Pliny's Warning

by Nicholson, Anne Maria

  They hurry through a labyrinth of lanes until they overtake the protesters. Ahead there is a line of police with batons and raised transparent shields spreading across the entry to the Parliament. She looks back and sees the marchers coming towards them. ‘Poppaea! We can’t stay here. We’ll get crushed!’

  The women step back into a lane as the sea of people flows by.

  ‘There’s Marcello!’ Frances and Poppaea run forward and fall in step with him.

  They all stop abruptly. A loud, distorted voice fills the air. They can’t see her but Doctor Masina is addressing the protest. She calls for calm, tells them they can go no further, then begins to describe Pasquale’s courageous struggle, urging that his legacy should be an end to the dumping of toxic waste.

  ‘We will not take this any longer.’ A new voice, male, rings out. ‘Pasquale Mazzone was my friend. He never hurt anyone in his life.’

  Marcello takes her arm and pulls her close. ‘Satore. He’s been getting ready to speak,’ he whispers to her.

  ‘Pasquale represented everything that is good in Campania. He had a big heart, a beautiful spirit and a love of art and music.’ Satore sounds strong and sure and he holds the crowd. ‘My friend wanted to trust in democracy, but he was betrayed. We are all being betrayed! Our leaders have forgotten what it is to be human. They are putting money ahead of our people. They are allowing our land, air and water to be poisoned and they don’t even care when our children die.’

  Loud applause and cheering greet his speech.

  More speakers follow, calling for a general strike that would bring Campania to a halt unless the politicians pledged to end the dumping. As the last speaker finishes, a ripple of restlessness runs through the crowd. It starts to break up and Satore pushes through to them, his face flushed, sweat beading his forehead.

  Suddenly, a loud roaring rises behind them.

  ‘Look!’ Poppaea screams. Fire is ripping through four buses spread across the road. The flames take hold quickly and people start pushing and shoving.

  ‘Quick, let’s get out of here!’ Marcello grabs the women’s hands and, with Satore, they run back into the lanes, sirens already blaring behind them. They criss-cross several city blocks but their way is blocked again. Large skips of garbage have been dragged onto the road and set alight. People linger in groups, their expressions wary and angry.

  Acrid smoke floats around them and sparks crack and splinter the night air. As the four of them sidle past, Frances sees something strange dangling out of one of the smouldering skips. She stops, stunned. An arm, glowing white, hangs out from the garbage. On the middle finger is a gold signet ring. ‘There’s someone in there!’ Frances points to the arm.

  They follow her gaze. Satore goes up to one of the men watching nearby and speaks to him, then comes back to tell them, ‘Fabio Dragorra. They got him at last.’

  ‘We have to get some help.’ Frances says. ‘We have to get him out!’

  ‘It’s too late. He was dead when they put him there,’ Satore says. ‘He lived like a hyena, let him die like a hyena. He and his scum, they killed Pasquale.’

  They are only metres from the arm. Frances can see an eagle’s head engraved on the ring, identical to one she had seen on his father’s hand.

  ‘Marcello, what can we do? If we do nothing, we’re as bad as them.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. That’s how it is here. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Camilla is feeling particularly pleased. It is her forty-fifth birthday and Luigi is more attentive than ever. When she woke this morning she found a beautiful crystal vase full of roses he’d left before he had gone home to his wife, sometime after midnight.

  Her appointment as Italy’s youngest university chancellor is beginning to bring rewards; invitations to join the board of the city orchestra and to international symposia as well as speaking engagements at prestigious conferences on volcano research. Interest in the monitoring of Mt Vesuvius was escalating and who better than she to take this knowledge to the world?

  She pads across the Persian rug to the credenza and picks up a silver-framed photo. Pasquale poses in a tuxedo, cello in hand. She kisses it, a daily habit formed not long after his funeral. How fortunate the orchestra had arranged a photo shoot before his debut. Her beautiful son—his whimsical smile offsets his wonderful eyes. They had so little time together. Yet, in spite of his declining health, she will always treasure those weeks.

