The Venice Conspiracy

by Jon Trace

  He’s stuck there.

  Stranded.

  Half in, half out of the window.

  He glances back. Two other black-caped figures are now in the room and they have guns.

  Tom raises Teale’s Glock and pulls the trigger.

  His shots are wide and wild. They zing across the walls but don’t hit anyone. But they buy him enough time to twist around on the iron bar and heave his weight down on the metal.

  It jerks and bends, then finally gives way.

  He tumbles backwards and hits the ground with a thud that thumps the wind out of him.

  Glass is stuck in his face. His shoulder is ripped and bleeding.

  And he’s dropped the gun.

  The grass around him is long and time to search dangerously short.

  He has no choice but to leave it.

  CHAPTER 77

  Getting a GPS check on Tom’s whereabouts seems to take an age. These things always do. Only in films do techies work at warp-speed 9. In real life, time drags like a leg with a bullet in it.

  Vito stays in the incident room while Valentina, Rocco and Nuncio finally get on the move. He’s already mobilising troops and issuing weapons by the time Francesca Totti gets a fix on Tom’s position.

  ‘Lazzaretto Vecchio?’ Vito repeats it like it’s a curse. ‘And all this time we’ve been so focused on Isola Mario. I should punch myself.’

  Valentina can still hear him mumbling as her Carabinieri patrol boat kicks up a break of white water and roars away from its berth. Despite Tom’s call for help part of her mind is preoccupied with Bale’s painting.

  Every brushstroke is branded into her memory.

  The use of Roman numerals to spell out the word Venice over all three sections of the canvas is what’s worrying her. She and Vito are both sure it means three locations - including Venice itself - are going to bear the brunt of whatever evil Bale has been orchestrating. Their best guess is that Venezuela is the second target, but what about the third?

  The speedboat pulls left and Valentina lurches violently to her right. The shock seems to do her good. Like a cure for hiccups. Her disparate thoughts all come together and she comes up with a third location - Muscle Beach, Venice - the Californian hotspot where bodybuilders work out and pose. She ducks low from the wind and engine noise, cups her hand over the cellphone and calls it in. ‘Major, the third target is not here, it’s California - I’m sure of it. Muscle Beach, Venice. That’s why those big cubes are there on Bale’s painting, they’re building giant muscle, not giant buildings.’

  ‘Got it!’ confirms Vito Carvalho, feeling a surge of adrenalin. He puts the phone down and hands out the instruction to call the FBI. With luck they’ll safely shift everyone from the sands of Venice Beach. The Venezuelan government has already been alerted and they’ve assured him the area around Angel Falls is being evacuated. Back home, he has every available man and woman out on the streets and waterways searching for anything suspicious. Collectively, law-enforcement offices across the world are winning the battle against Bale. But maybe too slowly.

  Vito glances at his watch.

  Almost midday.

  Coming up to 3 a.m. in California.

  A hundred and eighty minutes until Lars Bale is executed.

  Just three hours to find out if they’ve all been panicking unnecessarily, or if their worst nightmares are about to come true.

  CHAPTER 78

  Lazzaretto Vecchio, Venice

  Tom can barely see.

  The sun is so dazzlingly fierce he can’t look up from the ground. His ankle is swelling fast and buckles every time he tries to sprint.

  He hobbles away from the building and heads as quickly as possible into the forest ahead. He knows he can’t outrun them, so he keeps altering direction, hoping to throw them off his scent.

  Water!

  A vast stretch of water in front of him. He’s run out of anywhere to go. The lagoon stretches as far as he can see. There’s a small boat by the shore, but he doesn’t fancy his chances of being caught in it and stranded in the open water.

  Tom heads off at another angle. Darts into a thicket of straw-thin cypress trees so tall they look as if they’re sucking sunlight from the sky. He grits his teeth and hobbles quickly towards the biggest one he can see.

