by Martin Rua
Before I began to speak, though, the door opened and, inspector Viola Brancato, whom I already knew, and Vincenzo Amato came in.
I tried to collect my thoughts, then began to tell them everything, from the encounter with Anna to my ’awakening’. I told them that I’d found myself in that revolting apartment and discovered that my whole world had been turned upside down. That I’d found myself with that woman, who was not my wife; that while still under the effects of whatever they were giving me, I’d gone to that absurd store without knowing how and that I’d probably killed a man there in self-defence. I told them about the tattoo the man had, and the visions, the symbols, Spider-Man and all the rest.
After listening to my story Oscar leant back in his chair.
“Lorenzo, do you realize what you’ve just told us? You’re saying that someone has deliberately kept you in some kind of hypnotic state, probably induced by drugs, for weeks on end, and that in all that time not only did you go back to a building just a few metres from your home every night to sleep, but that every morning you also came to this area to work in a store where you underwent some kind of psychological testing? All this right under my nose—”
A feeling of desperation began to grow within me – it was clear that Oscar didn’t believe me.
“That’s exactly what happened.”
Oscar shook his head, trying to keep his cool. “Well, these people whoever they were must have been bloody good, because if it’s true that you were around here, I never saw you.”
“For God’s sake, Oscar, I was here! I told you, it was as though the drug had completely altered my perception of reality. An alkaloid like mescaline can have effects like that. In that hallucinatory state I went to that place every day, and the drugs made it look like the Églantine to me.”
“Ok, ok – let’s drop it for the moment.”
Shaken, I stood up impatiently. “Look, I don’t care if you believe me or not, and frankly I don’t care what happened, or what’s going to happen. I just want to know where my wife is. She’s not answering her phone – where the hell is she?!”
Oscar too got to his feet, and Viola Brancato put a hand on my shoulder to calm me. The tension was palpable.
“Your wife is in Zurich, in a cancer clinic.”
I felt sick to my stomach, and the feeling anguish that had been growing within me in the last few hours suddenly exploded and rapidly spread through my body as Oscar told me things I didn’t want to hear.
“While you were in Greece on holiday,” Oscar continued, “Àrtemis felt ill. You were in Santorini, having dinner. She started feeling a sharp pain in her abdomen. You immediately took her to the local medical centre, not imagining it was anything serious, but it was clear that they didn’t have the facilities there to deal with it, so you flew to Athens by air ambulance. Once in the Greek capital, Àrtemis was subjected to dozens of tests and the situation quickly turned out to be serious.”
Oscar looked at me, his eyes full of emotion.
“I— I’m sorry, Lorenzo. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer, which had spread to the surrounding areas.”
I collapsed into my chair, unable to speak.
After a moment of confusion, I forced myself to ask: “Is she… dead?”
The mask of pain on Oscar’s face seemed to soften. “No! No, thank God. The situation is still serious, but it has at least stabilised.”
I felt a lump in my throat. Viola gave me a glass of water which I gulped down quickly, and then I turned to Oscar. “Can I use your phone? Let me try and speak to her, please.”
Without saying anything, Oscar handed me the phone and finally I got through.
“Hello?”
Àrtemis! My Àrtemis! Her voice, though distant and tired, was unmistakable. I exhaled loudly and tried not to be overwhelmed by my emotions.
“Àrt, it’s me.”
There was a pause.
“Lorenzo! My God, how—?”
I could barely continue, and felt the sobs rising in my throat.
“Darling, don’t strain yourself. How are you?”
“I’m… Not bad, Loré, I’m not bad… Good God, what happened to you? Nobody would tell me, everyone was so vague.”
I sighed. The truth could wait.
“I’ll tell you soon as I’m there, I’ll see you soon – tonight, I swear.”
“All right, but… take your time, I’m fine. My parents are here, I’m not on my own. If you need to get organised—”
“Àrt, what are you talking about? I’ll be there tonight.”
