The Breach

by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger

“I don’t wish to go behind the backs of my supervisors,” the watchman said.

  “I understand. We will keep it discreet. It won’t come back to you.” He pulled Stefano to the side to give him instructions, but his eyes landed on Gina as she slipped away from the group of men and picked two glasses of prosecco off a waiter’s tray.

  “Minister, so good to see you again.”

  She handed him one of the glasses and kept the other, tilting her head at Stefano in mock disappointment as she raised her glass. “My apologies. I only have two hands.”

  Angelo nodded at his chief engineer. “I’ll find you later.”

  When Stefano had left, Angelo clinked glasses with Gina.

  “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything serious.”

  “I’m afraid I have to check on something. In the end, it is me who is responsible that everything is up to par.”

  “Yes, I had almost forgotten about your obsession with details.” She indicated the walkway of the dam’s wall. “But not your love for aesthetics. It is beautiful. Better to look at from above or below than here, but the dam is beautiful. Powerful.” There was a flash in her eye. “What were you thinking when you were watching me?”

  He was ready for it, her direct manner. He realised with a start that he’d been looking forward to another chance just like this. “You seem to be the designer of your very own web. That is what I was thinking.”

  Gina laughed, her head tilted back, but her eyes never strayed from his face. He felt that thrill again.

  “Are you saying I am a spider? I suppose I have heard worse.” She moved so that they were standing side by side on the railing, on the side that overlooked the deep gorge. “I like the idea,” she said, “but only of the spider web, not the spider.”

  “No? Why the web?”

  She chuckled. “You men all think the women are black widows. Dangerous. Feasting on you. It’s a cliché. The metaphor of the spider is not about the sexes, Minister. It is about where you are on the food chain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She became contemplative. “There was a summer night many years ago. I could not sleep. It was hot. And there was a clicking sound outside the window, like someone flicking at their fingernail. It kept up into the morning, and so I went down to the balcony, where the noise was coming from. I looked for the source, and finally, in the corner near the door, I found a small beetle, no bigger than this.” She pressed her thumb and forefinger together. “It was very small, you see, but it had a hard shell and was trapped in the remnants of a spider web. It had gotten itself terribly twisted, almost cocooned. I was amazed that such a tiny thing still had the energy to keep fighting. Its will to live was impressive.”

  “And the spider?”

  “I found it crouched under the doorframe. It seemed to be waiting, as if it was terrified of coming too close before the beetle had tired.”

  “Did you not release the beetle?”

  She smiled. “That would be against nature, would it not?”

  “So it died.”

  “I never went back to look. I didn’t need to. You see, Angelo, I was never inspired by the spider. On the contrary, I often feel like the beetle, surrounded by things that want to suck me dry.” She turned ever so slightly to the group of men behind them. “But they cower in the corner, afraid of what it is my will can do.”

  He felt that rush again. “And am I one of those spiders, waiting by your entangled web?”

  “Oh, no, Angelo. Like me, you are the beetle.” Her eyes landed on the Colonel before she turned back to him. “Except with you, the spider has already inserted his fangs. “

  He was off guard, his laugh proof of it, but her eyes stayed on his, grey and sombre. Like he’d imagined she would be with the general.

  He closed his mouth.

  ***

  T he sight of the empty champagne bottles sharpened the pain in Angelo’s head, and his hand went to where he’d find that scar from the attack. They were as much a part of him as anything, he supposed, the scar and the attack.

  Angelo dipped into her cigarette case, and Gina stirred from sleep as soon as he flicked on the lighter. He watched her fingers snaking their way to his cigarette. He inhaled once and handed it to her as she sat up, propping her pillows against the headboard. Cold winter sunlight sliced diagonally across their saffron-coloured sheets. He was numb.

  “It’s my birthday today,” he said.

  She exhaled and handed him the cigarette back. “Today is—”

  “December the first.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Young enough for you and old enough to know better.”

