When the Dead Awaken (38 page)

A few pellets had ricocheted off Sabrina's helmet, but the woman with the chewing gum had taken a full load from L'Artista and was lying a few paces from Sabrina's feet. The woman looked up at her, her jaws still moving. The ceramic vest had absorbed the impact of most of the pellets, but in the morning light Sabrina saw that the right sleeve of her
uniform had been ripped open and she could see white and black flesh and blood. The woman's partner bent down and dragged her out into the utility room while Sabrina knelt by the doorframe and risked a quick glance into the passage.

The petite figure moved with incredible speed. She had stood up and was heading for the bedroom when her husband fell through the doorway with red mist coming from his head. The mist hit the white plaster opposite. The woman continued in a forward somersault, straightened up right before the doorway to the bedroom and Sabrina instinctively released two pistol shots at the fleeing figure. L'Artista did not appear to notice the bullets that skimmed the hair above her scalp and sprayed plaster and brickwork on her head and shoulders. She continued to shoot at the invisible executioners in the bedroom. A roar could be heard on the inside and the woman was on her way in like a fluid, vengeful fury when instinct made her glance over her shoulder.

Slowly L'Artista rose to her feet, the shotgun hanging from her right hand. Sabrina could have ended it all there and then. She had a clear shot, L'Artista wasn't moving. Sabrina thought about her father, about Lucia and Salvatore Forlani … about Massimiliano Di Luca and Alberto in their eternal prison … about all the people she didn't know or hadn't heard of whom this creature had killed, but she saw only a mother, whose daughter was currently
dangling from Primo Alba's right hand, floating and silent in her pyjama top, pulled halfway up her naked chest and gathered at the back of her neck in the man's fist. A large grey pistol was pressed against the back of the girl's head and Primo Alba's handsome face was motionless.

‘Drop your gun, Anamarie Panevic,' he ordered her.

The shotgun clattered against the flagstones.

Behind Sabrina the wounded woman got back on her feet. The screaming from the bedroom had ceased. A man stepped out into the pasage with his machine pistol raised. He walked up to L'Artista and kicked her legs away from underneath her, rolled her on to her stomach and bound her hands with a plastic tie. He bent down and removed a small automatic pistol from her dressing gown. The woman turned her head and looked up at Sabrina. Without pleading for mercy. Nothing.

The last two men from the unit entered from the living room and took the daughter from Primo Alba. The girl started to scream and kick.

Sabrina could see the girl's screams etched in L'Artista's face. It grew smaller and paler. Primo Alba pulled her to her feet. He wasn't looking at anyone, his eyes were dark sockets, his face carved in stone.

The woman looked at her dead husband and her struggling daughter and her gaze was indescribable.

Alba pushed L'Artista in front of him and she seemed incredibly tiny and vulnerable. He opened the door to the
girl's bedroom and pushed the woman inside. Sabrina had turned to the soldier with the chewing gum when two pistol shots rang out from inside the bedroom.

Primo Alba came back out into the passage and slowly and deliberately returned his pistol to the holster above his left hip. He took out a mobile phone, turned away and started speaking in a low voice.

Sabrina tried to walk towards him, but someone prevented her. She tore herself loose and had almost reached him when more people arrived, twisted her arms around her back and put her on the floor. In a pool of the cripple's blood.

Primo Alba marched briskly down the passage while he continued to speak on his mobile, oblivious to the people behind him. And to Sabrina D'Avalos's curses, threats and obscenities.

Qualiano, Naples – Don Francesco Terrasino's estate

There was a polite knocking on the door, but Don Francesco Terrasino had already heard the nurse's heels against the flagstones in the passage.

His fork lingered indecisively over a plate of ham and eggs, but he was no longer hungry. He was losing his appetite more by the day.

He had slept badly. A night filled with forebodings, faces, bodies and troublesome memories. He didn't have the energy to get up and open the door to the nurse as he usually did. The sun was high in the sky, but the house was quiet. Guards and workers respected Don Francesco's morning hours that were spent in meditation and contemplations of that day's duties.

‘Enter.'