  The experience had changed her irrevocably. She believed that passionately. She wanted to be a better person, like him, to put her double life behind her. Well, almost all of it. Occasional exceptions in her love life didn’t count, surely!

  The newspaper is spread across her desk. She chuckles when she reads the headlines for the fifth or sixth time that morning.

  IL SISTEMA CHIEF DRAGORRA ARRESTED IN DAWN RAID.

  A photo shows two policemen escorting him into the police station, handcuffed, his face hard and defiant. Since the mass protest following Pasquale’s death, the Parliament had passed new laws, cracking down on toxic waste dumping and illegal developments. The situation had become an international embarrassment and Rome’s rulers were breathing down the necks of Naples’ jittery politicians.

  Camilla had rightly guessed that it would be only a matter of time before Umberto Dragorra’s time would be up and had moved to distance herself. Now he was in the city jail, arrested on charges of dumping waste in building sites and mixing toxic waste with cement.

  When unfortunate questions were raised by the Minister’s office about her report on the Red Zone, she had invited the Minister to dinner and over a glass or two of the best red wine successfully persuaded him that it was all a terrible mistake. The report had been a draft copy and was awaiting public input; it was never intended to be the basis on which consent had been granted to Dragorra for his shopping centre and school. There had been an appalling bureaucratic blunder. Work on the development had ground to a halt.

  ‘Chancellor, excuse me for interrupting.’

  Her new assistant taps lightly on the door and walks in. Romeo is still in his twenties but had shown immediate promise.

  ‘The news is about to start. You wanted me to remind you…’

  ‘Thank you, Romeo. Please, go ahead.’

  Picking up a remote control, he turns on a large new plasma screen attached to a wall in the office.

  ‘There, it’s just starting.’ He smiles at her as the music for the noon bulletin starts.

  ‘Perfect. Thank you.’ She watches his svelte body leave her office and thanks the stars she had given the annoying Maria her marching orders. She settles back into her large chair.

  Umberto’s arrest is leading the bulletin. The newsreader says his lawyer is about to make a statement and throws to a reporter on the steps of the police station who introduces a bald, bespectacled man.

  ‘My client is completely innocent of these charges,’ he says. ‘He will fight them to the end.’

  As he finishes, a woman with curly blonde hair steps into the frame, her heavily made-up face and impossibly long eyelashes filling the screen. ‘I wish to say something.’ Her voice reveals heavy traces of a Sicilian accent and her large breasts are well-displayed by a plunging neckline.

  ‘Umberto Dragorra is a good man. I know he is innocent. I have known him for more than six months and I am bearing his child. He has promised to leave his wife and I trust he will do the right thing by me, as I will do the right thing by him. I love you, Umberto!’ She blows a kiss into the camera lens.

  Camilla can’t stop smiling. She even feels a little sorry for Umberto. They had enjoyed some good times. And she was about to have many more !

  There had been news too of old Alfonso. He had survived his stroke and was in a rehabilitation hospital. His wife had taken the opportunity of escaping for a few months’ holiday with some family at Lake Como. Rumour was that she
might not return.

  All in all it is shaping up to be a wonderful day. She is feeling magnanimous towards her Progetto Vulcano team, even that pest, Riccardo Cocchia, on Stromboli. She had opened the coffers of the university wider to give them the resources they needed and today is the day to give them the good news. Maybe she’ll surprise them after lunch.

  She opens a small wardrobe in the corner of her office and pulls out the clothes she once wore when she worked in the field. When she lays them on the sofa they look a tad old-fashioned but they were expensive classics and she hasn’t put on a centimetre so they will fit her still. Removing her shoes and suit and silk blouse and hanging them carefully in the wardrobe, she slides into a pair of tailored jeans, a fitted white shirt and a navy jacket. She considers the suede trekking boots but quickly dismisses the idea and puts on her high-heeled shoes again. She regards herself in the full-length mirror attached to the inside of the wardrobe door.

  Not quite to her taste but at the observatory she would fit in just fine.

