The Nosferatu Scroll (22 page)

What he should do was call the police, hand over the thug he’d knocked out and explain that he was one of the men who’d attacked him and Angela the previous evening. The problem was that he had absolutely no proof. And he knew only too well how the corporate police mind works: the most likely result of such actions would be that he—Bronson—would face a charge of assault or the Italian equivalent of grievous bodily harm.

No, that was never going to work. Even if by some miracle Bronson managed to avoid being arrested, it would be hours before his assailant would be in a fit state to answer questions himself. The best chance of finding Angela lay with the two men who were now about seventy yards away from him and running hard.

Bending over the unconscious man, Bronson unsnapped both the belt holster and the leather pouch containing the two spare magazines for the Browning, and put them in his pocket.

Then he sprinted after his quarry.

Angela shook her head, and moved on. A second, much shorter, sentence followed, but two of the words in it were not listed in the Latin dictionary she was using. The translated sentence read:
There the open graves yawn ready where the fires burned in ages past, in the place where a little man once strutted and postured, and where a little
veglia funebre
once held sway.

For a few moments, she stared at what she’d written. It sounded like directions to a specific place, and she had a vague idea what at least one of the two non-Latin words might mean, because it wasn’t that different from a familiar English word. She looked at the desk in front of her, and at the other books and dictionaries stacked on it. One of them was a pocket-size Italian-English dictionary. She picked it up, flicked through the pages until she reached the letter “V,” and read the entry for
veglia
. She didn’t need to look up
funebre
, because the combination of the two words was listed in that entry.

A
veglia funebre
was a wake, or a vigil for the dead. Angela had guessed at the possible meaning of
funebre
because it looked so similar to the English “funeral,” or at least it probably had the same root.

Something else puzzled her about the way the sentence had been constructed. From what she knew of Italians, she doubted that any vigil for the dead could be described as “little,” and the repetition of the same phrase, the three Latin words that translated as “little”—
parvus, minor, minimus
—so close together in the same sentence seemed to provide an unusual degree of emphasis, as if the writer was trying to convey some additional information.

Then there was the “little man.” Angela didn’t know a huge amount about Italian, and especially Venetian, history, but she did know that Napoleon had conquered Venice in the last decade of the eighteenth century, ending eleven hundred years of independence. His troops had sacked and virtually bankrupted the city; they had seized many of its most valuable treasures, shipping them off to Paris, where many remain to this day. He’d even stolen the Triumphal Quadriga—or Horses of St. Mark—the famous bronze statues that for some time had graced the top of a triumphal arch in the French capital before the Venetians managed to have them returned.

When anybody spoke about Napoleon, the expressions “petty tyrant” and “little man” were often used as pejorative terms, though in reality the Emperor was of about average height for the time. The Venetians loathed him,
for perfectly obvious and understandable reasons, and the expression Carmelita had used—
where a little man once strutted and postured
—could well refer to somewhere in Venice where Napoleon had spent some time—a district in the city, perhaps, or one of the islands. She couldn’t think of any other historical figure who was likely to have been referred to as the “little man.”

Then she had another thought, picked up the Italian-English dictionary again, and turned the pages until she reached the English word “little.” The Italian equivalent was
po
,
poco
,
pochi
and other forms, depending on the noun being qualified, with
poco
probably the commonest. Angela wrote down all the variants at the bottom of the page she was working on, and added the two Italian words—
veglia funebre
—as well. Maybe there was a district of Venice called Poca Veglia or something similar.

There was a tourist map of the Venetian lagoon in the pile of books in front of her. She unfolded it and checked the names of the six districts, or
sestieri
, of the city, but none was even slightly similar to what she was looking for. Then she expanded her search to the islands of the lagoon, moving outward from Venice itself. Even then, she nearly missed it, because she was expecting to see something like “Isola di Poca Veglia,” and she was already checking the names in the southern end of the lagoon, near Chioggia, when her subconscious mind raised a flag. Her glance snapped back to the area between Venice and the Lido and there, due south of Venice itself,
well away from any other islands and fairly close to the Lido, she saw it: Poveglia.

