Father Marco Venetti dabbed the sweat from his beard and fanned the air with his rescinded invitation to the papal mass in St. Peter’s Square. It was stifling inside the confessional, and the faithful weren’t in a penitent mood this week, giving him nothing to think about other than the appalling heat and his canceled trip to Vatican City. Not that he minded a reprieve from the usual slate of sins—I have taken His name in vain, I missed mass last week without an excuse—but it was especially warm this afternoon, and the prevailing breeze had taken an untimely midsummer break.
He heard the shuffle of feet coming from outside his door and sat up in his chair. The door opened, and the kneeler creaked as the penitent—a woman, he guessed, about one hundred and thirty pounds from the groan of the ancient cypress—readied herself to make confession behind the screen. “Bless me, Father …”
Her voice was sultry and familiar, and he still heard it echoing inside his skull late at night when the sea was calm and the waves licked the shore beneath the rectory.
“… for I have sinned. It has been one year since my last confession.”
For a second, he couldn’t believe it was really her, but her scent was unmistakable, an intoxicating mixture of lavender and Sciacchetrà, the local wine made from aged grapes.
“May the Lord be in your heart to make a good confession.”
“I have done something terrible, Marco … I didn’t mean to. You must believe me.”
He could see only the outline of her head through the opaque shield between them, but his memory painted in the flowing curls of dark hair and the rose color of her full lips—the way she had looked when she had moved away from Monterosso al Mare four years ago, never to return.
“I tried to make a go of fishing. But the Japanese have stolen all the tuna.”
He could imagine the splay of her soft hands and the pleading in her brown eyes.
“I need to feed my family. You must understand this.”
“What happened, Elena?”
Her breath rushed out, the kneeler scraped against the warped wooden flooring, and she moved out from behind the screen and sat in the chair less than a meter in front of him—nothing between them now other than the warm air and the sacred vows he had sworn. Despite the dim and unflattering light in the confessional, her black hair had lost none of its luster, and her eyes shone as brightly as ever.
“You remember that man I told you about?”
“Antonio?”
“Yes, him.”
Antonio was a member of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian crime syndicate that had expanded its reach throughout Liguria and the north of Italy. Marco had done his best to keep Elena away from him; the mobster had been far too interested in her, more, he feared, for the sleek contours of her figure than for the want of her boat. He had envied Antonio, and any other man who could stare at her olive skin, burnt to perfection by the Mediterranean sun, without the constriction of a collar.
“I thought I told you to steer clear of him.”
“You did, but I didn’t listen. I thought you were just jealous.”
“I was jealous.” A breeze sparked up, carrying with it the odor of salt air and incense. “Isn’t jealousy what comes from unrequited love?”
“Your love wasn’t unrequited. I loved you just as much as you loved me, perhaps more.”
His eyes strayed from her high cheekbones down to the strong line of her jaw, and then even further, to the plunging neckline of her black blouse.
“Then why did you leave?”
“Because you were always going to love God more than you loved me. And I grew tired of sharing you with Him.”
A flutter of wings came from above; the pigeon nesting underneath the church eaves had returned to her nest, setting off a chorus of chirping from her squabs.
“I thought things would change, that you just needed more time to see how happy we could be together. But the weeks became months, and the months turned into years, and still you chose God over me.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
The chirping of the squabs reached a crescendo, filling the confessional with a shrill warbling.
“You were supposed to leave the priesthood. Choose me over God.”
“I couldn’t do that, Elena.”
“No, damn you, you couldn’t.”
She leaned in closer, and the neckline of her blouse plunged even further.
“And that’s why you still sleep alone every night. You always told me how much you hated the long, lonely nights.”
She slid the chair forward, and her foot brushed up against his. The smell of lavender thickened, and a familiar tightness gripped his chest.
“I am a vengeful woman. I had to leave before my resentment could turn into bitterness and hatred.”
“Resentment for whom? Me, or God?”
“For both of you.”
The pigeon flew away, and the chirping subsided. All Marco could hear was the quick rhythm of Elena’s breathing and the mad drumming of his own heart.
“Antonio came to see me a few weeks ago, to ask if I wanted to pick up some refugees. He told me they were looking for work. I didn’t want to, Marco, but it was either that or lose my boat.”
She paused, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t reply.
“I met them at night, in the Ligurian Sea, just north of Corsica. There were sixteen of them, and I knew straight off they weren’t refugees. I tried to get out of the deal, right then and there, but he threatened me.”
“Who threatened you? Antonio?”
