Century #4: Dragon of Seas

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  Keep your head up. Light on your feet. And when the time’s right, throw your punch.

  “There are things you still haven’t figured out, aren’t there?” Harvey asks, taking a step toward the man.

  Separated from him by the perfectly polished desk, Heremit Devil shows no sign that he even heard him.

  “There are things you still haven’t figured out, and you don’t know what to do,” Harvey says again, with greater conviction. “You know about the Pact, the four Sages, us.… You had us followed, you stole everything from us, you had our masters and your own rotten thugs killed … and after all that, after five years, you still don’t know what to do. And you don’t know what you did it for. Am I right?”

  “Watch what you say, boy.”

  The elevator door in the office opens silently.

  “Who is it that’s calling me?” Harvey asks again before two strong hands grab him by the shoulders and drag him out of the room.

  To someplace.

  In the black skyscraper.

  IT’S A NIGHT FULL OF LIFE, ILLUMINATED WITH NEON STREAKS in different colors. Shanghai is a tangle of serpents of light. The signs are buzzing masks. Hidden behind the tree-lined boulevards with their five-star hotels, sparkling marble-floored restaurants and perfectly manicured flower beds are smaller, darker streets. The forgotten alleys. Alleys lined with the service exits of bars, kitchen doors. Where tired waiters chat to each other in Wu, English, French, Russian, Italian. While stiletto heels and designer shoes tread the sidewalks along the main roads, the forgotten alleys are silent. Only shadows walk there. Shadows pulling other shadows behind them: billowing fabric, nylon cords. The wing of a parachute, to be quickly folded up and hidden among the plastic skeletons of garbage bins.

  Elettra and Mistral stand guard on the forgotten alley where they landed, not even sure what they have to be afraid of. In their minds, they relive second after second of their descent between the skyscrapers.

  In the shadows, the human bat finishes tucking away the parachute and motions to the girls to follow him.

  They walk along in the darkness, hearing muffled music pulsing on the other side of the thin walls. Jacob Mahler reaches a well-lit street. He crosses it and walks past a row of trees. Once again, darkness.

  When he reaches a large roundabout, the man seems to reflect on which way to go. Then the trio turns left, crossing over a green area illuminated by bright, flat disks they can walk over. All around them, the treetops look like shrouds. A stairway covered with graffiti. And a long sidewalk that leads back to the street. On the ground level of the block of buildings are restaurants. Mahler walks into the first one, whose flashing sign depicts a blue pig. He sits down on one of the stools facing the sidewalk and orders meat dumplings and tea for all of them. Then he turns to the girls and points at the skyscraper just across the street.

  It’s a completely black building.

  Tall, shiny and black. Heremit Devil’s skyscraper.

  “That’s it,” Mahler says.

  A middle-aged waiter serves them three glasses filled with a strange, yellowish beverage and a basket of steamed dumplings to be eaten with chopsticks or their hands.

  “Now I understand,” murmurs Mistral, who refuses to touch the food.

  “What?”

  “Why it’s called Century.” She turns to Elettra and points at a sign on the corner, which is written in two languages: Chinese and English.

  CENTURY PARK

  “The name of the place where the Pact was broken …,” Elettra murmurs.

  “It happened five years ago,” Jacob Mahler says in a low voice, “when that woman, the archeologist, responded to an ad in the paper.”

  “An ad?”

  “Heremit ordered work to be done on the building’s foundation. In the process, they unearthed an ancient dwelling. He put an ad in the papers to find someone who could explain what he found.”

  “And Zoe replied to it.”

  “I went to meet her in Iceland and then she came here.”

  “And she told him everything.”

  Jacob’s silence is his answer.

  Mistral shakes her head and lets out a shrill laugh. “And then,” she whispers, “you went to Rome to kill the professor. And to kill us.”

  “I wasn’t ordered to kill you.”

  Mistral looks at him intently with her big, clear eyes. And her stare summarizes everything she’s thinking.

  “I was just carrying out orders,” Jacob Mahler says.

