The Sudden Disappearance of the Worker Bees

by Serge Quadruppani

  As she and the prosecutor drew closer, Simona glimpsed what must have been the body, identifiable more for the technicians circling around it and taking photographs than for its actual appearance. At a distance of ten feet it wasn’t easy to decipher a human form in that bundle. One arm appeared from under a pile of frames, honey- filled cells, and mounds of dirt, while a purplish arm covered in bruises and unevenly swollen stuck out from the other sleeve of the T-shirt. The legs, half hidden by the wreckage of the hives, were swollen like those of a drowned body that had been in the water for days. And the face . . .

  “What’s this?” the commissario asked herself out loud.

  She had seen a few Mafia corpses disfigured by sawn-off shotguns and AK-47s, but this . . . this looked like a pumpkin smashed in half.

  “Half of the head was attacked by the bees and the other half was torn off by a large-caliber bullet,” said a voice with a strong Sicilian accent, adding, “I can’t say for certain, but I’d bet it was a .500-caliber, a bullet that could shoot through the armored glass in the front doors of a bank. Maybe shot from a Hecate II, an army rifle used by sharpshooters.”

  Simona turned around to face the speaker and discovered a short, heavyset man whose furrowed eyebrows gave him an air of perpetual rage—an impression that was probably accurate, because he added, “And don’t come bustin’ my hump asking me for more, ’cause I’m not in the mood. I haven’t even finished the autopsy of the other cadaver and already you’re starting in with your questions about this one. What gets into you people up in these mountains? Worse than Sicily! You guys eat dead bodies for breakfast, or what?”

  When he’d finished, the man set off, taking large steps toward a German-made utility car parked more crooked than straight near the tasting stand.

  “Doctor Pasquano!” the prosecutor yelled at him from behind. “What’s the connection?”

  The interlocutor got in the car and, before slamming the door shut, yelled, “You’ll have it on your desk tonight. You’ll get two for the price of one. But don’t you dare call me before then.”

  And he peeled out, with the rear wheels spraying grass and dirt.

  “Meet Doctor Pasquano,” said the prosecutor with a wry smile. “A consummate professional and a frightening character. He must have lost his poker game last night.”

  “I think I may have met him before.”

  “It’s possible, if you’ve been involved in investigations in Sicily. He made his entire career working between Agrigento and Porto Empedocle. He asked to be transferred here a year ago, just like that, after a fight with the commissario. If you ask me, it won’t be too long before he’s back home.”

  “My respects, Signor Prosecutor.”

  The maresciallo had approached them, cap in hand, his gaze fixed on the magistrate, deliberately ignoring the commissario.

  “Good day, Maresciallo. Have you reached any conclusions about what might have happened here?”

  The carabiniere quickly ran his thumb over his mustache as he straightened his sunglasses with his index finger.

  “We have to avoid getting too close to the body until Forensics finishes up. But based on a quick survey, it seems that the victim was bent on destroying the hives with an ax, which you can see down there, a few inches from his hand . . .”

  A large blade stuck out among the frames piled up near the body.

  “And someone shot him up while he was tearing down the apiary? With a military weapon?”

  It was the commissario who had asked the question. The carabiniere turned to look her in the face, as though he were just becoming aware of her presence for the first time. He seemed to hesitate before answering.

  “We’re listening,” Evangelisti said. His use of the first person plural did not seem to please the carabiniere, whose mustache hairs had shot up toward his nostrils again.

  “Apparently,” he murmured.

  He paused, cleared his throat, and nodded in the direction of the attaché case he was holding.

  “There’s something else,” he said somewhat reluctantly. “Another sort of statement . . . We found it under a rock, between the apiary and the perimeter of the forest.”

  He pulled a sheet of paper in a sealed plastic envelope from the briefcase. On it was written a phrase, in large, red letters: THE WORKER BEE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN.

  “Which reminds me, where have the bees gone?” asked the commissario.

