Shout in the Dark (25 page)

Laura tucked her silver Alfa away in the
shade of some trees in a small village carved into the side of the
hill. The view from the edge of the piazza was stupendous, a
genuine
bella vista
.
Down below, small tracks wormed their way through silver olive
groves and yellow fields. Rolling brown earth and gray hills faded
into the heat. It was the middle of the day and already the locals
were slowing down in preparation for their
siesta
.

The bar was open. They sat in the shade of
a large plane tree on white plastic seats around a white plastic
table. Nothing exotic, but at least it all looked clean. If Laura
had been expecting better she gave no sign of it. He sipped
his
caffè
latte
and tried
unsuccessfully to relax. He noticed that Laura left her cup
untouched, her eyes fixed on the road. The bright red lipstick she
had worn on her first visit had never reappeared. The current deep
pink was much more to his liking.

Perhaps life was all right. Free from
worry. Well, reasonably free. He was glad Laura had asked him out.
This might not be exactly what Father Josef had in mind, but there
was always the chance of coming up with something of value at the
monastery. Nevertheless, he felt pangs of guilt about his
friendship, his relationship with Laura.

Relationship? He shook his head. It was
hardly an affair, and Father Josef had given his blessing for
contacts to be made. So ... he was making contact.

He became aware that a hush had descended
on the piazza. Children were shouting further down the road where
they played with their bikes, but no other sounds disturbed the
midday peace. A red Audi station wagon sporting German license
plates swept through the village leaving a swirl of dust. The
children carried on with their games, and only the older
inhabitants took any notice. Marco guessed that here, as well as in
many other parts of Italy, Germans were still remembered as the
occupiers and resented accordingly, especially in remote rural
areas like this. Still there was hurt, still hatred.

Laura rummaged in her purse and dug out
her cell phone. "I'm just going inside."

Laura took her time returning. She seemed
slightly more at peace now and certainly more patient. They resumed
their journey at a leisurely pace.

"
There's no hurry to get to the monastery," she explained.
"I didn't tell you before, but Bruno Bastiani has gone there with
Riccardo Fermi to sort out a problem. I want to give them time to
get away before we start digging."

Marco slammed his hand down on the
dashboard. "Hold it a minute. Are you playing some sort of game
with me?"

Laura looked surprised. "What do you
mean?"

"
Your two friends are at Monte Sisto sorting out a problem,
but you don't want them to know we're going there? What are they
doing -- digging up the relic before we can get to it?"

"
I was going to tell you something ... but not now." She
shrugged. "Bruno and Riccardo are doing their thing, and we're
doing ours. They're not digging, and they'll be gone by the time we
get there. Stop worrying."

Marco shook his head. He couldn't help
worrying. "I hope you know what you're doing."

KESSEL EXAMINED the map again. It marked
the site as a ruin, but he
'd been hoping to discover that the monks still maintained
some sort of presence. Quite clearly the place was uninhabited.
There was only the one pathway shown that would take them all the
way to the top.

"
Karl, make sure we're on our own." He extended the aerial
on the radio handset. Otto's communication equipment would be
useful from now. Even if he and Karl bought themselves expensive
cell phones, in places like this there would be no signal. Karl was
behaving like an excited boy with a fresh plaything as he clutched
one of the radios.

"
Karl, go to the other side of the hill and let me know if
the place is clear. If you can't get through on the radio, come
back round until you can hear me. Got it?"

He instructed Otto to stay with the Audi
and report any approaching vehicle. He himself would be positioned
on the top of the hill to direct the operation. In spite of the
oppressive heat he felt pleased. This was the real thing: not a
training exercise. Apart from Karl's botched raid on TV Roma, this
was the first time in his life he had been in command of an
operation. His father must have stood here on this path commanding
members of the
Sicherheitsdienst
. The attendant at the garage a few miles back, where they
stopped for fuel, thought that a SS Nazi raiding party from Rome
had blown the place apart in 1943 or '44, which tied in perfectly
with the account given by old Helmut Bayer in Köln.

.As Kessel reached the top of the narrow
track, standing breathlessly under the blazing sun, he could see
that the main building looked
surprisingly small for a monastery. The monastic order that
once occupied this place must have been a minor one.

Brambles and bamboo overgrew the hilltop
making progress difficult. Fire had
once raged through the stone structure, leaving it
roofless and open to the elements. Perhaps the monks had destroyed
it in an attempt to thwart the Germans.

Picnickers had left their usual litter --
empty plastic mineral water bottles and brightly colored wrappers
scattered amongst the ruins. His people would never treat landmarks
of German history so casually. The Italians had no respect for the
past. A slight breeze shook the clusters of canes growing round the
monastery walls, making a sound like running water.

"
Can either of you hear me?" He asked the question quickly,
seeking the reassurance of a German voice in this
Hinterwäldler
place.

The radio hissed and the broken speech told
him that Karl was close, although Otto remained silent.

"
Try and get more out into the open, Karl, then stay there.
And don't forget you're acting as lookout while I search
around."

Kessel moved his position constantly as he
tried to receive a signal from Karl or Otto, his finger poised over
the speech button. Then Karl's voice on the radio made him jump.
The reception was clearer now.

"
No one round this side, Herr Kessel."

Kessel hid his concern. "Then come up to
the top and stay with me."

