Standing before him is a violinist with hair as gray as steel.
Jacob Mahler draws the bow away from his violin and lowers his arms to his sides. “Welcome, Alfred …,” he murmurs with icy calmness. “You aren’t easy to find.”
The man stands there like a pillar of salt. “What …?”
“ ‘Gesang ist Dasein,’ ” Jacob Mahler recites, looking at his violin. “‘Song is existence.’ Those aren’t my words but those of Rilke, a German poet. He knew that no man could resist the call of music.”
“What’s going on here? What do you want?”
Jacob Mahler takes two steps toward him. The man he called Alfred teeters in the dark of night. “I want the Ring of Fire,” Mahler whispers.
A long silence. The sound of dripping water. Rome echoing out in the distance.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re the Guardian,” whispers Jacob Mahler. “And a Guardian always has something to guard. I’ve come to get it.”
“You’re wrong. I’m not the Guardian.”
“I know who you are. And I know all about the secret you’re trying to protect. I flew twenty-nine thousand kilometers to come here.”
The Guardian’s eyes grow wide. “You’re one of them.”
Jacob Mahler’s laugh is strident. “Of course I’m one of them. Whatever ‘they’ are, I am, too. Now tell me, Guardian … where is it? Where is the Ring of Fire?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The violin’s bow hisses through the air like the gleaming blade of a knife.
“Look here!” Jacob Mahler cries out. “Don’t fool with me!”
The Guardian swallows hard and then lets a faint smile flash across his face.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking. You flew twenty-nine thousand kilometers to come here to get something I don’t have. And neither one of us knows what it is. Don’t you find that … comical?”
“No. Where is the Ring of Fire?”
“Good question. But answering that would be like answering these: Is there order in the universe? Is there life after death?”
“Don’t play games with me. Not now. Not tonight.”
“Then I won’t. Tell them they won’t find the Ring of Fire. Because tonight it’s all begun,” the Guardian replies in a serious voice.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Jacob Mahler grabs him by the shoulders. His grip is strong and firm. The violin bow slides a single time across the man’s throat, just below his Adam’s apple. He offers no resistance. He feels no pain.
He slides to the ground, drained.
Light.
The last thing he sees is a pair of women’s boots. They’re green.
The last thing he hears is the voice of the violinist, who orders, “Take his picture. And send it to the newspapers tonight. It’s got to be on the front page.”
Tonight.
White.
There’s snow everywhere.
Everything’s white.
After which everything goes dark.
FIRST STASIMON
“Hello?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. I wanted news. …”
“The kids met each other.”
“All four of them?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Then they went out together.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s nighttime. And it’s snowing.”
“Is everything going … as it should?”
“I think so. Alfred must’ve run into them by now.”
“What are they like?”
“Curious enough. And, in case you’re interested, Harvey’s a lot like you.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“Harvey will manage. The others will, too.”
“You’re optimistic.”
“I need to be. Once they’ve opened the briefcase, I won’t be able to help them anymore.”
“And if they get it wrong—”
“They won’t get it wrong. There won’t be any more mistakes.”
8
THE PAPER
“SO HE’S DEAD?” SHENG WHISPERS TO HARVEY.
The American boy takes a sip of his cappuccino with a dismal look on his face. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” replies Sheng, biting into his cream pastry. He silently waits for the others to show up. It’s the morning of December 30, in the dining room of the Domus Quintilia. Aunt Linda has made a stunning assortment of pastries, including a chocolate and vanilla marble cake, an apple pie, orange tarts and a ring cake. She circles cheerfully around the tables, humming as she offers her guests boiling hot coffee as black as oil.
“Did you sleep well, kids?” she chirps happily, distractedly picking a hair off of Harvey’s shirt.
“Very well, thank you.”
The adults at the hotel are relaxed and calm. None of them seem to have any idea what happened last night.
Elettra’s father is tranquilly reading today’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport. Sheng’s father is rubbing his eyes groggily. Harvey’s parents, on the other hand, are looking over a brochure listing the current exhibits, after having uselessly tried to convince their son to go with them to visit the Capitoline Museums.
Elettra and Mistral are the last ones to walk into the dining room. Mistral’s eyes show she’s had a restless night, but she forces herself to smile and keep their promise that they won’t say anything to anyone. Elettra walks beside her, far more carefree than her friend. They cross to the table where the boys are sitting alone and ask, “Any news?”
“I can’t read Italian very well,” replies Harvey, handing her the newspaper. “But I don’t think it’s good.” On the front page is a photograph of a man lying on his back in the snow. His face is obscured by a dark stain spreading out from his elegant raincoat.
“Oh, no!” cries Elettra, raising her hand to her mouth.
“What does the article say?” Sheng asks her.
“That he was found … dead … by the side of the Tiber last night, during the snowstorm.”
“How did he die?”
“They slit his throat.”
Sheng’s cream pastry plunks noisily into his latte.
“It doesn’t say much more than that …,” says Elettra. “They’re investigating to find out what happened, but they don’t even know what his name was. They’re asking anyone who has information to contact the carabinieri—the police, I mean. And …”
Elettra translates the whole article out loud to the other kids.