  “I’m good for you.” She opened the black lace robe, exposing her body. Her hair fell over her breasts, and he let his eyes rove over her curves.

  “Just yesterday,” she purred, “you bowed to the king, and today, I will make you feel like one. Happy birthday.”

  He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. His wallet was on the bedside table, certainly much lighter after all the bribe money he’d paid to the Laurin’s porters. Bribe money and champagne. He stood up.

  “What’s wrong, darling? Where are you going? I offer you what your wife won’t, Minister, and you turn away?”

  Angelo halted but did not face her. “There were two things you agreed to in this hotel room,” he said measuredly. “One, you do not talk about my wife.”

  Bed linens rustled, and when Angelo looked, Gina had jerked the sheets over her nakedness, looking defiant and amused all at once. “Yes, and two, no titles and no lovey-dovey nicknames. And I agreed to much more, Angelo, much more.” She snapped the covers off and exposed the inside of her left thigh, tracing a finger over his bite mark.

  He had cracked her open, and it was easy to understand how Gina Conti ticked. She did anything, drove him to do things he didn’t think he would. He remembered how Luigi Barbarasso had ogled her at the Gleno opening.

  “And your other liaisons?” he said, striding into the bathroom, but his tone was one of a jealous boy. “Do they like to be called by their titles?”

  “Most of them like to be called Prime Minister, but, darling, if you want to keep eating at this table, let us agree that you are not allowed to ask me such questions.”

  He rubbed the beard around his mouth, then punched a hand into the basin of water and washed. He was being ridiculous, behaving like a love-struck schoolboy. He should stride back in and make love to her again. He was supposed to be gone the entire weekend. Nobody knew they had returned to Bolzano.

  “Besides,” Gina said, “Il Duce’s year as prime minister may be finished, but nobody is going to ask him to step down. You will all have to give up on the dream of being his successor.”

  “Madonna.” Angelo whistled, beard dripping. “Who the hell wants that job now?”

  Gina chuckled. “For now, that is. But Angelo Grimani as senator? That might be interesting.”

  His heart jumped as if it were playing hopscotch. Senator? That would rile the old man. Imagine making laws, he thought, that would hinder the Colonel…

  From the mirror, behind his dripping face, he could see Gina reclining, her body only visible to him up to the midriff. Behind the door, he heard her light another cigarette, and she exhaled loudly. A plume of smoke wafted from where her head would be.

  He watched her slowly raise one knee. Damn it if he didn’t forgive himself and just get back in there.

  “It’s Saturday,” she said, followed by an obvious yawn. “And your…they don’t expect you back until tonight?”

  Chiara believed he was still up in Bergamo. And the general had left Gina alone to attend an important meeting the next day. It had all been too easy, and he felt uneasy about that.

  Angelo dried his face, his armpits, and the rest of him, then stuffed the towel into the brass ring. “This weekend is a one-off, doll,” he said with as convincing an air as he could. “Then it’s over.” It had to be.

  When he was a
t the edge of the bed again, she smirked up at him and stubbed out her cigarette. She kept her eyes on his as she opened her robe, unfolding her legs one at a time. The woman who made men.

  “Then,” she purred, “you’d better take all you can get.”

  ***

  L ater, there was a light knock on the door. Angelo dressed himself and threw the covers over Gina, sleeping again. “Who is it?”

  A voice behind the door said, “Sir, it’s the porter.”

  “We didn’t call for anything.”

  “There’s been an accident. I…I thought you should know.”

  Marco. Chiara. Angelo whipped the door open. “What’s happened?” It was the same man from late in the night, or early that morning.

  The porter lowered his eyes. “There’s been a dam break. In Bergamo.”

  “The Gleno?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re saying the whole Povo Valley is flooded.”

  Angelo was moving, left the door open. He didn’t care what the porter saw now. “Gina. Get up. You have to go home. There’s been an accident.”