  He gets a grip on a lower branch and manages to pull himself up into the layers of foliage.

  It’s a real giant. Sturdy branches shoot off all over the place and he’s soon so high he can barely see the ground.

  Across the lagoon in a shimmering haze he sees gondolas ploughing their channels, and distant domes of ancient buildings. A mile out from the shoreline waves are broken white by the bows of speeding Carabinieri patrol boats. The cavalry is coming!

  A branch to one side of him cracks.

  Then he hears the gunshot.

  They know where he is.

  Tom climbs higher.

  A flash of Greek mythology enters his mind - the cypress was symbolic of death, grief and mourning. Come to think of it, even the Romans and Muslims planted them by graves. Just his luck to pick one to hide in.

  Another shot rings out.

  Buries itself into the trunk of the tree at his feet.

  They’re close. Too close for comfort.

  A third bullet rips up through the dense green canopy. A branch to his left collapses. They’re adjusting their aim. It’s only a matter of time before someone hits him.

  Tom swings a hundred and eighty degrees around the trunk of the tree. He glimpses the Carabinieri landing on the island. Tiny ants swarming towards the building where he was held. He pulls himself into the final branches of the cypress and sees his prison clearly now. They had him in some kind of hospital. Run-down, derelict. To the side of the buildings is a stack of what looks like a kids’ bonfire.

  Only that’s not what it is.

  It’s a pyre.

  A sacrificial pyre.

  Tom’s vision goes again. Even though the sun is now behind him, the sky is bright and it hurts to look without any shade. He blinks and tries to refocus.

  Someone’s lit the fire.

  They’re dragging something towards the stacked and smoking timber.

  A human figure.

  Automatic gunfire and single pistol shots canon through the woods. Tom drops down several branch levels.

  Beneath him, two Carabinieri soldiers are exchanging volleys with black-robed gunmen.

  The soldiers are out-muscled. They’re matching basic Berettas against two Uzis coughing out six hundred rounds a minute.

  A young Carabinieri soldier takes a round in the face.

  The other officer drops the shooter with a single bullet, hits the ground and rolls away as machine-gun fire kicks up dirt exactly where he was.

  It’s one against one. But the Uzi is always going to win.

  Tom drops another branch. He has a bird’s-eye view of every move but can’t do anything to help. He has no gun, only the iron bar from the window he jumped through.

  The guy with the Uzi breaks position and begins a slow, circular route that will bring him up behind the soldier.

  The Carabinieri officer hears something. Shifts into a kneeling position and turns sideward.

  Tom has to double-take.

  It’s Valentina.

  The gunman appears from the cover of some bushes at the foot of the cypress.

  She’s going to get ripped to pieces.

  Valentina is oblivious to the killer just metres from her. She stands up and sweeps her weapon out in front of her, advancing slowly.

  The Uzi is up and aiming at the middle of her back.

  She’ll be dead in a heartbeat.

  Tom hurls the iron railing like a spear. It cracks against the gunman’s skull and his burst of fire goes awry.

  Valentina spins round. Pumps shots into her attacker’s body. Moves closer. Gun outstretched. Another round makes his chest jump. Nothing’s being taken for granted.

  Tom slides down int
o the lower branches, ‘Valentina! Don’t shoot!’

  She keeps her weapon at shoulder height, eyes sweeping east to west.

  Tom lowers himself out of the last branches, drops to the floor, his ankle buckling again.

  She sees him but says nothing. She’s wired. Still in the kill zone. Incapable of reacting outside her training. She moves cautiously to the body and picks up the Uzi.

  Tom bends close to the corpse and retrieves the rusty iron weapon. ‘There are others,’ he says, wiping blood and flesh from it on the grass. ‘They’re gathering at the back of the hospital. They have a fire there and - I couldn’t see properly because of the smoke - but it looked like they were going to burn someone.’

  ‘Stay here. I’ll take care of it.’ Valentina holsters her weapon and grabs her radio. ‘I’ll call it in, then come back for you.’

