End games az-11

by Michael Dibdin

  So far so good, but since then nothing had gone according to plan. Mantega had expected a warm welcome from his associate, a rapid update on the latest developments regarding both of them, followed by a discussion of the most appropriate means to bring their joint enterprise to fruition. None of that. Giorgio had remained silent and glacially cold throughout the twenty-minute drive to the ruin where they now were, and had offered absolutely no explanation for having insisted on the meeting in the first place.

  ‘We’ll talk once we get there,’ was all he would say.

  As he watched his host return, carrying two tumblers full of some colourless liquid, it occurred to Mantega that an important component of the primitive terror which had him in his grip was that Giorgio appeared physically different. He was still the same wiry weasel of a man, as thin and heavy as a sheet of beaten lead, but his movements had lost their fluidity, their naturalezza. He bristled with suppressed tension, and the hand that offered Mantega his glass of grappa might have been robotic.

  ‘ Salute.’

  Neither man wanted to drink. Both did. Once this ceremony had been concluded, Mantega waited for Giorgio to get to the point. He felt sure that Peter Newman was being held near by, possibly even in the cellarage of the barn, and was anxious to discuss the ways and means for his release and their payment by the son. But Giorgio didn’t seem to want to discuss anything. He just stood there, his back to the light, eyes focused on nothing within view, listening intently to the silence between them. Eventually Mantega could stand it no longer.

  ‘I’ve been under a lot of pressure, you know!’

  Giorgio moved his eyes, though not his head, and regarded him for a moment dispassionately.

  ‘From the police, as a matter of fact,’ Mantega continued with a hint of sarcastic emphasis. ‘This outsider that they’ve brought in as a temporary replacement for Rossi seems determined to make his mark at my expense. He gave me a very unpleasant grilling yesterday, and seems to regard me as a probable accessory both before and after the fact.’

  Still Giorgio said nothing.

  ‘Rossi couldn’t be bought, but he’d grown lazy,’ Mantega went on. ‘The new man has a quite different approach. He’s given the case top priority, is heading the investigation in person and, since the victim is a prominent foreign citizen, he’s getting full cooperation from his superiors and the judiciary. I therefore have to assume that all my phones, both at home and at work, are being tapped. I may even be under surveillance.’

  ‘You are.’

  Mantega’s relief at having finally made the other man say something was undermined by what he had in fact said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Giorgio put his glass in his pocket and lit a small cigar.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of the price of doing business,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say! You’re not under suspicion. How could you be when there’s absolutely nothing to link you to the American? Anyway, as I told you last night, Newman’s son has arrived, so let’s get down to this business of yours. That call was from a public phone box, incidentally, with a tramp passed out in a doorway on one side of me and a violent outburst of road rage on the other. I don’t want to live like this, Giorgio, so let’s stop pissing around and get down to negotiating.’

  Giorgio plucked the cigar from between his lips and exhaled a dense cloud of smoke. Then he smiled. When Giorgio smiled, you knew that the news was really, really bad.

  ‘Negotiating what?’

  Too late, Mantega sensed that he was on a steep, slippery slope with nothing left to do but slither down as best he could.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Giorgio! The money angle. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to see my share of the profits sooner rather than later.’

  ‘For doing what?’

  He can’t be planning to stiff me, thought Mantega, but in his heart he knew that Giorgio could and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  ‘We had an agreement, Giorgio!’

  ‘Have you a copy with you?’

  ‘You gave me your word! We embraced and kissed!’

  ‘And what did you do for me?’

  Mantega flung his arms wide.

  ‘What did I do?’ he repeated dramatically. ‘The whole thing was my idea! You would never even have known about this rich American if it hadn’t been for me.’

  ‘You told me he was Calabrian. A Calopezzati.’

  ‘Who cares who he is? He’s rich and he’s here, totally out of his depth and all alone. I marked him down for you and arranged for him to visit me that evening so that you could take him. Without me, none of this would have been possible! You can’t deny that.’

  Giorgio bent down to stub out his cigar, then placed the butt carefully in his pocket.

  ‘Let’s have another drink,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want your damned drink, I want my money!’

  But Giorgio had once again vanished into the dark recesses of the barn. A few moments later he returned, bottle in hand.

  ‘Give me your glass,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want a drink!’

  Giorgio stood quite still. He allowed the silence to reform and listened to it attentively for a while.

  ‘Neither do I.’

  In one motion, he swivelled round and hurled the bottle of grappa against the wall. Sensing that he was in great danger, Mantega did not move or speak. Giorgio reached into his jacket pocket and handed out a bundle of fifty-euro notes.

  ‘What’s this?’ Mantega asked.

  ‘Your fee.’

  ‘My agreed fee was ten per cent of the ransom, Giorgio. We haven’t even started negotiating yet. How can you possibly know how much the family will end up paying?’

  ‘There won’t be any negotiations. You get a kill fee of a thousand. Take it.’

  ‘What do you mean, no negotiations? What’s happened? What’s going on?’

  ‘At the back of the barn you’ll find an old Vespa. Full tank, key in the ignition. Turn right when you reach the road, then left at the next junction. After that follow the signs for Cosenza. Dump the scooter in the outskirts and take a bus into town.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘And Newman?’ asked Mantega.

