While the woman carried on consoling her daughter, Massimiliano Di Luca whispered his assumption to Alberto and the driver nodded.
‘Perhaps some small recompense would be in order, maestro?’
‘You’re suggesting … ?’
Alberto nodded.
Massimiliano Di Luca fished out a rarely used wallet from his inside pocket and opened it. Good! It was filled with banknotes. He handed all of them to the woman, who shook her head.
‘There’s no need, signore! It really was nothing.’
She stuttered with embarrassment.
In the course of the next minute Di Luca and the woman performed a sincere exchange of offers and rejections with the girl and Alberto as their silent audience. At last the immigrant capitulated and put the banknotes into the pocket of her anorak with two fingers. She took her daughter’s hand and limped back the way they had come. The woman had firmly declined their offer of a lift with a kind of fraught bashfulness, which further confirmed Di Luca’s suspicions that the woman and girl were illegal immigrants, desperate to get away.
Mother and daughter found their sensible Citroën Berlingo on a forest track a few hundred metres from the road.
L’Artista muttered a few words into a walkie-talkie and they got in the car.
She removed the last of the blood from her face with a wet wipe, pulled down her tracksuit bottoms and inspected the already swollen and discoloured knee. Then she flexed and bent the fingers of her right hand. They all worked. In the back her daughter put on her seatbelt and started playing on her Gameboy. Her mother opened a cool box in the passenger footwell, found an ice pack and strapped it to the inside of her knee.
‘Do you want an ice cream?’ she asked the girl.
‘Yes, please.’
‘You did very well, sweetheart.’
The girl nodded, totally wrapped up in her game.
‘Here you go,’ her mother said.
She handed her daughter an ice-cream cone and opened a can of Coke for herself.
‘What are we doing now, Mummy?’ the girl asked without looking up.
‘You’re not doing anything, darling. You’re going home to Daddy. I’ve got to go out and do something.’
‘Were they bad people?’
‘Make sure you don’t get ice cream on the seat, sweetheart.’
Massimiliano Di Luca and Alberto Moravia drove off together without exchanging a single word. Massimiliano Di Luca leaned back in his seat, frowned and held up his hands. He rubbed his palms together and studied the tiny dots of blood on the tips of his fingers. The blood kept flowing even though he pressed his fingertips together. He looked down at the pale leather seat and wondered at the fine layer of dust.
His fingers started to convulse involuntarily. His arms flopped into his lap, the nerves unresponsive.
With great difficulty he managed to lift his head and found Alberto’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. His driver was sitting in exactly the same position as he was; his hands had let go of the steering wheel and were resting on his thighs, his eyes unresponsive like his own. The Bentley drifted to a halt on the verge, and the engine stalled. Di Luca and Alberto both slumped forwards at the same time and threw up.
Di Luca’s eyelids were as heavy as the sins of the world and the sweat poured over his eyes. He couldn’t utter a single word. If he had been capable of speech, if Alberto hadn’t been in just as bad a state as he was, he would have asked him to find the old Colt .45 in the glove compartment and shoot him through the heart.
A tow truck pulled up in front of the Bentley and two men wearing overalls climbed down from the driver’s cab. They set about manoeuvring the truck’s towing brackets underneath the front wheels of the Bentley.
One of the men smiled at Massimiliano Di Luca, who was now lying in a foetal position in the back, incapable of movement, but fully conscious.
The two men pushed their shoulders against the rear of the Bentley and rolled it on to the tow bars. They secured the front wheels with chains, lifted up the front of the car, got back into the driver’s cab and drove off, towing the Bentley.
The whole sequence of events took only a few minutes.
CHAPTER 41
Outskirts of Milan
The irony of the situation had temporarily stumped Urs Savelli. He was a fan of Massimiliano Di Luca and over the years rip-offs of the designer’s creations had earned the Camorra more money than all the other Milan fashion houses’ products put together.
That it would all come to an end in a derelict warehouse offended Savelli’s sense of decorum.
