Dagger Key and Other Stories

The cynicism of these thoughts and their underlying naïvete should have been sufficient to persuade me to rid myself of Giacinta. They seemed proof of her negative effect upon me. Yet I continued to debate the matter. An enormous face, counterfeited by shadows and the visible portions of a fresco, stared down at me from the ceiling, and I was contemplating that face, thinking it superior in design to the sylvan scene actually depicted, when I heard a chthonic rumbling, followed by a tremor that shook the building for more than a minute, toppling a clock from the mantel, sending ashtrays scampering across tabletops, overturning a chair, bouncing me onto the floor. I staggered up, knowing at once what had happened, having a clear perception of it, though I tried to persuade myself that I must be wrong, and hurried into the bedroom. Gia was still on the bed, poised on all-fours, her eyes wide with fright. I convinced her to lie back, gentled her, and told her she would be all right if she stayed in the suite, but that I had to go.

“Please!” She put her arms about my neck. “You take me.”

“I can’t,” I said. “Wait here. Two hours. I’ll come back in two hours. I promise.”

My cell phone rang. Elaine. I switched it on and said, “Yes, I know.”

“I can’t believe the son-of-a-bitch…”

“Have you called Rome?”

“No, I thought you…”

“Call Rome. Now. Tell them to send helicopters. We have some in Palermo. Seal off the area. You coordinate from the hotel. Have you heard from Jenay?”

“No. Shouldn’t you coordinate?”

“That’s your job now.”

Following a silence, she said tremulously, “I guess it is.”

“Find out which satellites are passing over southern Italy and blind them. Knock them down if you have to.”

“God, what a mess!”

“Call Rome. I’ll get back to you.”

Gia renewed her pleading after I switched off, but once again I rebuffed her.

“Stay. Here you be secure,” I told her in fractured Italian. “Due oras. Okay?”

She put on a sad face, but she drew the blankets up to her neck. “Okay.”

I kissed her and backed from the room, reassuring her with a smile. Then, not trusting the elevator, I raced down the stairs, ignoring the hotel guests and staff that I encountered, and descended the hill into the ruins of Diamante.

There was a tremendous amount of dust in the air. It coated my tongue, the membranes of my nostrils, got into my eyes. In the upper reaches of the town, the buildings were some of them intact, others partially demolished, yet I saw no one on the streets and I assumed Lucan’s release must have killed everyone in an instant. His mental signature, which had been palpable at the hotel, boiled like steam from the wreckage, overwhelming all other sensory impressions. My cell phone rang. It was Elaine again. She told me the helicopters were on their way, the satellites had been dealt with, and our operatives within the Italian government were busy attempting to defuse the situation. As I listened, I began to feel the weight of my new responsibilities.

“Where are you?” she asked and, when I told her, she said, “I’m on top of the hotel. Wait until you see the waterfront. We’re going to play hell cleaning it up.”

“Call Skyler Means. Find out how much the Americans know. They’re certain to have picked up something on satellite. Tell him to do whatever he has to.”

I told her to continue checking in with me and switched off.

Shortly after Elaine’s call, I found the body of a young woman lying under some bricks, but I did not pause to examine her, nor did I allow her death to disturb me—there were many dead that night, and I had no time to ponder my emotional state. As I descended through the town, the devastation increased. Buildings were flattened and the rubble in the winding street provided a surreal accent to the scene. Portions of Diamante’s murals lay everywhere. Here a chunk of stucco bearing the pointillist rendering of an elephant’s foot; here a sunrise broken into five sections; here a child’s arm, a little dog trotting, a piece of a carousel, the bell of a tuba; half a Madonna’s face was intact—the other half was pitted and unrecognizable. It was as if the pretty shell of the world had been blown apart to reveal its true disastrous nature.

Because of the extent of the destruction, I was able to see the waterfront long before I reached the Via Poseidone. The sea wall and the causeway had been obliterated, and, surrounding the islet on which Baldassaro’s was situated, the water had been transformed into glass or something like, and the glass twisted into hundreds of tortured, translucent shapes, some diminutive, others towering thirty feet into the air, gleaming in the moonlight. The island itself was burning with a strangely steady, reddish flame, marking Lucan’s grave and that of his lover. From where I stood, the entirety of the scene resembled an enormous, complicated blossom with a fiery stamen and irregular stiff petals.