End games az-11

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘I wouldn’t have phoned otherwise.’

  ‘So there’s a definite relationship?’

  There was a pause at the other end.

  ‘Between what?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Lucio! You may have been up all night, but I haven’t had that much sleep either. Between the individual whose DNA sample I gave you yesterday and the other whose DNA profile you also have in your hands.’

  ‘Oh. In that sense, no.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I mean there is no correspondence at all.’

  ‘But you said the results were positive!’

  ‘Technically, they were. Sometimes matters are not so definitive, depending on the age of the sample, possible contamination and so on. But here there is no doubt whatsoever. The two subjects possess utterly different genetic profiles.’

  ‘There is no possibility that one of them could be the son of the other’s sister?’

  ‘Absolutely not. They are quite definitely unrelated by blood in any way.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘That was the result you were expecting, wasn’t it?’ Lucio put in at last.

  It was a stiff test, but Zen rose to the occasion.

  ‘Of course, Lucio! You’ve confirmed my hypothesis. Many thanks.’

  He put the phone down and continued on his way, his eyes blank.

  Enough was enough, thought Emanuele Pancrazi, gazing at the rapturous light streaming in through the bedroom window. Emanuele had just turned seventeen, his soul was gaping open like a mussel to filter every last drop of life on offer and only a few days remained before he would have to return home to school and everyday reality. It was time to assert himself.

  Thus far, Emanuele had indulged the agenda lovingly crafted and managed by his father. This governed every aspect of their month together, mostly in the form of day trips to churches and castles, long treks in the mountains and painstaking guided tours of the supposed sites of ancient Greek cities which in practice had vanished almost entirely. The day before had been devoted to the dull and seemingly endless badlands of the Marchesato di Crotone, unenlivened as usual by his father’s commentary on the historic system of sharecropping on the vast estates which had once covered the entire region, generating equally vast unearned profits for heartless absentee landlords such as the Calopezzati family.

  In some dim way, prefiguring a wisdom that he didn’t really want just yet, Emanuele realised that his visits to Cosenza were as difficult for his father as they were for him, if not more so. His parents had been separated for ten years, and he had long ago stopped wetting the bed and weeping in corners. He was young and tough and sanely egoistic, but he knew that his mother still suffered from the break-up, not because she missed his dad, as he once had, so badly, but because she felt guilty for the pain that they had both caused him. He had to assume that his father felt the same sense of culpability, and that his gruelling programme of educational experiences was not in fact a deliberate bid to wreck his son’s visit but an attempt to provide a regime of constant activity, excluding any possibility of embarrassing hiatuses when the big dark questions that lurked in the background might assert themselves and demand to be addressed.

  Nevertheless, the resulting experience was enough to make Emanuele feel as though he was back at school already. That had been just about acceptable when he was ten, or even fourteen, but time had now run out for this means of dealing with an event in the distant past which had changed his life for ever but wasn’t really of much interest to him any more. Too bad if his parents couldn’t get over it. Emanuele was on holiday in the deep south, almost a thousand kilometres from the apartment in Brescia where he lived with his mother. He wanted to relax, have fun and maybe even get a chance to chat up one of those juicy girls he had glimpsed from time to time through the car window as his father drove him home after another long day at the museum. Enough cultural uplift, enough history lessons. He programmed his mobile phone to ring, faked a brief conversation, then shuffled out to the living area of the spacious apartment facing Piazza del Duomo in the heart of the old city. His father was drinking coffee and consulting a map.

  ‘Ah, Emanuele! I’ve been thinking about what we should do today. The Sila Piccola seems the obvious answer, with a diversion to Carlopoli to see the ruins of the monastery founded in the twelfth century by the Benedictines and later taken over by the Cistercians. This complesso monastico was the religious, economic and cultural centre of the region, its abbot at one time having been the illustrious Giocchino da Fiore, but it was later suppressed and then destroyed in an earthquake shortly after — ’

  ‘Actually, dad, a friend of mine from school just called. He’s on holiday down here too, staying at a villa down on the beach. He says he’s getting a bit bored with the sun and sand bit so he wants to come into Cosenza and have a look around.’

