Medusa - 9 (19 page)

Aurelio Zen had had his share of compliments in his time, but this was a new one. Did it have something to do with one of those sample bottles of new lines in aftershave that Gemma brought home after her meetings with the sales representatives?

‘I heard about it from one of the founders of this project, one of the original Turin activists,’ Marta said. ‘Later he decided that our work here was counter-revolutionary and went off to Mexico to try and organize the Indian rebels. Anyway, at the meeting we convened to discuss Naldo’s joining the collective, Piero was very much against it. Naldo was already calling himself Ferrero then, and he mentioned to someone that his father’s name was Leonardo. This got back to Piero, who immediately became suspicious. According to him, Leonardo Ferrero had been involved in a Fascist military plot to overthrow the government. He had revealed details of this to a journalist and was killed shortly afterwards in a mid-air explosion that was never properly investigated. Piero claimed that the whole affair was bogus. The revelations that Ferrero made to the journalist contained no substantive information, while he himself was not on the plane that blew up. The leaked hints about the conspiracy would serve to either confuse or provoke the left, while Ferrero’s presumed fate would terrify any real potential traitors in the organization.’

‘But what did all that have to do with Naldo? He doesn’t strike me as anyone’s idea of a very competent conspirator.’

Marta laughed.

‘That’s what the rest of us thought, and Piero was overruled. I think that’s when he started distancing himself from the project here, to be honest. He was used to getting his own way in a highly disciplined and hierarchical party apparatus. We still used the language and went through the motions, but the place was basically a hippie commune. He thought we were a bunch of amateurs.’

Acar drew up outside, its headlights glaring in through the windows. A horn blared three times.

‘Who was the journalist that Leonardo Ferrero allegedly spoke to?’ asked Zen, stubbing out his cigarette.

‘I forget. But he was apparently a big name back in the seventies. Widely respected on the left and widely hated on the right. He used to do a lot of work for
L’Unità
, Piero said. Brandoni? Brandini? Piero had known him, of course. Everyone knew everyone in those days. It was a party in both senses of the word. That was half the appeal of it, the thing that everyone tends to forget now.’

‘Did anyone ever mention this to Naldo?’

‘Of course not! The only question was whether his joining us would cause trouble in one way or another. Once a collective decision had been reached that it would not, the matter was dropped.’

‘And he never raised the issue himself?’

‘I very much doubt whether he even knows about it.’

Zen nodded.

‘Or cares. He certainly didn’t seem very interested in cooperating with me.’

‘
Naldo è quello che è
. It may not be possible to help him, though I’d love to be able to. But some people would refuse a lifebelt you threw them. They would rather drown than be beholden to anybody.’

The horn sounded again. Zen went to the window and waved.

‘I’ve been here ever since he moved in,’ Marta went on in the same calm voice. ‘We even had a little fling at one point. But I don’t really know anything about him. I don’t think he does himself. Children who grow up without the parent of their own sex are often like that, I think. You have to be known in order to know, and if you don’t know yourself then it’s hard for others to know you. Does that make any sense?’

Zen wrapped his coat around him.

‘Well, thank you very much,
signora
. How much do I owe you for the grappa?’

Marta shrugged dismissively and walked him to the door.

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it. You must come back some time when the restaurant is open. It can get quite lively in season.’

Her tone of voice belied her words.

‘I’ll try to do that,’ Zen lied.

Once clear of the front door, the force of the wind almost swept him off his feet. He climbed into the waiting taxi, which immediately swung round in a circle and started down the dirt track. Looking back, Zen saw Marta still standing in the open doorway.

‘Good dinner?’ the driver asked.

‘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 è 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…’

‘Get to the point, Cazzola! I’ve got an important appointment in fifteen minutes.’

‘Well, I followed, of course, taking a seat in the next carriage so as to prevent subsequent recognition, but with a good view of the target through the connecting door. All by the book.’

A pause.

‘Only when the train arrived at Santa Maria Novella, he wasn’t on it,’ Alberto commented wearily.

‘No. He got up to have a smoke while the train stopped at Pistoia and didn’t return to his original seat. I assumed that he’d taken another one, in the part of the carriage I couldn’t see from where I was sitting. I caught the next train back to Pistoia, but there was no sign of him there either.’

Alberto glanced at his watch. There was no time to get angry, and no point.

‘Don’t worry about it, Cazzola. He’ll show up sooner or later. Meanwhile, get on with the other items we discussed. Go and visit Passarini’s sister first. The usual procedure. Who knows, you might even run into our missing target. I have a feeling that our paths are converging. In which case, just make sure you get there first.’

He slammed the phone shut, returning to the boulevard and starting to walk briskly. That it should come to this, he thought. Here he was, an old man in an increasingly strange land, facing the supreme crisis of his career and at the mercy of a dolt who wouldn’t be worth wasting a bullet on when the time came. But there was no question of using the good people, except for information gathering and logistical support. For the dirty work, he had only himself and the faithful but incompetent Cazzola to depend on.

Too bad he couldn’t have this Aurelio Zen on his side. He’d checked him out on the database as soon as that
carabinieri
colonel in Bolzano had reported Zen’s involvement with the case. He sounded like a good man. A bit younger than him, but essentially the same generation, the sort who understood. They’d stopped making them after ’68. Had a reputation for going his own way and using irregular methods, but there was nothing wrong with that as long as the cause was just. No reported political affiliations. There had been some sort of fuss when an operative named Lessi had tried to implicate Zen in the death of one of his colleagues down in Sicily, but nothing had come of it. Reportedly Lessi had always been regarded as a bit of a loose cannon on deck and had disappeared from view after being forcibly retired, much to everyone’s relief.