  Another long moment of silence. Elettra and Jacob eat slowly, order more dumplings. Across the street, the skyscraper’s shiny black steel seems to swallow up even the reflections of the streetlights.

  “Time for us to meet up with the others,” Mahler decides when they’re done. “Once you’re with them, find a place to spend the night.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to see an old friend of mine”—Jacob checks his watch—“in exactly two hours.”

  “Who’s the old friend?”

  Mahler pays in cash. They leave the restaurant, walk down Century Avenue on the opposite side of the street from Heremit Devil’s skyscraper and turn down an alley going in the other direction.

  “Who’s the old friend?” Elettra asks again.

  Jacob Mahler doesn’t answer.

  He isn’t used to talking much.

  Elettra catches Mistral’s eye. The French girl walks along, staring at the toes of her gym shoes. “Don’t trust him,” she whispers.

  Sheng and Ermete are still sitting on the steps.

  They’ve unfolded the tourist map of Shanghai and covered it with circles: one for each building constructed before 1907.

  “Hao! Finally,” Sheng says when he sees Jacob Mahler show up, followed by the two girls. They don’t seem to be in a very good mood. And the man with the violin is dressed differently than before. “What happened to your coat?”

  Running. Jumping. Plummeting. Gliding. At the very thought of what they went through, Elettra’s skin starts to tingle with shivers.

  “Are you guys okay?”

  Ermete and Sheng show them the work they’ve done on the map. Meanwhile, Mahler punches a code into the panel by the door. He has everyone follow him up to an apartment on the ninth floor.

  It’s a big, empty room with wires all over the floor. In the center of it, on a tripod, is a round naval signal lamp that faces the window. A table without chairs. A dozen or so black spray canisters. A row of identical suits still wrapped in cellophane hung on an aluminum rod.

  Mahler waits until they’re all inside and shuts the door behind them. He doesn’t turn on the light.

  No lightbulbs to be seen.

  “There should be something to drink in the refrigerator. The bathroom’s over there.”

  “Is it without lights, too?” Ermete asks.

  He gets no answer.

  Jacob Mahler rests the violin case on the table, undresses, removes the cellophane from one of his other suits and puts it on. Then he feeds his old clothes into a paper shredder.

  “Where are we?” Elettra asks him.

  “My place,” the man replies.

  “Nice,” Sheng says.

  “Yeah, real cozy,” Elettra points out. “Beautiful wires on the floor … no furniture getting in the way, not even a lightbulb …”

  Sheng rests the cookie tin and Elettra’s backpack on the room’s only table.

  “You can stay here for a couple hours, tops,” Jacob Mahler says. “Then you have to go.”

  He walks over to Elettra, talking to her as if she was the head of the group. “There’s a red button by the door. When you leave, push it. Then close the door. And don’t open it again, no matter what.”

  “Or else …?”

  “You’ll get blown up, too.”

  Mahler buckles his belt.

  Mistral steps over to the signal lamp by the window. In the distance, among the other buildings, she recognizes the shape of Heremit
Devil’s black, crystal skyscraper.

  “You’re going over there, aren’t you?” she asks, not expecting an answer.

  Mahler slips by her without making a sound. “That’s why I came back.”

  “But yesterday you said it was impossible!” Sheng exclaims.

  “And I’ll say it again: it’s impossible. Unless there’s someone inside who can open the door for you.”

  “Your friend,” Elettra says.

  Jacob Mahler nods. He checks his watch.

  Then he leans over behind the lamp, throws its large switch, and the heating element inside of it starts to heat up, glowing bright red. In half a minute, the lamp is ready and it projects a shaft of white light through the windowpane, straight at Heremit Devil’s building. A push-button control is connected to the switch. When it’s pressed, the light blinks off and on again. Off and on again.

  Off and on again.

  Sheng is the first one to figure out what’s going on.

  “Morse code,” he says, his voice low. Then he runs over to the window. “To communicate with someone inside Heremit’s building! Brilliant idea!”

  Mahler doesn’t reply. He continues to switch the signal lamp on and off, focusing on his message.

  “What are you transmitting?”

  “I’m asking him what his name is.”