  ‘Who is this boy?’

  ‘Oh, just a friend. Anyway, we’ve arranged to meet in half an hour. We’ll prowl around the streets a bit and then grab a bite to eat somewhere. So you can take the day off.’

  ‘But when will you be back?’ demanded his father in an almost panicky tone.

  ‘Depends. I’ll call you. Okay, I’d better go and put on some sharp clothes. You know how important personal appearance is down here. Don’t want these southerners to get the idea that the rest of us are all slobs!’

  Twenty minutes later, Emanuele emerged from the front door of the building and sauntered away down the main street. This initially provoked a moment of indecision in the two men sitting in a van parked outside the eighteenth-century palazzo on Via Giuseppe Campagna. Their instructions were to go to the Pancrazi apartment on the third floor, abduct the son and leave certain brutal verbal instructions with his father Achille, Professor of Ancient History at the local university. Now they faced a quandary.

  On the one hand, Giorgio had made it quite clear — in one never-to-be-forgotten instance by a personally administered beating that had ended with his being pulled off the offender just in time — that he wouldn’t tolerate his associates exercising any individual initiative in operational matters. On the other, taking the boy while he was alone would involve the two men and their boss in vastly less personal risk should anything go wrong. The normal course of action would have been to report in for further instructions, but the pair had been forbidden to make contact until the mission was complete. After a hasty discussion, they decided to go for it.

  Their choice was validated almost immediately. If the kid had carried on the way he had set out, down the sinuous curves of Corso Telesio towards the bridge leading over the Busento river to the broad boulevards of the nineteenth-and twentieth-century city sprawled out below, it might have proved difficult to take him unchallenged. But Emanuele soon became intrigued by the network of alleys leading off to either side of the main street, and wandered away into the warren of mediaeval dwellings which formed an increasingly abandoned slum surrounding the gentrified core of the original centre. One of the two men Giorgio had selected for this job had grown up in just that part of town and knew his way around blindfold. He also knew that, despite his colleague’s doubts, their van would fit into the alley that the boy had taken, and that there was an exit at the other end that would have them out of town in minutes, up on the superstrada into the mountains.

  ‘We just won the lottery!’ he said as they both pulled on their masks.

  Tom Newman was seated up front in Nguyen’s Mercedes, beside the driver. Nguyen sat alone in the back, furiously silent. The car gave Tom the creeps. It was like a hearse for the living. Maybe it was this thought that sparked his idea when Nicola Mantega rang him. He kept his responses down to the ‘I’ll be there right away’ level. In theory his boss didn’t understand Italian, but Tom had already been around Martin Nguyen long enough to know that it would always be dangerous to underestimate exactly how much he understood about anything.

  ‘That was the police, Mr Nguyen,’ he s
aid when Mantega hung up. ‘They want me to go to central headquarters right now. Some bureaucratic business involving my late father.’

  He didn’t even get a glance of sympathy in return.

  ‘Get back to the hotel as soon as possible,’ was the reply. ‘These continuing distractions are a pain in the ass. If they continue, I’ll be looking for a new interpreter.’

  Tom didn’t give a damn. He told the driver to pull over, stepped out into the balmy air and strutted off down the street as happy as a lord. Nicola Mantega wanted to talk to him in his office and then buy him lunch. This was very convenient, because Tom wanted to talk to il notaio about the big idea he’d had the evening before when he’d gone out to explore the dreary suburban streets of Rende, feeling lonely and disorientated for the first time since arriving, and in a weak moment had allowed himself to be seduced by an eatery named American’s Dream. The brilliantly lit interior vaguely resembled a bad acid flashback to a classic 1950s diner, with grilles and hubcaps from autos of that era arrayed on the walls and a Beach Boys album playing at an unsubtle volume. Tom had ordered a cheeseburger and fries, insalata Cesare and a beer. It took twenty minutes to arrive and was horrible. The meat patty was thin and dry, the fries limp and tasteless, the Caesar a soggy mess made with the wrong kind of lettuce, prefabricated croutons and gloopy sauce out of a bottle. The bill came to almost twenty bucks.

