He took his shoes off and lay down on the bed, but with his head and shoulders propped against the wall. After a sleepless night on the ferry, exhaustion was starting to overcome the adrenalin which had kept him going thus far, but he could not afford to sleep until his arrangements were made. He turned on the television and watched a documentary about tree frogs until the thirty minutes had elapsed.
There was still no answer from Gilberto’s home phone. Since his recent legal problems, the Sardinian no longer had an office number, and Zen was wary of calling him on his cellphone, knowing how easily such calls can be intercepted. In the end he tried anyway, only to discover that Gilberto’s telefonino was either switched off or out of range. Back on TV, the tree frogs were mating.
It was another two hours before Gilberto finally responded, and he when he did he initially sounded distinctly flippant.
‘I thought you weren’t speaking to me, Aurelio.’
‘I’m speaking to you now.’
‘So what’s the story this time?’
‘I don’t trust stories any more. I’m too old.’
‘It’s no fun growing old. But as someone said, the only alternative is dying young.’
‘Can we stop pissing around, Gilberto? I’m in serious trouble.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘I can’t tell you over the phone. We must do this on a strict need-to-know basis.’
‘All right, what do I need to know?’
‘First, I’m in Malta.’
‘Never been there. Are those Knights still around? I seem to remember that you had trouble with them some years back.’
‘Will you please shut the fuck up and listen, Gilberto?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Second, I need to leave as soon as possible, ideally this evening.’
‘I’m not a travel agent.’
‘Yes, you are, because the third thing is that I need to travel clandestinely. No tickets, no passport control.’
Gilberto whistled.
‘That’s a tall order, Aurelio. What did you have in mind?’
‘Preferably a light plane owned and flown by someone with a shady reputation. Take-off and landing at private airstrips.’
‘I don’t know anyone like that.’
‘But you have friends, and they have friends. Somewhere in that pyramid-selling scam you call your social life, there may be someone who knows the contact I need. Your job is to locate him.’
‘How can you know that such a contact even exists?’
‘Because Malta is, among other things, a notorious staging-post for a whole range of illegal import-export operations between North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Arms, drugs, you name it. And those people don’t fly Alitalia.’
‘I don’t blame them.’
‘This is not a joking matter, Gilberto!’
‘All right, all right, calm down.’
A distant sigh.
‘I’ll see what I can do, but it’s going to take some time.’
‘Time is of the essence. How long?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll drop everything else and get to work right away. Call me on my telefonino at noon and then every hour on the hour after that.’
‘We can’t discuss this stuff over a cellular link.’
‘Oh, I heard a great story the other day! There’s this guy on a train, making life hell for everyone around with an endless series of calls on his cellphone, right?’
‘Gilberto!’
‘Then this woman across from him has a seizure of some kind, and all the other passengers say, “Please, we need to call an ambulance at the next station, lend us your phone.” Only he won’t, see? Absolutely refuses to let anyone else use his cellphone. And …’
‘And in the end it turns out that it was one of those fakes. Yes, I’ve heard that story, Gilberto. Now can we get back to the point?’
‘Of course. Here’s the deal. If I come up with something, I’ll tell you so. Then you phone me about thirty minutes later on that landline number we used before, when I was having those legal problems. Do you still have it?’
‘I never throw anything away, Gilberto.’
‘Except your friends.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I probably over-reacted. I apologize.’
‘Don’t grovel, Aurelio. It’s not your style.’
The line went dead. With a yawn of immense weariness, Zen set the alarm on the clock-radio, took off his clothing and slid in between the sheets. Seconds later he was asleep.
At a quarter to twelve, he was woken peremptorily by the alarm, which sounded as though it had been triggered by a fire or a burglary rather than the clock. He took a quick shower and then dialled the twenty-one-digit number of Gilberto’s cellphone.
‘Nothing yet, but I’ve turned up some possible leads,’ was the curt reply.
Zen grunted and hung up. He felt refreshed but starving, having had nothing to eat since a ham roll on the ferry the night before. He was strongly tempted to go out and forage, but the risks of running into Roberto Lessi or one of his associates — a back-up team could well have been flown in by now — were too great, so he called the front desk. The hotel didn’t serve lunch, but the manager offered to send someone out to get Zen a snack.
This duly arrived fifteen minutes later, in the form of two pasties made with filo pastry and a filling of soft cheese or meat sauce. They were stodgy, greasy and almost completely tasteless, but they were certainly filling, in a depressing way. Zen seemed to recall that the British had owned Malta for several hundred years. The local cuisine had apparently been one of their legacies to the island’s culture.
Satiated but unsatisfied, Zen turned the television back on and watched an American thriller dubbed into Maltese. This was an interesting experience, since the rhythm and cadence of the language sounded wholly Italian, while the noise it made was one which Zen associated with the Tunisian and Libyan street traders who sold jewellery and accessories out of suitcases on the streets of Rome. To make matters worse, an entire Italian word such as grazie or signore would suddenly flash by, casting its brief, deceitful light on the prevailing obscurity.
