The Blue Ring (27 page)

Abruptly,
she pointed to his hand and asked, "What happened?"

He
lifted his hand and looked at it and slowly unwrapped the bandage and pulled
away the dressing.

She
looked at the stump of the little finger and repeated, "What
happened?"

Very
quietly he told her the story, the whole story. That night he reciprocated. He
cooked one of his famous barbecues; portions of steak, chicken, local sausage
and Lampuki fish. He also cooked the sauces he had learned in Africa: the hot
piri-piri from Mozambique, the thick bean sauce from Rhodesia and the green
chilli sauce from the Congo. He was wearing one of his sarongs tied around the
waist. She came out wearing one of her new sarongs, tied above her small
breasts.

They
talked as adults and he explained to her as much as he could about his life.
She felt very much an adult. She had many questions and, after a hesitant
start, asked them openly and directly. He answered all of them even though some
caused him pain. Especially when he talked of his dead wife and child, and of
the dead girl called Pinta.

"It
that why you brought me here?" she asked. "Because you wanted to
replace Pinta and your daughter?"

He
thought about that carefully and then shook his head.

"I
brought you here because you had nowhere to go. At least as I saw it. If I had
sent you to an institution or even home to your mother it would have been a
death sentence." His voice went quieter and lower and for the first time
she had a glimpse of what lay under the armour that surrounded his feelings.

"I
cannot tell you how many children I have seen dead or dying. In war it is
always the same. It was like that in Africa, in Asia, in Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos and all the rest. You see it now in Somalia, the Sudan, Mozambique, and
everywhere there's a bunch of so-called patriots and nationalists, politicians
and statesmen convincing themselves they're doing the best thing for their
people. The average person sees it now because it comes into their homes
through their television screens. But it has always been like that...children,
bombed, shot, napalmed...and starved."

It had
grown dark. Abruptly he stood up and went to switch on the pool lights. When he
returned she could see that his quiet outburst had disturbed him. Nothing
showed on his face but she could feel the disturbance in him. She had the
intuition to say nothing. They sat for many minutes in silence, looking out
over the lights of the villages below. Finally she stood up and cleared the
table.

After
the journey and the traumas of the day before he was tired. He kissed her on
the cheek, promised to take her fishing in the morning, and went to bed.

She sat
for another hour by the pool. There was a little wine left in the bottle. She
filled her glass and slowly sipped it. She knew that she had seen a glimmer of
Creasy's real character. She had wanted to react to it but in her youth did not
know how. She tried to remember her dead father. She could see his features and
his smile, but most of her feelings had been cauterised by the brutality she
had gone through.

Her
instincts told her that she must reach out to Creasy. She did not know how to.
She went to bed.

It was
about two in the morning when Creasy heard the soft tap on his bedroom door. He
was instantly awake. He heard her voice calling his name, then the door opened.
He switched on the bedroom light.

She was
wearing the same sarong. He saw the tears on her cheeks and abruptly sat up.

"What
is it?"

"I'm
sorry...mostly it's all right now. Mostly I can sleep...but sometimes I have
bad dreams."

He
patted the bed beside him and she moved forward and sat down. He put an arm
around her and pulled her close and with his other hand gently brushed her
hair.

"Can
I stay with you?" she said. "Just for a little."

"Of
course."

He
pulled a pillow across and she lay down.

He woke
at dawn with the feeling of something warm against his back. She was snuggled
up to him, her arms around his big chest. She was asleep. Gently he moved her
hands and tucked her up with a couple more pillows. Then he rose to make
breakfast.

Fear is
always relative. A spider can strike terror into the heart of some people;
others make pets of them. Fear can be dulled by ignorance or experience.

Fear is
one of mankind's greatest weapons. And none was more aware of this than Paolo
Grazzini. He had often felt it himself in his younger days. He knew its effect
and had witnessed its effect on others. He sat looking at the elderly man
across his desk. He had not expected to see fear in those eyes. Torquinio
Trento had been in the Cosa Nostra since he was a boy. His father and three
uncles had died in prison during the thirties, under Mussolini's merciless
crackdown.

