“It would be wonderful to say that the plane has lifted off and we can see the lights of Florence beneath us. That I’m already snacking on croissants and cream and raspberry jam, and that tonight I’m going to the opera, and after that I’ll drink Pernod then walk the banks of the Seine, but it’s just not so.”
“Wherever you are in the world, think of me, my beauty. Carefully, carefully.”
“Yes, carefully. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I’ll call you on the other phone. I love you.” She bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
She wove through the morning traffic until she reached the outskirts and the entrance to the Autostrada del Sole, then drove cautiously, keeping to the slow lane. Once into the Apennines, the muggy beige haze that smothered Florence gave way to looming, verdigris storm clouds, making the ruffled green slopes appear more menacing than usual. A hot wind came up and the sky seemed to boil and brew. On the horizon, a deafening bright bolt cracked the now black sky.
Katia could smell the electricity. When the road ahead was clear, she got into the left lane and drove ten over the speed limit until she came to the series of tunnels. She wanted to be done with them when the rain arrived. She turned on the radio. Crackly-voiced experts speaking on the state of things in Italy (worse and worse was the unanimous verdict) argued on for the next forty minutes.
When she reached the outskirts of Bologna, the traffic became heavier. The cars had started to slow to a crawl. They crept along until finally they came to a halt, probably for an accident somewhere up ahead. Just as the first fat raindrops began to splatter on asphalt, in the tangerine and burgundy apartment blocks lining the highway, deep green canvass curtains flickered and flew upward and women ran out onto the balconies, rushing to reel in multi-coloured garlands of laundry.
Below the apartments, boys in an improvised soccer pitch screamed and darted around a ball, undaunted by the storm threat, while their mothers shrieked down to them to come inside. They were sharp, fast little men, with the natural shrewdness and suspicion of a race that had been trampled over by the centuries, by the Romans, the Goths, the Napoleonic infantry and German Storm Troopers. Katia also saw the ancient stubbornness of a thrifty nation that has been offered the clothes dryer by an industrial ally, and refused it.
The sky was toying with them, promising wet relief then withdrawing it. The few disappointing raindrops evaporated almost as soon as they hit the asphalt, and nothing followed but hot gulps of sluggish air. The women on their balconies glared up at the sky, challenging it to try again.
Fifteen minutes later, when the long dragon of traffic finally picked up speed, the drops came in earnest, harder, playing the windshield with a loud ‘plik’. The sky above rumbled and coughed and then opened up, releasing a curtain of water. The traffic was moving too fast for the low visibility, but Katia could do nothing but follow.
She tried to slow down but the cars behind stuck to her tail, honking. Spray shot out everywhere, spinning off the wheels of cars and trucks roaring past her, blinding her. Miniature lakes were forming quickly. At a section of road lined with umbrella pines, her Volvo met a greasy soup of fallen pine needles and hot flooded asphalt, and hydroplaned, skidding sideways out toward the wide upward sloping shoulder. Katia grappled with the steering wheel and was able to turn the car out of the skid and into the emergency lane, stopping just short of the guardrail.
She turned off the ignition, leaned her arms on the wheel and her head on her arms, while her heart galloped into her throat. She was sure of one thing. This was not the death she pictured for herself. Not here on a rain-slick Italian highway, for no good reason. Not before seeing Sam again. If she had to die so soon, she wanted to make it count for something.
Katia’s appointment was across town at an outdoor antiques market. She had a hand-written note that had been put in her letterbox at home, with the time and place, and the words telling her to ask for Beatrice at the stall with the clocks. She didn’t know the city well, and when she got to the place she wasted half an hour finding a parking space.
There was more than one stall with clocks and she stood and stared until a dark woman in an eccentric pink and orange fifties vintage dress singled her out and came over to her.
“Katia?” she asked.
“Beatrice?”
The woman nodded.
Beatrice said, “Let’s get something to eat and walk with it.”
They bought sandwiches and water, and walked and talked well into the afternoon, Katia about the trip to Pristina and Beatrice about working for the On the Road Association.