  ‘He died.’

  The two men stared at each other.

  ‘What?’ Mantega shouted. ‘You let your hostage die and now you expect to buy me off with a lousy thousand euros? You must be crazy!’

  Giorgio unhooked the torch from its support.

  ‘Let me show you how crazy I am.’

  He shone the stark beam up and to one side, coming to rest on one of the transverse timbers supporting the roof. Attached to the side of the joist was a silver box terminating in a glittering glass eye.

  ‘Digital camcorder,’ said Giorgio. ‘I switched it on by remote control when I fetched the grappa and off again when I went back for the bottle. One of my cumpagni fixed it up for me, as well as the wire to hang up the torch that would draw you into its field of view.’

  He shone the light straight into Mantega’s face, blinding him.

  ‘You have not only admitted your part in the kidnapping but claimed that the whole thing was your idea. Without you it wouldn’t have been possible, you said. I kept my back to the camera all along, but I made sure that you were facing it. If I get arrested because you’ve blabbed, under duress or not, that video will end up in the hands of this new chief of police you’re so scared of.’

  He turned off the torch, leaving them both in the dark.

  ‘Drive carefully, Nicoletta.’

  ‘ I calabresi non sanno fare squadra. Tutto li! They can’t play as a team and so they’re condemned to remain ineffective whingers, always complaining that the state handouts they live on aren’t generous enough.’

  As if to illustrate his thesis, Giovanni Sforza attracted the waiter’s attention with a loud ‘ Eh! ’ and then stabbed his finger at the bread bask
et and the wine carafe. Moments later, both had been replenished.

  ‘You see?’ demanded Sforza. ‘Bullying and beating is the only language they understand.’

  ‘You sound like one of those racists who want to declare an independent Padania,’ said Zen.

  ‘I’m not a racist, I’m a realist,’ Sforza returned mildly. ‘A racist believes that a designated ethnic group can never function and compete effectively because of its innate deficiencies. I don’t believe that. All I’m saying is that the Calabrians do not in fact function or compete effectively, despite having been given every opportunity to do so. Look at the Irish, by way of comparison. Their historical and economic circumstances were very similar for centuries, yet now their country is per capita one of the richest and most successful in Europe.’

  Zen didn’t want to talk about Ireland. In fact he didn’t really want to talk at all, but Giovanni had invited him to lunch and it would have been churlish to refuse. Sforza was an overweight, melancholic individual from Bergamo who freely admitted that the only reason he had accepted his present posting as deputy questore in Cosenza was because it meant promotion. He and Zen saw eye to eye on almost everything that mattered, and tactfully agreed to differ on all the things that didn’t.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve ranted enough,’ said Sforza, reminding Zen of why he liked him. ‘How’s the Newman case going?’

  ‘No word yet from the kidnappers, but I’ve discovered one possibly significant fact. The victim’s original name was not in fact Newman.’

  Sforza made a visible effort to appear interested.

  ‘Really? So what was it? Mickey Mouse? Arnold Schwarzenegger?’

  ‘Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati. He was born here in the province of Cosenza.’

  Sforza shrugged.

  ‘In the two decades before the Great War, the south lost more men to emigration than the entire country lost fighting in that war.’

  ‘The significance is threefold,’ Zen replied. ‘First of all, he lied about his identity, even to his son. Lying is always significant, since by nature we’re truth tellers. Secondly, the documents relating to his American citizenship are held in a classified file marked “For Official Use Only”. And finally, the Calopezzati family used to be the greatest landowners in these parts. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.’

  Sforza shook his head.

  ‘So what? The latifondo system is as obsolete as Russian serfdom. Far enough removed from us now, in fact, that we can even afford to indulge in a little nostalgia. If you ever drive over to the east coast, take a look around the Marchesato. You realise instantly that the only viable way to make any economic sense of that lunar landscape is intensive, centralised wheat farming on a massive scale with low labour costs.’

  Zen laughed.

  ‘You’re sounding a little sentimental, Giovanni. Are you sure you’re not secretly voting for the Lega Nord?’

  Sforza erased that suggestion with a decisive swipe of his hand, but his eyes smiled.

  ‘You know the old saying — once a Communist, always a Communist.’

  ‘So you still believe in that line in the Marxist creed: “to each according to his needs”?’

  ‘Devoutly.’

  ‘Well, my needs presently include tracking down any surviving members of the Calopezzati clan and getting as much information as possible about their whereabouts and activities during the war years. Can you help?’

  ‘Yes, but I need to smoke. Let’s pay these swine and adjourn to a cafe.’

  They found a suitable place a few doors away, with tables on the street where they could smoke. The coffee was tolerable, but Giovanni Sforza was incredible. He swung into action as one to the manner born, calling a dozen of his contacts and gouging the information he needed out of each until a complete network had come into being and formulated a result, which he then communicated to Zen.

  ‘The man you need is Cataldo Antonacci. He curates the archives and local history section of the provincial museum. What he doesn’t know about events around here for the last thousand years is not worth knowing. He’s expecting you within the hour.’

