The Spider Dance

by Nick Setchfield

  Deep in shadow, Winter and Libby stood in a doorway in the Avvocata district, just above the gilded sweep of Via Roma. There was a plaster Madonna nailed to the flaking masonry, the pale face of the Virgin regarding them above a stack of buzzers and nameplates. Another of the city’s legion of watchful spirits, and one of the big guns, too. Winter wished he had the faith to be grateful for her presence.

  They had an optimum view of the street. The far end was cordoned off with strips of luminous yellow tape that swayed as the breeze stirred. Within these flimsy plastic barriers was a workman’s tent, a tall rectangle of canvas staking out a sizable chunk of road. Each side of the tent bore the logo of the city’s gas company.

  An hour earlier two men in overalls had emerged from a slit in the canvas. A lighter had flared and the pair had shared cigarettes. Winter and Libby had watched from the doorway, too far from the men to catch their conversation. Judging by their easy body language and occasional laughter it was no more than banter. Minutes later the cigarettes were flicked, discarded, to the gutter and the men had returned inside the tent.

  Shortly after that the ground shook.

  Winter took it for an earth tremor at first. He felt the street shudder, a spasm of vibration, approaching and passing at speed, rolling towards Via Roma. It coursed beneath the cobbles as if a pulse of pure energy was punching through the stratum. The kinetic surge was enough to scatter a mob of birds, picking at bags of spoilt meat on the kerbside.

  The coast was tripwired, he knew. This entire region rested on a cradle of faultlines and volcanic triggers. But he had a feeling this was no tectonic shift. The buildings around them had stayed stable and no aftershocks had chased that first judder.

  It was a detonation charge. He was sure of it. A controlled explosion, deep underground.

  Winter exchanged a look with Libby as the shockwave receded. They had shared the same thought. Cesare’s project was progressing, whatever the hell he might be hunting beneath the pavements of Naples.

  Now Winter tilted his watch, angling the face out of the shadows. It was five past four. The van was late. The others had hit the hour mark precisely. This ad-hoc surveillance operation had begun shortly before midnight and in that time no less than four vans had come and gone, some carrying men, others equipment, all of them punctual.

  Ten minutes later a vehicle bearing gas-company branding turned into the road. Winter detached himself from the doorway, leaving Libby concealed. He stepped casually in front of the cream-coloured Lancia van, persuading it to halt.

  Framed by the headlights, Winter peered through the windscreen. He knew the man behind the wheel. One of the foot soldiers of I Senz’Ombr. This was either a very useful or a very dangerous thing, depending on how far news of his betrayal had travelled through the ranks of the Shadowless.

  Winter smiled blandly as he tried to evaluate the man’s expression. The eyes that met him through the glass were innately distrustful but there was none of the telltale tightening of the facial muscles that signalled hostility. He was also relieved to see a faint reflection against the windscreen, cast from inside the van. This wasn’t one of those undead bastards, at least.

  Winter motioned for the man to winch down the window. ‘Buongiorno.’

  The driver acknowledged him with a blunt nod. ‘What do you need?’

  The back of the van was empty, save for some boxes. Good. The man was alone. This was purely an equipment run.

  ‘Change of plan. Just been told. They want you underground. You bring them the tools. I’ll take the van back to base.’

  The eyes hardened. ‘No tools. This is cable. You should know the schedule.’

  Winter shrugged, hiding his irritation at the slip he’d made. ‘So many van runs. Too little sleep. You know what it’s like, amico.’

  He had made the words as matey as he could, one drone to another. The driver’s expression remained sceptical. Winter had never done chumminess terribly well.

  ‘I don’t see you here before,’ said the man at the wheel. There was a sharpness to this observation. ‘Since when were you part of the Avvocata operation?’

  Winter had the lipstick ready in his hand, the slim plastic cylinder pressed against his palm.

  ‘They keep moving me around. All over this city. It’s crazy, isn’t it? I don’t think they know what to do with an Englishman.’

  He had loosened the cap with a tiny click. Now he slid the shaft free.

  ‘Why would they need me in the tunnels?’ the driver demanded, as tired as he was suspicious. His eyes were red-rimmed in the early hours.

