The Venice conspiracy ts-1

by Michael Morley

  It looks like an old hospital ward.

  Small and dingy. Musty. Mould on the bottom part of the room. Paint and plaster peeling from damp and cracked walls.

  His sight is returning.

  The jailer on the floor coughs for air and moves his legs.

  Tom turns towards him. The guy's no giant, but he's well-built enough to have thought he could have injected the drug into Tom without help.

  The sedative.

  Tom grabs the needle from its steel bowl and jabs it straight into the prostrate man's neck. Squirts the whole chamber into his bloodstream.

  Now he can relax.

  The jailer's out for the count, and his body is a treasure chest – a belt, a Swiss Army knife – and the most valuable trinket of all, a cellphone.

  He works the blade open and suffers a few close misses with his wrist veins as he saws through the plastic cuff ties. He rubs blood and feeling back into his wrists and grabs the cellphone. Quickly punches in Valentina's number.

  No signal!

  Damn!

  He's going to have to leave the room. Make a run for it.

  Tom wraps the man's belt around his waist and notices for the first time what they've dressed him in.

  A sort of gown. Long. Sleeveless. Black.

  A robe of some kind.

  Now he gets it.

  A sacrificial robe.

  Today is the day. The day they plan to kill him.

  CHAPTER 74

  The walls of the incident room next to Vito Carvalho's office are plastered with prints of Bale's final painting. The blow-ups come in every shape and size – from as big as a boy-band poster in a young girl's bedroom to as small as a postage stamp. There's not a minute when someone on the task force isn't staring at them, trying to make an inspired guess as to what messages and threats are hidden in the brushstrokes.

  Three whiteboards have also been set up, each one dedicated to a different tablet. Almost everyone can now draw a netsvis, a horned devil or a couple lying together with a baby at their feet. In capital letters the word VENICE has been printed out on a giant sheet and pinned above the boards, with its coded Roman numerals running beneath.

  Vito's working on a strategy of best guesses. The cubist drawings – the ones Gloria Cucchi suggested were titans of industry, building a city, have prompted him to raise extra security around banks and finance houses. Bale's impressionistic waterfall of blood and his attempt at Canaletto's view of the Canal Grande have resulted in him deploying extra boat patrols throughout the whole of Venice's canal system. Right now, he's stretched the Carabinieri's resources to their limits.

  But of course, all the interpretations could be wrong. And the fear of that haunts every passing second. So much so, that Vito has a team of officers scouring the web, trying desperately to find works of painters – new or old – that might give further clues to anything shown in Bale's work.

  He and Valentina sit in the far corner of the room, a stack of papers and bottles of water in front of them, a hundred operational actions and hopes behind them.

  'We know it's today, and we know it's going to be some kind of attack on Venice,' says the major.

  'We know it will probably involve Teale and Ancelotti,' adds Valentina.

  'And Tom.'

  She flinches. 'And Tom.'

  'If it's local, it will be one of the remote islands, perhaps underground and out of sight.'

  'Maybe in an old mansion?'

  'That takes us back to Fabianelli's place.' Vito points across the room to a blow-up of the billionaire's mansion. 'And we've now flipped that place more times than a crepe.'

  Francesca Totti joins them, looking exhausted.

  'And you thought undercover work was tiring,' says Vito with a smile. 'Welcome to the weary world of homicide.'

  Francesca tries to smile. She has a printout in her hands. 'A message from the FBI in California for Lieutenant Morassi: San Quentin finally came up with IDs on all Bale's visitors. There are several photo matches with Mera Teale, though she used a different name for the visitor's pass.'

  'What was it?' asks Valentina excitedly.

  'Lourdes di Natas.' Francesca scrapes a long strand of unwashed hair off her face and fleetingly dreams of a hot shower. 'She used a false driver's licence tied to an address that doesn't exist. Made three visits, starting just five years ago.'

  'Di Natas sounds Hispanic,' observes Valentina. 'She probably guessed the system would be filled with Latinos and would go unnoticed.'

