The Alchemist’s Code

by Martin Rua

  Suddenly, he shoved Sean against his comrades, fired two shots into the ceiling for cover and, thanks to the semi-darkness, managed to get to the door and slip into the passage leading to the nave.

  Instinctively, they all rushed towards the exit in pursuit, but a hail of bullets pinned them to the doorway, preventing them from setting foot outside.

  “Watch yourselves,” shouted Nathan, “he’s a formidable opponent!”

  As soon as von Tschoudy’s gun became silent, they ventured out of the room slowly, covering one other. But in vain – they were showered with a new volley of bullets.

  “Surrender, Henri! You don’t have enough ammunition,” said Nathan loudly, hoping to dissuade the German from this pointless attempt at escape. Then, lowering his voice, he turned to the others. “Let’s split up – you four to the right side of the porch, me and you three to the left. We’ll try and encircle him, he must still be on this floor. Take him out if necessary, but retrieve the idol and the keys.”

  The two groups split up and hid behind the ruined balustrade of the gallery.

  “You’ll never get out of Berlin, Keller! This will be your tomb!” cried von Tschoudy.

  “It’ll be a tomb for both of us, then,” replied Nathan, moving stealthily towards the end of the balustrade.

  “It’s a trap,” whispered the Italian who was standing next to him, “he’s at the end of the gallery, just around the corner, and there isn’t a staircase that leads to the aisle from there.”

  In the meantime it became chillingly quiet. The bombs had stopped falling, and soon patrols would be walking around the town checking the damage to property and people. Their shots would no longer be covered up by the noise of the planes and bombs.

  Nathan looked at the Italian.

  “The bombing’s over. We have to take him now. There’ll be teams out scouting for him soon. Get some tear gas over there.”

  His companion nodded, cocked his rifle with one of the cannisters, leant round the corner of the balustrade behind which they were hiding and fired. Immediately, they heard von Tschoudy start to cough, and the men on the other side of the gallery saw him climb up onto the balustrade as he attempted to get from there to the nave.

  “There he is!” shouted the four men who had the best view. Von Tschoudy was trapped, and began firing madly in all directions in an attempt to defend himself, his usually unerring aim hampered by the darkness and the gas.

  “Shoot the bastard!” shouted Nathan in exasperation.

  And suddenly, von Tschoudy’s gun became silent.

  “He must have run out of ammo – or one of the others must have got him,” said Lev Nemiroff.

  Nathan leaned out cautiously but could see nothing.

  “Maybe he managed to get down to the nave,” suggested the Italian.

  Nathan remained unconvinced. He moved back behind the balustrade and, loudly enough to be heard, said, “Can you guys see him on the other side? Did you hit him?”

  McCourt looked out cautiously. “It’s too dark, Nat.”

  “To hell with it, I’ll get him,” said Nathan. “Cover me!”

  Major Keller crawled along the floorboards while the others gave covering fire, and after a few seconds they stopped and listened.

  “Stop, don’t shoot,” ordered Nathan, then stood up carefully and took a few steps. The only sound was that of his boots crunching on the debris-covered floor. He had almost reached the pillar that divided the porch into two sections, when a gunshot – one lone gunshot, accompanied by a flash in the darkness – tore through the silence.

  It all happened in seconds.

  “Nathan!” cried the Italian, jumping to his feet without thinking twice. Nathan stumbled for a second, then fell to the ground. His companion ran over to the commander, while a shadow emerged from behind the pillar and took aim at him too. It was only when he heard a second shot that he froze before turning. Vlad was behind him, his gun still smoking. In the darkness they saw the shadow beyond the pillar turn, stagger and collapse to the floor of the nave. Vlad had got him.

  Kneeling beside Nathan, the Italian was weeping. The major pulled him close, looked at him, whispered something in his ear, then fell to the ground. The situation was desperate.

  “Steady, old man, steady,” said Kirk as he tried to staunch the wound, but Nathan was losing too much blood. The bullet must have punctured a lung – he couldn’t breathe and was bleeding from the mouth. His eyes wandered from one man to another.

  “Go—” he murmured, fighting to hold on to his life, “get it and go—”

  The seven men were motionless.

  “Nat—” whispered Kirk in tears while the Navaho’s eyes became glassy. “Ah, go, damn you, go and join Coyote in the heavenly valleys.”

  An eerie, unreal silence, settled over what had once been a place of prayer and hope, the only sound the muffled sobs of the men who had gathered around their commander, the elect of the Nine. No one moved or spoke, and they remained there in silence for at least a minute, staring at the lifeless form of their leader and brother, who had sacrificed his life to flush out von Tschoudy.

  Vlad was the first to move. Tears running down his face, he rushed downstairs with the intention of emptying his Luger into von Tschoudy. The others, still stunned, watched him go without making a move to stop him or ask him where he was going.

  Arriving in the aisle, he stopped in front of the body – the right side of its face was covered in blood. He pointed the gun and breathed hard. “I hope that by some mistake you are sent to the valleys of heaven, so you can meet Nathan and he can send you to hell himself.”

  But before he could pull the trigger, a hand pushed his gun down, stopping him.