“They don’t say anything else?” Harvey insists.
Elettra shakes her head. “It’s breaking news. That’s all they know.”
“What about the blackout?”
“Oh, yeah …” She thumbs through a few pages. “They say it only affected certain parts of town. The electricity came back on at dawn and the problem seems to be solved. But they haven’t figured out what caused it yet.”
“Talk about a dark and stormy night …,” Sheng murmurs.
“Let’s get moving,” Elettra suggests.
The kids reluctantly finish their breakfast and speak briefly with their parents, asking if they can have the day to themselves. Sheng’s father and Mistral’s mother make no objections. Quite the opposite, in fact. The man from China decides to take the opportunity to sleep off his jet lag and the French woman says she has to do a little extra work for some of her key clients.
Harvey’s parents, on the other hand, get into a lengthy debate with their son, which the boy survives at the price of a very bad mood. “It’s no big deal,” he grumbles when Elettra asks what it was all about. “Getting along with my parents is always kind of complicated.” He seems ready to add something else, but then, with a shake of his head, he keeps it to himself.
Elettra doesn’t press him for details.
She walks with him over to the door leading down to the basement, pushes aside the garden plants that Aunt Linda uses to try to hide it, and opens it up. They wait for Mistral and Sheng to join them, and then they all go down the stairs leading to the underground realm.
“We’ll be nice and warm down here,” Elettra points out, shutting the door behind her, “and nobody will bother us.”
“Wishful thinking,” grumbles Harvey. “You don’t know my folks.”
“They seem pretty interesting to me!” says Sheng.
“Yeah, sure …” Harvey’s expression is as dark as a storm cloud.
“Do they get on your case?”
“Yeah. That is … especially after they … Oh, never mind. My dad’s always wondering how he could have such an ignorant son. My mom, on the other hand, never wants me to leave her side.”
Little by little, as they make their way down the steps, the basement surrounds them with its maze of old furniture and empty picture frames. “Same thing here. My mother cried for a week when she found out about this trip …,” Sheng adds.
“That just means she cares a lot about you,” Mistral tells him, stretching out like a flamingo.
“Tired, huh?” Harvey asks her, sitting down cross-legged on the floor.
“I sure am. I didn’t sleep a wink.”
“Why not?”
“I was afraid,” answers Mistral, rubbing her hands together nervously. “Just like you guys.”
The leather briefcase is lying on the floor, hidden under an old white sheet.
“We can always change our minds,” Elettra states. “After all, nobody’s forcing us to open it.”
Their eyes dart around in the dim light.
“I say we do it,” Sheng proposes.
“Me too,” says Harvey.
“It might be dangerous,” Mistral adds meekly. “After all … that man was murdered.”
“And maybe because of this briefcase,” says Elettra. “He was being followed. He was scared. He said that it had all begun.”
“He doesn’t seem to have been very lucky to me. …”
“He was even saying ‘twenty-nine.’ Like our birthdays.”
“And don’t forget: yesterday was December twenty-ninth,” Sheng says, biting his fingernails.
The light from the bulbs hanging from the ceiling suddenly dims.
“You want to make those blow up, too, Sheng?” Harvey teases.
“Hey! I didn’t do it!”
“Oh, no? You mean I just imagined the whole thing?”
“Sheng’s right,” Elettra says as the basement lights go back to normal. “It wasn’t him. There’s a street right above us and the lights dim whenever a truck passes by.”
“Hear that?” Sheng retorts.
“Besides, yesterday …,” Elettra goes on, “I think it was me.” She drags her finger over the sheet hiding the briefcase and forces a smile. “I might as well tell you. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened to me. … But it’s never been as strong as it was last night.”
Mistral gives her a look of understanding.
Harvey leans back to rest on his elbows. “Sorry, what happens to you?”
“I make lightbulbs explode … without even touching them.”
“Hao!” cries Sheng. “How do you do that?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I feel strange … charged and … Well, laugh if you want, but when I feel that way I even make computers go haywire.”
“Like some sort of virus?”
“No. I interfere with their electrical current. At least I think that’s what it is. Sometimes all I have to do is walk by and the paper in the printer gets jammed or some of the computer screen’s pixels burn out. And … I make mirrors go dull,” Elettra continues. “After I’ve used them for a while, mirrors lose their shine. They get all blurry and … and they fade. They reflect less. I can’t explain it any better than this, but that’s basically what happens.”
“So what happened to you yesterday?”
“I started feeling this surge of energy when we were talking about our birthdays. I felt hot and I couldn’t breathe. In the end, when the heat was getting to be more than I could stand, I wound up touching Sheng on the shoulder and—”
“I had my hands on the lamp—”
“You funneled all your energy into him and—”
“And the lamp exploded.”
In the basement, there’s a long moment of silence.
“Something like that, I guess,” Elettra admits, embarrassed.
“Never heard anything like it,” Harvey breaks in. “But anyway, that’s got nothing to do with this briefcase.”
