End Games - 11 (20 page)

‘I understand that he was employed by an American movie company to act as their
mediatore
during preparations for a production to be filmed there.’

Calopezzati waved his elegant hand dismissively. His feet must have been elegant too, thought Zen, wondering how they had been severed.

‘That’s just money! He could have found another job.’

‘Perhaps he thought that the risks were by now minimal,’ Zen murmured as though to himself. ‘Perhaps after so many years he had grown nostalgic for his own country. You implied that you lost contact with Pietro at some point. When did that happen?’

‘I don’t recall exactly. At some point in the 1980s. He just stopped writing and phoning, or I did. He wasn’t my child, after all.’

‘But you were responsible for taking him to America?’

‘After my sister died, I became his guardian. This was after the war, the whole country was in chaos. I moved Pietrino in with me in Rome and sent him to school there to learn Italian. He was a wild creature who had been brought up by Ottavia’s entourage of servants, spoke only dialect and didn’t respond well to discipline. Nevertheless, it was clearly my duty to protect him until he came of age, so when I entered the agency and was posted to the embassy in Washington I took him with me. Our ambassador at the time was a family friend and happened to be in a position to call in a favour from the US government in return for some help that we had provided for them. Thus it was arranged for Pietro Ottavio to become an American citizen. All in all, it seemed the best solution to the problem.’

‘Which problem?’

‘The problem of possible reprisals from my family’s numerous enemies.’

‘Were they really that dangerous?’

The man in the wheelchair made another fluent, fluid hand gesture.

‘Who can estimate danger? One of my colleagues made clandestine trips to remote areas of our former colony of Eritrea during its war with Ethiopia and came back with nothing worse than a mild case of gonorrhoea. Another went to see a Washington Redskins game one evening and was beaten to death on his way home because the stupid bastard was too proud to give them his wallet.’

Roberto Calopezzati made his eloquent gesture again.

‘Life is an acquired taste, Signor Zen, but death has mass-market appeal. Sooner or later, we all succumb to its charms. I tried to shield my nephew from them as best I could.’

What sounded like a peal of the thunder that Zen was by now habituated to – although not this early in the day – prevented any further conversation. It turned out to be the roar of a jet taking off from Ciampino, a few kilometres to the north, and obligingly faded away in a few moments.

‘And it would have been an excellent solution,’ Zen commented, ‘if only he hadn’t come back to Calabria and started talking to the locals in fluent dialect.’

‘That marked him down as someone who had been born and raised in the area, but there are plenty of
calabresi
in the States, God knows. How did his killers discover his identity?’

‘Speaking of that, do you know the identity of his father?’

Roberto sighed.

‘My sister told me that it was a friend of ours named Carlo Sironi. He was a fighter pilot in the war, an utterly irresistible daredevil who was shot down while attacking an Allied bombing sortie over Salerno six months before Pietro was born. He and Ottavia had spent some time together in Naples shortly before, so it’s just possible that she wasn’t lying to me. The truth is that I don’t know and don’t really care. Whoever she might have screwed, Pietro was here and it was my duty to look after him to the best of my ability. Now will you answer my question, Signor Zen? Granted that Pietro was stupid enough to speak the dialect rather than just passing himself off as a dumb American, how could his killers have found out that he was a Calopezzati?’

Zen shot him a keen glance.

‘Are you insulting my intelligence or your own,
barone
? There is only one possible answer, namely that he himself disclosed the information to someone, almost certainly the shady fixer he had employed to facilitate his business deals. Following your advice, Pietro had set out to become an American. Perhaps he had succeeded only too well. After forty years over there he simply couldn’t conceive that anyone in a backwater like Calabria cared about what might or might not have happened in the years before he was born. But Americans care enormously about any provable antiquity and lineage in their family history, particularly if it involves a title. It’s hardly surprising that he couldn’t resist mentioning to his new acquaintance that he was a member of an Italian baronial family founded back in the mists of time before the first shipload of American pilgrims arrived.’

Calopezzati smiled pallidly.

