The Fallen (18 page)

“There was no need for her to die as well,” said Malpighi. “I know what you were thinking. You need only me.”

“So it seems they were right,” said Georgi, a ruthless smile crossing his face. “That you have the ‘sight'.”

“This does not end well for you, Georgi Akeldama, you who ‘died' once to hide from your old masters in order to join with your new ones,” said Malpighi, her voice firm and unrelenting. “You will die again, but this time permanently in the arms of the one you love.”

“I think you're getting me confused with someone else, Sister,” said Georgi. He locked the door with the key in the lock and stepped towards her. “So, tell me, then,” he said, drawing out his knife from the folds of the robe. “What do I want from you?”

“My eyes,” replied the Sister. “You've come to take my eyes.”

TWENTY NINE

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

Something ageless and profane was on the wind tonight, something funereal and withering to anything it touched.

Soldiers on the western front drew their coats tight about them and supposed that autumn would soon be here. Soldiers on the eastern front called for extra rations of vodka and took out letters from home. Sailors on their ships, far out to sea, felt a wave of homesickness wash over them. Mothers, pressing photos of their sons to their breasts, stopped and gasped, feeling that something terrible had happened to their loved ones serving overseas, while infants in rooms above sobbed pitifully in their sleep.

Something wicked and eternal had been awoken, and exhaled a foul breath.

All across the world, Priests crossed themselves at the malice they sensed, Cardinals sat up and muttered silent prayers, Inquisitors paused in their deadly pursuits and stared out into the black heavens above for a moment, wondering what wickedness it was they had felt.

Candles flickered, cattle lowed, cats hissed, dogs sprang from baskets and barked at shadows.

Crows flocked towards the Vatican in huge numbers.

Something undying shifted restlessly in its dark abyss.

THIRTY

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

The city's sewer stank, as did Tacit's mood.

He drained the remaining inch of brandy from his bottle and began climbing the rusted iron rungs of the ladder. It hadn't taken him long to arrive at the capital after his escape, riding the train he had stowed aboard from Toulouse almost all the way to the Vatican. Throughout the journey he had played Salamanca's admission around and around in his mind, the revelation that Strettavario had murdered Isabella still inconceivable to him. Unfathomable.

And yet, for all that, Tacit knew exactly what the old Father was capable of, how dispassionate he could be, how he could act without question or mercy to ensure the orders of his Church were carried out.

How murder was not beyond him. When required, Strettavario could be as unyielding and cold as his pale staring eyes. There had always been something about the man Tacit had respected, admired even. Perhaps it was because he saw so much of himself in him?

But that was then. Now the old man was going to die. The journey to the Vatican had given time for Tacit's wrath to ripen and fester like a poison. Now, back in the capital, he felt ready to let the venom loose.

The ladder led up to a courtyard within Vatican City. Tacit emerged from the dark sewer hole and slunk back instantly as an Inquisitor took him by surprise, walking past at the very same moment. The pair stared blankly at each other, both startled. Tacit moved first, wordlessly breaking the man's neck in an instant and dropping him through the sewer hole.

Inquisitors patrolling the Vatican? At once Tacit knew something was not right.

He took the stairs at the far end of the colonnade at speed, heading towards Strettavario's apartment, and reached the third floor, breathing
hard. A Priest met him coming the other way and Tacit knocked him on his back with a punch and dragged him unconscious into a side-room, shutting the door firmly behind him. There was no point in silencing the Priest permanently. The Church would know soon enough that Tacit had returned, once they found Strettavario's body. All he needed was a little silence for a while, enough time to exact his revenge on the traitor.

The apartment Tacit was seeking was at the far end of the corridor. As he ran he recalled the years Strettavario and he had spent together, past assignments on which the old Priest had trailed Tacit. It had seemed to the Inquisitor that the Priest was always just a few paces behind him, watching him, as if he didn't entirely trust him, as if always waiting for him to step over a line never supposed to be crossed. But now the old Father had stepped over a line himself and it would be he who regretted doing so.

The door to his apartment was locked and Tacit kicked it off its hinges and bounded inside. The room beyond was empty, as was the rest of the residence. Tacit spotted Strettavario's diary on his desk and leafed his way through it. Empty. There were no visits scheduled to take him out of the city, no assignments which needed his attention. Tacit knew he must still be in Rome.

There was dirt on the carpet, the tread marks close to the window. Not Priests' shoes. A soldier's boot. At once Tacit knew that Strettavario must have received a visitor, but this visit had not ended in a struggle. Strettavario had gone peacefully, willingly even, with the visitor and with enough presence of mind to lock the door behind him. Tacit lifted his eyes to the greying outline of Rome beyond. Somewhere within the city Strettavario and his accomplice were hiding.