They
had operated in the semi-civilised world of Calabria. At the age of seventeen,
Trento had emigrated north to stay with a distant cousin in Naples and had
naturally been initiated into the life of his father and forefathers. He had
never risen very high. His first capo had been wiped out in the inter-gang
rivalry that had erupted after the war. He had moved further north to Milan, always
managing to escape the internal genocide of the Cosa Nostra. He was a survivor,
never rising high up the ladder, but always keeping his nose just out of
trouble. Life had shown him much and he was generally immune to the shocks of
life and death.

For the
past few days Grazzini had been talking to many of the old ones of his
'family' and others. He had made it a kind of exercise in public
relations; calling them into his office and chatting about their families, if
they had one, and their problems, both financial and personal. He had enjoyed
the exercise, feeling more like the chairman of a public corporation than a
criminal capo.

He had
seen about fifteen of the old ones so far and, towards the end of each
interview, had enquired what they knew of an organisation called 'The Blue
Ring'. In each case up to now he had received a blank stare and a shrug of the
shoulders. He had begun to doubt the very existence of 'The Blue Ring', until
he had dropped the name to Torquinio Trento. The old man's head had jerked up
and for an instant Grazzini had seen the fear deep in his eyes.

"'The
Blue Ring'," Grazzini repeated.

The old
man's eyes had glazed over, then the fear in them reappeared. He glanced
nervously to left and right of the opulent office, as if expecting to see some
spectre come out of the panelled walls. Grazzini waited patiently. Finally the
old one asked in a tremulous voice, "What do you want of me, Don Grazzini?
I am an old man who only sits in the sun and waits for death."

Grazzini
smiled at him.

"Torquinio
Trento, before you retired you worked for my brother-in-law, God rest his soul,
and before that for his father. Were they not good to you?"

Very
carefully, Trento nodded.

"Of
course. They were my family...I was their child."

"You
are still their family," Grazzini said. "Even though they have
passed."

"What
do you want of me?"

"I
want what you know of 'The Blue Ring'."

Again
the old man's eyes darted around the room. He moved uncomfortably on the
comfortable chair. Again Grazzini waited patiently, until the old man began to
speak in a coarse whisper.

"They
are not of us, those people. They have nothing to do with us."

"I
know that. Who are they?"

The old
man whispered on as though talking to himself. "Compared to them we are
saints. Even the bad among us are saints. Their evil has no measure. Even to
think about them is dangerous."

Grazzini
leaned forward, fascinated and asked, "Why?"

The old
man's head jerked up as though he was coming out of a reverie. His eyes focused
on Grazzini and his voice firmed up. "Don Grazzini, I urge you not to even
ask about such people. Your brother-in-law's father may have died because he
once asked."

Startled,
Grazzini said, "He died of cancer."

Trento
nodded slowly, took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his
forehead and cheeks. He tucked away the handkerchief, looked down at the desk
and whispered, "That is what they say. But I know he had contact with
those people. His cancer came suddenly. He was only a young man of forty-three.
Within a month of being healthy and strong as an ox he was a dead
skeleton."

"What
are you saying?"

The old
man shrugged. "I am saying he had contact with those people."

Harshly,
Grazzini said, "Are you telling me that they gave him cancer?"

"I
am telling you only that they have powers...powers that they can use as
weapons, more than we know how."

Grazzini
remembered he was talking to a man who had grown up in the mountains of
southern Calabria and was imbued with its suspicions and superstitions.
"Apart from such powers, what else do they do?"

"They
deal in flesh."

"Flesh?"

The old
man nodded. "It is what I have heard. That is all I have heard."

Grazzini
sensed that he would learn no more from the old man. Courteously, he thanked
him and sent him away. For fifteen minutes the capo sat silently. Then he
phoned his brother-in-law's mother who, if he remembered, would be in her late
eighties.

