by Kai Meyer
At the moment, however, she wasn’t interested in the past. All she wanted was Alessandro. Alessandro and a lot of answers.
As she jolted up the track to the plateau in a cloud of dust, passing a ruined guardhouse and iron gratings in the ground, she thought it had been naive of her to assume he might have made it to this bleak place. It had taken her almost two days to get here from the island, and she hadn’t had to escape from the Stabat Mater first. Had she been harboring false hopes? She felt a sudden wave of despair, and her hands began to shake on the wheel.
She passed a row of concrete and steel posts. Local farmers had probably stolen the barbed wire once slung between them, or the Mafiosi of Corleone might have used it in their strongholds in the city. A few twisted spirals stuck up from the ground like the bones of half-buried animals. Ragged plastic film hung on some of them, wafted across the plains by the wind over the years.
There were still a few yards to go when she passed the first buildings that had been blown up. They seemed to be former large sheds for housing vehicles and military equipment. All that was left of them were concrete slabs on the ground, partly buried under the remains of fallen walls and distorted iron girders.
The trail was asphalt now, but the surface was crumbling so badly that she was jolted about in the car as much as she had been on the dirt path through the fields. A flock of birds crossed the sky and disappeared behind the buildings. At this distance she couldn’t assess their size. She hoped they were only crows.
At last the trail went uphill, past another ruined guardhouse.
Dust and wind had worked the mortar out of the masonry; the doorframes and windows in the low-built structures were bleached by the pitiless sun. A few panes were broken, but most were still intact. There were six or seven of these buildings, all on a single floor and built close together. There was nothing to suggest that any of them were still in use.
The trail led around a bend to a small square between the huts. Rosa abruptly hit the brakes. The tires swirled up yet more dust. It clouded her view through the windshield.
At the side of this square, in narrow alleyways between the buildings, were two vehicles. One looked like an old army jeep: mud-colored, rusty, and with clouded windows. The other was a modern BMW cross-country vehicle: black, slightly dusty, but no dirtier than Rosa’s Honda.
She reversed a little way and parked the car in the shelter of a building. Maybe it would be best to shift her shape and explore the terrain in snake form. On the other hand, then she would have had to do without the pistol and she didn’t want that.
Once again she looked around carefully, and then climbed out. With the gun at the ready, she approached the two vehicles. The army jeep didn’t seem to have been moved for years and was just as dirty inside as outside. Dust had gotten in through every crack and lay thick on the seats and the rest of the interior. After a moment’s hesitation, Rosa tried the door handle. Not locked. She reached under the wheel and pulled out the ignition lead with a jerk.
Then she skirted the building to reach the BMW in the alleyway on the other side. She could have taken the shorter way across the square but she wanted to try getting a look inside. She cautiously approached the first window and scratched the encrusted dust off the glass with her fingertip. The room seemed to be empty. Bare walls, no furniture.
Still cautious, she approached the black BMW along the alleyway between buildings. The front of the car was turned in her direction. Holding the pistol in both hands, arms outstretched, she aimed at the driver’s side. She still couldn’t see whether there was anyone in the vehicle.
Another five yards. Then three. She expected to hear the engine roar at any moment and see the BMW move forward. She couldn’t have swerved out of its way in the narrow passage. Her gun was still aimed at the windshield; she thought she could see the outline of the headrest. At least there was no one at the wheel.
The door was closed. Cigarettes and a half-empty pack of chewing gum lay on the passenger seat.
She moved away from the vehicle and stepped out into the square. She looked hard at all the buildings, all the windows, all the alleys between the fronts of the buildings. No one there. All quiet. She was alone.
Once again she glanced back at the BMW and saw tire tracks. So it couldn’t have been standing here very long. And now she also saw footprints leading away from the driver’s door and toward one of the huts.
She followed them slowly, still holding the gun in both hands. The footprints were much larger than her own. The hope that Alessandro might, after all, have escaped the hybrids flitted through her mind.
The tracks led up three wooden steps to a small platform in front of the entrance. Unlike the other buildings, this one stood on a stone base. The door was closed, but not locked. Beyond it lay a small front room, full of a brownish twilight that forced its way through the dirty windowpanes. Two old folding chairs covered with dust leaned against one wall.
Rosa went into the hut and moved slowly to a second door. A sign hung on it: ENTRY FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
She slowly pressed the handle down, holding the gun very close to her body so that no one could strike it out of her hand. At the same time she prepared to shift her shape.
It was as if this building were inside another one, much larger than it appeared from outside. At first sight, the room behind this second door looked too tall, but there was a reason for that. The hut had been built in front of an opening into the rock, the way down to an underground bunker complex.
A hall with high concrete walls opened out ahead of her. At the front end there was a broad gate with grating over it, a freight elevator large enough to take a vehicle or a trailer. Beside it was a steel door on which the faded symbol for a flight of steps could be seen.
