Cesco reached the promontory. He scrambled up its base to reach the tunnel road that girdled it, then sprinted past a family of family of four in matching flag of St George swimwear and cream of tomato soup sunburns, before racing down into the harbour car park even as the dive boat reappeared, carving a great white scar in the sapphire sea as it roared around the long curved arm of the harbour wall, making the neat rows of pleasure craft bob on their moorings like geriatrics at a fitness class.
Arturo cut his engines as he neared shore. The four Germans leaped down into the shallows. Cesco’s fisherman friends Battista and Tomas were winching their boat up the slipway. They appraised the situation instantly and raised their nets as the Germans reached them. He could hear yelling as they struggled to get free, and felt a little ill at the thought that his two friends would soon learn the truth about him, and curse themselves for having aided his escape.
He reached his van, thrust his key into its ignition. The crotchety old engine responded badly to his haste. He gave it a moment then tried again. It stuttered into life. He released the handbrake and began pulling away. Dieter sprinted towards him. Cesco locked his door a microsecond before he could open it. He stood there on the other side of the glass, his face red with berserker rage, veins throbbing and eyes bulging. He punched the window, leaving smears of knuckle blood on it as Cesco accelerated away. He pounded on his side panels and grabbed at his rear doors. Then he bellowed in frustrated fury and ran for his bike.
A pair of dustbin men were blocking the castle road, stuffing cardboard packaging into the maw of their truck like parents trying to feed a screeching toddler. With no option, Cesco turned the other way. The cobbled alley of Chianalea was so narrow that his van barely fit, and so busy that he had virtually to keep his hand upon the horn to toot people from his path, winning hard glares from the old women in widow black, the chatting shopkeepers and the tourist couples checking out the blackboard menus. Three of the bikers quickly caught him, but the lane was too narrow for them to pass. It would soon open up ahead, however, and leave him at their mercy. He put his foot down to encourage them to accelerate after him. Then he slammed on his brakes. The bikers tried to stop too, but the first of them crashed into his rear and skittled over his two mates.
Dieter appeared a moment later on his black Harley. He weaved between his fallen comrades then came charging. Cesco muttered a curse as the road opened up and Dieter roared alongside. He turned the wheel and slammed him into the wall. Sparks flew; there was a hideous shriek of metal. Dieter and his bike went skittering. Then he was around a corner and away.
Cesco had planned for contingencies like this. His next identity was all ready to go, hidden in an air duct in his apartment, along with a small amount of cash and certain useful tools. He raced there now, only to find Arturo already parked outside, yelling at his phone. Too late. Word was already out. The mates he’d touched for loans, the bored housewives who’d sponsored his research, the kind couples who’d puzzled about the missing trinkets after having him for dinner – all would soon be converging on his apartment, and no doubt so would his landlady too, armed with a spare key and a demand for her back rent.
Scilla was over for him. The question was where next. He raced along the coast road, thinking as he went. If any of those Germans were badly injured or, God forbid, even dead, the police would down come hard. No hotels, then, or anywhere that would want ID. He had a bedroll and a sleeping bag in the back of his van, but the police were going through one of their periodic campaigns of harassing anyone living rough. His best hope would have been to throw himself on the mercy of a friend – if he hadn’t just burned through every last one of them.
Except no. He still had one. Giulia Surace, she who’d sent him three invitations that same morning. Almost as though it was meant to be. The only problem was that she lived just outside Cosenza.
After all these years, it would mean finally going home.
On his return to Italy from England a little over a decade ago, Cesco had settled in Milan, both because he’d been in the mood for city life, and because it had been about as far from his home city as Italy allowed. When he’d made that city too hot for himself, he’d moved to Turin instead, still distant from Cosenza, but also from the Milanese police and the others he’d needed to avoid. Every move since had been made on the same basis, with the perverse consequence that each one had brought him that little bit closer to Cosenza. From Venice to Florence and thence to Rome. From there to Bari, Naples and finally here. He’d been aware that this was happening, and yet he’d let it, because there was a part of him that had wanted it that way.