  'Don't be racist,' says Vito. 'Anyway, it's not Hispanic. Lourdes is an allusion to Lord, and also to both the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and a place in France noted for its apparitions. As for "Natas" – well, our girl Mera really is having some fun at everyone's expense – Natas is the reverse of the word Satan.'

  Valentina gets up and paces out of frustration. 'It's all a game, isn't it? Just one sick game that these animals are playing on us.' She scrubs her hands through her hair out of anger. 'God, this case is driving me crazy.'

  'I know how you feel,' says Vito, looking up from his chair. 'If I had any hair, I'd probably do the same.'

  She manages a laugh. So too does Francesca.

  One of the search-team officers shouts from behind his computer. 'Major! Major, please look at this!'

  Vito walks to the terminal, closely followed by his female lieutenants.

  A young officer with bloodshot eyes points at his screen. 'It is Salto Angel – Angel Falls in Venezuela.'

  'So?' says Vito, not quite on the same wavelength.

  Officer Bloodshot points to a blow-up on the wall. 'It is in the painting.'

  Vito frowns and squints at Bale's waterfall. 'Similar. Certainly similar.'

  Valentina reads from the computer. 'Salto Angel is in Venezuela and is the tallest waterfall in the world.'

  'Venezuela?' queries Francesca.

  'The villages there, the palafitos,' says Vito, suddenly starting to see the connection, 'are built over water, just like in Venice. They made the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci think of Venezia. He took the Italian Venez and added the Spanish suffix zuola – meaning little – and named the place Venezuola.'

  'So what does it mean?' asks Valentina, looking up at the painting. 'Something is going to happen there instead of here?'

  'Or both? There as well as here,' adds Francesca.

  Vito's back in front of the painting. Staring hard into the eddy of symbols and codes. 'Three tablets. We now have two locations, both linked to Venice and a waterfall of blood. There's going to be a third location in here, somewhere. Now, where the hell is it?'

  CHAPTER 75

  Tom's legs wobble and splay like a deer on ice.

  He strips the guard and puts on his clothes. The shoes are too tight to get on, so he goes barefoot.

  He locks the door of his cell behind him. Heads down a corridor of old glazed brick and broken floor tiles that instantly cut his feet. Slithers along the wall, partly for support, partly to avoid the glare of overhead strips. His eyes are still stinging. Vision blurred by haloes of intense whiteness.

  There's a door to his left. Identical to his.

  Another ward.

  He slips past and slides along the next wall.

  Stops.

  The door was closed.

  Why?

  He can't help it. He goes back. If the door is locked, then maybe someone else is being held inside. Someone due to suffer the same fate as him.

  He hopes the sliver of steel in his hands is a master key.

  He pushes it into the lock.

  It doesn't turn.

  He wriggles it deeper and tries again.

  Chambers click and hidden metal teeth finally clack into play.

  Tom cautiously pushes the door open.

  The room is identical to his. Even smells the same. There's a rough metal hospital bed, jacked high. On it is a body.

  Unconscious or asleep?

  His heart thumps as he edges closer.

&
nbsp; Tina.

  The plump, moist lips he once kissed are dry and scabbed. Her vibrant eyes are rimmed with black bruising and are crusted shut. He shakes her.

  Nothing.

  Dead?

  He bends close. Hears her breathe.

  Thank God.

  Tom knows he doesn't have the strength to carry her. There's no choice but to leave. Leave, get help and come back.

  He glances down at the cellphone he took from the guard.

  Still no signal.

  He moves quickly. Locks the door again from the outside. Prays no one is coming as he slips back down the corridor.

  Seeing Tina has given him energy. Determination. Hope.

  Maybe there's more to her betrayal than he thought. An explanation.

  He turns right at the bottom.

  Another long corridor opens before him. His spirit sinks.

  An iron gate.

