James Twining - The Geneva Deception

‘Since I was a boy,’ Contarelli said proudly. He spoke fast and mainly in Italian, with a booming voice that was too big for his body. ‘It’s in the blood, you see. I used to come out to these fields with my father. In those days the earth would be littered with fragments of pottery and broken statues surfaced by the farmers’ ploughs. That’s when I realised there was another world under there.’ He gestured longingly out of the window towards the earthquake-scarred landscape now shrouded by night. ‘I sold what I found in the market, used the money to buy some books, got smarter about what pieces were and how much they were worth, climbed through the ranks. Now I’m a Capo di Zona and it’s the only life I know.’

‘And you always go out at night?’

‘It depends on the site.’ He shrugged, lighting a cigarette from the smouldering stub of the one which had preceded it, his fingernails broken and dirty. He seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘For some of the larger ones, we offer the landowner a share in the profits. Then my boys turn up in the day with a bulldozer and some hard hats. If anyone asks, we tell them we’re working on a construction project. If they ask again, we pay them off. Or shut them up.’

Allegra felt her anger rising, its delirious scent momentarily blinding her to the danger they were in and to the armed man seated in the back with her and Tom. She’d seen enough already to know that this wasn’t just tomb robbing. It was cultural vandalism, Contarelli’s brutal methods probably destroying as much as he found. The fact that he was now happily boasting about it only made it worse.

‘So you’ve never been caught?’ Tom asked quickly, his worried glance suggesting that he could tell she was about to snap.

‘The Carabinieri need to find us before they can catch us,’ he explained with a grin. ‘They do their best, but there are thousands of tombs and villas buried out here and they can’t be everywhere at once. Especially now the politicians are tablethumping about immigration, drugs and terrorism. You know, a few years ago, I even cleared out three graves in a field next to the police station in Viterbo. If they can’t stop us there, right under their snouts, what are their chances against us out here?’

He laughed, slapping the knee of the driver next to him in merriment.

‘Why do you still do it?’ Allegra snapped. ‘Haven’t you made enough money?’

‘I don’t do it for the money, my dear. Not for a long time now. Archaeology is my sickness, my addiction,’ he explained, his eyes shining, his hands conducting an unheard symphony. ‘The thrill of finding a tomb, the smell of a freshly opened chamber, the adrenaline rush as you crawl inside, the fear of being caught…’

‘What you do is not archaeology,’ Allegra snapped. ‘It’s rape. You take innocence and corrupt it, turning beauty into a bauble for the rich to decorate their mantelpieces with.’

‘I bring history back from the dead,’ he shot back, his face hardening. ‘I restore artefacts from thousands of years of neglect. I provide them with a home. A home where they will go on display and be appreciated, rather than languish in some museum’s basement storeroom. Now tell me, is that rape?’

The same tired old excuses, the same selfserving justifications.

‘What about your basement and the fresco we saw there, hacked into pieces?’ she retorted. ‘Or the fingers ripped from the dead, or the remains of tombs that have been gouged clean like a backstreet abortionist scraping out a womb. Is that archaeology?’

Contarelli, face now like thunder, eyed her coldly, then turned to face the front.

‘Stop the car,’ he ordered the driver tonelessly. ‘We’ll walk from here.’

19th March – 10.31 p.m.

They had parked at the end of a rutted track and then set out across the fields on foot, Contarelli leading the way, his two men at the rear. One of them had a pair of infra-red binoculars that he held to his face every few minutes to scan the horizon, presumably on the lookout for a possible Carabinieri patrol. Tom and Allegra, meanwhile, had been roped together by their wrists; Tom’s tied behind his back, Allegra’s fixed in front of her so that she could follow behind.

Contarelli was grasping a spilloni , a long metal spike that he had explained was used to identify a site’s size and entrance. He was still smoking, Tom noted, although he had turned the cigarette around so that the lit end was inside his mouth, to mask its glow when he inhaled. For the same reason no one was using a flashlight, relying instead on the low moon to light their path.

‘The most important thing is to be able to read the land,’ Contarelli expounded, having decided, it seemed, to focus all his attention on Tom after Allegra’s outburst. ‘You see how the grass is drier there?’ He pointed out a patch of ground that, as far as Tom could see, didn’t look any different from the rest of the field. ‘The earth above a hollow space has less moisture. And those brambles there -’ he gestured to his right – ‘when they grow tall and yellowish like that, it means that their roots are leaning on a buried wall.’

Tom nodded, struggling to keep up – Contarelli was proving to be surprisingly nimble over the rough terrain, although unlike Tom he didn’t have to cope with his arms being forced up behind his back every time he stumbled.

‘Wild fig trees are a give-away too,’ he continued. ‘And fox and badger tracks can often lead you straight to the entrance.’

‘Where are you taking us?’ Tom demanded, the hopelessness of their situation growing with every step. Over this rough ground, roped together, they had no chance of escaping.

‘Don De Luca told me you were interested in understanding what we do.’ Contarelli shrugged, turning to face him.

‘I think I’ve got the general idea, thanks.’ Tom gave a tight smile. ‘We can make our own way back from here.’

Contarelli gave one of his booming laughs and strode on, leaving one of his men to prod Tom forward.

‘It takes us two nights to break into a tomb normally. On the first night we clear away the entrance and let whatever’s inside oxidise and harden. Then on the second night we come back and take what we can before dawn. Usually I never come back a third time. It’s too risky. But I’ve made an exception for you.’

He stopped and signalled at someone standing beneath a low hillock covered in trees. The man was leaning wearily on a shovel and had clearly been waiting for them. As they approached him and the dark passage he had uncovered, he waved back, jumping down to greet them.

‘It’s an Etruscan burial chamber,’ Allegra breathed.

Contarelli turned, smiling.

‘You see,’ he said with a pained sigh, as if he was wearily scolding a small child. ‘That’s the type of cleverness that’s got you both killed.’

Before Tom could move, a plastic hood was placed over his head by one of the men standing behind him and he was forced to his knees. Working quickly, they deftly passed a length of duct tape several times around his neck, sealing the bag against his skin.

He felt himself being lifted and then dragged along the tomb’s short corridor into the Stygian darkness of the burial chamber. Moments later, Allegra was thrown down on to the damp earth next to him, struggling furiously.

‘Compliments of Don De Luca,’ Contarelli intoned from somewhere above them, his disembodied voice echoing off the tomb’s domed roof.

For a few moments Tom could hear nothing apart from the rattle of his own breathing and Allegra’s muffled shouts as her heels scrabbled in the dirt. But then came the muted sound of steel against stone.