The Ancient Curse (25 page)

‘Who were the victims this time?’ asked Fabrizio.

‘Guy named Marozzi,’ replied Reggiani. ‘A farmhand, as big as they come and tough as nails. Hell itself wouldn’t scare him. That’s what got him. When he saw his son attacked by that monster, he ran after it with a pitchfork, of all things. Christ, what a massacre . . .’

A long, leaden silence followed, then Francesca spoke up.

‘Have you checked whether these victims had anything in common with the others?’

Reggiani took a little notebook from his pocket. ‘They didn’t actually,’ he said. ‘The first ones were all tomb robbers or had actually broken into the Rovaio tomb, but these last ones—’

‘I’ll tell you what they have in common,’ piped up one of the carabinieri, a youth of about twenty. ‘I was born here and I can tell you that all of the guys who were killed are from families that have been in Volterra for generations and generations. They’ve always lived here, as far as I know.’

‘As if it smelt the scent of their blood,’ observed Fabrizio. ‘Native blood . . . from Volterra . . . It hates this city with a fierce, implacable loathing.’

‘And its den is under one of the oldest buildings in the city,’ said Reggiani, shaking his head. ‘Christ, what is all this?’

‘We saw it with our own eyes,’ said Francesca calmly, placing the tray with the coffee cups on the table. The look she gave them allowed no doubt.

‘Well, then, we can set up a trap,’ said Reggiani. ‘This time it won’t get away. I’ll put enough firepower out there to exterminate a regiment.’

‘You really think you can put it down, like a mangy stray dog?’ asked Fabrizio.

‘I’ve said it before: if it kills, it can be killed.’

Fabrizio looked straight into his eyes with a bleak expression. ‘Death kills. But it can’t be killed, right? You have no idea what this is. We had it right in front of us, just a metre or two away from us, for a few endless seconds. I have never seen anything like it my whole life. I am very certain that no animal of a like species exists. It’s a monster, I tell you. A . . . chimera.’

Francesca’s expression confirmed Fabrizio’s words in full.

‘I don’t know about that,’ replied Reggiani. ‘Maybe it’s the product of some experiment, you know? You hear about strange genetic experiments. Some mad scientist . . .’

Fabrizio thought of what he’d seen in the upstairs rooms of the Caretti-Riccardi palace and shivered. He drank his coffee in little sips, then looked up at the lieutenant. ‘Marcello, don’t make your move yet,’ he said. ‘You’d be making a terrible mistake. It’s too soon and you’ll have terrible losses. You won’t be able to turn back. Wait.’

‘I’ve waited long enough. As soon as I have word that we’re ready to go, I’ll unleash hell.’

‘Wait, for the love of God,’ insisted Fabrizio in a monotone.

‘Wait for what? For this thing to exterminate every last person in Volterra?’ He pulled a pile of newspapers from his black leather bag. ‘Look at this! The news is all over the national papers. In an hour’s time, people will be seeing this on the news-stands and they’re going to panic. And that panic will spread. We have a catastrophe waiting to happen.’

‘Wait,’ Fabrizio insisted. He lifted the cloth covering the last fragment of the slab of Volterra. ‘Until I’ve read this. Maybe . . . I think . . . it’s the key to everything.’

‘At this point,’ said Reggiani, ‘it’s sixteen hours to green light. Not a minute more.’

‘That’ll have to be enough,’ replied Fabrizio.

16

L
IEUTENANT
R
EGGIANI
looked at the little boy, then at Fabrizio and Francesca. ‘What do you know about him?’ he asked.

‘Not much. Nothing, really,’ replied Fabrizio. ‘He has more or less told us that his father is, or was, Jacopo Ghirardini, and that Ambra Reiter is his stepmother and that she beats him. He showed up at my house saying he didn’t want to live at Le Macine any more and that he wants to be an archaeologist when he grows up. I’ve told you the rest.’

‘Let me take a picture and see if we can find out anything more about him. You can never tell. Do you know how many kids disappear each year without leaving a trace?’

He went out to the car to get his digital camera and took a couple of close shots of the sleeping child. ‘Keep him with you for now,’ he said. ‘No one has reported him missing yet. As soon as we’re out of this mess, well worry about getting him settled.’

He swallowed his coffee down in a single gulp and left, racing off in his Alfa. Even before he was on the regional road he was on the radio to headquarters.

