Michael Cordy - The Source

Rome, 1561

When his eyes scan the small crowd she forces herself not to look away. If he is strong enough to endure this, then she is strong enough to watch.

He hobbles on bandaged feet, charred and broken by the Inquisition's torturers, as the executioner makes him a final offer: recant and be garrotted mercifully before being tied to the stake, or refuse and be burnt alive. His eyes find hers and, defiantly, he shakes his head. She wants to signal her support and her love, but she cannot move. She is mesmerized by what is happening, and in shock from what he has asked her to do.

What she has vowed to do.

The auto de fe is being held at night, in the torchlit courtyard of an anonymous church in the outskirts of Rome. A small group, less than twenty, has gathered round the lone stake. The Holy Mother Church has no desire to publicize this heretic's death – or his heresy. She catches a flash of red in her peripheral vision, but doesn't divert her gaze when the Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Prefect Michele Ghislieri, steps forward in his scarlet robes. The Grand Inquisitor has 'relaxed' the heretic to the secular authorities to perform the execution so the Holy Mother Church can abide by its maxim: ecclesia abhorret a sanguine, the Church shrinks from blood. But this is still his show. And with fire there will be no blood.

'Burn his book with him,' the Grand Inquisitor orders. 'Burn the Devil's book with the heretic.' There is a moment of consternation as the executioner and the clerics search him and find nothing. 'Where is it?'

A jolt of fear surges through her but the condemned man stays silent.

'Heretic, surrender the book or face the consequences.'

A bitter laugh. 'What more can you do to me?'

'Burn him,' orders the Inquisitor.

The men drag him to the platform and rope him to the stake. They pile the final bundles of wood around the base, then apply torches. As the fire catches, she prays he will suffocate before the flames reach his flesh. Clutching the crucifix he gave her, she holds his gaze until the acrid smoke obscures his face. Only then does she allow the tears to come. As the smoke rises into the night sky and his flesh starts to burn – to cook – the sweet, disconcertingly familiar smell sickens her. His screams are mercifully short, but she takes little comfort from that.

When the flames are at their height the Grand Inquisitor and his retinue leave. Then the others dissolve gradually into the night. Alone, she waits until only bone, ash and glowing embers are left. Then she approaches the pyre and collects what she can of his remains. As she bends she feels the manuscript concealed in her robes and hopes this 'Devil's book' is worth his torture and agonizing death. And she prays that it justifies the terrifying vow she made to him before he died.

'In time all will be revealed,' she whispers, as she walks off into the dark night. 'Time reveals all.'

Switzerland, four and a half centuries later He felt no fear at first, only sadness that it should end like this. He had made a fortune, amassed a portfolio of properties around the world, learnt several languages and bedded more beautiful women than he could remember, yet it seemed meaningless now. He had lived alone and would die alone, unremarked and unremembered, his body fed to animals or buried under concrete in a building site. It would be as if he had never lived, never existed.

'Kneel in the middle of the plastic sheet.'

As he knelt, hands clasped as if in prayer, he noted the surgical saw, Ziploc plastic bag and roll of duct tape by the killer's right foot. He didn't need to look up at the Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol in the assassin's left hand to know what was coming. He knew the procedure better than anyone: he had invented it. First there would be two bullets to the head. His left hand would be severed and placed in the Ziploc bag, then his body wrapped in the black plastic sheet and sealed with the duct tape. Finally, a vulture squad would be called to dispose of his corpse, and the killer would deliver his severed left hand to the client as proof of death.

'You know who I am?' the killer asked.

He nodded. 'La mano sinistra del diavolo, the left hand of the Devil. The most feared assassin in the world.'

'My real name. Do you know my real identity? Look at me. Look at my face.'

It was now that the fear came – paralysing fear. He couldn't look up. He was too frightened of what he would see.

'Look at me,' the killer ordered. 'Look into the eyes of the man who destroyed your life and damned you to Hell for ever.'

He looked up slowly. His heart seemed to stop in his chest. The killer's face was his own. As he trembled in terror, the din of fierce barking pierced his nightmare and dragged him to consciousness.

Marco Bazin emerged slowly from his medicated sleep and opened his eyes, but the guard dogs outside his house still sounded like the hounds of Hell baying for his soul. Panicked and disoriented, he stared into the gloom. At first he didn't recognize his own bedroom: the clinic had filled it with so much equipment it was more like a hospital room. He wiped sweat from his forehead and scalp. His hair, thick for a man in his late forties, had been his one vanity. The surgeons had said it would grow back but had been less optimistic about purging the disease.

He slowed his breathing and calmed himself. He despised fear. A few short months ago, before he had admitted himself to the exclusive Swiss clinic near his alpine retreat above Davos, he had been the source of fear: la mano sinistra del diavolo. He was renowned for the ruthless efficiency of his kills, and it was said that once a client gave him a name its owner was already dead.

Now he was about to die.

Bazin's hand brushed the crotch of his cotton pyjamas, as if reaching for what they had taken from him. The surgeons wished he had come to them earlier, before the aggressive non-seminoma could spread. They'd told him to watch for several symptoms when this last course of chemotherapy was over. But the cancer was only one of his problems.

As he stared into the dark, listening to the instruments and his breathing, he took stock. He had told no one of his illness and the staff at the clinic had assured him of their total discretion. Yet he knew the whispering must have started. He had turned down three major jobs before he'd entered the clinic, and many other clients had tried to contact him while he had been incommunicado during surgery and chemotherapy. Soon the rumours would harden into conclusions, then actions. Clients would wonder why their calls had gone unanswered; some would suspect he was working for rivals. Enemies would scent blood and seek the opportunity to settle old scores. He may have been a lion once, a king of the jungle, but he was wounded now and the emboldened jackals were circling. If the cancer didn't get him, a bullet would. Either way he was dead.

The dogs barked again and panic surged.

For the first time since his childhood Bazin felt fear. Not of dying – the novelty of that had long worn off – but of what lay beyond death. Since diagnosis and surgery he had been forced to reflect on his life and concluded that, in exchange for losing his soul, killing for a living had yielded nothing of real value – only money and its hollow trappings. A chill ran through him. He reached for the string of wooden rosary beads on the side table – a childhood gift, kept more out of sentiment than faith. He focused on the expensive curtains drawn across the window and imagined the looming mountains beyond. Usually their beauty calmed him but now it intensified his loneliness.