“No, one of the men I picked up. His name was Mohammed. He told me he would kill Francesca and Gianna if I didn’t do as they said.”
Gianna was Elena’s daughter, a lanky girl with her mother’s dark complexion. Francesca was Elena’s younger sister.
“How did he know their names?”
“Two of them had already come over. They had been following me around for days. When we got to the drop-off, Gianna and Francesca were waiting for us … Gianna was bound and gagged, and Francesca had been beaten.”
Elena stopped speaking for a second and sobbed quietly into her folded hands. Marco was possessed by a powerful impulse to wrap his arms around her.
“When was this?”
“A week ago. I have to get the rest tonight.”
“You must go to the police immediately.”
“I can’t. They are holding my daughter and my sister captive. Two of the men have been staying in my house for the last week. Mohammed told me he would kill my family and me if I tell anyone.”
“Go to the police now, Elena.”
There was no reply, only the creaking of the chair.
“They are following me. My family would be dead before I reached the police station.”
“Listen to me. I want to forgive you. I will forgive you. I know you are sorry. But these men are dangerous.”
“I know they are dangerous; he cut Francesca with his knife to scare me.”
Marco could see her shaking, and shame overcame him. Elena had come here for absolution, not an inquisition. But there were lives at stake, and it was his duty to convince her to get help.
“You must go to the police.”
“You must forgive me, Marco.”
The waves slapped against the rocky footings of the church, and the sound of distant laughter floated in through the open windows.
“I will forgive you, but you must go straight to the police.”
“He will kill my daughter. Gianna is innocent.”
“Elena …”
“I won’t do it, Marco.”
The quiet conviction in her voice reminded him of her inner strength, the fierce will she had harnessed to raise her daughter by herself, to be a female fishing boat captain in an industry dominated by men. How he had been drawn to that strength, how he had borrowed from it when they were together, absorbing it like a sponge absorbed water.
“Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Marco nodded, exhaling slowly.
“For these and all the sins of my past life, I am truly sorry. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins because of Your just punishments …”
Elena finished the Act of Contrition as the chirping of the pigeon squabs resumed in earnest. Marco raised his right hand, wrapped with the ivory rosary beads his mother had given him on the day he had graduated from the Collegium Canisianum, the Jesuit seminary in Innsbruck, Austria. He had inherited his faith from his mother—his faith, his lean face, and his light blue eyes.
“God the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son … and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Marco exited the church through the side door, crossed the narrow courtyard overgrown with bougainvillea and potted tomatoes, and entered the rectory. Signora Grecci, his elderly housekeeper, had left a casserole of stuffed peppers warming on the stovetop. A pitcher of iced sangria sweated on the kitchen table. He descended into the cellar on ancient stone steps. Three cardboard boxes were shoved into a damp corner, and he carried the largest of these upstairs.
He retreated to his spartan office overlooking the Ligurian Sea and set the box containing his spearfishing equipment on the wooden desk. A worn wetsuit lay on the top, still soggy from his last dive. He picked it up, folded it, and laid it down on the edge of the desk. The next item was a pair of flippers—a gift from his diving instructor in the navy—and he placed these next to the suit. At the bottom of the box, next to the snorkel mask, were his diving knife and underwater torch. He fitted the torch into a loop on the suit and whetted the edges of the knife against a sharpening stone before slipping it into its sheath on the suit’s right leg.
Crossing the tiny office to the closet tucked into the corner near Signora Grecci’s room, Marco unlocked the door and examined the rack of spearguns fixed to the wall. There were three in total—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He selected the Holy Ghost because he could never recall missing a shot with it, and fitted a titanium spear to it. It wasn’t the Beretta 9mm he had used in his naval career—the gun that had saved his life and those of his salvage unit in Somalia on that fateful day—but he was going to need a weapon if he wanted to save Elena’s life.
He closed the box and returned it to the cellar. On the way back to his office, he detoured through the kitchen to pour a glass of sangria, then reclined in his chair with his rosary beads wrapped around his hands, beseeching the Savior for courage.
Marco said evening mass with a fervor he hadn’t had since his ordination and nibbled on the stuffed peppers in the rectory’s small kitchen afterward. Peperoni imbottiti was his favorite dish, but there was enough garlic in it to awaken the dead, and his appetite was poor. Returning to his office after dinner, he killed time by working his rosary, but even the smoothness of the worn beads couldn’t put an end to the disquiet in his soul. He walked over to the window and watched the water darken as the light died. He had stood there many times, mesmerized by the splashes of bright color in the harbor—the pink and orange buildings squeezed against the gray sandstone, and the blue and yellow rowboats littered along the winding path to the water—letting the words to a sermon drop into his head.
