When the Dead Awaken

by Steffen Jacobsen

  CHAPTER 46

  Brescia

  The young woman turned over in bed and found her wristwatch on the bedside table: 6.30 a.m. Not even dawn yet. She drank a mouthful of water from the glass next to the bedside lamp and wondered whether to ignore the alarm from the pigeon loft. She still ached all over from the collision with Di Luca’s Bentley. Her left knee was swollen and discoloured; she would have to have it checked out later today. She always went to the same private clinic.

  No bird had ever arrived this early before, and nor had she ever been given assignments in such quick succession. She swung her feet out on to the stone floor, got up and found her dressing gown behind the door. She looked at her husband’s dark, curly head on the pillow and smiled. Unlike her, he had been blessed with the gift of deep sleep.

  She hobbled down the long passage that separated the bedrooms from the utility room, kitchen and bathrooms. The first room on her right belonged to her daughter, Abrielle. The old stone walls retained so much of the daytime heat that the nights were always too hot. Their daughter had kicked off her duvet and was lying in her dark blue pyjamas with stars, planets and moons on them. The woman pulled the duvet over the girl. Without waking, she turned over, found a cool corner of the duvet and put it under her cheek.

  The window was open and Hector the cat was outside.

  She stood for a moment with her arms folded across her chest and looked out of the window. The bedroom was east facing and she could see the start of the pale grey dawn behind the spruces. She checked the time again. Two roebucks would usually forage at the bottom of a fallow field around this time.

  But the field was deserted. And the animals had taken all sounds with them.

  There were no birds singing, no cicadas. There were no headlights from passing cars or trucks on Viale Sant Eufemia a couple of hundred metres from the cider house. The first shift workers should be on their way to work now, the first trucks should be arriving with deliveries for the supermarkets.

  Signora Malvestre, who lived in a small stone cottage a hundred metres to the south behind a row of old apple trees, would usually be up by now, light visible in her kitchen windows. She was the matron at a nursing home in Brescia and rode her bicycle there every morning. Her house was dark – and the heart in the young woman’s chest started to pound.

  No noises, no light or animals. Nothing. As if the world around them were holding its breath.

  She spun around and ran down the passage and into the living room. She had forgotten her injured knee and her wrist. When she was a circus artist she would invariably have some sort of injury, but would perform nevertheless. She had learned to ignore pain. She found the key on top of the gun cabinet, dropped it and nearly screamed in frustration while she wasted precious seconds looking for it. She opened the cabinet and found a small Taurus 7.65-mm automatic pistol, put it in the pocket of her dressing gown and snatched a Remington pump-action shotgun from its brackets. She broke a nail when she ripped open a box of shotgun cartridges, tore the rest of the paper off the box with her teeth and pumped cartridges into the chamber of the shotgun.

  The weight of the Remington instilled some calm and she got her breathing under control. She glided through the low, dark room with the shotgun ready at her shoulder. She waited ten endless seconds at the back door, before she went outside on the wet flagstones between the house and her husband’s studio. It was just at the time when the dew fell and she felt moisture on her face. The sky was growing lighter with incredible speed and revealed trees, fields and fences, while she wanted only to turn back the clock to the darkness and the night so that she could get Abrielle and her husband to a place of safety. Far away from here.

  She knelt down by the first corner and let the barrel of the shotgun swing in a wide arc around the corner before she followed. Hector was standing a few metres away with a mouse. He sat down on his hind legs, let the mouse escape into the tall grass and pricked his ears as he watched her.

  From the pigeon loft she could hear a sleepy cooing, as always when a new pigeon had arrived. She assumed it must be a kind of greeting. There were small piles of food and wood shavings in the tall grass and they felt spongy against her bare feet. She rested the shotgun against the wooden wall of the pigeon loft and checked the little photocell in front of the landing board where a homing pigeon would break the light beam.