It was nearly fifteen years since he’d fled Italy for England. Fifteen long years during which even to see Cosenza on the news or on a road sign had been enough to make him ill. Cesco was not a superstitious man, but he was Calabrian, with a Calabrian sense of destiny. Of fatalism too. Circles of life, the primacy of family, the necessity of revenge. So he’d always known deep down that one day he’d return.
He just hadn’t expected that today would be it.
III
Central Jerusalem was closing for Shabbat as Zara and Kaufman arrived. Shops were pulling down shutters, small businesses emptying of their devout, hurrying to make it home before sunset. Kaufman grew excited as they reached Talbiya. He’d always had a weakness for power. And the man they were about to see had almost as much of it as anyone in the country except the prime minister himself, who he was anyway hotly tipped to replace in the coming elections.
They turned off Pinsker up Yehuda Alkalai. Zara had only been here a few times because she and Isaac had broken up shortly after Avram had been appointed interior minister. His gates were closed, but there were lights on inside the house and she caught a glimpse of his Mercedes SUV. This street was strictly no parking; too many powerful people lived on it. But they found a blue zone further on, at which Kaufman paid by card. There was an awkwardness about him as they walked back. A need to clear the air. ‘Those things I wrote,’ he murmured.
‘It’s okay,’ she said reflexively. Then she realised that it wasn’t. ‘Why?’
‘Your review, of course.’
‘I only said what I thought.’
‘Why do you think it hurt so much?’
She looked at him in surprise. Academic life involved the endless exchange of hostile fire, and Kaufman had always seemed as happy taking it as dishing it out. But his latest book had been bombarded from all sides, so perhaps he’d looked to her as his last hope. Or perhaps her own success had simply got under his skin. Whatever the truth, there was no excuse for the bile he’d posted on academic message boards – intended as anonymous, but inevitably traced back – accusing her of plagiarism, promiscuity and – most hurtful of all – betrayal of her family and childhood friends.
Zara had been raised on a religious moshav in northern Israel – a community of like-minded families who’d all followed a very particular strain of Conservative Judaism, hostile to outsiders and intolerant of errant views. Her faith had been as true to her as the sea and the rocks and the sun on her face on a summer afternoon. As a brilliant young student, she’d become familiar with all the lines of attack from rival branches of Judaism and other religions too, the better to glory in their defeat. Not that she’d ever shown it publicly. Politeness to strangers had been central to their identity. Only amongst themselves had they revealed their true contempt.
At eighteen, she’d deferred her military service to study history and archaeology in Jerusalem. Questions had been raised about the historicity of the Torah: she’d felt it her duty to demonstrate its truth. Her parents had tried to dissuade her, but she’d been adamant. Her faith was true. What did it have to fear from study? So it had proved for eighteen months. Her intellectual defences had held up well. Until, one day, Professor Kaufman himself had brought them crashing down with the vilest and most underhand of tricks.
He’d asked her for her help.
At that time, he was
running an annual excavation of a cemetery near ancient Beit Shemesh. His latest season had yielded finds of wood, cloth and other organic matter whose radiocarbon dating made no sense. He’d found this puzzling enough to ask her – knowing her reputation as an accomplished and scrupulous mathematician – to check his results. She’d quickly found an error with the calibration, saving him considerable embarrassment. It had made her wonder about the reliability of other radiocarbon results – results that supposedly undermined the historicity of the Torah. Envisioning herself as Joshua outside Jericho, bringing the whole sceptical enterprise down with her trumpets, she’d taught herself dating techniques from first principles and had then immersed herself in the raw data. To her horror, however, the walls of Jericho had survived unscathed. It was her own trumpets that had broken.
