The Venice Conspiracy (49 page)

H3V3N

It goes blank again.

Lights inside the unit fade.

The timer shuts down.

The bomb is defused.

Vito sighs with relief. Then instantly thinks of the other bombs.

They wheel Bale from the prep room into the execution chamber.

Jim Tiffany winks at the prisoner as he looks down at him and locks the gurney into position and steps away.

The curtains to the viewing rooms slide back.

Governor McFaul gives the signal.

A member of the injection team nods.

Needle One: 1.5 grams sodium
thiopental.

Bale feels the chemical whoosh in.

It’s time to speak – say his piece before the barbiturates rob him of the power to do so.

‘I am a soldier of Lucifer, Lord of Darkness and the Bringer of Light. The author of true freedom.’

All eyes are on him. Wide, wide open. Dozens of them. Staring through the goldfish glass of the packed viewing rooms.

‘I am the way – the light – the truth.’

He pauses. Takes a breath. Struggles now to fill his lungs.

‘See me here in my finest hour as I do
his
bidding and unlock the Gates of Hell. Behold today my glorious ascension to his side and the wondrous destruction I leave behind as testament to him.’

Fast hands inject more sodium thiopental and a syringe of saline flush.

McFaul and his deputy governor exchange glances.

Bale should at least be unconscious – preferably dead – by now.

But he’s not.

Things are going wrong.

Las Vegas

The bomb goes off.

Rips out the windows of the new Medici Suite on the sixth floor of the Venezia Tower in the heart of the city.

Pieces of Roman tub, bedroom furniture and a fifty-inch plasma screen shower the sky like tickertape.

The room was the only one advertised with 666 square feet of luxury concierge-level space.

Despite protestations from the hotel management, the FBI got the place evacuated in lightning time. They rushed robots in to lay down armour-plated steel sheeting and then trigger the controlled explosion.

When the bomb went off the whole floor of the hotel was ruined. The casino may be closed for the moment, but the biggest gamble in the history of Vegas has paid off – no one has been hurt.

San Quentin

Syringe four – pancuronium
bromide – injected.

Gloved hands work quickly.

Syringe five – saline flush – injected.

And still Bale is conscious.

And talking.

‘To the gawkers behind the windows, I say this: Watch me as I watch you, for one day soon I will judge you all, as you judge me.’ His mouth grows dry and he struggles even to lick his lips. ‘I will be there at your death to weigh your souls and know your worth.’

Syringe six – potassium chloride – injected.

A member of the injection team checks the intravenous lines, makes sure the death chemicals are running true.

Syringe seven – more potassium chloride.

Syringe eight – another saline flush.

Bale’s voice is now only a low growl: ‘I am one of many. We will infest your bodies, pollute your children. We will nest cancers in your grandchildren.’ Incredibly, Bale raises his head. His eyes bulging, his stare fixed on the watching press. ‘When you lie on your death-beds – know this – I wait for you in hell.’

Behind the glass a woman gets to her feet in tears and rushes to the exit.

The team leader looks across to McFaul. ‘Tray A is finished, Governor.’ He nods towards the ECG machine. It still shows a strong heartbeat.

McFaul can’t believe it. ‘Repeat protocol. Use Tray B with the backup catheters – and make it damned quick.’

Salto Angel, Venezuela

The explosion can be heard for miles.

A mushroom cloud can be seen way beyond the long-deserted Canaima National Park where the bomb was placed.

A crater has opened up at the favourite viewing spot for tourists, the
place where millions of cameras have immortalised what the locals call
parakupa-vena, kerepakupai merú –
‘fall from the highest point’.

The bomb had ticked down all night.

Detonating at 8.33 a.m. local time, 6.03 San Quentin time. It had been set by a fanatic who’d forgotten to check the accuracy of their own watch. Had history been made it would have been late.

A cloud of dust swirls endlessy in the powder-blue sky, but no one’s injured.

Not even the wildlife.

In the distance, the largest waterfall on earth continues in its mesmeric beauty, not a drop even shaken by the events around it.

