The Power of Five Oblivion

you understand that? To change the sheets for him, like a servant.” Francesco paused. “And you realize that if they find out that Giovanni is helping you, they will kill him. He has been in the Castel Nuovo for two years and he has seen many other servants die. One of them was found stealing food. He was taken out and shot.”
    But you can’t just kill people like that, Pedro thought.
    Instead he said, “I promise you. You can trust Scott. He’s playing a game. It’s not what it seems.” Francesco translated again. Giovanni nodded. Pedro was relieved. It had been agreed.
    “We will have to think of somewhere safe for the meeting,” Francesco said. “The police are certain to be looking for you and that will make it doubly dangerous. I still wonder why we are doing this, why we are endangering ourselves for you.”
    And suddenly the old man spoke. “He is one of the Five,” he said. The words were in Spanish. “Gio found him and brought him to us. He is our one hope.”
    Francesco nodded but his face was grave. “Maybe you’re right, father,” he said. “So let us hope he does not let us down.”

TWENTY-ONE
    They met in the afternoon, in the very heart of the city.
    Francesco Amati had considered many possibilities for the meeting point – churches, shopping arcades, gardens, the Catacombs of San Gennaro, one of the jetties stretching out from the harbour front – but he had come to the conclusion that none of them was safe. The simple fact was that if Scott chose to betray Pedro, then there was nothing that any of them would be able to do. As soon as the place had been agreed, he could have five hundred men in the streets around any part of the city. The government still had helicopters and jeeps, even if the people didn’t. With a single command he could make sure Pedro was captured and that would be that.
    The police were already busy. There had been house-to-house searches in Vomero, Santa Lucia – the southern area close to the sea – and in a dozen other areas of Naples. Hundreds of arrests had been made. At the same time, notices had gone up everywhere offering a reward of ten thousand lira, an unimaginable sum of money, to anyone who came forward with information leading to the arrest of a fifteen-year-old Peruvian boy, thin with black hair, on his own somewhere in the streets. For the last six hours, Pedro’s description had been blasted out on police loudspeakers all over the city and with it had come a stark message. Anyone found guilty of helping him would be shot – and their entire family with them.
    Even travelling to the meeting place would be dangerous, and in the end that had given Pedro an idea. The police would be expecting him to leave Naples. He certainly had no reason to stay there. Already there were road blocks on all the main motorways. If he was still in the city, he would surely be hiding in the darkest corner he could find. The last place they would expect him to be was in the middle of a wide open space with no protection whatsoever – so as crazy as it sounded, that had to be the best place to meet. Francesco had quickly seen the logic of it and had suggested the Piazza Dante, a public square high up on the Via Toledo, once one of the busiest streets in Naples. It would also be an easy place for Scott to find. The meeting was set for four o’clock, next to the statue of the famous poet Dante Alighieri, which stood at the very centre.
    It was an unpleasantly warm and close afternoon without a breath of wind. There seemed to be more smoke in the sky than ever. Francesco had explained to Pedro that it was all down to Vesuvius, the volcano that stood ten kilometres to the east. There had been a minor earthquake followed by an eruption three months before. Nobody had been killed but the volcano had been spewing out smoke and ash ever since, poisoning the atmosphere and filling the people with dread of worse to come. And yet, strangely, the inhabitants of Naples had got used to it now. Perhaps it was because they had other things to worry about. There hadn’t been a serious eruption for almost a hundred years and even without weather forecasters and meteorologists to give their assurances, everyone had decided that there wasn’t going to be another one any time soon.
    Pedro stood in front of the statue, which had once been white but which now, like everything else, had a thin coating of grey. There were tall, handsome buildings all around him and arcades which