Elena had loved the view from the window as well, from her first meeting with Marco to register Gianna for catechism classes until that sunny afternoon with the sea breeze buffeting her hair when she had told him she was leaving. Many times, he had watched her standing in front of that window overlooking the bay, staring at the contrast of her shapely silhouette against the azure sky.
He returned to the desk, wrapped the rosary beads around his hands again—as his mother had taught him—and prayed for strength.
As soon as it was dark, Marco crossed himself and descended to the rocky beach below the rectory. A small boat with an outboard engine was tied there. He got in and motored out to sea. He ran quiet and blind, keeping his small searchlight switched off. It wasn’t as if he needed to see anyway; he had made the trip hundreds of times before, and he could trim the rudder by the slap of the waves against the keel.
He cut the engine and used the oars to guide the craft into a small cove, well hidden from the Sentiero Azzurro, the clifftop walkway that connected the five villages of the Cinque Terre. He had been here many times before, casting his net for anchovies and listening to the arguing of the gulls. He secured the boat, stripped down to his wetsuit, and stuffed his clothes and speargun into a waterproof satchel. Looping the bag over his shoulders, he slipped his fins on and dove in, swimming away from the shore with powerful strokes. The currents in this cove were dangerous, and he knew no one else would be using this area to escape the heat.
He reached deeper waters and turned to the south, swimming parallel to the shoreline. Taking advantage of his long frame and a lifetime in the sea, he reached his destination in a half-hour and circled the boat, trying to determine if there was anyone on board. When he was satisfied there wasn’t, he hoisted himself over the gunwales using the anchor chain and looked around.
The Bel Amica was just as he remembered it: a small diesel-powered fishing trawler in a horrific state of disrepair. There were countless such boats in these parts, probing the dying Mediterranean for the fruits of the sea. He grabbed his torch, adjusted the beam to a soft glow, and did a quick circuit of the boat. He found the storage closet right away, in the back corner of the wheelhouse. It should have contained cleaning supplies and equipment, but he had guessed it would be empty. He pushed aside an old mop, the sole occupant, and sat on the floor. Then he closed the door, which was warped from decades of exposure, and settled in to wait. The closet was cramped and warm and smelled of rat urine, but it was home for the time being.
He reached into his satchel, groping instinctively for his rosary beads before remembering that he had left them in his desk, where they wouldn’t be a party to what was coming. His fingers closed over the plastic handle of the speargun. He placed it on his lap and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the sea: the scraping of the anchor chain, the popping of the hull as it bobbed in the swell, and the whine of the wind against the superstructure. The briny smell made him think of his father, who had been the captain of a destroyer in the Italian navy. That Marco might have chosen a different path had been out of the question, ever since his father had given him a radio-controlled boat when he was five; both he and his older brother Claudio had entered the navy directly after graduating from secondary school in Trieste.
The dull thud of oars against boat announced that he had company. He rested his palm against his weapon, but there was no need; there was no mistaking Elena’s voice, uttering curses in low tones as she went around the boat in preparation for setting sail.
The engines rumbled, and the anchor chain clanked. It was a calm night close to shore, and the Bel Amica rocked gently with the swell, guided by Elena’s practiced hand. Farther out to sea, the northerly gusts of the tramontana picked up, and Marco felt the laboring of the twin diesels beneath him as they tried to maintain speed against the headwind. Despite the lateness of the hour, he had no interest in sleep, and so he passed the time trying to imagine the men they were picking up—the men he planned to kill to save Elena’s life.
Corsica neared, announcing itself by blunting the tramontana and filling the air with the unmistakable scent of the Corsican maquis, the dense underbrush that smelled like rosemary and thyme. The fishing boat slowed to a crawl, and Elena thrust the port screw into reverse to maintain course in the chop. The thud of a gangplank signaled the arrival of passengers, and Marco sat up straight and put his hand on his speargun, listening to the shouts.
Someone entered the wheelhouse and began conversing with Elena in Arabic. A few other people boarded, and Marco committed their voices to memory. There was a high-pitched, almost effeminate voice, two guttural snarls, and a murmur with sepulchral undertones—this would be the one to watch. Marco had listened to enough disembodied voices to guess the whisperer had killed before, perhaps many times, and would relish doing so again.