  Winter leaned into the open window, catching a tang of spirits on the man’s breath. ‘Quite frankly, they tell me shit all. But look, you’re late already. Don’t be in any more trouble.’

  The van continued to growl on the cobblestones. Winter’s hands were hidden below the door now. He palmed the cap and twisted the base of the lipstick, letting the camouflaged blade uncoil.

  He indicated the radio unit fixed to the dashboard. ‘Listen, why don’t you give them a call? They’ll confirm what I’ve told you. But do it quickly. You’re already wasting their time.’

  Considering this, the driver moved his gaze to the radio, breaking eye contact. As he reached to open the channel Winter thrust the compact blade to the side of the man’s throat, urging its edge against the skin. He spoke quickly and quietly.

  ‘Understand this. If I sever your carotid arteries you’ll be dead within minutes. And that’s me being merciful. I’ve inflicted this wound before. Unconsciousness precedes fatal blood loss. You’ll be in pain but not for long.’

  The pulse in the man’s throat brought his skin closer to the bite of the knife.

  ‘I don’t particularly need to kill you. I imagine you’re in no great rush to die. And to be honest I don’t have the patience to clean that much blood from this van. We’re both tired. Let’s make this easy.’

  The man was too mindful of the knife to nod, or make any move that might goad it to draw blood. There was a whine from the back of his throat that Winter took for acquiescence.

  ‘Good man.’

  Winter removed the blade. And then he seized the driver’s head and smashed it against the dash, concussing him.

  Capping the knife he tossed the lipstick to Libby. ‘Standard Sovereign Executive field issue? Amazed you didn’t use it on me.’

  She caught it as she stepped from the doorway. ‘Temptation’s a terrible thing, mate.’

  They moved quickly. The driver was bound with cable and stashed in the back of the van, another length of flex fixed tight between his teeth, gagging him. Winter took the remaining reel of cable. As he locked the rear doors he saw that Libby was screwing a silencer to her Webley & Scott revolver.

  ‘Give me your gun.’

  She made a final twist to the aluminium baffle. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because I don’t have a gun anymore.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I need a gun.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Winter held out his hand. ‘Just give me the bloody gun.’

  ‘Because you’re a bloke?’

  ‘Because I’m going in first.’

  Libby flashed an urchin grin. ‘Then I’ll cover you, won’t I? Don’t try and pull rank on me, Mr Winter. You’re not exactly in line for a service pension anymore.’

  Exasperated, Winter walked away from the van. The girl was right. He was in no position to demand her gun. But going into this unarmed made him edgy. There was a reassurance verging on dependency in the feel of a gun in your hand or strapped to your chest. Every field agent knew that sacred union of body and weapon.

  Then again bullets would be all but useless against Cesare and the other undead of the Shadowless. This had to be a reconnaissance mission; no confrontation. Slip in, slip out. Get the intelligence on the ground and let London unravel the mess. Faulkner, at least, could still be trusted. Winter surprised himself with that glimmer of loyalty.


  They stooped beneath the plastic barriers at the far end of the street. Libby hung back as Winter pushed through the canvas of the workman’s tent, carrying the cable that would buy him at least a moment of plausibility with anyone he encountered inside.

  The tent was empty. Only a portable stove and a trestle table, bearing a tatty copy of L’Europeo and two mugs of coffee dregs. Winter put his hand to the mugs. The ceramic was cool to the touch. They had sat there for some time.

  He flung the cable to one side and stepped to the edge of the hole ringed by the canvas. The crater in front of him crowned a vast, sepulchral wound in the earth, the shaft receding to a half-lit gloom below, far in the foundations of the city. The rock had been drilled to a depth, Winter estimated, of fifty feet. A rope ladder was bolted to the lip of the crevice, its rungs tumbling into the dank hollow.

  He whispered Libby’s name. She joined him at the crater’s edge and peered into the mouth of the pit. The base of the excavation had been rigged with electric light, enough to disclose that it adjoined a tunnel, branching to the left.

  ‘How far do you think this whole operation extends?’ she asked. The chasm gave her voice a hint of echo.

