On the Fifth Day (21 page)

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A. J. Hartley

"That thing?" said Deborah. "It was a man, Thomas."

"It didn't look like a man," he said. "It didn't move like a man."

"There are no alternatives," she said with finality. "And it did look like a man. A strange one, perhaps, but we could have guessed that from what he had just done."

He wasn't sure if she was as convinced as she was making out, but he knew she was right.

They had reached the restaurant-store on the corner with

out any sign of the killer, who--it seemed--had been content to scare them off. They had summoned the skeptical, middleaged widow who lived there and she had called the police, Thomas grateful that Deborah's Italian was considerably bet

ter than his.

"Homicidal lunatic" and "vampire" don't exactly make
the Berlitz guide.

He didn't know why the word
vampire
had popped into his head. He didn't believe in such things, of course, and didn't for a moment think that that was what had killed Satoh. It was just the paleness of the killer, the crablike way he had scuttled over the rocks like Nosferatu . . .

By the time their interview was over, the police had erected some kind of protective tent over part of the Temple of Ceres, and the entire site was bathed in the blue-white light of a dozen halogen work lamps. The entire environment seemed surreal, dreamlike. The police had not, thank God, asked him to look again at the body or, indeed, to venture back into the site. They had been interviewed separately, but once they'd been released, he and Deborah had compared notes. Thomas was particularly relieved to find that neither of them had held anything back, so their stories agreed. Even their answers to the key question, casually floated by the chain-smoking trans

lator in the museum where the police had set up their tempo

rary operations base, had been frank: "Did you know the deceased?"

Thomas had known that any discrepancies between his story and Deborah's would get them into deep water fast. So 151

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he had told them: about Satoh searching his room at the Exec

utive; about the struggle in the site earlier in the day; about the supposed link to Ed, whose death had first led him to Italy. The translator had gone over each point several times, clarify

ing, responding to rapid questions from the investigating offi

cer, the three men regarding each other cautiously, circling, almost, as if spoiling for a fight.

Camoranesi was a heavyset man with a thick black mus

tache and sad, heavy-lidded eyes. Like the translator, the po

liceman smoked constantly and spoke in a low, gravelly voice like someone who knew so much of the world's nastier side that he was numb to it, almost bored. By contrast the translator, a young man barely more than college age, seemed as rattled as Thomas, and though the greenish tinge left his face in the course of their long conversation, the jitteriness never went away.

They didn't like what he had to say. It complicated a messy situation further, and he knew it. They would have to liaise with the Americans, maybe with Interpol, and if Thomas was reading Camoranesi correctly, they thought it was irrelevant. They were dealing with some psycho, they thought. It had nothing to do with Thomas's rambling and arbitrary crusade. Thomas couldn't blame them. By the end of the interview, he too felt that Satoh's death was most likely a coincidence. He had, perhaps, been spying on Thomas, maybe on Deborah too, but that had not been connected to his death. He had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and had fallen afoul of a maniac. It could happen, he supposed uneasily, anywhere. The police didn't say any of this directly. They copied his passport--which he had been carrying with him since the break-in at the hotel--and asked for names and contact num

bers here and in the United States. He gave them Jim in the States, and Father Giovanni at the retreat house in Naples. The policeman raised his eyebrows at the fact that both were priests, and the strangeness of it struck Thomas too. They asked for his fingerprints, and Thomas gave them without complaint. He had nothing to hide.

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He'd had no more than ten minutes to speak to Deborah, and he didn't really know what to say anyway. After rehashing what she had told the police, she offered her number and he took it, doubtful they would ever speak to each other again, wondering how they could possibly chat about history and culture when all that held them together was soaked with the evening's horrors.

After their halfhearted farewell, he was invited to a police car and driven to the local station. He waited there for twentytwo minutes alone in a dingy room whose window was so high it may have served as a cell, before being put into another po

lice car and taken back to the Executive in Naples. It was two in the morning. He got the desk clerk to open the bar long enough for him to take a couple of beers to his room, drinking them in a series of long gulps the moment he got inside. He undressed quickly and got into bed, hoping against hope that he was too tired to dream.

CHAPTER 38

The Seal-breaker considered the display on his cell phone and answered it on the third ring.

"Yes?"

"This is Pestilence. We have a problem."

"I'm aware of the situation."

"What the hell were you thinking? I could have told you this would happen."

The Seal-breaker stared out the window. He had expected this response from Pestilence. War was always in his corner. Death did as he was told and Famine was . . . well, who knew what went on his head? But Pestilence was always secondguessing, prying, challenging. It was, he supposed, inevitable 153

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

with hired--if expensive--labor, but it was tiresome nonethe

less.

"The project is moving according to plan," he said. "If nec

essary you will liaise with War."

"And if I decide to eliminate that loose cannon once and for all?"

"That's not your decision."

"That's not what I asked," said Pestilence.

"It's all the answer you need."

After Pestilence had hung up, the Seal-breaker considered his options. Knight had been left alive thus far because it had seemed more useful or less risky to let him run aimlessly around like a headless chicken. But if he was picking up a scent, he could quickly become a liability. Ever the prag

matist, the Seal-breaker wanted no more corpses than were strictly necessary, but the death of Thomas Knight might soon be inevitable. It was also a matter of serving the greater good. The phone was still in his hand. He dialed, composing the instructions he would give War as he did so.

CHAPTER 39

"Rough night?" said Brad Iverson over his
Wall Street Journal
as Thomas arrived for the last ten minutes of the breakfast buffet.

"Slept badly," said Thomas.

"Apparently," said Brad, playing the genial guy's guy.
Jockular,
Thomas called it. "I hope she was worth it," said Brad, and laughed once, head flung back.

