The Fallen (35 page)

A line of women bearing trays laden with plates of delicacies filed onto the balcony and towards the table where the three businessmen sat waiting.

“At last!” cheered the fat Turk, smacking his meaty lips. “I feared I might die of hunger!”

Choice dishes of vibrant colours and enticing smells were arranged on the low table and goblets filled with cool water.

“Please,” announced Sadik, waving his hands over the food. “Enjoy!”

He waited for this friends to help themselves before spooning a generous serving of fragrant rice onto his own dish and promptly into his mouth.

He didn't gag, not at first, but he hesitated, thinking it strange how the rice teased against his tongue, as if the individual grains were alive. Moving. He chewed, working the mouthful around, tasting a bitterness he'd not experienced from one of his favourite dishes before. For he only ever procured the best ingredients and employed only the finest chefs to prepare them. But there was no doubt that something was awry in the taste of the dish.

At once he spat his mouthful into his hand and his eyes grew large. Maggots, foul engorged red maggots, writhed and twisted in the half-chewed remains in his open palm. Sadik leapt up, cursing, fighting against the urge to vomit, sending plates flying and alarming his fellow diners. He stared with growing horror across the table. For all the dishes were now moving, pulsating and throbbing, every dish was heaving with maggots, rotten, fouled.

And, at the very same time, all across the city, at every dining table, restaurant and café, citizens spat their food from their mouths in revulsion and shock as the plague descended.

SIXTY NINE

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

“Clearly I missed something while I was away?” said Strettavario, remarking on the frenzied activity within the Vatican. He stepped into the Apostolic Palace and took a moment to observe.

“Where have you been?” demanded a voice Strettavario recognised at once. Casado looked more exhausted than ever, his skin flaccid and grey like that of a dying man.

“Here and there,” replied the Priest, watching as a troop of Inquisitors marched the entire breadth of the palace before slipping from view behind pillars. “I see the Inquisition is no longer trying to hide their existence?”

“I don't need to remind you, Father Strettavario, that you are still under the employ of the Holy See,” replied Casado, ignoring the comment. “It is not your place to go here and there as you choose.”

“I had no assignments.”

“So you made your own.” Casado seized Strettavario's sleeve, his hand like a claw. “You ensured Tacit's escape!”

“I gave him the tools to escape.”

“Whatever were you thinking?” Casado hissed the words so as not to draw attention to them. “It was not your place to do so!”

“They would have killed him had he not been released. I am sure you would not have wanted that, Cardinal Bishop Casado. At least not until your questions had answers.” There was a searching tone in the pale-eyed Priest's voice.

“Do you know the problems you've caused?”

“I suspect the problems were caused when someone decided to chain what cannot be chained. If you wanted Tacit removed, you should have killed him when you had the chance, not tortured him with idle fascination.”

“They're going to kill him anyway. Grand Inquisitor Düül has taken personal responsibility for his apprehension and punishment.”

“Then Grand Inquisitor Düül is going to be deeply disappointed. This is Tacit we're talking about.”

“This is a murderer we're talking about!” He drew close to the Priest, an aroma of incense and garlic clinging to him. “Don't put him on any pedestal, Father Strettavario. He is a criminal.”

Strettavario smiled, a sly cold smile. “Yes, Tacit is many things. A killer?
A murderer?” Strettavario weighed the charges on his lips and found himself in agreement with the senior Cardinal. “Perhaps. But he is not a criminal, not unless the tasks we give him are criminal in themselves and so make him one.”

“He killed Sister Malpighi.”

Strettavario laughed, making no attempt to subdue his reaction. At once Casado took him more firmly still, guiding him to the shadows at the side of the hall. “We both know he did not kill Sister Malpighi,” Strettavario said.

“So who did then?”

And at once Strettavario's pale eyes seemed to darken. “Do you really need to ask?”

“Which is why Tacit must be stopped.”

“So that is what you think, is it? That he is one aligned with the Lord of Darkness?” He looked away across the hall, disgusted. “Is that what you have been trying to prove, with these acts of torture Inquisitor Salamanca was requested to perform? An attempt to draw the Devil out of him? Reveal his secrets to you?”

“We prefer to think of them as experiments and observations.”

Strettavario was impressed that the Cardinal had at least made no attempt to lie or feign ignorance over what they had done to the man in that prison cell. “From the very beginning you've wondered, haven't you, Cardinal? About him. About who he is. What guides him. What empowers him. How that power could be harnessed, understood. Channelled.”

“It is our role within the Holy See to observe and act in order to benefit the brotherhood and our faith.”

“Then you should have observed that Tacit cannot be controlled. He answers to no man. He goes wherever his path demands he goes. For so long you have shackled him, bound him by faith and blinded him with rhetoric from the Holy law, turning him to your needs and your gain. But the bonds have broken loose, the blind has slipped. The beast has broken free. And who knows where or when he will stop in his rampaging?”

Strettavario stepped out from the shadows, but almost immediately Casado called after him.

