Jake scowled and slouched around a bit longer, but in the end he seemed to see the logic of this.
‘Yeah, well, like, whatever, I guess.’
The call that Nicola Mantega had been expecting came shortly after four that afternoon.
‘Check your mailbox,’ said Giorgio. ‘Collect the goods and take them to the buyers for assessment. Keep them in view at all times and bring them with you when you leave, then take them back to where you got them, put the receipt in an envelope and deliver it by hand to the address written on the paper enclosed. These items are not for sale.’
Mantega ran downstairs to the bleak entrance hall of the building and unlocked his slot in the metal bin on the wall. Alongside the usual pile of junk and bills lay a plain brown envelope, unstamped and unaddressed. Inside was a left-luggage ticket headed Fratelli Girimonti and an address near the bus station. That day’s date had been stamped below, along with the handwritten time of deposit, about five hours before. There was also a scrap of paper with an address up in the old city painfully written in block capitals.
Mantega decided to walk the length of Corso Mazzini to his destination and take a taxi back. The exercise would do him good and help calm his spirits, which were understandably in a state of some turbulence. He would also have a much better chance of spotting young Tommaso’s girlfriend or any other visible tail. At the end of the gun-barrel vista that the long straight boulevard afforded, a massive white thunderhead was visibly expanding in the thinner air high above, burgeoning out like the blast of dust and debris from a slow-motion explosion. Down in the street, every surface was denuded by the caustic sunlight whose brutal candour taught every Calabrian that what you saw was what you got and all you would ever get, thus making life easier for such people as himself, who traded in appearances that weren’t always quite so candid. He processed down Corso Mazzini, acknowledging the greetings of male acquaintances and the pointed glances of women young enough to be his daughter, telling him that while he might be a bit portly he was still powerful. They knew where the oil to cook their eggs came from. Mantega felt himself relaxing with every step he took. As long as he stayed here, in his own territory, surrounded by his people, nothing really bad could ever happen to him.
Fratelli Girimonti turned out to be an old-fashioned ironmonger’s shop, opposite the square hollowed out of the hillside where the country bus routes terminated. It sold nails and screws and nuts and bolts and washers of every size and type, drills and chisels, hatchets and hammers, nippers and clippers, not to mention the cast-iron cooking pans, barbecues and patio furniture suspended on hooks from the ceiling. For your ferrous metal needs, this was clearly the place to come. The left-luggage facility was a minor aspect of the services available there, a remnant of an earlier era when peasants and travelling salesmen arrived by bus and needed a place to deposit their baggage until they moved on or found lodgings. Nicola Mantega handed over the ticket, paid the miniscule fee due and took possession of a large and surprisingly heavy cardboard box.
He went outside and looked around for a taxi. There were always a few of them hanging around the bus station.
‘ Prego.’
It took Mantega a moment to adjust his sightline to focus on the saloon double-parked outside the ironmonger’s. It took him another to recognise the face of the new police chief staring at him through an opened slit in the tinted rear window.
‘No really, thanks so much, very kind of you but I’d really rather take a taxi,’ he blurted out.
‘I’m not being kind,’ Zen returned. ‘Get in.’
Feeling horribly conspicuous, Mantega elbowed his way through the mobile mass of street people, students, African pedlars, gypsy beggars and bargain seekers.
‘How do you know Giorgio’s people didn’t see this?’ he demanded angrily of Zen as the car pulled away.
‘Why should Giorgio expose his people to stake out a perfectly routine transaction? Besides, the surveillance team that followed you here didn’t report the presence of any competition, so I decided to take a chance. Cosenza is starting to bore me and I want to force the pace a little. Let’s have a look at the goods.’
With the aid of a nasty-looking knife supplied by Zen’s driver Mantega slit open the plastic strip sealing the cardboard box perched on his knees, revealing multiple layers of faded newsprint. Like children opening Christmas presents, both men started pulling out the packaging and flinging it on to the floor. Mantega got there first, and lifted out the most beautiful object that he had ever handled in his life. It was a beaten gold plate engraved with patterns of intertwined curling vines in relief. Zen had meanwhile found the other item, a shallow dish with intaglio designs of nymphs and satyrs. The gold glowed with all the intensity, depth and provocation of human flesh. Mantega felt himself caressing it as he would a woman’s body. He was not given to feelings of awe and had no precedent for the ones that overwhelmed him now. Somehow the objects that had emerged from their tawdry wrappings in a reused cardboard box seemed more alive than he was.
‘Where in God’s name did Giorgio get these?’ Zen asked.
‘I have no idea. He wants me to take them back to that ironmonger’s and deliver the receipt to an address up by the cathedral. He said they were not for sale. But of course you already know that.’
‘Yes, but I don’t have the address. Show me that note.’
Mantega handed it over with a sigh.
‘Please be discreet in the manner in which you handle this aspect of the operation, dottore. If Giorgio begins to suspect that I have betrayed him, he will come to me and kill me! You understand?’
For a moment he had forgotten himself, and immediately feared that the chief of police might take offence. But Zen ignored not only his remarks but the entire subject.
‘So now you have to show these little beauties to the American treasure hunters in order to demonstrate the genuinita del prodotto.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, get busy. Things are moving more and more quickly, Signor Mantega. We must adjust to their rhythm if we don’t want to be left behind.’
‘I’ll do it as soon as I return to my office.’
‘You fool! I’ll be listening in anyway. Do it now.’
It was an order. Mantega got out his phone.
‘How are you, Tommaso? Good, good. Listen, I have a message for your boss. The samples we discussed are now in my hands and I can bring them to your hotel at half an hour’s notice. But they are extremely valuable and I have been given strict orders not to let them out of my sight at any time. I therefore feel that on balance it might be best not to proceed until the person who is to examine them has arrived. Could you therefore let me know as soon as that occurs, whatever hour of the day or night it may be? I’ll expect your call.’
He closed the phone and glanced at Zen. They were on the superstrada, near Carabinieri headquarters and the new railway station. He could pick up a cab there.
‘Can I go now?’ he asked.
There was no reply. Zen’s silences felt far more menacing than anything he said, so Mantega was relieved when he finally spoke.
‘Let’s suppose that these samples are indeed certified as genuine. How do you propose to supply the merchandise for sale?’
Mantega had given a considerable amount of thought to this.
‘I shall handle that part of the negotiations. Obviously we can’t invite them to view the assembled treasure and then pick and choose what they want, since we don’t have anything to show them. But such a sale would have to be shrouded in secrecy, for the protection of the buyer just as much as the vendor, and even the richest man on earth wouldn’t be able to afford the whole hoard. When the time comes, I shall play on that aspect of the matter and try to elicit from the Americans what sort of objects they are interested in.’