Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Massimo Russo
Massimo Russo
The Devil’s
Fate
Thriller
The Devil’s Fate
Pietro Macchione Publisher - Varese - Italy
All rights reserved
Translation copyright © Susi Clare 2011
e-book version by Massimo Russo
For Chiara, without whom
the world would be a place to forget,
where I live each day solely
to hear the sound of her voice...
Fate cannot choose for itself. It has been assigned the task of doing that for others, of giving the illusion of choice to convince people it does not exist.
Love lives alone, eats chocolate and talks to fate, telling it that the world is a better place than the one it conditions.
Life is the country where emotions find peace, staring at fate and speaking to a dream of love.
Hell does not exist, like all things that find no place in life, like everything that cries out to fate in order to be able to live without pain.
Chapter 1
The shadows in the room said that it was almost time to go to bed, and the heat of the night intimated that it would, perhaps, have been better to set out again along the path he had left. Dustin wasn’t fazed. He closed the book and wondered what he could do with the time he had been allotted to see with a child’s eyes. He decided that his mission didn’t allow him the luxury of leisure. He looked through the picture windows of his house at the view that always excited a fresh emotion, which his eyes translated into peace of mind. The sight of the lake in front of him became even more beautiful when the lights on the shore framed a fairytale that wanted nothing more than to be told, and the sun asked a tired-eyed night for the space it was due.
He walked out onto the balcony and breathed in the fresh air the season had brought; it was like being reborn. The room, the darkness, being outside, the lights. He clearly remembered deciding the moment and, above all, the reason for coming back. He missed his house, the colors of his friends’ happy eyes and the words of a family that always managed to surprise him and show him how to see his mistakes from a different point of view, how to rectify them without ever being afraid. Ah yes…fear. He had been filled with that the first time he had arrived. He just couldn’t understand the sentiments of the people who lived there, and even less their purpose. The only thing he had noticed was their absurd desire to be considered better than anyone else, superior even to their capacity to exist. That occurred to him later, after he had made the initial contact; he still remembered the weird character he had bumped into. He had looked as if he hadn’t slept for at least a decade. That was his first failure. The first in a never-ending series. He had lost count of the defeats he had suffered, but he had to admit that his adversary was a hard nut to crack.
The telephone rang and brought him out of his reverie. It could be only one person at that late hour. He placed his glass of vodka on the coffee table in front of the dark leather settee that gave a respectable touch to the room and answered on the third ring.
“It’s almost time.”
“Give me two minutes. Is everything ready?”
“They’re waiting for you; the instructions are in the memory bank.”
“Any problems?”
“Luc’s already set things in motion.”
“It’s not the first time. How many are there?”
“Only him.”
“It must be important then.”
“Never more so. He called Daisy for the first contact.”
“I’ll do the same.”
“Good luck.”
The line went dead, signaling the end of the conversation, as well as the peace and quiet that time had allowed him to savor, even for that short moment. He stared into space, fully aware of what awaited him. If only he had been able, he would have tasted fear in his mouth.
Chapter 2
The alarm clock dragged Norman Lae back from the fantastic places his mind had roamed with stunning women on board a luxury yacht hired from a skilled pedlar of dreams. Time presented itself to the morning dressed for 7:22. It was still early, but Norman was used to doing exercises before he went to work, so he got up that bit sooner to prime his body. Julia was still asleep. There was no need to wake her. He made his way to the bathroom, thinking about what the immediate future held for him: a meeting with his bosses. The job had become intolerable and his bosses were never happy with his work. They probably expected him to sell his soul to satisfy their craving for money. Damn money! It was always on his mind. If he could, he would tell the lot of them to go to hell and start doing what he had always dreamed of: traveling with a harem of women until he was thoroughly sick of it. The girl he had been living with for years was adorable. With her he had finally begun to feel alive and perhaps even happy. He wasn’t certain, because he had always doubted the existence of happiness and preferred a more worldly term better suited to his material way of thinking. He always said he was fine, but just as everything needs the right context to become perfect, even the affair with Julia was cramping his style. The problem was undoubtedly him, not her. Chasing his dreams was distancing him from reality and making him neglect his relationships with those who, of this he was sure, loved him. What probably prompted his state of mind was a bank balance that would hardly cover the cost of his smallest thoughts, let alone a dream.
He headed for the kitchen and took from the fridge the usual bottle of milk that would help him shake off the last remnants of sleep. He switched on the coffee machine; the espresso would bubble up shortly and give him the adrenalin he needed. Then he went into the bathroom and gave his eyes a minute to get used to the glare of unnatural light from the halogen lamp. He turned on the tap and looked at himself in the mirror before washing his face. He looked tired. His eyes were lackluster and that deadened any enthusiasm that might have been hiding there. He always wondered whether the man in the mirror felt the same emotions he did.
