Diego Marani: God's Dog

It was a sombre moon that rose above the rooftops of Rome that night. Helicopters were no longer flying over the city, but sirens were still blaring in the streets. Guards were posted on bridges and outside government offices and churches. Police at road-blocks pointed their sub-machineguns at every car that passed. In their homes, people were glued to their televisions where a series of grave faces were engaging in speeches of condolence in front of images of apparently endless scenes of massacre. Salazar sat down on a bench under the palm trees in Piazza del Risorgimento. He was tired and hungry, aching in every limb. The din of the explosion, the shouts, the bloodied faces had brought back buried memories of the day when Port-au-Prince had toppled in the quake. He smelt the same stench of scorched flesh, sweat and excrement. He felt again that ancient fear, which came not from within, but had been unleashed upon him by the boundless sky. He felt at last that he was free, that now he could go anywhere he wanted. No one was now his master, no one would look for him. A new life opened up before him, as on the day he had emerged, weeping, from the rubble of his home. The papal policeman Domingo Salazar was no more. He was dead, he’d vanished, along with old Bonardi, his own friend Guntur, the Vicar with the glass eye and indeed Pope Benedict XVIII himself. But he didn’t know what to do with all that freedom. He had no home to go to, no kith or kin, no ties. He had been reared and trained to defend the Holy Mother Church and that was all he knew how to do. Away from his army, far from his battlefield, his life would make no sense. He was a domini canis, a hound of God, God’s dog, and all he could do was serve his master. And what is a dog without a master? Salazar looked up at the dome of Saint Peter’s in the moonlight, stood up unsteadily and limped towards the gate of the Porta Angelica. He stood to attention and gave the military salute to the Swiss Guard in the sentry box beyond the gate.

‘I am the missing agent Domingo Salazar, registration number 18246592NLA, and I’ve come to give myself up for an identity check.’ Pointing his halberd at his back, the soldier escorted his quarry into the building.