End games az-11

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘What’s new, Jake?’

  ‘Not much. Feeling kind of pixellated.’

  Martin ushered him into the back of the car while the driver put his overnighter in the boot. Then they sped over to a gate in the perimeter fence, where the uniformed official barely glanced at the cover of Jake’s passport before waving them through.

  ‘How d’you manage that?’ asked Jake wonderingly.

  ‘VIP pull,’ Martin returned in a tight, brisk tone. ‘Getting back into the States is going to be a whole lot harder, but that’s the price we pay for honouring freedom and keeping our homeland secure from terrorists.’

  ‘I guess.’

  A couple of minutes later, they were on the autostrada. The airport had been built on an area of flat ground — as they so often were — but pretty soon the highway started to climb up into some spectacular scenery, different shades of green over some nice chunks of rock and not a building in sight. Jake just knew there had to be some great hiking, camping and off-road trails up in there. Plus this driver could really drive! Martin was yakking away in that clipped tone of his about how the Aeroscan data looked promising, there was definitely something in the Busento riverbed that couldn’t be any kind of geological formation, he’d inspected the site that morning and it was really isolated, they should be able to get to work tonight without being observed, the machinery had been hired and the Iraqi labourers were good to go -

  ‘Hey!’ said Jake.

  The monologue ceased.

  ‘How long from here to the hotel?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes?’ said Nguyen. ‘Twenty max, then at least six hours before we get moving. Get some sleep, Jake. You’ll need it.’

  ‘Bullshit. I’ve been stuck on that goddamn plane for what feels like my whole life. Now I’m here, I want to play. Tell this guy to get off the interstate, head up into the hills, and show me what this baby will do.’

  ‘But Jake — ’

  ‘Hey, it’s on my tab! Why can’t I have a taste of what I bought?’

  So Martin calls Tom Newman and passes on Jake’s instructions, then Tom calls the driver and tells him what the guys in the back want, and the driver confirms that several times just to make absolutely sure that whoever’s nuts around here it’s not him.

  ‘Fast for fun?’ he says in porno English.

  Martin slips him a fifty-euro note.

  ‘ Mas rapido possibile.’

  ‘Huh?’ says Jake.

  ‘I’m a whore for languages.’

  And then they’re off the gentle gradients and cambered surface of the autostrada, plunging through dense thickets of chestnuts and oaks and maples and beeches on a narrow track that looks like it was built some time back in the Stone Age, rough-surfaced a century ago and then left to rot, up impossibly steep inclines and round reverse curves tight enough to fit in your pocket, using the whole road, horn blaring, astonishing views of the valley below and the mountains opposite snatched away in an instant, a controlled four-wheel skid every twenty seconds to position the car for yet another gut-wrenching acceleration, the engine finally getting into its stride after all that tootling around town, and Jake laughing like a maniac.

  ‘Forget the goddamn treasure, this is worth the trip right here!’

  And Martin goes to reply, only his mouth is filled with something he thinks is vomit and hopes isn’t blood.

  The Italian Republic — res publica, public stuff as distinct from family and personal concerns — may be compared to the planet upon a small portion of whose surface it is located. Superficially all is flux and flow, evolution and extinction, crisis and catastrophe, but this flashy biosphere amounts to no more than an infinitesimal fraction of the entire mass. People talk loosely about saving the earth, but that celestial body is at no more risk from the worst that man can do than is its metaphorical equivalent from the whims and wiles of whichever species currently occupies top spot in the political food chain. Immutable, inaccessible and to all intents and purposes eternal, the vast deadweight of Italian bureaucracy goes spinning blindly on its way with utterly predictable momentum, indifferent to the weather outside.