  CHAPTER 79

  Lieutenant Francesca Totti and her three-man team enter the old Plague Hospital with weapons raised.

  A locally born history graduate, she’s more than aware of the building’s awful past. At least three of her ancestors died here. Another half-dozen perished in the watery journey to the Lazzaretto.

  Francesca’s radio is back on her belt after answering Valentina’s alert.

  Her team methodically clears the downstairs rooms. Two more units, following behind, take the upper floors.

  At the eastern end of the corridors, Francesca hears voices. Dark shapes are moving in a courtyard beyond dusty windows. She holds her hand high to slow and quieten the troops behind her.

  From their crouched positions they watch three black-hooded figures gather around a steel gurney from one of the wards.

  Something’s wrong.

  Francesca can see the reflection of a large fire that must be crackling and spitting flames somewhere out of view.

  The Satanists are wearing silver Venetian masks. Walking on a carpet of dead flowers. Reciting prayers.

  Francesca sees no knives. No weapons of any kind. Despite the impending arrival of the Carabinieri there seems no trace of panic amongst them.

  Everything’s too low-key.

  Like they’re too late.

  She waves one soldier around to a door on the right, another to an archway on the left.

  On her signal they step forward in unison into the courtyard.

  Guns drawn and aimed.

  The Satanists immediately hold their hands up in surrender.

  But there’s still no panic. The air is filled more with comedy than tension.

  Francesca moves to the gurney placed in the middle of them.

  It’s empty.

  She rips the masks off the celebrants.

  Three women.

  All looking amused.

  A flash of horror. The fire!

  Francesca runs to the flames, scared of what she might find.

  Wood. Old trees. Planks and garden debris.

  There’s nothing human on the fire. In the centre, just the glowing remains of a dummy, made from stuffed clothes and a mask.

  From behind her, Francesca hears the women start to laugh.

  It’s all a decoy.

  CHAPTER 80

  San Quentin, California

  The weatherman says it’s going to be a hot one, a high of nearly ninety degrees across the San Rafael city area where California’s oldest prison is preparing its latest execution.

  Twelve official witnesses walk through San Q’s cold, silent corridors, heading to the witness viewing room, trying to make small talk. Most are parents, girlfriends, husbands and children of those Bale has killed. A couple are anti-death-penalty campaigners.

  Some of the witnesses are thinking of going straight to church after this, down to the distinctive pink-roofed St Raphael chapel where a golden cross gleams against the cloudless blue sky and distant green hills. Others will meet with friends and try to drink the scene they’re about to witness clean from their memories. Others will go out to Miller Creek or walk in the forests and quietly reflect on it all.

  Seventeen media witnesses are brought from another direction. They look less concerned. Trained eyes desperately devour all detail, colour, background - anything that will make their stories longer. News that Bale passed on a last meal, and instead bizarrely requested a crystal glass to drink his own urine from is the current report being uplinked from the dozens of TV vans crammed in the car park.

  Inside the execution wing, eight of the prison’s most senior security staff are already in position to make sure nothing untoward happens.

  Bale has no one present.

  No family.

  No friends.

  No lawyer.

  Certainly no spiritual advisor.

  It’s the way he wants it.

  His people have more important things to do.

  And right now they should be doing them.

  Bale walks to the glass and points at his wrist.

  The guard opposite him raises two fingers.

  Two.

  Just two hours to go.

  CHAPTER 81

  Lazzaretto Vecchio, Venice

  Even with a busted ankle, sitting and waiting isn’t something Tom Shaman is good at.

  He clambers into an old rowing boat he’d spotted from the tree and takes to the water.

  The island is fringed with dense shrubbery and trees, the hospital obscured for much of his journey.

  Finally, he sees some outbuildings.

  A near-derelict boathouse.

  Dark green paint, baked and blistered by a scorching summer sun, peels from its grey weathered doors.