  “Who? What?” She was up and dressing like a soldier called to a raid.

  “It’s the Gleno Dam.” To the porter, he said, “When did it happen?”

  “Early this morning.”

  “Jesus,” Gina said.

  Angelo fumbled in his wallet, his mind racing. The watchman. The water levels.

  The porter waved his hands when Angelo handed over the money. “That won’t be necessary, Minister. We can handle the bill later. And Signora Conti, sir, she may take her time.”

  Without another word, Angelo followed him out into the hall and had him hail a taxi. Behind him, Gina called but then the door swung shut.

  At the ministry, the corridor on his department’s floor was filled with people hurrying, waving papers. They greeted him in hushed tones and sideways glances. Angelo pushed past them to his office, where he startled Mrs Scala, on the phone. She looked as if she’d been crying.

  “He’s here. He’s just come in,” she said into the receiver.

  The clock read twelve past ten. She hung up the phone. “Minister, we’ve been trying to reach you and have looked for you everywhere. The hotel in Bergamo—”

  “Call the consortium together, my surveyors, and the Colonel.”

  His risk assessor walked in. “Minister, we’re all in the conference room. Waiting for you.”

  Angelo ran a hand through his hair and followed his man. “Brief me.”

  “Six thirty this morning, the buttress of the dam cracked and subsequently failed. We’re estimating that about four and a half million cubic metres of water spilled out into the valley within minutes. The rains—”

  “Yes, I know. The elevation above sea level is just over one thousand five hundred, is that right?” He started calculating.

  “That’s correct, sir. They estimate that there was a breach of about eighty metres in the central portion of the S-shaped planimetry. The village of Bueggio was flooded first.”

  Angelo had booked his hotel nearby until Gina had seduced him, had convinced him to return to Bolzano. She had said that they would be safe at the Laurin. Protected, was the word she had used.

  “Damn it to Christ.”

  “Minister?”

  “Sorry. Where are the maps?”

  “Just here, sir.”

  They moved down the hall towards the conference room. Two men were holding the corners of the map up on the wall and conferring over it. They stepped aside for him.

  “Continue,” he said.

  “Dezzo is partially flooded.” The risk assessor’s voice betrayed his stress. “And Azzone as well. I’m afraid that the flood propagation along the downstream river were catastrophic. It took the flood wave about forty-five minutes to flush through to as far as Darfo.”

  Angelo shook his head in disbelief. “That’s over twenty kilometres.”

  The assessor swallowed. “Three villages and five power stations have been completely wiped out, sir.”

  Chills rippled down his whole body. “Are our people accounted for? Our chief engineer, Stefano? And all the others who were at the opening?”

  The man swallowed. “Some left, the chief engineer among them. He’s here in the conference room. Others were staying the weekend. We thought you might have…”

  Angelo felt his eyes stinging. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Christ!” He paused at the door of the meeting room. He saw Stefano, and Pietro was also in there, as if ready to take charge again. Angelo knew all the people in that room. He knew every single one of them, and he turned to look down the hallway because the Colonel was missing. The doors swung open at the end of the hall, and there he was, in military dress. He too had left the area then.

  When he reached Angelo, they looked gravely at one another before Angelo turned to the risk assessor. “Casualties? The numbers?”

  The risk assessor glanced nervously at the Colonel. “Umm, sir…we are still calculating—”

  “I’m aware of that.” Angelo would fire the risk assessor later. He held his father’s gaze. “What’s the number so far?”

  “Over two hundred, Minister.”

  “Right. Order the car. We’re going there as soon as we’re finished here.” To his father, he asked, “Army mobilized?”

  The Colonel nodded. The risk assessor hung his head.

  Angelo opened the way into the meeting room. “We are keeping this meeting brief. You’re both coming with me.”

  ***

  “S top the car,” Angelo told the driver.