  Five pairs of eyes stare at the black skyscraper between Century Park and Century Avenue. Most of the windows on the lower floors are dark. Only the second-to-top floor is completely lit up.

  For a long time, nothing happens.

  Then the light in one of the rooms suddenly turns on, turns off, turns on again.

  “There he is,” Jacob Mahler remarks.

  “What’s he saying?” Elettra asks, fascinated by the silent messages crossing through the night.

  “ ‘H … A …,’ ” Ermete reads. And without even looking at Elettra, he explains, “Morse code is a role-player’s bread and butter.”

  “H, A … and then?” Sheng speaks up.

  “Harvey,” Jacob Mahler says, smiling.

  “SOMEONE’S AT THE DOOR,” IRENE MELODIA SAYS. SHE TURNS IN her wheelchair, looking for Fernando. “Fernando?”

  He glances up from the stacks of papers all around him. “Hmm?”

  “Someone’s at the door.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.” He points at his papers. “I—I was …”

  The Domus Quintilia is closed and strangely silent. All the guests have checked out, and Fernando and Irene decided not to take in any more, not until things are back to normal, at least. During the wait, Elettra’s father is turning his efforts to working on his interminable novel in the only lit room.

  Once again, clangs from the iron knocker on the front door fill the courtyard. This time, Fernando hears it, too. He stands up and rubs his eyes. “Who could it be at this hour? And why don’t they use the bell?”

  “If you like, I’ll go down to see,” Irene says.

  The man stretches and walks out of the room, grumbling. But a moment before shutting the door behind him, Irene calls out, “Don’t open it right away. Be careful.”

  Fernando goes downstairs to the reception area, sees a broom propped up by the door and, thinking the person knocking might be up to no good, grabs it. He weighs it in his hands. Better than nothing.

  He crosses the dark courtyard, passing under the yellowing vines, reaches the front door and clicks open its old, heavy lock.

  “Sorry, we’re clo—” he begins to say the moment the light from the nearby streetlamp creeps into the courtyard.

  Outside is a gypsy woman.

  “Oh, no … look … don’t even ask,” Fernando says, hurrying to close the door.

  A gold earring glimmers through the woman’s grimy, curly hair. “I am a friend of your daughter,” she says.

  The man leaves the door open a crack, hesitant.

  “Your daughter, Elettra,” the gypsy woman adds.

  Fernando opens the door a little wider. There’s something familiar about her face. He has the impression he’s seen her before. Then he remembers: she’s the gypsy woman who often begs in Piazza in Piscinula or on the bridge over the Tiber. Now he recognizes her. He also seems to recognize the sweater the woman is wearing. Is it Elettra’s? Or Irene’s?

  “That’s my sweater …,” he finally mumbles.

  The gypsy looks down at her clothes. “It is? Oh, I didn’t know.… I’m sorry. Elettra gave it to me.”

  “My daughter—”

  “She is in Shanghai, I know.” The woman smiles. It’s a yellow, ugly smile, but it’s unusually friendly. She pulls a black appointment book out from underneath her sweater and hands it to Fernando. “Look at this. I stole it.”

  The man stiffens.

  “Read it! You are in danger!” the gypsy woman insists.

  “Listen, if this is some kind of joke …” Fernando leans against the doorframe and opens the appointment book. It’s full of entries.

  WEDNESDAY: E.M. LEAVES AT 8 A.M.,

  RETURNS AT 1 P.M.

  F.M. STILL AT HOME. WRITING?

  THURSDAY: NO MOVEMENT

  FRIDAY: F.M., E.M. DEPART AT 5 A.M.

  F.M. RETURNS ALONE AT 7:38 A.M.

  “What is all this?” Elettra’s father asks.

  The gypsy woman points to nearby Piazza in Piscinula. “This book belongs to the waiter over at that restaurant, the one who just started working there. I stole it from him not long ago. They are watching you.”

  “What?” Fernando gasps.

  “Look at the last page,” the woman insists.

  TOMORROW: F.M. AT THE OPEN

  MARKET AT 6 A.M.?

