The Ancient Curse

11

FABRIZIO SEARCHED the other man’s face but found only bewilderment and a touch of madness.

‘Do you have a weapon?’ he asked.

The man lowered his head. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘This time it’s come for me. I should never have refused.’

Fabrizio grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. ‘A man like you must have a gun somewhere, damn it! Get it and defend yourself. It’s only an animal. Ghosts don’t rip people apart the way he does.’

But as he spoke he felt like his voice was coming from someone else’s mouth, as if those weren’t his own words. This feeling of alienation made him profoundly uneasy.

‘You must have a weapon,’ he insisted, trying hard to pull himself together. ‘Get it and cover me while I try to reach my car. My rifle’s inside and it’s locked and loaded.’

As he spoke he could see the soft reflection of the burnished barrel in the darkness, smell the glycerine oil mixed with the persistent scent of gunpowder. All his senses were enhanced as he sought a point of focus.

The other man finally shook himself out of his trance. He got up, went towards the glass case and tried to control the trembling of his hands as he opened it. At that same moment the howl of the beast sounded even closer and was joined by the hoarse, furious barking of the dog outside. They heard the chain snapping back and forth, back and forth along the wire, followed by a fierce snarl and an immediately suffocated yelp. Then silence.

The man covered his mouth with his hand in a gesture of despair. ‘He killed my dog,’ he said softly. ‘He’s already here.’ Then, with a sudden flash of conscience, he pushed Fabrizio towards a door at the back of the kitchen. ‘You can get out this way. The regional road is just 100 metres away. There’s always a car passing. Run.’ He searched Fabrizio’s face fleetingly, but then his eyes turned blank. He walked mechanically to the door that led to the courtyard and was outside before Fabrizio could stop him.

Fabrizio heard a shriek of terror, followed by the same growl he’d heard a few nights before, suffocated as the animal sank his snout into flesh and blood. He ran through the kitchen, down the hall and out the back door. He could see his car out of the corner of his eye; he knew he could make it. But as he was about to make a dash for it, he saw two headlights flare at the far end the courtyard and Francesca’s little Jeep pulled up. He heard her voice calling, ‘Fabrizio! Fabrizio, are you there?’

Fabrizio felt his blood turn to water and, gripped by panic, he shouted out at the top of his voice, ‘Francesca! Francesca, no! Lock yourself in! Don’t move!’

And he sprinted towards his own car, partially illuminated now by Francesca’s headlights. But the beast instantly looked up from its victim and lunged after him. Fabrizio could feel its hot panting at his back, but he was sure he could make it. The car was there and Francesca was alive, though he could hear her terrified screaming. He opened the door, grabbed the gun, spun around and pulled the trigger. In the beam of the Jeep’s headlights he saw the creature’s terrifying bulk, its hackles raised, its bared bloodied fangs, and he understood he had failed in the same instant in which horror nailed him fast to the ground, slowed, almost paralysed his movements but left his mind free to race at an insane speed towards his own death.

He had no idea what was happening when the courtyard was swept by the blinding glare of another set of headlights. The dilated space of that unreal event was ripped through with agitated shouting and a burst of deafening explosions. He finally separated a voice he could recognize. It was Lieutenant Reggiani, yelling, ‘Fire! Fire! Shoot to kill, damn it. Don’t let it get away!’

Fabrizio heard bullets whistling in every direction, saw the dark sky streaked by vermilion tracers. White-hot stones scattered about him, filling the air with the sharp odour of burnt flint. A black mass made an impossible leap, cleared the squad-car blockade and disappeared into nowhere. Without noise, weightless, shape without substance, it seemed, until you saw the trail of blood it left behind. The man with his throat torn out was still bleeding in the glow of the headlights, his corpse jumbled up with the body of a dog, a brave little creature killed in the line of duty.

Fabrizio thought his head would explode. He called out, ‘Francesca!’ and the girl ran to him, threw herself into his arms and clung to him, crying the whole time.

Fabrizio touched her hair, caressed her cheek. ‘Do you believe me now?’

‘Looks like we got here just in time,’ rang out Reggiani’s voice to his right.

Fabrizio turned to face him. He was wearing combat fatigues and held two smoking pistols, one in each hand. The officer turned to the corpse on the ground.