  They were trapped behind a convoy of military trucks trying to make it up the icy road. He, the Colonel, Stefano, and the risk assessor stepped out onto the road some ways away from the dam break. Stefano started taking photographs. Angelo saw that the road was about a dozen metres lower than it had been a few days before and pointed it out to the Colonel. He went to the edge and nearly stumbled backwards. Below him, the valley had been laid to complete waste, the walls of the canyons scoured by the water. Some of the pylons were twisted, the lines dangling like useless, broken limbs. He could make out the debris piled upon a black muddy bed that was now the valley. Not far below him, a horse lay on top of a cart, angled and bent in death. Against the rock wall below, four dead goats.

  “Give us the field glasses,” Angelo said to Stefano.

  Stefano put the camera aside long enough to fetch the glasses, and when Angelo had them, he adjusted his, then made sure the Colonel was lifting his set to his face.

  Angelo eyed the risk assessor. “Stefano, have him take the photographs.” He glared at the man. Let the bastard see what his bribe payments had paid for. “You, keep your hands from shaking.”

  Angelo lifted the field glasses and scanned the valley. The first thing to come into view were the piled-up trees, then the flattened wooden boards of houses that had once stood on stone foundations. Those foundations were nowhere to be seen. He scanned the floor and saw what looked like a body of someone on a trunk. He looked closer. It was a naked man, slumped over a chest that had lodged into the mud, the water over the man’s ankles and wrists, the body limp and grey-blue. He heard the Colonel make a guttural noise and looked over to where he pointed. More bodies, this time a woman and two children twisted amongst a debris of trees. Above them, like a world on its head, a straw mattress.

  The water had already begun receding, but Angelo could imagine the snake of mud carrying carts and houses, the bodies of people and their animals slithering through the valley. A wall of water, someone had reported, a wave as tall as ten or fifteen houses had preceded the mud. He could imagine the sound of it, like a cyclone or a hundred locomotives. He lowered his glasses.

  “This may be the greatest engineering failure of the century,” he said.

  The Colonel pointed farther north. “The bridge is washed out over there. I don’t know how we’ll get to the Gleno.”

  “Did you see the bodies?” Angelo asked.

  The Col
onel’s face was twisted. “I’ve lost most of my men up there. Some electrocuted by the very lines they were trying to protect.”

  “Down there,” the assessor interrupted. “Look. Someone’s still alive.”

  Stefano grabbed the camera from the shaken man and pointed it to where the risk assessor had been looking. A unit of soldiers was making their way down into the valley, but then Angelo saw what the assessor had. Three people were slogging through the water and mud, without a stitch of clothing on them, and this in December. They were sifting through the piles of debris. He heard the sound of the camera again and again, and then the Colonel’s voice.

  “Does that man of yours have to take so many photos? What on earth does he hope to get from this perspective?”

  Angelo itched to tackle his father off the road and feed him to the black snake below. “Goddammit, Colonel, he’s documenting our wake-up call.”

  ***

  “T hree hundred and fifty-six deaths, that we know of,” Angelo said to Pietro. He lowered the report.

  “It’s good that we’re meeting at your office,” Pietro said. “We must keep things official, not personal.”

  “I’ve ordered a full evaluation of all dam designs for projects in progress,” Angelo said. “And, Pietro, we’re doing it my way. I won’t take any more orders from the consortium or any private companies until we’ve had a chance to assess all of this. I want a full overhaul of our risk assessment departments. I warned you, years ago, about the reports coming in, about the sloppy work, and it just slipped out of control as soon as we allowed the Gleno to go private.”

  Pietro sighed and shifted in his seat. “On some points I agree with you, Angelo. Money had a lot to do with it too.”

  “Money? Let’s start with the bureaucracy. For Christ’s sake, Pietro, it took us how long to get the damned second permit? They changed the whole structure before they even had it. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.”

  The phone rang, and Angelo lifted the receiver. “Is he here?”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  “Send him in.”