by Kai Meyer
Up above the monument, Rosa crossed a narrow path—asphalted, but the surface was breaking up—and then she reached the outer wall of the old farmhouse. Keeping low, she was moving into its shadow when she heard a noise far away. It was the rhythmic hum of an engine, rapidly getting louder.
Cautiously, she peered around the corner of the wall. The dismal concrete expanse of the monument stretched out below her.
In the sky to the east, gold in the rising sun, a helicopter was arriving.
THE INFORMER
THE HELICOPTER LANDED ON the open space at the edge of the concrete labyrinth. The men busy with preparations for the celebration stopped work when the wind of the rotor blades and swirling dust whipped across the slope.
Rosa was about two hundred yards uphill. No one could see her from below. Her heart was hammering so hard that she could sense the pulsing at her throat.
The side door of the helicopter opened and Cesare Carnevare climbed out, accompanied by three bodyguards, all of them in black suits. One of the men who had been working on the monument hurried toward Cesare.
Rosa withdrew her head and leaned against the wall for a moment. Even if Cesare’s orders to his men in Gibellina to look for her had never reached them, it wouldn’t be long before someone went in search of Iole and Alessandro.
She hid behind an abandoned stable a little way up the slope and found that she could peer cautiously around its corner and see the front of the dilapidated farmhouse. New windows had been set into the facade.
Two Land Rovers were parked outside the entrance. There were no guards in sight, but she couldn’t be quite sure. So she ran first into the cover of one vehicle, then over to the other. There were ten yards now between her and the farmhouse door.
She was betting everything on a single card. She ducked low and ran across the open space of the farmyard. A light shone behind one of the dirty windows. Crouching down, she heard men’s voices inside the house, talking in low voices. Two at least.
There were still four bullets in her revolver. She wasn’t sure what her best course of action would be. All she knew was that Alessandro was being held in this building, and she had to do something.
A cell phone rang inside the house. The men stopped talking. A brief silence, and then one of them said, on the other side of the glass, “No, all in order here. No problems. But Gino will take a look around outside.”
“Why me?” protested his companion, but the next moment came the scraping sound of chair legs being pushed back.
Rosa raced away, retreating behind one of the Land Rovers. In a panic, she looked around for a better place to hide, and at the last second rolled under the vehicle. She lay on her stomach in the dust, the gun in both hands, looking toward the house.
The front door opened; faint light fell out into the farmyard. A man came out with a submachine gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
Rosa didn’t move. She held her breath.
Slowly, the man crossed the yard. His shoes disappeared behind one of the high tires. She couldn’t see him now, although he was less than four feet away.
“Anything unusual?” asked a voice as the second man appeared in the doorway.
“Not a soul in sight.”
“Go and look all around the house.”
“What are they so scared of all of a sudden? Cops?”
The man in the doorway shrugged his shoulders. “We’re to keep our eyes peeled, that’s what they said. Signore Carnevare is coming up. He wants to speak to the boy.”
Gino, the man standing between the Land Rovers, groaned. “Okay, I’ll look around. Leave some of those cannoli for me.”
No sooner had he disappeared around the corner of the house than a third voice called, from the trail leading up to the house, “All clear with you?”
Rosa couldn’t believe her ears.
The man in the entrance shone the light of a lamp on the new arrival. “Does anyone say anything different? Why do they all seem to think we’re not up to the job?” Morosely, he stepped out of the door. “So what do you want?”
“Signore Carnevare sent me. I’m to take Alessandro to him down by the chopper.”
“Just now they said he was coming up here to us.”
“Then he’s changed his mind.” Footsteps crunched on dust and gravel. Turning her head, Rosa saw sneakers and jeans moving over the yard outside the house from the path below.
She knew that voice.
“Are you alone?” asked Fundling.
“Gino’s just checking the back of the building. Wait there while I call them down below so that they can—”
“No need.”
Two shots hissed through a silencer. The man in the doorway collapsed without a sound.
Rosa still didn’t move.
Fundling was faster. She could see him now, bending over the lifeless man and hauling him into the house. After a last glance into the dawn twilight, checking the surroundings, he closed the door from the inside.
Maybe he had hot-wired the Maserati. Or someone had picked him up and brought him here. The judge’s people? But wouldn’t they have intervened long before?
Rosa glanced at the corner of the house. Gino wasn’t in sight yet. She quickly rolled out from under the Land Rover, ran on tiptoe to the window, and peered in. No one there.
She switched the gun to her left hand so that she could wipe her sweating palm on her jeans. Then she took the butt in her right again, stole over to the door, breathing deeply—and opened it.
She aimed the revolver into the house.
Fundling was standing in front of her, with the muzzle of his own firearm pointing her way.
“Rosa!” Relieved, he lowered the pistol.
She kept her gun at the ready and stepped inside the door, kicking it closed behind her with her foot.
“Where’s Alessandro?”