“Actually, the same thing happened to me later on,” explains Elettra. “On the bridge, when we ran into that man. I felt hot. The same surge of energy.”
“And now?”
The girl shakes her head. “No. Everything seems okay right now.”
“So what do we do? Do we open it up?” Sheng asks impatiently.
“And after we’ve opened it?” asks Harvey.
Sheng brushes his finger against the briefcase, fascinated and scared at the same time. “We see what’s inside.”
“And then?”
“Then we keep it a secret. We swore we wouldn’t tell anyone anything, didn’t we?”
“Actually, maybe what we should do is take it to the police and forget this whole thing ever happened,” suggests Harvey.
Elettra thinks back to what the man shouted out in the snow. She repeats it aloud. “It’s begun.”
“No one’s going to come here to claim the briefcase,” says Sheng. “So we might as well see what’s inside.”
“It’ll be our secret.”
“Whatever you guys want.”
“So who’s going to open it?”
Harvey, Sheng and Mistral look at Elettra. “He gave it to you,” Harvey says. “You open it.”
She nods, rests her hands on the briefcase and clicks open its gold hasps.
Clack.
The pale sun peeks out from behind a thick layer of clouds. The snow that fell during the night is piled up along the curbs. Beatrice walks along nervously, her green boots getting splattered.
It’s eleven o’clock.
She didn’t sleep a wink. She kept her bedside light on all night long, looking through the few photos she has of her happy past, when she still lived with her little sister. But she never managed to fall asleep. Every time she tried shutting her eyes, she saw Jacob Mahler with his violin. She could still sense the darkness of the Tiber all around her. And the darkness of that incredibly enigmatic man.
She kept hearing the last words he said.
Before killing him, Mahler had called him the Guardian.
The guardian of what?
Beatrice is stunned, scared and rather disgusted by what happened. Joe Vinile never told her she’d be an accomplice to murder. And he didn’t tell her anything about Guardians. Or razor-sharp violin bows.
He told her there was an important job to do and that she’d be paid handsomely, more than she’d ever earned before. He told her that in the world of crime, Jacob Mahler was considered a legend. And that working with a legend, even once, meant joining the big league. It meant smooth sailing for the rest of her life. He told her that Jacob Mahler was looking for a man. And that they’d find the man, follow him and set him up to be captured. But he hadn’t told her that once Mahler had captured him, he’d kill the man by slitting his throat with a violin bow.
She’s still lost in her thoughts when she reaches Piazza Sant’Eustachio and the café by the same name.
Joe Vinile and Little Linch are already sitting at a table. Beatrice sits down beside them without so much as a hello. Joe’s sporting a pair of wraparound sunglasses and a black leather jacket. Beneath this is his Vasco Rossi T-shirt, from which he is inseparable. Joe’s convinced he looks so much like the famous Italian rock star that they could pass as twins. Joe Vinile’s real name is Giovanni. He�
�s fifty years old, and he is what he is today thanks to a flourishing pirated music racket.
Beside him, Little Linch looks like a walrus squeezed in between the arms of the chair. He has an enormous face, a pudgy, misshapen body and buck teeth. Beatrice doesn’t know what his real name is. In Rome’s underground crime rings they all call him Little Linch, jokingly distorting lince, the Italian word for “lynx,” because when he was young he worked doing bit parts at the Cinecittà movie studios, reaching the height of his career by playing a half-blind character called La Lince.
He’s the first one to speak to her. “We were expecting you to show up with your friend Jacob …,” he begins, trying to rest a sweaty hand on her arm.
“The meeting’s for eleven past eleven,” she replies, checking her watch. “And there are still two minutes left.”
“You sure he’ll show?”
Joe Vinile pulls a little square box out of his pocket. He rests it against his throat so he can speak. A hoarse, buzzing voice comes out of the box. “Well, this is … rrr … the right place … rrr. … Want some coffee … rrr…?”
Beatrice nods and Joe orders with a simple wave of his hand. The waiters prepare the espressos shielded by little screens so their clients won’t discover the secret behind their famous blend. That’s why many consider Sant’Eustachio to be the finest café in Rome.
The espressos arrive boiling hot in tiny cups that are even hotter. The moment they’re placed on the little table, the air fills with the persistent aroma of violets.
“Hello,” says Jacob Mahler just then as he sits down in the only free chair left.
Little Linch gives a start.
It’s eleven past eleven.
And none of the three even saw him walk up.
* * *
“I’m very angry,” he begins, not looking at anyone in particular.
Joe Vinile rests the little box against his throat and croaks out, “Mind telling us … rrr … about what, exactly … rrr …?”
“About how things went last night. Very badly, I’d say.”
“The boys … rrr … told me just the opposite … rrr …,” Joe retorts. “Isn’t that right … rrr … Linch?”
Little Linch stirs his spoon needlessly in his espresso cup. “I did what I was asked to do. I found our guy in Via del Babuino and started to follow him, pushing him toward the Tiber.”
Ring of Fire Page 6
