Chapter Fifteen
Training
Two weeks fly past, and, during the daytime at least, I’ve never felt more alive and focused.
At night, after Lorenzo and I enjoy each other’s bodies, and after he is sleeping soundly, I lie awake and rake over the discovery that I might have been raised as a child assassin.
I thought I had finished fretting about my origins, used to write off my parents as selfish pricks who could not be bothered to find out if the child found on the railway sidings was their own.
Endless questions fill my head now, some reflecting Mrs Bellacci’s reaction.
Were my parents also soldiers? Did they actively participate in my upbringing, and if so, did they willingly deprive me of a normal childhood in favour of performing acts of violence?
Or were they coerced? And if so, by whom?
Did they train me to kill like Jamila? I don’t feel any innate murderous instinct, though I wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone if it meant protecting those I care about.
And why did they not mount a rescue operation to extract me when I was almost killed in the train crash?
Was I not deemed valuable enough? One thing is sure after the discovery of the file. I need answers.
Each morning, Lorenzo joins me for a swim.
I love his competitiveness, which spurs me on to put more effort into the exercise.
I still beat him, but he’s no longer sore because when he takes me on the five-mile run that follows straight afterwards, across Tuscan terrain, over dry-stone walling and up rocky outcrops, he triumphs without fail.
I can scale any side of the villa a few seconds behind him now. His skill is in seeking out footholds and handholds from a quick scan of a building facade, which he must have mastered over time, because I can only follow in his path.
Today, we are sparring together again. As usual, Lorenzo pulls no punches, which is how I prefer our sessions to run.
Already, he has bested me twice, thrown me onto my back on the grass, with moves that are part judo and part military training.
I know I am not fully engaged. Each time, his physicality distracts me.
“Stop,” Mrs Bellacci calls, approaching us. She pulls out what looks like a black stretch headband.
“Put this over your eyes,” she tells me. I’m puzzled at first, but catch on quickly and do as she instructs.
This time I default to instinct, listen to the sound of the attacker, and divorce myself from the friendly face of Lorenzo. And this time, I am able to deflect his blows and even manage to floor him.
When I rip off the mask, I check to make sure he is unhurt and ask whether he eased up because of my handicap. He shakes his head and smiles up at me, holding out a hand for me to help him from the ground.
When we collapse into bed that night, we have both stored enough energy to wring the sexual tension out of each other’s bodies before falling into a deep sleep.
Mrs Bellacci treats me differently. I used to feel a guardedness from her during interactions, but that has now evaporated.
Lorenzo laughed when I told him. He thinks she is doing the same she does with him and, internally, at least, has adopted me as a second son.
But I feel it runs deeper, especially remembering her eyes when she asked the question, ‘What parent would allow their child to be used in this way?’ Maybe Lorenzo is correct, and these are latent maternal feelings.
Whatever they are, I feel there is now an unbreakable bond between us.
She takes great pains to show me the elaborate camera system installed around the property, how perimeter alarms are triggered if any crucial boundaries are breached, and how each can be operated from the strongroom master terminal or her tablet computer.
I do my best to follow her explanations and show my interest by asking pertinent questions.
‘How the hell did Spataro’s men manage to reach the back lawn without being detected?’
My question clearly hits a nerve and is met with a grunt and a few whispered words in Italian that I’m sure are expletives.
‘Those men were imbeciles. They drove into the wrong lane almost twenty kilometres west of here. They must have had the villa’s coordinates on a GPS device, but had no idea how far they would need to hike.
Which is why they were already tired when they entered the grounds over the stone wall near the firing range—’
‘But you have cameras installed there. I saw them.’
‘I do now. And in other vulnerable places. Fortunately for us, their messy attempt to break in highlighted our blind spots.’
Mrs Bellacci appears to enjoy furnishing me with various disguises to adopt when I need to become someone else, showing me how to change in seconds.
Two jackets and three pairs of trousers she provides are reversible, in contrasting colours and materials.
One pair of sneakers has a switch in the heel that, when kicked in the right place, changes their colour.
