by Kai Meyer
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Then we’ll wait.”
At that moment Alessandro’s phone rang.
“Iole,” he said, checking the display. “Or someone using her cell phone.”
Rosa snatched up the iPhone and took the call. “Hello?”
“The Dallamano purse factory here.”
“How are you doing?”
The connection was bad, with a scratchy sound on the line. Iole’s voice sounded lower than usual, and she was whispering. “I know those men. Some of them are our people. Alcantaras.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Are you in the bunker?”
“Cristina and Signora Falchi are down there. I couldn’t get a signal, so I came out again. I can see a couple of them. They’re at the moorings. Two boats are anchored here. The third must be somewhere else. Maybe in the bay on the south coast.”
“Make sure they don’t see you.”
“I’m not stupid.”
Rosa had never been so glad to hear Iole’s voice before. At this moment, she could have let her go on babbling for hours.
“I just wanted to tell you they haven’t caught any of us,” said the girl. “Sarcasmo is here with us, and we have enough to eat for a few days. Chocolate and cookies.” Iole paused for a moment, then there was a rushing and crackling on the line. “They are your people. They shot the watchmen.”
Rosa closed her eyes and let her head drop back against the neck rest. “Go back into the bunker at once. Don’t get caught. We’ll try to reach the island tonight.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“We don’t have a better one.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you and Alessandro. We’re fine. We’re safe in the bunker. None of them know their way around. Did you know how huge it is?”
During World War II, Isola Luna had been an advance military base meant to repel German attacks. Rosa herself had never been in the bunker, but Iole, who had spent six years as a hostage and was not afraid of the dark, had obviously explored most of the underground fortress long ago.
Rosa urged her again to look after herself and the others, then ended the call.
Alessandro turned to her. “Everything all right?”
Rosa turned her eyes away. “We’re screwed.”
“Amen,” said Stefania.
AMBUSHED
“LOOK AT THAT!”
The cry from the backseat of the car pulled Rosa out of her thoughts. They were driving around the area by the yacht harbor for the third time, looking for a place to park closer to the Gaia. All the streetlights and car headlights were switched on; the sky had changed from dark blue to black. Neon signs cast ugly lighting over plastic chairs on the sidewalks.
Rosa turned to her left and saw a snack bar with a phone number over it in digits as tall as a man. The flickering bright red sign over the door said AMERICAN PIZZA. An Italian wearing a cowboy hat was loading flat boxes into the trunk of a Fiat.
“That’s not pizza,” said Alessandro, with deep conviction, “that’s mushy dough with melted rubber topping.”
Stefania shrugged her shoulders. “Fills you up, though.”
“You police officers have no civilized culinary tradition.”
“Most of all we have no time,” retorted Stefania. “I can’t remember when I last sat down at a table to eat.”
“But eat something like that?” Rosa couldn’t take her eyes off the fake cowboy. “American pizza? In Italy?”
“My pistol comes from Germany. My jeans come from Turkey. My mother comes from Morocco. So?”
Alessandro grinned. “What’s the world coming to if not even the police maintain old Italian values?”
“Says Mister I-studied-in-the-States-and-I’ll-tell-the-spaghetti-eaters-back-home-what-it’s-all-about.”
“Calm down,” said Rosa. Was she, of all people, acting as peacemaker now? Crap, they really were in a jam.
Stefania looked over the back of the rear seat. “Damn. We’ve passed it now.”
“I noticed the number,” said Alessandro.
“I’ll do everything you ask.”
“That’s why it’s called being taken hostage.”
“I haven’t eaten since yesterday evening. Quattrini wasn’t exactly thoughtful about these things. If she wasn’t hungry herself, why would anyone else be? And did I mention before that I didn’t sleep all night?”
“Why not?”
“Because I had to get bloody cameras into place in the graveyard. Satisfied?”
“There wasn’t much to film.”
