Ring of Fire

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  The letters are “I,” “T,” “E,” “R” and “M.”

  The man scratches his head. “What do you think this is all about?”

  “I don’t have the foggiest idea,” the girl replies. “But the professor did, it seems.”

  “Didn’t he explain any of this to you?” Ermete asks the Gypsy.

  “He just said they were looking for it. And that they mustn’t find out where to look.”

  “So there’s something we need to look for in this trunk. …” Ermete’s hands dive down into the teeth, all the way up to his elbows. “But what?” he wonders.

  The three continue to sort through the teeth until, an hour later, the gas heater sputters off and the bitter cold once again starts to creep in through the walls of the shack. Elettra looks at the piles of teeth. “Still the same letters …,” she points out.

  “The only thing I can think of is that you can spell my name with them …,” Ermete notes, rubbing his hands together to warm them. He picks up a canine, three molars and two incisors and lays them out one beside the other, forming a grinning yellowed ERMETE. Then he uses the teeth as tiles in a macabre mosaic, trying to form other words. “ ‘Meet’… ‘Rite’ …”

  The Gypsy tries to get the heater working again, but it’s no use. Elettra rubs her fingers, which have grown numb.

  “ ‘Tremiti.’ That’s the name of a group of islands. … Could that be it? Maybe what we’re looking for is there. Or … ‘terrier’…,” Ermete says aloud, still trying. “ ‘Meter’… ‘Miter’… ‘Remit’…”

  Elettra’s fingers are tingling. “What did you say?”

  “ ‘Term’?” mumbles Ermete. “ ‘Termite’?”

  “No, wait. Go back. You said a word that made me think of … the sun god. Nero. Fire …”

  “Maybe you’re just getting a little too cold,” says the engineer with a smile as he rearranges the teeth, one beside the other. “Anyway, I know what you’re thinking of: Mithra. But we can’t spell it with these. Unless there are teeth with the letters ‘H’ and ‘A’ in that trunk.”

  “Hold on!” cries Elettra, struck by a revelation. “Actually, we do have another letter.”

  “Which one?”

  The girl thrusts her hand into her pocket and fishes out the tooth they were given by the professor. “There’s a letter here, too! I thought it was a circle, or a ring. … But what if it was actually the letter ‘O’?”

  Elettra lays the tooth down beside five others.

  OMITRE.

  “Ah …,” Ermete murmurs, reading the letters. “That’s it! But the ‘O’ doesn’t go here. … It goes on the other end.”

  MITREO.

  “Meaning …?” asks Elettra.

  “The mitreo!” Ermete explains. “That’s the name of the temple where they worshipped Mithra centuries ago.”

  “Keep going. …”

  “There was a really famous one in Rome, one underground, beneath two other churches.” Ermete grabs Elettra’s hand, clutching it tightly. “And it’s completely surrounded by water. An underground river that flows all around it. …”

  “A ring of water?” asks Elettra.

  “Precisely!” Ermete cheers. “What better place could there be to hide a Ring of Fire?”

  “So where is it?”

  “San Clemente,” replies Ermete, rising to his feet.

  * * *

  “We’ve got to go,” Jacob Mahler orders Beatrice. He’s as calm as a summer storm. He hurls an empty suitcase to the ground, slams the violin case on top of it and adds, “Immediately.”

  “Go where?”

  “You just get the car started.”

  “And you?”

  The man walks by her, leaving a trail of his characteristic cologne behind him. He opens up a wardrobe, yanks out his wheeled carry-on bag and throws it into the hallway. “I’ve got to talk with the girl.”

  “To tell her what?”

  “She lied to me.” Jacob Mahler walks back and kicks the empty suitcase, making the violin case tumble down at Beatrice’s feet. “And I don’t intend to let her get away with it again.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Ask her questions.”

  “And if she doesn’t answer them?”

  Jacob raises an eyebrow, as if to warn her that she’s pushing his buttons. “Go downstairs and get the car ready,” he orders.