  It had just occurred to her that this was what had struck her since their arrival: the silence—the complete absence of that buzzing which the day before had radiated from the flowering roof, from the beehives, and from the edges of the forest, permeating the atmosphere around them.

  The maresciallo removed his sunglasses to get a better look at her. Something like a smirk, halfway between profound bewilderment and vague disdain, appeared on his lower lip. “I don’t know anything about that,” he declared. “And to tell the truth, I don’t see what it has to do with the investigation.”

  “You find a sheet of paper referring to the ‘Worker Bee Revolution,’ the bees have disappeared, and you see no link whatsoever?” Simona insisted.

  Stone-faced, the carabiniere abstained from comment. Evangelisti cleared his throat.

  “But you’ve managed to get a hold of Bertolazzi’s lover, the Albanian shepherd . . . what was his name?”

  “Mehmet Berisha. No, we still haven’t found him but we’re actively looking. There will be a search in the pastures up in the mountains soon.”

  The maresciallo’s eyes settled on a point beyond where the commissario stood.

  “Look,” he said, “here’s someone who may be able to answer your questions about the bees.”

  The magistrate and the policewoman turned. A bright-red microcar of the kind so small it can be driven without a license in Italy advanced over the grass, lurching precariously. It stopped, parked, and from the little front compartment emerged a tall bald man with glasses. He unfurled his limbs like a huge, lanky insect and made his way toward the trio with large steps.

  “I know who the killer is!” he screamed as he came toward them. “I know who the killerrrr issss!”

  As he came closer, Simona could make out his wide-open eyes, his manic appearance. The man stopped six feet from the group, out of breath.

  “I know who the killer is!” he repeated a third time.

  “Which killer?” the prosecutor inquired in a neutral tone.

  “The one who killed the men that died. Bertolazzi. And the dead man here, in the apiary.”

  “Ah, so you know?” Evangelisti resumed.

  “Yes, sorry; your little mystery novel is over. You may have been hoping to keep us guessing with this story, but it’s all over. No more suspense. I’ll reveal the guilty party’s name. The end.”

  He crossed his arms, his body planted squarely on his legs, and eyed them one after the other: first the maresciallo, then the magistrate, then Simona.

  “So?” said this last one.

  The man sighed and lowered his eyes as though caught off guard.

  “To be more exact,” he said in a voice that had abruptly become hesitant, “I can tell you who gave the order. It doesn’t matter who carried it out.”

  “That’s your opinion. But the orders, they came from . . .”

  “The bees.”

  Silence.

  “The bees?” repeated Simona.

  The man nodded.

  “The bees.”

  The magistrate sighed.

  “Commissario Tavianello, allow me to introduce Professor Aldo Martini, a native of these parts and a nationally known bee researcher. His observations have been very useful to beekeepers in the region.”

  “Too bad he has those raving fits,” the maresciallo chortled. “You’ll have to excuse me, Signor Prosecutor, Signora Commissario, but some routine duties await me.”

  And after a quick military salute, he turned on his heel.

  “Professor Martini,” Evangelisti said, “I h
ave no doubt that your reasoning, your attributing the ultimate responsibility for these murders to the bees, is worthy of attention . . . I know that in addition to being a great scientist you are also an exceptional speaker. I attended one of your lectures. You have a way of taking brilliant paradoxes and masterfully weaving them together. But you see, like Caca—Calabonda, I also have a few routine duties to attend to. You wouldn’t want to get too close to the crime scene, right, Professor? So as not to disturb the investigators’ work . . .”

  Martini shrugged.

  “Certainly,” he said. “God forbid I should take up their valuable time. Their time is their own; let them do with it as they wish.”

  The magistrate sighed, then turned to Simona.

  “As for us, we’ll get back to the city. I don’t believe there’s anything happening here for us to stick our noses into, for the time being.”

  “If you don’t mind,” the commissario said, “I’ll stay a little longer. I’d like to chat with the professor a bit. I’ll take a cab back.”

  The confused prosecutor raised an eyebrow as if he wanted to say something and shot a look in Martini’s direction. But all he said was, “As you wish. I’ll see you later. Good-bye, Professor.”

