The Dante Conspiracy

CHAPTER 15



Night in the old city on the Arno. The goldsmiths’ shops that lined the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that Adolf Hitler had thought was too beautiful to be destroyed as the German Army began its final retreat from Italy, were deserted, the streets empty of all but the last one or two Florentines finally heading home from the bar or restaurant where they’d spent the evening. The pale moonlight, filtered through a scattering of cloud layers, played over the Santa Maria del Fiore, commonly referred to as the Duomo, and the Baptistry, giving life to insubstantial shadows that seemed to flicker and move around the ancient buildings.

But two of the shadows endured, moving with clear purpose through the ancient streets.

Neither man knew the city well. Both had been recruited from the Rome underworld, precisely because their temporary employer had not wanted to use faces who might be known to the police of Florence. The downside was the lack of local knowledge, but a hand-drawn map, supplemented by a mapping application on the smartphone carried by one of the men ensured that they knew exactly where they were going.

They came to a halt at the end of an unlit street in one of the oldest parts of the city, and both men peered at the excessively bright screen of the mobile phone.

‘That’s it,’ Bruno said, pointing down the street and slipping the phone into his pocket to extinguish the glare. ‘That house on the right.’

The map and phone application were silent confirmation of what they already knew. Late that afternoon, they had walked down the street to carry out a brief reconnoitre of the area and, more importantly, to take a surreptitious look at the locks on the house doors and the overall layout of the property, so that they could decide on the most appropriate method of entry. It didn’t look as if getting inside would prove to be too difficult. The main door of the property opened onto the street, and they had immediately discounted that because even in the early hours of the morning, it would simply be too exposed.

But on the right-hand side of the property was a small courtyard accessed through an old wooden door which opened onto a narrow alley between that house and the adjoining property, a door that almost looked as if it had been there since the house was built. In the bright sunlight that afternoon, they’d looked at the warped and twisted old grey wood and each had mentally placed a tick in the appropriate box. Even if they were unlucky enough to find that the doors bolted on the inside, neither man had any doubt that judicious pressure from a crowbar would be enough to force it open. And beyond that they had seen the side door of the property, which they would be able to work on out of sight of the prying eyes of anyone passing in the street. That was the obvious, and in fact the only practical, way of getting inside the property.

Both men checked that they were unobserved before they did anything else and then, their actions swift and well-practised, they each extracted a small semiautomatic pistol from the rear waistbands of their trousers. Arrigo was carrying a Walther, and Bruno a Beretta, and each was fitted with a suppressor which would reduce the sound of a shot to little more than a flat slap. Unlike the disposable revolvers they’d been armed with when they broke into Dante’s cenotaph, these pistols were their own personal weapons of choice, selected because both men recognized that silence might be important, and you can’t silence a revolver.

The suppressors greatly increased the overall size and bulk of the weapons, making them clumsy to manoeuvre, but the ability to fire them without immediately alerting everybody in the neighbourhood was far more important a consideration. They each knew that their magazines were fully loaded, not only because they’d prepared the weapons themselves, but also simply by the feel of the pistols, fully-loaded magazine greatly increasing the overall weight. Working purely by feel, each man pulled back on the slide of his weapon to chamber a round and then set the safety catch. Gentle pressure with the thumb would release the safety catch and the weapon could then be fired immediately.

They both hoped that they wouldn’t need to use the pistols, but they had no idea who or what might be waiting for them inside the property, and they weren’t prepared to take the risk that the occupants might be armed without being able to shoot back.

They tucked their weapons out of sight, again checked that nobody was visible on the street, then walked slowly and cautiously down the right-hand side of the street towards their objective, the unlit bulk of the old house beginning to loom above them. When they reached the property, they made a final check of the street and then, completely soundlessly, walked down the alley. While Bruno stood with his back to the wall of the courtyard, his hand resting on the butt of his pistol, ready to react immediately should anybody approach, Arrigo pulled a crowbar out of a long pocket sewn into the right-hand leg of his jeans. He inserted the point of the tool between the old door and the frame and gave a single firm push. There was a sharp crack as the wood splintered and gave way, and then the door swung open.

Seconds later, both men stepped into the courtyard, pushed the door firmly closed behind them, and crossed over to the side door of the house.