  But Beatrice insists. “If she doesn’t answer them?”

  An instant later the wind has been knocked out of her. Mahler has pinned her up against the wall with catlike grace and thrust his face up centimeters from hers.

  “Listen up,” he says. “Because I’m not going to tell you this a second time. I’m going in there to talk to the little brat. And she’s going to tell me what I want to know. Because it just so happens that, who knows how, she and her friends are keeping me from tracking down what my boss wants me to deliver to him.”

  “Are you afraid, Jacob Mahler?” Beatrice hisses, suffocating in his grasp. “Are you afraid of Heremit Devil?”

  Mahler strikes her with his open palm and throws her to the floor. The slap echoes through the room. “I told you never to say that name.”

  “Heremit… Devil…,” the young woman coughs, staying on the ground, her face shielded behind her arm. And she repeats it again. “Heremit Devil.”

  Jacob Mahler clenches his fists.

  Beatrice props herself up against the wall. She slowly wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, noticing that her lips are red with blood. And then she says, “Behold! The great Jacob Mahler, the infallible killer … who beats women and gets fooled by a group of kids.”

  The man glares down at her with a sneer. “You’re pathetic.”

  “Maybe. But you need me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, but I think so,” replies Beatrice. “And I’m telling you, don’t go near that girl.”

  “Who’s going to stop me? You?”

  “If I have to, yes,” retorts Beatrice, pulling the gun out of her pocket.

  Mahler lets out a laugh and turns his back to her. “You don’t know what you’re doing. It isn’t even loaded.”

  “Oh, really?” Beatrice says threateningly.

  “Go warm up the car …,” Jacob Mahler orders, leaning over to get something from his carry-on bag.

  “And you go to hell!” shouts Beatrice, pulling the trigger.

  FOURTH STASIMON

  “I know who he is. His name’s Jacob Mahler. He’s German. Former child prodigy. Ex-secret service. He went underground ten years ago to pursue a career in crime. They say he’s got a passion for music. And that Mahler isn’t his real name.”

  “I just want to know why he was sent to Rome.”

  “To kill Alfred, I imagine. And to get the briefcase.”

  “So … they’re actually willing to commit murder.”

  “They already have, it seems.”

  “And there’s nothing we can do?”

  “The agreement was not to interfere with the kids.”

  “The agreement was also not to kill Alfred.”

  “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know who’s behind all this. Or why. I haven’t even managed to track her down. Maybe Alfred was the one who let something slip. …”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, then?”

  “Well, a high-profile professional killer like him doesn’t decide to come to Rome all on his own. He must’ve been hired by someone, someone who knows about the Ring of Fire. About everything, basically. So the question is … who is it?”

  “I don’t know, but they’re definitely dangerous.”

  “We’ve got to warn them.”

  “What you’re actually thinking is: we’ve got to stop them.”

  “No, we can’t stop them. Not any longer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I know my niece.”

  25

  THE SANCTUARY

 
WHEN SHENG GETS BACK TO ERMETE’S PLACE, NOBODY’S THERE.

  He rings the doorbell once, twice, three times, but no one answers.

  He walks all the way around the building to make sure it’s the right one, he rings the bell again, he shouts, but all he gets for his efforts is an annoyed neighbor who glares at him from the floor above.

  Sheng waves, smiling sheepishly.

  Then he looks around, frenetically counting the seconds and regretting he doesn’t have either a cell phone or a number to call. The only thing that comes to his mind is to go back to the Domus Quintilia, which is … somewhere in Trastevere, he thinks.

  He spreads the map open in front of him and starts looking. He’ll need to cross back over the bridge and then, maybe, take bus number nine. Or twelve.

  “Why is it so complicated?” he says hopelessly.

  He folds up the map angrily and decides to wait five more minutes. “But only five,” he says aloud.

  The seconds tick by slowly, and when four of the allotted five minutes have gone by, Sheng sees Harvey appear at the end of the sidewalk.

  “Hao! Harvey!” he says, greeting him.