Thomas gave a wan smile but he didn't feel like playing along.

"What's on the itinerary for today then, Tourist Thomas?"

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"Not sure yet," said Thomas, almost to himself. "Back to Pompeii, I think."

"Dude! Once wasn't enough? What do you see in these piles of rocks?"

"Not enough, apparently," said Thomas.

He went to the retreat house not caring whether Pietro, Gio

vanni, or Roberta answered the door. He would want to speak to all of them today anyway. For once the great doors were open to admit a small delivery truck.

"Supplies for the
Fransiscana,
" said Giovanni, somewhat wearily, waving him in. "The rest arrive tomorrow."

"I hear you had a bit of a scare with one of them," said Thomas.

Giovanni shrugged.

"Probably nothing," he said, though Thomas doubted that he really believed that.

Pietro would be gone all day, but after hearing how Thomas had spent his evening, Giovanni said he would make sure the old monsignor sat down with Thomas before the day was out for a long overdue chat.

"Mind if you and I talk now?" asked Thomas.

Giovanni checked his watch.

"Okay," he said. "One hour. But not here. This place is getting . . ." He gave up looking for the word and raised his hands almost to the sides of his head: noisy, frustrating, crazy. They walked up to the junction with Via Medina, weaved their cautious way across the street, and strolled down toward the sea, passing the long row of elegant eighteenth-century facades, now blackened and tagged with graffiti. They passed a cluster of little restaurants, their roadside patios closed up till lunchtime; circled an imposing fountain featuring statues of vaguely nautical mythology; and then, quite suddenly, were presented with an imposing and well-maintained fortress, the Castello Nuovo.

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"I came here with your brother," said Giovanni. "I'd never been before. He showed me around."

"I guess when you live in a place you don't always see what visitors get so excited about," said Thomas.

"Right," said the priest. "The castle is typical Napoli: lots of layers. Under the earth there are Greek remains, then Ro

man. The building is thirteenth century but it was restored in the fifteenth century and again later. Now the city council meets here. Ed liked the . . . what is the word?"

"History?"

"Yes," he said, tilting his head onto one side to say
not ex

actly.
"More like
continuity,
yes?"

"Yes."

They entered the castle over a broad wooden bridge and through a floridly carved archway, flanked by columns and surmounted by a frieze with horses and a chariot. The arch

way was almost as high as the two massive, dark towers that flanked it, and led them to a stone-flagged courtyard. Thomas stood there, absorbing the age--the continuity--of the place, while Giovanni purchased a couple of tickets in what had been the gate house.

"You told me about Ed's interest in symbols," said Thomas, when the priest returned. "Can you recall any partic

ular focus?"

"I don't know much about his work," said Giovanni, "but I remember him collecting images of the fish from the cata

combs in Rome and other earlier Christian art."

"The fish symbol? Like those things you see on people's cars?"

Giovanni shrugged and motioned them up a long straight flight of steps.

"It was an early Christian symbol," he said. "A very simple design. Some people think it began as a word you make up from the first letters of other words."

"An acronym?"

"Yes," said Giovanni, "but I think it was also a kind of 156

A. J. Hartley

code. The language of the early church was Greek, and their word for fish was
ikthus.
Your brother showed me this. Wait."

They had emerged in one of the sea-facing towers in which a circular room was laid out with formal pews: a parliament building or a courthouse. The vaulted ceiling was perhaps sixty feet high, webbed by arcing stone braces. Giovanni pulled a paper napkin from his pocket, leaned against the edge of a wooden desk, and jotted with a black ballpoint:

I I
esous: Jesus

K K
ristos: Christ

Q
TH
eou: God's

Y U
ios: Son

S
S
oter: Savior

Thomas considered the words as Giovanni traced his finger down their initial letters.

"See?" he said. "
Ikthus.
Fish, but also Jesus Christ, son of God and savior. The word was used so that the persecuted Christians could recognize each other. When they met, one would draw a line like this."

He sketched a curved line, like a stylized wave.

"And the other would complete the image."

He added the bottom half of the curve, joining the line at the left end to form the fish's head, crossing it at the right to form the tail.

"And this is a very old image?" said Thomas.

"Maybe one of the oldest. Ed said it was a common sym

bol in other religions too, but the early Church claimed it. The New Testament is full of stories that use the fish."

"
I will make you fishers of men,
" Thomas said.

"And the feeding of five thousand people," said Giovanni.

"Eduardo said that the fish was an 'archetypal fertility sym

bol' also," he concluded, smiling at his memory of the phrase. They walked for a while in silence until they found them

selves in a long room facing the sea whose floor was made of thick glass. Beneath it they could see the building's lower 157

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

level: the remains of storerooms, dungeons, passages, and graves, some containing skeletons.

"They say the foundation is full of tunnels dating back to the earliest days of the building," said Giovanni. "Some may connect to the sea. There is a legend that prisoners left in the dungeons would scream in the night. When the guards went to check the next day, they had vanished from their cells. After several years, soldiers went through all the tunnels and found a crocodile that had escaped from a visiting boat from Egypt and had been living in the passages down there. They killed and stuffed the crocodile and hung it over the gateway. Only a legend, but Eduardo liked this story."

Again he smiled, wistful this time.

"I should get back," he sighed. "You have to go to Pompeii, and I have nuns to deal with."

Thomas nodded.

Symbols,
he thought.
Crosses and fish. Could these be at
the heart of Ed's death? How?

"It's all so . . . inadequate," he said aloud. "There's some

thing I'm missing."

Giovanni said nothing and Thomas wondered again if Ed's friends were withholding information, to protect his memory, or to protect themselves. If so, from what? From whom?