At one o’clock, Gilberto reported no further progress. At two, ‘I think I may be starting to narrow it down, but don’t get your hopes up.’ At three, ‘Why in the name of God did I let you sucker me into this, Aurelio? I should have just let you go on not speaking to me. I should have encouraged you! Friends like you I can do without.’
And then, at four o’clock: ‘Done it.’
The next thirty minutes seemed to last several hours. Zen had been asked to show his documents at the desk, and had therefore had no possibility of registering under an alias. And there weren’t that many hotels in Valletta. If Lessi had taken the number of Zen’s taxi, established that it had not left the city, then visited each in turn asking after his good friend Aurelio Zen, he could be knocking on his door at any moment. If he had called in back-up, they could cover the whole island by evening. And if they or their patrons in Rome had persuaded the Maltese authorities to cooperate, they might already have found him and be waiting for him to emerge, so as not to cause problems at the hotel, which could damage the island’s lavishly promoted tourist image.
When Zen finally called, he was told that Gilberto hadn’t arrived yet, although they were expecting him, because the traffic in Rome was a disaster, what with all the roadworks, renovation and construction designed to equip the city for the twenty-six million pilgrims expected for the forthcoming millennial Jubilee year. Try later, he was told.
Zen hung up, yelled an obscenity and smashed his fist into the wall, leaving a dent in the flimsy plaster-board. Then he told himself not to be stupid, lit a cigarette to calm himself down, and called again.
This time, Gilberto answered.
‘You’re on, Aurelio,’ he said. ‘It’s going to cost you, though
.’
‘I wasn’t planning this trip, Gilberto. I have precisely fifty-eight thousand lire on me.’
‘I don’t mean now, you polenta brain. The bill will be presented in due course after your return. I just wanted you to know that it will be in the region of five million lire.’
‘Jesus!’
‘This sort of thing doesn’t come cheap. I’ve had to grease a lot of palms and to buy a lot of silence.’
‘And then, of course, there’s your cut.’
There was a long pause.
‘I don’t think I deserve that, Aurelio.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It’s just with all this stress and strain I’m under …’
‘You’re grovelling again. Let’s get back to the point, which is that I’ve booked your flight.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘You lectured me about need-to-know. The same applies here. Briefly, a friend of a friend of a friend knows someone who has been planning just such a trip as the one you mentioned, to visit some friends of his in Sicily’
‘What a lot of friendship! I’m moved.’
‘To quote an ex-friend of mine, “Can we stop pissing around?”’
‘Sorry. To quote a true and valued and shamefully misused friend of mine, “What do I need to know?”’
‘Have you got a pen? These people are likely to be extremely nervous. The person concerned had originally been planning to leave at the weekend. For a consideration, partly in cash and partly in kind, he agreed to contact his Sicilian friends and rearrange the trip for tonight. But if you get any part of this even slightly wrong, he simply won’t show up.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘In the centre of Valletta, there’s a road called Old Bakery Street. Towards the bottom of the hill, it crosses St Christopher Street. Just after the crossing, there’s a set of steep steps leading down to the left. About half-way down there is a bar called Piju. Be there at seven o’clock this evening. Go to the barman and ask, in Italian, for a Beck’s beer. He’ll tell you that they don’t have any. You say, “Just give me a beer.” He’ll ask if you want Maltese or imported, and you reply, “Maltese is fine with me.” Got that?’
‘What happens after that?’
‘I don’t need to know, so I wasn’t told. One more thing. If these people find out that you’re a policeman, you’re dead meat. Understand?’
‘Only too well.’
‘All right, that’s it. Good luck, Aurelio. If you make it, give me a call as soon as you arrive. I’ve been missing you, you old shit. I don’t want anything to happen to you now you’ve finally got over our little misunderstanding.’
‘I’ve missed you too, Gilberto. I’ll try not to do anything stupid and I’ll call as soon as I can. Meanwhile, thanks for everything.’
It was only when he saw the tiny single-engined aeroplane that Zen realized that flying back to Sicily was going to mean…well, flying. He had been so preoccupied with other problems in the hours leading up to this moment that this basic point had completely failed to register. The moment it did, he also realized that the state of comatose indifference induced by the news of his mother’s imminent death, which had protected him through the turbulent flight to Rome, was no longer operative. He was sane again, and the only sane way to look at flying was to be utterly terrified.
‘What happens if the propeller falls off?’ he asked in a tone of forced jocularity as they taxied to the end of the baked-earth runway.
‘It won’t.’
‘But suppose you have a heart attack or something?’
The pilot stroked his black moustache.
‘Well, we’ll be flying low, to keep off the radar screens, so you’ll have about fifteen seconds to put your worldly and spiritual affairs in order. Not enough, probably’
A moment later, the plane was lined up, the pilot pulled back the throttle, and all talk became impossible.