I hung up, slightly relieved to have finally spoken to her, and took another sip of water. All eyes were still on me.
“I have to go to Zurich, Oscar.”
Without even trying to convince me to stay, my friend nodded.
“I’ll book you a flight, but I have to ask you a favour first. You’ll leave tonight, but give me some time to try and understand what happened to you. It would really help.”
I took a deep breath, breathed out slowly, then nodded. “All right, let’s start right now.”
Oscar picked up the phone. “Barone, please find me the latest available flight to Zurich today.” He hung up and looked back at me. “So, first of all, where’s this girl? The one who helped you. What did you say her name was?”
“Anna. She’s Russian, and the same thing had happened to her. Memory loss induced by a drug or something.”
“Where is she now? Why isn’t she with you, if she was the one who woke you up?”
“She didn’t want to come here – she said it would be useless.”
“Do you think there’s any chance that she might have been lying to you, Lorenzo?”
“If it hadn’t been for her, I’d still be vegetating in that rat hole, thinking I was living a normal life.”
“All right, get her in here – we have to talk to her.”
He handed me the phone again and I dialled Anna’s number, but couldn’t get through.
“Her phone’s off. She came to the police station with me and then we split up.”
“Viola, please start a search for this woman immediately. What does she look like, Lorenzo?”
I gave a brief description of Anna, and Viola immediately left the office.
“Oscar, will you tell me what happened to Bruno?” I pleaded.
“At the end of November last year, your partner and friend Bruno von Alten was found dead at his home. He’d been murdered, presumably poisoned.”
“Why do you say presumably?”
Oscar stared at me for a moment then gave a bitter smile. “It’s incredible, you really don’t remember anything. It was a customer who made us suspicious. He missed an appointment with him.”
“Don’t tell me - Doctor Ciliento.”
“Ah, you remember that much.”
“No, but never mind, go ahead.”
“Well, Doctor Ciliento tried to call Bruno at home. He was a regular customer, and Ciliento told us that Bruno answered the phone but sounded as though he was choking, and that all he had said was, ’I’m sick, help me, they’re going to kill me’. Ciliento called us and we rushed to Bruno’s house, but we got there too late. We found him lying on the ground in a pool of blood.”
“But you said that he was poisoned.”
“Indeed he was. The blood came from a gunshot wound fired at point-blank range to his face, which blew off his right ear. But that wasn’t what killed him. It seems that the killer shot Bruno after he was already dead.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I know. It’s as if he wanted to leave a message.”
“What poison did they use?”
“We don’t know yet. The results of the autopsy were rather disturbing. It seems that he’d been injected with some substance that had destroyed his internal organs, almost as if they had been dissolved. The amazing thing is that the coroner found no trace of anything in his body. Do you follow me? This stuff went into Bruno’s body, ate him up – and t
hen disappeared. The coroner mentioned cases where death had been caused by drugs that induced heart attacks and left no trace, but he said that he had never come across anything like this before.”
“Good God.”
“Yes, the whole thing’s bloody creepy. Unfortunately, some genius had heard about your experiments in alchemy and decided to rope you in as a suspect. I’m still struggling like mad to get you off the hook.”
“That’s crazy. Why would I kill Bruno? He was one of the most important people in my life.”
“I know he was. However, there’s one more thing which came to your defence in convincing the investigators that you had nothing to do with it. Your alibi, in fact, was as unfortunate as it was unassailable, because you’d been in Zurich for several days when the murder took place.”
“Zurich—” I murmured, my eyes wandering.
Just then Oscar’s phone began to ring.
“Yes, Barone. Six o’clock is fine, please book me a seat on that flight for one Lorenzo Aragona.”
I looked at the clock. It was ten o’clock.
“You’ve got about eight hours, Oscar.”
“I’ll do my best, brother.”
