‘Peace be with you, signora,’ he said solemnly, as the phone was answered with an incomprehensible yelp.
‘And with you.’
‘This is the friend of Signor Nieddo. I would fain speak with Mago.’
‘Hold on.’
The receiver was banged hollowly against something. Zen turned to the television. He picked up the remote control and shuffled randomly through a variety of game shows, old films, panel discussions, direct selling pitches and all-day sportscasts. Spotting a familiar face in the welter of images, he vectored up the sound.
‘… whatsoever. Would you agree with that?’
‘I agree with no one but myself.’
‘What’s your position on the hemline debate?’
‘It’s an irrelevance. My clothes are based on the simple complexities at the heart of all natural processes. Nature doesn’t ask whether hemlines are long or short this season. I seek to echo in fabric the regular irregularity of windblown sand, the orderly chaos of breaking waves…’
Zen pressed the MUTE button as the receiver was picked up again.
‘Mago is graciously pleased to grant your request. Lo, hearken unto the words of Mago.’
There was a click as the extension was picked up.
‘Hello?’ said the boyish voice.
‘Nicolo, this is Aurelio, the friend of Gilberto. Have you had any luck with the little puzzle I set you?’
‘Just a moment.’
Zen closed his eyes and saw again the casbah-like shack amid the sprawling suburbs of Rome’s Third World archipelago and the fetid stall at its heart, dark but for the glowing VDU screen from which the bedridden boy with the etiolated grace of an angel played fast and loose with the secrets of the material world.
‘It’s dated Wednesday, the day before you came to see me,’ said Nicolo, picking up the receiver again. ‘The text reads as follows. “Anonymous sources in the Vatican allegedly assert that there is a secret group within the Order of Malta, called the Cabal. The existence of this group was allegedly revealed to the Curia by Ludovico Ruspanti in exchange for asylum in the weeks preceding his death. Reported verbally to RL by Zen, Aurelio.”’
There was a long silence. Then Zen began to laugh, slowly and quietly, a series of rhythmic whoops which might almost have been sobbing. So this was the information which he had supposed so sensitive that Carlo Romizi had been killed to preserve its confidentiality! The Ministry had no ‘parallel’ file on the Cabal. All they knew about it was what they had been told by Zen, who knew only what he had been told by the Vatican, who knew only what they had been told by Ludovico Ruspanti, who had made it up.
‘I did a series of searches for the classified file on this Aurelio Zen,’ Nicolo continued, ‘but I didn’t come up with anything.’
‘You mean it’s inaccessible?’
‘No, it doesn’t exist. There’s an open file, in the main body of the database. I made a copy of that which I can let you have if you’re interested, although frankly it sounds like he’s had a pretty boring life…’
Zen spluttered into the mouthpiece.
‘Thank you for your help, Nicolo.’
‘It’s all been a bit of a waste of time, I’m afraid.’
‘Not at all. On the contrary. Everything’s clear now.’
He put the phone down with an obscure sense of depression. Everything was clear, and hateful. Perhaps that was why everything normally remained obscure, because people secretly preferred it that way. It was certainly a very mixed pleasure to discover that he was considered so unimportant that the powers that be hadn’t even bothered to keep tabs on him. Any relief he felt was overwhelmed by shame, anger and hurt. Was he worth no more than that? Evidently not. Well, it served him right for wanting to read his own obituary. He had just done so: a pretty boring life.
On the table lay a message which had been brought up with his breakfast, telling him that Antonia Simonelli expected to see him in her office at eleven o’clock that morning. Zen looked at it, and then at the television, where ‘the philosopher in the wardrobe’ was still holding forth. He identified the name of the station — a private channel, based in the city — and got the number from directory inquiries. It was answered by a young woman who sounded quite overwhelmed by the excitement of working in television.
‘Yes!’
‘This talk show you’ve got on now, is it going out live?’
‘Live! Live!’
‘I need to speak to your guest.’
‘Our guest!’
‘Get him to leave a number where I can contact him later this morning.’
‘Later! Later!’
‘Tell him it’s urgent. A matter of life and death.’
‘Life! Death!’
‘Yes. The name is Marco Zeppegno.’
Before getting dressed, Zen made one more call, this time to Rome. Gilberto Nieddu was initially extremely unenthusiastic about doing what Zen wanted, particularly on a Saturday, but Zen said he’d pay for everything, even a courier to the airport.
After leaving the hotel, Zen strolled down the broad boulevard leading from the fantastic mausoleum of the Central Station to the traffic-ridden expanses of Piazza della Repubblica. This was in fact one of the least propitious parts of the city for a pleasant walk. Because of the proximity of the railway yards, Allied bombers had given it their full attention during the closing stages of the war, and the subsequent reconstruction had taken place at a time when Italian architecture was still heavily influenced by the brutal triumphalism of the Fascist era. Zen wasn’t concerned about his surroundings, however. He just needed to kill a little time.
He idled along, staring in the shop windows, studying the passers-by, lingering in front of an establishment which sold or hired Carnival costumes. Eventually he reached Piazza della Repubblica, whose oval and rectangular panels of greenery still showed signs of the damage they had incurred during the building of the new Metropolitana C line. At a discreet distance from the piazza, beyond a buffer zone of meticulously trimmed and tended lawns, stood one of the city’s oldest and most luxurious hotels. As Zen turned back, his attention was attracted by a young couple walking down the strip of carpet beneath the long green awning towards the waiting line of taxis. The woman looked radiant in a cream two-piece suit which effortlessly combined eroticism and efficiency, while the man, his cherubic face set off by a mass of curls, was a lively and attentive escort. Zen stopped, quite shamelessly gawking. The woman looked mysteriously familiar, like a half-forgotten memory. So bewitching was the vision that it was only at the very last moment, as the taxi swept past, bearing the woman and her young admirer from the scene of past pleasures to that of future delights, that Zen recognized her as Tania Biacis.
He promptly sprinted up the drive towards the next taxi in line, which was coming alongside the awning to pick up a pair of Japanese men who had just emerged from the hotel. Ignoring the shouts of the doorman, an imposing figure clad in something resembling the dress uniform of a Latin American general, Zen opened the passenger door and got in.
‘Follow that taxi!’ he cried.
The driver turned to him with a weary expression.
‘You’ve been watching too many movies, dotto.’
‘This rank is for the use of our guests only!’ thundered the doorman, opening the door again.
The two Japanese looked on with an air of polite bewilderment. It was too late now anyway. The other vehicle was already lost to view amid the yellow cabs swarming in every direction across the piazza. Zen got out of the taxi and walked slowly back down the drive, shaking his head. At the corner of the block opposite, beneath the high portico, a red neon sign advertised the Bar Capri. Whether intentionally or not, the interior, a bare concrete shell, vividly evoked the horrors of the speculative building which has all but crushed the magic of that fabled isle. Zen went to the pay-phone and dialled the number which had been left for him at the television studio. There was no ringing tone, but almost at once the acoustic background changed to a loud hum and a familiar voice barked, ‘Yes?’