“How’s it going, Ayr?”
“Oh good, Norman! How about you?”
“Well, last night was a total drag. Pizza with her friends, cinema, romantic movie that obviously sent me to sleep! You?”
“Last night I was in Spain. Paella and sangria by the sea. Moonlight boat trip and champagne with three Spanish models... I leave the rest to your imagination. This morning I’ve got an appointment with the President of World Computers. He’s pissed off because the most important magazine in the world ran my face instead of his.”
Norman often use
d the nickname “Ayr”, the initials of the other three names his parents had chosen to give him: Andrew Yuri Ronald, in honor, respectively, of his maternal grandfather, his paternal grandfather and their favorite president. They had named him “Norman” for the simple reason that they both liked it. Of the four, his own favorite was Norman; he used the first letters of the others as a reminder of the nickname given to his long-standing hero, the only true basketball legend. He was proud of the analogy and always insisted that his friends call him Ayr Norman. There was no age limit, in his opinion, to self-aggrandizement.
Ayr Norman Lae always talked to himself in the mirror, following a ritual he thought fitting, namely, the exact opposite of a normal existence like his own. A life on the edge, for ever on the move, searching for new adventures and powerful sensations, so that one day he could tell his grandchildren such a wealth of tales that it would take their whole lives and more to hear them all. Sometimes he wished he were on the other side, so he could understand the mystery hidden in mirrors and find out whether his imagination was right or not. He couldn’t deny that lately he had even prayed for this to happen, though he didn’t really believe in God. Maybe his reflection thought the same thing; maybe it was tired of its own life, even if he deemed it impossible.
He sometimes worried that the yearning to follow his dreams would make him incapable of controling his life. He believed that fate and its sense of humor would one day knock on his door and, with the sneering smile of one who has already and irrevocably come to a decision, tell him that his life was over, at the precise moment he achieved his goal. He had a deep respect for fate, even though it rankled to think that someone else could decide something that affected him without even consulting him.
“Have you ever seen fate, Norman?”
“Oh sure, I know him. I invited him aboard my boat yesterday and paid him to tell me my future. He burst out laughing and told me he couldn’t grant my request. ‘You haven’t got enough money!’ the bastard said!”
They both had a good laugh at that.
“Ha, ha, ha... very funny!” As if fate could be bought, he thought in a moment of madness. I wonder how much he’d want? was his next, and even more extraordinary thought.
“Be seeing you, my friend! Anyway, if you want to swap, just give me a shout, I’m up for it. All you have to do is ask and my life is yours. That way you’ll go to the office this morning and brown-nose the bosses for a raise.”
He was still chuckling when he turned away from his reflection. It was a ridiculous notion, but he could have sworn it had the same mocking grin he imagined plastered on the face of fate. He finished washing and tiptoed from the bathroom to avoid waking Julia from wherever she was sailing her ship in that parallel world called dreams. He went into the kitchen. The coffee would be ready by now. He imagined the bitter flavor he was about to taste that would mellow the start of his day. He switched on the light. The glare was so strong that his eyes cried for revenge just as the bulb popped.
“Damn and blast!” he cursed. “So much for a mellow start...” He decided to change the bulb when he got home. He fetched a cup from the cupboard above the sink and poured himself a generous fix of steaming black coffee. The perfume was sheer bliss, the taste revitalizing. He looked at the time.
“Shit, it’s late!” The conversation with his counterpart had lasted longer than usual. He postponed his exercises until the following morning and went into the dressing-room to prepare his body for the respectable role it was about to play, clothing it with taste and elegance.
I’m going to describe my fate briefly, speaking to it so that it doesn’t fall asleep...
I can even believe it really exists...
I can bear the thought of being right, even if my mind is confused and doesn’t understand...
I ask, deny, risk, expect... but everything is “alone and for ever”, nothing more...
So, silently, I stand up and agree... and write down the words my heart whispers:
“I exist because otherwise I couldn’t search for you...”
That was how he said goodbye every morning to the woman he lived with and had truly loved and who, after all, he probably still loved madly. He always left her a poem on the table, written off the top of his head without pondering, to give her the sweetest awakening she could ever desire. Every time he re-read them, he was moved, like a spectator who is caught off guard by an unexpected happening. When he came home, he would find the book where Julia copied all his poems, open on the table at that morning’s page. She kept on telling him that he should send his work to a publisher, but he had never taken much notice of her.
He left the house and walked through the courtyard towards the garage, intending to require his car to take him to work as fast as possible. The door swung up as soon as he pressed the button on the remote control. He got into the car and turned the key. The engine stuttered in some mechanical language of its own, announcing that it had no intention of leaving its lair that morning. Norman swore. It couldn’t leave him in the lurch that morning of all mornings. He tried five more times, but it was clear from the wheeze produced by the engine that he would have to resort to other means of transport to get where he wanted to go.
