by James Becker
As he emerged into the open waters of the Venetian lagoon, he looked ahead. The blue boat was already perhaps a hundred yards in front of him, heading more or less east. But, as he turned in the same direction, the man in the bow pointed urgently back towards him. The other man glanced behind as well, and immediately turned the boat to the right.
Bronson knew he’d been spotted, and cursed. Wherever the two men had been heading, they were obviously not going that way any longer. They had turned south-west, towards Venice, and Bronson guessed their intentions. If they’d stayed out in the open waters, he’d have been able to follow them even at a distance. No doubt they were now heading into the city so that they could try to lose him in the notorious maze of Venice’s canals and waterways.
44
Angela looked up at Marco. He seemed strangely subdued by her mention of the island.
‘What is it about Poveglia?’ she asked.
He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. ‘You really don’t know?’ he replied. ‘Your ignorance staggers me.’
He reached forward, plucked a book out of the pile on the desk and slammed it down in front of her. ‘It’s all in here,’ he snapped. ‘Read it and educate yourself.’
Pulling a mobile phone from his pocket, Marco stalked across to the other side of the drawing-room and held a brief conversation with someone. It sounded as if he was issuing orders.
Angela glanced after him, then down at the book. It looked like a fairly typical multi-language tourist guide to Venice, but the title promised that it would reveal the hidden stories of the Venetian lagoon: ‘the Venice that tourists never see’, as the author claimed. The introduction pointed out that the city hosted around three million tourists every year, although most of them never got beyond Venice itself and the islands of Murano and Burano. There was a short chapter that dealt only with Poveglia, and by the time she’d finished reading it, Angela knew exactly why Carmelita had talked about the ‘ancient dead’ and the ‘screaming dead’.
The dead on Poveglia greatly outnumbered the living in Venice. The island was covered in plague pits, a legacy of one of the most terrible periods in Venetian history. In the outbreak of 1576 alone, it was estimated that fifty thousand people had died from bubonic plague. Fifty thousand was only about ten thousand less than the total population of the old city today. And there had been at least twenty-two attacks of the plague before that one. According to some calculations, the bones of over one hundred and sixty thousand people lay in shallow graves on Poveglia.
The island had been used as a lazaretto, a quarantine station, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in an attempt to prevent the spread of infectious diseases to Venice. The city was a maritime republic, almost entirely dependent upon trade for its survival, and visiting traders who wished to step ashore in Venice would first be required to undergo a lengthy period of isolation. In fact, it was the Venetians who invented the concept of quarantine, the word deriving from the Italian quaranta giorni, or ‘forty days’.
But even this procedure clearly hadn’t protected the city from the ravages of the Black Death, as the sheer number of deaths throughout that period bore witness. The city authorities had been ruthless in their attempts to keep Venice clear of the plague. Anyone displaying the slightest signs of infection would be shipped out immediately to Poveglia or one of the other lazarettos in the lagoon. One island was actually named after this function: Lazzaretto Nuovo.
According to the author of the book, it was popularly believed that weak but still-living victims of the plague were either tossed on the burning funeral pyres or thrown into the plague pits amongst the decomposing bodies, and then buried alive. Angela thought that the expression ‘screaming dead’ barely even hinted at the horrific events that must have taken place on Poveglia some half a millennium earlier.
And the horrors apparently hadn’t stopped there. Much later, in the early twentieth century, a mental hospital had been built on the island. Some of the inmates had reportedly been subjected to inhuman tortures, mutilated and then butchered by a notoriously sadistic doctor. This man had apparently then gone mad himself, and had climbed to the top of the old bell tower and jumped to his death.
It was no wonder that the island was hardly ever mentioned in the guidebooks, and was almost never visited. In fact, the book stated that Poveglia was officially off-limits to everyone, locals and visitors. Angela couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone could possibly want to go there. And that, of course, meant that it would provide an excellent hiding place for the ancient document Marco was seeking.
She put the book to one side and turned back to her translation, but the text didn’t seem to provide any further details of where the source document might be hidden. Angela looked at the detailed map that was included in the chapter on Poveglia, jotted down a few notes, principally dates and events, and then sat back.
She didn’t think it would have been buried in the ground somewhere, not least because of the plague pits that were the dominant feature of the island’s soil, so that left one of the ruined buildings on Poveglia. The document couldn’t possibly be hidden in the lunatic asylum – part of which had apparently also been used as a retirement home for senior citizens, a thought which made Angela shudder again – because the building hadn’t been erected until 1922. Several of the other structures were also comparatively recent, certainly built after Carmelita’s death.
The oldest structure on the island was the bell tower, the only surviving remnant of the twelfth-century church of San Vitale, which had been abandoned and then destroyed hundreds of years earlier. The translation Angela had completed was quite specific. It stated that after the source document had been prepared it had then been secreted beside the guardian in the new place where the legions of the dead reign supreme. Apart from the reference to the ‘guardian’, which still bothered her because she didn’t fully understand it, the meaning was perfectly clear. The document had originally been hidden somewhere else but, after Carmelita had seen it, for some reason it had then been concealed in a different hiding place.
