When the signora of the house had seen that everyone was seated and had had one of the servants pour them each a glass of champagne, the signore raised his glass from his place at the head of the table.
“This meal serves two purposes: to bid farewell to our friends, the Tavianellos, who are leaving our rustic valleys to continue their vacation, and to reconcile with my brother. We’ve had our fair share of arguments in recent years,” he said, turning to face Francesco, who was staring up at him with a dumbfounded expression. “My dear brother, in token of this reconciliation I want to let you know that my newspaper will not print an article that, as Evangelisti put it, runs the risk of interfering with the investigation into the failed attack on your research center. That way we hope to put an end to the question ‘What happened to Item Number 78C?’ After all, it’s just one small detail.”
Sitting across from Felice, Simona was in an ideal spot to observe the reporter change color as his employer spoke, passing from a deathly pallor to pink and finally to a deep crimson in mere seconds. As the younger brother responded, invoking the triumph of science and reason over the obscurantism of certain extremists who would like to take us back to hoeing the land and reading by candlelight, the hostess had the servants serve the first course: an ostrich emulsion with a little scoop of caramelized algae, a berry-infused foie gras semifreddo, frozen Alaskan crab bonbons, black Iberian pork mille-feuille, and licorice- marinated white truffle. As they all discussed the cesspool that Italian politics had become, they filled their stomachs with deconstructed food items that emerged from baths of liquid nitrogen or had been whipped at some unheard-of speed. The flavors had been painstakingly isolated and then reunited using the most innovative techniques of the day, the textures undone and redone with a decidedly postmodern eye. The spices and touches of exoticism commingled to form a sort of background noise, like the languages spoken in the interpreters’ booths at the United Nations, and each new dish was a surprise to behold.
If the other guests swallowed it all down with due diligence, Simona just barely nibbled at it, claiming a slight indisposition. Marco’s stomach, which hadn’t seen food since his departure from Salina, hesitated midway between literally shrinking from the challenge and facing it head- on. After a while, seeing as the group was admiring the plating of a particularly successful maple syrup pig’s foot charlotte with lobster and pili pili Chantilly cream, their hostess asked the retired chief of police what he thought of the dinner menu, and he answered:
“This isn’t a dinner . . .”
But seeing her stiffen in her chair, he hastened to add:
“It’s so much more. It’s a work of art . . . It’s . . . an installation!”
Signora Signorelli turned red with pleasure, looked at her guests, and, with visible effort, as if Marco’s compliment had given her the courage she’d been trying to summon herself, she turned to her husband to ask if he was enjoying the food he’d been putting away since the meal began without batting an eye or saying a word.
Dottore Alberto Signorelli raised his big bulging eyes to look at her and, in a voice that was utterly neutral, said, “It’s very good, darling.”
The signora’s large, pale eyes suddenly filled with tears as she rose from her chair.
“You . . . You’re only saying that to make fun of me . . .” Alberto Signorelli lifted a reassuring hand, and as he did so, his imposing corporeal mass seemed to become somehow rounder and more compact.
“Of course not, darling . . . it’s . . . it’s all very good,” he assured her, in a voice that evinced an attempt at enthusiasm.
The signora’s delicate and flexible body bent forward like a lily in a storm.
“You never miss an opportunity to humiliate me in public,” she said as several large teardrops rolled down her cheeks.
She dried her eyes in a theatrical gesture, then, with a melancholy smile directed at her fellow diners, murmured, “Excuse me,” and rushed out of the room. Simona’s gaze met that of the editorial director of the Quotidiano delle Valli and she remembered what he had said in the car about his potential desire to murder his wife.
Alberto Signorelli waited for the door to close behind her, then stood up and threw his napkin down on the table.
“Perhaps we should stop there,” he said. “I have a collection of Armagnac and grappa in the parlor, and whoever is interested may enjoy a cigar. I have some Cohibas, Partagás, and El Rey del Monde Grandes de España.”
