The Blue Ring (34 page)

He
lived in a small studio apartment in Trastevere. Apart from his narrow bed, the
tiny bathroom and the even smaller kitchenette, the whole apartment was filled,
wall to wall, with books, and in one corner his computer, which lately had
become the centre of his life.

He had
long ago given up the hope of being a social lion. He occasionally basked in
the reflected light of Satta's glamour; and he always enjoyed that, but for
him, that was enough. On this night he was in communion with his computer.
Sometimes he felt he was attached to it by some umbilical cord.

They
came for him just after eleven o'clock. A soft tap on the door.

He
thought at first that it must be his upstairs neighbour, an elderly widower,
retired from the civil service, who often came down to borrow a cup of sugar
but who, in reality, wanted a chat to relieve his boredom. Bellu had long
decided that the old man must have accumulated several thousand kilos of sugar.
One day the ceiling would collapse, and he would die smothered in the stuff. He
closed down the computer, hitting the keys which coded its information. Then he
opened the door. It was not the old man. It was two young men, darkly-dressed
and holding pistols.

They
allowed him to put on an overcoat before taking him away. His intelligence told
him that he was going to die. They did not blindfold him; that was the first
sign. Over the years his nose had developed an instinct for the Mafia. They
were not Mafia; that was the second sign. They conducted themselves as though
they were above and far beyond civic authority; that was the third sign.

His destination
was a cellar in Focene. He did not struggle as they bundled him out of the car
and down the steps. He felt no foreboding, only a sense of inevitability. They
strapped him to a chair in front of a table and waited. He asked no questions.
Ten minutes passed and then the door opened to admit Jean Lucca Donati. Bellu
recognised him from the photographs in his files. Donati sat down across the
table, pulled out a pen from his inside pocket and a small notebook. He laid
them in front of him, looked at Bellu and said, "You have been making
enquiries about me and also about a man called Anwar Hussein. Why?"

"It
is my job," Bellu answered.

Donati
shook his head.

"It
was not your job. No doubt you took instructions from Colonel Satta but it was
also not his job. From where or whom did those instructions emanate?"

Bellu
shrugged. He dropped his voice and said, "I know who you are and what you
represent. You are the filth on this earth. You will learn nothing from
me."

They
spent four hours torturing him. He sat bloodied and physically broken. His
fingernails had been torn out slowly, as had four of his teeth. His nose and
both cheekbones had been smashed. His testicles crushed. But Massimo Bellu was
not there in his body. His whole being had retreated into his mind. At the end,
he had smiled sickeningly into the frustrated face of Donati, sending the
message that such methods would achieve nothing.

Donati
received the message and understood it clearly. He was a patient man. He issued
instructions to one of the young men, who left the cellar. Donati and the other
young man unstrapped Bellu's broken body, lifted it up and laid it on the
table. He had neither the strength nor the inclination to struggle.

The
young man came back after a few minutes, carrying a small briefcase. He laid it
on the table next to Bellu's head and opened it. Donati hovered alongside like
a vulture. From inside the briefcase the young man picked up a syringe.

Donati
nodded and said to him, "Twenty milligrams...no more. Be very careful. Too
little is not enough, too much can be fatal." He looked down at Bellu's
ravaged face. His voice was cruelly soft. "So your body can take anything.
Now we try your mind. In moments from now you will feel no pain...only bliss. I
am giving you pure Valium. Not the dosage that neurotic, socialite ladies take
to ease their imaginary traumas, but enough to make your brain go on a journey
you could never imagine. I regret that you may never return from that
journey."

Through
the pain Bellu felt the slight prick of a needle. It took only a few seconds.
He found himself playing again as a child, playing in the fields behind his
grandfather's house in Tuscany. He saw the face of Mariella, his young cousin,
laughing at him and teasing him maliciously. He saw the face of his mother
scolding him because he had smacked Mariella. Through clouds of blue and green
he heard the soft voice.

"Who
sent you to spy on 'The Blue Ring'?"