He coughed drily and dabbed his watering eyes with the starched napkin that the housekeeper placed alongside his plate and cutlery every morning.

He was looking deep into the black pupil of the espresso cup when the footsteps stopped in front of the table.

‘La signora?' he asked without looking up.

‘The same, Don Francesco,' said a new voice. ‘Probably much the same as Massimiliano Di Luca, I presume.'

Don Francesco Terrasino didn't move.

Of course. After a night filled with all those faces. It had to be. It hadn't been a nightmare, but a premonition.

He looked up with a small smile. With his light brown hair and his clear grey eyes the young man looked like a prince. He would also appear to be unarmed, but Don Francesco didn't get his hopes up. This was the end.

The tall, lean figure balanced on the soles of his feet like an athlete. His arms were gathered in front of his body, resting – but Don Francesco knew his type, even if he didn't know the man himself: the GIS.

‘My sons?' he asked.

‘Gone.'

‘How did you get in?'

‘The tunnel. L'Artista is dead.'

‘You killed Anamarie Panevic,' Don Francesco Terrasino said. ‘What a shame. She had a rare gift.'

‘Undoubtedly, but born a couple of centuries too late. She belonged to the court of the Medicis.'

The young man nodded and Don Francesco closed his eyes. He heard nothing, but the young man was fast … terribly fast. A hard hand was placed over his mouth and
chin and Don Francesco Terrasino felt the knife enter below his rib and the explosion in his heart when the knife reached it.

‘This is for Federico Renda and Agostino D'Avalos,
figlio di puttana
,' the man whispered into Don Francesco's ear, almost as if he were praying, as he slit open the old man's white shirt and then his abdomen, from his sternum to his belt buckle.

Castellarano – fourteen days later

The performance might not be remembered for its intense acting or its crystal-clear singing, but no one could say a word against the girls' make-up or hair. They were perfect. What the girls lacked in terms of talent, during the school production of
The Mikado
, they made up for with huge commitment. There were long, extended rounds of applause when a gong struck by a pretty, kimono-clad Japanese lady signalled the interval.

It was a strange setting, Sabrina thought, looking up at the tall Gothic arches over her head, at the ascetic portraits of saints and founding fathers who seemed to squirm uncomfortably at the colourful and happy tableau on the makeshift stage at the back of the nave. She smiled politely to the fragrant, fur-clad woman on the arm of her husband in a dinner jacket, as they tried to make their way down the central aisle. She pulled in her feet and knees and ignored the woman's look.

It was inevitable that she would attract a certain amount of attention.

Giulio Forlani and Antonia Moretti had insisted that she come to the performance. Sabrina rose and tried to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. With her shaven head, downcast eyes, bruises and numerous fresh cuts to her face and scalp she looked like an earthquake survivor whom a humanitarian organization had hastily fed, dressed and flown into a charity event.

There was ecstatic conversation everywhere, the smell of expensive perfume, long glittering evening gowns, sparkling laughter and expensive jewellery. After all, the girls – the majority of them – belonged to some of Europe's most privileged families.

She found a shaded niche, quickly emptied the first glass of white wine and snatched another one from the silver tray of a passing waitress.

Forlani towered over everyone. He actually looked quite good in a dinner jacket, Sabrina thought. He was standing by a table covered with damask, canapés and crystal, and had turned his head slightly so that his good ear could pick up the words of Antonia Moretti, whose slim hands were folded around the stem of a wine glass. She looked happy, Sabrina thought.

She looked like a woman with a plan for the future.

Near the couple Sabrina spotted Gianni, Antonia Moretti's son. His hair was thick and black as a troll's and he
was mesmerized by the girls who were bustling around the stage or had found their parents at the tables. He appeared to be looking for one girl in particular. A couple of times he had looked in Sabrina's direction with an expression so close to jaw dropping hero-worship that Sabrina had to look away.

It was the last thing she needed: a teenager who idolized her.

There were a few serious men and women who looked neither at the stage nor the girls. All wore white earpieces, had their arms folded across their chests and their faces alert. Without expression they scanned the audience, their surroundings and the area around Giulio Forlani.