This was obviously old and solid, but unlike the door which had given access to the small courtyard, the lock was new, and that was good news because modern lock-picking tools are designed to pick modern locks. Sometimes, getting the tumblers to turn in a lock dating back a century or two, using a modern twirl or L-wrench could be extremely difficult. In fact, this door was secured only by a Yale-type lock, the easiest of all to get through, and which surrendered in a matter of moments to a lock pick gun wielded by Arrigo. Getting to the other side of locked doors was one of his specialities.

Almost immediately, the door swung open with the faintest of creaks from the hinges.

‘So far, so good. Let’s hope our man is right, and the place is deserted,’ Arrigo muttered.

‘We’ll find out soon enough, I guess,’ Bruno replied, and led the way into the musty and echoing darkness which lay beyond the door.

Both men were carrying small but powerful torches in their pockets, the size of the lenses reduced to little more than a pinhole by the application of layers of insulating tape to reduce the amount of light that they would emit. But before they turned them on, both men stood for a few moments just inside the room, the door closed and locked behind them, listening for any sounds that would indicate the presence of somebody inside the building. They also glanced all around them to see if any light was entering the room from the outside, which could mean it would be too risky for them to use their torches at all. They saw and heard nothing, and after a few moments Bruno clicked on his torch, but kept the beam pointing straight downwards, towards the floor.

The dim light revealed that they were standing in an old-fashioned kitchen, which was not entirely a surprise in a house of that age, and confirmed that although the room had two windows, heavy curtains were draped over both, meaning there was no danger of the torchlight being seen outside the house.

There was an odd odour about the place, but not an unpleasant smell. In fact, it reminded Bruno of a church, although in his line of work attending religious services was something he did extremely infrequently.

‘Smells like a museum, or maybe a cathedral,’ Arrigo murmured, confirming his companion’s impression.

‘It is old, that’s for sure. It won’t be in here,’ his companion added, ‘if it’s in the house at all. We need to look for a display case, or maybe a library or a study, that kind of thing, maybe even a safe.’

‘If the Russian is right, it might not be that easy. Don’t forget, he said it might be hidden inside something else, and whoever owns this house now might have no idea that it’s here at all.’

‘I know. I never thought it would be easy, so we’d better get started. The first thing we do is check the bedrooms, make sure there’s nobody here to disturb us. Then we start looking.’

The two men climbed the stairs that ran up the centre of the property as quietly as they could, which wasn’t easy because almost every tread creaked alarmingly. The stairs were a complex and eccentric design, with a number of half and quarter landings, each of which emitted even more noise when they put their weight on it. The only good thing was that the house as a whole released creaks and cracks intermittently, as the old timbers settled after the heat of the day, so the sound of their stealthy approach was to some extent disguised.

They found four bedrooms in the house, three of them unoccupied and two of them largely empty of furniture. Outside the last door on that floor – the only one which had been closed – they paused for a few moments and just listened. From inside the room came the rhythmic sound of snoring, and they knew they had to take care of the occupant before they did anything else.

The elderly man in the bed never had a chance. The two intruders pulled on black balaclavas to hide their faces, then opened the door, stepped inside the room and strode quickly across to the bed. Bruno took out his pistol and rested the barrel against the man’s forehead, an action which immediately woke him up. But before he had a chance to speak or cry out, Arrigo slapped a gloved hand across his mouth, silencing him. In a little over two minutes he was gagged, his wrists tied behind his back and his ankles strapped together using plastic cable ties, effectively unbreakable.

Finding somebody in the house was actually a bonus, because it meant they could turn on the lights as they carried out their search without necessarily arousing the suspicions of any of the occupants of the neighbouring properties, or anybody walking down the street. Lights burning after midnight in an unoccupied house would always attract attention, very obviously, but in a property that was known to be occupied nobody would take the slightest notice.

Watched by the frightened eyes of the owner of the property, the two men swiftly and efficiently searched the bedroom, but found nothing of any interest. Then they snapped off the light and walked out onto the landing.

‘I’ll check the next floor up,’ Bruno said, ‘so you look downstairs. Call out if you find anything.’

But before they could separate and go their different ways, they heard the unmistakable sound of a door opening and closing somewhere on the ground floor.

Somebody else was in the house with them.