‘Get him out of here!’ he shouted. ‘Take him away with you! Now!’
El Kassem ripped the backpack from Father Hogan’s shoulders, knocking him to the ground. He grabbed him by an arm and dragged him off in the dust, as Desmond tried laboriously to run after them, fighting against the wind. The signal, still growing, had became an acute, lacerating whistle. The dome of the monolith was now red hot and was flashing with a blinding light. It exploded, suddenly, with a fearful roar, raising a globe of fire that scorched the sky all the way to the horizon.
Desmond turned. ‘The fire of Yahweh . . .’ he murmured, as if speaking to himself.
The signal was extinguished into a deep, dull tone. Darkness and silence descended over the deserted expanse.
COLONEL JOBERT APPEARED before their eyes just then. His figure emerged slowly, like a ghost, as the wind cleared away the smoke and soot. He had his back turned to them and was kneeling over the body of a dead Blemmyae, which had been mangled by machine-gun fire. When he stood up and came towards the hill, his eyes were as empty and dull as though he had left his soul on that battlefield. He looked back. Nothing remained of the tower except for the great black stone sarcophagus, which the desert wind was already slowly covering with sand.
He turned to the others. ‘I’ve seen nothing,’ he said. ‘Those of my men who have survived will be split up and sent to distant outposts. The desert swallows up everything, even memory. Farewell.’
He observed the march of the Hallaki warriors with shining eyes: they bore the dead bodies of Amir, Rasaf, Altair. He touched his spurs then to his horse’s flanks and rode off to reach those of his unit who remained.
Father Hogan packed his equipment onto a couple of mules and took them by their halters. ‘I’m going with Colonel Jobert,’ he said. ‘May God bless you all.’
Philip turned to Desmond. ‘Farewell, father,’ he said. ‘I’m going to remain at Kalaat Hallaki. Maybe I’ll succeed in doing what you never could. I have someone to love, someone who needs me to share the burden of pain and grief . . .’
They embraced. Then Desmond leapt onto his horse.
‘Will I see you again?’ shouted Philip with moist eyes as his father rode off.
El Kassem turned back. ‘Inshallah!’ he shouted. ‘Farewell, el sidi!’ He spurred on his thoroughbred and disappeared with his companion in a cloud of dust.
15
SELZNICK WAS CAPTURED THE next day as he was dragging himself through the desert. He was on his last legs and put up no resistance. Colonel Jobert took him into custody and continued down Wadi Addir until they reached the redoubt where he had left his garrison.
Jobert entered, accompanied only by Father Hogan, as his men watched silently without dismounting from their horses. He found no one waiting for him because they were all dead. The corpses lay where each man had breathed his last and the Legion standard still hung limply from its pole, even more faded than it had been. No one had lowered it.
He did not dare to bury them, afraid of risking contagion, but above all so as not to further unsettle his surviving men, who were still reeling from what they had been through. Father Hogan recited the De Profundis and made the sign of the cross over each dead body.
‘I’ll leave him here,’ said Jobert suddenly.
‘That would be condemning him to death,’ said Father Hogan. ‘You may as well have him court-martialled.’
‘No,’ said Jobert. ‘The reason for which my superiors would like to see him executed is even more despicable than his misdeeds. I won’t absolve them of their nightmares. I’ll set him free tonight and I’ll say that he escaped. At least he’ll have a chance. No one should be denied a chance, not even the worst of murderers.’
THEY REACHED BIR AKKAR on the day of the winter solstice and Father Hogan waited there two more days for the plane to come and fetch him. When he was told that the pilot had arrived, he went to say goodbye to Colonel Jobert. The officer was standing in front of the window looking out, just like the first time they had met.