  GO IN AND GET THE OLD WOMAN.

  Fernando Melodia gapes at the page.

  “I think you should leave,” the gypsy woman says. Then she adds, “At once.”

  IN HEREMIT DEVIL’S BUILDING, HARVEY IS IN THE DARK AGAIN.

  He stares at Shanghai’s skyscrapers, the many lights switching on and off.

  And he wonders if those windows might be hiding other messages.

  Other Morse codes.

  When Jacob started to blink his light, Harvey had just walked into the room. He didn’t notice it right away, even though he’d gone over the plan for weeks and knew exactly where to look. Jacob explained it to him because he was sure that once Harvey was captured, Heremit would lock him up in that very room. He explained how to attract attention on the plane, how to act toward Heremit and, once he was alone, what direction to look in as he waited for the coded message.

  On. Off.

  On. On.

  Off.

  On.

  The instructions for getting out of the room traveled slowly through the night. And Harvey replied.

  On. On. On.

  “Okay.”

  In the darkness of the room, the boy opens his backpack, which was searched at the airport in New York and later by Heremit Devil’s security team. He pulls out his shaving kit, takes out his toothbrush and twists its head. The sharp tip of a screwdriver appears among the bristles. Harvey puts it on the bed. Then he uncaps the tube of toothpaste and squeezes its bottom end. Hidden beneath a small layer of toothpaste is a tiny yet powerful flashlight.

  The boy sits down on the bed and undoes his shoelaces: they’re made of the same material as Mahler’s violin bow. Razor-sharp threads.

  He reaches into his sweater sleeves and tears out the linings, which are shaped into two perfectly fitting gloves. He puts them on.

  Then he goes into the bathroom and detaches the plastic curtain from the shower rod. He brings it into the main room and spreads it out on the floor right below the small, square thermostat. He folds it into two insulating layers and steps onto it with his shoes. He studies the device in front of him. He loosens its four screws with his toothbrush, removes the cover from the little box and shines his toothpaste-tube flashlight into it. Inside the thermostat is a notched disk, a tiny glass tube with mercury in it, a green wire, a red wire
, a blue wire. Mahler told him to clip the blue one. He loops a shoelace around the blue wire and tugs on it. The lights in the room go out for a second.

  And the lock on the door goes clack.

  * * *

  The lights come back on a second later, but Harvey has already pulled the door toward him. He puts on his backpack and hurries out.

  Once he’s in the hallway, he checks his watch. He has just under twenty minutes.

  He listens. A constant, ominous hum fills the air.

  He peers around. The floor is made of sturdy teak. Overhead, in the corner, the red blinking light of a security camera. From what Mahler told him, it rotates to film the hallway every forty seconds. Harvey ducks back into the room a moment before the camera turns his way, then waits for it to return to its place and runs out again. He has forty seconds to reach a white door that should be somewhere on the opposite wall.

  Thirty seconds. Twenty.

  Beside the door is a keypad. Harvey knows the code. And he types it in.

  8 … 2 … 6 … 8 …

  He casts a final glance at the security camera.

  Ten seconds.

  … 6

  The lock clicks open. Harvey hurries out the door, closes it behind him and starts going down the service stairs in Heremit Devil’s building.

  He goes down cautiously, careful not to make the slightest noise.

  There aren’t supposed to be any surveillance cameras here, but Harvey checks for them anyway. With every other flight of stairs, he counts down, keeping track of what floor he’s reached, because there aren’t any signs indicating the skyscraper’s various levels.

  Once he’s reached what should be the ground floor, he goes down another half flight of stairs. A service door should be on the left.

  Instead, he sees a keypad halfway up the two-tone wall. Harvey punches in the access code and a small section of the wall slides open along an invisible track.

  On the other side is a passageway with a ceiling so low that he needs to crawl through it. On the far end, a second door with a coded lock.

  Clack!

  Harvey peeks outside. Nighttime. Darkness. A simple external metal cage in a narrow cement atrium. A tangle of rumbling pipes that plunge down belowground and disappear through a grate overhead. No access panel on the outside.