Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  As Dallamano talked, Rosa slid and stumbled down the wet steps, and the way it was getting darker and darker the lower she went did not improve matters. Plus, she was still exhausted.

  When she reached the bottom of the shaft, Dallamano was waiting in the center of the tiled star. The twilight sky above was reflected back only faintly from the damp stone slabs. The black semicircle of the mouth of a tunnel opened in one of the walls.

  Dallamano was still standing in the middle of the star, looking at her. “Come over here,” he said. “I have to pat you down.”

  “You what?” She almost turned back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t take your word for it. You could be wired from head to foot for all I know.”

  “Don’t touch me!” She retreated until she was standing back among the pillars marking the entrance to the bottom of the stairway.

  Dallamano didn’t move. “I won’t force you, of course. We don’t have to talk to each other.”

  She took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and slowly walked over to him. Back came memories that might not be memories at all: strange hands on her skin, fingers exploring every part of her. She felt a strong instinct to retch, and suddenly she tasted bile. She quickly turned her head away and spat it out.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  She turned back to him, trying to seem as impassive as possible, and stepped forward. Hesitantly, she raised her arms. Held her breath. Waited for his touch.

  He went about it quickly and professionally, like the security staff at airports. It took him only a few seconds to reassure himself that she was not set up to record their conversation.

  “Thank you,” he said, and took a couple of steps back into the dark mouth of the tunnel. “You can stand there if you like, or come over here if you don’t want to risk being seen from up above.”

  She stayed where she was.

  “How is Iole?” For the first time his voice was gentler.

  “Doing pretty well, I think, for someone who’s been held prisoner for six years.”

  “Those bastards.”

  “The last place where they held her was an empty villa on an island. Alessandro and I got her away from there by ourselves. She told us she has only one last living relation—you, Signore Dallamano—and Alessandro was planning to take her to you.”

  “Not a good idea,” he whispered.

  “You don’t want to see her?”

  In the darkness she couldn’t make out his face, only the outline of his wild head of hair. “I’d give my right hand to see her, but it’s no use. There are a few people who know my real identity—not many, but I don’t trust anyone. Except Judge Quattrini.” He paused for a moment. “I really died long ago. Augusto Dallamano no longer exists. I don’t even look like him.”

  She thought of the photo of him and his brother, the two laughing men in their diving suits. First he had lost his family, then his honor, his name, his face, and his past.

  If the clans found out that Rosa had been to see the judge, it would be the same for her. Even if the tribunal found her innocent, and she could prevent Cesare from eliminating the entire Alcantara family—even then her deal with Quattrini would be a sword of Damocles hanging over her head for the rest of her life. Treachery to Cosa Nostra was blood-guilt that never faded.

  “You’re afraid the same thing might happen to you.” It was like he had read her thoughts. “Because you are here, and talking to me.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Dallamano was still standing motionless in the entrance to the tunnel. “We are both running a great risk. And you’re not doing it only to tell me about my niece, are you?”

  “Iole was abducted a second time yesterday,” she said. “Cesare Carnevare found out where Alessandro was hiding her, and this time he’s going to kill her if we don’t stop him.”

  Now it was he who remained silent.

  “Cesare is going to kill not just Iole but me, too, and my entire family, Florinda Alcantara, my aunt … you know her. Then my sister. And probably everyone who works for us.” She cleared her throat. “If we don’t find a way to stop him, the Alcantaras will be wiped out, just like the Dallamanos six years ago.”

  “And why would that interest me?”

  “You know something that Cesare is afraid of,” she said. “By kidnapping Iole he silenced you when you were giving evidence in court…. Yes, I know you told them a lot, but not that one thing. And nothing that would incriminate the Carnevares.”

  He took his time answering. Maybe he was thinking. Or maybe fighting back anger. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded strained, and deeper than before. “But why is he going to kill Iole? He had six years to do it, but you say he didn’t.”

  What was she to say to that? Did he know about the Arcadian dynasties? When he made those finds on the seafloor, had he drawn conclusions from them about the secrets of many of the Sicilian Mafia clans?

  “He’s going to sacrifice her,” she said, and remembered the fictitious story that she had concocted during the drive from the airport. “He’s assuming you’re no longer alive because he hasn’t found you in all these years. So now he intends to show the other bosses that he’s disposed of the Dallamanos once and for all. That’s why he plans to execute Iole in front of them. To prove that he’s consistent and to gain their respect. Cesare has convinced the Carnevares that he would make a better capo than Alessandro. Now he needs the support of the other families, and finally eliminating all the Dallamanos will get him that.” Did it sound credible to a man who had been a high-ranking member of Cosa Nostra himself for decades?

  An icy draft of air blew out of the tunnel behind Dallamano. She could smell the aftershave that, to her surprise, he used in spite of the beard covering his face.

  At last he asked, “What exactly do you two intend to do?”