In fact, it wasn’t an island: it was three islands, shaped like an inverted triangle, with the point to the south. There was a small, regularly shaped, possibly even octagonal, island to the south, with two much larger landmasses, separated by a narrow canal that cut the island in two, directly to the north of it.

Angela looked back at the text she’d translated, and then again at the map of the Laguna Veneta. That had to be it. “Po” and “veglia” combined in a single word. That must be the place that Carmelita was referring to in her very simple and basic textual code.

But what about Napoleon? Was there any connection between the emperor and the small island in the lagoon? One of the books stacked on the desk in front of her was an English-language guide to the history of Venice. She pulled it out of the pile, checked the index and then opened it to a section about midway through.

“Yes,” she breathed as she read the entry. During the Napoleonic Wars, the emperor had used Poveglia as a storehouse for weapons, and there had been several vicious battles fought on and around the island. Napoleon definitely had a connection to the place, and might well have “strutted and postured” there.

Angela was sure she’d identified the right island. But there had to be more to it than that. Just stating that the long-lost document was secreted on Poveglia was not enough; for a search to succeed, much more information
was needed. Although the island looked reasonably small, she guessed it would still take a large team of people several days to search it.

She continued with her translation. The next line contained the word
specula
, which Angela had to look up. The dictionary suggested a number of translations, but a “tower” or “watchtower” seemed the most likely, and the Latin word
campana
, or “bell,” seemed to confirm it. On the map of the lagoon it looked as if there was a tower of some sort at the southern end of the largest of the three islands.

She felt her excitement growing as she realized she might be close to identifying the exact place where the ancient document was hidden, but then her thoughts tumbled back down to earth with a bump when the further realization struck her. Marco would keep her alive only as long as she was useful to him, and the moment she had identified the hiding place and the old documents had been recovered, she didn’t think he would have any further use for her.

Could she delay completing the translation? Or would Marco guess what she was trying to do and impose a brutal punishment in retribution? Angela shuddered as she remembered the jar and its collection of hideous relics, and bent forward again over the pages.

She heard a soft footfall on the wooden floor behind her and glanced round to see Marco looking over her shoulder at the work she was doing.

“You’ve found something,” he said, more a statement than a question.

Angela nodded. “I think so, yes.”

“Show me.”

She pointed to the last sentence she’d translated. “The author of this section of the text employed a fairly simple word code, but it looks to me as if she was referring to an island called Poveglia. Have you heard of it?”

Marco nodded, almost sadly. “Every Venetian knows about Poveglia,” he said quietly.

When the guard arrived with her midday meal, Marietta stared at him listlessly. She absolutely believed what he’d said to her that morning, and she’d resigned herself to the fact that she was going to die, painfully and unpleasantly, in that damp cellar within a matter of hours. There was no point in even attempting to establish a rapport with the man, of asking for mercy or anything else. His callous attitude toward her, and toward Benedetta, had become obvious. As far as the guard and the other men were concerned, Marietta and all of the other nameless victims of the bizarre cult were simply animals who would be slaughtered when their time came.

The guard followed his usual routine and placed the tray on the floor close to the wooden bed, then picked up the other tray he’d brought down that morning. Despite the terror that bubbled inside her, Marietta had eventually eaten all the food he’d supplied, just as she expected she would finally eat whatever meal she had now been provided with.

“This is your last meal,” the guard said, glancing at her, “so you might as well make the most of it. I’ll bring warm water and a towel for you to wash yourself later this afternoon, to get ready for the ceremony tonight.”

“And if I refuse? If I simply tell you and your revolting friends to go to hell, what then?”

