SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (14 page)

»I changed my mind in the matter of these exorcists’ placidity«, Giovanni whispered at me. »Let’s buzz off – this guy doesn’t look kosher to me!«

I couldn’t agree more. As if someone had turned our dash key, we doubled back simultaneously and beat it.

Numero due. A repeating, muffled hammering sound reached our ears, from afar and yet oddly close, in short intervals, yeah, almost sounding like a muffled up kettledrum. Of course we weren’t in the mood to stand still and look for the source of this strange sound. Bam! ... Bam! ... Bam! ... it resounded from somewhere again and again, while we ran over the boasted pavers with the hooded guy upon our heels. My current condition must have busted all panic scales. Yet I tried to use the rest of my ratio to find the cause of the sound. I felt a barely noticeable vibration underneath my paws and thought that the ongoing hammering was moving upwards from downstairs. Giovanni probably felt the same. As if there was another catacomb underneath us from where the drumbeat was issuing from. I would have loved to follow this hint some more, if there hadn’t been a weird guy with a saber chasing me – and also hadn’t something even more incredible come amiss ...

Numero tre. We had just reached the end of the corridor when suddenly two men turned around the corner. Nothing unusual one might think, as somewhere the batmen from the catacomb must have found a hideout in their confusion. Way off the mark though! No tailcoats, no capes, no tippers and no canes with golden knobs. When Giovanni and I stood on the brakes due to this changed situation on the roads, suddenly there were some pretty normally dressed human beings standing in front of us. Well, maybe they weren’t the kind you meet at the grocery store or at some BBQ at the park. They wore flawlessly ironed, dark single-breasted suits, ordinary ties and pitch-black sunglasses despite the local dizzy lighting conditions. Their scalps were decorated with flattop haircuts, and their edgy faces seemed as if their had been an iron foundry involved in their shaping. In short, those were two well-trained guys, which apparently didn’t rely on their muscles only. Each of them held a silver pistol with a
massive suppressor in his hand.

We were about to put our hands up, and stiffened on the spot. I risked a cautious glimpse behind. The hooded guy who about 50 feet away from us had also applied the handbrake by now. Blinking he stood in the middle of the corridor, motionless like a window mannequin in a Halloween costume. I would have loved to know what was going on his mind. This memorable meeting was accompanied by continuing hammering, and the even more intense vibration underneath my paws told me that the hammer had been inserted right
here beneath the stony soil.
It sounded like the soundtrack to the dramatic situation we found ourselves in. Even the suppressor-twins granted their iron facial expression some touch of irritation and slightly bowed their heads. Only to quickly look up again and get back to business.

»Don't move from the place or you are dead before you can fart!« one of them shouted and pointed his gun.

Well, that definitely didn’t sound Italian. It sounded more like some tourists who had booked their vacation at Smith & Wesson Travel Agency, tourists who longed for very individual extracurricular activities. Actually, it
sounded like true blue killers.

The minute we realized that the boys hadn’t undertaken the long journey from the US to Rome’s underground to, sticking to the fitting slang, blow our heads off, we couldn’t help but feel a relaxing shiver down our spines. We didn’t matter at all. They were after the hooded man. Many dark forces were interested in his miracle, and our two friends had
come so it could change hands.

Giovanni though looked at the situation in a more pragmat
ic manner.

»Always a pleasure chatting with you,
il mio amico
«, he said with a so nonchalant expression that I was afraid he was about to leak like perfume from a bottle and vaporize above our heads. »But I’m afraid someone around here will suffer from lead poisoning very soon. And with regards to poisoning I’m a burnt child – remember
–
Spaghetti Bolognese with a hint of green.
Arrivederci
, Francis!«

Giovanni took off without any sign of nervousness, so that even the gunmen felt forced to adjust their dark glasses and let things happen. Totally relaxed, he strolled through one of the guys’ legs, turned aro
und the corner and disappeared.