For the
next forty minutes Donati learned much about Bellu's childhood. He learned
about his frustrations, his fears and his ambitions. He learned that twenty
milligrams of Valium was not enough. With a sense of trepidation he instructed
the young man to inject ten more milligrams. After that he learned about
Bellu's masculine love for two men, but somehow, in spite of the miasma in his
mind, Bellu was unable to speak their names.

"Where
are they from?" Donati hissed in frustration. Bellu's mangled mouth had
twisted into a smile. "One is from Rome," he said.

"And
the other? Where is the other from?"

Donati
heard a word from the smashed mouth and leaned closer.

"Where?
From where?" he asked insistently.

"From
a stone house on a stone hill," Bellu said, with what sounded like a
giggle.

Donati
glanced up at the two young men who were also listening intently. They leaned
forward.

"Where
is it?" Donati asked. "Where is the house on the hill?"

They
all heard the word.

"Gozo...of
course. Gozo." And then Bellu's chest heaved and he gurgled in his throat
and died.

There
was only Bellu's sister and Satta and a priest. Others from the office had
wanted to come to the funeral, but Satta had discouraged them.

The
coffin was lowered into the grave; the priest said a prayer.

Bellu's
sister threw some earth on the coffin, and then she and the priest left. The
grave-diggers would come later to fill in the hole in the ground and erect the
simple headstone.

A cold
wind swept across the cemetery, dropping late leaves from the gaunt trees. Satta
remained, wrapped up in his dark overcoat and silk scarf, sitting on a nearby
headstone. He sat for more than an hour, looking down at the grass in front of
him. He was not a man to analyse grief or fate. He just sat there, looking at
the grass and slowly letting the rage build up inside him. He had no children,
and aspects of love had never really entered his life; but at this moment he
knew that the mutilated corpse lying in the open grave in front of him
represented the kernel of any real love he had ever known. He realised that
Massimo Bellu had been more than a son or brother or friend or a lover. It was
the very discretion and isolation of Bellu that he had loved. Above all, he
knew that Bellu had loved him, Mario Satta, and perhaps little else.

The
cold went through his overcoat, through his flesh and into his bones. Finally
he looked up and saw a man standing on the other side of the open grave. He was
dressed in jeans, a denim jacket and a black polo-neck shirt. His hair was
short and steel-grey. He was looking down into the grave.

Satta
stood up and slowly walked around the grave. The man lifted his head and his
arms and pulled Satta against his chest. For the first time in his adult life,
Satta wept. The man held him for a long time and then spoke quietly.

"Tomorrow
morning you will resign from the carabinieri. I will send Maxie and Frank to
you. We will take General Emilio Gandolfo and chart his path to hell. On that
path we will find the rest of them and send them to the same place." Creasy
looked down at the grave again and his voice became colder than the wind.
"When you get tired, when you get cold, when you get totally dispirited,
see in your mind the face of Bellu...See the compassion in his eyes, and the
kindness and the strength of the love he felt for you. And I see the same eyes
and the same love...Then realise what you and I have to do to satisfy his
memory."

They
made a telephone conference call. The link was between Jean Lucca Donati in
Milan, Anwar Hussein in Naples and Gamel Houdris in Tunis.

Donati
explained what they had learned from Massimo Bellu. Just a place...Gozo. He had
spoken the name into the telephone, not expecting any reaction. He himself had
never heard of the place. As it happened, neither had Anwar Hussein, but Gamel
Houdris recognised it immediately.

"It's
a small island," he said. "Part of the Maltese archipelago."

"So
what do we do?" Hussein asked.

"We
send someone down immediately to check it out," Houdris answered.

"Who
do we send?" Donati asked.

"You
send The Link...Franco Delors. He's the best we have, and he's in Naples. Today
is Tuesday. Tomorrow there's a ferry from Naples to Malta. Make sure he's on
it. Then he gets the ferry over to Gozo and sniffs around."