  ‘Did you explain the nature of my interest?’

  ‘Naturally not. I merely said that the chief of police wished to consult him about a matter that he had not disclosed to me but which might quite possibly be legally privileged. He sounded very impressed.’

  Twenty minutes later, Zen was in an elegant building on a quiet piazza high above the sterile grid of the modern city below, discussing the origins of the latifondo system in general and of the Calopezzati family in particular with Cataldo Antonacci. The historian’s expression of benign bemusement suggested that Zen’s visit possibly constituted a slight indelicacy, but one which he was too well bred to bring to his guest’s attention. Nor, needless to say, did he enquire why such an eminent official as the capo della polizia for the province of Cosenza was so interested in a dry subject that most people had learned about at school and promptly forgotten.

  With exquisite tact and a welcome gift for concise synthesis, he related the origins of the huge southern estates in land grants made by the Spanish viceroys of Naples during the eighteenth century, and in their subsequent enlargement by shrewd purchases from adjoining landowners, often ancient noble families who had got into debt and needed cash fast. The key to success, the archivist explained, was to get possession of a property large enough to be virtually self-sufficient, to allow diversity of production involving economies of scale thus insulated from the vagaries of the market. The continuing integrity of the operation was then guaranteed by strict adherence to the primogeniture system, under which the eldest son inherited everything, the other males being maintained on an allowance but forbidden to marry.

  ‘To do that successfully over many generations requires good luck or good genes. The Calopezzati were gifted with both. They were of humble origins, small landowners from Cosenza, but they proved exceptionally astute and energetic in developing and managing their property, which eventually extended from the wheat plains around Crotone to the alpine forests and summer pastures of the Sila massif above us to the east. There was constant tension and occasional strife with the local peasantry, most usually over the encroachment and expropriation of smallholdings and common land bordering the Calopezzati domains, but in general the system worked fairly smoothly. By the mid-nineteenth century the family had been raised to baronial rank, was immensely wealthy and kept a splendid palace in Naples.’

  ‘So where did it all go wrong?’ Zen ventured to enquire.

  ‘The short answer is after the Great War. By then the Calopezzati were powerful political players, and the baron thus spent most of his time at the centre of things in Rome, leaving the management of the estate to less able relatives or salaried underlings. In addition, socialist ideas about the rationalisation of land ownership had finally started to take root in the south, leading to demonstrations which often ended in bloodshed.’

  Cataldo Antonacci shrugged.

  ‘But in the end, it was their good luck that ran out. On the death of Baron Alfredo Calopezzati, the estate passed to his son Roberto, who was actively involved with the Fascist Mas X movement and later saw action in Ethiopia and the wider war that followed. He handed over administration of the estate to his sister Ottavia, who ruled over it with an iron hand from the old family stronghold at Altomonte, thirteen hundred metres up in the Sila mountains.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘By all accounts, a stone-cold bitch. Her father Alfredo had been respected, if not exactly liked. Even her brother got some admiration for his courage and daring, although there were darker sides to his character. But to the best of my recollection I have never heard anyone say a positive thing about Ottavia. While the country fell apart and endured defeat and invasion, she remained shut up in that chilly fortress known locally as la bastiglia, surrounded by a retinue of loyal servants and armed guards. Then one winter night just before the end of the war, a fire broke out. It
completely gutted the structure and killed the baroness, as Ottavia was called, although she had of course no claim to that title.’

  ‘And what happened to the estate after the war?’ asked Zen.

  ‘It was broken up by the agrarian reforms of the 1950s and what remained to the family was sold off.’

  ‘Did either Roberto or his sister have children?’

  ‘Not so far as one knows, but the details of the war years remain murky. It’s not even clear if Roberto survived, but Ottavia certainly died childless. She’d never married and was past childbearing age when the fire took her.’

  ‘So the family is now extinct?’

  ‘It may well be. That’s the price you pay for voluntarily observing primogeniture even after it was made illegal. But surely in your position it would be possible to…’

  Zen nodded his assent. Yes, he would certainly make further enquiries.

  ‘As it happens, we’re standing in a former possession of that family,’ the archivist said as he saw his visitor to the door. ‘This building was originally one of their many properties. When they came south from Naples for the summer, they would break their journey in Cosenza for a few days and wine and dine the local notables before making the long trek up into the mountains to Altomonte. Until a century ago there was no road beyond Spezzano. The baron and his entire retinue had to get out of their carriages and continue on muleback.’

  Zen had taken a taxi to the offices of the museum, but he opted to return to the modern centre on foot, down the narrow curve of Corso Telesio, where renovated apartments awaited yuppies with enough money and stamina to gentrify the largely abandoned mediaeval maze, and across the Busento river, a mere trickle between islands of gravel and tall reeds at this time of year. For a moment he wondered if he had wasted his time by going to see Antonacci. What he had learned had been interesting, particularly the bits that didn’t make sense, like Ottavia being past childbearing age when her son had been born. However, it remained doubtful how relevant any of it was to the task of getting Pietro Ottavio released as soon as possible by his kidnappers.