The Venice Conspiracy (47 page)

Only that’s not what it is.

It’s
a pyre.

A sacrificial pyre.

Tom’s vision goes again. Even though the sun is now behind him, the sky is bright and it hurts to look without any shade. He blinks and tries to refocus.

Someone’s lit the fire.

They’re dragging something towards the stacked and smoking timber.

A
human
figure.

Automatic gunfire and single pistol shots canon through the woods. Tom drops down several branch levels.

Beneath him, two Carabinieri soldiers are exchanging volleys with black-robed gunmen.

The soldiers are out-muscled. They’re matching basic Berettas against two Uzis coughing out six hundred rounds a minute.

A young Carabinieri soldier takes a round in the face.

The other officer drops the shooter with a single bullet, hits the ground and rolls away as machine-gun fire kicks up dirt exactly where he was.

It’s one against one. But the Uzi is always going to win.

Tom drops another branch. He has a bird’s-eye view of every move but can’t do anything to help. He has no gun, only the iron bar from the window he jumped through.

The guy with the Uzi breaks position and begins a slow, circular route that will bring him up behind the soldier.

The Carabinieri officer hears something. Shifts into a kneeling position and turns sideward.

Tom has to double-take.

It’s Valentina.

The gunman appears from the cover of some bushes at the foot of the cypress.

She’s going to get ripped to pieces.

Valentina is oblivious to the killer just metres from her. She stands up and sweeps her weapon out in front of her, advancing slowly.

The Uzi is up and aiming at the middle of her back.

She’ll be dead in a heartbeat.

Tom hurls the iron railing like a spear. It cracks against the gunman’s skull and his burst of fire goes awry.

Valentina spins round. Pumps shots into her attacker’s body. Moves closer. Gun outstretched. Another round makes his chest jump. Nothing’s being taken for granted.

Tom slides
down into the lower branches, ‘Valentina! Don’t shoot!’

She keeps her weapon at shoulder height, eyes sweeping east to west.

Tom lowers himself out of the last branches, drops to the floor, his ankle buckling again.

She sees him but says nothing. She’s wired. Still in the kill zone. Incapable of reacting outside her training. She moves cautiously to the body and picks up the Uzi.

Tom bends close to the corpse and retrieves the rusty iron weapon. ‘There are others,’ he says, wiping blood and flesh from it on the grass. ‘They’re gathering at the back of the hospital. They have a fire there and – I couldn’t see properly because of the smoke – but it looked like they were going to burn someone.’

‘Stay here. I’ll take care of it.’ Valentina holsters her weapon and grabs her radio. ‘I’ll call it in, then come back for you.’

Lieutenant Francesca Totti and her three-man team enter the old Plague Hospital with weapons raised.

A locally born history graduate, she’s more than aware of the building’s awful past. At least three of her ancestors died here. Another half-dozen perished in the watery journey to the Lazzaretto.

Francesca’s radio is back on her belt after answering Valentina’s alert.

Her team methodically clears the downstairs rooms. Two more units, following behind, take the upper floors.

At the eastern end of the corridors, Francesca hears voices. Dark shapes are moving in a courtyard beyond dusty windows. She holds her hand high to slow and quieten the troops behind her.

From their crouched positions they watch three black-hooded figures gather around a steel gurney from one of the wards.

Something’s wrong.

Francesca can see the reflection of a large fire that must be crackling and spitting flames somewhere out of view.

The Satanists are wearing silver Venetian masks. Walking on a carpet of dead flowers. Reciting prayers.

Francesca sees
no knives. No weapons of any kind. Despite the impending arrival of the Carabinieri there seems no trace of panic amongst them.

Everything’s too low-key.

Like they’re too late.

She waves one soldier around to a door on the right, another to an archway on the left.

On her signal they step forward in unison into the courtyard.

Guns drawn and aimed.

The Satanists immediately hold their hands up in surrender.

But there’s still no panic. The air is filled more with comedy than tension.

Francesca moves to the gurney placed in the middle of them.

