When the Dead Awaken (34 page)

The tow truck's crew kept a respectful distance from Savelli. The only one moving was the doctor whom Urs Savelli had insisted should be present during the abduction. The doctor was tending to the two stretchers where the fashion designer and his driver were lying. Massimiliano Di Luca's and Alberto's eyes were open and staring at Savelli's face. They lay curled up in the characteristic fighter's position where the stronger flexor muscles of the joints dominate the stretching muscles. Their fists were clenched and their knuckles bloodless. He knew that they were awake and listening, even though they couldn't move.

The doctor was wearing a white nylon hazard suit with a hood and a breathing apparatus. He adjusted the
electrodes on the fashion designer's bare chest and tore off a strip of paper from a printer. He studied the electrocardiogram as he walked towards the captain.

He stopped two metres in front of Urs Savelli's chair. Less than two metres was inadvisable: he might be contaminated with glass dust.

‘I'm not entirely happy, signore,' the doctor said.

‘No?'

‘No.' The doctor shook his head. ‘The oxygen levels in the blood of both patients are normal. They're awake, but paralysed, obviously. However, Signor Di Luca has cardiac arrhythmia. It ought to be treated.'

‘Cardiac arrhythmia?'

‘The atriums of the heart are beating too fast compared to the ventricles. The heart's neural transfer is irregular, thus reducing the pumping ability of the heart. Signor Di Luca is likely to develop blood clots.' The doctor looked gravely at the Camorra captain. ‘Normally one would try to recreate the heart's rhythm with digitalis medication or with an electric shock, and then try to prevent clot formation by administering a blood thinner.'

‘Can you do that?'

The doctor straightened up. His eyes behind the reflective visor continued to study the electrocardiogram. The furrow of concern refused to be smoothed.

‘Of course …'

‘But?'

‘I'm not entirely clear what level of treatment you wish me to administer.'

Urs Savelli studied the leaden tip of the makila placed exactly halfway between his boots.

‘You must do your duty and treat Signor Di Luca in accordance with best specialist practice. I certainly want him to live for as long as possible and in the best possible condition, doctor.'

The doctor quickly started to open various bags.

The Albanian rested his chin on the bear head of his cane and followed the doctor's preparations.

He had observed L'Artista's attack at a distance and been impressed. Remarkable couple, mother and daughter. Extraordinary.

His contact with the Chinese triads, Mr Chun, had provided him with the glass dust that L'Artista's daughter had scattered across the seats of the Bentley.

The microscopic shards of glass were impregnated with heparin, which blocked the blood's ability to coagulate, and tetrodotoxin, an extract from the fins, skin and intestines of the puffer fish and the second most poisonous substance known to science, after endotoxin from the poison dart frog.

The formula originated from West African and Creole-Haitian voodoo: in order to ensure obedience in his servants, the voodoo priest would spread
houngans
, ground glass grains impregnated with puffer-fish poison, on the doorstep of suitable candidates. When the victim trod
on the splinters with their bare feet, the inevitable transformation from human being to slave, to zombie, would begin. Urs Savelli found the correct ethnographical description,
lave tet
 – brainwashing – most apt: the victim's personality, will and memory were wiped as thoroughly as a computer's crashed hard drive.

The murder of Gianni Versace and the furore that had ensued was still painfully clear in Savelli's memory, but it would be nothing compared to the death of Massimiliano Di Luca.
Il maestro
would be given a state funeral and there would be a national outcry for a police investigation to find and punish the guilty. Every stone normally regarded as untouchable would be turned. Old friends in the Senate of Rome would lose their confidence in him and turn away. This was much better. Don Francesco had been right.

Savelli rose, walked over to the stretchers and stared into the eyes of Massimiliano Di Luca. At a safe distance.

‘Can you hear me? If you can, please blink once.'

Massimiliano Di Luca's eyelids closed and opened. His knuckles were no longer white, his hands were starting to relax, but his fingernails had left bleeding half moons in the palms of his hands; the tetrodotoxin was almost washed from his spine and in a few minutes Di Luca and his driver Alberto would regain control of their limbs.