  “Don’t take it out on him, Vlad. Nathan wouldn’t approve.” It was Sean Bruce.

  Vlad, his eyes still bright and full of hate, slowly lowered the gun.

  “It’s not fair Sean, it’s not right—” he said, shaking his head.

  “War is never right, brother. Now let’s get the idol and the keys and get out of here.”

  When the two men came back upstairs with the bag, Kirk was still bent over Nathan’s body. “We can’t leave him here like this.”

  Francois tilted his head at the others. “What do we do now?”

  “We can’t leave him here,” said the American, then looking up he added, “Quick – down there.”

  The small group lifted Nathan’s body and carried it to the aisle. They passed von Tschoudy’s corpse and headed to what was left of the Aron, the most sacred part of the synagogue, stopping at

  a point where the floor was badly damaged.

  “Quick, get those tiles out of the way,” said Kirk after Nathan’s body had been placed on the ground, and they all set to work uncovering part of the land the synagogue had been built upon.

  “This is crazy,” said Kirk, while the men put Nathan’s body in the ground. “A Jew leaves the German Weimar Republic and goes to the United States, where he falls in love with a Navaho woman, and here we are, burying their son in the place where it all started.”

  The Italian looked at him and nodded thoughtfully. “We must believe that there is a pattern to all this, something bigger. Our very presence here is part of something bigger.”

  Kirk’s smile was bitter. “My friend and brother just died for that something. And you know what, Alex? I don’t care about this divine plan any more, I just want to get that damn thing out of here.”

  Meanwhile they had finished covering Nathan’s body and had tidied up the tiles, in the hope that, at least until the imminent end of the war, no one would disturb the sleep of Naalnish Keller.

  They said a last sad farewell to the small portion of the floor where their friend now lay, and turned to the entrance of the synagogue, but stopped in their tracks when they saw that a group of German soldiers had entered the building, perhaps attracted by the shots that had been fired repeatedly after the bombing.

  The seven just had time to hide
behind the Aron, while the Germans set off to inspect the western part of the nave.

  “Merde!” whispered François in his own language, “we should have got rid of von Tschoudy’s body.”

  The soldiers approached the corpse, then, seeing Bauer’s body hidden behind a pillar, they conferred for a while. Their commander ordered three of them to remain there, and departed with the rest of the squad.

  “Others will come,” said Sean.

  “Then let’s hurry up and get rid of this lot and then get the hell out of here,” said Vlad, screwing the silencer onto his pistol. The others followed suit, looked around them for a moment and then emerged from behind the Aron.

  “Kameraden!” cried the Russian, swaggering towards them and firing repeatedly on one of the two armed soldiers. The other barely had time to raise his gun before he too was hit by a volley of bullets. Firing as they went, the seven then set off towards the third soldier, who barely managed to scream and curl up on the ground, covering his head with his hands. In thrall to the same fury of a few minutes before, Vlad put his gun to the head of the whimpering soldier, ready to fire.

  “Wait Vlad!” yelled Kirk again, raising the soldier’s head.

  “He’s just a kid!” exclaimed Alex.

  The young soldier was shaking and sweating at the sight of the Nazi uniforms worn by the seven men and had a confused expression on his face. Vlad leaned down to look into his eyes. Although he looked like a frightened bird, he had a proud look about him that struck the Russian. “That scumbag Hitler is even sending children to the slaughter, now,” he said in German.

  “No me mata, señor, por favor—” stammered the lad, “Don’t kill me.”

  “Señor? Por favor? What, are you Spanish? What the hell are you doing here?”

  Still trembling with fear and not understanding what was happening, the boy replied, this time in German.

  “I am part of Franco’s youth. I come from Valencia, but my mother belongs to an important German family and is loyal to the Reich—”

  “And what is that supposed to mean to me?” Vlad replied sarcastically, waving his Luger under the young boy’s nose. “You’re just another little shit who’s under the spell of that madman Hitler.”

  The boy was increasingly confused – why did a Nazi officer speak of the Führer in this way? He imagined that they must be spies. He had heard of the Allies who roamed Germany wearing German uniforms. “I came to Berlin to study theology and they enlisted me… I beg you, in the name of God, do not kill me.”

  Vlad bent even closer to the sallow faced, clean-shaven young man and stared at him with furious eyes.

  “God isn’t here any longer here, boy. You’re wasting your time.”

  He stood up and, together with the others, quickly left the synagogue.

  The young man was still on the ground, trembling but thanking God, who, he was convinced, had been at his side and had saved his life.

  11

  The Secret Safe

  Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragona

  Naples, January, 2013

  Oscar had some of the things found in Bruno’s house and the Églantine brought to us, along with the testimonies of the few people who had seen anything and the forensic evidence.