It’s empty.

She rips the masks off the celebrants.

Three women.

All looking amused.

A flash of horror. The fire!

Francesca runs to the flames, scared of what she might find.

Wood. Old trees. Planks and garden debris.

There’s nothing human on the fire. In the centre, just the glowing remains of a dummy, made from stuffed clothes and a mask.

From behind her, Francesca hears the women start to laugh.

It’s all a decoy.

San Quentin, California

The weatherman says it’s going to be a hot one, a high of nearly ninety degrees across the San Rafael city area where California’s oldest prison is preparing its latest execution.

Twelve official witnesses walk through San Q’s cold, silent corridors, heading to the witness viewing room, trying to make small talk. Most are parents, girlfriends, husbands and children of those Bale has killed. A couple are
anti-death-penalty campaigners.

Some of the witnesses are thinking of going straight to church after this, down to the distinctive pink-roofed St Raphael chapel where a golden cross gleams against the cloudless blue sky and distant green hills. Others will meet with friends and try to drink the scene they’re about to witness clean from their memories. Others will go out to Miller Creek or walk in the forests and quietly reflect on it all.

Seventeen media witnesses are brought from another direction. They look less concerned. Trained eyes desperately devour all detail, colour, background – anything that will make their stories longer. News that Bale passed on a last meal, and instead bizarrely requested a crystal glass to drink his own urine from is the current report being uplinked from the dozens of TV vans crammed in the car park.

Inside the execution wing, eight of the prison’s most senior security staff are already in position to make sure nothing untoward happens.

Bale has no one present.

No family.

No friends.

No lawyer.

Certainly no
spiritual
advisor.

It’s the way he wants it.

His people have more important things to do.

And right now they should be doing them.

Bale walks to the glass and points at his wrist.

The guard opposite him raises two fingers.

Two.

Just two hours to go.

Lazzaretto Vecchio, Venice

Even with a busted ankle, sitting and waiting isn’t something Tom Shaman is good at.

He clambers into an old rowing boat he’d spotted from the tree and takes to the water.

The island is fringed
with dense shrubbery and trees, the hospital obscured for much of his journey.

Finally, he sees some outbuildings.

A near-derelict boathouse.

Dark green paint, baked and blistered by a scorching summer sun, peels from its grey weathered doors.

Panic rises inside him.

He knows this place. Knows it like he’s visited it in his nightmares. It contains the same evil he felt at the Salute.

From where he’s sitting, the dilapidated outbuilding looks no different than dozens of others he’s seen in Venice. But this place is different.

It is the most evil place on earth.

Tom’s left hand aches, especially around the wrist. At first he thought it was where the plastic ties had chafed him. But now he sees it.

His veins are punctured in several places.

No doubt the spots where they jacked him full of Propofol or whatever it was. From the bruising, it also looks like someone’s vampired blood from him. He dreads to think what they want it for.

Tom paddles quietly towards the giant doors. They’re shut tight.

He pushes the boat on to a grassy bank and grabs his makeshift weapon. It seems hugely inadequate as he slips into the cold water.

He wades forward slowly, the water level reaching his mouth but not his nose. When he gets to the door he feels his way down for the bottom edge of it.

Tom takes a deep breath and ducks beneath the dark water.

He surfaces very slowly.

So slowly the surface barely ripples.

At first he sees nothing.

Dirty lagoon water stings his eyes and hangs like opaque curtains in front of him.

Gradually, his vision clears.

The entire boathouse is lit by candles. Black candles. It’s like staring into a night sky.

A long black gondola floats to Tom’s right. It’s similar but different to the pictures Valentina showed them of Fabianelli’s craft. It’s older and has a small cabin. Beyond it, on the same side, is a stretch of two-tier decking.

On the lower tier, rough planks of wood have been bolted together. For many reasons, it reminds Tom of a butcher’s table.

Behind it is the high priest. He wears a full-face silver mask, as do the
two acolytes flanking him.

Tom slowly dips beneath the water and moves towards the prow of the gondola.