‘Lieutenant Reggiani here. Who’s that? Over.’

‘It’s Tornese. What do you need, sir?’

‘Three vehicles and ten men set to move out right away. A search party. Have the warrant ready. Ambra Reiter at Le Macine. Look in the blue folder, top drawer of my desk. Is Bonetti from the archaeological protection team in yet?’

‘He won’t be here for a couple of hours.’

’Get him out of bed now and tell him to bring his gear.’

‘You got it, sir,’ replied the sergeant.

As soon as Reggiani arrived, he took the folder, picked up his men and vehicles and headed to Le Macine at top speed. They stopped about 300 metres from the building and he had the men scatter in a semicircle, hidden by the vegetation, so they would be able to converge on the objective and secure it.

He walked into the tavern alone and shouted, ‘Reiter, Ambra Reiter, this is Lieutenant Reggiani. I have a search warrant!’

No answer. The place seemed deserted. He waved in the archaeological expert, who had just arrived. Bonetti set to work combing the floor of the room with a metal detector. He had no success until he moved behind the bar counter, when the needle surged past the maximum mark and the buzzer began to sound loudly.

‘Under here,’ said Bonetti.

Two of the men joined him and they knelt on the floor and started to scrape between the bricks with trowels until they found the edges of a well-disguised hatch. They used a crowbar to prise the lid up and an entire section of the floor opened up, revealing steps that led underground. Reggiani went down first, with a torch in one hand and his pistol in the other.

There was no one down there, but the place was a treasure trove. Bucchero pottery, a large red-figured Attic crater which was practically intact, an alabaster vase, a cinerary urn of alabaster as well, decorated with images of the deceased reclining on a triclinium, and even a fragment of a fresco with a dancing figure. It had been brutally hacked from its wall using a power saw. It was already partially packaged in Styrofoam and plywood, no doubt to be smuggled off in a truck headed for Switzerland. There were ancient weapons as well. Arrow- and spear-heads, a bronze shield and a couple of helmets, one of the Corinthian type, the other a rare Negau, dragon-shaped buckles with amber beads and others made of yellow granulated gold, a double-cone-shaped cinerary urn of the Villanovan era and metal fragments of a war chariot.

Bonetti, their archaeological expert, was an auxiliary officer who in civilian life was a researcher at Tuscia University. He dutifully jotted down a piece-by-piece description of the objects as Reggiani’s torch illuminated them.

‘Good Lord, Lieutenant, this stuff is worth millions.’

‘I have no doubt about that. But I’m looking for something else here. Have them send me down a spotlight. I need to search this place centimetre by centimetre.’

One of his men connected the spotlight to an extension cord that he plugged in behind the bar, flooding the underground chamber with light. The chamber had been cut into a bank of tufa and had no flooring, although the ground was covered with a layer of yellowish earth; the same earth that Fabrizio had noticed on Ambra Reiter’s shoes. The bright light revealed greenish traces on the ground over a rectangular area measuring about forty by eighty centimetres.

‘Get me a sample of these oxides,’ ordered Reggiani. ‘I want to know what metal was lying there.’

‘Bronze, most probably, sir,’ answered Bonetti. ‘A bronze object of rectangular shape was sitting here for at least a few weeks.’

‘The slab of Volterra,’ mused Reggiani.

Bonetti looked up in surprise. ‘May I ask, sir, what you might be referring to?’

‘To the hypothesis of a colleague of yours, Dr Castellani. Have you ever heard of him?’

‘Fabrizio Castellani? Sure, I read a couple of his articles while I was at school,’ replied Bonetti. ‘He’s a serious scholar and a smart guy.’

‘Exactly my impression,’ said Reggiani. ‘You continue your work down here. I want a description of each and every piece. Write it all up in a detailed report. I want the original on my desk. Prepare a copy for the NAS director as well. But leave everything exactly where you find it for now. Massaro!’

Sergeant Massaro answered, ‘Yes, sir, Lieutenant. I’m here.’

‘You can send the others back as soon as they’re finished here, but I want you to stay behind with three or four of your men. As soon as Ambra Reiter shows up here, arrest her for illegal possession of archaeological materials and inform me immediately. Don’t let her get away. It’s essential that I question her.’

‘You can count on me, sir.’