It was the suffocating heat, the smell of diesel fumes, and the shouts of the men on board that broke open the vault in which he had buried the memory of the day, many years ago, when he had killed three men, Somali pirates all, but still children of the same God they all worshiped in one way or another. There had been eight altogether, six riding shotgun on either side of a skiff that had materialized on the starboard side of the Anteo, and two others on a second skiff on the lee side—a skiff he hadn’t seen emerge out of the early dawn.
He had been on watch that morning, walking the length of the salvage vessel more to stay awake than for any other reason. Trying to scare them off, he fired two rounds over their heads as the first skiff came alongside, succeeding only in engendering a murderous round of return fire from the pirates, all armed with a variety of assault weapons, mostly AK-47s and AKMs. But he had chosen his firing position well, tucked behind the boom of the crane that lifted the submersible, and the bullets had only clanked off the sturdy metal. And he would have continued to avoid deadly force if it hadn’t been for the RPG-7 one of the pirates had attempted to bring to bear against the Anteo. A trio of bullets in the man’s chest had put a stop to the grenade attack; another man fell to a head shot before the skiff sped away, disappearing into the murk from which it had come.
It was over as quickly as that, or so he had thought, not realizing that a second skiff had pulled up alongships on the lee side. One pirate had already boarded by the time Marco had crossed the vessel with some vague premonition that all was not well. He wouldn’t be alive to relive the moment again and again, during a thousand restless nights, if the man’s AK-47 hadn’t snagged on a hanging piece of pipe, giving Marco the chance to take him down to the deck with a head-first dive. The pirate was a small man and wiry thin, but Marco would remember to this day his feral strength, the raw power in his frame that wasn’t extinguished until he had buried the hilt of his diving knife in the man’s chest.
The engines throttled up, dispelling the unwanted memory. The screws thrashed, rattling the floorboards. The Bel Amica started a wide swing to starboard, making for home. Marco checked the luminous dial of his diving watch and made some rough calculations. They were three hours from shore; Elena was still safe. He guessed the men wouldn’t kill the captain yet, needing safe passage through unfamiliar waters. No, the danger zone was close to shore, possibly within sight of the drop-off area.
He spent the next two hours listening to the enemy, gauging their position and strength. After a time, he could identify the men by the slap of their boots on the deck and the sound of their voices. The high-pitched one belonged to a small man named Amad. The snarlers were large, heavy men called Asim and Tariq, and the menacing voice belonged to Karim. There was no doubt Karim was in charge. Marco could tell by the way the others addressed him and the fear in Elena’s voice when she spoke to the man.
With time, the men’s voices moved off to other parts of the boat, leaving Marco and Elena alone in the wheelhouse. The minutes passed, marked by the creaking of the deck and the pit in his stomach that deepened with their inexorable advance toward shore.
At last a door swung open, and Tariq trod into the wheelhouse, barking a command at Elena. Elena said nothing. He repeated his command, which launched her into a tirade of Arabic that Marco was pretty sure hadn’t been taken from the Koran. He squeezed the grip of the gun, knowing the hour was at hand. There was a loud crash, and the boat veered to port. He heard grunts of pain from the wheelhouse and the sounds of bodies rolling on the deck. He sprang up and thrust through the door.
In the dim light of the cabin, he saw Tariq kneeling over Elena, attempting to drive a knife into her chest. The man looked up in surprise as a new foe appeared out of nowhere and grabbed for the sidearm holstered on his waist. Marco raised the speargun and shot Tariq in the neck, keeping his streak with the Holy Ghost intact. Blood gushed from the jagged wound, staining the planking red.
Feet pounded on the stairwell leading up from the cabin beneath: Karim coming to his comrade’s aid. Marco grabbed the handgun from Tariq and shot Karim three times as soon as he cleared the bulkhead. His rifle clattered to the floor, and he fell against the stairs and slid out of sight.
Elena pushed Tariq’s lifeless body to the side and muttered something to Marco, but her words were drowned out by the angry shouts coming from outside the wheelhouse and the rush of more feet toward them. Marco would have been cut down if not for Elena. She dove at him, and they tumbled to the floor, falling down the stairs beneath a murderous hail of bullets. He landed against Karim and fired a volley into the wheelhouse, stopping the enemy’s advance for the time being.
Elena thrust Karim’s rifle into his hands. “Keep shooting.”