As he was walking toward the parlor, the director of the Quotidiano took Giuseppe Felice by the shoulders— a picture that immediately recalled to Simona’s mind the charming illustrations she’d seen in a children’s book about bears and mice.
“Come on,” he growled in his employee’s ear, “don’t make that face. You’ll see; you’ll have another shot at a big scoop very soon. Even sooner than you think.”
“And it’ll be too little, too late,” the well-read Simona murmured to her husband.
* * *
When he had gone about half a mile in the larch forest, walking alongside the rocky precipices that jutted out over San Giorgio al Monte, Professor Martini set his backpack down on the ground and took a seat on a log to catch his breath. For several long minutes, with his eyes half-closed, he breathed in the air laden with the scent of tree sap. Then he leaned over, opened his backpack, and took out the camouflage jumpsuit and the disassembled Hecate II rifle. After changing out of his hiker’s outfit and into his combatant’s uniform, he began to assemble the gun before loading it with .500-caliber bullets, unaware that he was being discussed at the Signorelli castle at that very moment. Giuseppe Felice was saying that, according to some information he’d obtained through his friends at the International Association for the Study of Crime with contacts in the police force, Martini had served in the Bosnian army and had most likely even participated in the Siege of Sarajevo as a member of the defense forces.
“It doesn’t take much to go from there to imagining him operating a sniper rifle,” Simona noted, “and that’s a connection Evangelisti and those in favor of the ecoterrorism theory wouldn’t hesitate to make. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found out that he’d been the one to establish a secret military faction within the Beekeepers’ Defense League . . .”
“The usual Chartreuse for you?” Alberto asked Francesco.
After he’d filled his guests’ glasses—a distillate of apple and chestnut for the commissario, a rue-infused Grappa della Serra for the police chief, a Janneau Trés Vieille Réserve Armagnac for Giuseppe Felice— he addressed his brother with that same tone of frank cordiality that he’d adopted since the evening began. Francesco at first had remained on the defensive, as though he wondered what cunning trick was hidden behind his older brother’s about-face. But at a certain point, Alberto had alluded to the fact that Sacropiano might be interested in acquiring one of his agricultural estates in the vicinity of Ferrara, which produced pears and asparagus as its main crops and had been in deficit for three years. But its prospects were good, he promised, especially if a multinational corporation specializing in cutting-edge technologies like Sacropiano decided to take it under its wing.
“Of course you understand,” the heavyset Alberto had said to the elegant Francesco, “it’s not that I couldn’t continue to absorb the losses myself for several years— the rest of my investments are fairly lucrative—but I don’t have much time to devote to this particular property, so far from where most of my business is based. If I could just exchange a few words with the upper management at your company . . .”
Francesco assured him that he’d mention it the very next day, and that Sacropiano would surely take the Quotidiano delle Valli’s recent goodwill into consideration. Simona had wondered, just for a second, if she and Marco wouldn’t be better off leaving. Then her eyes had met the deflated gaze of Felice and she told herself that it would be too cruel to leave that little minnow alone with two big sharks. Moreover, it seemed to her that an air of theatri
cality reigned there that evening, and she wanted to see what would happen next. The scene of the wife’s exit had kept Simona entertained for a bit, but now she was really starting to get bored. And so, as she always did in these situations, she drank. She was on her third glass. Marco kept giving her dirty looks. “You’re driving anyway,” she had muttered. Then Francesco Signorelli, who had drunk two large glasses of Chartreuse on the rocks, snorted:
“If the ecoterrorists were smart, they’d organize a little burglary here instead of taking on the center in Pinerolo.”
“Hang on,” Marco said, moving the bottle of liqueur on the low cashew-wood table out of his wife’s reach, “wait a second. What do you mean by that?”
“There’s a wing in this castle that belongs to me. My brother didn’t tell you?”
“These matters are of little interest to our guests,” Alberto Signorelli cut in, turning his glass of Bassano grappa, which he still hadn’t drunk a drop of, around in his hands.