Legs apart, Fundling was standing over the dead man’s feet. “You don’t have to wave a gun at me.”
“What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “You left me the Maserati.”
“Did Quattrini send you?”
“She’s looking for you.”
Rosa pointed at the body of the dead man. “What was that for?”
“We have to hurry. Before Gino comes back.” He put the pistol in his waistband and started dragging the body away from the door. They were in a narrow hallway. To the left was the lighted room where the guards had been sitting. The door on the right was closed. Fundling maneuvered the corpse through the third door, at the end of the tiny hall.
Rosa never took her eyes off him. The gun in her hands wasn’t shaking nearly as badly now. She was still confused, but she was regaining control over herself. She waited.
Fundling came back into the hall, closing the door behind him. He had the pistol in his hand again now. Rosa kept aiming at his chest.
“Now to look for Alessandro,” he said.
“You just shot that man.”
“Well, what exactly were you planning to do?” He nodded at her gun.
She heard footsteps outside in the front courtyard.
Rosa swore. She was still standing with her back to the front door. Time to get out of there, fast. She quickly made her way into the room on the left, just in time to see Fundling aiming his pistol at the entrance to the house.
Gino opened the door. “Nothing there. No idea what they—”
Fundling fired twice. Through the narrow gap, Rosa couldn’t see either of them. But she heard the heavy thud of a body falling. Fundling hurried to the door. A moment later he was dragging the second dead man to the end of the corridor.
The room where Rosa was standing smelled of sweet pastries and coffee. Two cardboard cups stood on a table, with a thermos jug and a plastic plate of cannoli.
Outside the room, the door at the end of the corridor closed, and then Fundling shut the front door as well. Seeing a trace of blood on the floor, he cursed under his breath.
“Once again,” said Rosa, “what are you doing here?”
“Keeping an eye on you.”
“‘Keeping an eye on—’” She was lost for words. “Quattrini knows I’m here, and she sends you? What exactly are you, her fucking intern?”
“She has no idea what’s going on here.”
Rosa stared at him. Suddenly she remembered what she had been thinking earlier. “It’s you? Pantaleone’s second man in Cesare’s camp?”
His nod was surprisingly frank, although he avoided her eyes with a touch of shame next moment. “It’s complicated.”
She’d been wrong. The second informer did not hold high rank in the Carnevare outfit; his was about as low as you could go—he only ran errands for them. That was how he had been able to intercept Cesare’s message to the others.
She lowered her weapon a little way. “You’re informing on the Carnevares to the police and to Pantaleone?”
“I’d help any enemy of Cesare’s, never mind who else they are and what they want.”
“Because he—”
“For the same reason as Alessandro,” he interrupted her, “only by other means. He wants to kill Cesare but protect the clan. I couldn’t care less about the clan. Cesare murdered Gaia and the baron. I owe more than my life to them. I won’t allow Cesare to become one of the most powerful capi in Sicily through murdering them.”
“Pantaleone told you to help me?”
He nodded. “But I was already well on my way here by then. This has nothing to do with either Pantaleone or the judge. I’ll explain it all to you later, if you like, but right now we don’t have time.”
“Cesare’s coming up here,” she managed to say.
“Yes. We have two or three minutes at the most.”
Hesitantly, she lowered the revolver as Fundling pointed behind her. “The cellar door.”
She looked over her shoulder, but still didn’t dare turn her back to him. This room must have once been a kitchen; a cast-iron stove stood against the rear wall. There was a narrow door beside it.
“Is he in there?” she asked huskily.
Fundling nodded again.
“Why doesn’t he say anything? He must be able to hear us.”
“They’ll have bound and gagged him. And probably chained him up. Because of the transformation.”
She hurried over to the door. The key was jammed.
“Rosa,” said Fundling gently, “wait.”
“We don’t have time. You said so yourself.”
“Do you know what you’re planning to set free?”
“Fundling, I’m one of them. I’m not afraid of him.”
He was about to say something in reply, but at that moment there was a crunching of tires on gravel as a vehicle drove up outside. The headlights passed the two parked Land Rovers and shone through the window. Bright white light filled the room.
Fundling took a step forward, grabbed hold of Rosa, and tore the cellar door open. She stumbled into the dark. A narrow flight of well-worn stairs led down without any rail. She leaned the palm of her hand against a bare stone wall.
Fundling let go of her. Suddenly she was alone on the steps, with nothing but darkness below her.
She looked back over her shoulder.
Fundling slipped smoothly back into the kitchen. Their glances briefly met. Then he closed the cellar door from the outside. She heard the key in the lock.
She was trapped there in the blackness.
IN THE DARK
CURSING, SHE STUMBLED UP the three or four steps to the top of the cellar stairs again and felt her way along the wall. When she reached the door, she hammered on the wood with the butt of her revolver. “Damn it, Fundling, open up!”
Car doors slammed outside the house. An engine was turned off. She heard muted voices in the distance.
