“That was half an hour ago,” he continued. “The desk’s heard nothing since they sent him up here with some rookie agente—”
“Nic?”
The light in the corridor outside failed, followed by those in the office, throwing most of the floor ahead of him into the dark. Only the bright silver rays of the moon, visible through scudding rain clouds, remained. He turned to face what should have been the doorway, blinked, trying to adapt to the sudden gloom. It could just be coincidence. Not that he believed in them much.
“Call the switchboard back,” he told Emily quietly. “Tell them we may have an intruder. Old wing. Third floor.”
She broke the connection without saying a word.
He could just see the extensions printed in the list by the phone. Costa called the first one. A sleepy Teresa answered.
“Don’t ask questions,” he ordered. “Just lock the door and keep it locked until someone arrives. Yell at Leo through the wall and tell him to do the same.”
Then, just to make sure, he dialled the room he’d been sharing with Falcone.
No one answered.
He swore quietly. At least he’d seen fit to check out a handgun from the armoury that afternoon. It sat in its regulation holster on the desk in front of him. Costa hated wearing the thing. He picked it up, checked the safety was on, then, grasping it low in his right hand, walked towards the pool of inky black spreading out ahead of him.
He could picture the corridor in his head, with its glaring white paint and bare bulbs. The emergency quarters were just ten metres or so on from the doorway.
Costa tried to hurry. Desks bumped into him, from all the wrong places. He blinked, trying to force his eyes to adapt, opened them and thought he could just make out the shape of the area ahead.
A car swept past outside. The bright stray flash of its headlights shot through the office, briefly illuminating the area like a flash of lightning. Then it was gone, leaving its visual imprint in his brain. Ahead, Nic Costa saw the single outstretched silhouette of a figure in a familiar pose, one he’d learned to loathe over the years: arm outstretched, weapon ready, moving purposefully, with intent. As the car moved on, he could see the pencil-thin beam of a caver’s helmet lamp running in a distinct yellow line from the figure’s head, slicing through the gloom, aiming towards the rooms where Falcone, Peroni, and Teresa Lupo had been sleeping.
“Wonderful,” he muttered, then took a first, tentative step towards the invisible corridor ahead.
“This is enough,” Abati began to say, then took one step forward and found himself falling, spinning, arms flailing, hands grasping in desperation at little Sandro Vignola’s shoulders just to stay upright. He needed a doctor. He couldn’t take on anyone like this, particularly not Ludo Torchia, who had now, to Abati’s dismay, grabbed Alessio round the throat, and was clutching the child, like a shield, like a weapon, his knife tight to his scalp. Dino Abati looked into the boy’s eyes and wondered whether he could really understand what he was trying to say to him, just with a desperate expression, surely only half visible in the dark.
This isn’t my doing, Alessio. Forgive me. I’ll try and make it right.
“I don’t wanna go to jail, Ludo,” Toni LaMarca pleaded. “Getting kicked out of college I can handle. But this—”
“No one’s going to jail. You won’t tell a soul, will you, kid?”
Alessio Bramante stayed there, tight in his grip, unmoving and not saying a word.
“He won’t say a word,” Torchia said defiantly.
“So…” Abati murmured, trying to force some clarity back into his head. “Tell us all, Ludo. Where now?”
A new sound came to them. It was the tentative clucking of the cockerel, fear covered by some small bravado, filtering out from the tiny, narrow tunnel they’d already passed.
“There,” Torchia answered Abati, lifting his arm from Alessio Bramante’s throat to point at the black chasm behind them. Abati could detect a breath of foul, miasmic air emerging from its mouth. It stank of decay. The very existence of a current of air, however meagre, filled him with the faintest trace of hope. It meant the channel went somewhere.
“Which goes where… exactly?” Abati asked.
Torchia’s foot came out and stabbed him painfully in the shin. The movement released Alessio. The child could have run then. He didn’t move.
Abati staggered to the tunnel, so crudely hacked out of the raw rock it looked unfinished. He could taste the dank, stagnant vapour in the air. Somewhere there was a stream, a fissure in the hill, perhaps, one that led into some unknown natural waterway running beneath the people and the cars on the Lungotevere, back into the real world, straight down to the Tiber. He’d stamped, waist-deep, freezing cold, through subterranean torrents like this before. He’d do it again, with a child in his arms if necessary.
“You tell me, Dino.”
“Ludo…”
“You tell me!”
Torchia’s voice was so loud it felt as if he had entered Abati’s head, and would stay there, spreading his infection wherever he could.
Then another noise. It was the bird again. The black cockerel strutted confidently into view from the hidden crevice ahead, small head bobbing, as if it were trying to force from its tiny mind the idea that there might be something worse ahead, worse even than the crazy Ludo Torchia, who now watched it hungrily.
“Mine,” Torchia barked, grabbing at the bird’s flapping wings and the flailing claws.
When he had hold of the creature, when it became obvious what would happen, Dino Abati took the boy by the shoulders and tried to turn him away. He didn’t want to watch himself. Only Toni LaMarca’s eyes glittered in Ludo Torchia’s direction.
“I thought you needed an altar,” Abati said quietly.
Torchia made an animal grunt, then flung a string of foul epithets in his face.
I thought, Abati wanted to add, but didn’t dare, a bungled sacrifice, rushed, out of place, out of time, was worse than no sacrifice at all.
There was the sound of wild, frightened cawing, one high-pitched screech, then nothing. An odour — fresh, harsh, and familiar — reached them. Blood smelled much the same, whatever the source.
The boy clung to him now, trembling, tight and nervous as a taut wire. Abati gripped him, hoping to keep his small, fragile body hidden. Torchia recognised fear. It stoked his craziness.
Torchia took the feathered corpse and walked round each of them, smearing its blood on their hands, and on Abati, on his face.
He reached Alessio. What Dino Abati thought he saw made no sense. For without warning the boy thrust out his fists, worked them deep into the shiny feathers, washing his hands with quick, eager movements.
“Brothers,” Torchia said, watching him. “See? He understands. Why don’t you?”
But he’s a child, Dino Abati thought. An innocent. He still believes this is a game.
“Where do we go now?” Vignola asked.
“Where this dead thing came from.”
Dino Abati looked at the crude, gaping hole of the tunnel.
“Sure,” he said.
Discreetly, he reached down and gripped the child’s tiny hand, sticky now with blood, then ducked beneath the sharp stony overhanging teeth, bent the beam of the flashlight forwards, and stepped carefully along the ground it revealed, hearing the shuffle of feet behind him, trying to force his aching head to think.