  ‘God knows. That detonation we felt could have been miles from here. This is only the keyhole to whatever’s down there…’

  ‘We’re going in, I take it?’

  Winter smiled despite himself. She had said it so brightly. Christ, she was painfully young. ‘You’re too bloody keen for this job, girl.’

  ‘Give me time. I’m sure I’ll be a narky old git like you eventually.’

  ‘Might even keep you alive.’

  Libby adjusted her cap with a smirk. ‘Do keep passing on the wisdom of the ancients, mate. But I’m the one with the gun.’

  Winter placed a foot on the rope ladder, testing it for support. The ladder sagged but held his weight. He began to make his way down, the wooden rungs swaying as they passed through his hands. Soon he was eye level with dark, porous rock. The air in the shaft was cool against his face, already laced with a subterranean chill.

  Libby watched from the edge of the crater, ready to follow the moment he dropped to the ground.

  Winter glanced down, in time to see a man in overalls emerge from the tunnel’s entrance.

  He froze, a hanging target, the boiler-suited figure framed between his shoes.

  ‘Parola d’ordine!’ the man called up, the voice booming through the shaft.

  He was demanding a password.

  ‘Parola d’ordine!’

  Winter rummaged for words. ‘I…’

  Again, even more insistently. ‘Parola d’ordine!’

  The shot came quicker than Winter anticipated.

  He twisted the rung the moment he saw the gun. Kicking at the wall he wrenched the rope away, evading the angle of fire as best he could. The ladder spun in the shaft. The bullet scraped the rock with a fleeting match-head glow.

  The man was aiming again. Winter fought to keep the ladder spinning. But the rope was tangling, suspending him in place. The second bullet barely missed him, its sparks leaping for his eyes.

  There was a soft, pneumatic hiss. Winter knew it at once. The kiss of a silencer. It was a strangely kind sound.

  The man slumped, Libby’s bullet embedded in a lung. So much for a simple reconnaissance, no confrontation.

  Winter let the ladder untwine then shinned down the rest of the rungs. He leapt the last few feet, landing on the hard layer of volcanic rock at the base of the shaft. The fallen figure in the overalls stared up at him, half-catatonic as blood thickened on his chest. He was still breathing but clearly not for long. Winter picked up the fallen gun, taking it for his own.

  He checked the chamber. The weapon was empty. Winter threw it back to the ground.

  ‘So where’s his mate?’ asked Libby, landing beside him, gun in hand. ‘There were two of them earlier.’

  Winter eyed the tunnel entrance. It was old, its sandstone walls chipped and eroded, the gloom beyond receding beneath a crush of rock. This passage had to date back centuries. ‘Keep close,’ he told her.

  Together they stepped into the underworld, into the chill and the half-dark.

  26

  It was a shadow city, a buried metropolis, an echo of Naples entombed in the earth.

  The Greeks had carved it from the core of volcanic rock beneath their streets. The compacted ash – as sturdy as it was workable – had been hollowed into a honeycomb of cavities and passageways. Winter could still see the pick-mark scars in the walls, left by the slave labourers, quarrying rock for the temples and villas of their masters. Muscle and blood had built this silent kingdom.

  The tunnel they had entered was cramped and icily moist. Libby took the lead, keeping her gun levelled as the passage broadened. Ahead of them stood a series of arches, a succession of stonework maws retreating into the distance. These archways were tiled with chunks of brick, overlapping like unkempt teeth. It gave the waiting path a hungry aspect.

  The air was stale but breathable. Winter imagined there had to be cracks in the vast arteries of rock, allowing oxygen to infiltrate the lower levels. More than anything he was struck by the absolute stillness of this hidden world. It was tangible, a weight against the senses, something cold and hushed and heavy as the accumulated centuries.

  They followed the trail of electric light. Soon the gradient began to deepen. The further they explored the more the ancient infrastructure revealed itself. Civilisation had existed here, in this dead, discarded maze. The ghost-lines of its geography could still be glimpsed. This was the imprint of another, infinitely older Naples, preserved in all its sprawl and emptiness. It was a place possessed by its own past.

