SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition

by Akif Pirincci

  In Antonio’s face I could see a certain stir now, which I took for a proof of conscience. He starred at me with a regretful mien as if he begged forgiveness and suffered from the spirits that he had cited. I clearly felt the urge in him to say some final explaining words to me before ... before what would happen? Very slowly, just as if a ball was starting to roll down a hill and was steadily increasing speed, I realized kind of trick I had been supposed to do tonight. Umberto hadn’t been interested in my vestibular organ. The project already was that well advanced that they wanted to start rehearsal. But he needed a guinea pig for the last and final proof. I couldn’t help it but think that I was supposed to play the target!

  »Every peace-loving human’s dream will come true tonight«, Umberto said and hobbled around the general with increasing excitement. This guy didn’t seem as impressed as expected and killed time with only a couple of gestures. Now and then he scratched his head and folded his arms in front of himself. Apparently he also waited for the final proof.

  »Miracolo will save mankind from their most evil scourge – from war and terrorism. Both issue from the sick brains of single persons. And we know their faces. And if we don’t know their faces, we know their distinctive voices or their individual smells – Miracolo can be programmed for all of these features. It is the thinking bullet from the barrel of a killer, just that it doesn’t take any killer anymore. Pushed off by a launcher system, this missile is capable of dashing through urban canyons at racing speed, entering buildings independently without destroying them and even orienting itself inside extremely mazed architecture. The targets can’t get away from it, regardless of where they are fleeing. And if it finds them and blows them up, one can sit next to them and enjoy one’s dinner. The innocent will be spared. Civilian casualties within a war or terroristic conflict both are a thing of the past. There won’t even be material damages. Look at this ...«

  He put out his hand and pointed at me. I already felt like I was shot and opened my eyes to the size of golf balls. Every single hair of my fur stood on end, as if I was sitting inside a tumbler.

  »... This animal was just biometrically recorded by secret cameras at the Forum Romanum yesterday morning. We have his optical imprint, and this imprint has already been saved on the computer of the missile. Miracolo’s job is to follow the animal and eliminate it without causing the death of a non-participants or any material damage. In order to clear up any doubt that the device doesn’t just orient itself by the optical pattern of a certain sort of animal, I brought my own pet. As you can see it’s of the same species, and as you will also see, Miracolo will spare it ...«

  I took to my heels and ran. At the right side of the wall was a plain passage in the dark. I didn’t know where it let. Headless and only inches away from totally freaking out, I decided on this escape route and senselessly ran towards it.

  »The little one tries to get away!« I heard Umberto shout behind me. »Even better, this way we can have a long close look at Miracolo’s skills.«

  I quickly looked back and saw him bend over the laptop and press a key. With an explosion-like bang a ray of fire shot out of the rocket nozzle, changing its color from blood orange over mint green into a light blue in a split second. Dragging this blue fiery tail Miracolo take off of the ramp and dashed towards the dome with an expansive bend. But I sensed that it was still in the warming phase and slowly probed, which of the breathing attendees underneath matched the biometric pattern in its memory. Absolutely, it had already seen me.

  The passage came closer and closer, and after a sheer senseless sprint I finally arrived there.

  »Francis! Francis! ...« I suddenly heard Antonio’s voice behind my back. I yanked my head around and saw the Oriental running towards me. Umberto didn’t seem to be very happy with this twist. He catcalled at his partner in crime and ordered him to come back as if he were a dog. Understandably, at the moment I wasn’t in the mood to deal with their relationship problems. When I looked up, the shock almost paralyzed me. The flying monster had reached the highest point of the dome by now and curved in an amazingly precise and small-radius semicircle. Then it dashed down at me with its flaming tail ...

  I jumped into the passage and to my horror I noticed that nothing more hid behind it than a circular staircase, which was hewn in massive stone. By the look of it, it led to the lantern hallway. What was I supposed to do? Going back would have been sheer suicide. Standing still also! Without further thinking I started to run upstairs. Breathlessly, I speeded upwards, and the steps underneath my paws quickly turned into a striped pattern on a twirly strap.

