Apocalypsis 1.07 Vision by Mario Giordano

LII
    May 15, 2011, Poveglia, Venetian Lagoon
    I t took eighteen agonizing months for God’s wrath to subside after claiming almost 50,000 victims. No other European city of the early 17 th century was better prepared for the plague than Venice with its strict sanitary restrictions, its efficient Public Health Office, and the first quarantine stations in the world. And yet, disaster struck in 1630. It was the entourage of the Duke of Mantua that brought the plague to Venice and, within a few weeks, the Black Death was raging through the narrow streets and canals of the City in the Lagoon. For months, the air was filled with the smell of putrefaction and the pungent smoke of the crematoria, which could no longer cope with the huge number of corpses that needed to be burnt. Consequently, most of the dead bodies were just covered with lime and earth so that the dogs would not eat them. Doctores with preposterous bird-like beak masks, stuffed with herbs and spices against the deadly »miasmas,« bled the few people who could still afford the procedure. Everyone who was able to fled the city. Every day, more than 500 people lost their lives. Public life came to a standstill and bread and wine prices went through the roof. Gangs of looters roamed the streets of the city, throwing even the living into the wheelbarrows for dead, after robbing them first. Whether beggar or nobleman, the authorities did not hesitate in deporting to one of the Lagoon’s quarantine islands anyone who showed the slightest symptom of the disease or had come into contact with an infected person.
    One of these islands was Poveglia. A place of death; hell on earth. Tens of thousands of people were crowded into an area of three hectares. The air was filled with the smell of burning bodies and festering sores, the screams of the sick and the moans of the dying. Hundreds of boats moored off the island’s coast, forming a barrier, and a flag marked the spot up to which the deported were allowed on the shore. Beyond that spot was the gallows, which was used for the execution of those who defied the authorities’ instructions.
    During the course of the various epidemics that the city of Venice suffered, a total of more than 160,000 plague victims were burnt on the island of Poveglia. Their dark ashes covered the entire surface of the island. In 1922, the former lazzaretto for the plague sufferers was transformed into a mental hospital, but only a few years later, it was closed again after a series of mysterious deaths. Until the present day, Poveglia was off limits  – for locals as well as for tourists. Keep out! A haunted place. But exactly the place where Urs Bühler wanted to continue his investigations.
    The little vaporetto chugged towards the island as it emerged from the early morning haze above the Lagoon. Urs Bühler was already able to make out the 14 th century octagonal fortifications at the entrance to the island. He had spent the whole of the previous day trying to find someone who could take him to Poveglia, but to no avail. Most of the boatmen had just looked at him with a strange expression in their eyes, before denying his request and explaining to him that the island was uninhabited and that there was nothing to see except for some ruins. It was only this morning that he had been able to find himself someone who was willing to take him over to the island and pick him up again at a predetermined time, in exchange for a horrendous amount of money.
    Bühler was already cursing himself for the crazy idea of leaving Rome during this crisis, just to follow a lead that would probably prove to be another dead end. But Bühler liked to follow through with what he started. The clue that he had not shared with Menendez had to do with his research on Suite 306. A static IP address of the mysterious investment bank »PRIOR« had pointed him to the location of a web server on the island of Poveglia. The server was registered to a hermetic lodge that