‘Fast for fun?’ he says in porno English.
Martin slips him a fifty-euro note.
‘ Mas rapido possibile.’
‘Huh?’ says Jake.
‘I’m a whore for languages.’
And then they’re off the gentle gradients and cambered surface of the autostrada, plunging through dense thickets of chestnuts and oaks and maples and beeches on a narrow track that looks like it was built some time back in the Stone Age, rough-surfaced a century ago and then left to rot, up impossibly steep inclines and round reverse curves tight enough to fit in your pocket, using the whole road, horn blaring, astonishing views of the valley below and the mountains opposite snatched away in an instant, a controlled four-wheel skid every twenty seconds to position the car for yet another gut-wrenching acceleration, the engine finally getting into its stride after all that tootling around town, and Jake laughing like a maniac.
‘Forget the goddamn treasure, this is worth the trip right here!’
And Martin goes to reply, only his mouth is filled with something he thinks is vomit and hopes isn’t blood.
The Italian Republic — res publica, public stuff as distinct from family and personal concerns — may be compared to the planet upon a small portion of whose surface it is located. Superficially all is flux and flow, evolution and extinction, crisis and catastrophe, but this flashy biosphere amounts to no more than an infinitesimal fraction of the entire mass. People talk loosely about saving the earth, but that celestial body is at no more risk from the worst that man can do than is its metaphorical equivalent from the whims and wiles of whichever species currently occupies top spot in the political food chain. Immutable, inaccessible and to all intents and purposes eternal, the vast deadweight of Italian bureaucracy goes spinning blindly on its way with utterly predictable momentum, indifferent to the weather outside.
In his private life, Aurelio Zen had often had cause to bemoan this fact, after being brought to the brink of tears or fury, or both, by the time and effort required to obtain — always in person at the anagrafe office of the local town council, and after a very long wait unless you had some strings to pull — the latest addition to the paper trail that follows every Italian from birth to death. Professionally, though, it was a godsend. This or that politician might currently be in or out, such and such a party reformed or deformed, the perpetual construction site of government landscaped with olive trees or houses of liberty, but the number of everyday events for which official documentation was required remained sufficiently large and various to provide the basis for a detailed biographical sketch of every citizen.
This had been even more true under the Fascist regime, and since Calabria was largely spared the bombardments that had destroyed archives in other parts of Italy and the post-war government had promptly rehired Mussolini’s officially disgraced myrmidons to curate the surviving ones, unravelling the history of the Intrieri clan proved much less difficult than might have been the case elsewhere. Caterina had been born in February 1926 in San Giovanni in Fiore, the third of nine children, and her death from natural causes was certified by the authorities of Spezzano della Sila on the sixth of December 1944, eight days after the birth of Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati in the same comune. By the 1960s, the ranks of the Intrieri family in Calabria had been depleted both by death and by internal emigration to construction jobs created by the building boom in the north. Only three were still registered as resident in the province of Cosenza: two of them middle-aged women, the other a cousin of Caterina’s who was now almost ninety.
So that trail was dead. Zen had never put much credence in it. He knew that Maria had told him the truth, but had also lied to him. What he didn’t know was where the one blurred into the other, so the Intrieri story had to be followed up. The girl had indeed died ‘of natural causes’ when Maria had said, but there was no objective evidence whatsoever that the baby who had come into the world at the same time had been hers. Caterina had been the elder and probably the dominant of the two friends, and might well have made up a dramatic story to enliven their wretched lives in that cold, lifeless mansion. Besides, why should the Intrieri murder one of their own? Unless, of course, they hadn’t known that he was. Zen had the sense of having strayed into the marshlands which infested the border between the laguna morta and laguna viva in his native Venice, a treacherous soup where you could neither stand nor sail, only be mired and dragged down.
He was saved, temporarily at least, by the appearance of the ever eager and confident Natale Arnone.
‘Just an update on Signor Mantega,’ he said, seeing the documents spread out on Zen’s desk. ‘It’s not urgent. I’ll come back.’
‘No, let me have it,’ Zen replied with a yawn. ‘I’ve had enough of deciphering words written with steel nibs dipped into pots of condensed ink and then badly blotted. Is our friend the notaio behaving himself?”
Nicola Mantega had been released at ten o’clock that morning with very stringent conditions attached to his provisional liberty. He had been given a mobile phone whose outward appearance was identical to his own Nokia model, but whose innards had been stripped out and replaced with the basic telephonic equipment, minus the camera and other gadgets, the extra space being used to house a GPS chip and a spare battery. He was to keep the phone on his person at all times and to use it exclusively for all his communications, both personal and professional. Once a minute, the chip called in to report its location to police headquarters, while all calls to or from the phone were automatically monitored.
‘He hasn’t put a foot wrong so far,’ Arnone reported. ‘He drove straight home, then phoned his wife, who’s on holiday in Germany, and told her to stay there until further notice. She didn’t want to — something about she and the kids having outstayed their welcome with her sister-in-law — but the suspect told her to go to a hotel if she couldn’t take it any more. Whatever happened, he was on no account to be disturbed at home until further notice.’
Zen smiled wanly. If he played his cards right, Mantega might yet get off with a short prison sentence for aiding and abetting Peter Newman’s kidnappers, but his wife would never forget being ordered around in that high-handed manner.
‘He spent the rest of the morning in his office making a number of calls to cancel meetings or delay deadlines on work that he apparently has in hand. Several of the men he called had obviously heard of his arrest, but he told them that it had all been a huge mistake and an embarrassment for the police which he had talked his way out of in no time.’
‘No calls to Giorgio?’ asked Zen.
‘One, after lunch, to the house we have under surveillance in San Giovanni. Mantega left a brief message giving his new number, which he said was clean, and telling Giorgio to call him as soon as possible.’
‘And has he?’
‘Not so far. But he did get a call from young Signor Newman to say that some package had arrived. Mantega tried to set up a dinner appointment for tonight to discuss it, but Newman said he couldn’t get away because he’s working for that Oriental representing the American film company, I can’t recall his name — ’
‘Neither can I, and I can’t pronounce it either. Let’s call him Fu Manchu.’
‘Who?’
‘Before your time. Carry on.’
‘Well, Newman told him that Signor Manchu’s boss had arrived from the United States and he couldn’t get away, so they agreed to meet at Mantega’s office tomorrow morning. That was a lie, however. In reality, our young American has a date with the Digos agent Kodra. She set that up as per your instructions, sir.’
Zen nodded vaguely.
‘Good, good. She doesn’t have to sleep with him of course, but… I have a feeling there’s something going on here that I don’t know about, never mind understand. Several things, in fact. Maybe even many.’