  She had fed the pigeons before she went to bed. There had been three, but now she could make out four silhouettes behind the netting. She lifted the catch, opened the mesh door, and extended her hands into the pigeon loft. She made reassuring noises as the birds cooed anxiously, pressing themselves against the perch. She had always been good with animals. She let her fingertips glide over the neck of each bird and when she got to the second one, she found a small metal cylinder attached to its left leg.

  Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. The cylinder was too long, it felt different from the usual metal containers that Signor Marchese tied to the legs of the pigeons – and he always attached them to the right leg. Always. Signor Marchese was methodical in everything he did for Don Francesco Terrasino. And there was something else in the darkness of the pigeon loft that didn’t belong: a small LED light casting regular green flashes across the claws of the pigeon.

  She closed the hatch, turned to the fields and spotted the first one.

  Between the old apple trees. Very slowly, one of the trunks changed shape and became two outlines. The man emerging from the shadow of the tree ran through the long wet grass, in between the trees, and up towards the house.

  And out of range of her guns.

  She heard Radu cry out from inside the house. Her beloved roared like an animal. The scream was cut short by a noise like an axe hitting a watermelon and the young woman ran silently around the corner, in through the back door and onwards through the living room, though she knew full well they were making Radu scream so that she would come running. She raised the shotgun to her shoulder, rounded the corner to the long passage and shot at the shapeless forms that filled it. There were three of them, but she wasn’t sure that she had hit anyone as they vanished like ghosts.

  ‘Radu!’

  His bloody lion’s head and upper body lay in the passage. He was naked. He must have dragged himself out of the bed and across the floor when they came. She dropped to her knees a short distance from his face and rested her left shoulder against the whitewashed wall. Her beloved stared at her and his mouth tried to shape a word … a warning. Someone dragged him quickly back into the bedroom by his feet. His hand grabbed the doorframe, but the intruders were too strong and his fingers straightened out and released. He was so far away, so very far. She hit one of the shadows with her next shot. The figure buckled in mid-stride and collapsed at the far end of the passage. She reloaded and fired two quick shots into the dark to keep others out of the passage. She got to her feet and was less than two metres from the bedroom when her husband – fully upright, which he hadn’t been for eight years – slowly staggered into her field of view with a red cloud on his temple. Someone had hauled him to his feet and shot him through the head.

  A few pellets had ricocheted off Sabrina’s helmet, but the woman with the chewing gum had taken a full load from L’Artista and was lying a few paces from Sabrina’s feet. The woman looked up at her, her jaws still moving. The ceramic vest had absorbed the impact of most of the pellets, but in the morning light Sabrina saw that the right sleeve of her uniform had been ripped open and she could see white and black flesh and blood. The woman’s partner bent down and dragged her out into the utility room while Sabrina knelt by the doorframe and risked a quick glance into the passage.

  The petite figure moved with incredible speed. She had stood up and was heading for the bedroom when her husband fell through the doorway with red mist coming from his head. The mist hit the white plaster opposite. The woman continued in a forward somersault, straightened up right before the doorway to the bedroom and Sabrina instinctivel
y released two pistol shots at the fleeing figure. L’Artista did not appear to notice the bullets that skimmed the hair above her scalp and sprayed plaster and brickwork on her head and shoulders. She continued to shoot at the invisible executioners in the bedroom. A roar could be heard on the inside and the woman was on her way in like a fluid, vengeful fury when instinct made her glance over her shoulder.

  Slowly L’Artista rose to her feet, the shotgun hanging from her right hand. Sabrina could have ended it all there and then. She had a clear shot, L’Artista wasn’t moving. Sabrina thought about her father, about Lucia and Salvatore Forlani … about Massimiliano Di Luca and Alberto in their eternal prison … about all the people she didn’t know or hadn’t heard of whom this creature had killed, but she saw only a mother, whose daughter was currently dangling from Primo Alba’s right hand, floating and silent in her pyjama top, pulled halfway up her naked chest and gathered at the back of her neck in the man’s fist. A large grey pistol was pressed against the back of the girl’s head and Primo Alba’s handsome face was motionless.