  Slap bang in the middle of his escape route is an iron, ceiling-to-floor, wall-to-wall gate. There's no chance his key will fit it. He can tell without even trying that the lock is much bigger.

  There's a door on the wall on the right-hand side just metres away. He has no option but to go for it.

  Five paces and he's there.

  It's not locked.

  He shuts the door behind him. Quickly checks the phone again.

  Still no signal.

  The room is pale green, cobwebbed and bare. Three deep wooden shelves run around the walls. In years gone by it must have been a storage area of some kind. There's a small window but it's barred from the outside. He can see trees through the dirt.

  Tom figures he's in an old storeroom, or laundry, maybe two floors up. A place for dumping dirty bedding and distributing new sheets and towels.

  A glance beneath the bottom shelf confirms his suspicions.

  A laundry hatch.

  He doesn't know where it goes, or whether he'll be able to fit in it.

  The cover is pinned with nails. Big ones.

  He hunkers down beneath the shelf and tries to pull a corner off, then remembers the Swiss Army knife he took from the guard. The blade is sharp enough to whittle out wood around a nail head. The slide-out screwdriver strong enough to get a little leverage.

  It's a struggle.

  But he gets there. The nail in the top corner comes away. He forces two, three fingers behind and tugs.

  Slowly the plywood bends, then splits diagonally across the middle. Tom tosses the broken part and pulls on the pinned remains. Splinters stick into his skin. Jagged edges cut his flesh, but he keeps straining.

  He falls backwards as it comes away.

  Voices outside. The clunk of the iron gate. Footsteps.

  A black hole faces him.

  Unhesitatingly, Tom slips into it. Unaware of where it goes, or whether he's going to be able to get all the way through and reach the bottom.

  The drop is not at all what he imagined.

  It's sheer.

  Deep.

  Over in seconds.

  What saves him from serious injury is that the laundry chute is as securely nailed at the bottom as it was at the top.

  His six-foot-three-inch frame hits the board in total blackness. Jars both his ankles and knees but breaks his fall.

  The backs of his thighs are ripped raw by the splintered wood as he tumbles out of the hole and drops three feet into a crunching heap on the ground.

  Tom lies still for a second. Takes stock of the damage.

  Everything hurts.

  Nothing has escaped either the jolt of the surprise impact or the brutal scraping of the splintered and jagged wood.

  He gets to his feet. Hobbles. Feels a burning in his right ankle. Twisted. Sprained. But not broken.

  His eyesight is still blurred. Hazy, but better.

  The room is big and open. Two windows. Both barred – just like the ones in the room where he'd been held.

  At the far end – a door. Closed. Maybe locked. Maybe not.

  He looks for the cellphone. It dropped from his hand when he fell through the chute. He hopes it's not broken.

  He bends down and sees straight away -

  – a signal!

  He grabs it and hits Valentina's number.

  Misdial!

  He tries to clear it and start again.

  The screen floods with a menu in Italian offering a camera, games, text messaging, calendar and a dozen other things that he doesn't want. He struggles to get back to just the dial function.

  An internet browser pops up.

  Internet on a damned phone!

  He finally dials Valentina.

  She answers within three rings.

  'Pronto.' Her voice is cautious, no doubt because of the unrecognised number on her display.

  'Valentina, it's Tom.'

  'Tom?'

  'I don't have long. I don't even know where I am. I've been drugged and held hostage.'

  'Wait, Tom! Wait!' She looks across the office to Francesca. 'Get a trace on this call. Quick! It's from a cell. Get a GPS lock on it straight away.'

  A noise outside the room makes him back into the corner.

  Tom hears voices now. He knows they're closing in on him. He can't talk any longer.

  He places the phone on the floor to free his hands, but leaves the call connected.

  The door bursts open.

  Two people rush in.

  He recognises one of them straight away. The one pointing a gun straight at his head.

  CHAPTER 76

  Mera Teale is dressed in full Satanic robes.

