The Venice Conspiracy

by Sam Christer

  His biceps find some hidden strength and crunch him up and over.

  Tom stays low. As still as a statue. Lets the water drip off his clothing and puddle around his bare feet.

  Ostende nobis, Domine Satanus, potentiam tuam.

  The high priest puts down the incense and takes a silver tray from the deacon.

  On it are two shining silver tablets.

  Tom’s mind spins. The Gates of Destiny. The very objects Alfie had described to him. After all the talk of legends, it’s a shock to physically see them.

  Two of the artefacts are laid out on Tina’s body. He can see one positioned above her breasts and one below her vagina. But where’s the third? Tom knows enough about these rituals to understand Tina is being used as a human altar, and shortly the high priest will violate her as part of his offering.

  His eyes dart to the space behind the high priest. The deacon now has an old silver goblet in his hand, filled by the look of it with blood. Tom’s left wrist itches, almost as though it recognises its own property.

  The deaconess comes back into view.

  She’s holding the third tablet in front of her face. Kissing it. Lifting it.

  The Satanists turn towards Tom. He must have made a noise.

  The deaconess suddenly flies at him. Hands like claws. Fingers grabbing for his flesh and eyes.

  Tom swats her away, like he would a low-flying bird.

  He hears the tablet hit the decking and her body splash in the water behind him.

  The deacon grabs a ceremonial knife from the altar. It’s strangely shaped, like something a carpenter or sculptor would use.

  Tom grips the iron bar in two hands, shifts his balance from one foot to the other, creates a moving target as the deacon advances.

  He waits for the inevitable lunge.

  Cracks the bar across the deacon’s wrist, then whips the iron in a low half-circle that’s hard enough to shatter a kneecap. The deacon crumples into a screaming heap and Tom steps around him.

  He hears thunder.

  Hears it but can’t place it. It’s all around him and his body is shaking.

  The high priest is holding a pistol.

  Tom can see smoke around the barrel. From the look on the gunman’s face he’s expecting Tom to fall.

  He’s been shot.

  He knows he has but he can’t yet feel it.

  Tom glances down. Blood is dripping onto the wood. But he still can’t feel it.

  Now the pain arrives.

  Hot and angry. Raw and intense. The bullet’s gone clean through his left hand, piercing the web of flesh between his thumb and index finger.

  The high priest fires again.

  The shot zips over Tom’s left shoulder. He rushes towards the smoking barrel, swings the iron bar one-handed. It connects with a rib but the Satanist pushes Tom into the side of the wooden altar.

  Tom loses his footing – and cracks his head on the decking.

  The high priest raises his pistol towards Tom’s fallen body.

  Another shot rings out.

  Then another.

  Tom’s still on the deck recovering from the fall when the high priest drops beside him. Shot dead.

  One to the head. Dead centre. Another in the heart.

  Valentina Morassi lowers her weapon.

  Tom crawls away from the corpse and groggily lurches towards Tina.

  She’s out of it. Spiked full of sedative.

  Soldiers are everywhere now. He’s still holding Tina’s face as a Carabinieri paramedic moves him to one side and checks her pulse and breathing. Valentina holsters her gun as she walks towards Tom. ‘I thought I told you to stay by the trees.’

  He almost manages a smile. ‘It was good advice. I should have taken it.’ They pause as two officers pass them with the now-unmasked deacon – a small-time businessman from the mainland.

  Other soldiers lift Tina and carry her out of the boathouse. ‘Will she be okay?’ Tom asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Valentina. ‘We’ve got good equipment on the boats, they’ll treat her quickly.’

  He glances down at his injured hand, still dripping blood on to the decking boards. ‘This isn’t over, you know.’ He motions to the dead high priest, now flat on his back with his mask off. ‘Whoever this guy is, he was only part of it. Lars Bale planned something much bigger than just this.’

  Valentina looks towards the man she killed. ‘I know who he is. It’s Dino Ancelotti – Fabianelli’s lawyer.’ She nods at Tom’s hand. ‘We need to get stitches in that.’