  When they were alone Simona asked, “First of all, can you explain to me where the bees went?”

  A look of profound stupefaction appeared on Martini’s face.

  “But . . .” he said. “Then you’ve really understood?”

  CHAPTER 4

  UP ABOVE THE HARSH LANDSCAPE OF LOCRI, Calabria, or Sicily’s lush Madonie mountains, over the course ofvarious police operations—hunts for fugitives, raids on Mafia clans, missions to free captives—Simona had had many opportunities to survey the mountains from a helicopter. The fact that the horizon line would pitch unexpectedly, that you grazed the treetops, that you could drop like a stone or shoot back up vertically, separated from the oblivion below by nothing but a sheet of glass that suddenly seemed too thin—none of this fazed Simona in the least. With a glance behind her, she confirmed that the other passengers were less accustomed to all this. The pallor of Calabonda’s face made his mustache and sunglasses seem even blacker than usual, whereas Evangelisti was dripping sweat in spite of the blasts of cold wind coming in from the openings on either side of them. Even though she wasn’t afraid, Simona noticed that the pilot didn’t seem terribly concerned about his passengers’ well-being. As they drew near the summit of Mount Banchetta the chopper tilted upward at a forty-five-degree angle, first on one side, then the other, executing a series of excruciating turns in order to keep to the outer edges of the larch trees. The cows below them sometimes came so close that it seemed they could look them in the eyes.

  She eyed the pilot, a burly young man in jeans and a short-sleeved button-up shirt. He had the intent expression of a serious professional on a difficult mission. But something worried her. The large, padded headset hooked up to the radio system was resting on the pilot’s shoulders, and he had a couple of white tablets stuck in his ears with a thin cord connecting them to his shirt pocket . . . He wasn’t tuned in to the radio control tower; he was listening to his iPod. Without even thinking about it, the commissario reached out a hand and brought one of the earphones close to her own ear.

  “Da-na-na, na! DA-NA-NA-NA, NA! DA-NA- NA-NA, NA!”

  The crescendo made her immediately reinsert the earphone in the man’s ear. He turned toward her and gave her a big smile.

  “The Ride of the Valkyries,” he yelled over the roar of the engine. “Have you seen Apocalypse Now?”

  She nodded.

  “I love the smell . . .” she started to say in English, practically shouting.

  “. . . of napalm in the morning,” he finished, absolutely ecstatic. “Wow! Now that’s cinema!” he yelled as he yanked the cyclic control and the top of a fir appeared suddenly in their field of vision, only to disappear a half- second later.

  “Goddamn it, be careful!” Calabonda burst out.

  The pilot’s only reply was to give a thumbs up, like a Yankee about to gun down a Vietnamese village.

  Simona passed a hand through a wisp of her white hair. Another lunatic, she thought. Maybe it’s the mountain air. First there was Felice, the “red-headed mytho-maniac,” as the maresciallo had called him, whom, at any rate, she was sure to see the following day. Not so much because she was curious to know the results of his technology based neural-network program’s analysis, but because she wanted to draw out some more details about the local situation. After the reporter, it would be bee specialist Professor Aldo Martini’s turn.

  * * *

  “But, then you’ve really understood?” he had asked when she had questioned him on the bees’ disappearance from the devastated apiary.

  “Understood what?” she had shot back. He responded with a bewildered gaze.

  “I’m sorry, I was mistaken. Even with everything that’s happened, they’re still all just theories . . .”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t understand. And, first of all, why do you say that the bees are sending the killers?”

  He gave her a wide smile that was friendly and disarming.

  “Did I really say that?”

  “Yes, Professor, you said it yourself, to Maresciallo Calabonda, Prosecutor Evangelisti, and me.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry. You know, I do have raving fits sometimes. I’m schizophrenic. Calabonda knows. That’s why he doesn’t let me get to him.”

  He kept smiling, and seemed to be wondering what she was doing there.