He sat motionless on an office chair in the warehouse on Via Carlo Montanari in one of Milan’s outer industrial areas; abandoned by its owners, no longer with any purpose. The few still unbroken windows had been painted white, the doors had been removed and the openings boarded up.
A rat scurried across the floor along the edge of a sunbeam and he noticed a couple of pictures of girls torn from a tyre-company calendar flutter through the shadows. One of them flew past the chair and he stepped on it with the tip of his boot. The blonde had a curly eighties hairstyle and eye make-up to match. Apart from the make-up, the girl was naked: kneeling, inviting … but with a pneumatic tool strategically placed in front of her crotch. He lifted his foot and the girl whirled on. He looked up. The old plywood ceiling was close to giving up the ghost and the wooden walls, roasted by the sun, were dry and fraying.
It was a good place. Several of the sheds around the warehouse had burned down and Savelli had big plans for this final building – and for Assistant Public Prosecutor Sabrina D’Avalos. She was a young witch and witches should be burned.
The tow truck’s crew kept a respectful distance from Savelli. The only one moving was the doctor whom Urs Savelli had insisted should be present during the abduction. The doctor was tending to the two stretchers where the fashion designer and his driver were lying. Massimiliano Di Luca’s and Alberto’s eyes were open and staring at Savelli’s face. They lay curled up in the characteristic fighter’s position where the stronger flexor muscles of the joints dominate the stretching muscles. Their fists were clenched and their knuckles bloodless. He knew that they were awake and listening, even though they couldn’t move.
The doctor was wearing a white nylon hazard suit with a hood and a breathing apparatus. He adjusted the electrodes on the fashion designer’s bare chest and tore off a strip of paper from a printer. He studied the electrocardiogram as he walked towards the captain.
He stopped two metres in front of Urs Savelli’s chair. Less than two metres was inadvisable: he might be contaminated with glass dust.
‘I’m not entirely happy, signore,’ the doctor said.
‘No?’
‘No.’ The doctor shook his head. ‘The oxygen levels in the blood of both patients are normal. They’re awake, but paralysed, obviously. However, Signor Di Luca has cardiac arrhythmia. It ought to be treated.’
‘Cardiac arrhythmia?’
‘The atriums of the heart are beating too fast compared to the ventricles. The heart’s neural transfer is irregular, thus reducing the pumping ability of the heart. Signor Di Luca is likely to develop blood clots.’ The doctor looked gravely at the Camorra captain. ‘Normally one would try to recreate the heart’s rhythm with digitalis medication or with an electric shock, and then try to prevent clot formation by administering a blood thinner.’
‘Can you do that?’
The doctor straightened up. His eyes behind the reflective visor continued to study the electrocardiogram. The furrow of concern refused to be smoothed.
‘Of course …’
‘But?’
‘I’m not entirely clear what level of treatment you wish me to administer.’
Urs Savelli studied the leaden tip of the makila placed exactly halfway between his boots.
‘You must do your duty and treat Signor Di Luca in accordance with best specialist practice. I certainly want him to live for as long as possible and in the best possib
le condition, doctor.’
The doctor quickly started to open various bags.
The Albanian rested his chin on the bear head of his cane and followed the doctor’s preparations.
He had observed L’Artista’s attack at a distance and been impressed. Remarkable couple, mother and daughter. Extraordinary.
His contact with the Chinese triads, Mr Chun, had provided him with the glass dust that L’Artista’s daughter had scattered across the seats of the Bentley.
The microscopic shards of glass were impregnated with heparin, which blocked the blood’s ability to coagulate, and tetrodotoxin, an extract from the fins, skin and intestines of the puffer fish and the second most poisonous substance known to science, after endotoxin from the poison dart frog.
The formula originated from West African and Creole-Haitian voodoo: in order to ensure obedience in his servants, the voodoo priest would spread houngans, ground glass grains impregnated with puffer-fish poison, on the doorstep of suitable candidates. When the victim trod on the splinters with their bare feet, the inevitable transformation from human being to slave, to zombie, would begin. Urs Savelli found the correct ethnographical description, lave tet – brainwashing – most apt: the victim’s personality, will and memory were wiped as thoroughly as a computer’s crashed hard drive.
