake’s split tongue.
Her vision was also changing. In a shadowy corner above the door, a tiny red source of heat that she couldn’t have seen with human eyes went out. Di Santis had been as good as her word and switched off the camera.
“Have you ever watched a Lamia shift shape, Trevini?” She slowly leaned closer to his face, to make sure that he could see what was happening to her eyes, to their pupils. “Did you ever see Costanza like this? Was that why you were so fascinated by her?”
He kept his cool, she had to give him that. Still, she felt a sense of triumph. She had control of it. For the first time she could keep herself entirely under control. She didn’t exactly understand how she was doing it, only that it went hand in hand with a sense of superiority that she had never experienced before.
“I want answers from you.” It sounded almost like a hiss, hardly at all like her own voice. “If I think that you’re being honest, for once, I’ll let you live.”
How easy it was to say the words. She was slightly alarmed to realize that she meant every word of it. It wasn’t a bluff. It was in her power to give him his life. Or take it away.
Trevini seemed to lose himself in the gaze of her snake’s eyes. Something in his face told her that, at that moment, his will was broken. All at once his humiliating arrogance had disappeared. She could smell vulnerability on his breath. Could pick up the scent of his fear like vapor from his pores.
Her lips, very narrow now, were only a handbreadth away from his face. He was sweating; his eyes were watering. Yet he didn’t blink. He stared at her like a rat driven into a corner.
“Did you know that Apollonio is my father?” she asked.
His lower jaw was shaking slightly, but he said nothing.
Rosa’s voice took on a sharper edge. “Did you know?”
“I…I don’t understand it myself,” he got out. “And that’s the truth. I saw him on the video, but I don’t understand the connection.”
“I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying.”
“I’ve told you that Apollonio was in touch with me after Costanza’s death,” he said hesitantly. “But I never met him in person. I don’t know why Davide is addressed as Apollonio on the video. Do you understand me, Rosa? I simply do not know.”
“Still, you didn’t warn me. Because you wanted me to come to you in a flood of tears, begging you to help me.”
“Di Santis foresaw that it might not turn out that way.”
Rosa’s tongue licked down to her chin. The split tip touched rough reptilian skin. She had to concentrate to halt the transformation at this stage, although she wasn’t sure whether she really wanted to.
“Who’s behind TABULA?”
“Don’t do it,” he said.
She frowned inquiringly, and felt scales trickle down over her nostrils.
“Don’t try to take on TABULA,” he
said. “Your grandmother did the only right thing by allying herself with them.”
“Who is TABULA?”
He let out his breath heavily. “No one knows…I don’t know.”
“But you have an idea, don’t you? Costanza must have known. The only question is: Did she find out from you?”
“I have a few scraps, small pieces of the whole truth. No faces, no names. At first I tried to find out more, but then I realized that any answer I got could mean the end for me. TABULA knows its enemies. And TABULA shows no mercy.”
“Tell me what you did find out.”
He groaned in pain and tried to avoid her gaze.
“It all goes back many centuries,” he said helplessly. “Tabula Smaragdina Hermetis—I don’t suppose that means anything to you, does it?”
“Is it Latin?”
“Yes. And much more than that: words from the language of alchemy.”
She hissed quietly, and Trevini’s eyes almost imperceptibly widened. “Don’t try to fool me,” she said.
“You want connections. Very well, listen. This is not about strange hooded figures brewing bubbling potions over open fires. Alchemy is both a philosophy and a science. More of a science than anything else today. And the Tabula Smaragdina Hermetis is its beginning, its origin, the coded truth of the thrice great. The legendary emerald tablet of Hermes Trismegistos.”
Maybe she really ought to leave him to di Santis and put her mind to something more important.
“Alchemy is the mother of science,” he said, apparently mistaking the pool steps for a lecture hall. “When TABULA carries out experiments on Arcadians today, it is with reference to the father of alchemy—Hermes Trismegistos himself. No one knows who he really was. I have read a great deal about him, and his name unexpectedly turns up in the strangest sources. Some say that he occupied the throne of Thebes as its king. Others claim that he was a god of the shepherds of ancient Greece. Or the direct son of Adam. Then again, another opinion is that he never existed at all, and the name is only a pseudonym under which a whole group of scholars wrote their works. It’s said that Hermes Trismegistos penned more than thirty-five thousand books.”