Century #4: Dragon of Seas by Pierdomenico Baccalario Page B

thinks about everything he needs to do: pretend to go to school, meet up with Ermete and again with Mahler. Cross the river, try to figure out a way to get into the skyscraper. Wait for the others to arrive.
    But then what?
    He quickly finishes his breakfast, goes back up to his room, gets dressed without looking at himself in the mirror, grabs his backpack with his books and stops a moment. But his every thought is interrupted by his father’s steady snoring, which echoes through the room. To Sheng, it sounds like he can barely breathe.
    And so, he goes downstairs and walks back into the kitchen, ready to leave.
    His mother stops him. “Where are you going, Sheng? It’s too early for school.”
    “I can’t sleep, Mom. I might as well go out.”
    “You’re just like your father,” the woman whispers. “At your age he couldn’t sit still one minute.”
    Sheng pecks her cheek and goes out into the alley. He looks around. Vendors selling eyeglasses, billboards, shops with trousers displayed on aluminum hangers, colorful fabrics, people walking their motor scooters.
    And across the street, him. Leaning against some cardboard boxes of fluorescent tube lights. The pale boy in the number 89 jersey.
    The boy who’s been following him.
    On the second-to-top floor of a black skyscraper in the heart of Pudong, the new area of Shanghai, the phone used for confidential calls rings. Heremit Devil closes the little door to the children’s bedroom where he normally sleeps, walks down the long hallway covered with childish, scrawled drawings and writings, and reaches his desk.
    “Heremit,” he hisses into the phone with a trace of breathlessness.
    “I have the boy,” a man’s voice replies.
    Nik Knife. Four Fingers. The knife thrower. The head of his security team.
    Very good
, Heremit thinks.
The first one has arrived
.
    “Bring him up.”
    “Can he keep his own clothes? He traveled by plane.”
    “Have him decontaminated first.”
    “It will take half an hour.”
    “I can wait.”
    Heremit ends the conversation. He leans against the desk and dials another number.
    “Cybel?”
    “My dear fellow! My dear, dear fellow! To what do I owe the honor? I’m on the twelfth floor of your delightful beauty spa! I didn’t know you appreciated such things! I’m having my nails polished with—”
    “Any news about the girls?”
    “Always in a good mood, aren’t you, Heremit? Why don’t you come here and enjoy a nice drainage massage? Or a chocolate treatment? Your ladies here tell me it’s simply divine.”
    “Cybel. Any news about the girls?”
    Cybel puffs. She cups her hand over her mouth and whispers into the receiver, “I simply didn’t want to answer you with them around.”
    “Do it.”
    “You trust people too much, Heremit! If you keep this up, sooner or later someone—”
    “Cybel. The girls.”
    “It sounds like you’re giving me an ultimatum. Well, then, I’ll answer you: no. No news. We haven’t managed to get them.”
    “Why not?”
    “Neither one is at home. The French girl and her mother haven’t come back. As for the Italian, early this morning she got into her father’s minibus … but she didn’t catch a flight. I repeat: she didn’t catch a flight.”
    “Then why did she go to the airport?”
    “To help her father pick up some guests?”
    “Why aren’t they home yet?”
    “Because not everyone is like you, Heremit, dear! People go out, my sweet! They go out! Being out of the house doesn’t necessarily mean setting off for Shanghai.”
    Heremit checks the calendar. September 19. Two days until the year’s last equinox.
    “They should have left by now.”
    “But they haven’t, my dear, they haven’t! How can I get it through to you? I have my men. And neither Elettra Melodia nor Mistral Blanchard is on a plane, a train, a ship or a race car headed for Shanghai.”
    Heremit hangs up. Only two days left.
    And he still has no idea what to do.
    “ ‘Claire and Lauren