Stefania let her head sink back against the upholstery. “I could be sitting comfortably in the surveillance van right now, evaluating the video and eating American pizza.”
Alessandro tapped a number into his cell phone. “Hello? I want to order pizza. Three pies, with extra cheese and onions. American pizza, yes.” Stefania was beaming, but then he said, “For delivery to a yacht in the harbor. On the left at the exit from the basin, you can’t miss it. The name’s the Gaia . . . G-A-I-A. And at ten on the dot, please, no earlier, no later. Can you do that? Okay, thanks.” He ended the call and immediately made another.
“Can I speak to the captain now?” he asked. “Well, okay. Tell him there’s a change of plans. I’ll come on board alone. At ten exactly. And don’t be surprised to see me looking rather odd. Yes, a disguise. How do we know who’s watching the yacht? So don’t shine a spotlight in my face before I reach the rail, okay? Thanks. See you then.”
Rosa glanced at him sideways, and slowly shook her head. Stefania leaned forward between the seats. “What a waste of three good, nourishing pizzas.”
“Lie down. Please.”
She did as he said. “Hear that? It was my stomach.”
Rosa nodded. “Pretty loud, too.”
“Can we stop talking about food?” asked Alessandro.
“There,” said Stefania. “There it goes again.”
“We can gag her.”
“I’ll eat the gag.”
He looked at the time, and turned into the square beside the harbor.
Behind the lights in the portholes of the yacht, shadowy outlines were moving, but never up in the saloon or in the private cabins. The crew were staying on the lower deck, although no passengers were on board. There was nothing to suggest that everything wasn’t the same as usual. No suspicious persons at the moorings, certainly no police officers.
“How much longer?” asked Stefania. “He’s going to be late.”
Rosa pointed forward. “There he is.”
The pizza delivery man’s Fiat braked by the promenade with its warning lights blinking. The driver with the cowboy hat jumped out, took three boxes from the trunk, and walked over to the Gaia.
“If they have any sense,” said Stefania, “they’ll take the pizzas and eat them.”
“Unless I’m mistaken,” replied Alessandro, “there’s going to be so much adrenaline spilled on board that no one will have any appetite left.”
A narrow strip of steel began to unfurl down the side of the yacht—an extendable boarding ladder. The steps were covered with thick carpet.
Rosa narrowed her eyes. “That’s not the captain up by the rail.”
“No,” whispered Alessandro.
“Anyone I know from the crew?”
“You know them, but not from the Gaia. Those are men from the Castello. They’re on guard.”
“Oh, great.”
Stefania sat up slightly so that she, too, could see the yacht. “An ambush?”
“Something like that. They knew exactly why they couldn’t let me speak to the captain. He’d have warned me.”
Rosa clenched one hand into a fist. “Suppose they shoot the delivery man?”
The policewoman snorted. “Then it’ll be another death on your consciences.”
For a moment Rosa thought that Stefania had gone too far. Black down appeared on Alessandro’
s hand as he gripped the steering wheel, but then it disappeared again under the sleeve of the leather jacket.
Time for her to do something.
“Rosa, no!” Alessandro swung around. “They won’t hurt—”
Too late. Her fist landed, hard, on the horn. The key was in the ignition, the lights were switched on, and a loud, hooting wail immediately rang out over the harbor area.
The pizza delivery man stopped just before he reached the stairway and looked at his car. The men behind the rail of the yacht changed their position to get a better view of the street.
Rosa pushed the car door open. She had meant to shift shape as she got out, but it didn’t go as quickly as she had hoped. Instead, she landed on all fours on the asphalt, and the metamorphosis started a split second later. Like a golden rope covered with scales, she shot out of the dress as it fell off her, slid into the street, hoping there would be no car speeding along at that moment, and glided over to the promenade. Headlights caught her as she went the last few yards, but then she was already on the sidewalk, winding her way around the palm trees and along the dark quay to the yacht.