The murder of Gianni Versace and the furore that had ensued was still painfully clear in Savelli’s memory, but it would be nothing compared to the death of Massimiliano Di Luca. Il maestro would be given a state funeral and there would be a national outcry for a police investigation to find and punish the guilty. Every stone normally regarded as untouchable would be turned. Old friends in the Senate of Rome would lose their confidence in him and turn away. This was much better. Don Francesco had been right.
Savelli rose, walked over to the stretchers and stared into the eyes of Massimiliano Di Luca. At a safe distance.
‘Can you hear me? If you can, please blink once.’
Massimiliano Di Luca’s eyelids closed and opened. His knuckles were no longer white, his hands were starting to relax, but his fingernails had left bleeding half moons in the palms of his hands; the tetrodotoxin was almost washed from his spine and in a few minutes Di Luca and his driver Alberto would regain control of their limbs.
‘I intend to take everything from you, signore … including your mind. Everything but your life. I don’t need you dead, I need you forgotten.’
Di Luca’s eyes remained half shut. His gaze no longer took in Savelli, but was focused on something far away. Far away in the fifty-eight-year-old man’s happiest memories.
Then he looked at Savelli and smiled.
His mouth formed words and Urs Savelli leaned forward until the doctor’s warning stopped him.
‘Keep your distance, signore!’
Savelli ignored the doctor.
‘What did you say?’
‘It never worked …’ Massimiliano Di Luca whispered.
‘What?’
Di Luca’s chest heaved, and on the exhaling breath he repeated: ‘Forlani’s invention. It never worked.’
Savelli’s fists clenched behind his back.
He didn’t believe the Venetian, obviously. It was a final desperate attempt to save Forlani. Admirable, really. Noble.
He nodded to the doctor who was removing a cylindrical metal container from a foam-padded aluminium suitcase. Once again ambitious assassins could do well to study the ancients. They could start with Homer. The pharmaceutical explanation for the orgiastic Dionysus festivals of ancient times was not only the consumption of copious amounts of raw fermented grape juice, but also the inhalation of smoke from the embers of thorn-apple twigs, datura stramonium. The priestesses of Delphi – the Oracle – knew all about this potent and treacherous nightshade plant. Its psychosis-inducing effect was due to its high levels of various hallucinogenic alkaloids. Such as ergot. Every part of the plant was rich in these alkaloids, but the line between undesired death and desired ecstasy was paper thin.
An old Greek living on the island of Samos still knew the art of collecting the smoke from the twigs in large glass balloons, distilling the toxin with water-cooled copper pipes and extracting the alkaloids in alcohol.
The doctor hooked up the pressure flask and placed a rubber mask over Di Luca’s mouth and nose.
Then he checked the monitors that tracked heart rhythm and oxygen saturation.
Di Luca’s irises rolled behind his eyelids.
‘He’s out,’ the doctor said.
‘Are you sure?’
The doctor nodded.
‘Quite sure. The datura is mixed with LSD and scopolamine. So –’ the doctor shrugged his shoulders – ‘bon voyage.’
Urs Savelli looked at the unconscious fashion designer.
‘Terror?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Savelli smiled.
‘What’s it like in there? Fear? Terror?’
The doctor looked uncertain. Fine drops sparkled on the upper lip of the Camorrista, even though the air in the hall was cool.
‘I imagine it’s like having untreated schizophrenia,’ the doctor said slowly. ‘Terror, possibly. Certainly. The subconscious in freefall.’
The doctor was keen to please Savelli.
‘And they can’t be brought back?’
The young man smiled.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Datura administered in these doses over the next couple of hours will cause lesions to several brain centres. No, they’ll stay as they are.’
Savelli nodded and turned on his heel.
‘We have work to do,’ he said.
CHAPTER 42
Milan – Ospedale Maggiore, Niguarda Ca’ Granda
Even though they were separated by only a few metres, they could have been on different continents. The unconscious fashion designer had dispatched Sabrina and Giulio Forlani to the furthest recesses of his mind.
