The Sacred Spoils

by The Sacred Spoils (retail) (epub)

  Baldassare rarely used his judge’s voice. It felt like an abuse of power. But it unquestionably came in handy sometimes. ‘This is Magistrate Baldassare Mancuso speaking,’ he told her icily. ‘Get me your station chief right now.’

  IV

  A miracle Carmen asked for; a miracle she received. Even as she stood there wondering how she and Cesco might escape, the Bussento seemed to lose its roar, and retreat a little from her shoes too. She thought at first it was wishful thinking, but then it carried on until it was undeniable.

  Cesco was equally bewildered. ‘What the hell?’ he said.

  ‘There’s a dam the other side of the mountain,’ she murmured. ‘They must have shut it down.’

  ‘Christ. Who are these people?’

  Torchlight flared along the passage. They needed out of here right now. The Bussento was receding all the time, revealing banks on either side, steeply sloped yet walkable. Downstream would put them in sight of the viewing platform bridge, so they headed upstream instead. It was hard going, crabbing sideways with their backs against the karst. The feeble light of Cesco’s torch was a firefly in the darkness, precious little help with Carmen’s footing. And there being no chance of a signal down here, she put the battery back in her own phone and turned on its torch too.

  The Bussento retreated further. The footing grew easier. Their shoes grew sodden, however, squelching with every step in the icy water. And still there was nowhere to hide. The silenced river and the cavern’s peculiar acoustics meant they could hear orders being shouted, the rumble of outboards. Yet the river was now little more than a series of shallow ponds. Dinghies wouldn’t be much quicker than walking. They kept going until they reached a ramp of rocks down which splashed the river’s modest remnants. An orange rope threaded through spring-loaded cams confirmed that Dov had indeed been here last night. They clambered over boulders to the top, found themselves at the foot of a chimney down which fell what was left of the Bussento, while a second orange rope zigzagged up and out of view. Carmen glanced at Cesco. He shook his head in disbelief. Whatever else one might say about Dov, no one could deny his courage. The outboards grew louder behind. Glints of light shimmered off the cavern walls. There was nowhere down here to hide. Their only chance was carrying on. Besides, Carmen realised, she had to know. She tucked her phone into her waistband and tugged the rope to make sure it was secure.

  Then, with a nod at Cesco, she began to climb.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  I

  For the best part of two hours now, Tomas and Guido had been helping Massimo and his men search the woods around the industrial building, as well as making broader sweeps of the whole Sicilì area. They’d found no trace at all of Nero, Rossi or their other friends. All they knew for sure was that neither the scarlet Renault nor the black Harley had left Sicilì on either of its main roads, which meant that they were still here somehow, probably lying low in these very woods, waiting for them to give up. But there was so much ground to cover, and the darkness was so absolute, that it felt a hopeless task.

  ‘Enough,’ sighed Massimo. ‘Let’s call it a night. Start fresh in the morning.’

  ‘They could be anywhere by then.’

  ‘And how will searching these trees again help? Come on, boss. The guys are beat. They got three hours last night. Push them now, they’ll be useless tomorrow.’

  Tomas stared at him. It wasn’t the disrespect that rankled. It was his being right. ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s a hotel in Policastro with spare rooms and a night desk.’

  ‘Fine. But leave those two at the cottage, just in case. And a man watching each of the roads out. Oh, and keep your phone on.’

  ‘Are you not coming?’

  Tomas shook his head. Nero and Rossi were here somewhere, he could sniff it. Lurking in the darkness, just waiting for them to give up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not.’

  II

  It was as bizarre a boat trip as Zara could ever have imagined. Dov, Avram, herself and five others divided between their two inflatable dinghies, laden with an extensible aluminium ladder and the other supplies they’d brought, including a sledgehammer and a spike for breaking open the tomb, and scuba gear in case they found it flooded. There was too much for the boats, so they packed the surplus into a string of buoyant yellow waterproof bags that they towed behind them like barges. To make it even crazier, the Bussento was barely a river any more, but rather a series of shallow locks from which jagged boulders jutted, forcing them out of the dinghies to lift them clear. At least they had neoprene suits and booties to keep them dry and warm, and safety helmets with fitted lamps to see with.