  “How can I be of service?” he said after a few moments of silence.

  “If you have a minute, perhaps we could find a quiet spot,” she proposed, with a wave of her hand to indicate the carabinieri and Forensics workers walking around Minoncelli’s destroyed hive. “So that you can tell me a bit about the bees. And about the cause of their disappearance.”

  At the wheels of their respective cars, they made their way to the town center of San Giorgio al Monte and ended up in a tea salon, where he took it upon himself to order two pieces of gianduja torte and two cups of Darjeeling before explaining his theory that the bees were dying because they had overadapted. Loaded with the pesticides and organophosphates they gathered, even up on the summits of the Alps, their bodies had undergone a mutation at the immune level. Simona’s cell phone rang as the professor launched into various scientific explanations. It was Marco. She didn’t answer, but it was distraction enough to make it impossible for her to pick up where she left off in his line of reasoning. She only remembered that, according to Martini—and he himself had used this metaphor—the bees were dying as a result of an attempt to adapt too well to changes in the world around them, rather than resisting them. “Exactly like a certain faction of the left in this country,” the professor concluded.

  * * *

  “We’re here,” Calabonda shouted from behind Simona.

  Overtaking a fortified crest formed by the tops of larch trees, the helicopter reached a valley in which acres and acres of pastureland sprawled toward a great wall of slate-colored mountains, spotted with snow that was dazzlingly bright. Simona’s face was struck full on by the visual slap of the undulating pinks, violets, whites, and golden yellows of the asters, buttercups, snowbells, flowering moss, and violets of Moncenisio that covered the fields. Almost as beautiful as the sea, she admitted mentally.

  “It’s over there,” Calabonda announced, pointing to a little grassy hill where one could make out, near a penned-in area where a flock of several hundred sheep were gathered, a little one-story construction.

  Right next to an enormous, curved rock, there was an unadorned structure made of flat, unmortared stones. The same stones comprised the single-pitched roof, which sloped down to the door, and two windows that seemed to be the only openings. At the foot of the little hill three sports utility vehicles belonging to the State Forestry Corps were parked at the end of a dirt road. A dozen men wearing camouflage jumpsuit
s and armed with sniper rifles could be seen positioned in a semicircle around the building at a distance of one hundred feet.

  “Excellent,” said the maresciallo, with the pair of binoculars he kept hanging around his neck glued to his eyes. “The deployment looks airtight to me.”

  Simona locked eyes with Evangelisti, whose face seemed to express much less confidence than the carabiniere’s voice. The prosecutor’s phone call had caught her as she was exiting the tea salon, where she had left Professor Martini to finish devouring the second piece of gianduja torte. The magistrate had suggested they meet as soon as possible at the heliport behind headquarters; they had found Mehmet Berisha, the Albanian shepherd. He had fired a shot as the carabinieri were closing in and now they were waiting for reinforcements so they could arrest him. If she wished, she could be present for the arrest and for the first interrogation. Now the aircraft was touching down in a great cinematic whirlwind of bending grasses, soldiers stooped over with their hands covering their headgear, and crackling radios. As the blades made their last revolutions, turning more and more slowly, the passengers left the field and, surrounded by carabinieri in bulletproof vests and helmets, arrived at the road. Behind an escarpment that shielded the sheep from view, near the parked cars, a paunchy brigadier greeted them with a military salute.

  “The deployment is in action,” he declared. “The subject can only exit through the front; there are no side openings, and only stone in back. The shooters are aimed at the windows and the door,” he explained, gesturing toward a bed of rhododendrons in bloom higher up in the sloping meadow, about a hundred feet from the sheepfold.

  Simona screwed up her eyes and made out three carabinieri lying down in the grass at the base of the shrubs with their submachine guns pointed at the little building. A little farther off on the right, behind a watering trough, she saw another three soldiers crouched down with their left hands resting on their grenade launchers. There were more men, carabinieri or forest rangers, lying on the grass to the left and right. The brigadier held out a megaphone and a gas mask to the maresciallo.