  ‘Drop your gun, Anamarie Panevic,’ he ordered her.

  The shotgun clattered against the flagstones.

  Behind Sabrina the wounded woman got back on her feet. The screaming from the bedroom had ceased. A man stepped out into the pasage with his machine pistol raised. He walked up to L’Artista and kicked her legs away from underneath her, rolled her on to her stomach and bound her hands with a plastic tie. He bent down and removed a small automatic pistol from her dressing gown. The woman turned her head and looked up at Sabrina. Without pleading for mercy. Nothing.

  The last two men from the unit entered from the living room and took the daughter from Primo Alba. The girl started to scream and kick.

  Sabrina could see the girl’s screams etched in L’Artista’s face. It grew smaller and paler. Primo Alba pulled her to her feet. He wasn’t looking at anyone, his eyes were dark sockets, his face carved in stone.

  The woman looked at her dead husband and her struggling daughter and her gaze was indescribable.

  Alba pushed L’Artista in front of him and she seemed incredibly tiny and vulnerable. He opened the door to the girl’s bedroom and pushed the woman inside. Sabrina had turned to the soldier with the chewing gum when two pistol shots rang out from inside the bedroom.

  Primo Alba came back out into the passage and slowly and deliberately returned his pistol to the holster above his left hip. He took out a mobile phone, turned away and started speaking in a low voice.

  Sabrina tried to walk towards him, but someone prevented her. She tore herself loose and had almost reached him when more people arrived, twisted her arms around her back and put her on the floor. In a pool of the cripple’s blood.

  Primo Alba marched briskly down the passage while he continued to speak on his mobile, oblivious to the people behind him. And to Sabrina D’Avalos’s curses, threats and obscenities.

  CHAPTER 47

  Qualiano, Naples – Don Francesco Terrasino’s estate

  There was a polite knocking on the door, but Don Francesco Terrasino had already heard the nurse’s heels against the flagstones in the passage.

  His fork lingered indecisively over a plate of ham and eggs, but he was no longer hungry. He was losing his appetite more by the day.

  He had slept badly. A night filled with forebodings, faces, bodies and troublesome memories. He didn’t have the energy to get up and open the door to the nurse as he usually did. The sun was high in the sky, but the house was quiet. Guards and workers respected Don Francesco’s morning hours that were spent in meditation and contemplations of that day’s duties.

  ‘Enter.’

  He coughed drily and dabbed his watering eyes with the starched napkin that the housekeeper placed alongside his plate and cutlery every morning.

  He was looking deep into the black pupil of the espresso cup when the footsteps stopped in front of the table.

  ‘La signora?’ he asked without looking up.

  ‘The same, Don Francesco,’ said a new voice. ‘Probably much the same as Massimiliano Di Luca, I presume.’

  Don Francesco Terrasino didn’t move.

  Of course. After a night filled with all those faces. It had to be. It hadn’t been a nightmare, but a premonition.

  He looked up with a small smile. With his light brown hair and his clear grey eyes the young man looked like a prince. He would also appear to be unarmed, but Don Francesco didn’t get his hopes up. This was the end.

  The tall, lean figure balanced on the soles of his feet like an athlete. His arms were gathered in front of his body, resting – but Don Francesco knew his type, even if he didn’t know the man himself: the GIS.

  ‘My sons?’ he asked.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘The tunnel. L’Artista is dead.’

  ‘You killed Anamarie Panevic,’ Don Francesco Terrasino said. ‘What a shame. She had a rare gift.’

  ‘Undoubtedly, but born a couple of centuries too late. She belonged to the court of the Medicis.’

  The young man nodded and Don Francesco closed his eyes. He heard nothing, but the young man was fast … terribly fast. A hard hand was placed over his mouth and chin and Don Francesco Terrasino felt the knife enter below his rib and the explosion in his heart when the knife reached it.