  The Romans had taken this quarried-out labyrinth and turned it into a remarkable water system. Winter remembered that these tunnels had once functioned as an elaborate network of aqueducts and cisterns, serving the city above. No wonder the passages were so constricted – the tighter the tunnel the faster the flow of water through these subterranean veins. A cholera epidemic in the late nineteenth century had seen the tunnels sealed but the memory of water, the dark surge of its power, seemed to haunt these glistening, echoing spaces.

  ‘Take a look at this…’

  Libby kept her voice to a whisper but Winter could still hear it echo through the arcade of rock. He looked to where she was gesturing with her gun. Heaped against the sandstone wall was an incongruous assortment of objects. A portable stove, some pans, a grime-blackened doll in an equally filthy strawberry-print dress. Scattered a little further along were toy cars and a sewing machine. The jumble of items seemed absurdly domestic in the context of the tunnel but there was an unsettling melancholy to them too. It was evidence that people had tried to live down here, to survive, somehow, in the dark and the bone-deep damp.

  ‘They must have used this as a shelter,’ said Winter, crouching as he spoke. ‘They found a way down here, when the bombs ripped the streets apart…’

  The Allied bombardment, he knew, had been remorseless. British and American forces had targeted the ports and industrial centres, scouring the city with fire. It was a war he had no personal memory of but Hart had been a part of it, and his legacy felt like one of those spiked mines still drifting in the shipping lanes, twenty years after peace had been declared. Right now that mine felt terribly close on the tide.

  Winter put his hand to the wall, tracing a series of markings on the mustard-coloured rock. It was a child’s picture, crudely scratched in chalk but recognisable as a portrait of Mussolini. Il Duce was crumpling planes in his oversized fists. Allied bombers, no doubt. Next to him was a single word, the letters boldly drawn. Vittoria. Victory. It must have been a kid’s prayer.

  They headed deeper into the warren of sandstone. Soon they were navigating a long, low passageway, some ancient pipeline that had once sent water swilling between the cisterns. There was a promise of more electric light at the end of it but the tunnel felt oppressive, its walls a fi
st of rock around them, the air thick and rank in their throats.

  The tunnel opened onto a wooden walkway that straddled an abyss, all that was left of an underground reservoir, long empty. A squat lamp blazed at the edge of this chasm, the kind usually found at roadsides. It gave the rock a harsh yellow cast and hardened the shadows of the pit. A cable trailed across the bridge, connecting the lamp to a generator on the other side, marked with the branding of the gas company.

  Winter and Libby paused at the tunnel’s edge, wary of the light’s unflinching brightness. As they strained their ears they could hear the sound of movement and voices. It was faint but distinct, echoing out of the aperture that lay at the opposite end of the walkway.

  Cesare’s operation had to be close now.

  Chancing it, they crossed the wooden slats, their shadows huge and fleeting against the cavern’s ceiling.

  The air had thickened with dust. And there was a sharp smell of almonds, one that Winter always associated with freshly detonated gelignite.

  The next tunnel opened onto a lip of rock, a crescent of sandstone perched above another yawning hollow in the earth. This void was even deeper than the one they had just crossed. The sheer magnitude of its emptiness hit like a gut punch. It was visceral, that sense of immense timelessness, a mass of history trapped with nowhere to go.

  They hunched as close to the edge as they could risk, a few feet from where a ladder connected the slab of rock to the ground below. There was a pack of men in the cavern – seven, Winter counted, including the one who had been in the workman’s tent – and they were standing among a tumble of rubble. A fresh fall, judging by the haze of dust that blurred the light from the assembled lamps.

  Winter immediately spotted that the debris didn’t match the surrounding sandstone. The colour and texture were different. It was granite, great, craggy chunks of it, torn apart by explosive.

  The remnants of a wall rose from the bed of the dried-out reservoir. A ragged outline of granite – all that was left of this barricade – clung to a pair of pillars that reached to the roof of the cavern. Beyond the wall’s remains lay some kind of antechamber. Whatever it contained was just out of view but Winter caught a gleam of something pearl-bright, reflecting the glare of the lamps.