Ten minutes later Karl had not shown up
and the radio only hissed with static. Otto still failed to
respond, although the greater distance to the car made this more
understandable. The photographer's radios were no better than toys
from the market place.

The huge doorway to the main building was
empty, the wooden door having long since been taken away, along
with anything else visitors could lay their hands on. The monastery
had been raped. He found it extraordinary that he should find
himself identifying with these monks.

Nearly thirty minutes passed before Karl
appeared at the top of the hill, breathless and sweating.
"Something bothering you, Herr Kessel?"

"
I have a feeling we're not alone." He suppressed his worry.
"And where have you been? You didn't answer my radio."

As Karl shrugged his broad shoulders,
Kessel could see dark bands of sweat showing in patches on the
youth's black T-shirt. The large sticking plaster that covered the
Gypsy's knife wound was now dirty and peeling at the
edges.

"
What's the matter, Herr Kessel? Did you want me to look
round or not?"

He let the lack of manners pass. Karl was
useful, so the matter would not be mentioned again. He ordered Karl
to go down into the darkness and search the cellars while he looked
around up above.

The library, stripped of the wood paneling,
might have been a former barn rather than a place of sacred
learning and study. Only the dark lines on the plastered wall,
where rows of shelves had once been fixed, gave away its original
function.

"
Herr Kessel, come down." Karl's voice echoed up from the
cellars.

The uneven steps disappeared into the
blackness. He stumbled his way down. The only light reaching the
main cellar came from a ventilation shaft high in the wall, and it
took him a minute or so to identify the objects on the floor.

"
Clothes," said Karl unnecessarily. "Someone might be
camping here."

"
Damn! We need a flashlight, Karl. Go back to Otto. I know
he has one in the glove box."

Karl had only just got to the top of the
steps when he turned in alarm. "Someone's coming, Herr
Kessel."

"
We'd better get down the hill and find Otto. Damn his
pathetic radios!"

MO WAS SIXTEEN, unwanted and rejected. He
had
learned his name
from the jeering children in the village. "
Scemo Bambino!
" they would call whenever he appeared. He
knew himself by no other name than his own corruption of
Scemo
, the
foolish one -- the village fool. It was one of the few words his
misshapen mouth could utter.

Many years ago he had believed his name was
Pietro. But that was before he tried to play with the other
children in the village and join in their games. Now he was Mo, the
only part of his name he could say easily.

Mo had never known the love of a mother,
for it was his mother who had rejected her illegitimate son, seen
as a punishment from the devil for her fun and games with the boys.
With an unidentifiable father and an uncaring mother, he had found
shelter with a farmer's family until his early teens.

The problem for Mo in a superstitious
backward community, reared for generations on old wives' tales, was
that he was unable to communicate in the conventional sense. The
occasional garbled utterance was all he could manage, and to the
villagers he appeared to be so mentally retarded that no one had
imagined there was a possibility of teaching him to write. And even
if there was a possibility, such a gesture would be pointless
because he could not move his limbs in co-ordination, so there was
little chance of his fingers grasping the pencil he had never been
offered.

The
Scemo Bambino
had been tossed aside, an embarrassment both to his mother
and the small community. The words he knew, but which he could not
communicate aloud, had been learned from the farm children who
accepted him for what he was, and gave him the occasional hug when
he managed to say a word correctly.

The farmer eventually grew suspicious of
Mo. The boy's voice, the voice that could say few words apart from
his name, became deeper as the hair on the upper lip grew thicker.
The farmer's daughters were getting older and he felt that in some
way they were at risk. They were certainly at risk from the able
bodied youths in the village of Monte Sisto.

Mo now lived in the ruined monastery,
sleeping in the cellar while seeking shelter from the sun in the
summer and the cold in the winter. The farmer's wife still provided
food, without her husband's knowledge, for which he made the
demanding trek down the steep path every two or three
days.

He knew when the children would be home.
He could sit with them as long as their father was out in the
fields. The bad village was the place he was told he must never
visit. The mother he could hardly remember was married now, and as
far as she was concerned he was some dreadful, forgettable, part of
her past. Her one horror was that some day the devil's child might
reappear and cast a blight on her virtuous life.

Mo had noticed the smart red station wagon
arrive. Trippers like these were
cattivo
-- bad. Everything and everybody strange
were
cattivo
. He
could pronounce the first syllable strongly, mouthing the other two
with an inward groan. The people with the car were bad.
Cattivo
. The
people in the village were bad.

But strangers were very bad.

Mo waited until the two men went up the
hill, then his curiosity became too strong to resist. Just one man
sat in the big car now. If he was careful he could go close to the
red car and still be safe. And if the bad man did see him he knew
exactly what to do.

LAURA PARKED
her Alfa under some trees near a small track that
ran across the fields to the houses in the village.

"
Let's not climb the hill yet," she suggested. "Leave the
detector in the car. We'll cut across the fields and ask in the
village if anyone knew Canon Levi. He may have discussed the relic
with someone there. It's not far. I can see the houses."

Marco felt isolated as they walked down
the track. The small village of Monte Sisto seemed to be officially
closed for the day when they reached it. Unofficially it had
probably been closed to visitors for centuries. He wondered how the
local priest in the war had felt after his act of betrayal of the
Brothers and Jews to the Nazis. He must be dead by now. Had he died
penitent? The place pervaded an air of despair. The little church
looked disused.