Ring of Fire

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  “As you wish. But I’m warning you: you’re making a mistake.”

  “You’re one of them,” the girl insists.

  Mahler laughs. “And you? Who are you? Or who do you think you are?”

  Mistral feels a lump in her throat, but she forces herself to overcome her fear.

  “If you keep this up, I won’t be able to help you,” Jacob continues.

  The girl nervously runs her hand through her hair. “Help me … how?”

  “To get back home, for example. Where do you live?”

  “Paris.”

  “Hmm … That’s awfully far from here, isn’t that right?”

  “That depends. Where are we?”

  Mahler raises an eyebrow. “Nice try. You’re bright.”

  “And I’m sure you don’t really want to help me.”

  “Well, just realize that I don’t want to hurt you. All I want is one thing. And you know what that is.”

  “No, I don’t,” the girl replies stubbornly.

  “Mistral …,” Mahler says insistently, pointing to the open door behind him. “Do you want to tell me what you did with that briefcase … or do I have to go get my instrument?”

  The memory of the violin’s hypnotic notes hits Mistral like a punch. At the very thought of hearing that music once again, her eyes open wide with fear.

  “Well?”

  “You said you dragged me out of the building when it was collapsing. …”

  “That’s right.”

  “What happened to the others?”

  “What? There were others?” asks Mahler, pretending to be shocked.

  “You know perfectly well there were.”

  “I have no idea how many of them there were. Won’t you tell me?”

  Mistral shakes her head.

  Mahler leans against the bed. “In any case, I don’t think anyone could’ve saved themselves. The whole floor collapsed. Boom! And it swallowed up Little Linch along with your friends.”

  Mistral feels tears well up in her eyes.

  “That’s the law of nature. Some die. Some live. You’re alive, Mistral, thanks to me. Don’t you think you owe me at least a little favor?”

  Mistral shakes her head slowly. “I don’t help people like you.”

  Mahler walks over to the window and peeks outside. “Ah, kids today …,” he murmurs to himself. “They want to play the heroes, but instead they’ve simply watched too much TV. Do you watch TV shows, Mistral?” He opens the window, letting in the cold air and the noise of traffic. “You don’t? That’s too bad. I love them, because they last twenty minutes at the most. Twenty minutes. And when they’re over you can forget about them, at least until the following week. Isn’t that wonderful? Wouldn’t it be perfect if life were broken down into twenty-minute episodes that you could forget about afterward?” His face whirls around to look at Mistral. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” he repeats.

  Although she doesn’t understand what he’s getting at, she nods her head.

  “There now, you’ve started to think clearly. Well, I’d like for this little show of ours to be over soon. I’d like for you to go back home to your mother and forget all about this, just like you would do with a bad TV show.”

  “Until next week,” replies Mistral.

  “Exactly. Don’t you want to give your mother the chance to see the next episode of the show about Mistral?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean,” replies Mahler, slamming the window shut, “that either you tell me what you’ve done with that briefcase … or I’ll have your little show end right here, right now. Forever.”

  Mistral doesn’t doubt it for a second. The man’s serious. She tries to keep her knees straight, although she feels her head reeling from fear.

  “That briefcase, Mistral,” Jacob Mahler continues, “is mine. And I’m very angry that you stole it from me.”

  “We didn’t steal it. …”

  “Very angry.”

  “We didn’t even want to take it. … He gave it to us.”

  “Keep going.”

  “When we met Professor Van Der Berger on the bridge, he was running away from them … from you. He said that something had begun and that we had to take care of the briefcase for him. But we—”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “We … we threw it into the river.” Mistral struggles to keep her head held high, but her eyes are no match for the intensity of Jacob Mahler’s stare.

  The killer raises his right hand and slowly starts to count down the seconds until her show comes to an end. “Five … four … three … two … one …”

  “It’s in the basement!” Mistral cries out just before he gets to zero. “We … we left it in the basement.”

  “The basement of the Domus Quintilia?”

  Mistral bites her lip, not answering.

  “There’s a good girl.” Jacob Mahler smiles. “I’m going over to get it. And then I’ll take you back to your mother. Agreed?” Without waiting for an answer, the gray-haired man walks brusquely out of the room and shuts the door behind him. The key turns in the lock.

  Beatrice is outside.

  “Keep her quiet,” Mahler orders, handing her the keys. “And don’t let her out for any reason. Any reason at all. I’m going over to get the briefcase.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “She’s seen me. She could identify me.”

  “So what? She’s only a girl. You don’t mean to—”

  “I don’t kill children,” Mahler cuts her off. He thrusts a hand into his pocket and pulls out a slender, shiny gun. “I have others take care of that, when need be.”

  Beatrice stares at the killer’s hand, horrified. “You’re joking, right?”

  “No. If she tries to escape and you can’t stop her any other way … shoot her.”

  He hands the gun to Beatrice.

  Mahler walks briskly down the stairs of the house. “I know you’re a bright young woman. Don’t disappoint me.”

  Lingering in the air is the faint smell of violets.

