Then he looked at her, his eyes wide, like a small child who sees, in the darkness of his bedroom, a sliver of light through the open door.
“Bastard!” shouted Mila in his face. She got closer and kicked him in the chest.
“Mi... Mila... listen, I have money... please don’t kill me. I had nothing to do with that incident. There must be some mistake.” Pagnan coughed, nearly choked.
“You're trying to make a deal? Seriously? Don’t you feel invincible any longer without your two-bit mercenaries? You honestly think you can buy me off? Fuck you, Pagnan.”
“I'm sorry, I didn’t know.”
Mila shook her head. Her rage was turning to nausea. She'd imagined this very scene thousands of times over the years, and she never thought she'd feel like this.
Disgust, that's what it was. A feeling that manifested itself through a slow, constantly growing burning pain in her chest.
Rossano Pagnan was simply a coward. A weak, ingratiating little man unable to play his role of villain, of criminal, of killer. A greedy little man who had flicked a switch and taken her father’s life through somebody else’s hands.
The tragedy of her life now sounded like a joke to Mila’s ears, a mean prank played by fate. This was a sad, pathetic conclusion to a story that in her opinion deserved to be played out by very different characters.
There was nothing epic in Pagnan’s wickedness.
And she would have to make him suffer for that inadequacy too.
“God, this is vile,” she barked through clenched teeth. “At least try to keep a little dignity. You make me want to heave.”
Pagnan didn’t reply, hiding behind a fear-induced silence.
“You don’t think it's already over, do you?” she prodded him. “Stand up, little man. Show me you still have some guts.”
But he didn’t move. Other than to tremble.
Mila couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Man up. Get to your feet, you fucker!”
She took him by the shoulders and turned him around, forcing him onto his back. At that second, she felt that she was crossing a line to a place from where there was no return.
It felt like a blade was scraping across her heart. A metallic pain, along with the awareness that her soul was now irretrievably rotten. What she had done until now was nothing compared to what she was about to do.
She bent over Pagnan. She grabbed the lapels of his shirt collar and pulled, ripping it off him, from top to bottom, the buttons popping off. Then she took him by the neck and sat him up. Tugged his mud-stained black jacket down, baring his shoulders, and then pinched his nipples between finger and thumb and twisted hard. She yanked upwards, forcing him to his feet.
Pagnan felt like a bucket of boiling oil had been thrown over his chest. His body would go wherever she guided it. No choice.
A rag doll in Mila’s hands.
But maybe he could still talk his way out, if it wasn't already too late. With a little luck he might be able to reach one of the guns he'd spotted earlier, discarded on the ground not too far away. He needed to draw this out.
Mila’s face drew closer to his.
“Open your eyes,” she said.
Pagnan blinked faintly.
“Open your eyes!” she repeated.
This time he obeyed, taking his time about it, though – to Mila it felt like a slice of eternity. His eyes, wide open, got lost in hers, an emerald sea shining with liquid yellow light.
They were not a woman’s eyes any longer.
They were the eyes of a Fury.
“Listen, Mila. I didn’t want your father to die. It was my men, they lost their heads! Yes, they were working for me, but I'd given them detailed instructions: rob the restaurant. Nothing else! I don’t know what came over them...”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Mila, you have to believe me...”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“Please, think about what you're doing. You're not a cold-blooded killer.”
“What the fuck do you know about me, you old wanker? Do you have the slightest inkling of what you turned me into?”
“No, I don’t. But I'm realising that you wanted to arrange a bloodbath between us and them.”
“You got it, pal! Took you long enough.”
“So? Haven’t you seen enough blood? Don’t you think it's time to stop?”
“Not when I'm about to tuck into the main course. You're the main course, old man. It's useless to try to buy yourself time.”
“I'm just trying to explain how things are.”
“Too bad you already took everything from me that I hold dear, and you can’t rewind the clock. So cut the crap.”
“Please, Mila!”
“I hope you enjoy Hell.”
Pagnan couldn’t think, much less talk. Terror had obliterated his thoughts and silenced his tongue.
He whimpered, a dull sound, interrupted by tears.
“Shit! I have to do everything myself,” said Mila. She lifted him onto his feet and spat in his face. Then she punched him.
Pagnan crumbled to the ground.
An enormous, fat octopus. A shadow of a man.
Punching Pagnan gave Mila renewed energy. She felt it flowing back through her arm. Like a backdraft.
She hit him again. And again. And again.
She grabbed him by the hair and dragged him to one of the cars.
Pagnan yelled, then Mila lifted him back onto his feet.
“It's your time. Let’s end this.”
“No, please!”
“Shut up.”
“No, I beg you... you can’t...”
She took one of the Colts and pushed it against his belly.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Dark blood squirted out.
A rotten watermelon exploding, ruptured by bullets.
Rossano Pagnan looked at her one last time. His eyes wide open, his mouth agape, his hands clawing the air to try to catch a last breath, a little more life.
“Bye bye, old man,” said Mila.
17.
Zhang couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Guo stand up, just a few yards away.
He looked at him, petrified.