It had been brutal for Zara, discovering that everything she’d been taught had been a lie. Her next return home had degenerated into argument and furious recrimination, prompting a rupture so brutal and bitter that she’d never even spoken to her parents since – for all that, in moments of weakness, she found her heart almost breaking out of her yearning for reconciliation. As for the immediate aftermath, she’d fallen into disarray until, at a university do, she’d met a young law student called Isaac Bernstein. Handsome, funny, brash, ambitious and atheistic, he’d shown her how to retain the secular virtues of Conservative Judaism without believing a word of scripture.
They’d gone out for eight years, moving from Jerusalem into a Tel Aviv apartment together, he practising law while she’d served her time in the army then studied for her doctorate. Everyone had taken their eventual marriage for granted. In the meantime, the Bernsteins had offered her a replacement family. They’d lunched together at least once a week, and had taken holidays in their Corfu villa. She’d campaigned for Avram, written articles and speeches. In return, he’d invited her into his inner circle, sharing Knesset gossip and discussing strategies to build his party into an electoral force and so make himself prime minister. At first, she’d had to bite her lip at his conceit. But her laughter had soon stopped.
During the last campaign, however, Zara’s relationship with Isaac had started to go bad. Something in him had changed. He’d always been outspoken when out stumping for his father, but now he lost his former twinkle. His mild dislike for Arabs, pacifists and liberals had turned into a mania. He’d scoured the internet for new stories to be outraged by. He’d come to believe the kind of crazy conspiracy theories that he’d once invented and spread for political advantage, then had grown angry at her mockery. He’d lost his charm and sense of humour. He’d put on weight and started to go bald. He’d get drunk in public and make mortifying scenes, then either snivel with self-pity afterwards, or make threats.
Then, one night, he’d punched her.
She should have ended it there and then, but he’d apologised so abjectly that she’d given him a second chance. He’d gone into treatment for alcoholism. Things had modestly improved. Then she’d come home one afternoon to find him yelling drunken abuse at a hooker, dressed only in a hijab, he had doubled over the kitchen table. Their split had gone badly. Zara wasn’t one to discuss her private life. Isaac and his mother, by contrast, both were. They’d badmouthed her at every opportunity, had lobbied her university to get her fired. That had been too much. She’d visited Avram at the Interior Ministry to play for him a selection of Isaac’s drunken voicemails, half maudlin apologies for his behaviour, half furious harangues, including one that airily pointed out that the last person to cross the Bernsteins had been a journalist by the name of Paul Shapiro, and look what had happened to him.
Avram had blanched on hearing this. He’d sworn blind that neither he nor any of his family had had anything to do with Shapiro’s death. Zara had believed him. Avram was no killer, and Isaac was a braggart drunk. Besides, Shapiro had skidded in the rain into the back of the van ahead, then had been crushed to death by a container lorry riding up over him. Surely that would have been impossible to arrange. But the recording could still have badly damaged Avram’s ambitions, so he’d vowed that the badmouthing would stop at once, that she’d never have to hear from or see any of Bernsteins ever again.
Nor had she. Not until now.
Standing outside his gate, she took a moment to straighten her clothes and to glance at Kaufman to make sure he too was ready. Then she breathed in deep and rang the bell.
Chapter Four
I
The three men arrived at the foot of the embankment in a cascade of stones and loose earth. All three were armed, Carmen now saw, one with a shotgun, the other two with pistols. They walked with remarkable calm, as if out on a Sunday stroll. The balaclavas hid their faces, but not their builds or postures. The first looked to be early twenties, dressed in white trainers, slimline jeans and a plain black T-shirt. The other two were middle aged, dressed in boots, baggy dark trousers and jackets of worn black leather.
The larger of these crouched beside Vittorio. Vittorio gave a moan when he saw him, a mix of recognition and dread. He raised a hand and made to speak, but his throat was so clogged with blood and saliva that he coughed out gluey red spatters instead that the man in the balaclava irritably brushed off his trousers. Then he pressed the muzzle of his shotgun against Vittorio’s cheek and looked up and around at the elder of his companions, like a gladiator for a thumb.