When I look at my bespectacled self in the mirror, suited, booted and wearing a tidy wig in dark brown to match my moustache and goatee, decked out like a trendy businessman from any metropolis in the world, I begin to wonder who I really am.
A few tasks have been more problematic. Trying to learn a smattering of everyday Danish and Italian has been an uphill struggle.
But I have persevered. Other skills have come instinctively, like driving Romano’s car or riding one of Lorenzo’s motorcycles—or perhaps that has been more about remembering or relearning what I already knew.
Some latent talents have surprised everyone.
Dr Romano presented me with a collection of vials containing liquid drugs to knock out or kill a mark.
He told me the medical names for each of the five, and I wrote them down but didn’t really commit them to memory.
One I’d heard Josh talk about something called gamma-hydroxybutyrate, GHB, also known as a date drug.
The vials were marked from one to five, with four and five being lethal but undetectable poisons.
Romano wanted to make sure I knew what to do if someone had drugged me with any of them.
The strange thing was that I could detect each one by smell, no matter in what liquid form they were presented or how strongly smelling.
Mrs Bellacci devised a range of cocktails, fortified wines, strong teas and coffees, to see if I could pick out the drugged drinks.
Every time, without fail, I could discern a tiny change in odour.
Sceptical at first, Romano put this down to a hyper-sensitive sense of smell.
I wonder if this is also something I was taught in the past and never really forgot.
In a moment of quiet reflection together, raking over my progress, Lorenzo mused that maybe it was not only Eagle House that I inherited when I came here.
We take my new identity for a spin a few days after finding the files. Lorenzo and I ride motorbikes out to a place called San Vincenzo along the Tuscan coast. We park up at a coffee shop he knows overlooking the town. The deck out the back provides a panorama of the coastline and beyond.
“Do you ever wish for a normal life?” he asks, his legs stretched out before him, sunglasses on his head, and face turned to the sun. With his hand resting on the table, he brushes my little finger with his own.
Lorenzo pulls his hand away as a woman comes out of the shop and steps up to the railing to take photos of the scenery. When she is done, she gives us a cursory once-over and a thin smile before heading back inside.
“What do you mean?” I ask when we’re alone again.
“To do ordinary things. Drive wherever we want, see places together. Go home, cook a meal and watch television on the sofa together. That kind of thing.”
“Until I came here, I thought I had that life. I’m not sure I would trust it now.”
While we lapse back into silence, enjoying the last of the day’s sunshine, my gaze takes in the seascape before snagging on a luxury yacht anchored off the coast. A sudden memory sparks—panicked voices and screams, flames and pain.
I flinch away from the sight and tell Lorenzo we ought to go before the sun sets.
He leads us back to Pensione Galli, knowing a few regulars will be there that evening. Lorenzo has coached me on how to move differently, less upright and rigid, and to lower the tone of my spoken voice—not that anyone in the bar is likely to remember Gabriel.
The outing works beautifully. Lorenzo leaves me to order beers while he heads off to chat with people he knows. Signor Galli singles me out and asks me questions in English. I’m amused because on my last visit as Gabriel, he intimated that he couldn’t speak the language.
“And how do you find our beautiful country?” he asks.
As coached by Romano, I pause to consider his questions before answering in blunt, grammar-perfect English.
“I admire your fresh produce and pasta. But everything else I find old and decrepit,” I reply bluntly. “Art, statues, buildings. Even the music you play everywhere is old-fashioned. Nothing is new or innovative.”
Galli’s eyes widen, my dismissive assessment almost making him choke.
“How can you not love opera? Have you listened to the works of masters like Puccini or Verdi? Music written for the gods, music to touch the soul.”
“I prefer music that sears the skin from the bones.” The personal file for Aksel stated that he had somewhat eclectic musical tastes. “Have you ever listened to Doom Death Metal? Bands like Trippelg?nger from Aalborg in my home country?”
Galli looks at me with a mix of confusion and disgust, shakes his head, then makes an excuse to attend to another customer.