The Power of Five Oblivion

Francesco cried.
    “You have to come with us,” Pedro said.
    “No. We can hold them off. We can buy you time.”
    “But they’ll kill you. They’ll kill all of you.”
    Francesco seized Pedro between his hands. “There is no room on the boat,” he hissed. “We’re dead anyway. But we need you to live. You are one of the Five, Pedro. You are the only hope we have left.”
    “Zio…” It was the Italian for “uncle”. Giovanni was in tears. He grabbed hold of Francesco and the two of them embraced.
    Then the two boys were out of the door and hurrying down the corridor. Pedro heard the front door being smashed open and could imagine the leather boot that had done it. There was another burst of gunfire, shockingly loud, and although they were six floors up he caught the unmistakeable smell of cordite.
    “This way!” Giovanni was leading him once again, just as he had done in the Castel Nuovo.
    The two boys hurried down the corridor in the opposite direction to the main staircase. Pedro could hear the soldiers coming towards them, twenty pairs of feet stomping on the steps. They came to a window at the end and Giovanni threw it open. There was a fire escape leading down. Pedro climbed out.
    “Not down. Up!” Giovanni was still speaking Italian but he stabbed with his finger and Pedro understood. There would almost certainly have been someone waiting for them at the bottom. There had to be another way.
    They climbed two sets of metal steps to the roof and ran across a flat concrete wasteland covered in soot and piled high with broken pieces of metal and wood, mangled bicycles, smashed-up machines that hadn’t worked for years. Ten years. The sight of them reminded Pedro what Scott had told him. They came to the edge of the roof and Pedro looked for a second ladder. There wasn’t one. A gap of about five metres separated this building from the next and Pedro saw what Giovanni was intending to do.
    The Italian boy threw his suitcase over. It seemed to hang in the air for a long time before it crashed down on the other side. Then he walked back, took a deep breath and began to run. Pedro saw him launch himself across the chasm. He made it easily, landing on both feet and rolling onto his side. Pedro was shorter than Giovanni and not as strong. But there was no point in staying here on his own. He took one glance down. He was eight storeys from the ground and he could imagine himself falling, smashing into the pavement below. There was a longer burst of gunfire from inside the building. Pedro felt the brickwork vibrating beneath his feet. Suddenly everyone was screaming, or so it seemed to him. He couldn’t take any more. He ran and jumped. At that moment, he wouldn’t have even minded if he had fallen to his death.
    But he didn’t fall. He hit the other rooftop, rolling over and taking the skin off his elbow and knees. Giovanni had already retrieved his suitcase and as Pedro got to his feet he propelled him towards a fire escape on the other side. The whole neighbourhood was in an uproar by now. People were pouring out of their homes, knowing that soldiers had come and that it would be safer to be far away. By the time Pedro and Giovanni reached ground level, the street was crowded. They had to push their way across, disappearing up an alleyway on the other side.
    Behind them, there was the scream of a whistle. Whoever was in charge at the Castel Nuovo was taking no chances. There were about twenty men inside the building and easily a hundred more outside. The entire area was surrounded. While Pedro and Giovanni had been packing and arguing about money, the net had been closing in and, with a sick feeling in his stomach, Pedro knew that there was no possible way out.
    Even so, they kept moving. It was early evening but there were still masses of people in the streets, taking up every inch of space. The crowds refused to get out of the way. They moved like syrup, reluctantly separating, then sliding back together again. Giovanni had his suitcase up against his chest, using it like a battering ram. Pedro glanced to one side and saw several men in black uniform, hacking and stabbing with their truncheons, beating a path towards them. Giovanni shouted and they took another turning. The wrong turning. There was a wall straight ahead of them, too high to climb, with no way around. They had come to a dead end.
    And they had been seen! The soldiers knew where they were. Pedro came to a breathless halt, the