And Then You Die

by Michael Dibdin

  He immediately stood up, shook hands with Zen and showed him into a seat, then produced a flask of excellent coffee and two cups. A moment later the stepladder was folded up, the door closed and the engines started.

  ‘Forgive the rudimentary cabin service,’ Zen’s companion said as the aircraft started to taxi. ‘On the other hand, the accommodation is superior to what you’re likely to have for the rest of your journey, and at least you won’t have to listen to the usual sermon about what to do in the unlikely event of a landing on water. I wonder if anyone’s life has ever been saved by one of those cheap life-jackets they stuff away under the seats. It seems to me that all those safety announcements do is spread an irrational fear of flying, actually one of the safest forms of transport. Imagine if every time you got into a bus or train or taxi you had to listen to a lot of euphemistic waffle about what to do if the thing crashed! No one would ever leave home.’

  The aircraft veered jerkily to the right, the engines roared, and before Zen knew it they were off the ground. He watched the coastline turning into a map for several minutes, then turned back to his companion, who was filling their cups of coffee. When he looked up at Zen, his professional mask was firmly back in place.

  ‘I trust your stay on Gorgona was tolerable?’ he said.

  ‘Very pleasant, thank you.’

  ‘It seemed the best short-term solution, given the events in Versilia.’

  He looked at Zen with a serious expression.

  ‘You’re a very lucky man. The Mafia have now tried twice to kill you, and failed both times. Very few people can say that.’

  ‘Is it certain that I was the intended target?’

  The young diplomat gestured dismissively.

  ‘Dottore, there has never been a recorded case of a murder on the beach in that area. A few knifings late at night down at the Viareggio end, and the odd settling of accounts between drug gangs, but otherwise nothing. Then a corporate lawyer with no known enemies, seated in the place which you had occupied for several weeks, is shot through the heart at point-blank range with a silenced pistol in broad daylight by a killer who nevertheless completely evades attention, even though the bagno was packed at the time.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Of course we are. Which is why we’ve decided to move you yet again, this time to the United States.’

  Catching Zen’s look of alarm, he held up a soothing hand.

  ‘The trial’s not due to start for some time, but the safest option in the meantime seemed to be to get you out of the country and into the hands of the federal authorities. They have a lot of experience in protecting witnesses, and America is a very large country. To make matters even more secure, we are flying you not to New York, where the trial will take place, but to the west coast. There you’ll be met by Italian-speaking agents of the FBI who will meet you airside, bypass all the immigration and customs procedures, and escort you to a safe house in a location which hasn’t been disclosed even to us. It will be impossible for the Mafia to find you there.’

  Zen looked out of the window again. The aircraft was passing over the Apennine chain. They were sending him away. He suddenly felt very small and helpless and desolate.

  ‘Our immediate destination is Malpensa,’ the diplomat continued. ‘There you will transfer to the regular Alitalia flight to Los Angeles. You will be boarded separately from the other passengers, and without passing through passport control and all the other nonsense, and seated in the business-class cabin. I take it that you packed your bags yourself, that they have not been out of your possession at any time since then, and that they do not contain any explosive or inflammable substances.’

  It was only after Zen had solemnly shaken his head that he realized that this had been intended as a joke.

  ‘Have you any questions?’ his companion enquired urbanely.

  Zen thought for a moment.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If I write a letter, will you post it for me?’

  The diplomat looked embarrassed.

  ‘That would depend,’ he replied.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whom you wished to write to and on what you intended to say.’

  ‘In other words, you would have to read it.’

  The young man gestured in a pained way.

  ‘Somebody would,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in trying to conceal that. There’s a lot at stake in this operation in terms of national honour and prestige. I’m afraid it would be naive to pretend that any obvious precautions are going to be overlooked out of motives of delicacy.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘Thank you for being candid. You could have lied. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It was a stupid idea.’

  When they arrived at Malpensa, Zen was transferred to an airport authority car and taken to a windowless lounge in a remote wing of the terminal. Here he had been left to cool his heels for over an hour, before being led back to the car and driven along a succession of vast concrete taxiways to a parked Alitalia 747 which was loading the in-flight food and beverage trolleys. Zen was loaded too, via a stepped ramp which was wheeled up to the aircraft’s rear door. It all reminded him oddly of his experience on his return from Malta to Sicily, where he had been ‘met at the airport’ – a strip of abandoned motorway – by members of the Ragusa Mafia for delivery to Don Gaspare Limina. Once again, he was just a package, to be shunted around and stowed away, just like the packages of drugs unloaded from the Malta flight. Packages don’t have feelings or opinions about the process this involves or their ultimate destination. Zen did, but they were equally irrelevant.

  Some three hours later, twisting uncomfortably in his seat and worrying about the disappearance of the sun, these views had not changed. The prospect of finding himself in America filled him with terror. Like many Italians of his generation, he had never been abroad before, apart from day trips into Austria, Switzerland and recently Malta. He had never even owned a passport, and it seemed highly appropriate that the one he was now carrying should be in a false name. Il bel paese could offer the traveller every conceivable variety of landscape, climate, natural beauties and cultural treasures. Why waste a lot of time going to some foreign country where they used funny money, spoke some barbaric dialect, and couldn’t be relied upon to make a decent cup of coffee, still less know how to cook pasta properly? It was a stupid idea, however you looked at it. And if the foreign country in question was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, it became quite literally insane.