By then it was past eleven o’clock at night. Zen had spent most of the intervening hours locked up in a stuffy apartment whose windows were covered by exterior grooved metal shutters which he had been strictly ordered not to open.
Shortly after half-past six, he had gone down to the reception of his hotel, settled the bill and ascertained that the bar Piju was no more than a ten-minute walk away. He then seated himself in a corner of the lounge from where he had a clear view of the entrance and lobby. If the ROS men did come looking for him, there was just a chance that he would be able to slip out while they were upstairs hammering on the door of his room.
In the event, no one came in except couples, evidently tourists, but he was still nervous about showing himself on the street. There was nothing to be done, however, and after studying a map of Valletta displayed in the lobby and determining his route, he pushed open the glass door and turned sharp left down a narrow, steeply inclined alley. It had occurred to him that the telephone line of Gilberto’s Sardinian friends might be under surveillance, and possibly that of the hotel as well. Of course, ‘they’ could grab him at the bar if they wanted to, but it had also occurred to him that they might prefer not to act so publicly. He had therefore located the steps where the bar was situated on the map, and then planned an alternative way to get there. This was not difficult, since the city was built on a grid plan.
And a very handsome city it was too, he thought, as he made his way along St Mark Street and turned left on to a long straight paved thoroughfare swooping downhill and then up again like a carnival ride. The buildings to either side were of pleasant proportions, the architecture sober and restrained, the material a golden sandstone which glowed in the late-afternoon sunlight like warmed honey. The balconies were enclosed with wooden walls painted green or left bare, which made a charming contrast with the stonework. There could hardly have been a more complete contrast with the tortuous baroque excesses of Catania, executed in the black solidified lava which had so many times overwhelmed the city. Although he was hundreds of kilometres south of Sicily, almost half-way to Africa, Zen felt quite at home with this form of urban planning, where all was calm, functional and restful.
At the bottom of the street he turned left and then immediately right, and walked up the steps to the bar. It was a small, poky place, obviously designed to appeal to a circle of regulars and to repel anyone else. Zen strode up to the bar and ran through his ritual exchange with the owner, whose jolly, tubby physique was belied by a pair of startlingly direct black eyes. Once their dialogue was completed, the man served Zen the beer, picked up the phone and spoke a few phrases in the guttural false-Italian of the island.
It was another half hour before his contact showed up. At first, Zen paid him no attention. Various people, all men, had come in and gone out while he waited, and this skinny, pimply, gangly youth seemed an unlikely candidate for a mission of this presumed importance. It was only later that Zen realized that this had been precisely the point. They were not yet sure of Zen, so they had left him to stew while they checked the comings and goings in the neighbourhood. Then, once they felt reasonably sure that he had come alone, they’d sent this expendable kid to make the first approach, just in case they were wrong.
The owner of the bar had appeared to speak, or at least be able to pronounce, some Italian, but the youth gave no sign of having any use for language at all. He appeared at Zen’s side, standing close enough in the uncrowded bar to draw attention to himself, then jerked his head sharply back and to one side and walked out. Zen duly followed. Under the circumstances, he didn’t bother paying for his beer. They could take it out of the five million.
They walked down through a warren of steps and alleys to a dock on the waterfront, where they boarded a small ferry. During the crossing to the other shore of the harbour inlet, the youth closely inspected each of the other half dozen passengers, but made no eye contact with Zen and still did not speak. When they disembarked after the short crossing, he took up a pose of sto
ic resignation near the top of the gangplank and remained there until all the other passengers had dispersed. Then he gave Zen another of his violent head gestures, like someone slinging water out of a bucket, and crossed the street to a blue Renault saloon. He opened the passenger door for Zen, who noted that the car had been left unlocked. Either Malta was an incredibly crime-free country, or these people enjoyed a level of respect which made such routine security precautions unnecessary.
They drove at what seemed to Zen a remarkably sober and steady pace — considering that his chauffeur was not only about twenty-two, but presumably also a gang member — up a wide street leading from the harbour to a sprawling development of apartment blocks with a vaguely Arab air: clusters of white cubes of different heights and sizes all jammed together in apparent disorder like a residential souk. The youth drew up by one of the entrances to this labyrinth, gave Zen another of his patented cranial swipes, and led him inside.
Despite the folkloristic appearance of the complex, the interior was completely modern and remarkably luxurious. They rode in a lift up to the fifth floor, where the youth opened a door — once again, unlocked — and gesturally jerked Zen through to a room to the left. He switched on the light, pointed to the shutters over the window and made a savage slicing motion with his right hand, looking Zen in the eye for the first time.
Zen nodded.
‘I won’t open them,’ he said.
The youth looked at him in astonishment, as though his dog had just given voice to a political opinion. Then he walked out, closing the door behind him. A moment later, Zen heard the lock engage.
The room was minimally furnished with a sofa, a chair and a table, all in what appeared to Zen to be execrable taste. Hiere was no telephone, radio or television, and the walls were bare. It was as neutral and impersonal as some hutch at a cut-price hotel on the autostrada.
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