  ‘I’m going to the observatory for a few hours, Romeo. I’ll drive my own car,’ she tells her assistant as she leaves, smiling with some satisfaction as she notices him furtively looking her up and down. Camilla strolls, relaxed and happy, out of the university and crosses the road towards the car park. She stops on the other side of the road and turns around. Ad Scientiarvm Havsvm Et Seminarivm Doctrinarvm.

  The engraved ancient mission statement is burning down at her from its position above the entrance. She feels as if she’s been struck by Neptune’s fork. This is what she was destined for, and how she will honour the memory of her son, who had brought such unexpected joy into her life. She would revere the pledge.

  In the past she had been guilty of omission, but beneath it all she was still a scientist, born to honour research and the truth. Her journey to the top had meant sacrifices and short cuts but there was plenty of time to remedy matters. No more nepotism, no more political favours. Chancellor Camilla Corsi would be remembered in the history of Naples as The Reformer.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Frances can’t believe her eyes. The microphones she planted on the summit of Stromboli are sending in the strongest vibrations she has ever seen from a volcano. The message is clear: the main vent is exploding.

  She grabs her mobile and punches in Riccardo’s number. There’s no reply. She tries Olivia. No answer. She rings the switchboard at the island’s observatory. The call rings out.

  Her eyes flit across the other monitors filling the nerve centre of the Naples Observatory. The seismographs recording movement on Stromboli are going crazy, the zig-zag lines leaping up and down the screens.

  Out of the corner of her eye she glimpses the water in her drinking glass washing from one side to the other. The glass starts to rattle on the desk then falls off, smashing on the floor.

  ‘When Stromboli coughs, Vesuvius sneezes.’ Riccardo’s words ring in her ears. Like a chain reaction, the monitors from one end of the room to the other start convulsing in concert, the jerking lines on each revealing a swarm of earthquakes stretching from deep in the Tyrrhenian Sea through to Campi Flegrei, the Campanian Ignimbrite and on through to Vesuvius.

  As Frances reaches to push a red alarm button, the room starts to shake and plunges into darkness. She pushes the button but there is no sound. Dropping to the floor she crawls around the room, fumbling until she finds her backpack propped against a wall. Putting it across her shoulders, she moves on all fours to the space beneath the doorway and stops to listen. Voices, crying and shouting echo around her. People are running in the distance and a low rumble makes her tremble. But she can’t see a thing. Her stomach heaves as the building sways and she feels as if she’s in the hull of a ship as it rides a huge wave.

  Her phone rings and she prises it out of her pocket. ‘Frances, thank God. Are you all right?’

  She sits against the door-jamb, hugging her knees, shaking. Beads of sweat slide down her face and she wipes them with her sleeve. ‘Marcello!’ Her voice sounds hollow, shrill. ‘I’m at the observatory. The whole place is shaking but I’m OK. Where are you?’ She bites her lip as she listens, trying not to alarm him but wanting to reach through the phone and hold him.

  ‘On the tangenziale, going to see Nonno. But the earthquake—the whole road is shaking and cracking. I’ve abandoned my car. Everyone has. People are running. I’m going to try to walk cross-country to my grandfather’s house.’

  ‘Be careful, Marcello. I’ll try to get there.’

  ‘Frances, I…’

  ‘I can’t hear you. Marcello?’

  The phone has died and Frances feels utterly alone. The building has stopped shaking and all is quiet. She stands and pulls off her backpack, groping inside for a torch and a water bottle. When she shines the light up and down the empty corridor it flickers on wall posters and closed doors. Nothing seems damaged. She flicks a light switch but the power is off. Her watch says one thirty-five—everyone must have left the building for lunch. She walks slowly along until she reaches a water cooler. She drinks all of her own water then refills the bottle. Three empty bottles have been discarded in a bin so she fills them and stuffs them into her bag.

  Hearing voices nearby she turns into the hall leading to the entrance, where she sees a dozen or so people crammed beneath the doorway. She wriggles between them, out into the full glare of the summer sun. At first she struggles to see anything, then notices more people standing in groups outside the observatory, strangely quiet.