  He’s about to say something brave when two male soldiers drag the deaconess past them.

  ‘Wait!’ shouts Valentina. ‘I need to talk to this witch.’

  CHAPTER 82

  San Quentin, California

  All Lars Bale has seen of the Death Watch wing is his eight-by-eight-foot cell. That, and the ugly mug of the guard earning overtime watching him twenty-four seven.

  Out of his view lie fifteen other rooms, including the death chamber itself, the holding area for his corpse, the press viewing area, staff rooms, equipment rooms, viewing areas on one side for those associated with the victim, and on the other side for those linked to the prisoner.

  Behind the scenes, a whole army of people are hard at work planning how to kill him and how to process the good, the bad and the ugly who’ve come to watch him die.

  Officer Jim Tiffany has walked every foot of the complex in the last hour, checking things over. He’s one of several guards who volunteered to be part of the execution team. After his earlier altercations with Bale, today is personal.

  It’s payback.

  Tiffany feels a delicious thrill as he shouts through the high-security door. ‘Get up, Bale. Turn around. Hands behind your back.’

  The prisoner slowly does as he’s told, sticking his wrists through a gap in the bars.

  Tiffany and two other guards snap on cuffs, open up the door and then add leg chains before hobbling him off to the shake-down room. ‘Turn again. We’re going to un-cuff you and then we need you to strip for a medical.’

  ‘How ironic,’ says Bale, his voice sounding tired and bored. ‘You are legally obliged to examine me, presumably to make sure that I’m healthy enough to die.’

  Tiffany steps up close to him. ‘Just do it, smartmouth.’

  As Bale begins to strip, a guard lets a nervous young doctor into the room. He pulls on a pair of ghostly white latex gloves and – as advised by the governor – painstakingly avoids eye contact with the inmate as he starts the routine of checking his pulse and blood pressure.

  ‘What are you doing, Doc?’ Bale asks, as the medic runs his gloved fingers up the inside of the prisoner’s right forearm.

  Tiffany answers for him. ‘He’s trying to find a vein, Bale. Looking for the best place to hose you full of killer drugs.’

  The young doctor turns his head and shoots the old guard a horrified scowl. He then returns to the task of checking the back of Bale’s hands, the tops of his feet, ankles and lower legs. He makes notes then nods to the officers and retreats to the back of the room. He hasn’t said anything and doesn’t say anything – he wants out as quickly as possible. The whole thing makes his skin crawl. He pulls off his gloves, bins them and waits to be buzzed through the electronically locked door.

  ‘Cuff him again,’ instructs Tiffany, ‘we’re ready to take him back to his cell.’ The big guard smiles in Bale’s face. ‘If it was me, I’d stick the needle right in your eye and it’d take me until Thanksgiving to inject enough chemicals to put you to sleep.’ He glances at his watch. ‘One hour, you piece of shit, one hour’s all you’ve got left.’

  CHAPTER 83

  Lazzaretto Vecchio, Venice

  Mera Teale no longer looks or feels quite as sexy as she did a few hours ago. The Satanic deaconess is bleeding, bruised and soaked from her dip in the boathouse water, the place where she and Dino Ancelotti took so many innocent lives.

  Valentina has no time for the
protocol of a courteous and judicious interrogation. She walks the handcuffed Teale outside the boathouse, away from everyone else. ‘So here’s how it goes. Either you tell me everything you know, or I put a bullet through your head and make it look like you were escaping.’

  Teale smiles. ‘You really are as sexy as fuck when you’re mad. I wish I had my camera right now.’

  Valentina holds Teale’s shoulders and expertly back-kicks her to her knees. Within a flash she has her Beretta drawn and pushed into the floored Satanist’s mouth. ‘I swear to Christ I will kill you if you don’t start helping me.’

  Whether it’s the taste of gunmetal between her teeth or the look of sheer rage in Valentina’s eyes, Teale is persuaded it’s time to cooperate. Her eyes signal total submission.