The conference
went into abeyance for half a minute. Then Donati said, "I will instruct
him to be ultra-careful. Meanwhile, we have to move quickly to the final
indoctrination of our Initiate. I would say within a week or so...We're talking
about fifty million US dollars minimum. It's a ripe fruit which must not fall
off the tree. It has to be plucked. We need the subject for the
sacrifice."

Houdris
said, "I think I have her. As you know, a few days ago I was in Albania at
our new orphanage. There is a prime candidate on hand. Franco Delors has
arranged the necessary adoption papers. We will move her to Bari within the
next few days, after Delors gets back from Gozo. Her name is Katrin. She is
pre-puberty. Twelve years old, blonde and very beautiful. Arrange the mass for
the following Sunday."

There
was a contented silence.

Michael
decided to abandon logic. He let his instincts take over. He knew he had to
dominate the woman beneath him. It was a crucial moment. He realised that she
wanted to be dominated, needed to submit. With that submission, the doors would
open. Within his understanding of lovemaking, and within his character, he had
always been gentle with women in bed. That gentleness had always satisfied them
and himself. But on this occasion he knew that gentleness would be like a
feather wafted in a storm.

He took
her wrists in one hand and twisted her onto her stomach.

She
struggled, but he gripped the back of her neck with his other hand and forced
her face into the pillow. She cursed in Italian and her body twisted under him.
He let her use her strength, allowing her to roll onto her back. She tried to
bite his shoulder, and he smacked her sharply on her cheek. She jerked a leg
between his legs but he was waiting for it and her knee bounced off his thigh.
A second later he had twisted her again onto her front, slid an arm under her
thighs and pulled her bottom up. His penis was already wet from her juices. He
rammed it into her bottom and she suddenly became very quiescent. It took only
a few seconds more. They came together.

Instinct
again took over. He pulled himself away and, without a word, padded into the
bathroom. He took a small hand-towel and held it under the hot tap, then rinsed
it out. She was lying on her front against the pillow, totally still. Gently
now, he turned her over and wiped the sweat and residual make-up from her face,
deciding that she looked more beautiful without it. Then he gently wiped her
genitals, tossed the towel onto the floor, lay down beside her and waited.

"You
have an understanding," she murmured, "about women like me...How can
it be in one so young?"

He
smiled and answered, "I was only young before I met you. I have lived a
thousand days these last two nights."

She
laughed with pleasure, thinking that she now controlled him. It took two
brandies and many soft, whimpering kisses before she made her move. She made
the move encompassed in the thought that, having given him the most secret part
of her body, she now controlled his mind. She played on his ego.

"No
one has ever done that to me before. In a terrible way it makes me your slave.
What more do you want of me?"

He
smiled in his mind.

"I
want you to take me to the very depths. You are my door to that...and my guide.
I want to see more than the joke of the other night. I want to go to the
limit."

She
thought for a moment, balancing the risks against the benefits, and then she
murmured, "It's possible...And I think you have the strength to see it.
But it will take much persuasion, and for me it will be very risky...When I
talk about risk, I talk about death."

"What
does the risk cost?" he asked.

Seconds
ticked by, then she slid a hand down his chest, across his penis and onto his
scrotum. She smiled in the semi-darkness and answered, "Fifty thousand
dollars could compensate for the risk."

Creasy
needed to talk. It was something very rare in his life; he had nearly always
been able to commune with himself. He considered unburdening his thoughts a kind
of weakness. He sat at a place which was one of his most favourite spots, the
terrace of the Pensione Splendide, late at night. A half-full bottle of Johnnie
Walker Black Label in front of him and, beyond him, the lights of the bay; and
beyond the lights the darkness of the sea.

He felt
a strong sense of deja vu. It was as though he had been there six years before
with the same bottle, the same lights, and the same darkness. After that night
he had gone away and killed many people. He felt he was poised in time at that
same moment.

Of
course, Guido was the one he should have talked to. Guido from the long past.
Guido his closest friend. Guido, the mirror to his own mind. But Guido was fast
asleep in bed, probably smiling at all the lire he had won at that night's
poker game.