“Is there really nothing which can be done?”

“Yes, there is something,” said Strettavario. “Pray.”

SEVENTY

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

Antonio Fellacuti was eighty-seven and almost blind. Crippled with arthritis and twisted like a gnarled tree root, for the last seventy-two years he'd been a presence within the Vatican, as constant as the hymns and psalms resonating through the great halls and churches of the city. Still today he walked the corridors of the Vatican, his bucket of lukewarm water gripped tight in his right hand. Perhaps his passage through the city was slower these days, maybe the water sloshed a little more frequently from the bucket's rim as he walked, but he still cleaned every statue, washed every floor, burnished every handle in the Vatican as he had done as a young man over seventy years ago. He knew of nothing else, certainly nothing which could bring him such joy.

He'd long dreamt of entering the Church as a servant of God, a deacon, a Priest or even, should God show him good fortune, perhaps a Bishop? Every night, as he retired to his bed, prayers were always on his tongue, God within his thoughts, his dreams never tarnished by impropriety or sin. Even in sleep he believed himself pure.

He never did find service within the Church in his lifetime, not as one of the cloth, his ability with words and people considered inappropriate for one to lead congregations. But he had since realised that, by cleaning the Vatican, he was in many ways more than doing his service to God and his faith. After all, cleanliness was godliness.

Every cranny and surface of every statue he knew by touch alone. Every turn of every chin, every bridge of every nose, he could detect and name by his fingers. His eyes might not be able to see the dirt nearly so well as when he was young, but what he had lost in sight, he made up for in his ability to feel. Seven decades on, people still commented on how spotless the Vatican was when Antonio had been at work.

Antonio was pleased to be working this evening in St Peter's Basilica. It was his favourite part of Vatican City, and while the great halls were vast and cold, particularly with the city seemingly caught in the grip of a strange chill this evening, the majesty of the building couldn't help but warm Antonio's heart and fire his emotions.

He'd set his small ladder to the lip of the marble column on which Michelangelo's Pietà was placed and climbed it slowly, one rung at a time,
setting his feet next to each other to ensure he was balanced before tackling the rung above, the bucket set in the crook of his right arm, his grey dull eyes staring blindly straight ahead. The statue of Mary with the crucified body of Jesus laid across her lap appeared more a worked lump of incandescent marble to Antonio's eyes than the exquisite piece of sculpture it was, but when the old man's hands began to feel the daring contours and delicate mastery of the marble, at once it came alive, a work of wonder and divine glory beyond comprehension. As he always did with this statue, he took out his finest of cloths, silk with just a little water to more easily remove any dust from the stone.

How it glistened in front of him, the water shimmering off the perfectly smooth marble to dazzle even his dull failing eyes. Something which sounded like thunder reached his ears. He shrugged and thought it strange for summer storms to have set in so early in the year. And then something which sounded like a wolf's howl. Most bizarre, wolves in Rome? He chuckled, and knew he must be tired. It would be his final sculpture this evening, he said to himself.

Suddenly something caught in his cloth, something tacky, globulous. He rubbed harder, confused and surprised that such a stain should have found its way onto the statue. Perhaps it had fallen from the ceiling above? But the liquid was slick, and the more he polished, the more it seemed to flow, as if he was working at an open wound. The cloth had become dark, and his hands too were now slick and dark, as if he were bleeding. He stopped and held the cloth close to his eyes, crimson and drenched.

And then he realised what the liquid was. The bucket dropped from his arm, falling to the floor, splashing its discoloured contents far across the tiles of St Peter's Basilica. Antonio felt himself topple backwards after it. He cried out and lunged for the ladder, just managing to snag his crooked fingers to the nearest rung and pull himself to safety before he fell too.

Blood!

The statue of Jesus was bleeding, bleeding from every inch of his skin, as if the marble had been stripped away to reveal haemorrhaging flesh inside.

PART FIVE

SEVENTY ONE

S
LOVENIA
. N
EAR THE
I
TALIAN BORDER
.

Poré watched the flames of his camp fire dance, tendrils of amber and red weaving like an enchantment in front of his eyes, drawing him nearer to sleep with every rhythmic sway. He had walked for days, every part of him ached, particularly his wounded leg, which now seemed to groan with every step, his limp more pronounced than ever before. He was sick and broken but he knew he could not give up. Not now. His eyes closed and he shook his head. He still had more miles to put between himself and where he had now chosen to rest before he finally succumbed to exhaustion. After all, he knew that every minute was precious, a race against time and great forces which, if unleashed, might well control time itself.

His eroded thoughts drifted to another time and place, exploring the dark recesses of his mind and his past, a young boy waiting anxiously at his classroom desk, a boy who never had any aspirations or dreams, only to be happy and to bring happiness to the world. And Poré was a happy child, until the man who entered the room, looking like an apparition of death himself, came into his life. Even now, thirty years later, Poré's guts hardened, just as they had then on seeing the man.