Marco jammed the stock against his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, raking the cabin with a short burst as Elena struggled with a panel in the rear wall. She wrestled it free with a thump, revealing a crawl space into the bowels of the boat, and slithered inside head-first, with her arms pressed against her sides. He fired another salvo as she disappeared, not aiming at anything in particular, just trying to keep the men in the wheelhouse pinned down. Elena had something in mind, some gambit, and he needed to give her enough time to play it.
The clip was empty, and he discarded the rifle in favor of Tariq’s handgun, firing every time he heard a movement. In between salvos, he rolled Karim over and searched him, but Elena had taken his sidearm; the only thing he was carrying was a folded piece of paper in the breast pocket of his shirt, which Marco slid into the waterproof compartment sewn onto the thigh of his wetsuit.
The murmuring above him increased, and he fired another shot, only to hear the hollow click of the firing pin. The men in the wheelhouse heard the noise as well, and Marco soon heard the slap of feet on the deck. He pulled his diving knife from its sheath, glad he’d had the forethought to sharpen it, and pushed against the wall abutting the stair, ready to ambush the pair as they stepped over Karim.
Two shots exploded above him, and then two more, followed by the thud of bodies against the floor. He let go of the wall and ascended into the wheelhouse. Elena was at the wheel; if there hadn’t been enough dead bodies on the floor to fill a small morgue, he might have been able to convince himself the whole thing had never happened.
“Hello, Marco.”
“Hello, Elena.”
He moved forward to stand close to her. She didn’t move away when his arm brushed against hers. Darkness filled the windshield, save for the stray wash of moonlight reflecting off a breaker. The smell of diesel fumes and blood stained the air.
“Where are we going, Elena?”
“Riomaggiore. Mohammed and another man are holding Gianna and Francesca in my house there.”
“You moved to Riomaggiore?”
Riomaggiore nestled into the slopes above a rocky cove at the southernmost end of the Cinque Terre, less than ten miles away, but over an hour’s drive, due to the twisting and precipitous roads, from Marco’s rectory in Monterosso.
“Where did you think I went?”
Marco didn’t say, which didn’t mean he hadn’t given it plenty of thought. At times, Elena’s whereabouts had been the only thing to occupy his mind—that and the unmistakable feel of her, soft and warm, a feel that still tingled in his fingers more than he cared to admit.
“Where were you taking these men?”
“Castello di Giordano. Do you remember our time together there?”
He would never forget Castello di Giordano. It was a large medieval castle built on a rugged island off the coast near Fegina. He had gone there on retreat every year during the week after Easter, walking the paths in solitude, until the diocese had leased it out three years ago to cover costs.
“Of course I do.”
His last week there had been a memorable one. The other participants had canceled at the last minute, leaving him alone on the island—until Elena had shown up midweek on the pretense that she needed to deliver supplies to the dock below the servants’ quarters.
The servants’ quarters were perched on top of a rocky bluff on the backside of the island. Marco had been assigned to them since he was a novitiate. On that starry April night four years ago, lying on the four-poster bed that dominated the bedroom overlooking the Ligurian Sea, he had glimpsed the fires of Gehenna—and had no desire to go back.
“Do you ever think about what happened, Marco?”
There were times—mostly late at night, as sleep eluded him—when he thought of nothing else. He would never be able to purge from his brain the sight of her naked form silhouetted against the starlight filtering down from the heavens. The warmth of her bare skin against his never strayed far from his mind, and the sweet scent of lavender tortured him to this day. He had broken his vow of celibacy that night, and even though it had never happened again—much to Elena’s ire—it remained broken, shattered in a thousand pieces on the floor like an expensive vase fallen from a table.
“I think about it all the time.”
The diesels coughed, and the hull creaked as the Bel Amica plowed through another medium-sized roller.
“Did you really think you could have us both? Did it ever occur to you that I might have wanted more than the barren future you promised?”
“Yes, it occurred to me.”
“And yet you steered me away from any man who so much as looked in my direction, so that you could have me all to yourself.”
“I was trying to keep you safe.”
“Safe from what? A real relationship? Intimacy? Happiness?”
In the dark watches of a hundred sleepless nights, Marco had asked this same question of himself. The answer had always been the same. He had been trying to save Elena from herself, from her penchant for bad choices and self-destruction. Or perhaps he just told himself that, in a meager effort to justify behavior unbecoming of a priest.
“I was being selfish. I’m sorry, Elena.”
She acknowledged his apology by shoving the throttles forward; the engine responded with a throaty roar. La Spezia glowed on the horizon, a smudge of light on the starboard side of the windshield, and she adjusted course, spinning the wheel to port with the deft touch of a thousand prior journeys.
“You’re da. . .
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