‘To save you, that is. It’s over for this poor devil . . . Christ, what a horrifying death!’

Exhausted by so much emotion, Fabrizio put an arm around Francesca’s shoulders and walked her back to her Jeep, trying to calm her. He turned to Reggiani. ‘Could someone take my car home? Francesca can’t drive,’ he said, adding, ‘She’s in shock.’ As if he were fine and in complete control of all his faculties.

Reggiani didn’t miss a beat. ‘Right. You go and take care of her. We’ll take care of the car. Tonight or tomorrow morning.’

Fabrizio got into the Jeep and drove off at a slow pace, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and the other around Francesca’s shoulders and saying, every so often, ‘There, there. It’s all over now. You’ll be OK.’

‘Stay with me tonight, please,’ said Francesca as soon as she had calmed down.

‘Yes, I’ll stay with you. That’s why I asked Reggiani to have my car taken care of.’

He crossed the regional road and turned off on to the local road that led to Francesca’s house.

Once inside, she prepared some herbal tea, poured it into two cups and sat at the table opposite him. Her cheeks were still streaked with tears, her hair was messy and her eyes were red and yet she was beautiful, with a quiet, unselfconscious beauty she seemed totally unaware of.

He drank small sips of the tea until it was gone, then got up and said, ‘Come on. Let’s go to bed.’

THE NEXT MORNING Fabrizio woke up early and feeling fairly normal, surprisingly so. Perhaps he had Francesca’s herbal tea to thank. She was already in the kitchen, making breakfast. He could tell that last night’s ordeal had affected her but not prostrated her. She was not the type to let her emotions run wild. Fabrizio was sure she was already rationalizing what had happened and searching for plausible explanations.

‘Why did you follow me last night?’ he asked her suddenly.

‘I tried to call you, half an hour after you left, and you didn’t answer.’

‘That’s impossible. My mobile phone never rang.’

‘I’m sure you never heard it ring. You left it here!’ she said, opening a drawer. ‘I turned it off and put it away for safe keeping.’

Fabrizio shook his head, took the phone, turned it on and put it into his pocket.

‘When I realized your mobile phone was here, I wanted to let you know and I called your home number. It rang and rang. You forgot to turn on the answering machine.’

‘That’s likely.’

‘I tried ten minutes later, thinking you’d got held up somewhere or had a flat. Still no answer . . . so I put two and two together. I drove by your house anyway to make sure. The lights were on inside but your car was missing. I realized you’d gone in and out in such a hurry that you’d forgotten to switch off the lights. At that point I had no doubt – I figured you’d gone looking for Montanari.’

‘Right. And the carabinieri got on your tail.’

‘I think they were already on yours. I’m sure Reggiani’s keeping an eye on you.’

‘Hmm. They’re good at it. I hadn’t even noticed. But why were you trying to call me in the first place?’

‘Because I’d discovered something.’

‘After I’d left your house? Are you kidding me?’

‘No, not in the least. Hold on tight: Balestra’s inscription is opisthographic.’

‘What do you mean? That there’s writing on both sides?’

Francesca was all calm and composed. She took the coffee pot off the stove and poured out two cups, then proceeded to scramble three eggs while a couple of pieces of thick Tuscan bread were toasting in the oven.

‘How can you say that?’ insisted Fabrizio, trying not to appear impatient.

‘I have a copy of the tape I gave you and after you left I got curious. I couldn’t resist taking a look. I was fast-forwarding it when the cat starting miaowing from behind the door. I got up to let him in and opened a can of cat food. As I was putting it in his dish, I realized I’d forgotten to pause the VCR. When I got back, the tape had gone beyond the point at which you could see Balestra’s transcription of the Etruscan text, which was the only thing I had considered, and it picked up other images.’

‘What images?’ urged Fabrizio. ‘Francesca, don’t make me drag the words out of your mouth!’

‘My camera kept filming for five minutes longer and captured a sequence of images that look like they were created by a scanner. Balestra has one that recognizes sixteen million tones of grey. For some reason that I couldn’t fathom at first, he had photographed the back side of the inscription and then scanned the photo.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely sure. The bronze surface is perfectly recognizable. It’s fairly even but a little rough. You can even see where the inscription was photographed. It looks like an NAS warehouse, probably the one in Florence. There’s not much depth behind the slab, but enough to let you see beyond it. I imagine that Balestra noticed something strange about the back of the inscribed slab and decided to try to get a scanned image. So what to the bare eye must have looked like shadows actually came out as lines of writing, thanks to the resolution of the scanning equipment. Look’

Francesca turned on the VCR and played the tape. Fabrizio stared hard at the screen.