The pizza delivery man had turned to the Gaia again. Motorists probably hooted at him all the time. Ahead of him the snow-white hull rose like the wall of a glacier, and the distant streetlights reflected off varnished steel.
From the ground, Rosa could see the face under the cowboy hat. This wasn’t the same driver as the one they had seen outside the snack bar. The one she was looking at was older, at least thirty. He wore a jacket like his colleague’s, with a white shirt under it—and something else under that. He was far too warmly dressed for a mild Sicilian evening in March.
She was still two yards away when she saw the pistol in his waistband.
“American pizza!” he called up the stairway. The rail of the yacht was several yards above the moorings. Impossible to recognize anyone up there from this angle. “You ordered from us.”
From below, Rosa saw that he had a second gun in his right hand, under the flat pizza boxes. He was either crazy, very brave, or convinced that reinforcements would arrive at any moment.
Not her problem anymore. She had changed shape to help an unsuspecting pizza delivery boy out of a mess. But whoever this guy was, he must have intercepted the real delivery man. All hell was about to break loose. She hastily set off back to the promenade.
Everything suggested that this was an operation carried out in great haste. Probably by Stefania’s colleagues. Presumably a great many fingers were hovering rather nervously over the triggers of guns.
Rosa sped up even more, and had to leave her cover. She catapulted herself forward in thrusting loops.
Suddenly she heard shouting and a car revving behind her. Shots rang out. The next moment a searchlight flamed in the night sky. Its beam of light swept just past Rosa, bathing the deck of the Gaia in dazzling brightness. At the same time tires squealed on the road along the seafront, doors were flung open, a voice speaking through a megaphone called on the men aboard the yacht to give themselves up. Masked figures stormed toward the moorings. Rosa just managed to coil around the foot of a palm tree before they all raced past her and went to the aid of the fake pizza delivery man.
What with the lights, the voices, and legs all around her, she feared she might lose her sense of direction. The exchange of shots by the water became more violent, and she saw the muzzle flash of guns more and more frequently, but when she looked at the yacht once more, none of the attackers were on board yet, because there was firing from above them, and the metal stairway was just being drawn in.
She hoped her honking hadn’t attracted anyone’s attention to the Cayenne. It was standing among a number of cars on the other side of the multilane road, not far from the end of a side street. Rosa wound her way between two unmarked police cars, unnoticed by several men who were directing the operation only a few paces away.
Stefania had lied to them. Her unit was far from understaffed. Plainclothes investigators had probably been keeping watch on the yacht since that afternoon, intending to give the signal to attack now, after nightfall. The pizza guy must have been a godsend. Maybe they had hoped to get one of their men on board to prevent the stairway from being pulled back in.
Rosa’s coils swept across the road, where all traffic had now come to a standstill. Someone shouted what sounded like, “Hey, there’s a snake!” but no one seemed to take him seriously. She reached the other side, unharmed, and slid on past and under the stationary cars. The Cayenne must be the next car, or the one after that.
The driver’s door was open. Alessandro had gone. The backseat, too, was empty. Rosa reared up and glanced across the road. Had he followed her, in human form or as a panther? Either would have been madness. A snake, even a snake nine feet long, could pass unnoticed in all this chaos, but no one could overlook a panther.
“Rosa!”
The door of a silver Volvo beside her was pushed open. Alessandro leaned far over the seat and signaled to her. Her clothes were lying on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She pushed her coils into the car, and was just getting the end of her snake body into it when he slammed the door.
“Sorry,” he murmured remorsefully, when he noticed that he had nearly closed it on her tail. He was busy hot-wiring the ignition. “I saw that you’d turned around.”
She crawled up on the seat and returned to human form. A glance over her bare shoulder told her that they were alone in the car. There was nothing in the back but the carton from Fundling’s room and the crate with the fake license plates in it. “Where’s—”
“In the trunk. She planned to make off the moment you were gone. She attacked me from behind and tried to get the gun away from me.”