  ‘Signorina, it’s not safe!’ a man shouts to her.

  She waves at him but continues walking to the car park at the rear of the building. A pile of rubble blocks her way. The back half of the observatory has crumbled. Desks and chairs dangle precariously in offices smashed and open to the air like a doll’s house. Satellite dishes have fallen from the rooftop to the ground, broken amid a tangled mess of wires. Frances clambers over the wreckage, avoiding large jagged pieces of glass. Many cars are buried beneath her, flashes of red, silver and blue revealing their presence. She searches at the far end of the car park until she finds her motorbike, lying on its side among the surviving vehicles.

  She starts to run, ignoring the sirens screaming all around. Picking up the bike she guns the throttle and it bursts into life. A thick pall of dust hovers in the air. Her helmet is back in the building but she retrieves sunglasses and a large handkerchief from her bag. With the checked cloth tied around her face, she drives cautiously through a rear gateway.

  The streets are like obstacle courses, cracked and blocked in places by piles of rocks and debris. As she passes the pizzaria she glimpses her work colleagues sheltering in the entry, and feels a pang of guilt for leaving. But Marcello needs her more right now. And she needs him.

  She heads towards the tangenziale, weaving in and out of the mounds and cracks. There is little traffic as the roads are almost impassable, with only a few earthmovers clearing the way for rescue crews.

  Smoke rises from an apartment building ahead where children’s cries greet her and she slows. Families are crowded out the front, watching helplessly as their homes collapse before their eyes, raining concrete, glass and iron. Somehow, an ambulance has forced its way through and paramedics are treating people lying on the ground, their faces and arms cut and bloodied.

  Frances is torn but knows she can do little here. She drives on, passing lines of people, staring dazed at one damaged building after another like survivors of a bombing raid. They seem in shock and don’t look back as her motorbike breaks an eerie silence. No birds sing. No dogs bark.

  When she reaches the highway she stops abruptly. The road is a car park. As far as she can see in both directions, cars have stopped and people are walking and running along the road. Forced to slow to almost walking pace, she ventures on slowly, at times having to edge between narrow gaps separating cars and trucks.

  She gasps when she sees the road ahead—buckled and twisted like a leather belt. Cars
have been tossed off the edge and lie upside down. Fire is sweeping through grass and trees and a petrol tanker lying on its side appears to have exploded and ignited several cars. At every turn, she sees people wandering confused and lost.

  A large military helicopter flies overhead. It circles then descends, landing close to the tanker. A dozen or so soldiers jump from the chopper and spread around the burning cars, searching for survivors.

  Frances eases her bike off the road onto a siding as far away as possible from the fire. She drives over rough terrain, dodging rocks and broken glass, until the road ahead of her is intact. She rides the tangenziale again, curious as to why this section is empty of vehicles. In the distance she sees trucks and cars stopped and can’t work out why, speeding now, the wind gusting through her hair and pushing the handkerchief tight against her face.

  All of a sudden she sees a huge chasm ahead has split the highway in half making it impassable. People are lined up on the edge of the far side. She screeches to a halt metres from the massive hole and hops off her bike, fixing it on its stand. The only one on this side, she is facing a small crowd on the other, some twenty metres or so away, all peering into the abyss.

  She follows their gaze and, for a moment, thinks she must be dreaming. A woman in jeans and a shirt is standing on top of a crushed silver Smart car and calling for help. When Frances hears the voice she knows she is fully awake. ‘Camilla?’ Frances shouts down.

  The woman looks up at her. ‘Frances! Thank goodness! Tell them to get me out of this hellhole! Quickly!’ Her husky voice echoes, as strong and commanding as ever and apparently unscathed by her brush with death. ‘I rang the Minister directly and asked for help. But the phone went dead so I don’t know what’s happening!’

  Before Frances has time to answer, another helicopter hovers noisily overhead. A soldier in army greens and a helmet drops down on a rope onto the bonnet of the car. He clips a harness around Camilla and holds her tightly as the helicopter rises again.