When the Dead Awaken (26 page)

The woman in Bergamo.

His brother Bruno.

When Bruno was an apprentice with Ferrari in
Maranello, the brothers had bought the effects of a deceased young motorbike enthusiast, which included two incredibly fast MV Agusta F4-Tamburinis. When everyone else had gone home, when the lights in the halls, in the workshops and office buildings were switched off and the security guards had been bribed, the brothers would race each other on Fiorano, Ferrari's private test circuit. Highly illegal and verging on the aerodynamically impossible.

As they had to duel in the dark, where the outline of circuit was assumed rather than seen, they had built up a set of alternative, acoustic reflexes. They navigated purely by the echo of tyres and engines from barriers, spectator stands and the pits.

They were like motorized bats and so they nicknamed each other
pipistrello uno
or
due
, depending on the order they finished each day. Giulio was usually
pipistrello uno
. Bruno claimed his brother could see in the dark.

When they weren't driving blindly around Fiorano, they would take part – along with other young motorbike fanatics, men and women – in the
tour la Tangenziale
, a suicidal race along Milan's ring road during the afternoon rush-hour traffic. The race was inspired by the equally insane
tour du Périphérique
around the outer ring road circling Paris.

He continued west around Bergamo down the A4, left the autostrada at Dalmine and found a small country lane outside of Fosca. The motorbike rattled down the dirt
track. Giulio stopped at the foot of a lonely hill between rustling maize fields, placed a stone under the motorbike's kickstand, stretched his aching limbs and unhooked the sea bag from the luggage carrier. He found a relatively level patch of grass under a handful of cypresses, removed a couple of stones and spread out his groundsheet and his sleeping bag. He sat down with his hands on his knees and looked towards Bergamo, which lay like an illuminated island on the horizon.

It was almost two years since he had been more than a few kilometres outside Castellarano.

The woman on the telephone had sounded unbelievably, almost offensively young.

He had read the ads in
Corriere della Sera
sitting at Antonia Moretti's kitchen table. He had always known there was a possibility that the ad would appear one day, but he was far from prepared. He had read them and then … nothing.

Darkness. Exactly like the day in the Å koda on the A7. But without the flashing mouth of the pistol.

The next thing he saw were the perforated ceiling panels above the hospital bed.

Again he thought about Bruno. Bruno was an innocent memory from a life before he met Fabiano Batista and heard his brilliant idea for a copyright protection device that would make history.

Giulio looked towards the distant town and thought
about the day they nearly got killed in the mountains over Castellarano. His father, Bruno and him. Suddenly and without warning, a wet, southerly wind, atypical for the season, had risen from the floodplain and brought with it impenetrable white clouds. What should have been an ordinary stroll before lunch became a confused nightmare. The moist clouds had drenched their all too light summer clothing and they began shivering from the cold. The twin brothers had been thirteen. He had been trudging along behind Bruno, who was a blurred silhouette only one metre in front of him. And Bruno was following on the heels of their father.

Upwards. Keep going upwards because it was too dangerous to go down, their father had said. Ultimately it was harder to fall up a mountain than fall down one.

When they finally broke through the clouds and arrived at the ridge, Giulio could suddenly see his hand, his arm and one of his legs slice through the abrupt transition between clouds and blinding white sunlight. And even though they were still shivering, even though they were still scared and exhausted, they were in the sun and from the stony ridge they could look down on the white clouds that filled up the valleys and they could see the other ridges, peaks and mountain tops that lay like sleeping whales in the white sea.

Once more Giulio found himself in a white nothingness
and he didn't know whether to go up, down or stay where he was. His stomach lurched and he thought back to the last day he had been Giulio Forlani.

Time miraculously stood still.