06.12.00 California

San Quentin

Eight more syringes.

Bale is now unconscious.

All eyes are on the ECG.

The ink keeps flowing.

Shallow mountains across the paper.

He’s close to death.

But still alive.

No execution has ever taken this long. No murderer proved so hard to kill.

A beep.

‘Flatline!’ The attendant shouts.

The injection team can’t help but smile.

McFaul sees people behind the goldfish glass clapping and cheering. It takes all his professionalism not to join in.

An independent physician moves in to pronounce the death.

Gloved hands of attendants uncouple catheters and moni tor leads.

The doctor puts a stethoscope to his ears and leans over Bale’s bare chest.

Fluids still slosh inside the corpse. Strange subterranean sounds of chemical death.

A long grumble of air rumbles up from deep inside his intestines.

For a moment it
sounds like a voice. Like a sinister whisper in a foreign language. The language of the dead.

The doc feels a shiver, then looks up.

‘The inmate has passed. Time of death should be recorded as 6.13 a.m.’

Ospedale Civile di Venezia, Venice

They stitch Tom’s hand
wound
and strap his sprained ankle, but because of the head injuries they insist on keeping him in overnight. It’s not what he wanted. Not after his nights of incarceration in the Plague Hospital.

To make matters worse, the TV in his room spouts nothing but news about the thwarted bomb attack in Venice. So far the media haven’t joined up the international dots, but Tom knows they will, it’s only a matter of time.

Somewhere in the early hours he leaves his bed and asks a nurse how Tina Ricci is.

He finds her just a door down – almost the same distance away as when they were both imprisoned. She’s conscious, staring at the ceiling, lost in her own thoughts as he slowly approaches her bed.

‘Hi there,’ he says gently. ‘How you doing?’

It takes her a second to realise who’s talking. ‘I’m okay.’ She squirms a little in her bed, and can’t quite hide her embarrassment. ‘And you?’

‘I’m fine.’ He moves closer to her. ‘I won’t stay. I just wanted to see how you were.’

‘You don’t look so fine.’ She glances pointedly at the bandaged hand and ankle.

‘Cuts and bruises. I’ve come off sports fields with worse.’

She can see a thousand unasked questions in his eyes. Questions about
them
. Questions about her part in everything. ‘Tom, they made me write that piece that was in the newspapers. I went to that commune on Isola Mario to do a story and that bitch Mera made me write it. Then they took me to that other awful place.’ She looks close to tears. ‘They
made
me, Tom, look …’ Tina tentatively draws back the bed sheets, revealing a mass of burns on her legs.

‘My God. What did they do to you?’

She covers up. ‘A poker. Nothing special. Just
a hot poker in a fire, like you see in B movies.’ She stretches out a hand to him. ‘They’ve given me a sedative, I think I’m going to doze in a second. Sorry.’

‘No need to be. Get some sleep.’ He squeezes her fingers. ‘Let’s talk later, when both of us feel stronger.’

‘For sure.’

He lets go and heads for the door.

Tina wants to say something more but doesn’t. Sleep is washing up over her and she can’t find the energy to fight it.

Tom doesn’t go back to bed. He’s been laid out on his back too much in recent times.

He hobbles a while, then sits and watches the sunrise from beneath a blanket in a chair next to his window.

He gets to thinking about where he’ll go next and whether he should make the journey alone, or not. Much of it will depend on Tina’s full explanation, and what her plans are.

Dawn starts as dull and grey as iron filings.

Then Venice remembers it has a reputation to keep up and pulls out radiant robes of golds, purples and shimmering reds before settling for a simple outfit of cornflower blue.

Vito Carvalho and Valentina Morassi arrive while Tom’s cradling an espresso so thick he could almost chew it.

‘How you doing, Father?’ Vito grins mischievously.

Valentina plays along, ‘Ex-Father!’

‘I’ve been better.’

‘And you will be again. Very soon.’ She leans over and kisses him.