Rosa’s heart hammered as she crossed the hall. Nothing that could be used as cover. She didn’t see any cameras. The elevator stood ready beyond the grating, so she figured that the driver of the BMW had probably used the steps. There was another way out, a ramp for heavy vehicles to her right, but the roll shutter at the end of the slope was pulled down.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to the stairway. A gray concrete shaft. Neon lighting, almost every other bulb out. Rosa listened hard, went to the banister railing, and looked carefully down.
Three floors, maybe four. Iole would have enjoyed exploring this place. Rosa, however, felt her heart racing and had to fight down the chill rising inside her, fearing she might not be able to hold back her metamorphosis.
After the third step, she took her shoes off. Now her footsteps were almost silent. The palm of her hand on the butt of the pistol was wet with sweat. What she was doing was lunacy; she didn’t even know whether the sickroom from the photograph of her grandmother with the two babies really was taken in this complex.
She cautiously passed two landings on the stairs. On both, there were niches in the walls for firefighting equipment. The metal doors in front of them had been broken open, and several yards of one of the hosepipes lay unrolled on the floor. She was more intrigued by the empty hooks on the back walls of the niches. Outlines in the dust told her that two long-handled axes had hung there. Neither was still in its place.
She suppressed nightmarish images of a figure with an ax in each hand coming up the stairs in total silence. With her lips pressed together, Rosa leaned on the wall and closed her eyes for a few seconds. Pull yourself together. Concentrate. When she opened her eyes again, sweat was running down her forehead.
Her throat constricted, she kept climbing down until she reached the end of the stairs. There was another steel door here, unlocked like the others. A stench assaulted her nostrils when she slowly opened it.
Beyond lay a hall similar to the one on the first floor. The freight elevator ended at a grating with loops of cables dangling behind it like huge cobwebs.
There was a steel door in the left-hand wall of the corridor, with a smaller door set into it. Both were locked.
The cages stood directly opposite her, on the other side of the hall. Several rows, reaching all the way up to the ceiling, like book-lined walls in a library. Many consisted of bars, others of sturdy wire netting. Their floors and covers were made of wood or plastic.
She counted ten rows of cages, side by side, with aisles between them wide enough to take a forklift truck. How far they went back in the neon lighting she couldn’t be sure. However, it seemed certain that the hall stretching that way was far larger than its counterpart on the first floor.
An uncanny silence filled the space. Not a sign of life. The fear that each cage might contain a dead Arcadian, mummified or decomposed, clawed its way into her gut. Nausea rose in her, and a sour taste turned her throat.
Very slowly, she moved out into the hall. As she did so, she kept her eye not only on the aisles between the rows of cages, but on the steel door to the left as well. The pistol no longer gave her a sense of security. It was only a heavy lump in her hand, useless against the lifeless silence in this concrete dungeon.
The cages were empty, the barred doors in front of them unfastened. The occupants had probably all been taken away in haste. But why not in their cages? She could think of only one answer to that, and it was a dreadful one. They had all been killed.
With great caution, she slipped into one of the aisles. She could see through the gratings into the next aisle, but hardly any farther. Many of the neon tubes under the ceiling no longer worked. Others were flickering frantically. More than once she thought she saw movements out of the corner of her eye, but when she swung around, holding the gun ready, it was only the twitching shadows of the cage.
The row—at least forty yards long, maybe as much as fifty—consisted of thousands of these cages. Even if they had not all been occupied at the same time, the chaotic sound of animal cries and human voices whimpering, with the stench of excrement, sweat, and vomit, must have been horrific. Even the lingering smell was still hard to bear.
The video that Cesare Carnevare had shown her last October, in an attempt to intimidate her, could have been filmed here. Here, or in some similar place where TABULA extracted the serum from hybrid blood. Thanassis had spoken of his people rescuing hybrids from many laboratories. Maybe there were places like this all around the Mediterranean, perhaps even all over the world.
Except that here, all of it must have been given up long ago, and the place left to itself. Rosa had to fight the impulse to turn back at once. She had come here to find out more about her father’s birth—and to see Alessandro again. But she couldn’t, she mustn’t think of him just now; it took her great determination not to let the thought of him distract her.
There must be a labor ward, somewhere in this complex, for delivering hybrids. But had they really been born here in this bunker? Or in one of the huts? Maybe in one of the buildings that had been blown up.
She heard something, and stopped. Listened.
Footsteps.
Whoever it was wasn’t stealing surreptitiously along, more like a leisurely walk. Somewhere in this huge hall, someone was moving around without bothering to keep quiet. Someone who thought he was alone down here. Or who felt so much in control that he didn’t have to conceal his presence.
She leaned back against a cage and strained her eyes to see in the flickering twilight. The sounds came from the left, and then next moment from the right. Once she thought for sure someone was behind her, but when she turned there was no one. The neon tubes crackled quietly.
The steps were coming closer. Not in this aisle, but in another one nearby. She crouched down, making herself as small as she could. Propped her elbows on her thighs, and held the gun upright in front of her face. And waited.
The hoarse sound of a throat being cleared, then a cough.