  ‘This is for Federico Renda and Agostino D’Avalos, figlio di puttana,’ the man whispered into Don Francesco’s ear, almost as if he were praying, as he slit open the old man’s white shirt and then his abdomen, from his sternum to his belt buckle.

  CHAPTER 48

  Castellarano – fourteen days later

  The performance might not be remembered for its intense acting or its crystal-clear singing, but no one could say a word against the girls’ make-up or hair. They were perfect. What the girls lacked in terms of talent, during the school production of The Mikado, they made up for with huge commitment. There were long, extended rounds of applause when a gong struck by a pretty, kimono-clad Japanese lady signalled the interval.

  It was a strange setting, Sabrina thought, looking up at the tall Gothic arches over her head, at the ascetic portraits of saints and founding fathers who seemed to squirm uncomfortably at the colourful and happy tableau on the makeshift stage at the back of the nave. She smiled politely to the fragrant, fur-clad woman on the arm of her husband in a dinner jacket, as they tried to make their way down the central aisle. She pulled in her feet and knees and ignored the woman’s look.

  It was inevitable that she would attract a certain amount of attention.

  Giulio Forlani and Antonia Moretti had insisted that she come to the performance. Sabrina rose and tried to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. With her shaven head, downcast eyes, bruises and numerous fresh cuts to her face and scalp she looked like an earthquake survivor whom a humanitarian organization had hastily fed, dressed and flown into a charity event.

  There was ecstatic conversation everywhere, the smell of expensive perfume, long glittering evening gowns, sparkling laughter and expensive jewellery. After all, the girls – the majority of them – belonged to some of Europe’s most privileged families.

  She found a shaded niche, quickly emptied the first glass of white wine and snatched another one from the silver tray of a passing waitress.

  Forlani towered over everyone. He actually looked quite good in a dinner jacket, Sabrina thought. He was standing by a table covered with damask, canapés and crystal, and had turned his head slightly so that his good ear could pick up the words of Antonia Moretti, whose slim hands were folded around the stem of a wine glass. She looked happy, Sabrina thought.

  She looked like a woman with a plan for the future.

  Near the couple Sabrina spotted Gianni, Antonia Moretti’s son. His hair was thick and black as a troll’s and he was mesmerized by the girls who were bustling around the stage or had found their parents at the tables. He appeared to be looking for one girl in
particular. A couple of times he had looked in Sabrina’s direction with an expression so close to jaw dropping hero-worship that Sabrina had to look away.

  It was the last thing she needed: a teenager who idolized her.

  There were a few serious men and women who looked neither at the stage nor the girls. All wore white earpieces, had their arms folded across their chests and their faces alert. Without expression they scanned the audience, their surroundings and the area around Giulio Forlani.

  Urs Savelli was still at large.

  The bodyguards’ work would be complete tomorrow when Giulio Forlani, Antonia and Gianni Moretti boarded a US military plane to be flown to an undisclosed location on the US east coast. Both the Secret Service, whose constitutional task was to prevent forgers from attacking the US dollar, and Professor Mai Luán from MIT had pleaded and begged Doctor Forlani to come to the States and continue his work. A house, a car, a new identity, plenty of research funding … a pony for the boy … they could have whatever they wanted. For Gianni Moretti, one of the best schools in the world, and for la signora … well, there were plenty of undertakers in the US. Unless she preferred living clients?

  The physicist looked up, spotted Sabrina in the shadows and went over to her. The crowd of gesticulating and chattering theatregoers parted in front of the giant. There was something about this scarred, sombre man that was far too inappropriate and conspicuously serious for the occasion.

  He reached Sabrina and she smiled at him. She found it surprisingly easy to smile at Giulio Forlani, but hard with everyone else.

  ‘Are you enjoying it so far?’ he asked her gravely.

  ‘If I’m to be honest, it would have been kinder to put it out of its misery,’ she said.

  He smiled.

  ‘You look good without a beard,’ she said.