  »Francis, you stupid smart-ass, why did you have to poke your nose into this dirty deal!« Antonio yelled at me out of the tunnel. Panting, he also rushed up the staircase. As he was located a couple of turns below me, we couldn’t see each other. Actually, right now I wasn’t in the mood to see the henchman of death anyway. Instead I was interested in the other messenger of death. Through a little hole in the wall I saw how the rocket rushed into the dark tunnel downstairs. Soon it would be up here.

  »Damn idiot«, Antonio yelled, and his voice sounded broken. »The Siamese would have been the last victim. Everything would have sorted itself out, and a few weeks from now nobody would have ever spared a thought about it again. And if you had swallowed the thing with Samantha, I wouldn’t have decoyed you to the Ponte Rotto. Damn idiot!«

  By now the capacity of my lungs was exhausted up to the border of a collapse. The steps I climbed up didn’t seem to end. Through a hole I saw the whole nave, which almost reminded of the view from a plane. Umberto and the general by now were only ant-sized dots on the marble floor, which was decorated with artful intarsia and bathed in pale light. Yet, my eyesight was enough to read the unequaled fascination in their faces, absolute enthusiasm about this launching, which merely intoxicated them. Their mouths stood open, and they were hunted by twitches of excitement. I dared to predict that in a hundred years even devices a hundred times as smart as Miracolo wouldn’t be able to stop all the torturing and murdering in the world given such a reprobated species!

  I cut myself with the whip and climbed up the stairs at a terrific speed. Although I was suffering of breathlessness and felt pretty giddy, a magical force moved me on without mercy. From the lower part of the tunnel I heard the squealing nose of the rocket, which got louder with each second. The encounter of Miracolo and I seemed inevitable. Umberto’s crafting skills hadn’t left anything to be desired until now. The thing worked perfectly, and despite the extreme sport I was just doing, the question what I was supposed to do when I reached the lantern hallway kept pushing into my mind.

  All of a sudden the last question became a highly urgent subject. Pale brightness greeted me, and before I knew what was happening I was standing at the 142nd step of the dome! Through the metal bars of the railing the first thing I spotted in the inside of the dome were the Latin words according to Matthew, which were shaded in gold: »You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it«. The words sounded like a prayer to me. As praying was probably the only thing that remained to me in my desperate situation, I asked Peter for help, gasping and panting. After all his bones were buried directly underneath the pope’s altar, so the transcendental way of communication between us was relatively short.

  But although I was asking for heavenly assistance, I wasn’t neglecting the search for an earthly escape from this dilemma at all. Without taking a breather, I ran down the gallery, in the elusive hope Miracolo would be distracted by that somehow. Underneath the dome in the niches of the pillars there were four giant figures of saints, which were connected to the Passion. Their blessing also found my ready welcome. Through the big windows of the dome I saw mighty bunches of thunderbolts, which illuminated the city for split seconds. Rome was at my paws now. My eyes could see from St. Peter’s Square to the Alban and Sabine Hills and into Vatican City, which was surrounded by a big wall. In the distance
the obelisks, the colosseum and the metropolis seemed to burn, and at the lonely Campagne the Tiber sparkled in its countless windings. And as if this wasn’t my demise but something like my resurrection, I could see the first crimson spark of dawn far away in the dark belly of the sky. At the time I faced death the sun was rising. Now that was an exit in style!

  Antonio jumped out of the tunnel into the lantern hallway, saw me on the other side of the tribune and came at me without hesitation despite his bad condition. Totally pumped out and rather messed up we now faced each other next to the line of bars. Our fur was totally ruffled and our ears hung down like kinked branches. In the Oriental’s coal-black face I noticed a mix of worry and some rest of morosity.

  »You die for a good cause, Francis«, he said. »Because of your death thousands, maybe even millions will survive. Our kind also.«

  »Thanks for the comforting words, Antonio, that’s very sweet of you«, I replied. »But I would have preferred if you had played the role of the martyr. It would have, how shall I put this, suited you better than me.«

  The boiling green magma in his eyes thoughtfully leaned on me for a very last time. Strange, I still liked him – although of course I couldn’t let him off his penalty.