Massimo
Bellu looked at his computer screen. For the last hour he had been tracing the
lineage of Jean Lucca Donati and he had made an interesting discovery, although
he doubted that it could have anything to do with the purpose in hand. But when
a brain like Massimo Bellu's started to interface with a complex computer with
almost unlimited information access it became something like pure mental
exercise. He had discovered that Jean Lucca Donati's father had been a very
senior official in the Italian Fascist Party. In fact, he had risen so high as
to become a personal aide to Mussolini himself.

He had
been killed by partisans in the last days of the war. Bellu decided to conduct
a similar exercise on the forefathers of Anwar Hussein. And again came up with
an interesting fact. The Nubian Egyptian's father had been a senior official in
the Cairo court of King Farouk and had been exiled with him and had died in
1952 in the south of France under mysterious circumstances.

Under
Satta's orders, Bellu already had a surveillance team on both men. Although the
teams were highly experienced, both men had vanished two days before and only
resurfaced in their respective offices in Milan and Naples that very morning.

She had
a face wrinkled like an old apple and a brain as sharp as a new razorblade.

Grazzini
had not seen his late brother-in-law's mother since the funeral. He felt guilty
about this, and opened the conversation by apologising for his busy schedule.
She gave him a slightly sarcastic look through her thick spectacles, but she
had been mollified by the large bouquet of red and white roses which had
accompanied his visit. Old ladies, especially Italian old ladies, never lose
their vanity.

Grazzini
approached the subject carefully. They chatted about the weather and the
vascillation of politicians, the rising cost of living and the declining value
of morals. Eventually she asked about the purpose of his visit. He sat in a
chair too low and soft for comfort, with his knees almost up to his chin. The
room was heavily over-furnished in a style much beloved by those who shunned
modern values. Dark and heavy furniture with dark and thick curtains, the gloom
only relieved by the light from the vast chandelier hanging in the centre of
the ceiling.

"Signora
Conti," he said formally. "I have come to ask your advice."

The
bouquet of roses had been arranged by her maid in a large Chinese vase on a
table by her side. She leaned towards it, cupped one of the roses in her bony
hand and inhaled its aroma.

"You
surprise me," she said, looking first at the rose and then at Grazzini.
"Why would such a great capo come to an old lady for advice? I suspect
that you come to me for information more than advice."

Grazzini
coughed uncomfortably at hearing this truth, then he plunged on. "This
morning I was talking to one of the old ones."

"Which
one?"

"Torquinio
Trento."

Her
eyes studied him through the thick spectacles. She nodded.

"Yes,
I remember him...a nice young man."

Grazzini
smiled. "Yes indeed. He remembers you well. He asked me to send you his
respects."

"What
of Torquinio Trento?"

Grazzini
plunged further. "He seems to think that your husband's death may have
been connected with an organisation known as 'The Blue Ring'."

She stared at him for a long time and then said, "My husband died of cancer."

"I
know that, Signora. But what makes me curious is why the mention of 'The Blue
Ring' brought fear into the eyes of the old one."

Under
her crocheted black shawl the old woman's thin shoulders shrugged.
"Torquinio Trento is from Calabria...the asshole of Calabria."

The
obscenity shocked Grazzini. She noted the shock and she smiled. "Yes, we
call them the fearful ones...but they only fear what they do not understand.
They fear the unknown."

"What
is the unknown?"

Her
laugh was reedy and without mirth.

"They
fear black in the night. They fear mystery which the priests cannot explain.
They fear the curse of the evil...although I never met anyone from southern
Calabria who was not evil in himself."

Grazzini
sighed inwardly and tried to bring the conversation back to reality.

"Do
you know anything yourself of 'The Blue Ring'?"

She
tapped sharply on the table beside her and instantly the door opened. Her maid
came in, a woman almost as old as herself. She gestured with her hand. The maid
crossed the room to an old sideboard and poured two glasses of an amber liquid
from an unmarked bottle. She gave one to Grazzini and placed the other beside
her mistress. The old lady was beginning to enjoy the visit.