Tacit strode from the room knowing he would find them. The question wasn't if. The question was merely when.

THIRTY ONE

T
HE
I
TALIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
S
OČA
R
IVER
. N
ORTHWEST
S
LOVENIA
.

The Italian Third Army was marching again. After two days being held down in the lower reaches of the Carso, burning under the scorching endless sun and growing despondent about home and loved ones, the order had been drawn up for the army to move.

An endless grey shabby line of stumbling sweaty soldiers snaked out from the lush green of the tree line below, climbing barren paths winding slowly and at times steeply up around the mountain side, always up, towards the grey and blinding white of the Carso's ridged peaks in the distance.

The Karst Plateau lay at its very summit, a broad flat terrain like a lunar landscape, but pricked with a single pinnacle of black rock on its western edge. An ungodly place, spurned by man and beast.

The perpetual summer sun bore down on the marching soldiers like a curse. Backs of necks burnt red, dry mouths hung open and tongues, caked thick with a skin of saliva, lolled from between split parched lips.

Up they marched falteringly, through gorges strewn with rubble and the detritus of a population which had fled before the Italian enemy had arrived, doing all they could to slow the invaders. Carts had been drawn across paths and their wheels broken to wedge them firm in the dust and rocks. Rolls of old wire fencing, once used to house poultry and keep out vermin, were strung across roads. Often the soldiers came across a ramshackle sea of garden implements, hoes, rakes, spades, all of which had been set in the cold unyielding earth as a flimsy wall, or thrown across the route with broken barrels and anything else that could help slow progress.

All too rarely for the soldiers' liking, they would cross stone bridges over rivers of turquoise, and fall out to fill bottles with fast flowing water that was ice cold from the mountain peaks and tasted like nectar in the clinging heat.

“Make sure you all drink,” said the Sergeant Major to the soldiers lined up along the river bank, some of them up to their knees in the cold water. He watched Pablo fill his bottle. Satisfied, he went on, walking with his swagger stick tight to his right leg. Pablo watched him go, then found himself looking absently across the vista.

“The Priests,” he said, taking a drink from his bottle, “they're just standing there staring at me. It's off-putting.”

“You seeing things?” replied Private Lazzari, splashing himself with water from a scooped hand, before gathering up his gear from the bank.

Pablo knew he wasn't. They'd been watching him, like overcautious parents, ever since he had first come into the mountain with them. He snatched up his equipment and ran quickly into line.

“Always the first, eh?” muttered the Corporal, watching Pablo standing near the head of the column of men on the gravel road cutting a rough course across the mountainside. The Corporal set his hat squarely over his head and pushed it into place. “Careful. Don't you know that first in line means first over the top, the first to be shot. Cannon fodder.” He chuckled to himself cynically and took a fat-bellied pipe from the depths of his jacket, which he shoved into the side of his mouth.

“We've not seen any of the enemy yet,” replied Pablo, as the Sergeant called them forward. “Maybe they've all gone? Retreated? After all, if this place is as you suggest, it has no value.”

“I never said that,” cautioned the Corporal, smiling. “It has value, beyond measure. And no, the enemy has not left.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it's been long prophesied.”

“What has?”

“The battle. The battle to come. On top of the Carso.”

As they climbed higher still they passed through towns, sad and decrepit, all of them empty, save for old people who couldn't or wouldn't leave. Slovenians, Hungarians, Italians, all eyed the vast line of soldiers with suspicion and a distant unflinching stare. Few soldiers dared to return their stares, as if to do so would curse and send them to damnation.

By midday on the third day of the climb, had they crossed the broad Isonzo river and reached the flooded plain's low lying areas beyond, where the sluices had been blown up by the Austro-Hungarian army to further slow any assault. After the initial burst of excitement of an army on the move, the slow torment of the constantly interrupted march into the Carso towards the enemy had worn away at hope with every tired step, so that it now hung by the finest of threads. It seemed to the soldiers that all they were doing was climbing over the unforgiving terrain or stopping to clear the path ahead.

“Does this route never end?” asked Pablo, stumbling among the stones of the scorched earth and struggling to regain his rhythm with those alongside him.

“We are walking in the valley of death,” the Corporal called from behind.

“It is a valley without end, save when
he
decides you have reached it.”

“By
he
I suppose you don't mean God?”

“Look about you. Do you see God in all this desolation?”

Pablo didn't need to look. He'd seen enough of the Carso to know it was forsaken.