God's Dog

by Diego Marani

  The common grave lay on the other side of a lawn running along the west side of the hill. Ivan went up to the yellow stone with the dates of the earliest and most recent burials carved into it. A light wind blew through the grass, ruffling the cypresses that overlooked the tomb. On the slope that ran down towards the road, yellow mimosa bushes were in flower, giving off a delicate scent of early spring. He thought back to the last time he had seen his mother alive, and that was many years ago by now. It was a summer’s day, he’d just come back from an afternoon at the seaside with Marta. He remembered her mild look, her eyes distorted behind thick glasses, the vague smile she put on in an attempt to please him and above all not let him see that she was worried. At least she had died quickly. Whereas his father…Who knows where they had dumped his corpse? More than the pain, it was the thought of the fear his father must have felt that caused Ivan such gut-wrenching fury. And the loneliness. Locked up in prison, watched over like a murderer, there in his filthy cell. Ivan tried to get these images out of his head, but they kept coming back to him as though he had been a physical witness to his father’s suffering. In fact, he knew nothing of his father’s death. When he had been taken into the hospital on the Caelian Hill, he hadn’t been able to see his own doctor; he tried to decipher the reports of the military doctors to get some idea of his condition. The telephone conversations he had had with Ivan had not been reassuring; not much was said. He had talked like a medical chart, addressing him in the polite form; he knew that his conversations with Ivan were recorded. The police had allowed them hoping they might reveal something about Ivan’s whereabouts. He remembered how wretched he’d felt during that time. He’d desperately wanted to go to see his father, but that would have meant another stint in prison, and this time there would have been no reprieve. At least this way they would leave his father in peace. He would never have thought that they would take it out on him, an old man who was already serving a death sentence. How could they be so cruel? But it was that fanatic Novak who was the wild beast among them, it was he who spurred on all the rest; he was an obsessive, and his underlings were ready to obey him in order to further their own careers. Ultimately Ivan had decided to go back, to get himself arrested. He had been on the road when he had received Boris’s phone call. His father had died, perhaps some days ago. A routine letter had arrived at his old address. The date of death was uncertain. Novak would have liked to keep it secret, in order to lure Ivan to Rome, but the bureaucrats at the papal registry office had overridden him, powerful though he was. Ivan dried his eyes on the back of his hand. He picked a daisy and threw it onto the slab of stone that covered his mother’s tomb.

  From the basement in which he now found himself, Salazar could see a dense grove of pine trees, a strip of sand and the iron gateway to a villa. All he knew of his whereabouts was that he was on the coast. A patch of sky, overcast but bright, a quiet road, a lot of dust. Salazar didn’t know what day it was, but from his calculations it should be Easter Saturday. The only noise filtering in from the outside was the chirping of sparrows. Suddenly, he was deafened by the sound of a plane landing; the runway must be extremely close. It was probably early morning, because there was a smell of fresh bread in the air. He looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing a track suit and trainers. All there was in the room was the camp-bed on which he had been lying, and a bottle of water, on the floor. Beyond the wall he could hear the cackle of a radio. Suddenly the door opened and four people came in, the bogus Chiara Bonardi and three others with stockings over their faces. They pushed him into the next room and sat him down at a table; one of the three stood opposite him with a pen and paper, the others took up positions behind him. Salazar looked around him as best he could, trying not to move his head. He was in the living room of a holiday home, but the furnishings seemed past their prime: he noted the faded nautical motifs on the wallpaper, some blue pottery covered with dust, a large fish-shaped vase with a chipped rim. There was a divan beneath the tall window and a small bamboo table between two non-matching chairs. The wrought-iron table at which he was seated had a glass top covered with an old discoloured sheet. There were patches of mould on the brick floor. Four rucksacks were piled up against the wall near the door.

  ‘Don’t strain yourself, there’s nothing to see!’ said the man opposite him. The other two were peering out through the blinds. A car drove up, and the driver switched off the engine. They nodded, as though to confirm that everything was under control.

  The woman went round to the other side of the table. ‘Now you must tell us everything, inspector. That was our agreement!’ she said in a rasping tone, looking distinctly nervous by now.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Salazar. He was in no position to foil their plans; all he could do was string them along, but his subterfuge had to be carefully considered, bearing in mind what he had read on the phone belonging to the hit-man who’d been sent to kill him. The members of the brigade almost certainly knew something already. It should be enough to tweak the truth a little in order to seem credible and lead them into making some mistake.

  ‘Where are the marksmen? We’ve located four positionings around the portico, but we know there are others.’

  ‘Yes, there are two others, one on the Leonine Walls and one on the roof of the Galleria Aurora.’ It wasn’t true, but it was plausible.

  ‘Any others?’

  ‘They usually post them between the statues on the façade of the basilica.’ This was invention pure and simple.

  ‘What about plainclothes men, how many will there be? How will we recognise them?’