  Every ten minutes, Dov called Noah on the satellite link to reassure himself that the dam was still closed. And whenever his signal started to weaken, he found a suitable ledge on the riverbank on which to set another relay to give it another boost. All the while, Zara kept filming and talking to camera, describing the destruction of Jerusalem and the theft of Jewish treasures, of Roman triumphs and the Temple of Peace, of Alaric, Athaulf and the rest.

  At length they reached a hummock of rock beneath a sinkhole. They moored the boats and found footing for their ladder, anchoring it to the wall with the rope already there. Dov made to lead the way, but Zara appealed to Avram to keep his promise. He nodded. She held the rungs with one hand while filming her ascent, trying to find grand phrases to match the moment, but only managing to sound breathless and pompous instead.

  A new chamber came slowly into view, the one from Dov’s photographs. It was broader than the cathedral-like nave beneath, but not so tall; yet it was made glorious by the myriad gemstones hammered into its ceiling, twinkling like a night sky in her helmet lamp. She reached the top. Her beam skittered over the rippled water and threw hallucinogenic patterns onto the limestone walls, so that for a mad moment she could have sworn she saw something moving way upstream. Except she couldn’t have.

  The chamber was largely drained, yet still a lake of sorts remained, surrounded by sloped banks and a helpful ledge or two for their equipment bags. But that wasn’t what she cared about right now. What she cared about was being first to the marble block. She waded out into the lake, arms spread wide for balance as she negotiated the stony floor. And there it was – a pale white rectangle glimmering just beneath the surface, like something from Arthurian legend. She swept away the covering of grit and algae with her forearm, turning the water opaque. But then it cleared again, revealing an inscription finished with gold leaf. An eagle, just like the one on the Caselle roof, its wings outspread and with a cross held slantwise in its talons. And, directly beneath, the legend:

  ALARICVS MAGNUS

  REIKS GOTHORVM

  Tears pricked at the corners of Zara’s eyes.

  They’d found him.

  III

  Baldassare had been on hold so long that he feared he’d been cut off. He was on the point of hanging up and calling back when finally there was a click and a new voice came on.

  ‘Judge Mancuso, is that really you?’

  ‘Yes. Listen. I have a situation—’

  ‘Such an honour! What you did for your family, for our nation, a true inspiration for all of us in law—’

  ‘Not now,’ said Baldassare. ‘Thank you, but not now. I need you to listen.’

  ‘Of course, Judge. Whatever you—’

  ‘You know the town of Sicilì?’

  ‘Do I know it? They hold the most wonderful festival there every summer that my wife—’

  ‘There’s a cottage beneath it.’ He gave him its address, insisting that he wrote it down, if only to shut him up for a moment. ‘The woman staying there is the one we rescued from that dungeon, along with my wife and daughter. She’s to be a key witness against the ’Ndrangheta. We think they may be after her right now.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ said the station chief.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Baldassare.

  ‘We had a report from Sicilì earlier tonight,’ he said,
dragging the words out of himself. ‘Three or four cars with foreign plates taking photographs of people. I let it go. Taking photographs is hardly illegal. And I’d already sent my two nearest cars to deal with vandalism at the Lake Sabetta dam. But if what you say is true…’

  ‘These foreign plates. What nationality?’

  ‘Dutch. Why?’

  Baldassare nodded to himself. There’d long been rumours that the Critellis had a powerful and lucrative Amsterdam operation. Yet if the ’Ndrangheta were out hunting, it implied that Cesco had got to Carmen in time and they’d gone to ground – presumably somewhere without a signal for their phones. ‘How long to get a car there?’

  ‘A car? Half an hour. But one of my top guys retired there last year. He has a vineyard that produces the—’

  ‘Call him. Have him check the cottage and report straight back. Tell him to be very, very careful. These people may have found it and be waiting. In the meantime, put a team together. Your best people. The kind not to back down from a gunfight with the Mafia.’