  Valentina drags her to her feet and re-holsters the weapon. ‘So, tell me.’

  Teale’s lost her arrogance now. ‘I don’t know much. Just that there are bombs.’

  ‘Bombs?’

  ‘One at the Ponte della Libertà. Another in Venezuela at Angel Falls. And one in America. At the Venetian – the hotel in Las Vegas.’ A twitch of a smile touches her lips. A reminder of the old Teale. ‘You’re too late to stop them.’

  Valentina’s in shock. She’s made a terrible mistake. It’s not Muscle Beach in Venice. She calls it in to the control room and prays they can warn the Americans in time.

  CHAPTER 84

  Carvalho’s instructions to clear and close the Ponte della Libertà are relayed at lightning speed.

  But Italians are not good at doing things in a hurry.

  By the time the major gets there, the roadway is still jammed with tourists. The more his men try to hurry them, the more tempers break, horns sound and everything grinds to a halt.

  The bridge, opened by Mussolini in 1933, is more than three kilometres long and has no emergency lanes. It is Venice’s only road connection to the village of Mestre and beyond it, mainland Italy. Known as ‘the Freedom Bridge’, Vito supposes Bale picked it because it signifies his own imminent freedom from prison.

  Vito gazes out along the perfectly rectilinear bridge and its two hundred and twenty-two arches. He remembers being told at school that it was specifically designed so it could be rigged with explosives and blown up, with the intention of leaving attacking armies stranded on the mainland. There’s no telling the extent of the damage Bale’s explosion is going to have. Vito knows he can’t search every arch in time.

  Search teams have been concentrated at both ends – the places he suspects detonators may be rigged.

  He’s now at the northern section, the San Guiliano access point, just before where the SR11 forks right into the SS14 and left into the Via della Libertà.

  Rocco Baldoni appears from a small boat looking absolutely terrified. The bottom of his grey trousers are soaking wet. ‘We’ve found the charges! Explosives rigged to a timer set in the third arch down from the water’s edge.’

  Carvalho still has his eye on the long tail of traffic. ‘What’s it look like?’

  ‘Complicated. It’s a sealed unit, with a digital clock and key-pad trigger.’

  ‘Motion sensors? Pick-up switches? Power loops?’

  Rocco wipes sweat from his forehead. ‘Maybe, but I didn’t see any. It’s high-tech. Looks as if it’s been in position for a while.’

  ‘And it’s ticking?’

  ‘It’s ticking. Display shows fifteen minutes and counting.’

  ‘Where’s the bomb squad now?’

  ‘On their way. But, Major, they’re coming from Padua, they’ll never make it.’

  Vito looks at his watch: 2.45 p.m. That means it’s 5.45 a.m. in California. Fifteen minutes to Bale’s execution. ‘You know anything about defusing bombs?’

  Rocco smiles. ‘Only what I’ve seen on TV.’

  Choices roll like dice in the major’s mind. Can he hope the bridge clears in time? The device malfunctions? The bomb squad arrives and saves the day?

  He knows he can’t risk it.

  ‘Show me, Rocco. Show me the damned thing for myself.’

  CHAPTER 85

  Death Watch, North Block Rotunda,

  San Quentin, California

  They come quickly into the holding cell.

  Bale says nothing.

  Fears nothing.

  He’s been expecting them.

  Big, leathery hands frisk him for a final time.

  Metal cuffs click tight around his wrists. A jangling Martin chain loops noisily around his waist. Leg restraints clunk around his ankles. He can smell beer and tobacco on the bodies around him. A surreptitious smoke and jolt of Dutch courage before they set about their duties.

  ‘Move the prisoner.’ The voice is not a guard’s this time, it’s Governor McFaul’s.

  Bale smiles as he passes him.

  Smiles every step of the way to the L-shaped Prep Room that adjoins the Lethal Chamber.

  And he’s going to keep on smiling, right through each and every one of his last minutes on earth.