Of course I was flirting with following him at first. Because what Giovanni had said sounded pretty much as prophetically as the suggestion that days are warmer in summer than in wintertime. It wouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise, if there had been bullets shooting through the air in a minute. And still ... Still I willingly devoted myself to the sweet poison, which fed my incurable disease: insatiable curiosity. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Maybe I’d get to know someth
ing about the miracle this way.

After the two mannequins for glasses had swallowed Giovanni’s cool
performance, they resumed work.

»Discard the fucking saber and get closer slowly!« one of them said to the hoode
d guy and pointed at the saber.

Right at this moment I felt a powerful blow below me, which automatically made me think of an earthquake. The bang was ear-deafening and made the whole catacomb tremble. After a tremor like this there should have formed prominent cracks between the stone slabs. And in fact, when I broke away from the gangster drama a split second and looked down, I saw them. Like ramifications in a broken glass panel the cracks spread over the floor in an irregular pattern. What a winning streak I was on! Now I could even choose the manner of my upcoming death: shot by a stray
bullet or buried by boulders.

For a moment the boys got distracted from the noise, which the hooded guy took advantage of without any hesitation. He turned around and wanted to escape towards the cross tunnel. But one of his bailiff
s acted quick-witted and fired.

It created a noise like a springing trap, half of a hiss, half of a snap. At the hooded guy’s right upper arm appeared a hole in the size of a dime; and a small gush of blood oozed out of it. The master dropped the saber, which fell on the floor with a rattling sound, and grabbed the wound with his now free hand. Honor to whom honor is due; the killers knew their craft. They wanted to catch the miracle man alive and had therefore passed on a heart shot. They didn’t want to destroy the treasure chest before they hadn’t yielded the hoard.

For a moment there was silence in which the foes fixed their gaze on each other. Barely visible fume soared from the muffler of the fired weapon; blood oozed from between the hooded guy’s fingers, which were still pressed on the wound, and the tip of my tail shivered so feverish, as if I had just found a brandnew mouse hole. Then the boys stepped towards their cornered prey, and the events followed in quick succession.

Another crash went through the silence, even more booming now, the ground tremored and I began to hallucinate. I just couldn’t find another explanation for what happened on the ground. The cracks between the flagstones multiplied rapidly, some stones staggered threateningly, others already collapsed and eventually plunged into the deep like blown up building blocks. I only realized that I wasn’t hallucinating, when the foothold underneath my paws dissolved into thin air and
I followed the plunging stones.

Before I started on the vertical journey, I was granted to witness the temporary end of the hooded man’s story. The opening had created an inveterate rift between the opponents. While the killers tried to get over their bewilderment, the master took a chance and ran away. Promptly another shot was fired. This time it hit the fugitive’s leg, which didn’t kept him from running until he reached a cross tunnel ... But this ambivalent happy ending was not for my eyes, because faster as anticipated I became a victim of gravity and dropped through the hole in a cloud of dust, flyin
g small stones and big slates.

The arrival on the ground didn’t quite deserve the title »comfortable«, but I also wasn’t welcomed to the netherworld but in a circle of three
enlightened
. I landed on my four paws on a big pile of rubble, while a rain of dust and rubble fell down on me. Apparently I was in a new catacomb. This one seemed to be built far more primitively than the other – buckled and crooked walls, probably built bare-handed and with a mortar-mix of clay, straw and cow dung, bordered by support logs which were made from trunks and partially were still covered in bark. Everywhere around here seemed archeological jewels seemed gathered. Crosses from Rom and Jerusalem, aureoles, which represented the apostles with halo and heavenward pointing index and middle finger, and scenes from Jesus’ holy grave together with whining women had been painted on the walls with pure ash. But also colored paintings were on view. I suggested that this lowest level must be the o
riginal part of the catacombs.

