Black Run (21 page)

“After this curve I'll speed up, I promise,” he told her with a smile. He took it at 40 miles an hour. Then, right in front of him, lit up by his car's halogen headlights, he saw a man in a loden overcoat, arms spread wide. Marco slammed on the brakes. “Shit!”

“What is it?” asked Carla.

“No idea. Let's hope nothing serious.”

A second man wearing a police uniform went by in front of the windshield.

“Jesus fucking Christ, the highway police!” said Marco Traversa, gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles whitened. He could just see his driver's license being shredded before his eyes and dropped on the asphalt. But to his surprise, the policeman ignored his Audi entirely. Instead he continued across the road.

“Where are they going?”

“Carla, what do I know?”

After the uniformed policeman, a dark-skinned man appeared. Skinny, short, slightly hunched over. Then another, and another, and another.

“Who . . . who are they?” asked Carla in a faint voice. Marco stroked his chin. “No idea. I really have no idea.”

Men, children, and women in saris with their heads covered continued crossing the road. As they went by the car, they smiled and greeted the couple inside with a slight nod of the head. Marco smiled back like an idiot, waving with one hand like a child. He and his wife watched that biblical diaspora, a desperate flock, black in the darkness of the night, dressed in rags and scarves.

“Are they Indians?” asked Carla.

“Huh . . .” said Marco, “maybe so.”

“But where are they going?”

“Come on, Carla. How am I supposed to know?”

They just kept coming. The stream of people never seemed to end. Then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, they vanished, swallowed up by the dark countryside. Marco waited, motor chugging, headlights illuminating the empty lane ahead. “What do you think? Should I go?”

“Go on, my love, you can go,” said Carla as she caressed the hand with which he was gripping the stick shift. Marco Traversa put the car in first gear and slowly pulled out. He looked to the left, but there was no sign of that interminable single-file line of people.

When Emilio Marrix opened his front door, he saw a man wearing a loden overcoat, a police officer, and, half-hidden in the shadows of the larch trees, a group of men and women.

“Who . . . who are you?” asked Emilio, and his cheeks, already flame red, turned redder still.

The man wearing the overcoat pulled out a badge. “Deputy Police Chief Schiavone, mobile squad of Aosta. This is Officer Pierron.”

“My pleasure. Emilio Marrix, retired mailman,” he replied with a smile, brushing back his full head of white hair.

“May we?”

Emilio nodded his head yes and stepped aside. Rocco walked in, followed by Italo. Then, one at a time, the Sri Lankans entered the house. Emilio smiled, having no idea what to do, and they responded by pressing their hands together over their hearts and bowing their heads ever so slightly.

“What can I do for you?” asked Emilio.

Rocco looked around at the interior of the house. A lovely little detached villa, neat as a pin, with the television on. In front of the television, on a velvet sofa, was a woman, fast asleep. A cat was curled up on the marble apron of a fireplace where a crackling fire burned. The wood-lined walls were dotted with landscape paintings. In one corner stood an easel and a half-finished canvas. Tubes of paint sat on a low, wheeled table.

“Are you the painter of the house?” Rocco asked.

“No, my wife,” Emilio replied. “Ginevra!” he called.

Ginevra jerked awake. The minute she saw her living room as crowded as a commuter bus at rush hour, her eyes opened wide. “What . . . what's happening?”

“This gentleman is the deputy police chief of Aosta,” her husband immediately reassured her.

The woman got up from the sofa. Her chin was quivering. She looked at the mass of people as she straightened her white hair with a simple gesture, then her hand adjusted her flower-print dress, and finally she pulled up the zipper of her green pile sweater.

“Buona sera
,
”
she said in a faint, small voice.

“Don't be afraid,” said Rocco. “Let me explain. We've pulled over a truck that was transporting a full load of these immigrants.”

“Sure, but we don't have room here. All we have is an extra guest bedroom,” Emilio objected.

The Sri Lankans had lined up along the interior walls. They stood more than three deep and left just enough space for Ginevra and her husband to talk to the policemen. The cat swished its tail. Then it started performing its ablutions, licking its forepaw.