  »Intolerance, Francis, must be exterminated, and all these monsters, who want to tell others the way they have to live, must be killed! But in the end: Life is beautiful – mankind is ugly. I beg you to forgive me.«

  With a deafening whining sound the missile shot out of the exit and turned into the lantern hallway, fast like an animal and without any hesitation. Its maneuverability really was unbelievable, and its agility to make turns with the smallest possible radius reminded of the lightning-fast sidestepping of our kind. Getting louder, it flew alongside the dome, until eventually it was only a few feet away from us.

  »Ciao, Francis! We will see each other again some time – in a better world ...« Antonio said and was about to bow out to make room for the explosive finale.

  »Why wait so long, il mio amico!« I replied, sprang at him and plunged all of my claws into his fur. Wedged like that we rolled towards the railing until we broke through the gap between two bars and fell down together ...

  In free fall we kept spinning over and did a couple of full turns. At that also the inherent parachute-reflex was employed, which causes our leg muscles to switch to muscle relaxation at maximum crashing speed. So we reminded of a natural parachute, using the braking effect of the air. We used our tails to balance us out, and our heads automatically faced the ground. Despite of those small tricks, I bewared of letting go of Antonio because I knew that a fall from this height was going to be my certain death without his future sacrifice. Regardless of how hard he tried to get away and how much he twisted and turned, my claws were stuck in his fur.

  But the old danger hadn’t been outgrown at all. Directly after the grasp at nothing I had seen from the corner of my eyes that due to the changed situation Miracolo hadn’t at all experienced an identity crisis and hadn’t ended the hunt being a fair sportsman. The missile had just rushed over the railing as if nothing had happened and had performed a sharp course correction downwards. Like a whirling knife it know vertically shot at us and threatened to destroy us in case the dash on the ground wasn’t going to manage this first.

  Shortly before we dashed to the ground, Antonio gave up resistance and looked at me with his beautiful eyes. I read sadness in them, but also resignation to his fate.

  »I forgive you!« I said and pressed his body under mine.

  Antonio plunked onto Umberto’s laptop and was instantly dead. Just a nano-second later his soft body mass clasped me like an airbag and cushioned my fall to a certain degree. When I rolled to the side right away, I saw that the rocket was only a few inches away from my nose. With a desperate jump with my strong rear legs I catapulted myself out of the danger zone. That close to the finishing line even Miracolo wasn’t capable of speedy maneuvers. It crashed into Antonio’s body and exploded into a thousand pieces. On the marble floor, on which il mio amico had just been lying, now was nothing more to see than an annular trace of ash and tiny metal parts.

  My ears were still partially numb, when I heard another squeal. I looked around and with horror I saw three new Miracoli take off. From hidden corners of the left and right naves and from behind the socket of the Cathedra Petri one rocket a time shot to the top of the dome. It looked like fireworks in honor of Saint Peter.

  »Fuck, what does that mean?« the old general asked and, flabbergasted, he backed away from Umberto.

  The priest with the angel-face also didn’t look that attractive anymore. He rather gave the impression that God for once had allowed him to get a glimpse of the place, which was already impatiently waiting for him. With uplifted hands he tumbled backwards, his head strangely bopped up and down like that of an old man, and he kept licking his lips. A flick of hair had broken away from the rest of his neatly combed hair and naughtily dangled in front of his eyes. It was hard to say, if Antonio’s explosive exit or the dancing missiles underneath the dome had thrown him for a loop.

  »A safety measure«, he said, almost stuttering. »It is a safety measure.«

  »Safety measure?«

  The general now gave the impression that a lot of things were put together inside his skull. Obviously he didn’t like the result.

  »I was shot last night, and I thought, maybe you were behind that, General. Maybe mighty governments don’t like that guys with my kind of knowledge keep living after they have developed a weapon of such importance. Maybe they think that I will pass this knowledge to ...«

  »Jesus Christ, talk faster, dude!«

  The military officer had already turned away from his high-tech-dealer and totally addicted himself to the observation of the ado at the dome. Meanwhile the three miracoli had ended their recon flight and formed for a nosedive.