The afternoon sun went down while doctors, nurses, lab technicians and Carabinieri officers went in and out of the isolation ward through the airlock, everyone protected by breathing apparatus, gloves, suits and hoods. The doctors were dumbfounded, the nurses were efficient, the phlebotomists drew a little more blood from Di Luca’s thin arms, and the officers whispered comments to Sabrina which she didn’t hear.
It had been a call from Primo Alba that woke her up in the house in Ticino. That voice always meant disaster. After an anonymous tip-off to the Carabinieri in Greco Milanese, the designer’s Bentley had been found in an underground car park in Porta Volta.
A careless Carabiniere had opened the driver’s door and Alberto had fallen out on to the concrete floor. The officer had begun to examine the driver, but started convulsing a few seconds later; he had become non-responsive and his hands had started to bleed.
From that moment on Alberto and Massimiliano Di Luca were treated as if they were carrying a deadly virus.
Sabrina got up and went over to the window. Sweat poured down her back under the nylon coverall and her hair was soaking wet. Enterprising journalists who had been listening to the police on a scanner had started gathering in front of the hospital’s entrances. For the time being they were kept at a distance by the police, dogs and cordons, but Sabrina knew that the vast hospital had hundreds of ways in and it was impossible to secure totally. Sooner or later some journalist would find a white coat, a stethoscope and his scoop. Massimiliano Di Luca’s name had been mentioned on the police radio during the initial call, which had sent the media into a frenzy.
The hospital’s large, elliptical courtyard, with its strict geometrical pathways and shrubs, lay strangely peaceful and golden, deserted and unused.
After his initial contact, Primo Alba was no longer taking her calls and Federico Renda was not available either, his secretary informed her. At least not to Sabrina D’Avalos.
She had been overtaken by events and she could feel the fresh imprint of the pariah mark on her forehead. This was what Primo Alba had warned he
r about outside the cathedral. If she succeeded, everything would be official and hunky-dory; there would be toasts and champagne, applause and medals; if not, no one had ever heard of her and everyone would distance themselves from her. She would be a rogue agent, an unreliable assistant public prosecutor who had put her private motives above her duty.
She would be famous, notorious … and forgotten. Perhaps her name might occasionally be whispered in the canteen of the Palace of Justice or in one of the cafés around Via delle Repubbliche Marinare by some careless junior assistant prosecutor who would quickly be silenced by an older colleague. Sabrina D’Avalos? Hush! For God’s sake never mention her name within the hearing range of Federico Renda if you value your career.
The next and final step would be relegation to the Vehicle Registration Agency, but she was too tired to really care. She turned around and looked at Giulio Forlani, who hadn’t said one word to her in the last three hours in the hospital ward – his rare glances in her direction had spoken volumes.
Sabrina sighed and tried to take stock of the situation: (1) she had found a genius who was presumed dead – who didn’t want to be found – and an invention that didn’t work; (2) she had caused the deaths of Professor Carlo Mazzaferro and his companion Laura Rizzo; (3) given time, she would have ensured that the widow Antonia Moretti, and her fifteen-year-old son Gianni, met the same fate; and (4) she had turned the world-famous fashion designer Massimiliano Di Luca and his innocent driver into vegetables.
It was truly impressive. She was a human Bermuda Triangle.
The deep groan from the rubber edges of the airlock made her turn around: a man with an aristocratic face, half-moon reading glasses on a long patrician nose, tall and thin, had arrived.
He introduced himself as Professor something or other, but did not shake hands.
Giulio Forlani rose to his feet. He positioned himself next to Sabrina.
‘You are Signor Di Luca’s next of kin?’ the professor asked.
Sabrina nodded. As they waited for the doctor to deliver his news they felt fairly composed.
Di Luca looked just the way he had at breakfast, Sabrina thought. It was possible that he looked even better. The colour of his face was natural and he was sleeping calmly. The monitors above his bed all showed normal green curves and numbers.
When the Dead Awaken Page 26