“But it is of interest to us,” Francesco shot back with a grimace and a knowing look directed at his brother. “Especially as we wait for the details of our dearly departed parents’ estate to be settled.”
He seemed to feel that he had the upper hand as a result of Alberto’s suggestion that Sacropiano buy his holding in Ferrara.
“At any rate, it’s here in my study that they would find the documents with the results of the studies we conduct at the center to remedy colony collapse disorder. Documents that Bertolazzi had made unauthorized photocopies of and that the beekeepers were right on the verge of discovering at his home. But then he was killed and they cut the occupation short . . .”
“So in the end, Bertolazzi’s murder occurred at just the right time,” observed Felice.
Signorelli swiveled his head around to scrutinize the reporter’s face with the expression of someone who had just noticed a cockroach crawling up a wall.
“What are you trying to insinuate?”
Felice raised his hands with his palms turned out.
“No, nothing, nothing at all.”
Seeing as the executive’s eyes continued to shoot daggers at the little redheaded man, Simona decided to divert his attention.
“So the secret of your investigation into Bertolazzi’s murder can be found in the dossier in the prosecutor’s possession?”
Francesco Signorelli shook his head.
“Oh, no. Evangelisti rightly felt that that information should remain the property of Sacropiano and returned the photocopies to me. They’ve joined the originals, and they’re protected by this,” he said, pulling out of his pocket a chain at the end of which dangled a round badge. “With this,” he said, “we can get into the west wing of the castle and access my study. Second door on the right.”
He nodded brusquely at the reporter.
“You’d like to rifle through my papers, wouldn’t you, you dirty little communist? Always sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong,” he laid into Felice, who drew back in his chair.
“Oh, no . . . of course not . . .”
“Calm down,” Alberto interjected. “Perhaps you’ve had a little too much to drink . . . You’re clearly exhausted. You’d be better off if you stopped drinking for the night.”
In fact, for a while now Francesco’s eyelids had been coming to rest halfway over his eyes, and his speech had become labored.
“Don’t get on my case,” he muttered as he poured himself yet another glass of Chartreuse. “Are we out of ice?”
Alberto raised his fat carcass upright.
“I’ll go look for some. No point calling our server. She’d take twenty minutes to bring it out of solidarity with her mistress.”
He left the room. His brother stared at the glass, which he had filled halfway with Chartreuse.
“Eh,” he said, “who gives a crap about the ice.”
And he downed the glass. He closed his eyes. Two seconds later, the glass was rolling at his feet and he was snoring with his head leaning back on the headrest of the armchair, facing the ceiling.
Simona, Marco, and Felice exchanged glances. Then their eyes all jumped to the same object, as if drawn to it magnetically: the badge dangling at the end of the chain hanging from his pocket.
And it was in this position that Alberto Signorelli walked in on the three of them.
“My little brother has always been a teetotaler,” he snorted.
Then he turned to Felice, towering over him like a mountain.
“And you, you son of a bitch, what’s keeping you from doing your duty as a reporter? You have the chance to find out everything about the mysterious research conducted by Sacropiano and you’re going to let it slip through your fingers? My brother’s wing of the castle is right behind that door,” he added, pointing to an ornate double door decorated with carved circular windows and pastoral scenes. “Third door on the right, at the end of the hall. The study is in the tower; you take the elevator to get to it.”
From deep in his seat, Felice shook his head.
“I don’t know . . . I don’t think I can do it . . .”
Alberto Signorelli rolled his bulging eyes.
“You imbecile! Don’t you realize that you don’t have a choice? You want to lose your job? If I go, it will be a betrayal of familial trust. But you, you would only be practicing your profession . . .”
At every one of his boss’s points, Felice shook his head violently.
Simona leapt up from her armchair, took the badge, and made a beeline for the indicated door.
“Come on, Felice!” she called out.
“Simona,” Marco shouted, “get back here! You’re crazy!”
