“It is no accident! The Turkish dog is waging war on us!”
We made our way to the front, Tavosanis just behind me, Rizzi to my left.
On the floor, in the middle of the circle of legs, were two black stains as big as the palm of a hand. The boy who had summoned us pointed to them with a beaming smile.
“Pitch, boss. It’s pitch!”
I leaned forward and touched it, then sniffed my fingertip. Pitch, no doubt about it. Pitch in a powder store. Like stoat-shit in a chicken coop.
“What a spectacle!” Rizzi muttered between his teeth as Tavosanis pushed the boat toward the foundries. “You don’t need pitch to set fire to a store of saltpeter. It only takes a spark.”
“Right” I agreed. “And the motive for all this?”
He started counting on his fingers. One. “If it’s pitch, there’s someone involved.” Two. “If someone’s involved, it’s not an accident.” Three. “If it’s not an accident, then they’re not to blame for anything.”
Well done, Rizzi, a good observation. But I still wasn’t convinced.
“Tell me, what makes you think it was an accident?”
He pointed to the big chimney pots of the foundries — the area we were about to visit. “If the Turks wanted to damage us, they’d have started their fire somewhere more central.”
“There’s not just the Turks in this world.”
“Thank God. But what I say about them applies to anyone: If I wanted to destroy the Arsenal, I’d strike at its heart, not its heel.”
I nodded. “And you certainly wouldn’t wait until half the barrels of powder had been taken somewhere else. Or choose a stormy night, so that the wind would carry the flames outside.”
Tavosanis lifted the oars and took a breath, staring straight into my eyes. “Only chance is as precise as that.”
“Chance, certainly.” I lowered a hand into the water, as if the sea might give me a clue. “Or an enemy other than the Turks. An enemy who doesn’t want to do too much damage.”
3
As I had expected, the foundries were unscathed, since they were far away from the site of the explosion. The first and second workshops were still bolted shut. Tavosanis and Rizzi slipped into the calle between one and the other and checked the perimeter.
The third door was wide open. A sound of hammering came from within. I stepped into the doorway and walked forward slowly, checking the various departments. In the carpenters’ area there wasn’t a tool out of place. The tree trunks that had already been shaped were divided according to caliber and type, in the usual meticulous stacks. Farther along, where the pressing was done, a certain chaos was only to be expected. Bags of lime, ox hair, wax presses for relief decorations: Everything was scattered around big tables or piled up at random in corners. The foul stench of tallow oil emerged from jars that had been left open. Only the clay shells were set down carefully, ready to receive the molten bronze. On the other side, the piercing frames were silent and no one turned the lathe, the wheels of the augers, the bow-drills for punching touch-holes.
The racks for the finished weapons seemed unmanned too, but again a metallic sound reached my ears.
My call of “Who’s there?” received a faint reply a moment later, and a gray head appeared from behind a long, slender cannon. It was Varadian, the Armenian artilleryman who worked on prototypes. I was about to ask the man if he’d noticed anything when he suddenly spoke first: “Signor De Zante, it’s a good thing you’ve shown up, you at least.”
He looked shattered. The room was cold and the kilns were unlit, but his forehead was pearled with sweat.
“What’s troubling you?”
He opened his eyes wide, as if a ghost had appeared behind me. I had to force myself not to turn round and check. “The Turks. Trust me, I’ve worked for them. This fire is just the start of it; they’re going to attack us again. I know the architect Savorgnan is reinforcing the defenses at the entrance to the lagoon. Fair enough, a good precaution, but take a look, look around. There isn’t anyone here yet this morning, no guards or workmen. The treasure that interests our enemies most is here, but no one’s protecting it apart from me, and I deserve more protection than the others.”
“What did the workers do?”
“They spent the night putting out the fire, they got a pay raise, and now they’re resting on their laurels.”
I tried to assume a reassuring tone. Varadian knew how much the Mohammedans hated renegades. He had been an engineer in Constantinople for years, before coming over to us. He had become a Christian because the Republic allowed him to work, financing his experiments into cannon recoil. In contrast, the Turkish vizier of war had considered them pointless and unworthy of attention. The Ottomans wanted only one thing from a fiery mouth: that it should be big, gigantic, colossal. They wanted the wide-open jaws of the Devil, bombards spitting out the whole of hell and making the world shake. Why worry about the recoil?
“I’ll talk to the chief guard, Signor Varadian. Meanwhile I’ll have someone sent over, right away, and I’ll see to it that you and your work are given double protection. But don’t worry — I have a feeling the Turks haven’t got much to do with this business.”
He gripped my hand between his own, and his voice dripped with gratitude. “Thank you, Signor De Zante. And trust me, I know them welclass="underline" This is their work.”
It was evening when we got back to the palace. Some of my men, keen to demonstrate their zeal and ruthlessness, had already got things started. They had assembled a handful of seditious wretches, people used to singing songs against the Doge and the noblemen: con men, provocateurs.
On the wheel, one arsenal worker had confessed to be Giuseppe Nasi and the son of the Devil. A blacksmith from Chioggia had sworn himself blind that he had always been a Turk, a janissary and friend of the Kapudan Pasha, who had personally issued the order to start the fire. A woodcutter from who knows where had started talking a language entirely his own, saying that it was the language of the Turks of Asia Minor, adding a few words in Latin that he had picked up from the Mass.
Spilled blood and the stench of excrement. Torture is pointless when you’re looking for the truth. And in any case I was soon disgusted with it.
I made them stop. The foreman had given me a list of hotheads and discontented arsenal workers. I asked Rizzi to check if any of them were among the ones arrested in our absence. There were a few.
I ordered Tavosanis to start on the first one.
Usually I waited at least half an hour before coming into the room. Meanwhile Tavosanis asked general questions and got to work with his fists. This time I was more impatient: I had to end the day with a result, something to give the Consigliere.
The man’s head was hanging over his chest. He was tied to the chair; he seemed to be still conscious. Tavosanis came over and whispered in my ear what he had managed to get out of him. Now it was my turn.
“What’s that song you were singing at the inn a few evenings ago? ‘Come, Turk, free us from our masters. .’ That was it, wasn’t it?”
Silence. Tavosanis looked at me. I gestured to him to wait. “We know what you were singing; we know who you were singing with. We know what you ate, what you drank, when you got up to go for a piss. We know everything.”
The man pleaded, “What do you want from me?”
I slowly circled the chair. The wolf isolating his prey.
“It’d be a good idea to speak now. Think of the magistrate. Think of the wheel. You’ll miss this chair and my mate’s knuckles.” Tavosanis drew back his arm and hit the man in the jaw. “We know your friend Battiston kept saying ‘I know a way of getting them to up our pay.’ Isn’t that right?”