  The front door opens and shuts. From the window, Beatrice watches the oval shape of her yellow Mini cross the square. Then she looks down at the gun she’s holding, torn apart by conflicting thoughts. Jacob Mahler asked her not to disappoint him, but she’s not willing to go to such extremes.

  It’s one thing to go pick him up from the airport, naively thinking she’s taking part in a classy operation, like the ones in spy movies where they exchange briefcases. It’s another thing to witness a man being murdered on the banks of the Tiber and then discover that the briefcase is in the hands of a group of kids, who are going to be killed for no better reason than that.

  She’s not sure she’s doing the right thing. She’s not at all sure.

  She heads toward the room where Mistral is locked up.

  She presses her ear up against the door and hears her crying, “Mom, where are you?”

  Beatrice’s female heart shrinks down to the size of a little speck. I’m not your mother, she thinks. But I could be your sister.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Beatrice whispers to the closed door. “And he isn’t going to hurt you, either.”

  She has the gun in her pocket.

  “Trust me, sweetheart. Trust Beatrice.”

  THIRD STASIMON

  “Well?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you much. She’s not answering the phone. She might’ve gone off on an excavation somewhere. … The people at the university can’t tell me anything more than that.”

  “We’ve got to find her. And we’ve got to find out if she’s the one who talked.”

  “Any news on your end?”

  “Nothing good. Only three of the kids are left now. They lost Mistral.”

  “What do you mean they lost her?”

  “She didn’t come back. They’re saying she went out of town with her mother.”

  “But didn’t you set everything u
p so they’d all have enough time to look for the Ring of Fire?”

  “Something seems to have gone wrong.”

  “Like last time, you mean.”

  “Last time it was different.”

  “Why, because it was a hundred years ago?”

  “No, it was just different.”

  “I wouldn’t say so. The kids have hit a dead end and now they risk making the same mistakes.”

  “I didn’t say they’d hit a dead end. I just said they’d lost Mistral. The others were already back working on it this morning. Maybe … maybe there’s still hope.”

  “But it’s never been done with only three of them. It’s unlikely, don’t you think?”

  “Unlikely, but not impossible.”

  “If the kids fail this time, too, it’ll be … the end of the world, in a sense.”

  “Then look for her, Vladimir. Keep looking for her.”

  21

  THE STREETS

  AT ELEVEN PAST ELEVEN ON THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR, ELETTRA arrives in Via della Gatta. Walking around a Gypsy woman, the kind who asks for money to read your palm, she crosses through a sunny little square used as a parking lot. In her pocket is the top with the eye, along with the tooth they found in the briefcase. Before leaving Ermete’s house, they divided up the tasks … and the treasure.

  Via della Gatta is a total disappointment. It’s a dark, narrow, dirty little street tiled with porphyry and flanked by tall buildings in dark travertine. Tall black bars protect the windows on the ground floor.

  What is it you were trying to show me here? Elettra asks the top she’s carrying in her pocket. Don’t tell me Harvey’s right and you don’t work at all, okay?

  She turns into the lane with the best intentions, but no matter how hard she tries, she can’t find anything that seems important. After a few meters, the street broadens into a square and continues on, becoming a sunnier, paved area.

  Elettra sees a bookshop, a library, a few stores, the customary cars parked sideways over the sidewalks, a beat-up van bearing the name of a moving company and … basically, that’s it.

  She’s reached the end of Via della Gatta.

  It might just have been a coincidence, she tells herself, turning back.

  She searches high and low, remembering what was written in the professor’s journal: Search below and you shall find it above.

  And of us three crazy kids, I just might be the craziest.

  Four crazy kids, she corrects herself instantly. Four, not three.

  She searches the lane a second time, checking the names on the intercoms in search of a sign.

  “We’ll find you, Mistral …,” she whispers. “Don’t worry. We’ll find you.”

  This conviction is stronger than any other thought in her mind, stronger than her concern about calling home to let them know everything’s okay. Elettra’s totally committed to her task, to her friends. She’s never felt so close to other people before. It’s like she’s known them her whole life.

  Sure, Harvey’s grouchy, but deep down he believes in their adventure, too. Elettra can still feel his cheek pressed up against hers as he protected her in the professor’s apartment. … Then there’s Sheng, who’s so enthusiastic he might even seem a little naive. But he’s got undying faith in the others.

  “Can’t find it, can you?” asks a portly man with a big mustache who’s standing outside a café.

  Elettra stops in her tracks.

  “You’re a tourist, right?” the portly man asks bluntly. “I’m good at spotting tourists. Never get it wrong. You’re here in Rome to celebrate New Year’s Eve! Got it right, didn’t I? Where are you from, Paris? I bet you’ve never had a real dish of spaghetti!” The portly man bursts out in a hearty laugh, and Elettra doesn’t know whether to answer him directly in Roman dialect or to ignore him completely.

  She decides to ignore him and continues walking down the street.

  The man looks at her, amused, and shouts after her, “In any case, you need to keep your head up. The cat you’re looking for is up there, on the cornice of the corner building! Second floor. You can’t miss it! It’s a statue!” He lets out another hearty laugh.

  Elettra looks up. Resting on the cornice of one of the buildings is a statue of a cat. So that explains the name of this street! she thinks.