‘Mission accomplished, Father Hogan,’ Jobert said as soon as he heard him enter. ‘You’ve imprisoned the message in that machine of yours and now you’re taking it home. I’d be willing to wager that no one will ever hear another word about it. Although, in theory, we should be kept informed . . . Wasn’t that the deal?’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Father Hogan. ‘That was the deal. But even I don’t know what’s been recorded on that memory. It will take time – a long, long time, I suppose. But would you really like to know?’
Jobert shook his head. ‘I want to know nothing. I want only to forget.’
Father Hogan approached him with his hand extended, but when Jobert turned towards him, he let it fall and said, ‘You didn’t tell me everything either, Colonel. I saw you lift the veil that covered the head of one of the fallen . . . one of the Blemmyae. But nothing has happened to you. Nothing that I can see.’
Jobert’s face tensed, his eyes clouded over.
‘What did you see, Colonel?’ insisted Father Hogan.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Myself,’ he said with a disturbing light in his eyes. ‘A shapeless, repugnant mass, which transformed under my eyes into my face but it was . . . different. I saw an atrocious mask and yet it was my own. The dark side that we hold prisoner in the bottom of our souls so that no one will ever glimpse it. The wickedness, corruption, unconfessed foulness that we’ve removed from our conscious minds. Shameful desires, bestial violence, infamy. I saw all of it in that horrendous mask. They are us, those monsters . . .’ he said. ‘They are us . . . So now you can imagine what you would have seen had you been in my place, Hogan. Force yourself, strain your imagination . . .’
His voice trailed off and Father Hogan looked at him in silence. That hollow tone, that bleak gaze, left no doubt that he was telling the truth.
‘Evil always seems invincible to us,’ replied the priest. ‘Especially the evil within us, but that’s not true. When you wake up tomorrow, before dawn, watch as the light advances over the world, stare at the rising sun. You will find your face there as well, Jobert, the part of you destined to live. For ever.’
He went to the airstrip, where the plane was waiting to take him to El Kef. Jobert did not accompany him, but Father Hogan caught a glimpse of his dark, still shape, arms folded, behind his office window, through the swirling dust raised by the plane’s propellers.
FATHER HOGAN REACHED ROME one stormy night a few days before Christmas. The rain pounding on the shiny tarmac, the dark, swollen clouds in the sky and the air laden with humidity made him feel as if he were on another planet.
He waited on the airfield as the big black oilcloth-wrapped crate was unloaded. A cart was ready to transport it to a warehouse. He followed it on foot, as one does a coffin. Two security men who were there to ensure its safety brought up the rear of the little procession.
When he walked out onto the street, he saw a man dressed in a raincoat, with a hat low over his eyes, waiting. Father Hogan approached him. ‘You’re already here,’ he said. ‘I would have kept my promise to come to see you.’
‘I know,’ said Marconi. ‘But I couldn’t sit there waiting. Come with me. I have a car.’
Father Hogan returned to make sure that the warehouse was locked and guarded, then got into the car that was waiting for him, shiny under the rain, door open.
The two of them dined alone in Marconi’s house, in the big library, and Father Hogan told the scientist everything that had happened from the moment he had landed at Bir Akkar. Marconi listened intently, never missing a word, never interrupting.
‘What became of your friends?’ he asked at the end.
‘Desmond Garrett disappeared into the desert with El Kassem and I don’t think we’ll hear from him, or of him, again. He lives in a place now where time and space fade into infinity.’
‘And Philip?’
‘His life is in Kalaat Hal
laki now. He was the one who saved us, you know, with the silvery sound of his sistrum . . . My God, it was incredible . . . As we were leaving that awful place I asked him how he could explain such a miracle. He told me that he had no idea of how it had happened.