If her reading of the Latin was correct, and assuming the document still existed, that meant there was only one place it could possibly have been hidden on Poveglia: it had to be somewhere in the bell tower.
45
Marietta lay on her back on the thin and uncomfortable mattress, eyes wide open and staring at the cracked and discoloured plaster on the ceiling above her. The food tray sat untouched on the floor beside the bed.
When the guard had casually, callously, confirmed her worst fears, when she had finally realized that there really was no hope, it had driven all other thoughts from her mind. The idea of eating or drinking didn’t even occur to her. Her mind was filled with vivid images of the horrendous events of the previous evening – of Benedetta strapped on the stone table, struggling futilely against her bonds, her screams reduced to muffled grunts and moans as she was violently raped and her blood drained from the wound on her neck.
Now, Marietta knew what fate awaited her, knew that sometime – sometime soon – the guards would appear in the cellar and instruct her to wash her body. Would she resist? And, if so, how? There were no weapons she could use against her captors, no arguments or persuasion that would do anything to alter the events she knew would take place in the next few hours.
The choice was stark. Marietta was a fighter. But she was also a realist. If she refused to obey orders she knew the guards would simply rape her or beat her into submission, or just strip her naked and then hose her down. Her best, and in fact her only, choice was to do it the easy way: do her best to detach her mind from the awful reality of what was going to happen to her and hope it would all be over quickly.
She thought again of her family, of her father and mother, and of the mental anguish she knew they would be feeling after her disappearance. When they’d read reports in the newspapers, or seen television programmes about the other girls who had vanished from the stree
ts of Venice, her mother had always said that the worst part was the uncertainty. For a mother, not knowing if her daughter was alive or dead was a burden not many could bear. At least if a body was found, the grieving process could start: the news would be devastating, in the proper sense of that word, but the family would be able to make their farewells, and then try their best to move on.
But when a person vanished, leaving no trace behind, every waking moment would be a torture. That could be the day where two grim-faced police officers would knock at the door to bring the final, dreadful news. Or – and this was the hope that Marietta was sure every mother would cling to – perhaps that would be the day when her daughter would at last walk back through the door.
Marietta closed her eyes again, but still the tears came, coursing down her cheeks, because she knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, that her own mother would never, ever, find out what had happened to her. And she felt her heart breaking as she realized this.
She took a deep breath and tried to get herself back under control. She knew she was going to die, but she was determined to do her best to die with dignity, not to scream, not to shout. And, above all, not to cry. She rubbed angrily at her cheeks with her free hand. She would show them.
She was a Venetian, after all, descended – so she’d been told – from important, perhaps even noble, blood. No matter what they did to her, she would cling to what shreds of dignity she could during her ordeal.
46
Angela was so engrossed in what she was doing that she didn’t see or hear the drawing-room door swing open. She was just suddenly aware of a pungent and acrid smell, and of Marco jumping to his feet.
She turned round in her chair to look behind her and saw a figure clad in an all-enveloping black cloak, the hood covering his face, moving silently across the wooden floor towards her. She started to rise, but immediately Marco shouted out to her, ‘Sit down and face the wall.’
The smell grew stronger as the figure approached, and Angela was seized by an overwhelming feeling of horror and dread, made worse by the uncanny silence with which the man moved. Even though she couldn’t see him, because she was obeying Marco’s commands to the letter and staring fixedly at the wall behind the desk, she knew that the man had stopped directly behind her.
Marco strode across towards her as well, and stood beside her.
‘We may have it, Master,’ he said, pointing down at Angela’s translations of the Latin text.
‘Where?’ The voice was little more than a whisper, a sibilant hiss.
‘Poveglia,’ Marco said.
There was a short silence as the new arrival apparently digested this information, and then Angela heard his quiet voice again. ‘Get the boat ready,’ he said, ‘and bring her as well.’
47
Bronson pushed the throttle all the way forward to the stop, and the bow of the speedboat lifted in response to the increased revolutions of the outboard engine’s propeller.
Ahead of him, the blue powerboat had also increased speed, and was now clearly heading directly towards the square inlet on the northern side of Venice that was known as the Sacca della Misericordia. There were two canals that opened off the inlet, and any number of smaller canals that connected with those two. Bronson knew that once they got into the canal system, he would have his work cut out trying to keep track of them, so he kept up his speed, heedless of the increasing number of boats manoeuvring in the water around him.
The blue powerboat swung left into the Sacca della Misericordia, weaving around vaporettos and gondolas and launches and various other types of craft, the driver pushing the boat much too quickly in the congested waters.
Behind him, Bronson was starting to close the gap, simply because he wasn’t yet in the thick of the water traffic. But as he, too, entered the inlet, he was forced to reduce speed considerably. A vaporetto was heading straight for him, probably aiming for the Fondamente Nuove vaporetto stop down to the south-east, and Bronson was forced to turn the boat hard to the right to avoid a collision. He straightened up and steered around the passenger craft, the driver shaking his fist angrily at Bronson and mouthing expletives as he, too, took evasive action. Bronson ignored him, his attention still fixed on his quarry as he instinctively manoeuvred the boat around all the other vessels in the congested area.