  »This is why I brought these additional three missiles for my personal safety«, Umberto went on. »They are fed with your biometric data and with those of the killers, who also were captured by the cameras at the Forum Romanum.«

  »Call it off!« the general yelled and also began to tumble. »Do it, gosh darn it, call it off!«

  »That, that, that isn’t possible. Antonio, my Antonio, fell on the laptop and activated the ignition. And the laptop is ...«

  With his hands, which he had stretched like he was about to pray, he pointed at the ash trail on the ground.

  »You goddamn son of a bitch!« the General shouted and pulled a pistol from a hidden holster under his tweed sports coat.

  Then he flipped his fingers. Behind the statue of St. Peter the two CIA killers from the catacomb showed up now! They had their weapons with mufflers thrust out and approached Umberto cautiously. Despite the dull light the sunglasses with almost black glasses flaunted on their noses. But their cool ado didn’t keep them from casting worried glances on the missiles, which came rushing down from the dome.

  »This is my safety measure, bastard!« the general yelled and flicked his fingers again.

  The killers shot their clips almost completely. The angel-faced man of God was hit by so many bullets that for a while he didn’t even have a chance to fall down. Every time a bullet hit him and he was about to keel over with a clenched grimace, the next bullet was already on its way and kept him upright. The wounds in his face and throat were the worst. The glasses fell out of his face, and also his fine hairdo couldn’t be saved in the end.

  After Umberto had finally collapsed, the general and the two killers yanked up their weapons and fired at the approaching missile. It was so loud that I quickly hid behind the altar, rolled up and buried my head in my fur.

  But despite all defensive measures the rockets kept dashing towards their victims, which finally stopped the pointless shooting, dropped their weapons and fled towards Filarete’s brazen gate. Umberto had done a very good job. Three explosions happening shortly after each other, roaring and accompanied by the disgusting sound
of bursting flesh, finally ended this horrific episode.

  When I dared to leave my dugout again, there were widespread pools of blood everywhere on the glassy ground. Umberto in his cassock had become a black island in the middle of a crimson lake. Headfirst, his face drowned in this thick fluid, but I didn’t feel sorry for him a whole lot. Except for radially drifting-apart gushes of blood, only marginal signs of their former existence were left from the general and his killers. A ripped off finger here, a part of a foot there, covered by a rag of leather, which once had been part of a shoe. Wads of smoke hovered over this ground zero, and I had to throw up because of the smell of burned human flesh and dynamite. Through the windows, which were decorated with a thousand saints, I saw that outside the new day was dawning.

  All of a sudden the soldiers of the Swiss Guard, which had reported for duty, opened the mighty, brazen gates of the cathedral. I ran outside, just in time, before I could get trampled by impatiently waiting hordes of tourists. Have fun in there! shot through my mind. In front of me St. Peter’s square unrolled like a paradisiacal realm. I felt like I saw Rome, the beauty, for the very first time. The may rain had dispersed. The sun shone again, warmer and bright than ever, and the light reflexions of the puddles of water caused a funny itch in my eyes. I ran down the stairs and finally stood in the center of the plaza, surrounded by Bernini’s Colonnades.

  My thoughts wandered to Antonio. Had he just meant well? No! Nothing was good that was bought with other people’s death. It sounded old-fashioned, not to say corny, but life was sacred. No statement fit better into this place than this. On the other hand I couldn’t hide my sympathy for his way of thinking, or should I call it ideology? The world was full of two-legged devils, which tried to turn this place into hell. They needed to be affronted. Yeah, if necessary they even had to be killed. »Ha ha, ›if necessary‹, a very catchy word indeed«, I heard Antonio laugh. »A word at which every member of the Western civilization would nod approvingly, just to turn on the TV a moment later as to not miss his favorite show. But when is ›if necessary‹, il mio amico?« And what shall I say, he was right. Still, it rested on the Western civilization to keep a sound judgment and to not become evil during the fighting of evil. Intolerance was like dirt, which consistently accumulated on the body. One had to wash it off every day, or lick it off in our case, so that it didn’t stiffen and harm the organism in the end. But even in the face of most stubborn intolerance, words benefit more than thousands of ultramodern weapons. Antonio had taught me this. As suddenly I missed nothing more than the affinity of the black cutie with the wedge-shaped face and the big funnel-ears.