by James Becker
‘I know exactly what this is,’ Angela said. ‘This book is some kind of do-it-yourself vampire kit. It’s bullshit.’
The slight smile left the Italian’s face and he stared at her in a hostile manner. ‘I’m not interested in your opinion,’ he snapped, ‘only in your skill as a translator.’
Angela tried again. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the bones of the woman who wrote this are lying in a two-hundred-year-old tomb on the Isola di San Michele, crumbling away to dust. I think that’s a fairly compelling argument to suggest that she didn’t live for ever.’
‘How do you know she wrote it?’
The possibility that the book had actually been authored by somebody other than the occupant of the old grave hadn’t occurred to Angela. But it didn’t change anything.
‘I don’t, but it was a reasonable assumption. But whether she did or not, I know – and I hope you do too – that vampires don’t exist. They’re a myth, nothing more.’
Marco didn’t respond for a moment, then he shook his head. ‘I already told you,’ he said coldly, ‘I’m not interested in your opinion, ill informed though it obviously is. Just get on with that translation.’
He stood up and walked across to where Angela was sitting. ‘Have you found any references to the source yet?’ he asked.
Angela nodded and pointed at the last sentence she’d translated. ‘This says that she’d seen some other document, but I haven’t found any mention of when she saw it or whereabouts it was.’
Marco scanned her translation swiftly and nodded. ‘Good. Keep going. Let me know as soon as you find a mention of where the source might be hidden.’
In fact, the very next section of the Latin text seemed to provide a clue. An obscure clue, granted, but the first indication she had seen of where the other document, the mysterious ‘source’, might be concealed.
Carmelita had again referred to the ancient dead and the screaming dead, neither of which made very much sense to Angela, but the next sentence did provide what looked like a location. Once she’d translated it and rendered the words into readable English, it read: Our revered guide and master has graced us with his sacred presence, and has instructed us in the ancient procedures and rituals, these being recorded by him for all time and for all acolytes in the Scroll of Amadeus, and then secreted beside the guardian in the new place where the legions of the dead reign supreme.
She didn’t like that last expression, though it could obviously just refer to a graveyard somewhere; and the idea of a ‘guardian’ really troubled her. But, despite her unshakeable conviction that vampires were nothing more than a pre-mediaeval myth, it was the first part of that sentence that sent a chill down Angela’s back.
It suggested that Carmelita had actually met, or at least seen, the person – Amadeus? – who had authored the source document. But that made no sense. Carmelita had died in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Whoever had written the source document must have died some seven hundred years earlier. Maybe she meant that there had been a succession of ‘masters’ through the ages, each acting as the head of the ‘Vampire Society’ or whatever name had been given to the group that Carmelita had been a member of.
But that wasn’t what the Latin said. And Latin was a peculiarly precise language.
40
Behind the tomb on the island of San Michele, Bronson spotted a glint of metal from one side of the unconscious man’s belt. Risking a closer look, he saw a dull black shape: the lower end of the magazine for a semi-automatic pistol, tucked into a quick-release leather pouch. There was no reason why a man would carry a magazine unless he also had a pistol, which meant he must be wearing a belt holster, not a shoulder rig.
Bronson looked up again at the man with the pistol. He was taking a couple of steps closer to him – shortening the range to ensure that his next shot would be the last he would have to fire.
The unconscious man was lying face-up, which meant the weapon had to be tucked into the small of his back, otherwise Bronson would already have seen it. Jerking him over on to his side, he rammed his other hand behind the man’s back, inside the windcheater he was wearing.
His fingers closed around a familiar shape and, as the approaching man stopped and took aim, Bronson rolled sideways behind a vertical gravestone. As he moved, he racked back the slide of the automatic pistol with his left hand to chamber a round.
His movement took him just beyond the gravestone and, as he emerged from that fragile shelter, he aimed the pistol straight at the approaching figure, who swung his pistol towards him and fired two rapid shots.
Bronson flinched as a copper-jacketed nine-millimetre bullet slammed into the gravestone right beside him, but he held his aim and squeezed the trigger.
During his short career as an army officer, Bronson had become quite proficient with the Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol, then the standard officer’s sidearm, but he also knew how inaccurate such weapons were at anything other than very close range. So he wasn’t surprised when his shot went wide.
But his target was clearly shocked to be under attack himself. He turned and ran, dodging around the gravestones as he fled.
Bronson rose cautiously to his feet, the pistol he’d grabbed – which he now saw actually was a nine-millimetre Browning, the weapon he’d got so used to firing in the Army – still pointing towards the fleeing figure. The second man had also taken to his heels, and was a few yards ahead of his accomplice, a bulky bag clutched in his left hand.
Bronson glanced down at the man lying on the ground. He was obviously unconscious, and no doubt would remain that way for some time. The noise of the shots had echoed around the island, and Bronson knew that people would start heading towards the area very soon, which would add to the confusion. He looked over at the tomb, at the two fleeing men, and made a decision.