  Not even Christian Lacroix could have designed a garment more sensuous than her silver-lined black alba. Though the Glock in her hand seems an excessive fashion accessory. Tom notes it's in her left hand. For a split second he remembers Carvalho's description in the morgue of how Monica had probably been killed by a left-handed person.

  A male acolyte steps towards Tom. 'Hold out your hands.'

  Eyes glued to the gun, he does as demanded.

  The black-hooded disciple loops a sturdy plastic tie around Tom's wrists and begins to thread the end into the locking hoop.

  It provides the split-second distraction that Tom needs. He breaks his hands apart, grabs the guy's arm and swings him like an Olympic hammer towards Teale.

  There's a deafening roar.

  Blood splatters Tom's face. The window behind him splinters.

  Teale's shot has gone straight through the acolyte's chest. Tom drops to the ground. Sweeps a left-footed kick at the side of her knee.

  She goes down like a snapped cane.

  The gun drops free. He grabs it and glances at the barred window. Maybe, just maybe, he can use his weight and force his way through.

  There's no hesitation in his run. He hits the centre of the window with a deafening crash. The old wooden frame buckles. The central iron bar slams into his shoulder and pain roars through the side of his head.

  The strength of his leap and the weight of his body have broken the top of the bar free from the concrete lintel and it's given way, but the bottom of the bar has held firm.

  He's stuck there.

  Stranded.

  Half in, half out of the window.

  He glances back. Two other black-caped figures are now in the room and they have guns.

  Tom raises Teale's Glock and pulls the trigger.

  His shots are wide and wild. They zing across the walls but don't hit anyone. But they buy him enough time to twist around on the iron bar and heave his weight down on the metal.

  It jerks and bends, then finally gives way.

  He tumbles backwards and hits the ground with a thud that thumps the wind out of him.

  Glass is stuck in his face. His shoulder is ripped and bleeding.

  And he's dropped the gun.

  The grass around him is long and time to search dangerously short.

  He has no choice but to leave it.

  CHAPTER 77

  Getting a GPS check on Tom's whereab
outs seems to take an age. These things always do. Only in films do techies work at warp-speed 9. In real life, time drags like a leg with a bullet in it.

  Vito stays in the incident room while Valentina, Rocco and Nuncio finally get on the move. He's already mobilising troops and issuing weapons by the time Francesca Totti gets a fix on Tom's position.

  'Lazzaretto Vecchio?' Vito repeats it like it's a curse. 'And all this time we've been so focused on Isola Mario. I should punch myself.'

  Valentina can still hear him mumbling as her Carabinieri patrol boat kicks up a break of white water and roars away from its berth. Despite Tom's call for help part of her mind is preoccupied with Bale's painting.

  Every brushstroke is branded into her memory.

  The use of Roman numerals to spell out the word Venice over all three sections of the canvas is what's worrying her. She and Vito are both sure it means three locations – including Venice itself – are going to bear the brunt of whatever evil Bale has been orchestrating. Their best guess is that Venezuela is the second target, but what about the third?

  The speedboat pulls left and Valentina lurches violently to her right. The shock seems to do her good. Like a cure for hiccups. Her disparate thoughts all come together and she comes up with a third location – Muscle Beach, Venice – the Californian hotspot where bodybuilders work out and pose. She ducks low from the wind and engine noise, cups her hand over the cellphone and calls it in. 'Major, the third target is not here, it's California – I'm sure of it. Muscle Beach, Venice. That's why those big cubes are there on Bale's painting, they're building giant muscle, not giant buildings.'

  'Got it!' confirms Vito Carvalho, feeling a surge of adrenalin. He puts the phone down and hands out the instruction to call the FBI. With luck they'll safely shift everyone from the sands of Venice Beach. The Venezuelan government has already been alerted and they've assured him the area around Angel Falls is being evacuated. Back home, he has every available man and woman out on the streets and waterways searching for anything suspicious. Collectively, law-enforcement offices across the world are winning the battle against Bale. But maybe too slowly.

  Vito glances at his watch.

  Almost midday.