  05.50.00 California

  10 minutes to go

  14.50.00 Venice

  ‘Madonna Porce!’ Vito Carvalho has never seen a detonation device so high-tech and clean. ‘There’s no way of getting to the wires. The whole unit is sealed.’

  ‘It needs a password,’ observes Rocco, somewhat un necessarily.

  ‘Oh, really?’ Vito answers sarcastically. ‘You have one handy?’

  Rocco looks stressed. ‘I guess we have to guess.’

  ‘You guess we guess? Thanks, bright spark. And if I get it wrong?’

  ‘We’re dead. Or you get another go.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He takes off his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. The armpits and back of his shirt are already soaked in sweat.

  Perspiration runs off Rocco’s head as he stares at the display. ‘You usually get several attempts with electronic-key locks. It must be built to be deactivated as well as primed. Even bombers need to reset things.’

  The digital display drops to show six minutes.

  The space above the keypad allows for five numbers or five letters.

  Vito doesn’t say anything. He types in: 66666 and feels his heart hammer in his chest.

  The display flashes – ERROR – then goes blank again.

  Vito tries a word: SATAN.

  ERROR.

  The device beeps. A red light flashes.

  He takes a deep breath and looks towards Rocco. ‘What do you think that means?’

  Rocco mops more sweat from his brow. ‘It probably means you only have one last chance.’

  One. Never has so small a number presented Vito with so big a problem.

  Both men swallow hard.

  The display drops to five minutes.

  ‘Or perhaps no more chances,’ Rocco adds.

  Vito stares at the digits.

  A shiver runs through him.

  He’s stuck.

  Clean out of ideas.

  From here on in, whatever he does is just a gamble.

  05.50.00 California

  5 minutes to go

  14.55.00 Venice

  If the scene shocks Bale, he doesn’t show it.

  The gurney.

  The two trays of syringes.

  The eagerly waiting members of the hand-picked injection team.

  The witnesses, like fish behind glass, open-mouthed in their viewing tanks.

  Bale shows nothing but his smile.

  He’s shepherded into the anteroom and sits on the gurney. Swings his feet up like he’s visiting the dentist, then lies down without a fight.

  They secure him to its winged arms. Leather belts around his wrists and ankles. He feels like he’s laid out on a horizontal crucifix.

  Someone taps his forearm to raise a vein.

  His blue snakes slither treacherously from their pink blankets, greedy to suck up the poison.

  His death-row shirt is deftly unfastened.

  ECG pads are moistened and stuck with jelly
to his chest.

  Leads plugged to a monitor.

  Needles and catheters appear at a magician’s speed.

  Eight needles.

  A sequence to be meticulously followed.

  Bale appreciates the need for routine. Routine and ritual were always important to him, especially when he was taking a life.

  A saline drip goes up.

  A monitor beeps.

  ECG graph paper crinkles.

  Someone coughs.

  The end is beginning.

  A new beginning is only minutes away.

  05.59.30 California

  30 seconds to go

  14.59.30 Venice

  The timer on the detonator shows thirty seconds.

  Vito Carvalho struggles to think of a new sequence.

  Instinctively, he sifts away the unimportant.

  Eliminates the unnecessary.

  Hones in on the headline.

  The one thing at the heart of it all.

  The timer shows twenty-five seconds.

  If he gets it wrong, then he, Rocco and hundreds of others will die.

  He types the first digit.

  Please God, look after Maria. If I die, then please make sure she is cared for and loved.

  The second.

  There are parents and children in cars on the bridge, please let them live.

  The third.

  Babies in carrier seats, kids listening to iPods, protect them, O Lord.

  The fourth.

  God forgive me for my sins. What I have done I have done in failure, not in malice. Forgive me my failings as I have forgiven others.

  The fifth.

  He’s mistyped!

  The device clunks. The display shows five angles lines –

  / / / / /

  The counter registers ten seconds – then suddenly jumps to zero.

  Vito swallows.