Beatrice said, “We’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. We’re dedicated, and we’re growing, but it’s not enough. We need to extend the network.” Then she lowered her voice and looked Katia straight in the eye. “I need to tell you though. It’s about our people in Rosa. They’re ready to mobilize, every last one of them.”
“That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear,” said Katia. “And I have a proposal.”
Chapter Ten
Porteus continued to turn the Bible over in his hands. It gave him an incredible sensation, the excitement of promise, of things to come, things locked away in a terrible past that would come burgeoning forward and make a better future. It was the way he always felt when he held nice pieces of history in his hands.
The door opened and Hani from the neighbouring carpet shop came ambling in and deposited his sleek body on the chair opposite Porteus.
“So?” Porteus asked.
“You were right.” Hani said. “I blew up the images on my computer… Is that it?”
Porteus still had the Bible in his hands, was afraid to let it out of his grasp but at the same time, felt caught out, like a child fingering forbidden biscuits in a tin. He nodded.
“Lovely looking thing,” said Hani. “What is it exactly?”
“A Mekharist bible.”
“Ah. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. But Walter had mentioned them. Religious order, isn’t it? Their founder was a monk, a fellow named Mekhitar. From the Ottoman Empire?”
“Sebastia. Yes. His most impressive legacy was the monastery he founded in Venice, San Lazzaro. I’ve been there. It’s stunning. The place is full of treasures like this.”
Hani nodded.
Porteus’s white gloved hands set down the Bible and turned the pages very slowly, revealing curling and coiling gilt embellishments and richly coloured flowers and birds next to a foreign text. “They had their own printing press for the Armenian alphabet. It was quite a big deal, if you think about it. Even in the eighteenth century they were already printing their own books.”
Hani leaned in to get a better look.
“The order became really wealthy. They were given plenty of gifts, because there was this great enclave of Armenians who had escaped to Venice. And the printing press brought them in some money because those Armenians bought books in their language. It was actually quite a going commercial concern. They started producing these bibles for the wealthy merchant classes, some of them customized, all of them beautiful and unique, and this is one of them.”
Porteus closed the book to let Hani see the cover properly, the tooled silver, the amber cabochons, the rubies, emeralds and lapis lazuli set into the tiny metal blossoms.
“It’s quite something,” said Hani.
“Yes, but there’s something else. Because they were continually persecuted, they were used to moving around a lot, and they carried these books around with them everywhere as a kind of talisman. They wrote in the margins. Prayers, notes, messages to their loved ones. Those images I sent you are notes from the margins. But not the ones I expected. Not the right notes, not the right notes at all. Look, here’s the original.”
Hani was beginning to understand what Porteus was trying to tell him. The difference between the Armenian script and the fresher hand-written squiggles and dots that he had just translated were worlds apart. Two quite different cultures.
“I get it. So you have an A
rmenian Bible with notes written in standard Arabic, modern Arabic? Why?”
“You tell me what they say, Hani, and then I might be able to tell you why.”
Hani extracted a folded sheet of paper from his jeans pocket, then he reached into his shirt pocket to take out some reading glasses. “There’s a lot here. It looks like some kind of diary. The entries are brief but strange. There are dates from about a year ago, starting June the third. That’s the first date, and then there’s a daily entry from then on to the end of the month. Package received, target sighted, target observed, package lost, Satan?, Satan confirmed… Here, I wrote it all down. Have a look for yourself.” Hani set the sheet of paper on the desk.
“Thank you,” said Porteus. “I appreciate it. If there’s anything I can do for you…”
“Let me know what it’s about. You’ve piqued my curiosity.” Hani smiled and stood up, held up his hand in a salute and left the shop.
Porteus was stumped. When had Walter started doing business in Arab? Or had he been doing something else, playing for another altogether unexpected team? All that mystery and then the bird and the peculiar behaviour over the Bible. Porteus simply didn’t know what he was looking at? Al Quaida? Or some other similar faction?
