At the intersection just beyond offices of the assessorato alla cultura, four sets of converging facades combined to produce a perspective of vertiginous symmetry. Zen stood motionless at the kerb, gazing at the seemingly endless vistas on every side. In the even pearly light, the outlines of the buildings appeared to blur and merge into the expanse of the sky. It was impossible to say how much time passed before the metallic grey Lancia Thema screeched to a halt beside him.
‘Hop in,’ said Gilberto Nieddu.
The Sardinian had changed out of the jeans and poloneck he had been wearing earlier that morning into a sleek suit with matching tie and display handkerchief.
‘You look like a pimp at a wedding,’ Zen told him sourly as they swept off along the broad central boulevard running the length of EUR.
‘I’ve got an important lunch coming up,’ explained Nieddu. ‘It’s all very well for you, Aurelio. You can wear any old tat. In business, if you want to be rich and successful you have to look like you already are.’
Zen flushed indignantly. His suits came from an elderly tailor in Venice who had once supplied his father. They might not be in the latest style, but they were sober, durable, well-cut and of excellent cloth. To hear them denigrated was like hearing someone speak ill of a friend.
‘You sound like that jerk I saw on television yesterday,’ he retorted. ‘He claims that you are what you wear.’
‘Falco?’ exclaimed Nieddu. ‘He’s a genius.’
‘What!’
‘Well he’s done all right for himself, hasn’t he? Which reminds me, have you got the cash?’
‘Of course I’ve got it.’
The envelope containing the five fifty-thousand-lire notes was safely lodged in his jacket pocket. At this rate he was going to be broke by the New Year. They left the confines of EUR and drove along a road whose original vocation as a winding country lane was still perceptible despite the encroaching sprawl of concrete towers and jerry-built shacks which continually spilt across it. Nieddu punched the buttons of the radio without finding anything which satisfied him.
‘Want to hear a joke?’ he said. ‘This priest is playing bowls with the village drunk. Every time the drunk misses his shot, he yells, “Jesus wept!” “Don’t take Our Lord’s name in vain,” the priest tells him. Next shot, the drunk is wide again. “Jesus wept!” “If you blaspheme like that, God will strike you dead,” warns the priest. They play again, again the drunk misses. “Jesus wept!” Sure enough, a black thundercloud covers the sky, a bolt of lightning sizzles down and strikes dead… the priest. And from the heavens comes a tremendous cry, “ Jesus wept! ”’
Nieddu turned off on to a dirt track running through an enclave of shacks and shanties to the right of the tarred road. The Lancia bumped over dried mud ruts and a collapsed culvert. Three toddlers standing on a rusty pick-up perched on concrete blocks watched solemnly as they passed by. Just before the track turned left to rejoin the road, Nieddu stopped the car.
Like its neighbours, the house at the corner had apparently been cobbled together out of materials scavenged from other jobs. The walls were formed from breezeblocks, roof tiles, bricks of varying shape and shade, and sections of concrete and tile piping, all stuck together with plenty of rough thick cement. The property seemed to have grown organically, like a souk, further sections being added as and when required. Some of these were roofed with tiles, others with corrugated iron or asbestos sheeting, one with a sagging tarpaulin. There were few windows, and one of these, its wooden frame painted a lurid shade of puce, was nailed to the outside of the wall, presumably for decorative effect. The house was surrounded by a large expanse of bare earth, every growing thing having been consumed by the pigs and goats which roamed the property freely except for a small fenced-off area of kitchen garden. The entire lot was surrounded by a mesh fence against which two savage-looking mongrels were hurling themselves, their fangs bared at the intruders.
Nieddu locked the car, having first set and tested an alarm which briefly silenced the dogs. As he and Zen walked up to the gate they renewed their aggressive clamour, only to be stilled again, this time by a voice from inside the house. The front door opened and a shapeless, ageless creature appeared on the step. It was wearing a long robe of bright yellow silk, a crimson sash and a tiara set with green, blue and red stones.