The red truck that overtook him on the inside and pulled out in the fast lane. Flickering images of Batista, Hanna, Massimiliano … Lucia and Salvatore, the taste of iron and catastrophe when the red wall that was the rear of the truck stopped dead in front of him. The sound of metal tearing and glass shattering; he remembered the steering wheel turning into a triangle in his hands before being wrested from his grip … and then … nothing, a grey darkness. Perhaps he remembered the fire from the muzzle of the pistol that lit up his consciousness like a photographic flash or perhaps he was rationalizing it later when the old man told him that the driver had got out of the truck, walked over to the crushed Škoda and fired the pistol twice.

The pain came much later.

The old man, the general, had sounded impressed that he remembered as much as that.

It wasn't going the way she had planned it at all.

It hadn't started out well and it was getting worse.

Forlani seemed completely uninterested. Empty. Vacant. Like a closed-down theatre.

They were standing at the top of the bell tower of Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore and for the moment they had the viewing platform to themselves. Above them was the verdigris green dome of the basilica – Bergamo's famous landmark – and above that hung a low, grey sky.

The man who used to be Giulio Forlani leaned against the stone balustrade and stared out at Città Basso and the plain. Next to him was a coin-operated telescope through which Sabrina had followed him going through some of the manoeuvres that finally brought them together.

He had called shortly after ten in the morning, had woken her from a dreamless sleep and introduced her to a monumental hangover and a mouth that – as her father would
have put it – tasted like the inside of a wrestler's jockstrap. In a flat voice Giulio Forlani had ordered her to go to the funicular and catch the 10.25 a.m. departure down to Città Basso, twelve (twelve!) insane minutes later. He had asked her to get some tape (which she stole from the reception) and stick her warrant card under the funicular's northern bench (which way was north?) after which she was to make herself invisible.

Or else …

She was getting fed up with threats. Real as well as imaginary.

She reached the funicular three seconds before departure, with the taste of blood in her mouth and on trembling, aching legs. The cabin was full to the brim and it had required extensive fidgeting with her bootlaces with her head down between her knees to Sellotape the warrant card furtively to the underside of the bench.

Afterwards she did exactly as she had been told: she made herself invisible in a café where she alleviated the hangover with coffee, cigarettes and a beer.

But Minerva was a difficult man to please. He had also demanded that she – now travelling in the ascending funicular – stuck a note with her log-on details, passwords and access code to the public prosecutor's intranet under the bench. No doubt so he could log on to her private drive in Naples from a laptop with a wireless Internet
connection. He had also asked her which year she had graduated from law school in Milan. No doubt to check if the photograph in the university's yearbook matched the reality.

She had borrowed a notepad from the waiter in the café and again played along without asking questions.

From the station at Piazza Mercato delle Scarpe she had raced across town and had sprinted up the bell tower's seemingly endless internal spiral staircase, to the viewing platform. She had pushed a child away from the telescope, stared down its outraged parents, pushed a €2 coin into the slot and aimed the telescope at the funicular.

In vain.

No one who in any way met Giulio Forlani's known physical criteria – 197 centimetres tall and weighing roughly 108 kilos – had entered or left the funicular station. But she had spotted a boy walking purposefully across the Piazza and disappearing behind the corner, only to return a minute later. This time visibly more relaxed and smiling as if he had just earned a very generous hourly rate for running a small errand.

Her mobile rang.

‘You are who you say you are, so I've decided to meet you,' the voice had said.

‘Where?'

A few seconds of pensive silence.

‘At the top of the basilica's bell tower, signorina. What I'm saying is you can stay where you are.'

‘All right,' she said feebly and let go of the telescope.

The place was well chosen. From the viewing platform there were only two ways out: down the spiral staircase to the nave or over the balustrade to the narrow road thirty metres below. She wouldn't have had a chance: the man was enormous. His hands looked as if they could strangle an ox. He looked more like a leather-clad foreman at a marble quarry in Carrara than a potential Nobel Prize winning physicist, and somehow it seemed to confirm that he was uniquely gifted.

