Michael Morley - The Venice conspiracy

Present Day Carabinieri HQ Alfredo Giordano looks nothing like Vito expected. He'd imagined a small monk-like man, perhaps with a balding head and a learned face interrupted by wire-framed glasses. Alfredo is a good six-footer, as broad as a rugby player, with a full head of sandy-coloured hair.

It takes Alfie more than an hour to explain his repeated searches in the secret archives on behalf of Tom. 'I didn't have time to tell you on the phone, but the stories of the Tablets of Atmanta span centuries. The Catholic Church has linked them with some of the worst losses of life the world has ever known.' He sips on an espresso Valentina has brought him. 'They were said to have first been used to cause an underground mine explosion in Atmanta that wiped out noblemen from all over Italy – the world's first recorded case of mass murder. Then they were linked to many events: the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, China's deadliest ever earthquake in the mid 1500s, the sinking of the Titanic, floods in Holland that killed more than a hundred thousand people, cyclones in Pakistan, the Chernobyl meltdown in Russia, the 9/11 attack, and even the latest tsunami in Asia.'

'In fact, almost everything that is monumentally bad,' concludes Vito.

Alfie nods. 'It is convenient to blame the tablets. Evil is everywhere, the tablets have just come to symbolise it.'

'You call them the tablets,' notes Valentina, 'not the Gates of Hell, or whatever. Why's that?'

'They didn't get their alternative names until much later in their existence, probably in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, so it's factually more appropriate to call them the Tablets of Atmanta.'

'Father, do you think Satanists would kill for possession of them?'

Alfie answers instantly. 'Major, there are sections of the Church that would kill for them.'

'We've had several deaths here,' confides Valentina, glancing at Vito to make sure it's okay to continue, 'including that of a fifteen-year-old girl. Her liver was cut out. Can you see that being linked in any way to the artefact?'

Alfie looks pensive. 'Perhaps. Tetia, the wife of Teucer, was only a teenager, probably around fifteen – when she gave birth to their baby. This is the child Satanists believe is the son of Lucifer. Sacrificing a girl of about the same age would have a ritualistic significance.'

'And the liver?' presses Vito.

'Tetia was said to have cut the liver from the man who raped her, so cutting out the liver of someone they've selected to symbolically represent Tetia would, in the mind of Satanists, restore a spiritual balance and signify just revenge.'

Valentina hesitates before asking the next question. 'And would the blood of a priest, or the liver of a priest, have ritualistic significance as well?'

'Of course,' snaps Alfie. 'To shed the blood of a soldier of Christ is always a triumph for these people. Given that Teucer himself was a netsvis – a priest of sorts – you can see how this might also be of value to them in some ceremony to celebrate bringing the tablets together and opening the gates of hell.'

'And that would go for an ex-priest, too?'

'It would,' confirms Alfie, frowning. Vito's sure he's about to ask why she posed the question when the door opens and Nuncio di Alberto sticks his head into the room.

'Scusi. Major, I am sorry, but I need to talk to you urgently.'

Vito excuses himself and steps outside.

Nuncio is holding a wad of papers. He looks anxious. 'I think I've managed to trace the ownership of one of the tablets.'

Vito looks surprised.

'The curator at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice told me he'd heard of a silver Etruscan artefact with the image of a young priest on it being traded in Austria or Germany about five years ago.'

Vito dredges his memory. 'That was the middle tablet.'

'Si. It was a good lead. Look-' He holds out a photocopy of what appears to be a page from an auctioneer's brochure with a drawing of the silver tablet.

Vito's eyes light up as he takes it from him. 'Bene. You've done well. Wait here while I show this to the priest from the Vatican.'

He walks straight back into the room. 'Father, please look at this-' He hands over the photocopy. 'What would you say it was?'

Alfie instantly recognises it. 'It's the middle tablet, the one depicting the netsvis Teucer. Where did-' Alfie never gets to finish asking his question.

Vito walks out and returns the paper to Nuncio. 'The priest confirms it's the tablet. So who owns it?'

Nuncio is not about to give an abridged version of his story. He wants to milk his success for all it's worth. 'The curator was right. I found it had been traded in auction at the Dorotheum in Vienna – one of the oldest art houses in the world, renowned for its discretion.'

'Who?' says Vito, impatiently.

'It had been bought anonymously by a German art collector for a cool one-point-one million dollars. After his purchase, the trail gets complicated. It turns out the anonymous buyer sold it the next day to another trader, this time in America. He in turn sold it on again, within a week of the first transaction. Each time a sale took place, the price rose by exactly twenty per cent, almost as though an agreed commission was being paid. No further auction houses were involved.'

Vito still wants to get to the name of the owner, but he can see why the trail is important; whoever stumped up the cash wasn't just shy of being identified – ownership of the artefact had been systematically laundered.

'So – now to the owner.' Nuncio's eyes brighten. 'The tablet was eventually purchased not by an individual but by an offshore company registered in the Cayman Islands.' He slips a sheet of paper to his boss. 'A company owned by our hippy-loving billionaire, Mario Fabianelli.'

Vito feels his heart quicken as Nuncio hands him copies of the bank transfer and the incorporation of the offshore company. He taps the papers. 'You're sure of the trail? Certain this payment ties all the way back to the artefact?'

Nuncio feels a jangle of nerves. 'Si. I'm certain.'

'Va bene. I'll finish up with the man from the Vatican, then we go and get a warrant to see Mario Fabianelli and his commune of happy campers.'

When Tom wakes, all he sees is an unnerving blackness.

They've re-bandaged his eyes.

Cuffed him as well. But left his feet untied.

He has an awful headache. But he's thinking clearly. More clearly than he's done for weeks.

He's been moved again.

Things are different.

The air is fresher. He can smell things. Grass. Wild garlic. Catmint.

And he can hear different things, too. Birdsong. Leaves rustling.

He knows he's still lying down.

Flat on his back. On something hard. Outside somewhere.

But where?

And why?

Why have they moved him from that room?

Possibilities – and fears – tumble into his head like a game of Tetris.

Mera Teale – Lars Bale – the Gates of Destiny – Monica Vidic – the sixth of June – Venezuela – Little Venice.

Suddenly he's being lifted into the air.

He's on a hard stretcher. Several people carrying him. By the sound of their feet, four rather than two.

Moving him forward, then lowering him to the ground.

Mutterings in Italian.

No!

Not Italian. Latin. They're mumbling something in Latin.

A mass?

His stretcher is lifted again. It wobbles. Someone's shoulder braces it.

'Satanus…'

Tom hears it clearly. Satanists – rehearsing a ceremony of some sort.

Preparing themselves – and him – for a ritual that's going to happen soon.

A sacrificial ritual.

And Tom is pretty sure he knows who the sacrifice will be.