The Abomination (11 page)

Which meant that, so far, they hadn't found it.

He wasn't sure exactly what he'd do if he and his programmers found it first. It would almost certainly be encrypted and untraceable, like the majority of Carnivia's traffic. But he hoped that from the size and shape of it, and the pattern of uploads, he might be able at least to figure out what kind of thing he was dealing with.

You know
, Max typed from halfway across the world,
there's always a possibility that we're playing right into their hands
.

How so?

They tried to hack into Carnivia themselves and failed, right? Looking for the exact same thing we're looking for. And now here we are, doing it for them
.

Daniele ran his hands through his hair, exhausted. Then he typed,
You're right. Plan A sucks. If I had a Plan B, we'd probably go to it. But I don't. So let's keep looking
.

HOLLY TOOK THE
files from the archive back to the Liaison Office and examined them more carefully. Three files, consisting of about twenty pages of loosely inserted material in all. She tried entering some of the Slavic words into Google Translate, but the inverted circumflexes and other unfamiliar accents easily defeated her US-layout keyboard.

“Mike, do we have any Serbo-Croat translators on base?” she asked her boss.

“NFI. But I could send an email or two if you like. This still your Open Government request?”

“'Fraid so.”

“Frankly, I doubt you'll find anyone. The Pentagon won't have seen any point in training interpreters in those languages since Kosovo, and that must have been almost fifteen years ago. World's moved on, right?”

“Right,” she said with a sigh. Through a nearby window she could see a dozen soldiers spotting each other over the assault course. It looked fun – or at least, physical and challenging. For a moment, she regretted not fobbing Barbara Holton off with a form letter and some platitudes.

“I do know one person you could try, though,” Mike was saying.

She turned her attention back to him. “Yes?”

“Ian Gilroy. He was the local CIA section head before he retired – a real Cold War warrior from the old days. He comes on base once in a while to give lectures.” Mike made a face. “I went to one, a while back. Can't say it was riveting. I suspect it just gives him an excuse to use the PX, get his car serviced and chew the fat with the other old-timers. You know how it is with these retirees.”

“Sure,” she said. “Ian Gilroy. Thanks, I'll try him.” A thought suddenly struck her. “Mike,” she said slowly, “this isn't all some kind of elaborate snipe hunt, is it?”

“Snipe hunt?” he said innocently.

Postings abroad were notorious for snipe hunts. Newly arrived soldiers were sent to the armoury to ask for a crate of left-handed grenades. Airmen were sent to the stores for tins of camouflage paint. Seamen were ordered to help calibrate the radar by wrapping themselves in tinfoil. The variations were endlessly inventive, whether for duplicate Humvee keys, replacement spirit-level bubbles, copies of gun reports, or any of the hundred-and-one other practical jokes that kept combat-ready troops entertained in long foreign postings. Only now did it occur to Holly that a suspiciously articulate middle-aged American woman brandishing an obscure FOIA request might be something similar.

Mike smiled at the thought. “Wish it was – it would be a pretty good one. But no, not so far as I know. You chose to do this, remember? Only yourself to blame.”

The Camp Ederle Education Centre consisted of no fewer than three affiliated colleges: University of Maryland, Central Texas College and University of Phoenix. She looked up the lecture schedules on her computer. Between the three, she could study everything from Criminal Justice to Business, all heavily subsidised by the government. Even so, she knew, most soldiers preferred to spend their free time racking up internal army qualifications.

Ian Gilroy taught two courses: Italian Military History and Roman Civilization. In total he gave only three classes a week, and they seemed not to lead to any particular major. It certainly read more like a retiree's hobby than a serious academic pursuit.

Seeing that his seminar on Italian Military History would be finishing within the next half hour, she caught a bus over to the Education Centre. The place was busy, mostly with women in civilian clothes. There were almost a thousand service spouses living near the base, she knew, and they had to keep busy somehow. Alongside them were a smaller number of older men, also in civvies. These would be the retirees: ex-soldiers or officers who had settled down nearby and were entitled to use the base facilities for as long as they lived. Her own father had talked about doing something similar at Camp Darby.

She felt a sudden pang of heartsickness. Many of these men were about the same age as him. White hair combined with an upright, military bearing – dignified and frail at the same time – always got to her.

She found the right classroom and peered inside. Two men of about seventy were sitting watching another man of a similar age. He was drawing a diagram on the whiteboard as he talked. She guessed that must be Gilroy, and stepped back into the corridor to wait.

After about five minutes the door opened and the two other men came out. Gilroy was cleaning the board down, meticulously scrubbing it clean with methylated spirits.

“Mr Gilroy, sir?”

He turned. He was white haired, and his physique had the slenderness of age, but his firm blue eyes showed no sign of wateriness as they took in her meagre pips. “Yes, Second Lieutenant?”

“I'm here to ask a favour, sir. I'm told you might speak Serbo-Croat – I have some documents I'm looking to translate.”

Clearly pleased to be asked, he nodded. “I'll certainly try. But I have to warn you, my skills in that direction are somewhat meagre. Back in the day, it was our Russian we tended to work on. Do you have the documents with you?”

She gave him the papers, and he waved her to a seat. Pulling out a pair of reading glasses tucked discreetly into his shirt pocket, he scrutinised them.

“These are mostly dates, and what appear to be meeting notes,” he said after a minute. “At a guess, I'd say they relate to Operation Storm.”