“I'm not asking you to let them sleep here,” said Rocco. “I'm just wondering if you could let these people stay inside, out of the cold, while my colleague and I finish up with the truck.”

“They must be hungry,” said Ginevra.

“Don't worry,” said Rocco. “It won't be long. Emilio, can I ask you something?”

The master of the house flashed him a smile. “At this point, one thing more hardly makes a difference, does it?”

“Do you have a rotary cutter?”

“One of those power tools for cutting metal?”

“That's right.”

“Yes, but it's battery-powered.”

“All the better. Can I borrow it?”

“Certainly. Come with me. Excuse me . . .” Emilio was doing his best to push through the throng of Sri Lankans filling the few dozen square feet of his living room. “Excuse me, pardon me. Can I get through?” and he crossed the room, followed by Italo and Rocco. They managed to make their way through the mass of humanity and reached the front door. “Here we are, pardon me. May I?” he said to two women, who stepped aside, and managed to open his heavy security door. At last the three men were able to leave the house.

Ginevra was standing in the middle of her living room, looking at all the men and women with downcast eyes. They seemed to be ashamed.

“Does anyone here speak Italian?”

No answer. Not even a fly buzzed. Even the littlest ones remained silent: not a whimper. Ginevra looked a woman in the eye. She could have been thirty or she could have been fifty. She tried Italian and then French:
“Lei . . . venga con me. Venez avec moi, okay?”
and waved for her to follow.
“Tout le monde
,
”
she said, addressing the whole room.
“Asseyez! Asseyez, s'il vous plaît.”
And with her hands, she mimed instructions for everyone to sit down. Men and women started looking around for a place to sit. Some sat on the sofas, others on chairs, many on the floor. In the meantime, Ginevra and the woman went into the kitchen. The mistress of the house began to open cabinets and drawers. She pulled out everything edible that she could find and put it on the table. She spoke slowly and clearly. “Let's make a delicious bowl of pasta and whatever we have we'll share, all right? For the children I have milk. I milked the cow today.
Lait, compris? Pour les enfants!”
And she smiled at the woman, who thanked her, bowing her head. “I'm sorry there's so little to eat. Darn it, if I'd known you were coming I would have done some shopping.” Then Ginevra started getting out pans and pots.

Sebastiano lay huddled among the crates, listening for any noises. The two truck drivers could come back at any moment, and there he was, half-hidden in the shadows, a bullet chambered, ready for them. Every rustling branch, every gust of breeze and snapping of a twig jolted his nerves into high alert. Shadows emerged from around the curve. He cocked the pistol. Then he eased the hammer back down with a smile. It was Rocco and Italo, accompanied by a man who looked to be in his early seventies, carrying a power tool of some kind.

“This is Emilio. He's going to help us,” said Rocco. Emilio smiled at Sebastiano, and the two men shook hands. “He brought a rotary tool,” Rocco added.

Emilio showed it to Sebastiano. “If a person isn't experienced with these things, it's best for them not to try to use one. That's why I came along.”

Sebastiano glared at Rocco. But Rocco just shrugged. Then he climbed up into the truck and reached down to help Emilio up, but the old man clambered up unaided, in a surprising display of agility. The minute Emilio saw the container, he started shaking his head. “They were in here? That's out of this world!”

“Right? But it's actually very much part of this world, Signor Emilio. Come down here to the far end, if you would!”

Emilio went over to the deputy police chief, who was rapping his knuckles against the far wall of the container. “My dear Emilio, we have reason to suspect that there's something behind here.”

“But the ones who were driving the truck, where are they, Dottore?”

“They ran away. All right, then, shall we punch a hole through here?”

“Certainly, certainly.” Emilio grabbed the rotary cutter. “All right, then, stay back.” He turned it on. The noise was deafening, and it was only amplified by the enclosed space. When the blade actually cut into the metal, it became intolerable. A shrill noise halfway between chalk on a blackboard and a dentist's drill. Outside the truck, Italo covered his ears. Sebastiano was keeping an eye on the road. But Rocco simply twisted up two pieces of paper and stuffed them in his ears.