Five yards ahead of her, someone stepped out of the wall of cages like a ghost. There had to be an aisle crossing those between the cages in the opposite direction, and from where she was she hadn’t been able to see it.
A figure dressed in white.
It disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, crossing the aisle without noticing Rosa.
The footsteps sounded heavy and labored. The figure was slightly stooped.
Rosa slowly straightened up and moved forward on tiptoe. She reached the cross aisle. Just wide enough for two people side by side.
With the pistol raised, she turned the corner.
No one.
Her jaw was clenched. She stood upright, legs apart, as if she knew what she was doing, clutching the pistol in both hands like someone who often went around armed like that.
The cough again. The footsteps.
Then the man in the white coat. He must have turned off into the next aisle but changed his mind, and was now coming back. Like a ghost, he made straight for Rosa.
And took no notice of her.
“Stop where you are,” she said.
He came closer, still ignoring her. Looked at a block of paper that he was carrying on a clipboard. As he walked along, he wrote something on it.
“I said stop right where you are!” This time she spoke more sharply, but her tone bordered on panic. She couldn’t let herself show any fear.
He glanced up, looked at her and at the same time right through her, shook his head, and went on past her. She had to move aside to keep him from bumping into her, but it was not aggressive, not even carelessness. He simply didn’t see her.
She raised the muzzle of the pistol behind him, aiming at his broad back, the gray-haired head. He was tall and looked strong, in spite of his advanced age.
“Professor Sigismondis!” she said, as he moved away. “Stay where you are.”
This time he surprised her, doing as she said. But he did not turn around, only let the hands holding the clipboard and his pencil drop.
“You knew my grandmother,” she said. “Costanza Alcantara.”
His ragged breathing stopped short, as if he couldn’t think and breathe at the same time. Then he sighed softly.
“Costanza,” he whispered.
“She was here, with you. You brought her children into the world.” Rosa was standing ten feet from him, the arm holding the gun outstretched, aiming it between his shoulder blades. His coat was dirty and gray, with threads hanging loose at the hem.
He slowly turned toward her.
STUFFED ANIMALS
BUSHY EYEBROWS, HIGH CHEEKBONES. A flat nose like a boxer’s. If Rosa hadn’t known anything about Sigismondis, she might have taken him for all kinds of things, but not a scientist who had nearly won the Nobel Prize. He must once have been over six feet tall, and even now that his back was crooked and his shoulders slumped, he towered a head above Rosa.
A smile raised the corners of his mouth, as if they were hanging on fishhooks. “Costanza,” he whispered again.
Except that this time he was staring at her. And he obviously thought he recognized her.
“I’m Rosa Alcantara,” she said, looking over the butt of the pistol. “Costanza’s granddaughter.”
He slowly nodded.
“You also knew my father. He was born here, wasn’t he? Davide Alcantara.”
His smile disappeared; his face was expressionless. Now he was only an old man again. A demented old man. But she didn’t want to acknowledge that, not now that she finally had him before her—the monster who had been the head of TABULA all those years.
But Eduard Sigismondis must have exhausted his stocks of evil long ago. Given all that she knew, he had drawn on them deeply over the decades. No wonder he seemed hollow now.
She took care to keep the pistol steady. Aimed at his heart, then at his face. Finally at his chest again.
“Davide,” he said quietly. “Costanza’s son.”
“Davide was my father.” Or perhaps, she thought, is my father. If he was still alive and was the man on the video who contracted her rape, the man whose fault it was that she got pregnant and had her child, Nathaniel, aborted.
“Davide,�
� he said once more. “And Apollonio.”
Mr. Apollonio, Michele Carnevare had said to her father. Or was it her uncle?
“Who is Apollonio?” Her voice shook. She was all the more determined to make someone pay for it. Even if it was this confused old man.
“They were brothers,” said Sigismondis. “Davide and Apollonio were twins. Costanza’s twins.”
“Why didn’t anyone ever mention him? What happened to Apollonio?”
Sigismondis put his head on one side, inspected her, then smiled again. “Costanza was a beautiful woman. So are you.”
“I am not Costanza.”
There was something mysterious about his smile as he turned and walked away, despite the gun aimed at him.
“Stop!” she snapped at him.
He took no notice.
She went after him, caught up, put out her hand to hold him back. But he was much taller than she was, and she wasn’t sure how demented he really was. He might seem harmless, but she didn’t know how he reacted to being touched. She could have shot him, but then she’d have no chance of getting answers to her questions.
“Where is my father?” she asked, as she followed him farther between the rows of cages in the underground hall. “What became of Davide?”
He did not reply.
“And Apollonio?”
Only silence. The crackling of the neon lights sounded like insects caught behind glass.
They reached the end of the row of cages. Sigismondis turned left and went along the back wall of the hall, gray concrete with old memos hanging here and there. What to do in the case of a fire. Ways of escape shown on a diagram of the bunker. Once even a board with blurred chalk lettering on it, the ghosts of words that had long ago lost their meaning.