  “I’ll spare you the details,” said Oscar, “and just sum up what emerged from the interrogations. The testimonies of those who were present in the area revealed nothing strange. The only evidence that might be worth mentioning is that of the owner of the tobacco shop in front of the Églantine. He says that he noticed someone go into your shop just before Bruno would normally have gone home – a man of considerable stature. He was inside for a few minutes, and then he saw him leave. That was the killer.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “From the CCTV system that you’ve got in the gallery and from forensics. Whatever killed Bruno was injected into him. Having failed to find any trace of that substance in his body, we carefully examined other details emerging from the investigation, the autopsy and from the film. The autopsy showed a tiny puncture in the palm of his right hand – the place where, according to the doctor, the murderer could have injected him with poison or whatever it was.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Yeah, by comparing the information gleaned from the medical examiner with that of the forensics and the video, we concluded that the injection occurred more or less at the time when the tobacconist saw the man enter the store, i.e. closing time, twelve hours before his death. We went over the recordings with a fine tooth comb, we were convinced that we’d catch him within twenty-four hours. The man was right there, standing brazenly in front of a CCTV camera.”

  “So?”

  Oscar shook his head. “After extracting his face and inserting it into the database, the only correlation we found was a dead end that left us completely dumbfounded. The face belonged to a little known German actor. Through INTERPOL we managed to locate him, traced him to Berlin and put the screws on, but the poor guy had a cast-iron alibi and it was all just a huge waste of time that made us look ridiculous internationally. The techs have come to the conclusion that the killer either wore a mask that perfectly reproduced that actor’s features, or else he’d undergone plastic surgery to alter his features.”

  “I see. And apart from that, what did you get out of the video camera?”

  Oscar frowned. “You can see the exact moment when the man kills Bruno – with a simple handshake. You see Bruno quickly retract his hand and rub it, probably because of the pain caused by the puncture. The guy must have had a needle or something hidden between his fingers, maybe a ring.”

  I shook my head, stunned. “All this is absolutely incredible. A handshake only lasts a second or two, how on earth did he manage to inject enough stuff into him to kill him? And what the hell is powerful enough that even a small amount of it can destroy a person’s innards in twelve hours and then disappear without a trace?”

  Oscar just shrugged. “And don’t forget the gunshot to the face, which gives the whole thing a weirdly retro touch.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First things first. The morning after the… the handshake in the Églantine, the footage from the CCTV cameras at Bruno’s villa show someone: we see the figure of a man opening the electric gate as though it were the most natural thing in the world, going through it and then… nothing. The cameras, both inside and outside, go off. Maybe the murderer himself tampered with them. According to the coroner and forensics, the man got to Bruno just as he was dying, probably waited for him to die and then shot him in the face, for no apparent reason, with a rather antiquated nine mm.”

  “What do you mean ’antiquated’?”

  “Do you know anything about historical weapons?”

  “Well, they’re not exactly my favourite topic for bedtime reading, but I know a bit.”

  Oscar handed me a plastic bag containing a cartridge case. “That’s what we found at the crime scene. It’s the only thing that the killer left. Deliberately, at a guess.”

  I turned the cartridge case over in my hands, then read what was written around the end plate. “DWM 1944. 1944 – is that the date?”

  “According to ballistics, this is a German World War II bullet. The acronym DWM, in fact, stands for… Hold on, I have to read it, because I don’t remember it. Here, Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken – German Arms and Ammunition Factory.”

  “What a mess,” I said, turning the cartridge case over in my hands. “Maybe they used this heirloom to send you off on a wild goose chase after that German actor.”

  “It’s perfectly possible,” admitted Oscar. “Initially we thought the killer had shot Bruno to make sure he was dead, but that’s not it, because he fired a single, oblique shot, and at point blank range. In short, if Bruno hadn’t been poisoned, the shot wouldn’t have killed him. He’d just have had a nasty scar on his face. Add to that he used a bullet from the Second World War, and it can only mean one thing.”
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br />   “That the killer wanted to leave a message,” I concluded, finishing his train of thought for him.

  “Exactly.”

  “But for who? Bruno had no enemies, he was an honest antiquarian, he was always above board, he never got mixed up in anything shady.”

  “Perhaps the message was for his partner,” suggested Oscar, giving me a hard look.

  The astonishment on my face was evident. “For me?”

  “You can’t say that you haven’t made a few enemies around the world, Lorenzo. Your adventures in search of mysterious artefacts have often got you into trouble. And if what’s happened to you in the last month and a half is true, if someone has deliberately kept you drugged, it’s pretty reasonable to think that the two things – Bruno’s murder and what happened to you – are connected. And moreover, the timing coincides. Bruno is killed in late November while you’re in Zurich attending to your wife. You’re alerted to the death of your partner, you come back to Naples just long enough to help me open an investigation, then, practically before you’ve touched ground you announce that you’re going back to Switzerland. Right then, however, your curious amnesia starts, and you never actually get back to Zurich.”

  “You mean, they started drugging me while I was here in November.”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  We sat there in silence for a moment, trying to work out the series of events that had brought us to that point. It almost looked as though Bruno had been killed to make me come running back to Naples.

  “Have you got something else to show me?” I asked, looking again at Oscar.

  He stood in front of a box containing some wrapped objects.

  “I won’t show you the photos of Bruno’s body. Last time… I mean, before you lost your memory, you got very upset when you saw them. And we haven’t found anything new. But I would like you to take a look at what we took from the Églantine and from Bruno’s house.”