He had an overwhelming urge to blurt it all out to someone. But who? MI5? MI6? MI7? The CIA? And what would he tell them? They would laugh at him. He was already risible enough. Why make things worse? No one would believe him. And Walter was of no use. He was dead.
Porteus, on the other hand, felt quite alive. And excited. He had the Bible back and perhaps, just perhaps he would risk looking ridiculous, and get in touch with some Secret Service or another, just for the sake of scrupulousness, some English-speaking Secret Service, and let them laugh at him too. They could all have a good guffaw together.
He turned the pages of the Bible again. It was impossible to determine its provenance. Walter had said nothing about that trip. As he basked in the richness of the illustrations, he became aware that he was not alone. The door had been opened soundlessly, and a huge shadow blocked the bit of light that made it into the shop.
He looked up to see Samuele Montefalcone staring at him with a murderous expression on his face.
Sweat trickled down Porteus’ forehead. He felt the trembling begin, his muscles go slack. He was afraid he might be sick. He wanted to run for it but there was nowhere to go, only the one front door and no other way out. He stammered, “I was just… ah… working on this…”
The black expression vanished from Sam’s face and he unfroze and sauntered over to the desk. He hung over Porteus’ shoulder and looked down at the Bible. Porteus prayed to the Lord that he was not going to be garrotted from behind, then and there, please God no, not before he’d had a chance to really savour the beautiful book and the last vestiges of his miserable life.
“It’s lovely,” said Sam. And then Porteus saw Sam take a few steps backward, and stop, and cross his arms, and scrutinize him. He was assessing him. Porteus was tempted to cry out, “Guilty, guilty, guilty,” but kept quiet.
But when Sam finally said, “I want you to tell me everything that you know about Walter, particularly in this last year,” Porteus couldn’t stop himself. The tension of the last months had taken its toll, and he began to babble like a fool, tears of relief rushing down his face as he tried to tell Sam about everything. It all burbled out, an incoherent river of fractured information, the pension that might not arrive, the bird, Walter’s peculiar behaviour and departure for a trip to an unknown destination, Walter’s insistence on staying close to home. He even launched into an account of the cheque in the letter from Villa del Bosco, and the fact that he’d cashed it, and the death of Mirella Bianchini, though he left out the other cheques.
“Calm down,” said Sam, “You’re not making sense.”
Porteus began again, recounting the entire saga, right down to the scribblings in the Bible.
The letter from Villa del Bosco was still there in the desk, and Porteus took it out and waved it at Sam. Sam read it over and Porteus could see that it had grabbed him. Sam’s eyes were now a burning intense blue that bored into him and demanded loyalty. A chip off the old block.
“Do you have a car?” he asked.
Porteus nodded.
“You can keep the money,” said Sam. “I don’t care about that. Despite Walter’s apparent generosity, he was often pretty mean, charming, but tighter than the paper on the wall. About that Bible, put it somewhere safe for now.”
More tears gushed from Porteus’ grateful ducts. He couldn’t hold them back. He would have hugged Sam if that embarrassed and embarrassing little British shit who still lingered inside him hadn’t stopped him.
Sam rubbed his tired face. “Do you feel up to a long drive with a wanted criminal?”
Time away from Ilaria? Porteus nodded ecstatically.
When they reached the car, they agreed that Porteus would drive and Sam would lay low, avoid any cameras along the motorway to Milan. Neither of them noticed the numerous tunnels between Florence and Bologna, or the sweet hot countryside studded with golden wheels of hay, or the thick sickly industrial air that came later. Sam was crumpled sideways in the back seat, and Porteus kept his attention on the driving. It was something simple, something focussed, something he could get right to push away all the emotional upheaval of the past months. He was happy now. Samuele Montefalcone had taken him into his confidence.
