Massimo Bellu was such a man. He considered himself unattractive to the opposite sex. He was short and somewhat plump, no matter how much he dieted. His hair was lank and not quite black enough to be interesting, no matter what expensive shampoos and conditioners he used. He would always recall the comment of a hairdresser who had contemplated his hair when he was nine years old. His mother had taken him there and waited expectantly. The hairdresser had been an attractive young woman. She had circled him three times and then stated, “We either shave it all off and try to make him look like Kojak, or we do the best with it.’
His mother had become angry. Massimo had become sad. He had retreated into his intellect, which, even at that age, had been considerable. At school he had been the butt of scorn from his contemporaries. Unco-ordinated at sports, unskilled in social mores, unsuccessful with girls. His only anchor had been his mind, and he withdrew into it.
It had taken him through school and by a scholarship into the University of Rome to study Social Science. From there he had gone into the most cerebral department of the carabinieri to specialise in social trends, including the analysis of the criminal mind. Within a few years he had found himself working with Colonel Mario Satta as a backroom boy, supplying analysis relating to the phenomenon of the Mafia. As he looked back on his life only two people had profoundly affected it: one was Colonel Satta and the other was Creasy. Within the distortions of Italian society and social structure, they were the only two people who held any value for him.
He lived in a small studio apartment in Trastevere. Apart from his narrow bed, the tiny bathroom and the even smaller kitchenette, the whole apartment was filled, wall to wall, with books, and in one corner his computer, which lately had become the centre of his life. He had long ago given up the hope of being a social lion. He occasionally basked in the reflected light of Satta’s glamour; and he always enjoyed that, but for him, that was enough. On this night he was in communion with his computer. Sometimes he felt he was attached to it by some umbilical cord.
They came for him just after eleven o’clock. A soft tap on the door. He thought at first that it must be his upstairs neighbour, an elderly widower, retired from the civil service, who often came down to borrow a cup of sugar but who, in reality, wanted a chat to relieve his boredom. Bellu had long decided that the old man must have accumulated several thousand kilos of sugar. One day the ceiling would collapse, and he would die smothered in the stuff. He closed down the computer, hitting the keys which coded its information. Then he opened the door. It was not the old man. It was two young men, darkly-dressed and holding pistols.
They allowed him to put on an overcoat before taking him away. His intelligence told him that he was going to die. They did not blindfold him; that was the first sign. Over the years his nose had developed an instinct for the Mafia. They were not Mafia; that was the second sign. They conducted themselves as though they were above and far beyond civic authority; that was the third sign.
His destination was a cellar in Focene. He did not struggle as they bundled him out of the car and down the steps. He felt no foreboding, only a sense of inevitability. They strapped him to a chair in front of a table and waited. He asked no questions. Ten minutes passed and then the door opened to admit Jean Lucca Donati. Bellu recognised him from the photographs in his files. Donati sat down across the table, pulled out a pen from his inside pocket and a small notebook. He laid them in front of him, looked at Bellu and said, ‘You have been making enquiries about me and also about a man called Anwar Hussein. Why?’
‘It is my job,’ Bellu answered.
Donati shook his head.
‘It was not your job. No doubt you took instructions from Colonel Satta but it was also not his job. From where or whom did those instructions emanate?’
Bellu shrugged. He dropped his voice and said, ‘I know who you are and what you represent. You are the filth on this earth. You will learn nothing from me.’
They spent four hours torturing him. He sat bloodied and physically broken. His fingernails had been torn out slowly, as had four of his teeth. His nose and both cheekbones had been smashed. His testicles crushed. But Massimo Bellu was not there in his body. His whole being had retreated into his mind. At the end, he had smiled sickeningly into the frustrated face of Donati, sending the message that such methods would achieve nothing.
Donati received the message and understood it clearly. He was a patient man. He issued instructions to one of the young men, who left the cellar. Donati and the other young man unstrapped Bellu’s broken body, lifted it up and laid it on the table. He had neither the strength nor the inclination to struggle.
The young man came back after a few minutes, carrying a small briefcase. He laid it on the table next to Bellu’s head and opened it. Donati hovered alongside like a vulture. From inside the briefcase the young man picked up a syringe.
Donati nodded and said to him, ‘Twenty milligrams . . . no more. Be very careful. Too little is not enough, too much can be fatal.’ He looked down at Bellu’s ravaged face. His voice was cruelly soft. ‘So your body can take anything. Now we try your mind. In moments from now you will feel no pain . . . only bliss. I am giving you pure Valium. Not the dosage that neurotic, socialite ladies take to ease their imaginary traumas, but enough to make your brain go on a journey you could never imagine. I regret that you may never return from that journey.’
Through the pain Bellu felt the slight prick of a needle. It took only a few seconds. He found himself playing again as a child, playing in the fields behind his grandfather’s house in Tuscany. He saw the face of Mariella, his young cousin, laughing at him and teasing him maliciously. He saw the face of his mother scolding him because he had smacked Mariella. Through clouds of blue and green he heard the soft voice.
‘Who sent you to spy on “The Blue Ring”?’