  Panic rises inside him.

  He knows this place. Knows it like he’s visited it in his nightmares. It contains the same evil he felt at the Salute.

  From where he’s sitting, the dilapidated outbuilding looks no different than dozens of others he’s seen in Venice. But this place is different.

  It is the most evil place on earth.

  Tom’s left hand aches, especially around the wrist. At first he thought it was where the plastic ties had chafed him. But now he sees it.

  His veins are punctured in several places.

  No doubt the spots where they jacked him full of Propofol or whatever it was. From the bruising, it also looks like someone’s vampired blood from him. He dreads to think what they want it for.

  Tom paddles quietly towards the giant doors. They’re shut tight.

  He pushes the boat on to a grassy bank and grabs his makeshift weapon. It seems hugely inadequate as he slips into the cold water.

  He wades forward slowly, the water level reaching his mouth but not his nose. When he gets to the door he feels his way down for the bottom edge of it.

  Tom takes a deep breath and ducks beneath the dark water.

  He surfaces very slowly.

  So slowly the surface barely ripples.

  At first he sees nothing.

  Dirty lagoon water stings his eyes and hangs like opaque curtains in front of him.

  Gradually, his vision clears.

  The entire boathouse is lit by candles. Black candles. It’s like staring into a night sky.

  A long black gondola floats to Tom’s right. It’s similar but different to the pictures Valentina showed them of Fabianelli’s craft. It’s older and has a small cabin. Beyond it, on the same side, is a stretch of two-tier decking.

  On the lower tier, rough planks of wood have been bolted together. For many reasons, it reminds Tom of a butcher’s table.

  Behind it is the high priest. He wears a full-face silver mask, as do the two acolytes flanking him.

  Tom slowly dips beneath the water and moves towards the prow of the gondola.

  When he resurfaces he can hear and see more.

  ‘In nomine magni dei nostri Satanus. Introibo ad altare Domini Inferi.’

  Behind the high priest is an inverted cross. Tom sees it now - the Satanic acolytes are not acolytes, the grandeur of their robes shows they are a deacon and deaconess.

&n
bsp; Ad eum qui laetificat meum.

  The high priest starts to waft incense over the altar - and also a naked, drugged body lying on top of it.

  Tina.

  Tom knows the incensing will be done three times.

  Then things will get bloody.

  Fatally bloody.

  Domine Satanus, tu conversus vivificabis nos.

  He slips behind the gondola and tries to heave himself slowly out of the water. His clothes are soaked and weigh him down. The edge of the decking is higher than he’d have liked, and he knows it’s going to be difficult to pull himself out without making a noise. He puts the iron bar down first. Strains his way up. For a second, he thinks he’s going to fall back in, create a splash that will give away his position.

  His biceps find some hidden strength and crunch him up and over.

  Tom stays low. As still as a statue. Lets the water drip off his clothing and puddle around his bare feet.

  Ostende nobis, Domine Satanus, potentiam tuam.

  The high priest puts down the incense and takes a silver tray from the deacon.

  On it are two shining silver tablets.

  Tom’s mind spins. The Gates of Destiny. The very objects Alfie had described to him. After all the talk of legends, it’s a shock to physically see them.

  Two of the artefacts are laid out on Tina’s body. He can see one positioned above her breasts and one below her vagina. But where’s the third? Tom knows enough about these rituals to understand Tina is being used as a human altar, and shortly the high priest will violate her as part of his offering.

  His eyes dart to the space behind the high priest. The deacon now has an old silver goblet in his hand, filled by the look of it with blood. Tom’s left wrist itches, almost as though it recognises its own property.

  The deaconess comes back into view.

  She’s holding the third tablet in front of her face. Kissing it. Lifting it.

  The Satanists turn towards Tom. He must have made a noise.

  The deaconess suddenly flies at him. Hands like claws. Fingers grabbing for his flesh and eyes.