  ‘I don’t know how many there’ll be, but you can recognise them by the yellow buttons on the collars of their shirts.’ That, at least, was true. But Salazar knew that during an event as momentous as the canonisation of a pope, nothing and no one would be recognisable. The police would mingle with the pilgrims, the friars, the nuns and even the sick in search of a miracle.

  ‘What about the podium. Do you know when it will be ready?’

  ‘No, but usually everything is in place before the maximum security measures come into force. The workmen have to be out of the area so that the papal guard can make their inspections. Not even the pope can enter it without their authorisation. So I presume that the podium will be completely finished by the evening of the day before the ceremony.’ At least that made good sense, even if it was not very informative.

  ‘And who keeps watch over the place during the night?’

  ‘I don’t know about such details. All I know is that the night patrol comes on at midnight, when the Swiss Guards finish their shift.’ From his time at police school, Salazar knew that the six o’clock changing of the guard in Saint Peter’s Square was just a show put on for tourists; the real change took place at midnight. But the real guards were not those who relieved one another outside the basilica; there were many others in readiness behind the wall of the colonnade.

  ‘What about the telecameras? Where will they be?’ That was something else he could tell them. Those telecameras were indestructible. Perhaps if they realised what they were up against they might lose heart and give up the whole endeavour.

  ‘Under the colonnade, every ten metres. Four on the façade of the basilica and one at the top of the obelisk.’

  The man who was questioning him looked away for a moment. The others were discussing something in low voices over a map they had spread out at the other end of the table. Chiara Bonardi was shaking her head, indicating a point on it with her finger. Salazar took advantage of the moment to take a closer look at the man’s face behind the stocking mask. He saw a beard, but that was all he could make out; the stocking distorted his other features.

  ‘What time does the papal procession arrive?’ the man persisted, seeing himself being looked at. Salazar had a perfect memory of the pope’s prospective movements; that was what he had paid most attention to when he’d studied the cadet’s mobile phone. Then he remembered the leaflets and poster
s he’d seen in Saint Peter’s Square, and came out with something he hoped was plausible.

  ‘There isn’t going to be a procession. On such occasions the pope comes out of the basilica on foot. He has to be on the podium by eleven, so I imagine he will be going down the flight of stairs around ten forty-five. He’s usually accompanied by the papal prefect, the secretary of state, the chief of the papal police, the heads of the congregations and the commander-in-chief of Propaganda Fide. But they don’t go up on to the altar; they stay down on the lower part of the podium; and they will already be in their places when the pope arrives. The only person who is always with him is the deacon.’

  ‘Where will Benedict XVI’s sarcophagus be placed?’ There had been nothing about this on the cadet’s phonecard, so Salazar had to improvise. Even though he had been just a boy when Karol Wojtyla had been canonised, he remembered the event, which he had watched on television.

  ‘It will be borne on to the podium and placed in front of the altar, probably leaving the basilica at the same time as the pope.’ That was fairly plausible. The man who was questioning him was taking notes, tapping his biro nervously over the paper. The others were now folding up the map and putting on their rucksacks.

  ‘This had better all be true, inspector, or we’ll be taking you back to the hospital! And your mates will see to it that you meet your maker!’ Salazar nodded, giving him a defiant look.

  ‘Now we’re going to have to blindfold you and take you to another hiding place.’

  ‘Can I refuse?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It won’t be for long, forty-eight hours at most.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if you killed me straight away.’

  ‘We won’t be doing that; you’re of no interest to us.’

  Salazar was put into the back of a van with his hands tied behind his back and a towel around his head. The driver set off at some speed, but had to brake continually to negotiate sharp curves. Short climbs, followed by short descents, suggested that the van was going over bridges; sometimes it jolted along what might have been a gravelled surface. There was a smell of dust. He was taken out of the van in an underground car park and taken to another basement, in part of an old garage; there was a smell of petrol, and old tyres. A room with the camp-bed that had come with them in the van; two small windows with frosted glass, and bars. A metal door led into a lavatory; there were oil stains on the floor, and piles of sawdust. One of the men freed his hands, but tied his feet together with a bicycle chain. Before going out, the woman put a bag on the floor. ‘Something to eat and drink,’ she said, darting him a sympathetic glance. He made a move to go towards her, but the bicycle chain prevented him.

  ‘Wait…’ said Salazar. The woman paused on the threshold.

  ‘I wanted to thank you. I think you’ve saved my life…’

  ‘It’s nothing…’ she said, embarrassed; then she looked away and went out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Trains full of pilgrims were arriving at Stazione Termini one after the other. Hundreds of monks and nuns were thronging the platforms and wandering off into the station entrance. Men and women of every conceivable hue were calling to each other in a Babel of tongues, waving the flags of their various countries and forming orderly lines, their vast array of uniforms and insignia attesting to the Church’s awesome power. Salazar looked like a beggar in his tattered track suit and trainers. He wandered around the station in search of an internet point. It had taken him several hours to free himself, patiently working the bicycle chain against the metal door of the lavatory; but the hard part had been getting out of the basement. Luckily he had heard voices on the other side of the wall, and had called out. He had been heard by an electrician who’d come down into the basement to do some repairs, who had told the watchman, who had come down with the spare key. Salazar told him that he’d recently rented the storeroom and locked himself in by mistake, then made himself scarce, not leaving the man time to wonder at his stupidity. At the bus station he had at last seen an Italcom sign, and gone in. He hadn’t a penny on him, so was obliged to wait until someone went off leaving some credit on the computer. An Indian seminarist had grasped his predicament, possibly having been in the same position himself, and let him take his place. There were still twenty minutes left on the phonecard. The first thing Salazar did was to check his e-mails. He found a message from Guntur.