  In his private life, Aurelio Zen had often had cause to bemoan this fact, after being brought to the brink of tears or fury, or both, by the time and effort required to obtain — always in person at the anagrafe office of the local town council, and after a very long wait unless you had some strings to pull — the latest addition to the paper trail that follows every Italian from birth to death. Professionally, though, it was a godsend. This or that politician might currently be in or out, such and such a party reformed or deformed, the perpetual construction site of government landscaped with olive trees or houses of liberty, but the number of everyday events for which official documentation was required remained sufficiently large and various to provide the basis for a detailed biographical sketch of every citizen.

  This had been even more true under the Fascist regime, and since Calabria was largely spared the bombardments that had destroyed archives in other parts of Italy and the post-war government had promptly rehired Mussolini’s officially disgraced myrmidons to curate the surviving ones, unravelling the history of the Intrieri clan proved much less difficult than might have been the case elsewhere. Caterina had been born in February 1926 in San Giovanni in Fiore, the third of nine children, and her death from natural causes was certified by the authorities of Spezzano della Sila on the sixth of December 1944, eight days after the birth of Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati in the same comune. By the 1960s, the ranks of the Intrieri family in Calabria had been depleted both by death and by internal emigration to construction jobs created by the building boom in the north. Only three were still registered as resident in the province of Cosenza: two of them middle-aged women, the other a cousin of Caterina’s who was now almost ninety.

  So that trail was dead. Zen had never put much credence in it. He knew that Maria had told him the truth, but had also lied to him. What he didn’t know was where the one blurred into the other, so the Intrieri story had to be followed up. The girl had indeed died ‘of natural causes’ when Maria had said, but there was no objective evidence whatsoever that the baby who had come into the world at the same time had been hers. Caterina had been the elder and probably the dominant of the two friends, and might well have made up a dramatic story to enliven their wretched lives in that cold, lifeless mansion. Besides, why should the Intrieri murder one of their own? Unless, of course, they hadn’t known that he was. Zen had the sense of having strayed into the marshlands which infested the border between the laguna morta and laguna viva in his native Venice, a treacherous soup where you could neither stand nor sail, only be mired and dragged down.

  He was saved, temporarily at least, by the appearance of the ever eager and confident Natale Arnone.

  ‘Just an update on Signor Mantega,’ he said, seeing the documents spread out on Zen’s desk. ‘It’s not urgent. I’ll come back.’

  ‘No, let me have it,’ Zen replied with a yawn. ‘I’ve had enough of deciphering words written with steel nibs dipped into pots of condensed ink and then badly blotted. Is our friend the notaio behaving himself?”

  Nicola Mantega had been released at ten o’clock that morning with very stringent conditions attached to his provisional liberty. He had been given a mobile phone whose outward appearance was identical to his own Nokia model, but whose innards had been stripped out and replaced with the basic telephonic equipment, minus the camera and other gadgets, the extra space being used to house a GPS chip and a spare battery. He was to keep the phone on his person at all times and to use it exclusively for all his communications, both personal and professional. Once a minute, the chip called in to report its location to police headquarters, while all calls to or from the phone were automatically monitored.

  ‘He hasn’t put a foot wrong so far,’ Arnone reported. ‘He drove straight home, then phoned his wife, who’s on holiday in Germany, and told her to stay there until further notice. She didn’t want
to — something about she and the kids having outstayed their welcome with her sister-in-law — but the suspect told her to go to a hotel if she couldn’t take it any more. Whatever happened, he was on no account to be disturbed at home until further notice.’

  Zen smiled wanly. If he played his cards right, Mantega might yet get off with a short prison sentence for aiding and abetting Peter Newman’s kidnappers, but his wife would never forget being ordered around in that high-handed manner.

  ‘He spent the rest of the morning in his office making a number of calls to cancel meetings or delay deadlines on work that he apparently has in hand. Several of the men he called had obviously heard of his arrest, but he told them that it had all been a huge mistake and an embarrassment for the police which he had talked his way out of in no time.’

  ‘No calls to Giorgio?’ asked Zen.

  ‘One, after lunch, to the house we have under surveillance in San Giovanni. Mantega left a brief message giving his new number, which he said was clean, and telling Giorgio to call him as soon as possible.’