‘Actually, we’re only late eighteenth century.’

Tom spent much of the morning watching television with Martin Nguyen. He’d been able to hold off moving hotels for twenty-four hours, on the grounds that the police wanted him to perform various legal functions connected with his father’s death, but that morning Nguyen’s limo had shown up to whisk him off to this flashy business location about two miles from the city centre, out in what Italians called the periphery. While he was in the car, Nicola Mantega had phoned to tell him that the world-famous film director Luciano Aldobrandini would be making a surprise appearance on the popular morning TV show
Ciao Italia!
and that there were rumours that what he was going to say might have a direct impact on the business interests of Tom’s new employer. This news had been duly passed on and both men were now fixated on the screen, Tom’s job being to translate Aldobrandini’s words, in real time as far as possible, although Nguyen was burning a DVD as back-up.

Up to now the show had offered nothing but a succession of entry-level celebrities, burned-out celebrities, minor politicians and a footballer in drug rehab, but when the presenter finally announced the star whose name she had been teasingly trailing for almost an hour the results proved well worth the wait. Clad in a stunning cream linen suit over a blue silk shirt left largely open to reveal a perfectly judged tan, his mass of silver hair sculpted as though by some natural force, Aldobrandini looked youthful yet distinguished, strikingly virile and decisive but with vast inner reserves of gravitas.

He speedily got down to business, announcing that he had flown to Rome, ‘interrupting my annual period of creative repose’ on the Costa Smeralda, in order to break the dramatic news that he had withdrawn from the project to transfer the Book of Revelations to the screen – ‘a work I hoped and believed would crown a long career dedicated solely to my art’ – since he had lost all faith in the commitment and integrity of the American production company which had been financing it.

What followed was a presentation worthy of someone who had once played, very competently, various minor roles in post-war neo-realist films made on a shoestring budget by directors including Visconti and Fellini. Aldobrandini lamented the demise of that generation’s values in favour of the cynical manipulations of market-driven accountants and middle managers, ‘people without intelligence, without courage, without vision, without ideals, concerned only with maximising profits’. With a sad smile, he recounted his discovery that the backer of ‘the intended masterwork of my late period, a funeral oration for the entire culture which formed and nourished me’, was exploiting the project for reasons which had nothing to do with making the film.

Egged on by the eager but flustered hostess, who had obviously been primed with a list of helpful questions, Aldobrandini proceeded to disclose certain very specific details which had led him to suppose that the masterwork in question would never be made. His suspicions had been aroused, he said, by the withdrawal of the great British actor whom he had selected to play St John of Patmos. The reason given at the time had been that his agent had come to doubt the credibility of the project’s backers. Until that moment, Aldobrandini proclaimed, he had ‘never even thought of such a thing. I don’t live in that world. For me it is all about the creative challenge
e basta!
When it comes to high finance and commercial skulduggery, I am an innocent abroad.’ Nevertheless, this news led him to instigate certain enquiries, the results of which had appalled him.

‘I am reliably informed that for several weeks now a helicopter has been operating in and around the city of Cosenza, supposedly carrying out a detailed survey of the terrain under the pretext of selecting suitable locations for the shooting of my film.
My
film!’

He appealed to his interviewer with a charming gesture.

‘
Signorina
, you may or may not like my work … Well, that’s very kind of you, but my point is that even my severest critics have never suggested that I am not
un autore
. Every single one of my films is handcrafted in every aspect and at every stage of its creation, from setting up to final editing. It is absurd to imagine that Luciano Aldobrandini would delegate the selection of locations to an outside contract! And needless to say he never did so. Nevertheless, these flights are taking place under the auspices of my American production company. Have you ever had occasion to hire a helicopter,
signorina
? I have, and believe me they don’t come cheap. Since that money is clearly not being spent on preparations for my film, what is it being spent on? And where does that leave me and my dreams of making a final and lasting contribution to the glorious history of Italian cinema?’

Aldobrandini held up his palms in symbolic surrender.