Emilio took less than five minutes to open a space through which a ten-year-old child could easily pass. He turned off the saw and wiped his lips on his sleeve. “There you go.”

Rocco went over to the cut while Italo and Sebastiano climbed up into the truck to take a look. The deputy police chief braced himself against the metal wall, then he delivered a kick to the middle of the cut sheet metal. It started to break loose. He kicked it again, and then a third time. Sebastiano and Italo stood there, eyes bulging, in a state of feverish anticipation. Emilio had taken a seat on one of the side benches and was politely awaiting further instructions.

On the fifth kick, the sheet metal finally yielded, falling into the secret compartment. Rocco picked up the flashlight and wiggled his way in. Sebastiano and Italo stepped closer to the opening.

Crates. Wooden crates. Square ones and rectangular ones, stacked up. In the narrow space, Rocco could barely manage to turn around. He shone his flashlight on the stacked crates while Sebastiano peered into the newly opened gap and did his best to read the words on the wooden crates.

“See if you find one marked
CHANT NUMBER 4
. That is our crate!”

“No such luck,” Rocco replied. His voice echoed against the metal. “Just numbers.”

“What's in them?”

“Couldn't say. Let's pull a few out and take a look.”

The crates were heavy, and Emilio was helpful as ever. After an hour's hard work, sweaty and exhausted, the men sat down on the crates that they'd unloaded onto the roadside. A wooden pyramid. Each case had a padlock. And a mysterious code written on the side. The sky had cleared, and the chilly stars were blinking down from on high. It was one in the morning, and there were no more cars going past on the road. Emilio came back with a nice hot thermos. “Here. My wife made some coffee. She gave those poor wretches some food. Now they're all asleep.”

They poured out the coffee. It was good and, most important, it was hot. Rocco and Italo each lit a cigarette. “Now what do we do, Rocco?”

“Let's open them up and see what's inside.”

With a sure cut from the rotary blade, Emilio sawed the padlock off the first crate. Rocco opened it. It was filled with straw. Under the straw were rectangles of a plasticky-looking material.

“Holy shit!” shouted the deputy police chief.

“What is it?” asked Sebastiano.

“Plastic.”

Sebastiano and Italo exchanged a glance. Emilio was baffled. “Plastic?”

“Plastic explosives,” Italo corrected him.

Emilio's eyes opened wide in fright.

“Let's open another. Come on, Emilio.”

“At your orders!”

In the second crate they found automatic assault rifles. More plastic explosives. Then detonators. Still more plastic explosives. A disassembled shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Ammunition.

Seated on the opened crates, the four men looked at one another in bewilderment. “Sebastia', I'm starting to have some doubts,” said Rocco. “You don't think that ‘Chant number 4' stands for C-4, do you? Plastic explosive? Look how much of it there is!”

Sebastiano nodded. “Maybe so. What the hell was I thinking? I should never have trusted Ernst,” his friend replied.

“Let's call the police!” Emilio suggested.

Rocco slapped him on the shoulder. “We
are
the police, Emilio.” Sebastiano and Italo exchanged a baffled glance. “All right,” the deputy police chief continued, “now why don't you take your rotary tool and head on home. Get yourself some rest, because you've probably caught a chill. Thanks for all the help you've given us. Without you, we couldn't have done a thing.” The retired postal worker smiled and nodded. “Ah, don't mention it, it was nothing. In fact, I really enjoyed it, you know?”

“All right, go take care of Ginevra. Then we'll catch up with you and decide what to do with the Sri Lankans.”

“All right. I'm heading back then. I'll wait for you inside. It's been a pleasure to help you. A real adventure, a real adventure . . .” And Emilio headed home with his saw and a light step.

“The thing to do here is call Interpol, if you ask me!” said Sebastiano. “No, seriously, do you realize what we have here? This is a military-grade arsenal!”

“Yes, we're going to have to impound the truck. No two fucking ways about it,” Rocco said and flicked away the dead cigarette butt that he still had clamped between his lips.

“Chant number 4!” shouted Italo.

“What?” called Sebastiano and Rocco in unison.