This second man walked over to the pickup. A hand to his chin, he studied the kicked-out windscreen and the trail of dust and blood that Carmen had left while dragging Giulia to safety. He turned to his colleague and tapped his ear to indicate that the shotgun was too noisy. Then he looked away again. The other man set down the shotgun to pop the clasp on a sheath strapped to his leg. He drew out a hunting knife with a long serrated blade then held it up so that the afternoon sunlight glinted off it. Vittorio moaned again, his face a deathly grey. The man knelt astride him, pinning his shoulders beneath his knees. He clamped a gloved hand over his mouth then muttered something that might have been a prayer or even an apology before plunging the knife deep into Vittorio’s throat, directly beneath his ear. He held it there a moment then brought his free hand down to shield himself from the spray as he sawed across his windpipe and carotid. Then he wiped his blade on Vittorio’s shirt and stood and walked calmly over to Giulia, thankfully still unconscious. He glanced at his companion for confirmation before slitting her throat as well. Then he came across to Carmen and knelt upon her shoulders too.
She wanted to fight, she wanted to be defiant, but somehow she was unable. Her violent trembling suddenly stopped. She could see his eyes through the holes in his balaclava, dull like a backward pupil, darkly bloodshot and wrinkled with the mild distaste of a man about to plunge a blocked loo. His mouth was open, breathing hard from his exertion, his tongue coated with a pale yellow fur and his teeth spaced, grey and wonky, like headstones in an abandoned cemetery. She felt, simultaneously, both total dread and immense calm as he placed his hand over her mouth and—
‘Attenti,’ said the other older man, evidently the boss. He came and squatted down beside her. ‘Tu chi sei?’ he asked. Who are you?
Relief made Carmen sob. But the stress was too much for her rickety Italian. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t…’
The man grunted. ‘Inglesi?’
‘America,’ she said.
‘Passport?’
She looked around for her purse. It was still lying inside the Fiat’s cab. She nodded towards it. The youngster went to fetch it for him. He opened it up, took out her phone and then her passport, checking her photo, visa and entry stamp. Then he nodded at Vittorio and Giulia. ‘How you know these people?’ he asked. There was a disconcerting gentleness to his voice, and something off about his accent, too, though she was far too stressed to work out what.
‘I’m at university with Giulia,’ she said. ‘Sapienza. In Rome.’
‘You are here why?’
‘She invited me. There was a parcel she neede
d bringing.’
‘A parcel?’
Carmen looked around. The packing case had spilled from the back of the pickup and had tumbled all the way to the river’s edge. ‘There,’ she said.
‘What is it? Why she want it?’
‘I don’t know. She never said. I swear.’
The man fell silent. He gazed at her. She gazed back. If eyes were windows to the soul, then this man at least had one. Where his partner seemed dully indifferent to his butchery, this man was haunted by it, like an aid worker overwhelmed by a famine or some other natural disaster. Yet the only natural disaster here was him. She met his gaze with as much candour as she could muster, letting him see inside her. Finally he nodded. ‘You will be quiet for me one minute, yes?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He gestured for the youngster to cover her with his pistol then walked off a little way with his colleague with the cemetery teeth. Their lack of hurry bewildered her. But then, she realised, it wasn’t as if they could be seen. The steepness of the embankment at this point and the thickness of the surrounding woods put a screen completely around them. Fifty yards either side, where the gradient lessened and the landscape opened up, they’d be in sight of the road and other houses too. An ambush, then. One designed to look like an accident, in the hope they’d break their necks in the tumble. Unfortunately for them, she’d survived, kicking the windscreen out from within then dragging Giulia to safety, leaving a trail of blood and dirt all too easy for the police to read. So they’d given up on their initial plan and simply slit their throats instead. Now she herself was the only problem left for them to solve.
The Sacred Spoils Page 4