For the next forty minutes Donati learned much about Bellu’s childhood. He learned about his frustrations, his fears and his ambitions. He learned that twenty milligrams of Valium was not enough. With a sense of trepidation he instructed the young man to inject ten more milligrams. After that he learned about Bellu’s masculine love for two men, but somehow, in spite of the miasma in his mind, Bellu was unable to speak their names.
‘Where are they from?’ Donati hissed in frustration.
Bellu’s mangled mouth had twisted into a smile. ‘One is from Rome,’ he said.
‘And the other? Where is the other from?’
Donati heard a word from the smashed mouth and leaned closer, ‘Where? From where?’ he asked insistently.
‘From a stone house on a stone hill,’ Bellu said, with what sounded like a giggle.
Donati glanced up at the two young men who were also listening intently. They leaned forward.
‘Where is it?’ Donati asked. ‘Where is the house on the hill?’
They all heard the word.
‘Gozo . . . of course. Gozo.’ And then Bellu’s chest heaved and he gurgled in his throat and died.
Chapter 66
There was only Bellu’s sister and Satta and a priest. Others from the office had wanted to come to the funeral, but Satta had discouraged them.
The coffin was lowered into the grave; the priest said a prayer. Bellu’s sister threw some earth on the coffin, and then she and the priest left. The grave-diggers would come later to fill in the hole in the ground and erect the simple headstone.
A cold wind swept across the cemetery, dropping late leaves from the gaunt trees. Satta remained, wrapped up in his dark overcoat and silk scarf, sitting on a nearby headstone. He sat for more than an hour, looking down at the grass in front of him. He was not a man to analyse grief or fate. He just sat there, looking at the grass and slowly letting the rage build up inside him. He had no children, and aspects of love had never really entered his life; but at this moment he knew that the mutilated corpse lying in the open grave in front of him represented the kernel of any real love he had ever known. He realised that Ma
ssimo Bellu had been more than a son or brother or friend or a lover. It was the very discretion and isolation of Bellu that he had loved. Above all, he knew that Bellu had loved him, Mario Satta, and perhaps little else.
The cold went through his overcoat, through his flesh and into his bones. Finally he looked up and saw a man standing on the other side of the open grave. He was dressed in jeans, a denim jacket and a black polo-neck shirt. His hair was short and steel-grey. He was looking down into the grave.
Satta stood up and slowly walked around the grave. The man lifted his head and his arms and pulled Satta against his chest. For the first time in his adult life, Satta wept. The man held him for a long time and then spoke quietly.
‘Tomorrow morning you will resign from the carabinieri. I will send Maxie and Frank to you. We will take General Emilio Gandolfo and chart his path to hell. On that path we will find the rest of them and send them to the same place.’ Creasy looked down at the grave again and his voice became colder than the wind. ‘When you get tired, when you get cold, when you get totally dispirited, see in your mind the face of Bellu . . . See the compassion in his eyes, and the kindness and the strength of the love he felt for you. And I see the same eyes and the same love . . . Then realise what you and I have to do to satisfy his memory.’
Chapter 67
They made a telephone conference call. The link was between Jean Lucca Donati in Milan, Anwar Hussein in Naples and Gamel Houdris in Tunis.
Donati explained what they had learned from Massimo Bellu. Just a place . . . Gozo. He had spoken the name into the telephone, not expecting any reaction. He himself had never heard of the place. As it happened, neither had Anwar Hussein, but Gamel Houdris recognised it immediately.
It’s a small island,’ he said. ‘Part of the Maltese archipelago.’
‘So what do we do?’ Hussein asked.
‘We send someone down immediately to check it out,’ Houdris answered.
‘Who do we send?’ Donati asked.
‘You send The Link . . . Franco Delors. He’s the best we have, and he’s in Naples, Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow there’s a ferry from Naples to Malta. Make sure he’s on it. Then he gets the ferry over to Gozo and sniffs around.’
The conference went into abeyance for half a minute. Then Donati said, ‘I will instruct him to be ultra-careful. Meanwhile, we have to move quickly to the final indoctrination of our Initiate. I would say within a week or so . . . We’re talking about fifty million US dollars minimum. It’s a ripe fruit which must not fall off the tree. It has to be plucked. We need the subject for the sacrifice.’
Houdris said, ‘I think I have her. As you know, a few days ago I was in Albania at our new orphanage. There is a prime candidate on hand. Franco Delors has arranged the necessary adoption papers. We will move her to Bari within the next few days, after Delors gets back from Gozo. Her name is Katrin. She is pre-puberty. Twelve years old, blonde and very beautiful. Arrange the mass for the following Sunday.’ There was a contented silence.
Chapter 68
Michael decided to abandon logic. He let his instincts take over. He knew he had to dominate the woman beneath him. It was a crucial moment. He realised that she wanted to be dominated, needed to submit. With that submission, the doors would open. Within his understanding of lovemaking, and within his character, he had always been gentle with women in bed. That gentleness had always satisfied them and himself. But on this occasion he knew that gentleness would be like a feather wafted in a storm.