She was gasping frantically. She breathed in the damp, musty air of the cellar. If she called and knocked again, it would draw the attention of Cesare and his men to her even sooner.
She slowly turned around. Below her everything was dark, no light at all. As if she had been dipped into a cask of black ink.
“Alessandro?” she whispered.
Something was moving down there. She heard rattling. The clink of chains.
“Alessandro, is that you?”
Outside, the voices were all talking at the same time, until one rose above the others. Cesare. She couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Cautiously, she felt around for the top step with her foot and began the downward climb. Her fingers were touching the cold stone of the wall again. There was nothing to give her any idea of how large the cellar was.
After ten steps she reached the bottom of the stairs. The wall went straight on ahead to her right. Rosa groped her way hesitantly along it.
“Where are you?”
The rattling grew louder. Even noises were swallowed up by the blackness. It was cold in the ancient stone cellar, but part of the chill came from herself. A shudder raced through her legs, took over her upper body. She had to stop for a moment to calm down.
“Where are you?”
There was a growl, and then vigorous rattling of the chains again. Farther ahead or to her left? She was having difficulty locating the sound.
“I can’t see anything,” she whispered. “I can’t find you unless I hear you.”
She followed the course of the wall. The rattling was in front of her now. She sensed the presence of someone very close.
Slowly, she put out a hand. It was unnerving to move away from the wall and the sense of direction it gave her.
Her fingers met a void.
After a moment’s hesitation, she crouched down.
She felt fur. Alarmed, she withdrew her hand. But the next moment she reached out again, and yes, there it still was. Warm, smooth fur over a supple, breathing body.
The growl turned to a gentle purring, curiously muted, which finally told her that he had been gagged. Maybe with the kind of muzzle dogs wear. He moved again, and once more links in the chain scraped over stone.
“Can’t you change back?” she asked quietly.
His anger with Cesare, maybe with himself as well, must be holding him in his animal form. His feelings were out of control, just as they had been a few days ago when he sat beside her in panther form, helpless to do anything about it, unable to turn back into human shape until she had left him alone. She had to calm him down. Get rid of the gag. Get his chains off.
There was a crashing sound on the floor above. Something had been pushed over, or smashed. A shot made her jump. No silencer, so it hadn’t been fired by Fundling.
Although she was trembling, she passed her hand gently over Alessandro’s fur. It was soft and silky. She could feel the arch of his backbone. He was lying on his side with his back to her. The chains were too short for him to stand up. The angrier he was, the harder it must be for him to change back. Older Arcadians might be able to control their transformations, but Alessandro was a victim of his emotions.
Her fingers wandered along his back and up to his neck. If he had been lying there in human form, she would have felt more timid about touching him like that.
He kept his heavy panther head perfectly still as her fingertips rubbed between his ears and hesitantly stroked his skull, then his cat-like face. He closed his eyes when her fingers passed over them. Then she touched a strap. It was indeed part of some kind of muzzle. She quickly undid the buckles and took the leather thing off his face.
He let out a sharp snarl. When she flinched back, he calmed down again. He had never said how often in the past he had changed to his panther shape, but she now guessed it couldn’t have been very often. Up above, she heard two more shots. Who was firing at whom? Had Fundling entrenched himself in the house? All that seemed very far away, as if it had nothing to do with her. An unnatural calm took hold of her. At the same time, the cold sensation moved on to her fingertips.
“Just lie there, okay?” she whispered.
> He purred like a domestic cat.
Her hands moved down his muscular forelegs until they met iron rings above the paws. The chains holding him were no broader than her little finger. Then she felt for hind legs, and to do that she had to lean far over him. Her upper body touched his fur. A strange tingling ran over her skin. She tried to ignore it, let her fingers move down his legs, and found two iron rings there, too.
“Did they tranquilize you to get these things on you?”
He rubbed his head on her knee, which she took to mean yes.
Upstairs, glass broke. Someone started shouting, but farther away, probably outside.
“I still have four bullets in my revolver,” she said. “I can try to shoot the chains apart.”
His head rubbed against her leg again.
“I’ll have to put the muzzle of the gun on a link in each of the chains. Can you stretch them tauter?”
A decided snarl of assent.
She picked up the revolver, as several more shots rang out in the house overhead.
In the dark, relying only on her sense of touch, she made her way around him. “First the left foreleg.” He straightened it until the chain between the iron ring around his paw and the wall fastening was taut. She felt the tips of his retracted claws, counted four links down in the chain—she hoped that was enough not to injure him. She put the muzzle of the revolver on the metal there, took a deep breath, and concentrated.
“Ready?”
He growled.
“Here goes, then.” She pulled the trigger. The recoil was violent. A whistling explosion showed that the projectile had hit something and was now ricocheting through the darkness.
“Are you all right?” she was quick to ask.
He scraped his leg on the floor, and she realized that it was free. Her idea worked. If none of the ricochets caught her, she could get the chains off.