Paul Christopher - The Lucifer Gospel

Milan, Finn knew, was a smaller and considerably more decrepit version of Paris, and like Paris it was almost completely empty of skyscrapers. Scaffolding seemed to grow from buildings constantly being refurbished like permanent exoskeletons. It was the place where thirties fascism had been born, where Leonardo’s and Dan Brown’s Last Supper was doled out to ticket holders for roughly a buck and a half per minute, and it was the place where thirties fascism had finally died at an Esso station in the Piazzale Loreto with Benito Mussolini hanging from his heels while half a dozen GIs looked on. It was home to the finest Italian fashion, the most extreme Italian politics, and the best-equipped riot police in the world. It’s duomo, or cathedral, was the third largest church in all of Christendom, but the city’s true religion was soccer, second only to the pursuit of money. It was a city far too brash and industrious to be charming, and certainly its vast slums and sometimes choking smog were not what the average reader of the New York Times thought about as he dreamed of a holiday in Tuscany.

Finn jumped as her door burst open and Hilts appeared, shirt unbuttoned to the waist. His hair was all over the place and his eyes were wide and hot.

“Turn on the TV!”

“What’s the matter!?”

“Just turn the damn thing on!”

Finn picked up the remote from the bedside table and pushed the ON button. The screen on the big console TV on the bureau at the end of the bed blipped on to CNN, which was the last channel she’d had on before trying to sleep. They were showing a weather map of Eastern Europe. It was raining in Prague.

“Not that! Switch it!” barked Hilts. He came into the room and closed the door. Finn did as she was told, flipping through the channels.

“There!” he said. “Hold it!”

It was channel six, Telelombardia, a local news show. A well-dressed dark-haired woman with a serious look on her face was reading a report as she stood in the middle of a futuristic set constructed of something that looked like chrome-plated scaffolding. There were keyed-in inserts showing an old black-and-white photograph of two smiling middle-aged men, one of whom looked vaguely familiar.

“Turn it up! What are they saying?”

“Calm down and I’ll tell you,” said Finn, using the remote to adjust the volume. She listened. The news anchor kept on with her story. Finn translated for Hilts as the story continued, thrusting her feet into her running shoes as they watched.

– Here seen with his friend Adriano Olivetti, Vergadora was a well-known and well-liked member of the academic community and a noted historian. His sudden, violent death at the hands of what are reported to be members of the terrorist group Third Position came as a shock to the people of Venosa, the farming community where he made his home.-

The scene on the television changed to an idyllic shot of rolling hills and vineyards from the station’s stock footage library, then more footage of the town itself, and finally a floodlit shot of the villa among the poplars, surrounded by efficient-looking police unreeling tape while the bubble lights on their patrol cars skipped frantically over the scene. This was then shockingly overlaid by two grainy black-and-white pictures that clearly showed Hilts and Finn shot from a high angle standing outside the door of the villa.

– These pictures, taken from Rabbi Vergadora’s security system, show his attackers shortly before the elderly professor was slaughtered in his library…-

“I didn’t see a camera,” said Finn, shocked and horrified by what she was seeing.

“They murdered him,” muttered Hilts, staring at the screen. “And they’re putting it on us.”

“They?”

“This is Adamson and his pals.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“You think it’s a coincidence?”

“The camera got us on tape. There’s been a misunderstanding, that’s all,” said Finn. “We’ll just go to the police and explain.”

“Where do they get this stuff about us being members of Third Position?”

“Who are they?”

“The Italian version of al-Qaeda. We’re being set up.”

“It’s a mistake.”

“It’s no mistake. Vergadora is dead. If the news is saying it’s Third Position, that probably means Vergadora was killed violently. Their weapon of choice is a cut-down shotgun, a Mafia lupara. This is not Boy Scouts, Finn. This is hardball. These people are out to kill us.”

“But why kill Vergadora?”

“Because he obviously needed killing as far as they were concerned, and because blaming it on us turns you and me into lepers-untouchables. With this hanging over us there’s nobody we can go to for help.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“That we get the hell out of here. Fast. We’ve got to regroup.”

“If they’ve got our faces on tape they probably have a description of the car. Maybe even a plate number.”

“The train station then.”

On cue there was the sound of two-tone sirens wailing and the screeching of tires. Finn jumped off the bed and raced to the window. She looked out and saw the dark street below littered with blue-and-white polizia Alfas. A black-and-white van thundered up behind them and half a dozen special police poured out dressed in camo blouses, black helmets, and loose fatigue pants. All of them were carrying compact Beretta machine guns or short-barreled Benelli shotguns.

“SISDE,” muttered Hilts, looking over her shoulder. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the window.

“Who are they?”

He started dragging her toward the door. “Italian Secret Police, come on!”

“My clothes! My things!”

“No time!”

She barely had time to grab her wallet and watch off the nightstand before Hilts pushed her out into the narrow hall. There were two rooms to the left, three to the right, the same across the hall, and the single old-fashioned cage elevator in the middle. Even as they stood there the mechanism began to grind.

“Here they come!”

To the left Finn saw a backlit sign, white on red: ESITO. Exit.

“This way!” She pulled him left. Three seconds later and they were there. They barged through the pneumatic door. Six floors below booted footsteps hammered and shouts echoed up.

“Su! Su!” Hard voices yelling. Up. They were trapped. The elevator and the stairs were blocked.

“Maybe we should surrender ourselves.”

“These guys are the shoot-first breed and they’ve got machine guns.”

“There,” said Finn, pointing up. “The roof!” There was a pull-down fire ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling of the stairwell. Below them the pounding boots were getting closer.

Hilts jumped up, grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder, and pulled hard. It came creaking down, showering them with flecks of dried-out rustproofing paint. Hilts went up first, banging the palm of his hand into the underside of the trapdoor. It slammed open and he continued through the exit. In an instant he reappeared, holding his hand down to Finn as she climbed upward.

A few seconds later she was standing on the roof of the hotel as Hilts hauled up the ladder and dropped the trapdoor closed. The summer air was hot and heavy. There were neither stars nor moon. The night was dark except for the wash of light from the street below.

“They’ll figure out where we went quickly enough when they find our rooms empty.”

“Where to now?” asked Finn.

“Anywhere but here.”

Milan, like many of the older European cities, began its existence behind walls, where space was always at a premium. Lawns, backyards, drive-ways, and garages simply never existed. Rome was the first city to have tenements, in the first century, and Milan wasn’t far behind. By the Renaissance things were much less confined, but old habits died hard. Even beyond the walls of the Old City humanity was densely packed, building built against building so that entire blocks and neighborhoods consisted of a solid wall of terraced structures presenting a single face to the street, the rear of the buildings creating common courtyards or airshafts, sometimes connected and sometimes not.