The blue powerboat steered to the left of the Sacca della Misericordia and, still travelling quickly, started heading down the Rio di Noale canal, which would lead them directly to the Grand Canal and its myriad tributaries. Bronson knew that if his quarry managed to reach there, they could vanish into any one of the smaller canals, and he would probably never see them again. At all costs, he had to keep them in sight.
He increased speed as much as he dared – smashing the boat into the side wall of the canal or into another vessel would absolutely ensure that his pursuit would end prematurely – and powered into the canal after them.
A short distance down the canal the waterway split in a Y-junction, the wider Rio di Noale veering to the right, while a slightly narrower canal, the Rio di San Felice, lay straight ahead. That was the quickest route straight through to the Grand Canal, Bronson guessed, as the blue boat kept to the left of the stone breakwater that marked the junction.
Then he saw something that made him smile. At the end of the canal, where it narrowed still further, was a veritable logjam of gondolas, all manoeuvring either in or out of the Grand Canal at the junction ahead. The blue powerboat would have to slow down to a crawl to get through the mêlée. Either that, or they’d have to take a different route.
In fact, the blue boat did both: it slowed and turned. Bronson saw the wake diminish markedly as the driver pulled back the throttle, slowing down, and then accelerated again as he steered the boat into the entrance to another canal on the left-hand side.
Bronson eased back the throttle, ensuring that he was travelling slowly enough to make the turn, then accelerated again once he was inside the other canal. The sound of the two fast revving engines on the boats echoed off the walls of the surrounding buildings, and the waves from their wakes slapped hard against the stones that lined the canal.
The waterway ran straight for a short distance, but at the end it swung through about ninety degrees to the left. There were also two other canals that had junctions with the one they were in, both on the left-hand side and leading away from the Grand Canal. Bronson had managed to keep up with the other boat so far, and he knew that he could go on chasing the two men through the canals of Venice until he ran out of fuel or miscalculated some corner and smashed up the boat, but this wouldn’t help him to find Angela. Instead, what he needed to do was convince the men he was chasing that he’d given up. He knew they wouldn’t head for home until they were sure he was no longer on their tail.
But how could he convince the two men that he was a spent force? At that moment he could think of only one way to do this. It was a risky manoeuvre, and if it went wrong, he’d be dead in minutes. It all depended on timing, and the inherent inaccuracy of semi-automatic pistols, especially when such pistols were being fired from an unstable platform, like a boat travelling at speed.
The driver of the blue boat turned the wheel hard to the left, steered the vessel into the first of the subsidiary canals and increased speed again. This canal was slightly narrower than the one they’d just left, and there were only a few other boats in it, mainly moored at various landing stages and jetties along the sides. There were no gondolas in sight. It was as good a place as any.
Bronson pulled the Browning semi-automatic pistol from his pocket, pointed it in the general direction of the boat in front of him, and pulled the trigger twice. The shots boomed out, deafeningly loud in the narrow canal. As far as he could see, neither bullet went anywhere near its target, but that wasn’t his intention. He wanted a reaction. A reaction he could use to his own advantage.
The driver of the blue boat obliged him.
He was just coming up to the entrance to another c
anal on the right, and swung the boat into it. As he did so, the man in the bow of the boat raised his own pistol and fired off a shot towards Bronson.
That was what he’d been waiting for. Pulling back on the throttle, Bronson spun the wheel hard to the right, to make sure that the boat would circle in more or less the same place. Then, rising in his seat, he clutched at his chest and slumped down out of sight, the Browning still in his hand, just in case the two men decided to come alongside his boat for a closer look.
From his position on the floor of the powerboat, Bronson could see nothing except the sky and the tops of the buildings that lined the canal, so he was relying entirely on his ears to deduce what was happening. He heard the sound of the engine of the other boat fade away sharply, which meant the driver had chopped back the throttle. Then the engine noise – and Bronson was sure it was the same engine – increased again, and appeared to be getting closer, though it was difficult to be certain of this because of the way the noise echoed from both sides of the man-made canyon. It certainly sounded as though the two men were approaching to make sure he was dead.
Bronson checked the Browning was ready to fire, and waited as the sound of the other boat’s engine grew louder.
48
About an hour later, Angela was taken out of the main door of the house into the pale watery light of a cloudy afternoon in the Venetian lagoon.
After the hooded man had left the drawing-room, Marco had instructed her to make a complete translation of the rest of that section of the diary as quickly as possible, obviously hoping that the remainder of the Latin text would provide details of the precise location of the source document. It didn’t. The only reference Angela found was to the ‘campanile of light’, which just served to confirm her assumption that the document must be somewhere in the ancient bell tower. From her reading of the chapter dealing with the history of Poveglia, she knew that the bell tower had for a time been converted into a lighthouse. But she still had no idea exactly where to start looking.