What he should do was call the police, hand over the thug he’d knocked out and explain that he was one of the men who’d attacked him and Angela the previous evening. The problem was that he had absolutely no proof. And he knew only too well how the corporate police mind works: the most likely result of such actions would be that he – Bronson – would face a charge of assault or the Italian equivalent of grievous bodily harm.
No, that was never going to work. Even if by some miracle Bronson managed to avoid being arrested, it would be hours before his assailant would be in a fit state to answer questions himself. The best chance of finding Angela lay with the two men who were now about seventy yards away from him and running hard.
Bending over the unconscious man, Bronson unsnapped both the belt holster and the leather pouch containing the two spare magazines for the Browning, and put them in his pocket.
Then he sprinted after his quarry.
41
Angela shook her head, and moved on. A second, much shorter, sentence followed, but two of the words in it were not listed in the Latin dictionary she was using. The translated sentence read: There the open graves yawn ready where the fires burned in ages past, in the place where a little man once strutted and postured, and where a little veglia funebre once held sway.
For a few moments, she stared at what she’d written. It sounded like directions to a specific place, and she had a vague idea what at least one of the two non-Latin words might mean, because it wasn’t that different to a familiar English word. She looked at the desk in front of her, and at the other books and dictionaries stacked on it. One of them was a pocket-sized Italian–English dictionary. She picked it up, flicked through the pages until she reached the letter ‘v’, and read the entry for veglia. She didn’t need to look up funebre, because the combination of the two words was listed in that entry.
A veglia funebre was a wake, or a vigil for the dead. Angela had guessed at the possible meaning of funebre because it looked so similar to the English ‘funeral’, or at least it probably had the same root.
Something else puzzled her about the way the sentence had been constructed. From what she kne
w of Italians, she doubted that any vigil for the dead could be described as ‘little’, and the repetition of the same phrase, the three Latin words which translated as ‘little’ – parvus minor minimus – so close together in the same sentence seemed to provide an unusual degree of emphasis, as if the writer was trying to convey some additional information.
Then there was the ‘little man’. Angela didn’t know a huge amount about Italian, and especially Venetian, history, but she did know that Napoleon had conquered Venice in the last decade of the eighteenth century, ending eleven hundred years of independence. His troops had sacked and virtually bankrupted the city; they had seized many of its most valuable treasures, shipping them off to Paris, where many remain to this day. He’d even stolen the Triumphal Quadriga – or Horses of St Mark – the famous bronze statues which for some time had graced the top of a triumphal arch in the French capital before the Venetians managed to have them returned.
When anybody spoke about Napoleon, the expressions ‘petty tyrant’ and ‘little man’ were often used as pejorative terms, though in reality the Emperor was of about average height for the time. The Venetians loathed him, for perfectly obvious and understandable reasons, and the expression Carmelita had used – where a little man once strutted and postured – could well refer to somewhere in Venice where Napoleon had spent some time – a district in the city, perhaps, or one of the islands. She couldn’t think of any other historical figure who was likely to have been referred to as the ‘little man’.
Then she had another thought, picked up the Italian–English dictionary again, and turned the pages until she reached the English word ‘little’. The Italian equivalent was po, poco, pochi and other forms, depending on the noun being qualified, with poco probably the commonest. Angela wrote down all the variants at the bottom of the page she was working on, and added the two Italian words – veglia funebre – as well. Maybe there was a district of Venice called Poca Veglia or something similar.
There was a tourist map of the Venetian lagoon in the pile of books in front of her. She unfolded it and checked the names of the six districts, or sestieri, of the city, but none was even slightly similar to what she was looking for. Then she expanded her search to the islands of the lagoon, moving outwards from Venice itself. Even then, she nearly missed it, because she was expecting to see something like ‘Isola di Poca Veglia’, and she was already checking the names in the southern end of the lagoon, near Chioggia, when her subconscious mind raised a flag. Her glance snapped back to the area between Venice and the Lido and there, due south of Venice itself, well away from any other islands and fairly close to the Lido, she saw it: Poveglia.
In fact, it wasn’t an island: it was three islands, shaped like an inverted triangle, with the point to the south. There was a small, regularly shaped, possibly even octagonal, island to the south, with two much larger landmasses, separated by a narrow canal that cut the island in two, directly to the north of it.
Angela looked back at the text she’d translated, and then again at the map of the Laguna Veneta. That had to be it. ‘Po’ and ‘veglia’ combined in a single word. That must be the place that Carmelita was referring to in her very simple and basic textual code.
But what about Napoleon? Was there any connection between the Emperor and the small island in the lagoon? One of the books stacked on the desk in front of her was an English-language guide to the history of Venice. She pulled it out of the pile, checked the index and then opened it to a section about midway through.
‘Yes,’ she breathed as she read the entry. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Emperor had used Poveglia as a storehouse for weapons, and there had been several vicious battles fought on and around the island. Napoleon definitely had a connection to the place, and might well have ‘strutted and postured’ there.