Rosa was still dazed by her swift return to her own shape, but she knew she had to pull herself together. With nervous movements, she picked up her underwear and dress and slipped them on.
The engine of the Volvo started. The harbor was enveloped in a haze now, maybe from a smoke bomb. Muzzle fire was still flashing; sirens were sounding. The helicopter she had heard hovered high above the Gaia, flooding it with bright light.
Slowly, Alessandro sat back, so as to avoid attracting any unnecessary attention. They still had a chance of getting a head start on the police.
Rosa pulled the hem of her dress down over her thighs, and saw that her fingernails were growing back. Alessandro put the car in gear and stepped on the gas cautiously; he didn’t want to rev the engine.
“The people on board wouldn’t have harmed the delivery guy,” he said. “They thought it was me, and they obviously want us alive. Otherwise the Malandras would have killed us.”
The Volvo cruised along the seafront road at a leisurely tempo going south, fell into the traffic behind some other vehicles, and passed a half-constructed safety barrier just before the crew of a patrol car could close it. Obviously the operation carried out by the anti-Mafia unit had also taken the local police force by surprise.
“If Iole was right,” said Alessandro, “and it was men from your clan who occupied the island . . . and if the men aboard the yacht really were from the Castello—”
“Then the Alcantaras and the Carnevares are in league with each other against us,” she finished his sentence, her throat dry. It all seemed perfectly logical now.
“They commissioned the Malandras to kill Quattrini so that there’d be no one left we could ask to protect us,” he went on. “Not even the police.”
“But an alliance between your family and mine means a new peace pact. A new concordat.” As she spoke, the ends of her forked tongue grew back together. She shook her head. “I thought they wanted to get rid of us so exactly that thing would not happen?”
“There must be more behind it. We’re not just dealing with a few traitors who’ve had enough of us. There’s something much bigger going on.”
In the trunk, Stefania kicked the backseat, with much crashing and banging, but with no success.
Rosa knocked dry snake scales off her forearms, folded the sun visor down, and watched the slits of her pupils turn back to human eyes in the makeup mirror.
THE GAPS IN THE CROWD
A CLEAR, STARRY SKY stretched above the slopes of Mount Etna. The volcano was quiet that night, and no smoke rose from its peak. Rain clouds often gathered on the sides of the mountain, but there were none in sight now. The lights of a few villages shone in the distance, but here, at the end of a bumpy path through the fields, only the stars sparkled, silvery gray in the darkness.
The Volvo was parked between black rocks. Solidified lava covered large parts of the volcanic slope, and tangled grass and bushes grew on many parts of it. By day sheep and cattle grazed here, but by night only the blades of grass moved in the wind. Away from the main roads at the foot of Etna, there were only narrow paths for the few farmers who cultivated crops on the meager soil between lava fields and expanses of scree. Most tourists kept to the eastern and southern sides of the mountain, where there was accommodation for hikers and people traveling through the area. But here to the west, the land was bleak; scarcely anyone lived outside the few villages. Remote farmhouses lay in ruins, their silhouettes merging with the rugged lava crests.
They had stopped to get a few hours’ sleep. Alessandro had threatened to gag Stefania again if she didn’t keep quiet in the trunk. He refused to let her lie on the backseat again, and for the moment Rosa didn’t object. Stefania had lied to her at least once, and she took that badly. Tomorrow they would have to decide whether it would be better to let the police officer go free.
They had pushed their seats as far back as possible, but it was still pointless to even think of sleeping.
Alessandro held Rosa’s hand as they looked up at the mountain through the windshield. The peak of the volcano couldn’t be seen from here; rising ground lower down obscured their view. Here and there, porous lava structures were visible in the moonlight, looking like the waves of the sea frozen as they broke.
Weariness and lack of sleep combined made Rosa edgy and impatient. She switched on the interior light of the car.