  Zen’s rule of thumb in these matters was very simple. In theory, at least, he was prepared to at least consider going to any country which had formed part of the Roman Empire. If it had also been part of the political or trading empire of the Venetian Republic, so much the better. Egypt, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, the Balkans, Austria, Bavaria, France, Iberia, North Africa – even England, at a pinch – he could contemplate as a hypothetical destination. Beyond those limits, he just didn’t see the point. The Romans had been brutal bastards, but they were no fools. If they hadn’t bothered to conquer Sweden or Poland, there was probably a good reason. And they certainly hadn’t been to America. Maybe they didn’t know it was there. Or perhaps they’d heard rumours, but just didn’t care enough to investigate further. Either way, Zen was inclined to trust their judgement.

  As if this wasn’t enough to stoke his anxiety, there was the small matter of his testimony at the trial. The Ragusa thugs who had delivered Zen to Don Gaspare Limina had been given to understand that he would be killed, and so they had not bothered to conceal their faces. But thanks to the Catania clan’s mercy, or rivalry, he had survived to find himself in the almost unprecedented position for a non-mafioso of being able to identify two prominent members of ‘those pushy little squirts from Ragusa’, as Limina had contemptuously referred to his upstart neighbours.

  But life is a moving target, and never more so than for Mafia capi. Don Gaspare had been arrested in the course of a mas
sive operation following the attempt on Zen’s life, and was now serving a multiple life sentence in a particularly cold and primitive prison high in the mountains near Matera. Meanwhile Bernardo ‘The Tractor’ Provenzano, the last remaining Corleonesi chieftain, still unapprehended after almost forty years as a fugitive, had managed to impose his control on the relatively free market and regional competition which had started to evolve following the breakdown of the old hierarchies. Following a spate of violent deaths and a judicious selection of the classic unrefusable offers, the Ragusa clan had been brought under his control, but also under his protection. Whoever testified against Nello and Giulio Rizzo would be testifying against Cosa Nostra itself, and would be a marked man for the rest of his days.

  For a while Zen toyed with the idea that maybe they weren’t going to America after all, given that they seemed to be flying north, but a glance at the route map in the Alitalia magazine dispelled this illusion. It appeared that when aeroplanes went from place to place, they never did so directly, but took a long curving roundabout path by way of such outlandish localities as Baffin Island and Labrador. Perhaps it had something to do with the prevailing winds, as in the days of sailing ships. Or maybe it was a planned diversion designed to give everyone a chance to get some sleep. Overnight trains often went deliberately slowly so as not to arrive at some ungodly hour and decant the passengers half awake at a deserted station in a slumbering city.

  He flipped through the magazine, pausing to skim an article about the city he was bound for. Apparently it had originally been settled by the Spanish, who named it El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles. There was a translation in Italian, ‘The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels’, and photographs of an old stone monastery gleaming white in the sunlight. Maybe Los Angeles wouldn’t be so bad after all, he thought. It sounded like a pleasant, old-fashioned sort of place, and at least the people would all be Catholics. Although by no means a committed believer, Zen preferred to be surrounded by his own sort. Protestants were an enigma to him, all high ideals one minute and ruthless expediency the next. You knew where you were in a Catholic culture: up to your neck in lies, evasions, impenetrable mysteries, double-dealing, back-stabbing and underhand intrigues of every kind. With which comforting thought he lowered the blind again and dozed off.

  The next thing he knew was being woken by the stewardess and asked to fasten his seatbelt for landing. Were they there already? Ten hours, the captain had said before take-off. Surely he hadn’t been asleep that long? The cabin lights had been turned on and the other passengers looked restive, all except the businessman who had taken Zen’s seat after he moved. He was sprawled back, his chair in full recline position, a blackout mask over his eyes and his mouth wide open as if snoring. The cabin attendant in the other aisle bent over him and said something and then, not getting any response, buckled up the man’s safety belt.

  The scene outside the window looked like nothing on earth, a rough first draft of creation fresh from the drawing board: deep ocean rollers going about their restless immemorial business, then breaking up in spectacular confusion on the ragged coastline, and beyond that an uneven wasteland torn to shreds by outcrops and crags of raw rock breaking the surface in random profusion. There were no buildings, no fields, no farms, no roads, no people. Nothing.

  This was not how Zen had imagined America, but as the wheels touched down and they rolled to a roaring halt, he saw a row of large camouflaged military jets, each with the United States flag painted on the tail. They continued to taxi for some time, then drew to a halt. The sound of the engines died away and everyone stood up.

  Zen manoeuvred his way politely through the throng towards the row of seats opposite, where his hand baggage was in the overhead locker. The man who had taken his seat was still lying there, mouth agape. He had had several rounds of cocktails and liqueurs before and after the lunch which Zen himself had refused after one glance, and was no doubt still sleeping them off.