Angela was sure she’d identified the right island. But there had to be more to it than that. Just stating that the long-lost document was secreted on Poveglia was not enough: for a search to succeed, much more information was needed. Although the island looked reasonably small, she guessed it would still take a large team of people several days to search it.
She continued with her translation. The next line contained the word specula, which Angela had to look up. The dictionary suggested a number of translations, but a ‘tower’ or ‘watchtower’ seemed the most likely, and the Latin word campana or ‘bell’ seemed to confirm it. On the map of the lagoon it looked as if there was a tower of some sort at the southern end of the largest of the three islands.
She felt her excitement growing as she realized she might be close to identifying the exact place where the ancient document was hidden, but then her thoughts tumbled back down to earth with a bump when the further realization struck her. Marco would only keep her alive as long as she was useful to him, and the moment she had identified the hiding place and the old documents had been recovered, she didn’t think he would have any further use for her.
Could she delay completing the translation? Or would Marco guess what she was trying to do and impose a brutal punishment in retribution? Angela shuddered as she remembered the jar and its collection of hideous relics, and bent forward again over the pages.
She heard a soft footfall on the wooden floor behind her and glanced round to see Marco looking over her shoulder at the work she was doing.
‘You’ve found something,’ he said, more a statement than a question.
Angela nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’
‘Show me.’
She pointed to the last sentence she’d translated. ‘The author of this section of the text employed a fairly simple word code, but it looks to me as if she was referring to an island called Poveglia. Have you heard of it?’
Marco nodded, almost sadly. ‘Every Venetian knows about Poveglia,’ he said quietly.
42
When the guard arrived with her midday meal, Marietta stared at him listlessly. She absolutely believed what he’d said to her that morning, and she’d resigned herself to the fact that she was going to die, painfully and unpleasantly, in that damp cellar within a matter of hours. There was no point in even attempting to establish a rapport with the man, of asking for mercy or anything else. His callous attitude towards her, and towards Benedetta, had become obvious. As far as the guard and the other men were concerned, Marietta and all of the other nameless victims of the bizarre cult were simply animals who would be slaughtered when their time came.
The guard followed his usual routine and placed the tray on the floor close to the wooden bed, then picked up the other tray he’d brought down that morning. Despite the terror that bubbled inside her, Marietta had eventually eaten all the food he’d supplied, just as she expected she would finally eat whatever meal she had now been provided with.
‘This is your last meal,’ the guard said, glancing at her, ‘so you might as well make the most of it. I’ll bring warm water and a towel for you to wash yourself later this afternoon, ready for the ceremony tonight.’
‘And if I refuse? If I simply tell you and your revolting friends to go to hell, what then?’
The guard shrugged. ‘That’s your choice,’ he said, ‘but if you don’t do what we want, you’ll taste the taser again. And if you still don’t cooperate, I’ll ask a couple of the men to come down here and have a bit of fun with you before the ceremony. They’ll enjoy it, but I don’t suppose you will. It’s up to you, really.’
Marietta held herself together until the man had walked out of the cellar, then she dissolved into tears.
43
Bronson sprinted across the graveyard after the fleeing men. He paused for a few seconds beside the tomb of the twin angels, staring at it with a sense of déjà vu. The stone side of the grave had been smashed open – a hammer and chisel were lying on the ground beside the shattered stone – and what was left of the ancient coffin was scattered about. The grave itself was obviously very old, and most of the wood had long since disintegrated to reveal the skeletal remains
of the tomb’s occupant. This corpse had also been decapitated, but this time the head was nowhere in sight. Could that explain what was in the bag that one of the men had been carrying?
Bronson shook his head and set off in pursuit of the two men. He wasn’t concerned about them getting too far ahead of him, because they must have used a boat to get to the island. From the direction they were running, this boat was moored in the inlet at the northern end of the island, where Bronson’s own vessel was tied up.
The last thing he wanted to do was storm on to the jetty and start a firefight. He needed the two men to make their getaway, so that he could go after them.
Instead of following right behind the two men, he angled over to one side and did his best to increase speed, though having to dodge around gravestones and tree trunks hampered his progress somewhat. The sound of a powerboat engine starting close to him – just a few yards away – indicated that he must be right by the jetty. He stopped and made his way cautiously in the direction from which the sound had come.
In a couple of seconds he reached the edge of the jetty, but remained out of sight as he surveyed the scene in front of him. A blue powerboat was already about ten yards out from the water’s edge, and gathering speed. The man who’d shot at him was sitting in the bow staring back towards the island, his pistol held low in his right hand, clearly waiting for Bronson to show himself, while the other man concentrated on getting the boat away from the jetty as quickly as possible.
Bronson memorized what the men were wearing and the colour and type of the boat, and waited until they turned right out of the inlet, and the craft was lost to view. Then he stepped on to the jetty, ran down to where his own boat was moored, released the line and climbed aboard, starting the engine as he sat down on the padded seat. He opened the throttle and the boat surged forwards. He pulled it round in a tight circle and headed for the entrance to the inlet, then swung the wheel to the right, to follow the other craft.