  ‘And has he?’

  ‘Not so far. But he did get a call from young Signor Newman to say that some package had arrived. Mantega tried to set up a dinner appointment for tonight to discuss it, but Newman said he couldn’t get away because he’s working for that Oriental representing the American film company, I can’t recall his name — ’

  ‘Neither can I, and I can’t pronounce it either. Let’s call him Fu Manchu.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Before your time. Carry on.’

  ‘Well, Newman told him that Signor Manchu’s boss had arrived from the United States and he couldn’t get away, so they agreed to meet at Mantega’s office tomorrow morning. That was a lie, however. In reality, our young American has a date with the Digos agent Kodra. She set that up as per your instructions, sir.’

  Zen nodded vaguely.

  ‘Good, good. She doesn’t have to sleep with him of course, but… I have a feeling there’s something going on here that I don’t know about, never mind understand. Several things, in fact. Maybe even many.’

  He looked up at the young officer.

  ‘To tell the truth, Arnone, I don’t have the faintest clue what’s going on.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But of course I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No, sir. And I didn’t hear it.’

  ‘ Bravo.’

  Outside the unopenable pane of toughened glass, a continuous raft of cloud seemingly as solid as concrete stretched away featurelessly as far as the eye could see.

  ‘It sounds suspiciously as though Mantega’s cooperating,’ Zen remarked finally. ‘On the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past him to try and do some private enterprise on the side. I also have a feeling that the thunderstorm is about to burst, and while my reasoning faculty may be falling apart I still trust my intuition, or experience, or whatever you want to call it. What else have I to count on?’

  It was a rhetorical question, but Arnone answered it.

  ‘Fear.’

  Zen looked at him but did not reply. Arnone coughed in an embarrassed way.

  ‘If you will permit the observation, sir, I think you underestimate yourself. My father always said, “ La paura guarda le vigne, non la siepe.” Fear guards the vineyard, not the hedge. And I know that you are feared.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Because, with all due respect, you’re not one of us. So no one knows what you might decide to do next. Sir.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘That’s logical. To be honest, there are times when I terrify myself.’

  Given the constraints on Tom’s time, his date had suggested a place in Rende. She’d also told him that her name was Mirella, but hadn’t asked for his.

  The initial call had come while Tom was stuck out on the fringes of town in the yard of a company that rented construction equipment, clarifying contractual details between the supercilious jerk in charge and an increasingly impatient Martin Nguyen. He couldn’t talk right then, but had promised to call Mirella back as soon as possible.

  ‘Who was that?’ demanded Nguyen.

  ‘Oh, just another bureaucratic thing they need me to do before they can release my dad’s cadaver.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Nguyen remarked succinctly, but didn’t follow up the comment. He’d been looking kind of unwell ever since fetching his boss in from the airport, not nearly as feisty as usual and occasionally clutching his stomach and crunching down pills.

  When they finally got back to the hotel, the head honcho — some Microsoft millionaire named Jake — was still sleeping off his jet lag. Nguyen went over to six short but brawny guys who were lounging around the lobby as if expecting to get thrown out any minute. They looked Italian but didn’t speak it, so Tom’s services were not required when Nguyen took them off to a conference room he’d booked for their briefing. Apparently one of them understood English and would pass on Nguyen’s instructions to the others in their own language, which might as well have been Arabic for all that Tom could make any sense of it. Which left him free to call Mirella back.

  The fact that she’d got in touch at all astonished him. He’d assumed that the striking young woman that he’d twice made a clumsy attempt to hit on had no interest in him whatsoever. She certainly hadn’t provided him with the slightest encouragement on the occasions when they’d met, purely by chance, and he had more or less forgotten her, except he hadn’t. And now here she was saying she could see him for a couple of hours that evening if he was free.