‘I intend to take everything from you, signore … including your mind. Everything but your life. I don't need you dead, I need you forgotten.'

Di Luca's eyes remained half shut. His gaze no longer took in Savelli, but was focused on something far away. Far away in the fifty-eight-year-old man's happiest memories.

Then he looked at Savelli and smiled.

His mouth formed words and Urs Savelli leaned forward until the doctor's warning stopped him.

‘Keep your distance, signore!'

Savelli ignored the doctor.

‘What did you say?'

‘It never worked …' Massimiliano Di Luca whispered.

‘What?'

Di Luca's chest heaved, and on the exhaling breath he repeated: ‘Forlani's invention. It never worked.'

Savelli's fists clenched behind his back.

He didn't believe the Venetian, obviously. It was a final desperate attempt to save Forlani. Admirable, really. Noble.

He nodded to the doctor who was removing a cylindrical metal container from a foam-padded aluminium suitcase. Once again ambitious assassins could do well to study the ancients. They could start with Homer. The pharmaceutical explanation for the orgiastic Dionysus festivals of ancient times was not only the consumption of copious amounts of raw fermented grape juice, but also the inhalation of smoke from the embers of thorn-apple twigs,
datura stramonium
. The priestesses of Delphi – the Oracle – knew all about this potent and treacherous nightshade plant. Its psychosis-inducing effect was due to its high levels of various
hallucinogenic alkaloids. Such as ergot. Every part of the plant was rich in these alkaloids, but the line between undesired death and desired ecstasy was paper thin.

An old Greek living on the island of Samos still knew the art of collecting the smoke from the twigs in large glass balloons, distilling the toxin with water-cooled copper pipes and extracting the alkaloids in alcohol.

The doctor hooked up the pressure flask and placed a rubber mask over Di Luca's mouth and nose.

Then he checked the monitors that tracked heart rhythm and oxygen saturation.

Di Luca's irises rolled behind his eyelids.

‘He's out,' the doctor said.

‘Are you sure?'

The doctor nodded.

‘Quite sure. The datura is mixed with LSD and scopolamine. So –' the doctor shrugged his shoulders – ‘bon voyage.'

Urs Savelli looked at the unconscious fashion designer.

‘Terror?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

Savelli smiled.

‘What's it like in there? Fear? Terror?'

The doctor looked uncertain. Fine drops sparkled on the upper lip of the Camorrista, even though the air in the hall was cool.

‘I imagine it's like having untreated schizophrenia,' the
doctor said slowly. ‘Terror, possibly. Certainly. The subconscious in freefall.'

The doctor was keen to please Savelli.

‘And they can't be brought back?'

The young man smiled.

‘No, no,' he said. ‘Datura administered in these doses over the next couple of hours will cause lesions to several brain centres. No, they'll stay as they are.'

Savelli nodded and turned on his heel.

‘We have work to do,' he said.

Milan – Ospedale Maggiore, Niguarda Ca' Granda

Even though they were separated by only a few metres, they could have been on different continents. The unconscious fashion designer had dispatched Sabrina and Giulio Forlani to the furthest recesses of his mind.

The afternoon sun went down while doctors, nurses, lab technicians and Carabinieri officers went in and out of the isolation ward through the airlock, everyone protected by breathing apparatus, gloves, suits and hoods. The doctors were dumbfounded, the nurses were efficient, the phlebotomists drew a little more blood from Di Luca's thin arms, and the officers whispered comments to Sabrina which she didn't hear.

It had been a call from Primo Alba that woke her up in the house in Ticino. That voice always meant disaster. After an anonymous tip-off to the Carabinieri in Greco Milanese, the designer's Bentley had been found in an underground car park in Porta Volta.

A careless Carabiniere had opened the driver's door and Alberto had fallen out on to the concrete floor. The officer had begun to examine the driver, but started convulsing a few seconds later; he had become non-responsive and his hands had started to bleed.

From that moment on Alberto and Massimiliano Di Luca were treated as if they were carrying a deadly virus.

