‘They were closed.’
‘I’m not surprised. Who in his right mind would drive all the way up here? But you can’t talk sense to these yuppies from the north. They come down here looking for the simple life and authentic values. I could tell them a thing or two about that! My father used to farm around here. Not as a sharecropper — we owned the land. Of course, all the kids had to do their bit too, but as soon as he died we sold up. Un lavoro massacrante, dottore. Back-breaking labour, hour after hour, day after day. These incomers are pleasant enough people in their way, but frankly they don’t have the brains that God gave hens. Finti contadini is what they are. It’s all make-believe. The real country people couldn’t wait to quit, any who had the chance. Some of my friends even volunteered for the carabinieri or the army, just to get out. When we were in our teens, we used to go down to the sea on a Saturday night in summer, looking for some fun. All the girls used to laugh at us with our peasant tans that stopped at the biceps, the nape of the neck and the knees. But we were out in the sun all day working! Mind you, that was back before they put cancer in the sunlight.’
He broke off briefly as they approached the junction with the paved road.
‘Have you booked a hotel, dottore?’
‘No, I…’
‘I can recommend a very good one. Modern, clean, quiet and very good value, right by the…’
‘Do any night trains stop at Pesaro?’
A brief pause. The man obviously didn’t know, but equally obviously wasn’t going to admit it.
‘Well, yes. A few. Are you heading north or south?’
‘North.’
‘Milan?’
‘Switzerland.’
A much longer pause.
‘Ah, well, in that case you want to take the plane from Bologna. Too late now of course, but you can get a good night’s sleep at this hotel I was talking about, run by a friend of mine as it happens, so there won’t be any problems about you arriving so late, and then get off bright and early tomorrow morning.’
‘No, I think I’ll look into the trains.’
‘But it’ll take hours, dottore! Maybe even days!’
‘That’s fine. I need some time to think.’
XII
‘ Il Paradiso e all’Ombra delle Spade.’ Yes, he thought. ‘Paradise lies in the Shadow of the Swords.’ He must have passed the First World War memorial at the heart of this part of Rome, the district he called his ‘village’, at least twice a day for over twenty years, but the concluding phrase of its simple, poignant inscription never failed to move him.
The sun had already slid down below the line of rooftops to the west, casting shadows that reached across the broad boulevard. Alberto moved like a tank through the groups of afternoon shoppers shuffling about as aimlessly as the windblown dead leaves of the lindens that lined the kerb.
All’Ombra delle Spade. He had lived there all his life, but what did they know of such things, these infantile adults in their quilted acrylic jackets and two-tone designer sports shoes? He tried not to despise them, although he knew that they would despise him. They were rather to be pitied. Yes, get the latest-style clothing, the latest mobile phone, the most powerful motorbike, the most fashionable pedigree dog. Get it all, if you can! It won’t make you happy, but it may eventually bring you what you least desire but most need: the knowledge that happiness is an illusion.
Almost half a million Italians had passed over into those paradisiacal shadows during the Great War, with another million crippled for life, but the country had quickly recovered. Now, though, the Italians were dying out. The birth rate was amongst the lowest in the world, with the population predicted to decline by a third in the next fifty years. That meant the end of the extended family that had held the nation together for centuries. And when you looked at the coddled brats who were the end result of this genetic experiment in self-immolation, it was hard to argue that this was a case of pochi ma buoni. It was as if the Italians had collectively lost the will to live. The only reason that the population rate had remained roughly stable until now was the continual influx of illegal immigrants, who of course spawned like sardines. Italy had suffered countless invasions in the course of her long and chequered history, but never before had the nation’s very survival been dependent on the fecundity of the invaders. The ultimate invasion, the ultimate defeat.
But all that was still decades away, when he would be dead and buried. In the meantime, he was at peace with himself. He had done his duty, and that was all that anyone could do. There were even a few pleasures left in life, such as lunch. Alberto’s tongue explored his hefty rear molars, worrying away at a tuft of pork that had got jammed into a crevice. One ate well at Da Dante. Solid, rich Roman food, in a solid, rich Roman establishment on Via dei Gracchi, in the heart of solid, rich Roman Prati. Nice crowd, too, the right sort, even though these days most of them wouldn’t know who the Gracchi were. They could recite the names of a hundred characters from the latest movies and TV shows, but they wouldn’t have a clue about the Gracchi, particularly the kids. Half of them couldn’t remember 1975, let alone 175 BC. Some old dead guys, who cares? The arrogance of the young.
He knew who the Gracchi had been. Servants of the Latin people, and upholders of their rights against the corrupt and indolent landowners who had enriched themselves with war booty while leaving the soldiers who had fought those wars too poor to support their families. True, the Gracchi had broken the law, but only to defend a higher law and a nobler con¬ cept of the historic good of their city and country. They had willingly sacrificed their own interests, and indeed their lives, for the greater interest of the community and the nation as a whole. Which was all he had ever striven to do. To act for the greater long-term good of the people. Nothing for himself. No one could ever reproach him for that. And where laws had been broken, it had always and only been to keep a more important law intact.
One of his three mobiles rang. The encrypted line.
‘ Pronto.’
‘It’s Cazzola, capo.’
‘Hold.’
Alberto walked to the end of the block, then turned right into a quiet side street.
‘Well?’
‘I’m afraid we seem to have lost contact.’
‘You what?’
‘The target told his girlfriend yesterday that he had to go to Venice to sort out some problems with the family lawyer regarding his mother’s will.’
‘That sounds plausible. His family’s from Venice and his mother died recently.’
‘But he also told her that the police were sending him to Padua to report on the status of an on-going murder investigation. I checked with our friends in Padua. There are no murder cases underway there.’
Alberto heaved a rhetorical sigh.
‘Wonderful. So he’s realized that the apartment has been bugged and is using the equipment to feed us a pack of lies.’
‘Unless it’s a cover story he was feeding the girlfriend so that he can go off and visit his mistress somewhere.’
‘He doesn’t have a mistress.’
‘Oh.’
‘Congratulations, Cazzola. This is a major set-back. Not only are the bugs and phone tap now useless, but he now has confirmation of the importance of the operation.’
‘It’s not my fault, capo! I swear I did everything by the book.’
‘All right, all right. No point in worrying about that now. You’ve lost him. When and how?’
‘Well, it was the girlfriend’s birthday and they went out for lunch at a restaurant in the country. Before they left, he told her to drop him at the station in Lucca when they got back, so I waited there.’
‘Instead of which she drove him to an unknown destination.’
‘No, no, they came to the station, and I overheard him buying a ticket to Florence. I’d already monitored him telling the girlfriend that he was going to change there to the Eurostar for Venice…’