He took her wrists in one hand and twisted her onto her stomach. She struggled, but he gripped the back of her neck with his other hand and forced her face into the pillow. She cursed in Italian and her body twisted under him. He let her use her strength, allowing her to roll onto her back. She tried to bite his shoulder, and he smacked her sharply on her cheek. She jerked a leg between his legs but he was waiting for it and her knee bounced off his thigh. A second later he had twisted her again onto her front, slid an arm under her thighs and pulled her bottom up. His penis was already wet from her juices. He rammed it into her bottom and she suddenly became very quiescent. It took only a few seconds more. They came together.
Instinct again took over. He pulled himself away and, without a word, padded into the bathroom. He took a small hand-towel and held it under the hot tap, then rinsed it out. She was lying on her front against the pillow, totally still. Gently now, he turned her over and wiped the sweat and residual make-up from her face, deciding that she looked more beautiful without it. Then he gently wiped her genitals, tossed the towel onto the floor, lay down beside her and waited.
‘You have an understanding,’ she murmured, ‘about women like me . . . How can it be in one so young?’
He smiled and answered, ‘I was only young before I met you. I have lived a thousand days these last two nights.’
She laughed with pleasure, thinking that she now controlled him.
It took two brandies and many soft, whimpering kisses before she made her move. She made the move encompassed in the thought that, having given him the most secret part of her body, she now controlled his mind. She played on his ego.
‘No one has ever done that to me before. In a terrible way it makes me your slave. What more do you want of me?’
He smiled in his mind.
‘I want you to take me to the very depths. You are my door to that . . . and my guide. I want to see more than the joke of the other night. I want to go to the limit.’
She thought for a moment, balancing the risks against the benefits, and then she murmured, ‘It’s possible . . . And I think you have the strength to see it. But it will take much persuasion, and for me it will be very risky . . . When I talk about risk, I talk about death.’
‘What does the risk cost?’ he asked.
Seconds ticked by, then she slid a hand down his chest, across his penis and onto his scrotum. She smiled in the semi-darkness and answered, ‘Fifty thousand dollars could compensate for the risk.’
Chapter 69
Creasy needed to talk. It was something very rare in his life; he had nearly always been able to commune with himself. He considered unburdening his thoughts a kind of weakness. He sat at a place which was one of his most favourite spots, the terrace of the Pensione Splendide, late at night. A half-full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label in front of him and, beyond him, the lights of the bay; and beyond the lights the darkness of the sea.
He felt a strong sense of déjà vu. It was as though he had been there six years before with the same bottle, the same lights, and the same darkness. After that night he had gone away and killed many people. He felt he was poised in time at that same moment.
Of course, Guido was the one he should have talked to. Guido from the long past. Guido his closest friend. Guido the mirror to his own mind. But Guido was fast asleep in bed, probably smiling at all the lire he had won at that night’s poker game.
He heard the door open behind him and a figure came out some metres away and walked to the edge of the terrace and looked out at the view. There was only a sliver of a moon but Creasy recognised the Dane. He himself had not been noticed.
Five silent minutes passed, and then Creasy called softly, ‘Do Danes drink whisky?”
He saw Jens’ head jerk up in surprise and turn. Then his voice came equally softly. ‘On a night like this, Danes drink anything . . . Even hemlock.’
Creasy smiled in the semi-darkness.
‘Come and sit with me and tell me what makes the world go round.’
The Dane moved out of the darkness, pulled up a chair and sat down.
They sipped quietly for a few minutes, then Creasy said, ‘You told me and the others why you are here. You explained about your job and your vocation and the acceptance of your wife. But you have never really told me why you are here.’
The Dane refilled his glass and spoke as though the words came from his toes and through his feet and up his legs, and then passed through his thorax and onto his lips. ‘To
understand why I’m here, you would have to understand the psyche of the Northern people. We do not do things by logic. If I looked at this whole situation logically I would not just run back to Copenhagen, I would keep going till I got to the North Pole, and then I would start looking for a spaceship to take me to the moon.’
Creasy chuckled. ‘So why? Tell me why.’
The Dane swirled the liquid in his glass as he thought, then he said, lightly, but with emphasis, ‘Oh, around a thousand years ago my ancestors pushed out frail boats, jumped into them and went off to conquer their known worlds. Perhaps I don’t look exactly like a Viking, but I feel like one. I know that at this moment I live in total danger. I am surrounded by killers and I am pursued by killers . . . It concentrates my mind like never before. My heart beats faster than ever before . . . And I like it.’
Creasy chuckled again and then said, ‘But you still have not answered my question.’
Another silence and then the Dane said, ‘I am here because of three people. First, Michael; he walked into my life and into my house and jerked me away to Marseille. This kid almost young enough to be my son. Second, while I was in shit up to my neck, you arrived and dealt out death all around me. Third, I saw the face and the eyes of a child in hell, and watched you and Michael extract her from that hell and give her a life . . . Why should I not be here?’
Below them in the bay a large cruise liner was moving out to sea. It was dressed like a Christmas tree. Over many minutes they watched its lights seemingly drift to the horizon, and then the Dane asked his question.
‘Why are you here? And why is it possible that you attract to you men of such diversity, who would literally die for you?’
The Blue Ring (A Creasy novel Book 3) Page 26