In her mind she had rehearsed over and over how she would tell Giulio Forlani that his wife and child had been found.

She had practised her speech in front of various mirrors.

But the very first thing Giulio said was: ‘You've found my wife and my son, signorina. Thank you. I can imagine where and how.'

Her mouth was already open to deliver the paralysing message and then express all the sympathy she was capable of. She would even have offered him a warm handshake or a brief embrace.

Instead she closed her mouth and muttered a feeble, ‘You're welcome.'

An anticlimax at the top of her own church, she thought.

‘The Camorra isn't what you think it is, Signor Forlani,' she then began.

‘Giulio. Giulio is fine.'

‘Okay … It's not what you think it is, Giulio. Not at all.'

‘And what do I think it is?' he asked.

‘A faceless mass. It calls itself “The System”. It's deliberate, to make people think that it's invulnerable, so they feel beaten before they start. But there are names, Giulio. Faces and bodies. This “System” is made up of individuals.'

‘Then give me a name.'

‘Urs Savelli is one,' she said. ‘He was behind the attack on your firm. He ordered the murders of Batista and Paolo Iacovelli, and he killed Hanna Schmidt.'

He merely nodded and she realized that he already knew that.

‘How did you find me?' he asked.

‘By chance. I found a tote ticket from San Siro the day … the day …'

‘I was killed?'

‘Exactly. From the day you were killed, Giulio. It was in the pocket of a man's jacket and there was writing on the back of it. “CDS Janus seeks friendship with Minerva”. I discovered it was written by your friend Massimiliano Di Luca. Who is probably the man behind the almost identical ad in yesterday's
Corriere
.'

‘Let's hope so,' he muttered.

‘Have you spoken to him?'

‘Of course.'

Of course, she thought.

‘It was Max … Massimiliano who suggested I meet with you. Listen to what you have to say.'

He looked at her blankly.

‘You made a good impression on Max.'

‘Thank you. And you trust him?' she asked.

‘Of course.'

‘Why?'

He flung out his hands.

‘Why? Because he's Max! He has known where I was all along.'

‘What?!'

‘I've met with him several times since I came back to Italy,' Giulio said. ‘He keeps me up to date, sends me things from … our home in Milan. My personal effects. The two stars in the ad was a code we had agreed. Two stars meant that Lucia and Salvatore had been found.'

‘And four stars?'

‘That I had been discovered. That I had to disappear immediately.'

Christ! She leaned against the balustrade and buried her face in her hands.

‘What did you think I was living on?' he asked. ‘Max sent
me money every month. He helped me. He would call me Johann in his letters if he wanted us to meet.' He looked at her. ‘I'm sorry that I can't offer you something as tragic and sensational as being betrayed by a good friend. My apologies, signorina.'

She held up a feeble hand near his face.

‘Stop,' she said.

‘But if anything happens to him,' Giulio Forlani continued. ‘If anything happens to Max because you went to see him, then I'm going to—'

‘Kill me?'

The eyes in the dark, lean and ruined face studied her in depth.

‘No. Because Max is already dying. But he should be allowed to die in his own way.'

‘What are you saying?' she said, alarmed.

‘He has liver cancer. I presume you had lunch together?'

‘Yes, at Dal Pescatore.'

Giulio Forlani smiled.

‘Just so. He told me you threw up. A sinful waste,' he said. ‘Well, did he eat anything?'

‘Practically nothing.'

‘Then he really is dying,' Giulio Forlani declared laconically. ‘Max loves his food.'

He closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. But she didn't look at his face. It was impossible to look at his face.

Sabrina had spent hours studying every available photograph of the physicist. Photographs which were completely different, distractingly different from the bearded and scarred boxer's face that now belonged to Giulio Forlani.

‘What happened to your face?'

Forlani's eyes were distant, almost lifeless creatures.

‘A plastic surgeon and a man in a truck,' he said. ‘I don't know who was more effective. Someone helped me afterwards.'