  Her entire body was tense, her limbs, all her senses, even her eyes hurt. “If I know what Cesare is so anxious to keep secret from the others, I can suggest that he make a deal with me.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “Maybe he’ll try. But he may not succeed.”

  “Are you brave or terribly naive?”

  She took a step closer to him in the dark, and was even more intensely aware of his presence. Under the aftershave, he had an animal odor.

  “What did you find back then?” she asked. “What was it that you and your brother discovered?” Her hand felt for the picture in her pocket, but he wouldn’t be able to make it out in the dark anyway. “It has to do with the photographs of the sea floor, doesn’t it? The pictures that were on your brother’s desk.” She was on thin ice here. But there was no going back now.

  “I’ve seen the statue,” she said. “A photograph of it, a panther and a snake. Iole took it off her father’s desk just before Cesare’s men dragged her away. She says there were more like it.”

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly. “What else do you know?”

  “Nothing else,” she replied truthfully. “Only that you and your brother took those pictures.”

  “It wasn’t just one statue.”

  Disappointment muted her excitement. If there were statues of all the Arcadian dynasties on the sea floor, what linked her and Alessandro might not be anything out of the ordinary.

  “Remnants,” he said. “The remains of several statues. Snakes and panthers in various positions.”

  “Only snakes and panthers?”

  Dallamano nodded. “After our dive, my brother was elated. He obviously knew more about those figures than he ever told me. He packed up some of the pictures, twenty or thirty photos, and took them with him when he went to see the Carnevares. For some reason he assumed they’d be interested in our find.” He snorted bitterly. “They came the next day. Killed the family and kidnapped Iole.”

  “All the family except you.”

  “I was out at sea on one of our ships. Ruggero sent me a message. He gave me Judge Quattrini’s name and said I
was to get in touch with her—and he wouldn’t have done that if the whole affair hadn’t been deadly serious. I never went back to Sicily; I actually tried to disappear from the face of the earth. But I soon found out what had happened. I went to Quattrini and turned state’s evidence for her. It was only when I was in remand prison that I heard about Iole’s survival. They sent me pictures of her in chains and told me she would die if I either testified against the Carnevares or said anything about the photos. They also wanted to know the precise coordinates of the site we found on the sea floor. So I withdrew my evidence against the Carnevares, but I stuck to what I’d said about all the other accused.”

  “What about the coordinates?”

  “I didn’t tell them. To keep Iole and myself safe.”

  “How about the crew of the ship? The one you and your brother were on when you made your dive? Didn’t the Carnevares go after them?”

  “It was too late by then.”

  “Too late?”

  “That was the first thing my brother dealt with after we were back on land.”

  “You mean he … his own people?”

  Dallamano shrugged his shoulders. “He sent some of his bodyguards to the ship that same evening. The crew members were still on board. And that’s where they stayed.”

  After a moment, Rosa said, “Then no one but you knows precisely where you made that find? That was how you managed to save Iole’s life.”

  “Even if that were so—do you imagine I’d tell you the place? You and that Carnevare up there?”

  “But you said you knew where—”

  “No. I only made sure that the Carnevares thought I did. The truth is that only my brother knew the exact coordinates.”

  “Then it was all just bluff?” she exclaimed.

  “Almost all.”

  She quirked her head to one side.

  “We had a civil engineering contract at the time,” he said. “The biggest we’d ever been given. For a very long time there had been plans to build a bridge between Sicily and the mainland. Several miles long, a suspension bridge on gigantic piers, about three hundred feet above the water. We got the contract and started by investigating the sea floor. It was on one of those trips that our geologists’ instruments showed distinctive features. Ruggero and I went down with a couple of our divers and took a look around.”

  “Is the sea shallow enough there for divers in ordinary scuba gear to reach the bottom?”

  Dallamano laughed softly. “Where everyone else planned to build the bridge, between Messina on the Sicilian side and Villa San Giovanni on the mainland, the water is a thousand feet deep—only a submarine can reach the bottom there. But Ruggero had a different plan: He was going to build the bridge in a shallower part of the sea. It would have to be almost twice as long, but because the water isn’t so deep it would be much easier to construct. So at that point we were looking for a place farther south. There’s an underwater ridge of rock there above which the water is just one hundred thirty feet deep. An experienced and reasonably skilled amateur diver can do that.”

  “You really don’t know the coordinates?”

  He shook his head. “Not exactly. And without them you could spend decades searching the bottom of the sea for a few unusual stone formations. The Strait of Messina has steep rocky ravines running through it. The sea floor has many fissures, so there are extreme variations of height and depth. Without the precise coordinates, no one will find anything there. Except by chance—as we did.”

  “So that’s why you’ve never tried to make a deal with the Carnevares. Without that data you had nothing of value to offer them.” She cursed. “Then all this has been for nothing. They’ll kill Iole, and my family, to….”

  “You’re really going to try it, am I right?”

  She looked at him even more suspiciously than before.

  “You’d make a deal with a man like Cesare? To make sure that nothing happens to Iole?”