‘I will. I have other matters to see to. Remember, make no false moves here. Be careful not to give away your presence. Wipe out all traces of the vehicles and this search operation.’

He took a final look at a group of fabulous jewels glittering under the beam of the spotlight, then went back up the stairs and headed back to the city.

F
ABRIZIO SET
the bronze slab on the table and started to clean it carefully with a bristle brush. Where the encrusted earth covering the text was too hardened to be brushed away, he set to work with a scalpel, using extreme caution.

‘What you’re doing is illegal, you know that, right?’ asked Francesca.

‘Of course. Partial restoration of the slab of Volterra with neither the permission nor technical assistance of the NAS. Furthermore, I’m holding an unpublished fragment of the same which has not been duly reported to the authorities. They could even put me in jail for this.’

‘They could certainly put you in jail for this.’

‘But my conduct is fully justified by the emergency conditions we’re operating under and by the fact that the police are aware of the situation and have not made any objection.’

‘Well, your friend Reggiani belongs in jail too.’

‘That’s why we get along.’

‘So, then, why are you preventing him from carrying out his operation? Military action might stop further deaths from happening.’

‘It could provoke a far greater number of deaths. I have no idea what that animal is capable of, and nor do you or anyone else. What’s more—’

His phone rang.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi there, handsome.’

‘Sonia.’

‘I see you still recognize my voice.’

‘Not really. Your name just popped up on the display.’

‘What a wanker you are.’

‘I know you think I’ve been neglecting you . . .’

‘Neglecting me! I could have dropped off the face of this earth and you wouldn’t have noticed!’

‘I deserve a good kick up the arse.’

‘You certainly do! So when are you going to show up to collect it?’

‘Why? Has anything new come up?’

‘I’m done. With the animal, that is. The human bones are an entirely different story. The biggest piece is a few centimetres long.’

‘Sonia, you’re awesome. I can’t believe you’ve finished. So what does it look like?’

‘It’s got me scared shitless. I can’t wait to get out of this hole. If we put it on exhibition, the horror-flick crowd will all show up.’

‘Listen, Sonia, I can’t get over there just now because there’s something big I’m working on here. It shouldn’t take me more that a few hours . . . I hope. Then we’ll do everything the way it should be done.’

‘You’ve seen the papers, haven’t you?’

‘There’s no need. I know what’s in the papers.’

‘What a bastard you are! You told me nothing!’

‘I didn’t want to frighten you. I wanted you to be able to work in peace. And now that you’ve finished, my advice would be to go back home, where you’ll be safe.’

‘And miss out on what’s happening here? I wouldn’t dream of it!’

‘Sonia, please listen. Nothing that’s happening here is good. Exactly the opposite. I mean this as a friend: go home now, fast, while you can. We are all in danger, including you, I’m afraid. You’ve got to believe me, Sonia. I’ll call you a few days from now, we’ll meet up and I’ll tell you everything, all right?’

No answer from Sonia.

‘All right?’ His tone was exasperated. ‘Listen, if you go home like a good girl, I promise to introduce you to Reggiani.’

‘You just want to get rid of me.’

‘No, this time I’m serious. He wants to meet you.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Sonia, for God’s sake, give me a break here. I’m trying to save your life!’

Sonia was silent for a moment as she began to believe he wasn’t joking. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. ‘Maybe you’re right. I do have a lot to do back in Bologna. Goodbye, then.’ She hung up.

Fabrizio didn’t know whether she was offended or angry or both, but it didn’t really matter much for the time being. As long as she took his advice. He then put her out of his mind and got to work. Using the charts he’d drawn up while translating the other parts of the inscription, he began to transcribe the text, one word at a time. After a while, Francesca passed him a cup of coffee and he glanced over at Angelo.

‘He still hasn’t woken up!’ he said.

‘The shock was enormous,’ replied Francesca, ruffling his hair gently. ‘Rest is the best thing for him now.’

The boy turned in his sleep and tossed off his blanket, and Francesca leaned forward to tuck him in again.

‘Wait,’ said Fabrizio. ‘What is that?’

‘What?’

‘Look. That bruise he has on his stomach, on his right side.’

Francesca paused with the blanket in hand as Fabrizio drew closer. ‘I don’t know. His skin looks red, as though he’d scraped it,’ she said.

‘How? It’s right where his liver is. Don’t you find that strange?’