‘No. Watch. I’ll show you,’ said Francesca, placing a mirror in front of the screen. As if by magic, a sequence of letters appeared.

‘Latin!’ murmured Fabrizio. ‘I can’t believe it . . .’

‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ said Francesca, obviously pleased with herself. ‘It’s quite archaic, but it’s Latin for sure. Now you know why he’s kept this so secret. Balestra has the key for translating Etruscan if – as I think – this is the translation of the text on the other side.’

Fabrizio explored the paused image at length. ‘Amazing!’

‘How do you explain it?’ asked Francesca.

‘For some reason, the person inscribing the slab must have made a copy in Latin, probably using a material with a slightly different composition. The two slabs were in contact long enough for the oxidation process to create these differentiated shadows. Balestra really has some incredible equipment. I didn’t realize these things were so sophisticated. He must have paid for it himself. I doubt the NAS would finance—’

‘It’s the same equipment,’ Francesca interrupted him, ‘that discovered that the shadows over the eyes of the man on the Holy Shroud are actually coins which picture the head of Pontius Pilate. Extraordinary work, done using the same machine. Now what are you going to do?’

‘About what?’

‘About this inscription, what else? Nothing that would detract from Balestra’s eventual announcement about its discovery, I hope.’

‘No. I wouldn’t dream of stealing his thunder. The only thing I want to do is figure out what it says. It’s the only way to understand what’s happening here.’

Francesca shook her head. ‘You’re mad as a hatter . . . How can you possibly think there could be any connection between these murders and . . . Christ, this stuff happened two thousand four hundred years ago! It’s absolutely impossible.’

‘Last night you didn’t seem so sure about that . . . The one thing I know is that Sonia’s virtual reconstruction of the skull of the animal in the tomb is identical to the head of the animal we both saw last night.’

‘So? It’s a striking coincidence. That’s all.’

‘No, there is one more thing: an open account from the past always has to be settled. Even after two thousand four hundred years.’

Francesca had no answer for that. Even if she had known what to say, she knew Fabrizio would not listen. His mind was going in other directions.

‘Well, what do you propose we do?’ she asked.

‘Start translating.’

Francesca widened her eyes. ‘We’re not philologists. We’ll never succeed.’

‘I was a pretty good epigraphist before I started studying statues, and we can always get help on the Internet or by asking someone who knows more than we do. Vartena, for instance, or Mario Pecci or even Aldo Prada. Why not? Aldo’s a friend of mine. But we won’t do that unless we’re desperate. First of all, though, let me call Sonia. It’s ages since I’ve talked to her.’

‘Forty-eight hours at the most,’ Francesca said sharply.

‘She’s a friend and she’s doing an awesome job,’ said Fabrizio defensively.

‘About time!’ chirped Sonia’s voice from his mobile phone. ‘Where are you? What have you been up to?’

‘Looking for trouble, as usual. How’s your work going?’

‘Really well. I’m assembling the spinal column and the hindquarters.’

‘As soon as I have a minute I’ll drop in.’

‘Oh, listen . . . that carabiniere lieutenant came by. He said he’d be getting your car back to you this morning. What, you were so busy smooching you didn’t notice the tow truck dragging you off?’

Fabrizio ignored her comment.

‘Pretty hot, your lieutenant friend.’ Sonia started on a new tack. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing him again outside the office.’

‘To see how he handles a pistol?’ Fabrizio teased back.

‘You fool,’ concluded Sonia. ‘See you around.’

Fabrizio hung up and went straight to work, using his digital camera to photograph the images on the screen. Then he asked Francesca to drive him home.

‘You could move in here for a while,’ she suggested. We could work on it together. Cook something up when we get hungry . . .’

Fabrizio hesitated a moment, long enough for her to be offended.

‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Forget I even said anything.’

‘It’s just that I have everything I need at my house,’ said Fabrizio. ‘A lot of people don’t have my mobile phone and they might leave me messages on the answering machine . . .’