“That tallies with my intel, sir. But why would the US Army have archive notes relating to Storm? My understanding is that there was no US involvement in that conflict.”

He glanced over the reading glasses with a smile. “What's your name, Second Lieutenant?”

“Boland, sir. Holly Boland.”

He stared at her. “Not Ted Boland's daughter? Little Holly who used to make those Italian cookies for barbecues?”

“Affirmative, sir,” she confessed.

“Well, I'll be. . .! Your father and I didn't see each other often, of course – he was down at Pisa and I was up here in Venice, although I took my chain of command from Langley.” She nodded at the discreet acknowledgement that he'd been CIA. “But I certainly swung you round on my arms a few times – in the days when I was still capable of such things.” He smiled ruefully. “But you haven't come here today to listen to an old man's reminiscences.”

“On the contrary, sir. I'd be honoured to hear your recollections of my father.”

“Well, perhaps on another occasion.” He turned back to the documents. “May I ask exactly what it is you're looking for?”

“Well, that's the thing – I'm not quite sure. A Freedom of Information request came in. Something to do with a man called Dragan Korovik.”

“And who is he, when he's at home?”

“He is, or was, a Croat army general. And he's certainly not at home, not at the present time. He's awaiting trial for alleged war crimes relating to Operation Storm.”

Gilroy raised his eyebrows. “Well, it's certainly an intriguing mystery. And I have to confess, I've rather missed those since I retired. Mind if I take these and try to work it out?”

“Please go ahead, sir.” As he folded the papers, she added, “That's a copy.”

“So not classified?”

“Doesn't appear to be.”

“Good. And whether there's anything useful in here or not. . .” He tapped the folded pages. “I'd like to borrow you for dinner sometime. Been into Venice much yet?”

She shook her head. “I only got here yesterday.”

“Then we'll go to a proper Venetian restaurant and you can fill me in. My treat.” He paused, then added, “I do get some news, via friends back home. I'd heard that your father's no better. I'm very sorry.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said. For some reason, this old warrior's calm sympathy was almost harder to bear than her own family's regular updates. She swallowed away the sudden catch in her throat. “I'm sure he'd be glad to know so many people are thinking of him.”

“Things like that, they put life into perspective, don't they?” He tapped the papers she'd given him. “But in the meantime, I'd be pleased to help you with your puzzle, Second Lieutenant.”

STILL WEARY FROM
her late night, Kat drove inland towards Verona for her 9 a.m. appointment with Father Uriel. She got lost several times in the Veneto countryside before she finally located the Institute of Christina Mirabilis, nestled on its own amongst rolling vineyards and quiet woods. To judge from the ancient stone of the buildings, and the stained glass in some of the windows, it had once been a monastery or convent. The area between Venice and Verona was liberally dotted with such places, most of them dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when
La Serenissima
, as Venice was known – The Most Peaceful One – provided a safe haven for those of every persecuted religious affiliation. In the modern age many had become hospitals or colleges, often still run by nuns or monks from the original order. Something along those lines was clearly the case here: as Kat parked she observed a number of nurses in grey nuns' habits, hurrying busily from building to building.

The receptionist, another nun, took her to Father Uriel's office and knocked on the door for her.

“Come in,” a voice called.

A man in shirtsleeves sat at a desk, typing briskly into a small computer. Apart from the white
collarino
of his shirt, and the small metal cross pinned to his chest, he might have been any other busy medical man at work. A doctor's couch, complete with a paper hygiene sheet, stood to one side.

Breaking off from his work, he stood and greeted Kat with a handshake. “Pleased to meet you. I'm Father Uriel.” His Italian was excellent, but a hint of clipped vowels suggested that it wasn't his first language.

“Thank you for seeing me, Father.”

“Not at all. I understand it relates to the abomination at Poveglia?”

“To the murder, yes.”

“It was not only the murder I was referring to,” Father Uriel said quietly. She must have looked at him questioningly, because he continued, “There are many different ways of allowing evil into our world, Captain.”

“You're talking about the occult?” she said cautiously.

“Amongst other things.”

“But this is a hospital, isn't it? I suppose I'm a little surprised to hear a medical person talking in such terms.”

A hint of a smile creased the corners of his eyes. “The dividing line between the spiritual and the medical is sometimes less clear cut than my purely medically trained colleagues would have you believe. Whether you use the term ‘psychosis' or ‘possession', for instance, is often more a matter of your training than any real difference in the symptoms you're describing. In earlier times, of course, prayer was often the only remedy for such illnesses. But in the modern age, we have powerful pharmacological treatments too. So here at the Institute we use both approaches – pharmaceutical interventions and spiritual ones, working in combination. Quite literally, the best of both worlds.”

“Interesting,” Kat said, not wanting to get drawn into a general discussion about the Institute. “But it's your specific expertise with the occult that brings me here today. I'm told you might be able to identify some of these.” Opening her file, she took out Hapadi's photographs showing the symbols daubed around the Poveglia crime scene.

Father Uriel scanned the images one by one. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “Some of these are very familiar to me.” He pointed. “This one is the upturned cross, obviously. It signals to Satan that he's being welcomed to a blasphemous space.” He indicated another. “This is the Horned God, a symbol representing the Evil One. And the entwined double S here represents the Salute and the Scourge, a symbol of obedience to evil.”

“So there's absolutely no doubt in your mind that these symbols are sacrilegious?”

“None whatsoever.” He handed the photographs back quickly, as if unwilling to handle them any longer than was absolutely necessary.