  She nodded, hoping he could see it in spite of the darkness.

  He said quietly, “There could be a way of getting those coordinates. Maybe—and I mean maybe—my brother’s documents still exist.”

  “Cesare would have found them,” she objected. But then she also remembered her conversation with Alessandro during the flight, and the question she had asked herself. How had Iole been able to take the photo without letting Cesare discover all the other pictures on Ruggero Dallamano’s desk?

  And suddenly she realized what she really should have asked. Where, for heaven’s sake, was that desk now? Somewhere in the Dallamanos’ house that Cesare still didn’t know about? Iole must have been there right before she was kidnapped.

  At that moment there was only one person who could answer the question.

  “Do you think the documents are still there?” she whispered. “In your brother’s villa?”

  “Yes. But I can never go back there. I’d be found and killed almost immediately. Otherwise don’t you think I would have returned to look long ago?”

  “I could go,” she managed to say. “I could look for your brother’s papers. And for the coordinates.”

  “Yes,” he said, after a long silence. “Yes, it’s just possible that you could.”

  PROMISES

  ON THE FLIGHT BACK they had to stop over in Rome again, only to find that their connection to Catania was canceled. The pilots’ strike was still on, and there was no way of getting back to Sicily that night.

  When dawn came, Rosa woke up in the airport lounge. Voices over the loudspeakers roused her from confused dreams. She was lying across two chairs with her knees drawn up, her head resting on Alessandro’s thigh. He had slept sitting up, and he was already awake, smiling down at her, dark rings under his eyes. Then he kissed her hair gently and murmured something unromantic about disposable toothbrushes available from vending machines over by the toilets.

  Three hours later they landed in Catania and didn’t even look for the Carnevare car in the multistory garage. They set out at once in a rental car.

  The drive down the coast to Syracuse lasted just under an hour, and after dozens of attempts, she finally reached Zoe on the phone.

  Her sister sounded terrible. Her voice was only a whisper, and for a moment Rosa was afraid that she, too, had been dragged away by Cesare’s men.

  “Are you okay?” asked Zoe. “What happened?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Is Alessandro Carnevare with you?”

  She saw no point in lying. “Yes.”

  “Lilia is dead.”

  Rosa clenched her fists. She couldn’t get a sound past her lips.

  Memories of another time, another place. Then, too, they had spoken by phone. Zoe had called Rosa after she left the hospital. She’d said how terribly sorry she was, but she assured Rosa she’d soon forget the pain and the grief. Everything would be all right again.

  But nothing had been all right. Rosa had hated her sister for her superficial consolations, the way she’d hated everyone who offered her good advice. Sympathy. Pity. It all had such a stale taste that, ever since, she had wanted to spare other people such remarks.

  “They’re claiming that you shot Tano Carnevare,” said Zoe.

  “No. Lilia shot him. For me. That’s why Cesare killed her.” A long silence at the other end.

  “Zoe?”

  Her sister began to cry.

  “Lilia told me all about it,” said Rosa gently. “I know everything.” She listened to her sister’s sobs and cursed herself for being unable to comfort her. She felt Alessandro’s fingers on the back of her hand, and reached blindly for them.

  Florinda’s voice could be heard in the background, low and alarmingly harsh. With an effort, Zoe pulled herself together. “Florinda wants to speak to you,” she said, then hesitated for a moment before adding, “You mustn’t come home. The tribunal of the dynasties will—” She broke off, and there was a loud rustling noise, then Florinda’s voice.

  “Rosa, are you all right
?”

  “Yes. Lovely weather.”

  “Zoe says she told you everything. But the fact is, she did not. Not quite everything. There’s still something you have to know.”

  “TABULA,” said Rosa huskily. “Am I right?”

  “I know what Cesare says,” Florinda replied, after a moment’s silence. “He’s been making the same accusations for years. His dislikes are so incredibly unimaginative.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Cesare tells lies the moment he opens his mouth. He makes a great many wild claims—for example, he says you shot his son.”

  “I would have killed him, if I’d been holding the gun instead of Lilia.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Where, Rosa?”

  “In a car. There’s still something I have to do before I come home.”

  “You trust Alessandro Carnevare more than you trust me?”

  Rosa sighed. “How often have we really talked, Florinda? Three times, four times? I know the cleaning ladies in the palazzo better than I know you.” She was expecting her aunt to interrupt, but Florinda said nothing. “As for Alessandro, he’s explained something to me that I ought to have heard from you. That says a lot for him, don’t you think?”

  “You wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told you everything right away. And in your state at the time—”

  “I let my baby be killed. If I can cope with that, then I suppose I can face the fact that I’m likely to turn into an enormous snake at any moment.” It came out sounding less laconic than she’d had hoped.

  “You could not cope with it. That’s why you came here to us, remember?”

  Rosa closed her eyes to calm herself. Deliberately cool, she said, “There’s something I still have to do. But if this tribunal is making decisions on rules that I’m supposed to have broken, I’d better be there.”