Gilberto Nieddu raised his right hand in a gesture of salutation.
‘Peace be with you, signora!’
‘And with you.’
The voice was loud, coarse, hopelessly at odds with the archaic formulas of greeting.
‘We would fain speak with him that abideth here, yea, even with Mago,’ intoned Gilberto in a fruity tone, before adding prosaically, ‘I phoned earlier this morning.’
The figure screamed incomprehensible abuse at the dogs, who looked as though they might burst into tears at any moment, and slunk off to the rear of the property. Gilberto opened the gate and led the way across the yard to the door where the robed figure stood to one side, gesturing to them to enter.
The interior of the house was cool and dark and smelt strongly of animal odours. They walked along a passage which twisted and turned past a succession of open doorways. In one room a young man stripped to his underpants lay asleep on an unmade bed, in another an elderly man pored over a newspaper with a magnifying glass, in a third two teenagers wearing crinkly black acrylic shell suits with bold coloured panels sat watching a television set on top of which a cockerel perched, watching them in turn.
The next doorway was covered by a heavy velvet curtain.
‘Make ready your offering,’ hissed their guide.
Nieddu nudged Zen, who produced the envelope containing a quarter of a million lire. A plump hand appeared, its slug-like fingers bedecked with an assortment of jewelled rings, and the envelope vanished into the folds of the yellow robe.
‘Wait here while I intercede with Mago, that he may suffer you to enter in unto him.’
The creature drew back one edge of the curtain a little, releasing an overpowering whiff of fetor, and slipped inside. The curtain dropped into place again.
‘My grandfather used to move his bowels first thing every morning,’ Nieddu remarked conversationally. ‘Afterwards, he’d inspect the result carefully, then go outside and eat the appropriate herb or vegetable, raw, with the dirt still on it. He lived to be a hundred and four. He saw Garibaldi once.’
There were muffled voices from behind the curtain, which twitched aside to reveal the robed figure.
‘Mago is graciously pleased to grant your request for an audience.’
As the two men stepped inside, the curtain fell shut behind them, leaving them in a darkness which was total except for a glow emanating from the far side of the room. Nauseating odours of unwashed flesh, stale sweat and spilt urine made the air almost unbreathable. As Zen’s eyes gradually adjusted, he made out the reclining figure bathed in the toneless radiance.
‘Hi, Gilberto!’
‘Nicolo! How’s it going?’
Nieddu put his arm around Zen, forcing him forwards.
‘Let me introduce a friend of mine. This is Aurelio. Aurelio, meet Nicolo.’
Propped up in bed lay a teenage boy with delicate features, flawless pale skin and fine dark hair. His big expressive eyes rested briefly on Zen, and his slender hand stirred in welcome from the keyboard where it had been resting. A length of coiled wire connected the keyboard to a stack of electronic equipment on a table beside the bed. On an old chest of drawers at the foot of the bed stood a video screen.
‘Aurelio’s got rather an amusing little puzzle for you,’ said Nieddu.
‘Oh goody!’ the boy cried gleefully. ‘It’s been a bit boring lately. Is it like that one I did for you last month, Gilberto, the one where you wanted to find out how much money…?’
‘No, no,’ Nieddu interrupted, ‘it’s nothing to do with that at all. Aurelio wants to break into a database at the Ministry of the Interior.’
The
boy’s face fell.
‘Government systems are easy peasy.’
Nieddu nudged Zen.
‘Tell Nicolo what you want to know, Aurelio.’
Zen was busy trying to block his nasal passages against the pervading stench.
‘I want a copy of a confidential file on an organization called the Cabal.’
The supine figure fluttered his fingers over the keyboard like a blind man reading braille.
‘Like that?’ asked Nicolo.
Zen followed his gaze to the glowing screen, which now read CABAL. He nodded.
‘It’s in a part of the database which you need special security clearance to get into,’ Zen explained. ‘The problem is that it’s quite urgent. Have you any idea how long it might take?’