Along the road, they stopped at a motorway bar for two stale prosciutto sandwiches and double espressos. Porteus was caught off guard when he glanced up at the muted TV screen in the corner of the bar, and saw Sam’s face. Marta La Stella then appeared in uniform, followed by photos of two girls. One was Emmie, the little blonde who had been living at Le Falde. The other was older, and he finally placed her. It was that Cremini woman. The police were making a connection between the man in the Acqua Cristallina advert and the man who was last seen in the company of these women, Samuele Montefalcone. Porteus felt another frisson of terrified excitement run through him.
Someone in the bar was bound to recognize him. Porteus had difficulty chewing and swallowing. Nobody seemed to notice, though. Nobody was looking at the screen. The hot, tired long-haul truckers who filled the place were only interested in getting their loads to their destinations. It could have been Bin Laden sitting next to them and they wouldn’t have cared.
Porteus’ heart thumped out an irregular tattoo. He nudged Sam’s knee under the table and nodded toward the TV screen. Sam was calm as he stood up, went over to the cashier and paid. He moved toward the door with Porteus hurrying after him. Sam climbed into the driver’s seat, said, “You don’t mind if I drive, do you?”
Porteus shook his head and handed him the keys.
Sam was about to start the car, but then stopped, took his phone from his pocket and began to tap out letters.
“We have Villa del Bosco and Mirella Bianchini.”
“The name is familiar but I still haven’t been able to place it,” said Porteus. “A movie star from bygone days perhaps?”
Sam held up the phone. Photographs of a young dark Audrey Hepburn beauty in various fashion shots from the seventies were there in miniature. Porteus was disturbed by the way Sam stared at the images, saw him go dark, as if a cloud were passing over him. His face became slightly contorted. He said, “Bad sandwich,” and leapt away from the car to disappear into the washrooms.
When Sam came back, he was closed in some kind of physical agony. The sandwich had been a bit stale but not toxic.
“Are you all right?” he asked Sam.
“No.”
“Is there something I can do?”
“No, but it’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been not all right for a long time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. Let’s get moving.”
Sam started the engine and pulled back onto the motorway.
Ten minutes passed in silence before he asked, “Porteus, where were you in 1980?”
“I'm sorry?”
“1980. Where were you? Think back.”
“It was rather a long time ago.”
“Something happened. At Le Falde, I mean. My mother had just left.”
“Well, when you put it like that, yes, I do remember that time. She didn’t just exit yours and Walter’s lives. She exited mine as well.”
“Sorry?”
“I've always thought the world of your mother.”
“Yeah.”
“The truth is, I’m quite in love with her. Always will be, I’m afraid.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. She really was the most wonderful creature, and remains so to this day. We still talk, you know. She’s so far away, but the illusion with the technology these days, is that she’s right there in the same room. I’m always so very happy to see her, to hear her voice.”
“Can I ask you a favour then?”
“Certainly.”
“If something happens to me, will you let her know?”
“Good Lord… I… uh… well, yes, I suppose.
“Now tell me about 1980.”
“Ah… let me think… it’s a long way to cast my mind back… I had a Fellowship at the Tati. Walter was helping me to understand certain old books, antique folios. Oh yes, I remember. Your mother had been distraught for several years. She sometimes visited me on the sly. She’s older than me of course, but only by a few years. She took me out of my dreadful digs for meals and to the movies. She was being a Good Samaritan, but I was completely smitten with her. Little by little, she began to confide in me about Walter’s affairs.”
“So you had every reason to kill Walter.”
“Well, yes, if we're talking about Nora. Too late, I'm afraid. If I was going to murder him, I should have done it years ago.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember nothing from that time.”
“They waged war on each other. Your mother was a consummate warrior. She fought her battle against Walter but lost. But not before he had pulled out every single weapon he had. It may only have been one slap, but it was enough. You were a first class pawn. I don’t know exactly what they said to each other but he fixed things so that she had to leave without you. She was devastated, but also afraid of Walter, I think. She never said anything, but I wondered about it. You know, that nasty little Italian law that should no longer have been in force by the eighties…”
Galileo's Room (Noir Florentine Book 1) Page 12