I couldn’t enjoy the sights though, because the three illuminated guys surrounding me blinded me. Mine lamps, which shone directly at my face, were clipped to their canary-yellow hard hats. One of them was still doing the heroic pose of a monument for the laboring with an iron battering ram in his hands, which apparently he had used for hammering for cross ways to the temple. A woman wearing metal rims and a filter mask appeared to be the intellectual within the group as she simply held a delicate little hammer for minerals and a brush. The third guy looked freaking familiar. No wonder, as this stupid face usually bend over to me on a daily basis with lines like »Wuduwuduwudu, likey your yummy-treat?«.

As I knew that this guy’s speed of thinking was as good as a snails’ fugue, and as I also knew which line was about to follow this exhausting mental work with the utmost probability, I whiled away the time with something useful. I raised my head and stared at the breakthrough in the ceiling. The boys upstairs had – unsurprisingly – disappeared by now, and nothing reminded of the gunfire that had just happened at the piano nobile just a few moments ago.

Then I turned back to Gustav and endured his surprising insight:

»I got one of your kind at home!«

T
he reunion with Gustav – if the umpteenth encounter with one and the same person within a single day counts as reunion anyway – only lasted a couple of seconds. Because I had neither time nor leisure to study my cohabitant’s slow motion working face for long, who by the way wasn’t made for being in catacombs anyway. Of course he deserved some credit for getting to work with his colleagues right after landing and digging the newly accessed tunnel until late at night. Also the new breaking would shed light on the catacomb-maze upstairs and inescapably illuminate the theosophists’ activities. But my unmistakable instinct told me that the mystery’s solution wouldn’t be found in either the catacombs or inside the theosophical society. This secret society might be amazingly conspirative and shady, but still the brothers were harmless. No, the key to the cruel truth lay in the master’s hand alone. He milked everything to do his own thing. This thing,
il miracolo
, was the actual motive for the murders of my Roman fellows. This I felt, this I knew!

In the spotlight created by the beaming mining lamps on the hard hats, snowed in rubble and dust and with the most stupid facial expression the world has ever seen, I probably didn’t cut a fine figure on the pile of stones. Thus, I wasn’t that surprised when the three archeologists looked at me with rather pitiful miens after the first shock had subsided. Gustav half-heartedly tried to pet the dust off my fur
, but I was already on my way.

I ran down the pile of rubble and towards the exit. As in this tunnel there was just one way to liberty, namely back through the newly discovered passage, this time I didn’t worry about getting lost. Despite the darkness around me I was able to sneak a peak of some of the treasure while running. Often there was the word INRI carved into the walls, the abbreviation for »Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum« inscripted on the very cross Jesus Christ had been crucified on. Now and then artistically very sophisticated reliefs stood out, which portrayed angels with halos and children dancing around them. I could very well receive how Gustav had repeatedly been haunted by a phenomenon at the sight of these treasures which he had to go without since the
invention of color TV: orgasm!

However fascinating the gallery I passed was, my thoughts were bothered by the recent incidents. Those had killed all vacation mood and had brought me that fire instead, a fire I had never believed to see blazing up again. Although the whole thing was related to blood and death and although many innocent had been killed, I felt the passion again. I noticed how every single atom in my nerve cells jumped for joy on the hunt for the butcher. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, the best vacation for an ill mind, like the one in my head, was in the land of unresolved mysteries. In short, the situation be
gan to be great fun.

So let’s count it all up and wait for the result, I thought to myself. According to the hooded guy’s festive lecture the miracle wasn’t just a mystery to me, but also to the theosophists. As to the premiere of the revelation,
i fratelli
were promised jam tomorrow. Thus, the whole situation became more thrilling, and the old trick still worked, so they were willing to donate even more. On the other hand the mystery didn’t leave much to be desired, if even government circles got scent of it. As the two killers in the catacomb hadn’t quite looked like escaped prisoners, who were after a suitcase with cocaine. Their smart outfits had reminded me of »civil servants«, who did pretty much everything but sit in an office and stamp forms. So the master’s work wasn’t very popular within a certain government, or they hadn’t been able to conclude a sat
isfying contract – on whatever.