10
The Mission – Part Three
Reconstruction based on the secret files of Group 9 and the memoirs of Sean Bruce
Berlin, the night between the 24th and 25th of March, 1945
Von Tschoudy’s face remained impassive, although his self-assurance had begun to falter. Lev held the gun steady at the head of the terrified Müller, and the young man, bound and gagged, trembling and dripping with sweat, kept his eyes on his captain.
“I realise that we are at the end of a war that you have lost, but I must say that the quality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht really has fallen off,” said Nathan sarcastically, nodding to Müller’s trousers, which were sopping wet. “The Führer would be proud of you, boy,” Nathan whispered into the boy’s ear.
“Let him go Nathan, he has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, no?” said Nathan. “Wasn’t he chosen, along with the others, to guard the idol? Is he not a follower of Thule? So he must be a man of quality, then. Let’s see if it’s true. Lev, the Sergeant can do without his right ear – make his face unique.”
Müller began to whimper and wriggle, while three men held him down. Lev put down his gun, pulled out a long knife and approached the German, who was now moaning like a heifer headed for the slaughterhouse, then took one last look at Nathan, awaiting his decision. They all looked over at von Tschoudy and waited for him to react. But there was no response, so Nathan nodded. Lev moved his knife slightly closer while Müller writhed in the throes of terror.
“Sorry Müller – your captain doesn’t give a shit about you,” whispered Vlad in his perfect German.
At these words von Tschoudy stamped his foot.
“Stop!”
The eight men turned suddenly towards him.
“Stop, you bastard! Let him go. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Lev looked at Nathan who nodded again, then the Ukrainian released Müller, who fell down sobbing into a pool of his own piss.
“Wise choice, Henri,” said Nathan, “these men have already suffered enough thanks to Hitler’s madness.”
Von Tschoudy gave a grin that expressed all his contempt. “I’m still not convinced that you would have done it Keller. You have a soft heart.”
“So do you, apparently, but I don’t really think the sergeant here would like to test me again.”
Von Tschoudy held his gaze a moment longer, then looked down, defeated. Sean Bruce and François David moved towards him: one held him at gunpoint, while the other untied him.
“Don’t be so nervous, dear fellows, I don’t bite,” he said with a sarcastic smile that showed his perfect teeth.
“Shut up, Henri. I’ve had enough of you. If we’re being bombed right now it’s all because of you,” said Bruce, still holding him at gunpoint.
“I’ve spent a year under your bombings.”
“You chose to come back to this hellhole.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Sean. Probably, I never left.”
“Then you betrayed us right from the very beginning.”
“No, but things changed – abruptly. And I opened my eyes,” said von Tschoudy, a note of pain in his voice.
“Enough!” Nathan interjected. “Henri, either you’re with us or I swear I’ll cut off Müller’s ears and make you eat them. The key – where is it?”
Bruce pointed the gun at von Tschoudy’s head.
“Considering you’re supposed to be one of the elect, your searching skills are absolutely pathetic,” he said, moving his left foot forward, and with Bruce’s gun still pointing at his head, he added, “Can I bend over without running the risk that you’ll shoot me, Mr haggis-eater?”
Bruce gave him a withering look, then stepped back and lowered his gun.
“Get a move on, Nazi.”
Von Tschoudy pulled off his left boot and slid the heel back. The inside was hollowed out, and contained the Chaldean key. He took it out and handed it to Nathan.
“Very theatrical,” he said. “But please, instead of just giving me your key, join us, as though we were still a brotherhood. Sean, help dear brother Henri.”
Bruce pushed von Tschoudy towards the golden casket that had been placed at the centre of the dank room. The cubic metal chest, upon whose front a bearded face had been carved, was locked with a complicated mechanism. The face was, in fact, at the centre of two concentric discs which could each turn independently: this was the lock which opened it. On each of the discs, numerous symbols were engraved and there were nine holes. If someone tried to force the box without using the appropriate keys, an ingenious system would destroy its contents. That was why they were the only ones who could open it.
Kirk McCourt placed nine candles around the casket and the men moved into position, forming the mystic circle. Sean Bruce, pistol in hand, stood beside Henri von Tschoudy, still holding him at gunpoint.