His voice trailed off as he ran out of lies. In reality, he felt suddenly afraid of staying at Francesca’s house, wary about continuing a relationship that had been too serious from the start. He was not at all sure he could cope. He’d felt strange for quite a while now: out of step, out of place, out of his depth. And he felt indebted to her, which made him uncomfortable. What’s more, he was used to the solitary life, to working on his own. And when he thought of what had happened the night before, and might happen again, he knew it was best to keep her out of it as far as he could.

But he couldn’t help but notice the disappointment in Francesca’s face. ‘Besides, this situation has us all acting crazy. You’d end up hating me, sooner than you think!’ he continued weakly.

The girl shrugged, as if resigned, walked out front and opened the door to the Jeep. ‘Go on, get in,’ she said, then sat behind the wheel and, once he was in, started driving.

Neither spoke for a while, then Fabrizio said, as if thinking aloud, ‘The beast seems to strike all of those who have something to do with the tomb.’ Ringing in his mind were the words of the woman who had threatened him the night before. ‘Or maybe even those who have something to do with the statue in the museum, like me.’ He reflected in silence for a moment, then went on: ‘You’re not in on this threat for the moment and it’s best that you don’t get mixed up in it. I have a lead that I’m following and there’s no reason for both of us to risk our lives. Right?’

Francesca took her eyes off the road for a moment and turned to him. ‘If you love someone you take risks,’ she said. ‘But I understand. I’d feel the same way if I were in your shoes. I imagine you won’t answer if I ask you what lead you’re working on.’

‘No, I can’t. It’s a pretty remote possibility anyway. At least for now.’

‘I thought not,’ she said and asked nothing further.

They got to Fabrizio’s house as the carabinieri were pulling up to return his car. Sergeant Massaro handed him the keys and was joined by Reggiani, who stepped out of his regulation Alfa holding a hunting rifle. He said hello to Francesca, then turned to Fabrizio. ‘Do you have half an hour to talk? Massaro has a few more photos to take at the Montanari house, then hell be back to pick me up.’

‘Of course,’ replied Fabrizio, and turned to Francesca. ‘If you’d both like to come in, I’ll make some coffee.’

Reggiani set his gun in the rack, then sat down with Francesca at the table in the big kitchen as the intense aroma of freshly made coffee filled the room.

Reggiani put a spoonful of sugar into Francesca’s cup. ‘Is one good?’ he asked.

‘Yes, fine,’ replied the girl.

‘How are you feeling today?’ the officer asked her as Fabrizio sat down with them and started sipping the coffee.

‘Better, thank you, much better, but I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.’

‘I can believe it. Finding yourself face to face with such a monster. As luck would have it, we got there in time. We were trailing Fabrizio at a distance when we saw your car on that side road. It was dark and I didn’t recognize your Jeep, but when I saw you drive straight into the Montanari courtyard I thought I would have a heart attack. We rushed in and thank God we did. It could have been much worse.’

‘What are you going to do with this fourth corpse?’ asked Fabrizio.

Francesca noticed a moment of hesitation on Reggiani’s part. She downed the last drops of coffee from her cup and got up to leave. ‘I have things to do,’ she said at the door. ‘I’ll see you later, Fabrizio.’

Reggiani sighed. ‘We haven’t let the news filter out yet. Montanari lived alone in that isolated house in the middle of the countryside. People were used to him disappearing for relatively long periods of time. He would go off looking for seasonal jobs or work of a more dubious nature. He’s spent plenty of time in jail. No one will notice he’s gone. At least for a while. I guess that’s lucky for us, but we can’t go on like this. I’ve spoken to my superiors and we’re organizing a hunt with hundreds of men, dozens of dogs, helicopters and off-road vehicles, infrared equipment . . .’

‘You’ll draw a hell of a lot of attention to yourselves. You’ll have the press of half the world on your backs. A story like this . . . I can just imagine.’

‘I know. But at this point we have no choice. Especially because you’re not being of any help. For example, what were you doing at the Montanari house?’

‘You were the one who told me that those mysterious phone calls were coming from there. And are you aware that Balestra is studying an exceptionally important and very rare Etruscan inscription?’