  But the man standing outside the café isn’t done. “Everybody comes here for the same reason. … Legend has it that a treasure’s hidden in the very spot where the cat’s looking. But I say the cat’s turned its head over the years. If you ask me, it used to be looking down here at the café! What other treasures could there be around here, do you think?” And, with a final burst of laughter, he turns around and walks back into the café.

  Sheng elbows his way out of yet another crowded bus and, once on the sidewalk, makes his way briskly down the blocks separating him from the Coppedè district. He’s armed with a giant map of the city that, at least in theory, can be refolded, along with a pen and pencil to take down any notes he might need, a half-used stack of bus tickets and a professional camera that makes him look just like Peter Parker, the only reporter able to unmask Spider-Man himself.

  In his pocket he’s carrying two of the tops they spun around on the map: the one with the dog and the one with the whirlpool. He’s hoping that what he’s trying to do will actually help them somehow.

  At the first intersection, Sheng spreads the map out in his hands, examines it carefully and, without thinking twice, goes the wrong way. When he realizes this, it’s almost too late to fix things. The sun’s high in the sky, the trees in the park in Villa Borghese are a beautiful sight with their centuries-old trunks … but Rome is clearly far too big a city for anyone to be wandering around lost.

  He sits down, taking stock of his situation.

  He’s never been good at getting his bearings, especially in a city that’s so different from the one where he grew up. If he were in Shanghai, he’d call one of his cousins to come get him or flag down a palanquin. But he isn’t in Shanghai. He’s in Rome. And just trying to understand how the buses work is already enough to drive him crazy, staring at all those signs in Italian. …

  He checks the time, tries not to think about how late he’s made himself by getting on and off all the wrong buses and heads back to the Coppedè district.

  The camera bangs against his chest and sharp pangs shoot through his bandaged arm, but Sheng’s happy to be there. He has no idea what he’ll find at the spot he’s circled in red, nor what he’ll learn from the photos he’ll manage to take, but he’d rather try doing everything possible than sit there feeling sorry for himself or being mad at the world, like Harvey.

  “It’s not my fault!” Sheng shouts after a while, when he realizes that the street he’s turned down goes uphill instead of downhill. “These streets are all crooked!”

  * * *

  Meanwhile, at the Regno del Dado, Harvey paces back and forth nervously.

  It’s noon.

  Ermete’s still in the shower. He’s been in there for at least half an hour.

  Harvey can hear him singing away as steam swirls out from the door, which is slightly ajar. When the man’s voice cracks for the millionth time, Harvey paces around and checks the time yet again.

  “How much longer is this going to take, anyway?” he asks. It’s a question aimed at just about everything: Ermete’s endless shower, Elettra and her mission in Via della Gatta and Sheng, who by now must’ve gotten lost in the streets of Rome.

  Harvey’s convinced that their splitting up was a terrible idea. Just like his decision to stay there, spending the morning listening to Ermete’s phone calls with a series of friends, each one shadier than the last.

  On paper, at least, their task seems to be the most critical one. They’re supposed to go see one of Ermete’s unscrupulous connections to find out if he knows anything about the man with the violin. Or Mistral’s kidnapping. But after a million useless attempts, just when he seemed to be on the verge
of talking to this unknown friend, the engineer said he was tired and that he needed to take a shower so he could concentrate better.

  “An hour-long shower?” yells Harvey, exasperated by the wait.

  Inside of him, he feels a growing rage, which he’s perfectly unable to vent. He wishes he knew whether Elettra and Sheng have discovered anything by following the directions given to them by the tops. And he’s not sure what answer he’d rather hear, because if those pieces of wood actually work, it means he’s losing his mind.

  “It’s all crazy …,” he mutters, staring down at one of Ermete’s board games. “This is what I feel like. A pawn in someone’s hands.”

  He walks through the apartment for the millionth time, and, hearing the engineer crooning blissfully, he clenches his fists in anger. “You’re such a big help!” he snarls impatiently.

  When he goes back to the kitchen, he passes by the phone and decides to make a call. He picks up the receiver. He puts it down. He picks it up again. Then he quickly dials his father’s cell phone number.

  “Dad?”

  “Harvey? Where on earth are you?” his father shouts immediately. There’s a muffled noise as the phone is handed over to Mrs. Miller, who, in a single breath, gives him a seemingly endless third degree.

  “Everything’s fine … just fine …,” Harvey tries to tell her. But his mother is like a raging river. “No, really, we’re perfectly fine! Yes, we’ll be back soon. … We’re just … No! No! Mom! Listen to me! Would you listen? No! I can’t come back right now! And don’t come looking for me! At a friend’s house. Yeah, a friend! I don’t know his name! I’m fine! Mom! I just wanted to … I just …” He brusquely hangs up before his ear catches on fire.

  “Yeah, happy New Year’s Eve to you, too!” he mutters, staring at the phone.

  The bathroom door opens. Ermete’s finished his shower.

  “Everything okay?” he asks, drying off the few strands of hair left on his head.

  “Nothing’s okay!” yells Harvey. “Let’s get going!”