SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,41

tippers and no canes with golden knobs. When Giovanni and I stood on the brakes due to this changed situation on the roads, suddenly there were some pretty normally dressed human beings standing in front of us. Well, maybe they weren’t the kind you meet at the grocery store or at some BBQ at the park. They wore flawlessly ironed, dark single-breasted suits, ordinary ties and pitch-black sunglasses despite the local dizzy lighting conditions. Their scalps were decorated with flattop haircuts, and their edgy faces seemed as if their had been an iron foundry involved in their shaping. In short, those were two well-trained guys, which apparently didn’t rely on their muscles only. Each of them held a silver pistol with a massive suppressor in his hand.

We were about to put our hands up, and stiffened on the spot. I risked a cautious glimpse behind. The hooded guy who about 50 feet away from us had also applied the handbrake by now. Blinking he stood in the middle of the corridor, motionless like a window mannequin in a Halloween costume. I would have loved to know what was going on his mind. This memorable meeting was accompanied by continuing hammering, and the even more intense vibration underneath my paws told me that the hammer had been inserted right here beneath the stony soil. It sounded like the soundtrack to the dramatic situation we found ourselves in. Even the suppressor-twins granted their iron facial expression some touch of irritation and slightly bowed their heads. Only to quickly look up again and get back to business.

»Don't move from the place or you are dead before you can fart!« one of them shouted and pointed his gun.

Well, that definitely didn’t sound Italian. It sounded more like some tourists who had booked their vacation at Smith & Wesson Travel Agency, tourists who longed for very individual extracurricular activities. Actually, it sounded like true blue killers.

The minute we realized that the boys hadn’t undertaken the long journey from the US to Rome’s underground to, sticking to the fitting slang, blow our heads off, we couldn’t help but feel a relaxing shiver down our spines. We didn’t matter at all. They were after the hooded man. Many dark forces were interested in his miracle, and our two friends had come so it could change hands.

Giovanni though looked at the situation in a more pragmatic manner.

»Always a pleasure chatting with you, il mio amico«, he said with a so nonchalant expression that I was afraid he was about to leak like perfume from a bottle and vaporize above our heads. »But I’m afraid someone around here will suffer from lead poisoning very soon. And with regards to poisoning I’m a burnt child – remember – Spaghetti Bolognese with a hint of green. Arrivederci, Francis!«

Giovanni took off without any sign of nervousness, so that even the gunmen felt forced to adjust their dark glasses and let things happen. Totally relaxed, he strolled through one of the guys’ legs, turned around the corner and disappeared.

Of course I was flirting with following him at first. Because what Giovanni had said sounded pretty much as prophetically as the suggestion that days are warmer in summer than in wintertime. It wouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise, if there had been bullets shooting through the air in a minute. And still ... Still I willingly devoted myself to the sweet poison, which fed my incurable disease: insatiable curiosity. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Maybe I’d get to know something about the miracle this way.

After the two mannequins for glasses had swallowed Giovanni’s cool performance, they resumed work.

»Discard the fucking saber and get closer slowly!« one of them said to the hooded guy and pointed at the saber.

Right at this moment I felt a powerful blow below me, which automatically made me think of an earthquake. The bang was ear-deafening and made the whole catacomb tremble. After a tremor like this there should have formed prominent cracks between the stone slabs. And in fact, when I broke away from the gangster drama a split second and looked down, I saw them. Like ramifications in a broken glass panel the cracks spread over the floor in an irregular pattern. What a winning streak I was on! Now I could even choose the manner of my upcoming death: shot by a stray bullet or buried by boulders.

For a moment the boys got distracted from the noise, which the hooded guy took