Nicolo gave a contemptuous sniff.
‘I could get the system on-line while you wait, but if this is restricted-access data that isn’t going to help.’
He stared at the screen in silence for a while.
‘There are various ways we could do it,’ he mused. ‘There are probably a few guest passwords left lying around in the system. We might be able to use one of those.’
Zen shook his head.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, let’s say some VIP like Craxi comes to visit the place, they’ll set up a password customized just for him, for example…’
‘ Duce,’ suggested Nieddu.
Zen laughed. Bettino Craxi, the leader of the Socialist Party, was notoriously sensitive about comments likening his appearance and style to that of Benito Mussolini. Nicolo paid no attention to the joke.
‘Yes, that would do. After the visit, the guest password is supposed to be erased, but half the time people forget and it’s left sitting in the control system, waiting to be used. And it’s easier to guess a password than you might think. They have to be relatively straightforward, otherwise the designated users can’t remember them. Anyway, that’s one possibility. Another would be to run a key-stroke-capture programme, but if this level is classified then it may be accessed relatively infrequently, so that would take time.’
‘I need to know in the next day or two,’ Zen told him.
Nicolo nodded.
‘In that case, we’d better go in via Brussels. I cracked the EEC system last month. This mate of mine in Glasgow and I had a bet with the Chaos crowd in Hamburg to see which of us could get in there first and leave a rude message for the others to find. We won. From Brussels we can log on to the anti-terrorist data pool, and then access the Ministry from say London or Madrid. That way we circumvent the whole password procedure. If you’re on-line from a high-level international source like that, you come in with automatic authorization.’
Zen nodded as if all this made perfect sense.
‘Oh, and just one other thing,’ he said. ‘If you do manage to access this area of the computer, I’d like to see the file on an official named Zen. Aurelio Zen.’
Nieddu looked at him sharply but said nothing.
‘Zen,’ said Nicolo, spelling the name on the screen. ‘I’ll get to work on it right away. Give me a ring tomorrow. With any luck I should have something by then.’
Gilberto bent over the bed and handed something to the boy, who slipped it hastily under the covers with a guilty grin as the curtain drew aside again and the robed figure reappeared to usher the visitors out.
Back in the car, Zen burst into the hysterical laughter he had been suppressing. Nieddu grinned as he slalomed the Lancia through the twists and turns of the narrow country road.
‘I know, I know! But believe me, Nicolo’s the best hacker in Italy, and one of the best in Europe. He’s done things for me I didn’t believe were possible. And when he says he’ll get to work right away, he means exactly that. The boy lives and breathes computers. He’s capable of going for forty-eight hours without sleep when he’s on the job.’
‘But that… thing in the fancy dress!’
‘That’s his grandmother. Nicolo was born with a spinal deformity so severe he wasn’t expected to live. The family’s from a village near Isernia. Nicolo’s parents had their hands full working the land and looking after their other seven children, so they handed him over to Adelaide, who’d moved up here to Rome with her other daughter. One of the grandsons was given a computer for Christmas, but he couldn’t figure out how to work it properly, so they passed it on to Nicolo. The rest is history.’
‘But what’s all this Mago business?’ demanded Zen.
Nieddu laughed.
‘Adelaide thinks the whole thing is a con. Well, what’s she supposed to think? Here’s this crippled adolescent invalid, never leaves his bed, can’t control his bladder, kicks and screams when she tries to change the sheets, yet is supposedly capable of roaming the world at the speed of light, dodging in and out of buildings in Amsterdam, Paris or New York and bringing back accounts, sales figures, medical records or personnel files. I mean come on! I’m in the electronics business and even I find it barely credible. What’s a sixty-year-old peasant woman from the Molise to make of it all? Yet the punters keep rolling up to the door and pressing bundles of banknotes into her hand! It’s a scam, she thinks, but it’s a bloody good one. So she’s doing her bit to help it along by dressing up like a sorcerer’s assistant.’
Zen lit cigarettes for them both.
