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.’