Sabrina got up and went over to the window. Sweat poured down her back under the nylon coverall and her hair was soaking wet. Enterprising journalists who had been listening to the police on a scanner had started gathering in front of the hospital's entrances. For the time being they were kept at a distance by the police, dogs and cordons, but Sabrina knew that the vast hospital had hundreds of ways in and it was impossible to secure totally. Sooner or later some journalist would find a white coat, a stethoscope and his scoop. Massimiliano Di Luca's name had been mentioned on the police radio during the initial call, which had sent the media into a frenzy.

The hospital's large, elliptical courtyard, with its strict geometrical pathways and shrubs, lay strangely peaceful and golden, deserted and unused.

After his initial contact, Primo Alba was no longer taking her calls and Federico Renda was not available either, his secretary informed her. At least not to Sabrina D'Avalos.

She had been overtaken by events and she could feel the
fresh imprint of the pariah mark on her forehead. This was what Primo Alba had warned her about outside the cathedral. If she succeeded, everything would be official and hunky-dory; there would be toasts and champagne, applause and medals; if not, no one had ever heard of her and everyone would distance themselves from her. She would be a rogue agent, an unreliable assistant public prosecutor who had put her private motives above her duty.

She would be famous, notorious … and forgotten. Perhaps her name might occasionally be whispered in the canteen of the Palace of Justice or in one of the cafés around Via delle Repubbliche Marinare by some careless junior assistant prosecutor who would quickly be silenced by an older colleague. Sabrina D'Avalos? Hush! For God's sake never mention her name within the hearing range of Federico Renda if you value your career.

The next and final step would be relegation to the Vehicle Registration Agency, but she was too tired to really care. She turned around and looked at Giulio Forlani, who hadn't said one word to her in the last three hours in the hospital ward – his rare glances in her direction had spoken volumes.

Sabrina sighed and tried to take stock of the situation: (1) she had found a genius who was presumed dead – who didn't want to be found – and an invention that didn't work; (2) she had caused the deaths of Professor Carlo
Mazzaferro and his companion Laura Rizzo; (3) given time, she would have ensured that the widow Antonia Moretti, and her fifteen-year-old son Gianni, met the same fate; and (4) she had turned the world-famous fashion designer Massimiliano Di Luca and his innocent driver into vegetables.

It was truly impressive. She was a human Bermuda Triangle.

The deep groan from the rubber edges of the airlock made her turn around: a man with an aristocratic face, half-moon reading glasses on a long patrician nose, tall and thin, had arrived.

He introduced himself as Professor something or other, but did not shake hands.

Giulio Forlani rose to his feet. He positioned himself next to Sabrina.

‘You are Signor Di Luca's next of kin?' the professor asked.

Sabrina nodded. As they waited for the doctor to deliver his news they felt fairly composed.

Di Luca looked just the way he had at breakfast, Sabrina thought. It was possible that he looked even better. The colour of his face was natural and he was sleeping calmly. The monitors above his bed all showed normal green curves and numbers.

The professor cleared his throat.

‘We're … dumbfounded. When I say “we”, I mean the
staff here at Niguarda. We don't understand what has happened to Signor Di Luca.' He smiled faintly. ‘Normally we don't mind appearing all-knowing … far from it. But the truth is that we're totally at a loss. Almost.'

‘Almost?' Sabrina said, with a glimmer of hope snatched from the darkness.

‘Insofar as there are many causes of a coma which we can eliminate fairly easily: Signor Di Luca didn't suffer a stroke, his brain hasn't been subjected to trauma or violence, the MR scan of his brain was completely normal.'

The professor's voice ebbed out.

‘Drugs?' Sabrina asked. ‘Toxins?'

‘We haven't had any definitive results back yet,' he said, then added quickly, ‘That doesn't mean that Signor Di Luca's mind hasn't been contaminated with some exotic substance. In fact, I believe it has. But we have yet to identify what it is.'

‘Did you notice his fingertips?' she asked. ‘I understand that a type of glass dust was found in the car.'

‘Yes, fascinating, isn't it? The fingertips were the entry point for what has now put him out of the running. Whatever it is.'