Michael Morley - The Venice conspiracy

His blue snakes slither treacherously from their pink blankets, greedy to suck up the poison.

His death-row shirt is deftly unfastened.

ECG pads are moistened and stuck with jelly to his chest.

Leads plugged to a monitor.

Needles and catheters appear at a magician's speed.

Eight needles.

A sequence to be meticulously followed.

Bale appreciates the need for routine. Routine and ritual were always important to him, especially when he was taking a life.

A saline drip goes up.

A monitor beeps.

ECG graph paper crinkles.

Someone coughs.

The end is beginning.

A new beginning is only minutes away. The timer on the detonator shows thirty seconds.

Vito Carvalho struggles to think of a new sequence.

Instinctively, he sifts away the unimportant.

Eliminates the unnecessary.

Hones in on the headline.

The one thing at the heart of it all.

The timer shows twenty-five seconds.

If he gets it wrong, then he, Rocco and hundreds of others will die.

He types the first digit.

Please God, look after Maria. If I die, then please make sure she is cared for and loved.

The second.

There are parents and children in cars on the bridge, please let them live.

The third.

Babies in carrier seats, kids listening to iPods, protect them, O Lord.

The fourth.

God forgive me for my sins. What I have done I have done in failure, not in malice. Forgive me my failings as I have forgiven others.

The fifth.

He's mistyped!

The device clunks. The display shows five angles lines – / / / / /

The counter registers ten seconds – then suddenly jumps to zero.

Vito swallows.

The display flashes. It shows for the first time what he typed in -

It goes blank again.

Lights inside the unit fade.

The timer shuts down.

The bomb is defused.

Vito sighs with relief. Then instantly thinks of the other bombs. They wheel Bale from the prep room into the execution chamber.

Jim Tiffany winks at the prisoner as he looks down at him and locks the gurney into position and steps away.

The curtains to the viewing rooms slide back.

Governor McFaul gives the signal.

A member of the injection team nods.

Needle One: 1.5 grams sodium thiopental.

Bale feels the chemical whoosh in.

It's time to speak – say his piece before the barbiturates rob him of the power to do so.

'I am a soldier of Lucifer, Lord of Darkness and the Bringer of Light. The author of true freedom.'

All eyes are on him. Wide, wide open. Dozens of them. Staring through the goldfish glass of the packed viewing rooms.

'I am the way – the light – the truth.'

He pauses. Takes a breath. Struggles now to fill his lungs.

'See me here in my finest hour as I do his bidding and unlock the Gates of Hell. Behold today my glorious ascension to his side and the wondrous destruction I leave behind as testament to him.'

Fast hands inject more sodium thiopental and a syringe of saline flush.

McFaul and his deputy governor exchange glances.

Bale should at least be unconscious – preferably dead – by now.

But he's not.

Things are going wrong. Las Vegas The bomb goes off.

Rips out the windows of the new Medici Suite on the sixth floor of the Venezia Tower in the heart of the city.

Pieces of Roman tub, bedroom furniture and a fifty-inch plasma screen shower the sky like tickertape.

The room was the only one advertised with 666 square feet of luxury concierge-level space.

Despite protestations from the hotel management, the FBI got the place evacuated in lightning time. They rushed robots in to lay down armour-plated steel sheeting and then trigger the controlled explosion.

When the bomb went off the whole floor of the hotel was ruined. The casino may be closed for the moment, but the biggest gamble in the history of Vegas has paid off – no one has been hurt. San Quentin Syringe four – pancuronium bromide – injected.

Gloved hands work quickly.

Syringe five – saline flush – injected.

And still Bale is conscious.

And talking.

'To the gawkers behind the windows, I say this: Watch me as I watch you, for one day soon I will judge you all, as you judge me.' His mouth grows dry and he struggles even to lick his lips. 'I will be there at your death to weigh your souls and know your worth.'

Syringe six – potassium chloride – injected.

A member of the injection team checks the intravenous lines, makes sure the death chemicals are running true.

Syringe seven – more potassium chloride.

Syringe eight – another saline flush.

Bale's voice is now only a low growl: 'I am one of many. We will infest your bodies, pollute your children. We will nest cancers in your grandchildren.' Incredibly, Bale raises his head. His eyes bulging, his stare fixed on the watching press. 'When you lie on your death-beds – know this – I wait for you in hell.'

Behind the glass a woman gets to her feet in tears and rushes to the exit.

The team leader looks across to McFaul. 'Tray A is finished, Governor.' He nods towards the ECG machine. It still shows a strong heartbeat.

McFaul can't believe it. 'Repeat protocol. Use Tray B with the back-up catheters – and make it damned quick.' Salto Angel, Venezuela The explosion can be heard for miles.

A mushroom cloud can be seen way beyond the long-deserted Canaima National Park where the bomb was placed.

A crater has opened up at the favourite viewing spot for tourists, the place where millions of cameras have immortalised what the locals call parakupa-vena, kerepakupai meru – 'fall from the highest point'.

The bomb had ticked down all night.

Detonating at 8.33 a.m. local time, 6.03 San Quentin time. It had been set by a fanatic who'd forgotten to check the accuracy of their own watch. Had history been made it would have been late.

A cloud of dust swirls endlessy in the powder-blue sky, but no one's injured.

Not even the wildlife.

In the distance, the largest waterfall on earth continues in its mesmeric beauty, not a drop even shaken by the events around it. 06.12.00 California San Quentin Eight more syringes.

Bale is now unconscious.

All eyes are on the ECG.

The ink keeps flowing.

Shallow mountains across the paper.

He's close to death.

But still alive.

No execution has ever taken this long. No murderer proved so hard to kill.

A beep.

'Flatline!' The attendant shouts.

The injection team can't help but smile.

McFaul sees people behind the goldfish glass clapping and cheering. It takes all his professionalism not to join in.

An independent physician moves in to pronounce the death.

Gloved hands of attendants uncouple catheters and monitor leads.

The doctor puts a stethoscope to his ears and leans over Bale's bare chest.

Fluids still slosh inside the corpse. Strange subterranean sounds of chemical death.

A long grumble of air rumbles up from deep inside his intestines.

For a moment it sounds like a voice. Like a sinister whisper in a foreign language. The language of the dead.

The doc feels a shiver, then looks up.

'The inmate has passed. Time of death should be recorded as 6.13 a.m.'

Ospedale Civile di Venezia, Venice They stitch Tom's hand wound and strap his sprained ankle, but because of the head injuries they insist on keeping him in overnight. It's not what he wanted. Not after his nights of incarceration in the Plague Hospital.

To make matters worse, the TV in his room spouts nothing but news about the thwarted bomb attack in Venice. So far the media haven't joined up the international dots, but Tom knows they will, it's only a matter of time.