  “Sheng! When did you get here?”

  “An hour ago, maybe two?”

  “That’s impossible. I’ve been gone less than thirty minutes.”

  “Where’ve you been? Why isn’t anyone here?”

  Harvey pulls out a set of keys and unlocks the garage.

  “I went to a restaurant down the street. It was fantastic! I’d never eaten bucatini before!”

  “Gee, you seem so worried …,” Sheng chides him. “Elettra? Ermete?”

  The garage door goes up with a metallic hum. Harvey goes over everything he knows: the trunk full of teeth that Elettra found, Ermete taking off in his sidecar, and his own meeting at the restaurant with the man’s really shady friend.

  “So what’s the guy like?”

  Harvey shakes his head, disappointed. “He didn’t make a very good impression on me. Actually, we didn’t talk much at all. Also the guy wasn’t really talking … he … he was wheezing through a little box. But when I asked him about the man with the violin …”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Harvey snorts. “Barely anything. But when I asked if he knew him, the moment I brought up the subject, it’s like he … woke up. He had me sit down, he ordered me a dish of bucatini and he asked me around three hundred questions.”

  “And you?”

  “I ate my pasta.”

  “And his questions?”

  “I made up a bunch of stuff.” Harvey smiles. “I’m getting to be almost as good as you are at inventing stories. But I’m telling you, I don’t like that guy one bit.”

  “Did you tell him about the briefcase?”

  “What do you think I am, an idiot?”

  “Hao! You’re great, Harvey. … So did you tell him or didn’t you?”

  “No!” the American boy snaps. “I didn’t tell him anything!”

  Sheng goes to open the fridge and comes back with an ice-cold Coca-Cola. “I don’t know. …”

  “You don’t know what?”

  “There are so many things I don’t know right now. … I wonder if it was a good idea to tell Ermete about all this.”

  “I’ve wondered that, too,” admits Harvey.

  “And …?”

  “And I thought he might even be one of them.”

  Sheng gapes at him. “How come?”

  “We know he was working with the professor, but we have no way of knowing if the professor really trusted him. …”

  “But in his journal he wrote down Ermete’s name right after ‘Study the tops and the wooden map. Find out how it’s used.’”

  “The fact is … I don’t know how to explain it to you, Sheng, but I had the funny feeling … that Ermete’s friend knew all about the man with the violin.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “He never asked me anything about him. He just asked questions about me and how I knew Ermete. Listen …” Harvey starts to count points off on his fingertips. “Ermete knew Professor Alfred Van Der Berger. Ermete’s friend knows the man with the violin. The man with the violin kills the professor. What’s the only common denominator?”

  “Ermete,” Sheng admits, but then he adds, “But he helped us. And he showed us how to use the map.”

  “Of course, but we were the ones who had the map,” Harvey reminds him.

  Sheng is silent for a moment, thinking things through. “And we basically brought it over to him.”

  “Exactly. Speaking of which, what did you find out about the house over in Coppedè?”

  Sheng shows him the photos and admits how he was suddenly so scared he turned around and ran off.

  “Scared of what, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. Just plain scared. It’s like, in that house, there was something … something scary, I guess.”

  Harvey looks at his friend with a faint smile. “Well, that explains it.”

  Just then, a phone call comes in. The sudden, metallic ring makes them start.

  “Should we answer it?” Sheng asks on the second ring.

  “It might be Ermete’s mother. She’s called ten times already.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just listen. The answering machine picks up automatically on the fifth ring.”

  And, in fact, on the fifth ring, they hear the woman’s shrill, nagging voice. The boys exchange a grin and then the answering machine cuts off the monologue with a beep.

  “We’d better get out of here,” suggests Harvey when the room is quiet again. “The more I think about that guy I talked to, the more I feel like putting a few miles between him and me.”