  ‘I’ll lead them in myself,’ he promised.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Baldassare. ‘Then I’ll see you there.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I

  The tomb was still covered by a skim of water. Dov and his men gathered at the sinkhole to scoop it out with their hands, lowering the level enough to reveal the lid and then a hairline crack that ran around its perimeter, so fine that it was only visible in places, yet of such perfect straightness that it could only be the join between body and lid. They gathered around it and gripped it as best they could, despite the slick surface. Then they tried to lift it. It didn’t budge. They tried again and then a third time, giving it everything.

  Nothing.

  Zara crouched to study the join more closely. There was no obvious trace of mortar or cement. It appeared to be sealed only by the tightness of its fit. She ran her thumbnail along it and found the answer, for the line of it changed course at its downstream end, like the lid of a domino box, to be slid rather than lifted. They gripped it once more but this time they heaved sideways. It gave a fraction, enough to encourage them. They heaved again and again, and then a fourth time, and finally its resistance broke and it came sliding sweetly, so that in their jubilation they might have taken it all the way had Zara not yelled at them to stop, lest they not be able to fit it back in.

  She shone her torch into the exposed cavity, bracing herself to find it flooded. But the seal had done its work supremely well, the space beneath so dry that there was even dust on the steps beneath. They led down to a landing then turned sharp right out of view. Before anyone else could move, she hoisted herself up over the lip onto the top step, water spilling from her in dark pools. Her heart racing, she set off down the stairs, ducking her head beneath the rim of the marble lid, filming as she went, the walls inscribed with spirals, swirls, vortices and other patterns picked out in silver leaf.

  Then she reached the landing below and turned to look.

  Since first seeing Dov’s short clip, Zara had entertained all kind of wild ideas of what they might find down here. None came even close. The staircase fanned out into a large chamber with rough-hewn walls and a massive pillar at its heart, carved from the limestone bedrock in the shape of an enormous tree, whose many spreading branches had been so cunningly shaped that they seemed actually to bow beneath the weight of the roof they were holding up, before being subsumed into it, and around whose trunk a giant snake was coiled.

  A snake in a sacred tree was a key component of the Judaeo-Christian creation myth. Yet Gothic lore had had something very similar too. And it was clear to Zara at a glance that this was no Garden of Eden but rather Yggdrasil, the ‘world tree’ of Germanic myth – not least because its very name had been a corruption of Odin’s horse, in turn a euphemism for the gallows from which the Goths had hanged their sacrificial victims. And so it was here. For dozens of nooses dangled from its branches, of rope so desiccated that the touch of a single finger would surely burst them into dust. And its crop of grisly fruit lay scattered beneath, the skeletal and part-mummified remains of at least fifty victims.

  Until this moment, the slaves that Athaulf had put to death to keep the secret of this place had been mere abstracts to Zara, not men of flesh and bone. The horror of this sight changed all that. Yet she was a professional too, and this was an historic moment, so she filmed the chamber floor even as she made her way down to it. Then she picked her path towards that huge trunk, careful of the sculpted roots that slithered serpent-like across the floor to the walls, whose fractured limestone had been carved into hellish arrays of tormented faces and figures reaching up for succour or salvation.

  Her pace was too slow for Dov and Avram. They pushed rudely past her on either side. Unwilling to cede priority, she went with them, rounding the vast trunk to see what lay beyond. A wide arched doorway led into a second, smaller chamber, much more as Zara would have expected. Hexagonal and with a vaulted, domed ceiling, its walls were gorgeously sculpted and painted with what appeared to be scenes from Alaric’s life, its floor laid with black-and-white tiles in concentric circles around a granite plinth on which stood a sarcophagus of pink-veined marble, whose matching lid was lying on the floor beside it, and which contained a skeleton in ragged robes of white and purple. But that wasn’t what struck them all most forcibly. What struck them all most forcibly was that the chamber was otherwise entirely empty.

