The Geneva Deception

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.’

FIFTY-TWO

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.

They were filling the entrance in.

FIFTY-THREE

19th March – 11.06 p.m.

They didn’t have long, Tom knew. Each breath used a little more of the oxygen sealed within the bag. He could already feel the plastic rubbing against his face, warm and moist; hear it crinkling every time he inhaled, growing and shrinking like a jellyfish’s pulsing head. In a few minutes the air would all be gone and then the CO₂ levels in his blood would rise, shutting down first his brain’s cerebral cortex and then the medulla.

It was a cruel death – light-headedness, followed by nausea, then unconsciousness. And finally oblivion. But then that was hardly a surprise, given that they were here at the orders of the same man who had, by his own admission, ordered Cavalli to be slowly choked by the Tiber’s strong current and Argento to be partially decapitated and left to bleed out like a slaughtered lamb.

Lying next to him, Allegra had stopped struggling but was still shouting, using up her air far more quickly than she should. He’d have to get to her first. He shuffled back towards her, feeling for her with his hands, which were still tied behind his back. Touching her arm, he bent forward and pulled himself round with his feet until he made contact with the hood’s slippery surface. She seemed to guess what he was doing, because she went quiet and bent towards him until he was able to feel the outline of her mouth.

Digging his finger hard into the shallow depression formed between the hard edges of her teeth, he gouged the thick plastic with his nail, weakening its surface until it suddenly gave way. There was a loud whistling noise as Allegra sucked air greedily through the small hole.

But the effort had cost Tom more than he’d expected. He felt light-headed, almost as if he was floating outside of himself. He didn’t have long before he went under. Thirty seconds at most. He shuffled down, bending his head towards where he guessed Allegra’s hands had been retied behind her back so that she could feel for his mouth. With her longer nails, it took far less time for her to rupture the plastic, the chamber’s stale air tasting sweet to Tom’s starving lungs.

‘You okay?’ Tom called through the darkness when his head had cleared, the plastic hood both muffling and