  Big deal, he’d thought as he retreated to his gaudy, sterile, whorehouse-minus-the-whores hotel. If you travel, you’re going to have a bad meal once in a while. But while he was down at the municipio that morning, mindlessly offering Martin Nguyen a simplified version of the deputy mayor’s pronouncements, so shaded with multiple layers of nuance that they often appeared to be meaningless, Tom had had his idea. The stuff that he had tried to eat the night before had all been simple American dishes that were easy to prepare and in their way delicious — not great cuisine, but satisfying and tasty when they were properly made and you were in the mood for them. And there was evidently a demand or how could the place stay in business?

  The problem wasn’t the concept, it was the execution. That was Tom’s area of expertise, plus over here political correctness hadn’t hit the table yet. Imagine being able to use raw egg in the Caesar, grind up nicely marbled chuck and foreshank fresh every day and soften hand-cut fries in pure beef dripping before crisping them at scorch temp. The concept felt solid, and in the changed financial circumstances following his father’s decease he might well be able to realise it, but he was going to need insider assistance. There should be enough seed money there once the will was probated, but Tom had already been in Italy long enough to know that money was not enough for what he had in mind. You couldn’t just rent a storefront property, kit it out with the necessary, turn on the neon sign and open the door for business. You needed some official paper or stamp to do almost anything — they even had one called the certificato di esistenza in vita, which officially affirmed that you were still alive, or at least had been when you applied for it — and while these were in theory available to any suitably qualified applicant on a first-come first-served basis, in practice the system didn’t work quite like that. If you wanted results, above all if you wanted them fast, you needed a fixer who could cut corners and get the job done. Nicola Mantega was a perfect match.

  Outside the building that housed Mantega’s office, Tom noticed the stunning woman he had spoken to briefly at a cafe a couple of days ago and never heard from since. She was leaning up against some sort of maintenance truck, wearing a much more sluttish outfit than the last time, although she brought it off really well, and chatting animatedly to some handsome fuck in company overalls. Tom almost walked on, but then decided that if he was to make it in this town, he mustn’t duck the first challenge that came along.

  ‘ Salve! ’ he shouted in the loud but unaggressive manner of the local people his age.

  The woman looked at him blankly, then seemed to fake a smile.

  ‘ Buon giorno.’

  She seemed preoccupied and made no move to approach him. An interesting person, thought Tom, and possibly some interest on her part too, but a lot else besides. A complex situation, in short, and not without a certain promise. He strolled over to where she was standing beside the electrician or whoever he was. God, she had fabulous eyes! Huge olive-green ovals filled with an intense but indefinable expression, like the women portrayed on Greek vases.

  ‘You didn’t call me,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  That didn’t seem to leave Tom much to say, so after a long and meaningful look he turned and walked into the office building.

  Given Mantega’s reputation, he had expected his business premises to have an air of discreet luxury, with lots of potted plants and a brittle, babe-aceous receptionist displaying her cleavage and her boss’s status. In the event it looked more like the back room of a failing used-car dealership, but Mantega’s welcome couldn’t have been more effusive.

  ‘Tom, my friend! What terrible news about your father! I am devastated, destroyed, deranged! To think that this unspeakable crime should have happened here, and that I — ’

  Tom gestured negatively with his hand.

  ‘I’d prefer not to speak of that just now.’

  Mantega effortlessly flexed his features from a tragic mask to the devotional image of a saint’s sorrowful but benign regard.

  ‘Of course, of course! Tactless of me. I cannot apologise enough. Please sit down.’

  He waved at a lime-green plastic bucket chair with stainless steel legs that had somehow survived, tawdrily intact, from the 1970s.

