The Dante Conspiracy

CHAPTER 21



Working out the mechanics of the ambush hadn’t been difficult.

The house had only two doors. One opened onto the main street and the other gave access from the courtyard, and that was where the other man or men – Marco guessed there were probably two of them, but obviously he couldn’t be sure – had gained entrance to the property. One side of the house abutted the adjoining building, and the only other means of entry or egress were the four windows which overlooked the alley beside the house, and a further two opening onto the main street.

That meant the people inside the property had only three choices: they could use the front or side door, or come out of one of the windows, and probably one of those down the alley. Marco guessed that the windows were probably the most likely, but luckily between them they could watch every possible exit. He and Guido had chosen positions from which they could cover both the doors and the windows, and had settled down for what they both guessed was going to be a very long wait.

Realistically, the cut-off point was daylight: once the sun came up and the streets filled with residents of the city and the daily influx of tourists began, they would almost certainly have to leave, whether or not their quarry had appeared by then. In fact, Marco guessed that quite probably the men inside might decide to do just that: stay in the house until well after the sun had come up and then rely on the crowds, on the sheer number of people, thronging the streets of Florence to protect them.

So he was actually surprised when, a little under two and a half hours after they themselves had walked out of the house, he saw the hall lights switch off and distinctly heard the metallic click of a bolt being withdrawn or a lock being released.

He hissed a warning to Guido, then sighted down the barrel of his pistol at the main door of the property. It was too dark to see the sights on the top of his weapon, and in any case the bulbous suppressor screwed onto the end of the barrel meant they were useless. But he was experienced enough with the pistol to know that his aim was good, despite the circumstances.

He heard a faint creak as the door opened, and then a figure wearing a dark coat emerged from the house and started to run down the street.

Marco didn’t hesitate. He altered his aim fractionally now that he had a definite target, and squeezed the trigger twice. The running man jerked as one of the bullets hit him, staggered another couple of paces, and then fell flat on his face. He didn’t move again.

Immediately, Marco altered his aim so that he was covering the door, waiting for the second man to appear.

Instead, moments later he again heard the faint noise of the door opening, and then the crashing explosion as somebody fired an unsilenced pistol, the noise deafening at such close range. And at the same moment he felt a sudden stinging pain in his left cheek as the bullet smashed into the wall of the house close beside him and sent stone splinters flying in all directions.

Whoever had fired the shot clearly had a pretty good idea where he was.

Instinctively, Marco dropped flat, as the first shot was followed by another one, the bullet hitting the wall within just feet of where he’d been standing. He aimed at the door of the house and fired once in response, the noise of his shot drowned out by a third round fired by the man in the house.

Then the door slammed shut, the noise followed by the metallic thud as a bolt was pushed into place.

‘What the hell happened then?’ Guido demanded, walking quickly over towards where Marco was climbing to his feet.

Lights were coming on in the upper floors of the buildings all around them, the shots having clearly roused the neighbourhood.

‘That was the men in the house being clever,’ Marco replied, ‘and I think it’s worked.’ He pointed up at the illuminated windows. ‘Gunshots tend to attract attention, and my guess is that at least one of the people who are now awake will already have called the police, and most of the others will be dialling the number right now. There’s a body in front of the house with one or two of my bullets in it, so we need to get out of here.’

‘Who was he?’ Guido asking, peering over towards the unmoving shape lying sprawled in the street. ‘One of the other group?’

‘I don’t know,’ Marco admitted. ‘When he came out of the front door, I thought he was running away, and that’s why I fired at him, but now I think he might have been pushed, so he might just have been unfortunate enough to be in the house when the other people broke in, and they forced him out, used him as a decoy.’

Guido shrugged.

‘Well, whoever he was, he’s dead so it doesn’t matter now.’

Half a minute later, the two men melted away into the night, heading in different directions, because they hadn’t quite finished their work for the night.



Twenty minutes after the two men had walked away, they stepped out of an alley near the River Arno almost side by side and raised their weapons. Four dull thuds from the suppressed weapons echoed from the silent buildings around them and the two men they’d followed ever since they’d left the house fell forward onto the unyielding surface of the road with barely a sound.

‘All too easy, this,’ Marco murmured, as he and Guido unhurriedly stepped forward.

They covered the few feet that separated them from their victims, stopped beside them to check they were dead and turned them over and searched them.

‘Nothing on this one,’ Guido said, ‘apart from his weapon and a couple of spare magazines, so I guess it’s pretty certain that they didn’t find what they were looking for.’

‘Same here, except that this man has a mobile phone as well. That might help us find out who they’ve been working for, if Stefan wants to close that particular loop. We’ll get rid of them.’

The streets in that area were still dark and deserted, and they were able to carry the two corpses to the bank of the river without interruption. One after the other, they rolled the two bodies into the fast-flowing water and watched as they disappeared downstream.

They weren’t the first two corpses the men had entrusted to the welcoming dark waters of the Arno, and neither of them assumed they would be the last.