Urs Savelli was still at large.

The bodyguards' work would be complete tomorrow when Giulio Forlani, Antonia and Gianni Moretti boarded a US military plane to be flown to an undisclosed location on the US east coast. Both the Secret Service, whose constitutional task was to prevent forgers from attacking the US dollar, and Professor Mai Luán from MIT had pleaded and begged Doctor Forlani to come to the States and continue his work. A house, a car, a new identity, plenty of research funding … a pony for the boy … they could have whatever they wanted. For Gianni Moretti, one of the best schools in the world, and for
la signora
 … well, there were plenty of undertakers in the US. Unless she preferred living clients?

The physicist looked up, spotted Sabrina in the shadows
and went over to her. The crowd of gesticulating and chattering theatregoers parted in front of the giant. There was something about this scarred, sombre man that was far too inappropriate and conspicuously serious for the occasion.

He reached Sabrina and she smiled at him. She found it surprisingly easy to smile at Giulio Forlani, but hard with everyone else.

‘Are you enjoying it so far?' he asked her gravely.

‘If I'm to be honest, it would have been kinder to put it out of its misery,' she said.

He smiled.

‘You look good without a beard,' she said.

Forlani stroked his new, smooth face. He was unrecognizable. He had also had a haircut. He actually looked distinguished in that greying, professorial way. Sabrina looked past him and spotted the grey eyes of Antonia Moretti. She studied the back of the physicist with an expression of concern and ownership that boded well.

‘You're going to the US?'

‘With Alberto. They're flying him to Massachusetts General Hospital. Apparently they have an expert in exotic poisons. Perhaps there's some hope.'

‘But not Massimiliano?'

‘He's dying … the poison … the cancer. There was some talk about giving him chemotherapy, but his family said no. I think they made the right decision.'

‘Does he still sing?'

Forlani studied the floor.

‘It appears he has an inexhaustible repertoire.'

‘Perhaps it's a form of self-preservation,' she said.

‘Perhaps.'

They looked at each other.

‘Thank you,' he said at last.

‘For what?'

‘All of it, really. Lucia and Salva … you were right. It did mean something … more than I can say, everything … To know. That they had been found.'

Sabrina had attended the simple cremation of the remains of Lucia and Salvatore Forlani at the cemetery in Chiaravalle. Giulio Forlani's brother Bruno and his parents had been there. There had been a heavy mix of emotions around the grave, as one would expect, and Sabrina had kept her distance, as did Dr Raimondo Sapienza, the forensic scientist from Rome, who looked extremely uncomfortable in his tight-fitting dark suit.

‘
Di niente
, Giulio.'

She held out her hand.

‘Have a safe trip.'

He took her hand.

‘You're not leaving, are you?' he said. ‘You'll miss the second act.'

‘I'm still recovering, Giulio. My doctors say I mustn't get overexcited.'

‘Then you had better go.'

‘
Arrivederci
.'

‘Take good care of yourself, Sabrina D'Avalos.'

She waved over her shoulder without turning around and she held back her tears until she reached the evening air. These days she couldn't stop crying.

Palazzo di Giustizia, Naples

She had tried, as discreetly as possible, to slip back into her old life. Before the container. She managed fairly well at home, though she spent most of the time lying on the bed, smoking cigarettes, staring at the ceiling or reading the first five pages of a book before putting it down. Sometimes she would sit in front of the mirror studying her new hair, trying to get it to grow faster by sheer willpower.

At work they treated her as if she needed handling with great care in order to avoid a sudden, disastrous meltdown. The other young assistant public prosecutors, her peers, looked at her differently, spoke to her differently, avoided her as far as possible and when they couldn't, spoke in hushed voices with guarded smiles. Any excitement must be avoided at all costs, she understood. Her old cases had been delegated to her colleagues and new ones had yet to materialize, possibly because no one really knew at which
level she should work. Officially, she was still an assistant public prosecutor, but one who had been allocated a brand-new Mercedes C-350 saloon – bullet-and fireproof – and three drivers who took turns to drive her around and always treated her with the utmost courtesy.