With her hand on one of the double doors, she turned around to face her husband.
“That’s why you love me, isn’t it? Let’s go!” she shouted at the reporter. “Do as I say. That’s a police order! Hurry, before he wakes up!”
Alberto drew near her and said under his breath, “Don’t worry about that. With what I put in his Chartreuse, he’s going to be out for a good while. This pig really thinks that I don’t give a crap about my property in Ferrara? Let’s go, Felice,” he added, swiveling around on his heels and turning his scorching glare on his employee. “To work! I only said that Item Number 78C is a detail, not that I wanted to let it go. When I went to get the ice, I was detained by a phone call in the next room over, and you took advantage of my absence to gather some information. What could be more natural, right?”
* * *
In the meantime, the elegant bald man whose balls the commissario had busted in the elevator was on the phone with the magistrate.
“Dottore, I’m sorry to disturb you at home at this late hour, but it’s very urgent. The surveillance service just conveyed to me an email sent to Commissario Tavianello by Professor Martini. As far as we can tell she hasn’t viewed this message yet. Right now she’s at dinner at the Signorelli castle . . . Yes, we have our sources. Shall I read you the email? It seems to me it could mean trouble . . . All right then:
Dear Simona,
I take the liberty of calling you by name because I got the impression that you were one of the few people I’d met in recent years who more or less understood what was on the verge of happening. I have a confession to make, in order to keep the poor beekeepers in the Defense League from rotting in prison. I was the one who shot Mauro Danela, the madman who criticized Minoncelli for introducing foreign bees into Italian territory. I was also the one who shot Berisha. Since the years of the Siege of Sarajevo, a time when I was as invested in the fate of my fellow human beings as I was in the fate of the bees (I have changed quite a lot since then in this respect), I’ve owned a copolymer Hecate II rifle with a Scrome J10 10x40 scope with a Mil-Dot reticle on a NATO/STANAG rail, which shoots .500-caliber bullets. It was given to me during the Yugoslav Wars by a Bosnian friend of mine who had stolen it from a Serb; I will spare you the details.
In fact, for a period of several months, I played the part of th
e guerilla fighter, just for fun. I donned a military jumpsuit and amused myself by capturing various people in my crosshairs from the edges of the forest, but it never would have occurred to me to actually shoot anyone. But when I took it out of the shed in my garden, where it had been lying in wait patiently for fourteen years, my only intention was to defend a certain part of the mountain, to which Mehmet Berisha had the bad judgment to wander too close. But that happened purely by chance, and I only managed to hit his leg. However, I confess that I lost my cool when I saw that idiot Danela destroy Minoncelli’s apiary. I had been watching our friend’s house for a while because I had noticed that he’d been having a lot of visitors. I have a sneaking suspicion that our famous Services—the envy of the entire world—sent several agents here to keep an eye on things, with the goal of protecting the experiments being conducted in Pinerolo by the Doctor Strangeloves of the biosphere. I confess that I wouldn’t have minded taking out one or two of them . . .
Evangelisti’s interlocutor stopped reading.
“Fuck! Do you realize what that means? The bastard was this close to shooting me!”
“Go on,” said the magistrate, as he zipped up his fly and flushed. “Keep reading this interesting email,” he insisted, closing the bathroom door behind him and casting a melancholy glance at the large cup of gelato on the kitchen table. It was melting rapidly.
“All right then, I’ll keep going: ‘. . . taking out one or two of them. But none of that matters now, since the first phase of The Worker Bee Revolution is nearly complete. After the exile, the return.’ That’s it.”
“What do you mean, ‘That’s it’?”
“That’s it. That’s how it ends: ‘After the exile, the return.’”
“I’ll call Calabonda right away, and DIGOS. I need to get my hands on Martini so that he can explain these obscure passages.”
“And the guys from the Defense League? What are you going to do with them? You really think they were involved in the failed attack?”
The Sudden Disappearance of the Worker Bees Page 14