  ‘You said you wanted to discuss something before we go to lunch,’ Tom began. ‘There’s also something I want to ask you, but that can wait.’

  ‘Yes, as it happens, there is something on my mind, something which would perhaps be better discussed in a secure environment. It’s a rather delicate matter, if you take my meaning, but I see no reason why the two of us, working together, shouldn’t be able to reach a mutually advantageous agreement.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, it concerns this American who arrived a few days ago.’

  ‘Martin Nguyen?’

  ‘I understand that you are working for him.’

  Mantega laughed roguishly.

  ‘Strictly illegal, you know! Non-EU citizens are not permitted to work here without signing their lives away after months of pleading with half a dozen different heads of the bureaucratic hydra for the right to do so. After all, you’re taking bread out of the mouths of all our own poor Italian translators. I really ought to report you to the authorities!’

  ‘What about my father? He was working here, before…’

  Mantega instantly became solemn again.

  ‘I managed to facilitate that on the basis that the work involved was of limited duration and scope and so straordinario that it could not be undertaken by anyone else. Your case is different. However, we’ll overlook that.’

  ‘I imagine that happens quite a bit here,’ observed Tom.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Mantega returned complacently. ‘Otherwise we’d all be strangled by red tape and nothing would ever get done. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. I won’t breathe a word.’

  Tom gave a guarded nod.

  ‘So you want to reach an agreement with me concerning Signor Nguyen?’

  ‘It’s more to do with the people he is representing. You told me that under pretence of preparing to make a film here, they were in fact searching for the tomb of Alaric. As I told you yesterday, many others have tried in vain to locate that fabled hoard of treasure, and it may very well be that the latest arrivals will have no more luck. On the other hand, they no doubt have vastly superior technology at their disposal, so we can’t rule out such a possibility. My point is this: if they do find the tomb, I need to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  Mantega raised his chin and looked at Tom with the air of someone doing his best to e
xpress an emotion he has read about but never experienced.

  ‘Because I am a patriot,’ he declared quietly. ‘Not an Italian patriot, although I consider myself to be both an Italian and a European, in that order. But first and foremost I am a Calabrian!’

  He bent forward and grasped Tom’s arm so tightly it hurt.

  ‘And so are you, my friend, despite your American passport. In our hearts, we are both Calabrians.’

  Tom was by now feeling uncomfortable in all sorts of ways.

  ‘What has all this to do with Rapture Works?’ he replied.

  ‘It’s very simple. La tomba d’Alarico is a Calabrian heritage site of inestimable archaeological value which must contain a collection of priceless artefacts beside which even the Riace bronzes would pale in comparison. Now then, supposing your employers do find it, what are their intentions?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Precisely. Of course, they may simply wish to have the glory of having made the discovery, and having done so will turn over future exploitation of the site to the appropriate authorities. In that case, I would have no quarrel with them. With a fat grant from Rome and the EU, we could build a superb extension to the Museo Civico in which to accommodate these treasures. People will fly in from all over the world to view them, bringing fame and prosperity to the city and the region. We might even consent to send some of them off to London, Paris and New York as one of those travelling museum shows you have to book tickets to get into. “The Treasures of the Tomb!” All well and good.’

  His face darkened.

  ‘But let us suppose that their intentions are different. Whoever is behind this search has clearly spent a lot of money, and may well be motivated by the prospect of financial gain. The treasure obviously couldn’t be traded on the open market, but it wouldn’t be impossible to locate some Russian billionaire who would pay almost anything to be in possession of such items. Then again, it might end up being scrapped for the intrinsic value of the gold and the precious stones, as has tragically happened so often in the past, thereby destroying this unique and irreplaceable archive of our mutual heritage. The fact is that we simply don’t know what may happen in the event of this illegal search proving successful. I am therefore appealing to you, my friend, to inform me if that happens. Just phone me, at any hour of the day or night, and say, “The package has arrived.” We’ll then arrange a meeting at which you can give me the details. So tell me, Tommaso, are you prepared to perform your duty to the madrepatria?’