‘If you don’t mind, I won’t do that,’ jokes Vito, offering a handshake.

They settle in chairs alongside his bed and give him a bullet-point debrief: Bale’s execution went ahead as planned. Tom’s old friend Alfie is okay, is in Venice and is desperate to see him. Antonio’s funeral is fixed for five days’ time, a full military service, and they’d like him to come. Forensics have pulled together damning evidence from the boathouse on Lazzaretto Vecchio, including finding traces of Monica Vidic’s blood in the gondola along with hair and skin from Ancelotti and Teale. The paint flakes on Monica also match the gondola.

Some things need longer
explanations, like why Mario Fabianelli is still a free man.

‘Totally innocent,’ says Vito. ‘He wasn’t involved at all, he just got manipulated by Teale and Ancelotti.’

‘Teale had become obsessed with Bale,’ explains Valentina. ‘During the years when Mario was off his head on coke she even visited Bale in prison. Like lots of other weird losers, she fell for his charm and mind games.’

‘Teale and Ancelotti were romantically involved too,’ adds Vito. ‘Initially, she got him into it just to spice up their sex lives. Then they became hooked on abducting and killing victims like Bale and his cult had done. We believe they selected their prey from local churches. Then when Mario had his muddled idea of a hippy haven, they seized on it and encouraged him. It was the perfect vehicle for them to recruit cult members while pretending to do Bale’s bidding.’

Tom’s almost afraid to voice his next question. ‘And Antonio – your cousin – he just stumbled into all this?’

Vito answers for her. ‘It seems that way. Antonio was under orders to search the grounds for drugs, and that meant him going to all the places that were off limits. We know now that the mansion and grounds were covered by more cameras than a Big Brother house. We think Ancelotti picked him up on surveillance and had his boat rigged with explosives.’

Seeing the pain in Valentina’s eyes, Vito swiftly changes the subject: ‘Your old prison pal, Bale, put messages in his pictures and got an unsuspecting group of do-gooders to advertise and sell them on the internet in aid of charity. Teale and others then went online and decoded the symbols and clues. They were all part of a mystical, secret society that spread across the globe, hence the attacks in Venezuela and Vegas. In truth, we don’t know exactly how far it spread or how many were involved.’

Tom puts down the last of his coffee and hitches himself up the bed. ‘Why did Bale have such an obsession with Venice?’

‘Well,’ begins Valentina, ‘we called the FBI after you told me about him, and they’ve been digging out everything on him since he was born.’

‘Born in Venice, California,’ adds Vito. ‘The illegitimate son of a former Catholic nun called Agnese Canaletto who died in childbirth, he was brought up in a Catholic orphanage and adopted by a family called Bale when he was four years old.’

Tom’s memory flashes a picture of the Canaletto painting Rosanna Romano had given him the night she’d died. He’s still thinking of its significance
as Valentina picks up the tale. ‘Bale was told of his upbringing by his adoptive parents, who probably meant well, but from an early age he harboured an obsessive hatred of all things Catholic and Italian. The FBI psychologists believe this led to him seeking to destroy as much as he could of the Church and anything symbolically Italian.’

‘Symbolism and evil are powerful combinations,’ says Tom, ‘especially when you’re dealing with loners who have disturbed childhoods. What happened to the silver artefacts – the Tablets of Atmanta?’

‘Under lock and key in the Carabinieri safe,’ says Valentina, lifting a fruit bowl up from beside the bed.

‘Safe from both the Church and the Satanists. We’ll work out what to do with them later,’ adds Vito. ‘They’re in two safes, actually.’

‘Two?’ queries Valentina, picking herself some grapes.

‘It’s not that I’m superstitious,’ says Vito, ‘but I didn’t want the three tablets lying together. I thought it best to keep them apart.’ He throws up his hands. ‘I know, they should be in three separate safes, but I only have two.’

They all laugh.

They’re still laughing when the door opens.

Tina is surprised to see people sitting either side of Tom’s bed. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had visitors.’