  Strictly speaking, of course, he wasn’t. Martin Nguyen had given him firm instructions to be on call and ready to leave at five minutes’ notice, as a result of which he had already turned down Nicola Mantega’s invitation to a working dinner that evening to discuss what Tom knew about the apparent discovery of Alaric’s tomb. On the other hand, he’d gathered from Nguyen that the next stage of the operation wasn’t going to happen until well after dark, and hadn’t even been told what it was or whether his presence was required. So as long as he could get back to the hotel quickly if Nguyen summoned him, there was no reason to sit twiddling his thumbs in his room when he could be romancing — what a beautiful name! — Mirella.

  They’d agreed to meet at seven-thirty, but Tom got there twenty minutes early to check the place out. A bank of thick thunderclouds squatted on the city like one of those unimaginably huge alien spaceships in that movie. A sense of oppression was thick on the ground. The venue turned out to be a garish pizzeria alongside an intersection just a few minutes’ walk from the hotel. It looked borderline okay, and the alternatives were even more uninspiring, as indeed was the whole area. There were the vestiges of a straggling roadside town now bypassed by the autostrada, but it mostly consisted of dormitory apartment blocks whose commuting owners ate at home, and bars and fast food outlets for students from the 1970s university slab stretching away like the Great Wall of China across the line of hills to the west.

  When Tom arrived, there were a dozen students there, hanging out rather than actually eating, their voices struggling to be heard above a barrage of rap music sweetened by Italian vowels. The decor was upscale public lavatory, only with bleached-out halogen lighting, mirrors just about everywhere except the floor, and clunky plastic tables and chairs in primary colours like a play-set for giant toddlers. That was okay. Tom had already figured out that there were few things to touch Italian taste at its best and none to equal it at its worst.

  He ordered a beer and found himself wondering what Mirella was going to wear. The two outfits he had seen her in so far had been so different that they didn’t provide much of a clue. In fact, thinking back, Tom realised that almost everything had been different on each occasion: the style of her hair, the make-up she wore, even her body language. It was almost as if the person he had seen on those two occasions had not in fact been the same but a pair of identical twins, structurally similar but each with a completely different personality. He smiled to
himself at the absurd thought. Anyway, identical twins might just about be possible, but triplets would be pushing it, so pretty soon he’d get a take on who she really was — or rather, who she wanted him to think she was. Tom found this final insight rather disturbing. I’d never have had an idea like that back home, he thought. This place is complexing me. He wasn’t sure whether he was entirely comfortable with that.

  The answer to his question about her appearance proved to be yet another enigma, so different from either of her previous personae that Tom didn’t even recognise her until she sat down at his table. Beneath a bulky blue padded coat she was wearing a prim suit in a clashing shade of muddy brown. No make-up, no jewellery, her hair drawn fiercely back and bunched in a tight bun. All in all, she looked like a small-town dental hygienist dolled up for a tough job interview in the big city. Guess I’m not going to get laid tonight, thought Tom, although under the circumstances there wouldn’t have been any chance of that anyway.

  ‘You seem surprised to see me,’ Mirella said.

  Tom didn’t have a ready answer, so he just smiled.

  ‘Now then,’ she went on, ‘you told me your name on the phone but I didn’t understand it.’

  ‘It’s Tom. Thomas. Tommaso.’

  ‘Tommaso.’

  He loved the way she lingered on the double consonant, caressing it with her lips as though reluctant to let it go.

  ‘ Un bel nome.’

  A surly servitor appeared at their table. Mirella ordered some kind of pizza. Tom said he would have the same.

  ‘So you’re staying out here?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘Just around the corner. The Rende International Residence.’

  ‘Oh, you must be rich! I’ve only been there once, when one of my friends got married. They held the wedding reception there. Isn’t it very expensive?’

  ‘Well, I’m not paying. I’ve been hired by a friend of my father’s who’s working for an American film company. They’re planning to make a movie here, only he doesn’t speak Italian so he needs me to translate for him. Not my normal line of work, but you know what they say — another day, another dolore. I mean dollaro.’