‘I don’t know the answer to those questions, and until I do I can have no faith in those who suggested this project and promised to finance it. I am therefore, and with the greatest reluctance, severing all personal and professional connection with this whole sorry affair. It is a sad day for me, a sad day for art and a sad day for Italy.’

Martin Nguyen turned off the TV as the hostess thanked her guest and transitioned effortlessly to a commercial break.

‘Holy fuck!’ he said.

‘Yeah, he was certainly in a hissy fit,’ Tom replied casually. ‘No one gives me ’nuff respec’ now I’m over the hill stuff.’

‘The guy’s a genius,’ said Martin in a tone of hushed reverence.

Tom gestured sceptically.

‘Well, the jury’s still pretty well out on that one. I like his early films,
Terra Bruciata
for example. That was one of my mom’s favourites. She said it was just how people lived where she grew up.’

‘I’m not talking about his fucking movies!’ Martin yelled. ‘He just killed us, live on national network TV! Next it’ll be all over the –’

The phone in the room rang. Martin jerked his thumb.

‘Take it.’

Tom did so. He listened for a long time, inserting the occasional ‘
Ho capito
’, ‘
Senz’altro
’ and ‘
D’accordo
,
signore
’. Then he turned to Martin.

‘That was the mayor’s office. They want you to present yourself at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘Present myself? What the fuck does that mean?’

‘Sorry, I’m thinking in Italian. Go to city hall and meet with them.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s about the permits your company was granted to operate those helicopter flights. Apparently they expire in forty-eight hours. Basically, they want to know if there’s any truth in Aldobrandini’s allegations. I don’t want to sound alarmist, Mr Nguyen, but I think you should take this very seriously. Italy may seem all free and easy and spontaneous on the surface, but when the going gets rough you find out that it’s basically a police state in many respects. This could just be one of those occasions.’

Martin Nguyen stared at the blank television screen.

‘Holy fuck,’ he repeated.

The convoy of vehicles came to rest at a remote spot on the banks of the Busento river a few kilometres south of Cosenza. The only access was by a dead-end dirt track leading steeply down from a minor road to the city from the village of Dipignano, which saw very little traffic now that there was a much faster route over the line of hills to the east connecting with the
autostrada
.

As a result, the guard who had been posted at the turn-off to deter intruders was only called upon to act once, when a farmer in a quad vehicle came along, trying to short-cut across the valley by fording the river and taking the equivalent track leading up on the western side. The guard simply shook his head and told the man that the road was ‘
chiusa per lavoro
’. What sort of work? Construction of a weir in the river-bed to improve flow levels and protect aquatic life. An environmental project. The farmer cackled cannily.

‘Glad to hear someone’s getting Rome’s money!’

Say what you liked about Giorgio – and opinions on this subject were many and various, although rarely expressed – he knew how to organise and execute a project like this on time, under budget, with minimal risk and at the shortest possible notice. The last of these attributes was perhaps the most valuable, given the nature of his business. Opportunity tended to knock rarely and with no notice whatever, so to take advantage you needed to be able to think on your feet. He had spent the previous day scouting out a suitable site. Enquiries at the few neighbouring farms in the area Giorgio had eventually chosen revealed that no helicopters had been seen or heard in this valley as yet. This was crucial to the success of Mantega’s scheme for instant riches, as was haste, since those searching for the location of the tomb might appear at any moment.

The first stage of the operation involved installing sandbags upstream to dam the flow of water – still minimal despite the recent rains, thanks to the absorption capacity of the baked hillsides all around – followed by the marking out of a circular area ten metres in diameter and the removal of the superficial rocks, gravel and vegetation. This was done by hand by the unskilled labourers, great care being taken not to mark the rocks with metal tools or to damage the various reeds and weeds that had taken root for the summer in muddy patches formed by the eddies of the stagnant stream but would be swept away once the winter floods arrived. A geotextile access path was then laid down to minimise any further disturbance to the surface and the big yellow mechanical digger unloaded from its transporter and brought up to excavate the site down to a level of about two metres.