  “And if he knows Ermete, he must know where he lives, too. … So where should we go?” asks Sheng. “We don’t know where Elettra and Ermete are, and—”

  “Unless…” Harvey suddenly remembers Ermete’s cell phone number. He tries calling, but hangs up again after a moment. “It’s switched off. Or dead. In any case, it’s not working.”

  “That’s bad news.”

  “We’ve only got two alternatives.”

  “Try out one of these fantastic board games?” suggests Sheng.

  “No. The first is going back to the hotel and calling it a day. At least for today.”

  “And the second?”

  “We could—”

  “No!” cries Sheng, guessing what Harvey’s going to suggest.

  “I haven’t said anything yet!”

  “But I can already tell. …” Sheng continues to nervously pace across the room with long strides.

  “Sheng? What can you tell?”

  The Chinese boy picks up his backpack and puts all their gear into it. “Let’s at least pack up all our stuff first.”

  “Do you want to hear the second alternative or not?”

  “I know …,” sighs Sheng. “We go back together to the Coppedè district. And we look for Mistral.”

  Harvey tosses the journal into his friend’s backpack. “Sometimes you amaze me.”

  “Hao. …,” mumbles Sheng. “But I’m warning you: to get there we’ll need to take a bunch of buses. And we’re almost out of tickets.”

  A few minutes later, Harvey and Sheng walk out of the apartment. The overcast sky threatens to snow. They reach the sidewalk and look around suspiciously. But the few people who are walking along, chilled, don’t seem to take any interest in them.

  “How can you tell if someone’s following you?” asks Sheng.

  “You just keep your eyes open,” Harvey answers.

  They head toward the bus stop.

  “Harvey?”

  “What?”

  “This is all really exciting …,” Sheng admits. “But … now … I almost wish it was over.”

  “So do I,” the American boy replies.

  Behind them, the telephone in Ermete’s empty apartment rings five times. The answering machine automatically
clicks on. “Harvey! Sheng!” the engineer’s voice is heard shouting as it’s recorded on the tape. “I just saw that you called! You’ve got to come immediately to the Basilica di San Clemente! I repeat: the Basilica di San Clemente! We might just have found … well, the you-know-what. … Come on! We’ll be waiting for you!”

  26

  THE WATER

  THE BASILICA DI SAN CLEMENTE LOOKS LIKE AN ANIMAL CROUCHED beneath the snow. Inside, the golden dome over the altar is filled with the whispers of the few tourists and the echoing of their footsteps.

  Elettra and Ermete walk in through a side door.

  “I’ve never been in here before …,” says the girl, looking around. “It’s a very pretty church.”

  Ermete points at the nave to their left, where the ticket booth is. “Lucky you,” he sighs. “This must be my thirtieth time here. I think I know all the churches in Rome inch by inch.”

  Elettra glances at him inquisitively.

  “My mom made me be an altar boy,” the engineer explains. “Back when she was still proud of me.”

  The ticket booth is closed, but Ermete takes advantage of his old acquaintances and, after a brief chat with the priest, who’s as tall and gaunt as a sardine, he’s given keys that unlock a very large door. On the other side of the door is a stairway that makes its way steeply underground in a long series of white steps.

  “Where’s the mitreo?” asks Elettra.

  “Way, way down,” replies Ermete.

  * * *

  Below the church of San Clemente is a second church. A row of floor lamps turns on with a chorus of clicks. Once she’s reached the foot of the stairs, Elettra has the impression she’s walked into a stone forest lit up by torches. The ancient walls are like canopies of intertwined branches. The tombs carved into the walls, the niches and the writings on the tombstones are like wrinkled bark. There are Latin inscriptions and fragments of mosaics. Frescoes paled over time. Faded images with dull colors.

  And a damp silence.

  “Is this it?” Elettra asks, making her way through the strange forest of bricks and stone like a nocturnal animal.

  “No. This is the old church. The mitreo is even farther down,” replies Ermete, leading her toward the nave on the left, to a strange sculpted stairway that looks like a well. On the floor are the remains of columns, which jut up like truncated tusks. “We have to go down this way,” he says.