He climbed out of the driver’s seat, looked at the time and concluded that all he could do was run to the nearest subway station; he would never hear the end of it, but there was nothing else for it. Julia had no car, so he wouldn’t have to disturb her. He would manage on his own. Besides, he knew his bosses well: they would have forgotten all about it by the next morning. He decided not to call the office. If he caught the right connections, he would be there in less than fifteen minutes. He even switched off his mobile; he would say his battery was flat. He set off at a brisk walk, turning the corner onto the street leading to the subway entrance, a walk of less than two minutes. He couldn’t stop thinking about what would have happened at that precise moment if he had been on the other side of the mirror. He certainly wouldn’t have been racing against time to get to a place he only went to in order to earn money. He would have been the one in control of time, paying it at the end of every month to have its services at his beck and call; he would have rewarded it for taking him somewhere else and he would have sat on a mountain peak to watch it pass, with complete and utter indifference. Exactly what he imagined happened in that other dimension, concealed by the tracery of light on a clear-eyed face.
Given better choices and a bit of the luck he had never received from his damned fate, he was convinced he could have been one of the most famous people in the world instead of a simple onlooker. He knew well enough that he couldn’t complain. There were those who had no life at all; they dragged themselves through the years waiting for death to take them to a better place where they could again enjoy the taste of an emotion, smell the scent of a peace of mind that recreated the sensation of life and its meaning. Being a manager in a big marketing company was a gratifying enough job and, all things considered, well paid; his companion was sweet and understanding, not a bit obsessive or tiresome. But all that was light years from his idea of happiness.
Plenty of people in the world would have envied him and gone to any lengths to be in his shoes, but his humdrum existence and the absence of new experiences had almost depleted his mental energy. He felt stifled. Each day he was on the look-out for the weirdest vices to make him feel alive. He recalled the previous week when he had gone to a party with his oldest friend and made a bet that he would get the birthday girl into bed; it still tickled him to remember the awful remarks aimed at the poor woman. The most harmless comment re-evaluated the concept of measurement, replacing the dictionary word “gross” with her name. He remembered less happily having to fork out a thousand euro for losing, and taking home the pain in his stomach left by the woman’s fist. Filthy lucre. Money didn’t matter much to him with his lively personality and sharp sense of humor; it was merely the best way to live the lives of many in a single life. His intellect showed him coun
tless other ways. Politics for instance, or the cloth, scaling the heights of a military career; but they all had the drawback of having to answer to someone else. On the other hand, money was capable of anything, even changing the truth, even burying a wrong-doing.
He reached the entrance to the subway. There was a crush of people, as usual. He hurried to buy his ticket from the automatic machine. A beggar sidled up to him with his hand open and asked him to remember that not all men were equally lucky. Norman nodded and handed over what change he had. In exchange for his generosity, he received a copy of a newspaper.
“God bless you, my son. He who gives shall receive!”
“Amen, reverend!” replied Norman with an amused grin.
He pushed through the barrier that divided the travelers from those who had decided to stay put, and ran towards the waiting train that would take him to his destination. Inside the compartment, he imagined how sardines must feel before being freed from their tin prison. His thoughts turned to the beggar. A few cents had been enough for the man to bless a perfect stranger and hope that fate would give what he had been given. He felt deeply ashamed when he realized that he would have given nothing if he hadn’t slipped the coins into his pocket a few seconds earlier and almost forgotten about them. It probably wasn’t even a dollar’s worth. He would have dodged the annoying presence without the slightest twinge of remorse, cursing him and all his kind and comparing them to parasites that leech off the work of others. What a hypocrite, he said to himself, as it crossed his mind that the poor man had probably not eaten for days, whereas he had thrown a whole plate of French fries into the bin only the evening before merely because he had cooked too many and hated eating the same thing two days running. He banished any urge to feel remorse, and grabbed a strap above his head in one hand and held the newspaper in the other. It was dated the previous week. Touché, replied fate with its customary sense of humor. The first page carried headlines of events he knew almost by heart. His curiosity lingered on a news item about the hundredth reprint of a book. A true record. Lucky author, he muttered to himself. Needless to say, he tried to calculate an approximate figure of how much the fortunate chap would have earned. The article stated that sales had peaked at an incredible nine hundred million copies. It was a collection of poems and maxims called “Instructions for Living”, which implied that someone had found the way to describe emotions so satisfactorily that they could be experienced merely by reading those words. Curiosity drew him to the inside page where the whole article was printed under Charles J. Gordon’s byline with an excerpt from the book. He read it with the attention he paid to everything he hoped might surprise him, although that rarely happened these days.
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