‘ “The sistrum saved us like it did an Etruscan haruspex two thousand years ago,” he said. “He was the only survivor of a Roman army unit that had ventured into the desert and been attacked by . . . that very same creature, I suppose . . . I was in an absolute panic until I thought of the sistrum, and when I held it out and shook it, the fury stopped all at once. And then something extraordinary happened. For just a moment all of that horror surrounding me disappeared, the screaming and shouting were hushed and that field of blood and fire was transformed into the most peaceful setting you can imagine. I was in a field of grass, flocks of sheep all around. I heard the voice of a little child crying, crying in despair, and I saw a woman, a beautiful woman with black hair, bending over a rough cradle and singing. Singing and shaking a rattle made of little bits of bone and wood. And the baby stopped crying, all at once. The sound, that sound, was the same as that of the sistrum.”
‘That’s what Philip told me before he joined the woman he loves and has bound his life to . . . before he disappeared into the shadows of that marvellous, forgotten place. Perhaps the vision that he had – of such a remote event – gives us the key to understanding not only what happened out there in the desert, but perhaps even, who can say, the mystery of our life on earth and of our death.
‘As for me, I managed to save the machine from destruction, at the risk of my own life. The recorder received the flow of that signal which originated from the furthest reaches of space. You deserve credit for the success of this operation as well, Mr Marconi, and I intend to respect the pact that you made with Father Boni. The recorded memory is not in the crate that I left under lock and key in the warehouse. It is in a crate that is being unloaded at this very moment probably, along with a consignment of Oriental carpets. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you wanted me to come to see you first?’
The scientist stared deeply into his eyes in silence for a moment. Then he said, ‘No, that’s not the reason. I wanted to prevent Father Boni from having access to that memory. There’s only one man on this earth who can decide the fate of that message and he’s waiting to see you. Go now, Hogan, go to him and tell him how you saw the fist of God strike down the Tower of Solitude in a lonely spot in the middle of the desert.’
‘But what about Father Boni?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve heard that he has fallen gravely ill and that he’s been taken to a quiet, secluded place where he may be able to recover his health and, above all, the serenity of his mind and spirit. If that’s possible.’
From the street Father Hogan could hear the muted, singsong notes of a shepherd playing on an Italian bagpipe. He felt a lump in his throat and thought of a bare room and an old priest who died trembling with fear and pain. He took his leave and went down to the street, where a car was waiting to take him to the Vatican.
He asked to get out at the entrance to the square so he could cross the immense colonnaded area on foot. He looked at the nativity scene on display in a corner, with its Christ child, shepherds and shooting star, and he stopped for a while to listen to the murmuring fountains. He closed his eyes and saw, for the last time, the clear waters of Hallaki. He raised his head before setting off again and at that moment a light appeared in a window on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace, like an eye opening wide onto the darkness of a sleepless night.
THE TOWER
VALERIO MASSIMO MANFREDI is professor of classical archaeology at the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan. He has carried out a number of expeditions to and excavations in many sites throughout the Mediterranean, and has taught in Italian and international universities. He has published numerous articles and academic books, mainly on military and trade routes and exploration in the ancient world.
He has published ten works of fiction, including the ‘Alexander’ trilogy, which has been translated into twenty-four languages in thirty-eight countries, and The Last Legion, made into a major motion picture starring Colin Firth and Sir Ben Kingsley. He has written and hosted documentaries on the ancient world, which have been transmitted by the main television networks, and has written fiction for cinema and television as well.
He lives with his family in the countryside near Bologna.
Also by Valerio Massimo Manfredi
ALEXANDER: CHILD OF A DREAM
ALEXANDER: THE SANDS OF AMMON
ALEXANDER: THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
SPARTAN
THE LAST LEGION
HEROES
(formerly The Talisman of Troy)
TYRANT
THE ORACLE
EMPIRE OF DRAGONS
TO BONVI
First published 2006 by Macmillan
First published in paperback 2007 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-330-52750-7 PDF
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Copyright © Valerio Massimo Manfredi 2006
Translation copyright © Valerio Massimo Manfredi 2006
First published in Italian 1996 as La Torre Della Solitudine by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano
The right of Valerio Massimo Manfredi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Valerio Massimo Manfredi, The Tower
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