‘What did you give the boy at the end?’
‘Butterscotch. It’s some sort of speciality from Scotland. This friend of his in Glasgow — they’ve never met, needless to say — sent him a packet, and now Nicolo can’t get enough. I’ve bought a supply from a specialist shop in Via Veneto and I take him some every time I go.’
They had reached the Via Appia Nuova, and Gilberto turned left, heading back into the city. Zen felt totally disoriented at the sight of the shiny cars and modern shopping centres, as though he’d awakened from a dream more real than the reality which surrounded him.
‘So what is this Cabal?’ Nieddu said suddenly. ‘It was mentioned in that anonymous letter to the papers about the Ruspanti affair, wasn’t it? Are you still investigating that?’
‘No, this is private enterprise.’
Nieddu glanced at him.
‘So what is it?’
‘Oh, something to do with the Knights of Malta,’ Zen replied vaguely.
Nieddu shook his head.
‘Bad news, Aurelio. Bad news.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well for a start-off, the Knights of Malta work hand in glove with the American Central Intelligence Agency and with our own Secret Services.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I get around, Aurelio. I keep my ears open. Now I don’t know what you mean by private enterprise, but if you’re thinking of trying anything at all risky, I would think again. From what I’ve heard, some of the stuff the Order of Malta have been involved in, especially in South America, makes Gelli and the P 2 look small-time.’
They drove in silence for a while. Zen felt his spirits sink as the city tightened its stranglehold around them once more.
‘Like what?’ he asked.
‘Like funding the Nicaraguan Contras and mixing with Colombian drug barons,’ Nieddu replied promptly. ‘You remember the bomb which brought down that plane last year, killing a leading member of the Brazilian Indian Rights movement? Every item of luggage had been through a strict security check, except for a diplomatic pouch supposedly carrying documents to one of the Order’s consulates.’
Zen forced a laugh.
‘Come on, Gilberto! This is like claiming that Leonardo Sciascia was a right-wing stooge because his name is an anagram of CIA, CIA and SS! The Order of Malta is a respectable charity organization.’
Nieddu shrugged.
‘It’s your life, Aurelio. Just don’t blame me if you end up under that train to Milan instead of on it.’
Tania Biacis had said that she wouldn’t be home until eight o’clock, so Zen got there at six thirty. This time there wer
e no problems with the electricity, but as he pushed the button of the entry-phone to make sure that the flat was in fact unoccupied, Zen couldn’t help recalling the night when Ludovico Ruspanti had died and all the lights went out. As the darkness pressed in on him, Zen had thought of his colleague Carlo Romizi. That association of ideas now seemed sinister and emblematic.
There was no answer from the entry-phone, and the unshuttered windows of the top-floor flat were dark. Zen let himself in and trudged upstairs. On each landing, the front doors of the other apartments emitted tantalizing glints of light and snatches of conversation. Zen ignored them like the covers of books he knew he would never read, his mind on other intrigues, other mysteries. A series of loud raps at the front door of Tania’s flat brought no response, so Zen got out the other key and unlocked the door.
Once inside, he turned on the hall light and checked his watch. He had plenty of time to search the flat and then retire to the local bar-cum-pizzeria, run by a friendly Neapolitan couple, before returning at about ten past eight for his dinner date with the unsuspecting Tania. First of all, though, he phoned his mother to make sure that Maria Grazia had packed his suitcase. His train left at seven the next morning, and he didn’t want to have to do it when he got home.
‘There’s a problem!’ his mother told him. ‘I told Maria Grazia to pack the dark-blue suit but she said she couldn’t find it! She wanted to pack the black one or the dark-grey, but I said no, the black is for funerals, God forbid, and the grey one for marriages and First Communions. Only the blue will do, but we can’t find it anywhere, I don’t know where it’s got to…’
‘I’m wearing it, mamma.’
‘… unless we find it you won’t be able to go. We can’t have you appearing at an official function looking less than your best…’
‘Mamma, I’m wearing the blue suit today!’
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