  ‘Robbed,’ muttered Avram. Then louder and more angrily, as if it were he himself who’d been cheated. ‘Robbed!’

  Zara ignored him. It was still an astonishing find; she was still an archaeologist. She examined the skeleton first, noting the broken fingers, wrists and jawbone, no doubt snapped by robbers impatient for the precious jewellery in which Alaric had been laid out. Then she turned her attention to the five walls, starting to the right of the doorway, the bedrock sculpted in deep relief to create a rich and detailed scene that had then been finished with metallic leaf and paint of remarkable freshness, so that, despite its dusty coat, it glowed and shone in her torchlight – as did all the walls, indeed.

  A boy – surely Alaric himself – holding a spear some twice his height, its butt pinned against a rock as a demon-faced warrior impaled itself upon its tip as it strained to reach him with its sword. A Hun, no doubt, thought by the Goths to be the progeny of witches and the wild spirits of the steppes – and so feared by them that it had sent them fleeing across the Danube into Roman territory.

  Zara filmed every detail of it before moving to the second panel. A young general now, Alaric led a ragged horde through a wintry mountain pass, holding his horse by its bridle while two children rode on it, wrapped in what appeared to be his own fur coat. Directly opposite the doorway now, Alaric stood outside a city under siege – presumably Rome itself – magnified by a trick of perspective into looking taller than its walls, while a harvest moon hung low and red beside his head and the night sky glittered with gemstones in familiar constellations. She paused longest in front of this panel, for it offered the largest and clearest portrait of the man himself: handsome and battle-scarred, with a trim beard and long golden hair combed into ropes then arranged into a side knot. He wore the battered armour of a combat veteran rather than a general, his round shield pitted and its pointed boss stained with blood, as too was the long-bladed sword leaning against his hip. Only his imperious posture and the crested helmet he held casually down by his side spoke of his true rank.

  The fourth panel shrunk him back to mortal size, gathered with his generals on what must have been the Calabrian shore, staring in frustration across at Sicily, their Carthage ambitions frustrated by those narrow yet impassable straits. And now the final scene, lying on his deathbed in a glade outside this very grotto, while grief-stricken family and troops filed past, much as they themselves were now filing from panel to panel in this ever more congested chamber. So congested did it grow, indeed, that Dov looked around at everybody gathered in
that small space, and then remarked in a voice of quiet but unmistakeable fury: ‘Which one of you idiots is supposed to be keeping watch?’

  II

  Hunkered down behind a rocky outcrop a short distance upstream of the tomb, Cesco watched the last of the Israelis vanish down into it. Immediately he turned on his torch and glanced at Carmen. She nodded unhesitatingly. They needed to get out of here now. They needed to reach Morigerati and call in help.

  Their clothes were wet but they could still get wetter. They stripped them off and waded out into the water holding them bundled above their heads. ‘If they spot us,’ whispered Cesco, ‘you make a run for it. I’ll hold them back.’

  ‘But I can’t just leave you—’

  ‘You must. Getting help is the best chance for us both. You know it is.’

  The iciness of the water soon had them shuddering with cold, but the footing was so treacherous that they dared not rush. Any stumble would send a wave splashing over the tomb’s lip. The marble glowed palely in his torchlight, enough to use it as a guidepost. They’d just passed it when, to Cesco’s horror, he heard footsteps coming from inside the tomb. He glanced around as its mouth glowed bright. Then one of the Israelis climbed into view, muttering to himself. The beam of his helmet lamp picked them out instantly. There was a moment of frozen disbelief on both sides. Then everything seemed to happen at once.

  The Israeli bellowed for help even as Cesco shouted at Carmen to run for it. Instantly, she started splashing through the water for the sinkhole. The Israeli dived in to stop her. Cesco threw himself on him to hold him back. They flailed and splashed in the water. More Israelis arrived. Carmen reached the sinkhole ladder. But that was the last Cesco saw, for a second Israeli put his arm around his throat at that moment and dragged him backwards underwater.