When he resurfaces he can hear and see more.

‘
In nomine magni dei nostri Satanus. Introibo ad altare Domini Inferi
.’

Behind the high priest is an inverted cross. Tom sees it now – the Satanic acolytes are not acolytes, the grandeur of their robes shows they are a deacon and deaconess.

Ad eum qui laetificat meum.

The high priest starts to waft incense over the altar – and also a naked, drugged body lying on top of it.

Tina.

Tom knows the incensing will be done three times.

Then things will get bloody.

Fatally
bloody.

Domine Satanus, tu conversus vivificabis nos.

He slips behind the gondola and tries to heave himself slowly out of the water. His clothes are soaked and weigh him down. The edge of the decking is higher than he’d have liked, and he knows it’s going to be difficult to pull himself out without making a noise. He puts the iron bar down first. Strains his way up. For a second, he thinks he’s going to fall back in, create a splash that will give away his position.

His biceps find some hidden strength and crunch him up and over.

Tom stays low. As still as a statue. Lets the water drip off his clothing and puddle around his bare feet.

Ostende nobis, Domine Satanus, potentiam tuam.

The high priest puts down the incense and takes a silver tray from the deacon.

On it are two shining silver tablets.

Tom’s mind spins. The
Gates of Destiny
. The
very
objects Alfie had described to him. After all the talk of legends, it’s a shock to physically see them.

Two of the artefacts are laid out on Tina’s body. He can see one positioned above her breasts and one below her vagina. But where’s the third? Tom knows enough about these rituals to understand Tina is being used as a human altar, and shortly the high priest will violate her as part of his offering.

His eyes dart to the space behind the high priest. The deacon now has an old silver goblet in his hand, filled by the look of it with blood. Tom’s left wrist itches, almost as though it recognises its own property.

The deaconess comes back
into view.

She’s holding the third tablet in front of her face. Kissing it. Lifting it.

The Satanists turn towards Tom. He must have made a noise.

The deaconess suddenly flies at him. Hands like claws. Fingers grabbing for his flesh and eyes.

Tom swats her away, like he would a low-flying bird.

He hears the tablet hit the decking and her body splash in the water behind him.

The deacon grabs a ceremonial knife from the altar. It’s strangely shaped, like something a carpenter or sculptor would use.

Tom grips the iron bar in two hands, shifts his balance from one foot to the other, creates a moving target as the deacon advances.

He waits for the inevitable lunge.

Cracks the bar across the deacon’s wrist, then whips the iron in a low half-circle that’s hard enough to shatter a kneecap. The deacon crumples into a screaming heap and Tom steps around him.

He hears thunder.

Hears it but can’t place it. It’s all around him and his body is shaking.

The high priest is holding a pistol.

Tom can see smoke around the barrel. From the look on the gunman’s face he’s expecting Tom to fall.

He’s been shot.

He knows he has but he can’t yet feel it.

Tom glances down. Blood is dripping onto the wood. But he still can’t feel it.

Now the pain arrives.

Hot and angry. Raw and intense. The bullet’s gone clean through his left hand, piercing the web of flesh between his thumb and index finger.

The high priest fires again.

The shot zips over Tom’s left shoulder. He rushes towards the smoking barrel, swings the iron bar one-handed. It connects with a rib but the Satanist pushes Tom into the side of the wooden altar.

Tom loses his footing – and cracks his head on the decking.

The high priest raises his pistol towards Tom’s fallen body.

Another shot rings out.

Then another.

Tom’s still on the deck recovering from the fall when the high priest drops beside him. Shot dead.

One to the head. Dead centre. Another in the heart.

Valentina Morassi lowers her weapon.

Tom crawls
away from the corpse and groggily lurches towards Tina.

She’s out of it. Spiked full of sedative.

Soldiers are everywhere now. He’s still holding Tina’s face as a Carabinieri paramedic moves him to one side and checks her pulse and breathing. Valentina holsters her gun as she walks towards Tom. ‘I thought I told you to stay by the trees.’