The guard shrugged. “That’s your choice,” he said, “but if you don’t do what we want, you’ll taste the Taser again. And if you still don’t cooperate, I’ll ask a couple of the men to come down here and have a bit of fun with you before the ceremony. They’ll enjoy it, but I don’t suppose you will. It’s up to you, really.”

Marietta held herself together until the man had walked out of the cellar; then she dissolved into tears.

Bronson sprinted across the graveyard after the fleeing men. He paused for a few seconds beside the tomb of the twin angels, staring at it with a sense of déjà vu. The stone side of the grave had been smashed open—a hammer and chisel were lying on the ground beside the shattered stone—and what was left of the ancient coffin was scattered about. The grave itself was obviously very old, and most of the wood had long since disintegrated to reveal the skeletal remains of the tomb’s occupant. This corpse had also been decapitated, but this time the head was nowhere in sight. Could that explain what was in the bag that one of the men had been carrying?

Bronson shook his head and set off in pursuit of the two men. He wasn’t concerned about them getting too far ahead of him, because they must have used a boat to get to the island. From the direction they were running, this boat was moored in the inlet at the northern end of the island, where Bronson’s own vessel was tied up.

The last thing he wanted to do was storm onto the jetty and start a firefight. He needed the two men to make their getaway, so that he could go after them.

Instead of following right behind the two men, he angled over to one side and did his best to increase speed, though having to dodge around gravestones and tree trunks hampered his progress somewhat. The sound of a powerboat engine starting close to him—just a few yards away—indicated that he must be right by the jetty. He stopped and made his way cautiously in the direction from which the sound had come.

In a couple of seconds he reached the edge of the jetty, but remained out of sight as he surveyed the scene in front of him. A blue powerboat was already about ten yards out from the water’s edge, and gathering speed. The man who’d shot at him was sitting in the bow staring back toward the island, his pistol held low in his right hand, clearly waiting for Bronson to show himself, while the other man concentrated on getting the boat away from the jetty as quickly as possible.

Bronson memorized what the men were wearing and the color and type of the boat, and waited until they turned right out of the inlet, and the craft was lost to view. Then he stepped onto the jetty, ran down to where his own boat was moored, released the line and climbed aboard, starting the engine as he sat down on the padded seat. He opened the throttle and the boat surged forward. He pulled it around in a tight circle and headed for the entrance
to the inlet, then swung the wheel to the right, to follow the other craft.

As he emerged into the open waters of the Venetian lagoon, he looked ahead. The blue boat was already perhaps a hundred yards in front of him, heading more or less east. But, as he turned in the same direction, the man in the bow pointed urgently back toward him. The other man glanced behind as well, and immediately turned the boat to the right.

Bronson knew he’d been spotted, and cursed. Wherever the two men had been heading, they were obviously not going that way any longer. They had turned southwest, toward Venice, and Bronson guessed their intentions. If they’d stayed out in the open waters, he’d have been able to follow them even at a distance. No doubt they were now heading into the city so that they could try to lose him in the notorious maze of Venice’s canals and waterways.

Angela looked up at Marco. He seemed strangely subdued by her mention of the island.

“What is it about Poveglia?” she asked.

He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “You really don’t know?” he replied. “Your ignorance staggers me.”

He reached forward, plucked a book out of the pile on the desk and slammed it down in front of her. “It’s all in here,” he snapped. “Read it and educate yourself.”

Pulling a mobile phone from his pocket, Marco stalked across to the other side of the drawing room and held a brief conversation with someone. It sounded as if he was issuing orders.

Angela glanced after him, then down at the book. It looked like a fairly typical multilanguage tourist guide to Venice, but the title promised that it would reveal the hidden stories of the Venetian lagoon: “the Venice that tourists never see,” as the author claimed. The introduction
pointed out that the city hosted around three million tourists every year, although most of them never got beyond Venice itself and the islands of Murano and Burano. There was a short chapter that dealt only with Poveglia, and by the time she’d finished reading it, Angela knew exactly why Carmelita had talked about the “ancient dead” and the “screaming dead.”