  Gradually the line of standing passengers started moving slowly forward, carrying Zen with it. The crew members at the door nodded, smiled, apologized, and assured everyone that the delay would be a brief one. It seemed to Zen that one of the male attendants, a slim young man with piercing eyes, gave him a particularly meaningful look, but that was neither here nor there. Everyone knew that i steward were all gay. Outside, the light seemed diminished, uncertain of itself. The air was harder than he was used to, almost fibrous in texture, and smelt strongly of seaweed. Zen wrapped his coat about him and stepped down the gangway to the waiting bus.

  A short drive brought them to a low line of concrete buildings, where they were unloaded into what looked to Zen like the dance hall of a ‘youth club’ to which the church was trying to attract the disaffected teenagers of some no-hope town in Calabria. The unsmiling uniformed blonde men and women who had accompanied them on the bus now escorted them inside, then closed and locked the doors and drove away in the bus.

  One of the side effects of Zen’s brush with death had turned out to be that his lifelong fear of flying had been dispelled. This may have been due to the greater fears to which he had been exposed, or simply a case of familiarity breeding contempt; aeroplanes had been the preferred means of transport of the authorities in whose hands he had been ever since the ‘incident’. At all events, he had now come to realize that flying was not at all frightening, just massively boring. And the most boring parts were not the flight itself, but the bits before it started and after it stopped. Entering the United States was evidently not going to be an exception. There was no sign of any passport officers, no sign of the luggage, no purposeful activity at all. Everyone just stood around.

  Five minutes later, a second busload of passengers returned from the plane to swell the waiting throng, and some time after that a third, bearing a final contingent of stragglers. Meanwhile a tanker truck had approached the aircraft, and men in orange jumpsuits were hooking up a coil of large plastic piping to its underbelly. Zen turned to a young man standing next to him who had just finished a long mobile-phone call in Italian.

  ‘Looks like they’re filling her up,’ he remarked, as a token conversational opening.

  The man looked him blankly.

  ‘Emptying her out, you mean. Christ knows when we’ll get to LA at this rate. My people are going ballistic.’

  He punched more buttons and turned away.

  ‘At first I thought it was a joke!’ said a voice to Zen’s left. ‘Only on Alitalia!’

  The speaker was a woman of fifty-something whose crisply tailored coat merely emphasized the puffiness of her features.

  ‘Imagine diverting an international flight for a thing like that in this day and age!’ she went on, rubbing her pudgy fingers together. ‘It’s just a joke, a bad joke!’

  Having failed to get a reply, the man Zen had spoken to first snapped his phone shut.

  ‘The flight had over seven hours to go, there are three hundred and seventy-something passengers and crew aboard, and all but one of the lavatories were out of action. Think about it, signora. The alternative would have been no joke at all.’

  The woman wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  ‘I prefer not to think about such things,’ she declared haughtily. ‘It’s disgusting, just disgusting. Only on Alitalia!’

  An ambulance had now pulled up to the steps leading to the front of the aircraft. Two paramedics got out, unloaded a stretcher from the rear doors, and carried it up into the plane. Zen was desperate for a cigarette, and the woman’s mention of lavatories, whatever it might have been intended to mean, made him realize that he might be able to get away with smoking one there. Looking around, he spotted two doors marked with the universal symbols for men and women.

  Ten minutes later, with two Nazionali-worth of nicotine coursing through his blood, he emerged a changed man, totally confident about whatever questions the US immigration officials were going to throw at him, despite the fact that his FBI escort apparently had
n’t shown up to whisk him through these formalities as had been promised. The only problem was that the immigration people apparently hadn’t shown up either. In fact there was no sign of any activity whatsoever. All the passengers were just standing around looking glum, and staring at the men working on the plane from the tanker. Zen tried asking one of the uniformed blondes what was going on, but he or she would only reply in English, which Zen couldn’t understand.

  They had been there over an hour, during which time Zen made three further trips to the lavatory, when he heard someone calling what sounded like ‘Pier Giorgio Butani!’. The speaker was another of the uniformed clones, and Zen’s first thought was that that he was going to get arrested for smoking in a non-designated area. Then he realized that what must have happened was that the FBI agents had finally arrived. He showed his passport to the man, who nodded and gestured to Zen to follow him.

  He was led through the crowd of passengers, all of whom looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and envy for having been singled out for special exemption from this communal purgatory. Zen gave them a politely superior smile. They went through a door and along a corridor, then into an office where two people were seated. One was a very striking young woman with the natural pale blonde hair which seemed to be as common here as it was rare in Italy. Zen’s escort handed her the passport and then left. The other person was a thin, balding man in his late thirties with the startled expression of one who has been unexpectedly woken from deep sleep. He was wearing a hideous brown acrylic suit, battered ankle-length boots, a pink button-down shirt and a patterned yellow tie. The woman wore a dark blue uniform and white blouse buttoned at the collar. She rose and handed Zen a card which read: ‘þórunn Sigurðardòttir’, with a line of incomprehensible script and some phone numbers beneath.