Guo took his tie off and tightened it around his left thigh, where the bullet had dug a small, bloody tunnel. Then he took off his jacket, his shirt and the Kevlar body armour that had stopped the first bullet, the one that had hit him in the back. He stood there, bare-chested, in the freezing night.
A blue bruise ten inches wide discoloured his back at the spot where the bullet had hit the body armour.
His pale chest was marked by long thin lines scarring his skin and telling many stories about his life.
Mila looked at him, nodding.
“Welcome back to the living,” she told him.
Guo turned to face her. “As we agreed, right?”
“Sorry I hit you in the leg, but I couldn’t risk Pagnan’s men smelling a rat.”
“No problem, I understand. So what do we do now, you and I?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you let me live and I let you live? Or do you have something else in mind?”
“Listen here, Guo: I wanted to kill your men anyway. My mission is to clean up this land.”
“Oh, that's how it goes, is it? You're a knight in shining armour now?”
“If that's how you want to put it. But the men you sent to my home to kill me deserved what they got. Your nephew included. And those I killed today weren't innocent little lambs either.”
“Looks like everything is very clear in your mind.”
“Yep. We both know perfectly well who you are and what you do. The Talking Daggers are taking over Veneto. The way I look at it, you're nothing more or less than any other criminal organisation: Sicilian mafia, Chinese mafia, Neapolitan camorra or Calabrian 'ndrangheta – it's all the same to me. Let’s just say that I started a perso
nal vendetta and that the dead are simply casualties of war.”
“I see,” said Guo. “A wise man acts and then talks, and his talk follows his actions.”
“Couldn’t have said it better.”
“Still, you shot my leg.”
“Right. But I'm ready to even the odds.”
As she spoke, Mila pointed one of the .45s against her left thigh.
A look.
Bang!
A shot.
The bullet pierced her thigh, about six inches above the knee.
“Now we're even. You're an honourable man. For a criminal. And I don’t need an advantage to defeat you.”
Guo didn’t say anything, but his eyes revealed his surprise.
He looked around.
A couple of yards away he saw a piece of wood that looked long and thick enough.
He got closer to it. With a sudden but premeditated move, he dug his toes underneath it and flicked it up towards his chest, then grabbed it with both hands.
Mila didn’t waste any time getting into position.
She took a half step to her left so that her feet were the same width apart as her shoulders. She brought her hands to her hips, fists clenched, palms up, then straightened her shoulders, keeping her forearms parallel.
“Shaolin Kung fu,” said Guo. “Wu Bu Quan, the form of the five steps. Qi Shi, the first movement. Well executed, too.”
Mila stared at him, waiting for his next move. Her face was like a sphinx. Etched in stone.
She didn’t show any emotion.
Guo narrowed his eyes and started running, the stick held low, his right hand above the left. When he got close to Mila he drove the stick into the ground in a smooth and surprisingly nimble movement. He spun quickly and somersaulted, using all his momentum to bring the stick smashing down.
Mila didn’t fall for it. She didn’t turn, only a minimal movement to dodge the blow. Then she shifted her weight onto her left leg, adopting the archer position, and threw a punch, keeping her arm level with her shoulder.
Guo’s nose broke in a tremendous cracking of destroyed cartilage.
Off-balance because of the missed strike and thumped square in the face by Mila’s punch, he tried to get back into position with a butterfly jump.
But while he was trying to regain his balance, the woman had already started another attack. With a double leap forward, ignoring the pain that bit into her leg, she maintained her distance from her opponent and then completed the move with a third jump during which she spun around to finish it off, as she went down, with a perfect blow to Guo’s neck: the deadliest xuan feng jiao ever executed in Veneto.
Crack!
The collarbone of the Chinaman shattered under the devastating kick. A second later he was nothing but a rag doll lying on the ground in an unnatural position.
Only then did Mila take some time to bandage her wound. Then she threw a last look towards Zhang: she'd already decided she would leave him there, tied to the fence, to bleed to death.
She had filmed the whole fight with the video camera in her specs. Now she only needed some luck and hoped that the footage she'd collected would be enough to interest Joch Unterberger, BHEG High Commander and close friend of her grandfather’s.
18.
Mila got back to her car.
Her leg was really hurting now.
It had been bloody stupid to shoot herself in the thigh.
But she wanted to prove to the world that she was as tough as they came.
Her father and grandfather would have been proud of her, and that was good enough for her.
Now she felt at peace. Dog-tired and bleeding from the thigh wound, but her mind was carefree. She'd faced her foe in a fair fight and she'd won. Without cheating. Following the rules.
There was one last thing she had to do. But until then, she just had to rest for a week and wait.
She put everything she needed in the boot and headed north.
Mr Carraro, the lawyer, would receive her journal in a few days. He'd deliver it to Chiara Berton, the Public Prosecutor, within five days after that. Even if they started looking for her right away, they'd never find her. Not in such a short time. Not in such a wild place.
She drove up the Bassa from Badia Polesine and headed towards Trento through Solesino, Cittadella and Bassano del Grappa. Then the Valsugana opened before her like a Dolomian mountain wall in the crust of the Earth. Hard, harsh folds in the stony bed of the Brenta river.