“Brothers, the evil that we have faced getting here and the evil that still fills our souls should be kept away from this circle of the Nine,” said Nathan. “Let each of us enter his seal.”
He began first. “Adonaii,” he said before turning the outer disk to align the symbol that only he knew.
“Jub” said the Italian, then did the same.
Then it was Lev Nemiroff’s turn. “Ina.”
“Hayah”, Sean Bruce’s name.
“Gotha,” whispered the French man.
“Jeo,” said Kirk McCourt.
“Jakinaii,” uttered the rock-like Vlad.
“Heleneham,” said the Armenian Aram.
After a moment of silence, all turned to look at von Tschoudy, whose face was now a mask of hatred and contempt.
“Come on, von Tschoudy – you’ve been given the honour of participating in the ritual, enter that fucking seal!” said Sean Bruce, poking him with his gun.
Von Tschoudy breathed out heavily through his nose like a bull preparing to charge, then said, “Jahabulum.”
As soon as the German had rotated the disk, the upper part of the chest opened into two parts, revealing its contents, and the nine stared transfixed at the object inside, created thousands of years ago, sitting there glowing in the dark, in the middle of one of the bloodiest wars in human history. A legendary thing, which for centuries had been kept in the bowels of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, before being discovered by the Templars and hidden within the walls of the monastery of Montecassino. The object known as Baphomet. The object, forged in a mythical time by the legendary magicians, the Chaldeans, was the key to accessing something which must never fall into the wrong hands. It was for this reason that the wisdom of the ancients had led them to create such a complex mechanism for accessing its secret: a double lock, activated by nine symbols, each in the possession of one of nine initiates.
Nathan motioned to the others to keep
their distance and, as head of the mission and having been awarded the highest degree of the Elected Nine, finally moved to take the object concealed in the shrine.
“Are you sure you’re worthy of it, half-breed?” mocked Henri.
“I told you to shut up, von Tschoudy!” snapped Bruce, still holding him at gunpoint.
Nathan finally lifted his hands out from the chest, the idol now between them, and in that instant the intensity of the dazzling light suddenly increased, taking them all by surprise. All but von Tschoudy, who, quickly seizing the advantage of Sean Bruce’s momentary distraction, snatched the gun out of his hand. The others immediately grabbed their weapons, but von Tschoudy now held the Scotsman immobile with an arm round his neck and was pointing the gun at his head.
“One move and you’ll find his brains all over the idol!” he shouted, in the grip of blind rage.
“Don’t be an idiot, Henri,” said Nathan, watching the idol’s glow slowly disappear as he placed it into a large bag, leaving only the candles to illuminate the darkness. “You’ve got seven guns pointed at you, we’d have you in an instant.”
“Believe me, Keller, your bullets would not stop the last flicker of life in my index finger. I’ll kill the Scot anyway.”
Nathan ignored the threat and continued calmly.
“Henri, lower the gun, you’ve got no way out.”
“Give me that bag, Keller, and throw all your keys into it, or I swear, I’ll show you what it means to have balls.”
“Don’t do it, Nathan—” said Sean.
“Hush my Scottish friend, or the next haggis that you eat will be made from your own damn stomach!” spat von Tschoudy. He turned to Nathan again. “Give me the bag and the keys, Keller, I’m asking you for the last time.”
Everyone waited for Nathan to move. Angry as he was, he had no choice but to put the bag on the ground. “Men, put the keys in the bag, quickly.”
“Nathan, what the fuck are you doing?!” exclaimed Sean Bruce as he squirmed in von Tschoudy’s grip.
“Shut up, I said! Get that bag.”
Nathan, keeping his eyes on his companion, nodded resignedly, and grabbed the neck of the bag.
“Lay it next to my right foot,” said the German still holding his hostage. Von Tschoudy hesitated a moment, then, with his usual wry smile said, “Thank you, brothers.”