‘Of course. The guys over at archaeological heritage protection told me about it. The slab from Volterra. They were the ones who recovered the piece from an old riverbed, but it had been moved there from somewhere else, if I remember correctly.’

‘You’re right. That was just a temporary hiding place. It was Montanari who reported it to the NAS, saying that he’d dug it up while working in the fields. Balestra immediately ordered further investigations but they turned up nothing. This tipped them off; an inscription that important cannot be devoid of any archaeological context. It was evident that Montanari was lying and that he must have known where it had really been found and where the missing portion of it was. I thought I could get him to talk and that’s what I was doing there.’

‘Without saying anything to me,’ commented Reggiani.

‘I would have told you if I’d been successful. Anyway, you were following me.’

‘That doesn’t justify your behaviour. Go on.’

‘What’s more, inside Montanari’s house I saw a fragment of the same bucchero pottery with the swastika that I found near the Phersu tomb and I realized he must be connected to that find as well. Ill bet you he’s the one who told the tomb robbers where the Rovaio tomb was.’

‘And what about your colleague Dr Dionisi? What was she doing last night at La Casaccia?’

Fabrizio hesitated a moment, looking into the bottom of his cup, then said, ‘She had something urgent to tell me.’

‘What?’ Reggiani pressed.

‘It concerns a discovery she made . . . a scientific discovery.’

‘That was so important it couldn’t wait for today? It must have been very urgent indeed.’

‘It was, but I can’t tell you any more. Give me a couple of days to work on it before you order a full-scale search operation.’

‘So it has something to do with this.’

‘I’m not really sure but maybe it does . . . Give me the chance to find out.’

‘I can’t promise you anything but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try to put off the operation for as long as I can, but then I’ll turn this whole place inside out. I’ll find that thing and fill it full of lead, then stuff it myself so I can see it hang in some museum. I saw this film the other night, a DVD that I rented.’

‘Yeah? What film was it?’

‘The Ghost and the Darkness.’

‘I remember that one. With Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer. The story about those two lions that devour a hundred and thirty workers on a railroad project. In Africa, at the end of the 1800s. Is that the one?’

‘Yes, that’s it. You know, the film is based on a true story. Everyone thought the two man-eaters were spirits, ghosts in the shape of lions who couldn’t be defeated. Well, you know what? They’re now sitting stuffed in a window display in a museum in Chicago. I saw them.’

‘You saw them? In Chicago?’

‘No. I downloaded the image from the Internet. One of the new guys can navigate the web like a real sea wolf. So, you know what else? They don’t even look scary. They are small and scraggly-looking. Doesn’t that console you?’

‘Not in the least,’ replied Fabrizio. ‘I’ve heard the phenomenon explained by animal-behaviour specialists. A predator, for some reason, becomes disabled. He can’t run as fast as the others, or isn’t as strong, and he gets kicked out of the pack. At some point, by pure chance, he kills a human being and immediately realizes that man is a slow, easy prey and, let’s say, has high nutritional value. From that moment on, he hunts and eats only people. Now, would you say that our creature is disabled in some way, or is killing out of hunger?’

Reggiani shook his head, discouraged. ‘I have to admit you’ve got a point there. In any case, I still intend to hunt it down and take it out.’

They heard the sound of an engine outside. ‘That must be Massaro,’ observed Fabrizio.

Reggiani got up and went to the door.

‘Listen . . .’ Fabrizio began.

‘I’m listening,’ said the officer with his hand on the door handle.

‘Nothing . . . I have to check out this thing first and then I’ll let you know, I promise.’

‘I hope so,’ said Reggiani. ‘For your sake.’ He started out, then turned back again. ‘You know, I was wondering . . . that colleague of yours . . .’

Fabrizio couldn’t help but smile. ‘Francesca?’

‘No, the other one.’

‘Sonia?’ asked Fabrizio with pretended nonchalance.

‘Yeah, I think that’s her name. You two aren’t . . . together, are you?’

‘No. We’re not.’

‘If I wasn’t in the shit up to my eyeballs, I wouldn’t mind having a go. Good God, someone like her can’t just spend all her time with bones, right? She must like flesh as well, I hope.’

‘I imagine she does,’ replied Fabrizio. ‘I’d bet on it actually.’

He closed the door behind Reggiani, went back to the table and switched on the computer.