  ‘Dear Domingo,

  I got your message just today because I spent all yesterday in a seminary out of town. All’s well here, no news. Or rather, to tell the truth, I feel slightly worried: I have the feeling I’m being watched. Yesterday I thought I saw the flash of cameras from the other side of the glass, though it might just have been a sailor from one of the barges taking a photo of the quay for a souvenir. But then I have another worry; I must be overdoing things. I was afraid that Django might start talking in front of Henk, the keeper who comes to feed him and clean his cage. Then I realised that Henk probably wouldn’t understand that the chimp was doing anything other than grunting. Tomorrow I’m expecting this Aren De Smet from Leyden. Meanwhile, I carry on encouraging Django with recordings of voices in Swahili and other exercises. I’m eager to get on with my research, but I need time to perfect certain experiments, and it’s complicated doing all this in secret. It would be good to be able to talk to colleagues, and consult scientific journals. But I’m staking my all on this neurolinguist, and I’m expecting material from America which might prove decisive. How are you getting on in Rome? I don’t suppose that you can tell me much about your mission. I’d thought of asking for a visa and coming to visit you in May, if you’re not back by then, that is. It would be good to see you here when the first new catch of herring of the year arrives; we could go to supper again with my Friesian friend. Apparently his place has become all the rage with yuppies and intellectuals and other toffs. But I discovered it when it was just a rough-and-ready bar, with paper tablecloths and sawdust on the floor. I wonder if Rik still gets drunk now that his place is in the good restaurant guide!

  My warmest greetings, Guntur.’

  The message was four days old. Salazar deleted it. All communication with Guntur now had to cease; he might get him into trouble, and put someone on his own trail. By now his e-mails would certainly be being checked. But was Guntur really being watched? If they’d got their hands on him, they would certainly also have located Guntur, whose experiments would upset a lot of people. Salazar feared for his friend; he would have liked to put him on his guard. Then another alarming thought struck him. He googled Guntur Pertiwi, University of Amsterdam. What came up was a photograph of a burned-out ruin on the Nieuwe Diep.

  ‘On Tuesday evening, during the storm which hit the whole north Dutch coast, causing flooding and serious damage, a fire broke out in the Amsterdam university complex, probably caused by the collapse of a high-tension pylon. The building which houses the biological research laboratory run by Professor Guntur Pertiwi and the adjacent greenhouse were completely destroyed. The fire brigade was on the spot within minutes, but a high wind prevented them from bringing the flames under control. Their situation was made more difficult by the nearby presence of reservoirs containing diesel for the river barges which moor at the adjacent quay. During the night the fire also spread to this same quay, destroying a barge and causing the reservoirs to explode. Only at first light were the firemen able to approach the quay and train seawater on to the building, which was by now a mere burnt-out hull. There do not seem to have been any victims on the barge, which was carrying sand and gravel. However, while work was going on to make the place safe, the charred body of a man was found at the foot of the embankment, together with that of a monkey. The body has not yet been identified, but is presumed to be that of Professor Pertiwi. The monkey is undoubtedly to be identified as the chimpanzee Django, originally from the Kibale Nature Reserve in Kenya, on whom Professor Pertiwi was conducting various experiments. There do not seem to be any other victims. The police
have opened enquiries into the cause of the fire.’

  The fair-haired man rolled up the shutters, picked up the newspapers and went back into the bar. The coffee-machine was already on. He poured some coffee into the filter-paper, put it in place and pressed the switch; what he wanted was the smell of coffee. He spread the newspaper out over the counter and put his cup on it. Every so often he glanced out into the street, unable to resist the urge to check that nothing unusual was happening. He saw the dustcart, the wholesaler who served the greengrocer, the night-watchman from the nearby lawyer’s office getting on his scooter, the seven o’clock bus. Between the colourfully-packaged Easter eggs he could also see the ramparts of the Vatican bristling with white and yellow flags. Then he felt his mobile buzzing in his pocket; he pulled it out and snapped it open. The number was that of a public phone box.

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes. Who’s speaking?’

  ‘It’s me, Ivan.’

  ‘Ivan! Where are you?’

  ‘Here in Rome. I’ve just arrived.’

  ‘Are you completely mad? They’re still after you here!’

  ‘I know. And I’m still after them. Zladek Novak is on the hit list.’

  ‘Ivan, do you realise what’s going on?’

  ‘Marta has told me everything. Your madcap plans will cause utter bedlam, and I’ll take advantage of it to murder that swine.’