When she got to the Scale di Primolano, on top of which was the war memorial, Mila turned left and drove up the snaking concrete road that would bring her, sixteen hairpin bends later, to Enego.
The automatic gearbox allowed her to keep her leg still, but she had no doubts that it was getting worse. She needed to get to her destination as soon as possible. She started the CD player.
Tom Waits started to sing about red roses and golden bullets, and it felt for a moment as if the tension was dissipating. Dark sky, deep green pine trees, the naked branches of the larches, snow falling from above like candyfloss, that strong, sweet smell. The moss-paved undergrowth poked out at her along the road to Mount Lisser. She yawned. Everything spelled sleep. But both the pain and her survival instinct helped keep her awake.
About twenty minutes later she saw the familiar outline of her cabin. She parked behind it. Took one of the tennis bags from the boot.
It was 8 in the evening.
She went inside and walked to the bathroom. Took what she needed to medicate herself out of the medicine cabinet. Removed her clothes and got in the tub, letting the water wash over her, even though it was bloody cold.
She tried to move her leg to evaluate the damage. Clots of blood, shredded skin and pieces of flesh came off, reddening the water. The bullet hole was the size of a hazelnut. She grabbed the bottle of grappa she'd taken with her and knocked back a couple of mouthfuls.
A few minutes later, she got out of the tub and splashed her leg liberally with alcohol. Then she used tweezers to remove the tiny pieces of skin and burned flesh still attached to the edges of the wound. She staunched it with a clean towel and put gauze dressings on the entry and exit wounds. She filled a plastic syringe with an antibiotic. Then she drank a couple more mouthfuls of grappa. She inserted the needle in her thigh muscle and pressed gently. She got ready for bed with a heavy dose of painkillers.
The following morning she woke up pretty late. She got out of bed and clumped on a pair of crutches over to the tennis bag. She fished out her Macbook and specs, plugged the specs into her computer and downloaded all the clips, adding the earlier closed-circuit camera recordings.
She e-mailed the lot of them. It took a while.
Now she just had to wait.
19.
From Mila Zago’s journal.
So, this is the end.
I'm a little sorry about that, actually. It's the same feeling I get when I reach the last page of an Emilio Salgari swashbuckler. Do you know him? Sandokan, the Black Corsair...? I frequently re-read those novels. My father gave them to me when I was a kid. Salgari is really good. He never travelled but was able to build a highly believable world. His novels are full of pirates boarding enemy ships, swords, guns, killings. I wasn't born when the television series about the Tiger of Mompracem – the one with Kabir Bedi in it – was shown. I watched it a few years later, when RAI re-ran it on prime time.
Sorry, I'm rambling, apologies.
Let’s try to reconstruct recent events.
I'm sure you have already found out that the slaughter in Limenella Nord a couple of days ago is linked to the Badia Polesine massacre. If by any chance you were not aware of that yet, let me confirm it: yes, the two events are closely linked. It all stemmed from bad blood between the Chinese and Rossano Pagnan’s gang. Competition in a free market, you know how it is. Of course I hardly need say that I took full advantage of the situation. I pitted one group against the other and I made sure they annihilated each other. Neat, eh? Of cou
rse they were a big help.
I’ll keep the details brief.
Ottorino Longhin, one of Pagnan’s men, betrayed his side and sold out to Guo Xiaoping, the 14K White Paper Fan and leader of the Talking Daggers. I trust those names mean something to you, Dr Berton? Anyway, in Limenella Nord, it was Longhin who killed Marco and Mirco Galesso, the twin accountants who took care of laundering Pagnan’s money and who, incidentally, had two million in cash stowed in the boot of their Mercedes the day they were shot.
In Limenella, Longhin lost it. And caused a needless massacre.
That's when I stepped in.
I protected the weak and oppressed and delivered Longhin to the police. Pretty efficient of me, don’t you think? Of course, as soon as Pagnan found out what had happened he went completely berserk. He sent his men to pick up the traitor at the Padua hospital. The kidnapping was successful. They killed a few people and brought Longhin to Pagnan, who tortured him within an inch of his life without managing to get a single word out of him.
After capturing the nephew of the bad old Chinaman, I returned to the scene. Doesn’t matter how I caught him. I don’t want to bore you with the details.
I proposed an agreement between the two bosses. Like you would in court.
Anyway, a deal was on the cards. Guo was ready to meet Pagnan to have his nephew back, as he loved him like a son. He promised to withdraw quietly from the Veneto underworld, keeping a small piece of the drugs market but letting go of everything else. He would have accepted some self-imposed limitations, not unlike the Indians in their reservations after their dealings with the white man.
Of course Pagnan didn’t trust him.
The funny thing in all this mess is that I was behind it all. I knew where Pagnan’s two million Euros were and I was holding Zhang Wen, the Chinaman’s nephew. So Pagnan needed to listen to me, to trust me, if he wanted to see his money again. And Guo too, he had to do the same if he wanted to see his nephew alive.
We're nearly there.
The venue for the meeting: Pagnan’s farmhouse near Badia Polesine.
First Pagnan gets there with his men. And me, of course.
The Ballad of Mila Page 14