End Games - 11 (29 page)

‘Right.’

‘Why? Are you Jewish?’

Jake grinned.

‘Are bears Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?’

‘Okay, okay! Sorry I asked. It’s just that what we’re going to be doing from here on in is very high-risk. Are you sure you want to be there tonight, Jake? If anything goes wrong, I might be able to talk my way out of it. I’m just an employee, but you’re the
mandante
, as they say here. Might be smarter to stay here at the hotel and then cut back to your jet and get the hell out if the flares go up.’

‘No way. I’ve been waiting over a year for this moment. Chickening out now would be like not showing up for your honeymoon.’

‘Or your funeral.’

‘Don’t let that motion sickness thing get to you, Mart.’

Tom Newman sidled up to them.

‘Sorry to intrude, guys, but your food’s on the table.
Crostini rossi piccanti, caciocavallo ai ferri, zuppa di finocchi
. Best they could do at this hour.’

‘Cool,’ Jake replied cordially. ‘I just love ethnic food.’

It was in the small hours of the morning, about ten past four, when Nicola Mantega finally heard from Giorgio. So did the police technicians who were monitoring the new phone that Mantega had been given, and as a result the call was immediately traced to a public phone in Cerenzia, about ten kilometres east of San Giovanni in Fiore but with easy access to the
superstrada
. When a police car arrived twenty minutes later there was no one about, and it was unlikely that anyone in the town had seen Giorgio come or go. Nevertheless, he had been terse.

‘They moved in during the night with heavy equipment. Dug around a bit, took a look at the rocks inside, then left in a hurry.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I was watching. Oh, and I hear you got arrested and then released a few hours later. I hope you didn’t make a deal.’

‘Of course not! They simply had no evidence against me, so I –’

‘I’ll kill you if I have to, Nicoletta. Whether you’re behind bars or walking the streets makes no difference. Remember that in the days to come and honour our agreement. If anything goes wrong, you’re a dead man whatever happens to me.’

The phrase kept recurring to Mantega as he drove into Cosenza.
Sei un morto
. That was how the shattered trunk of the man he had known as Peter Newman was invariably described in the media: ‘dressed like a corpse’. Giorgio might not be as powerful a figure as he liked to make out, but he was crazy. The thing about crazy people was that you never had the slightest idea what they were going to do next, any more than they did.

Tom Newman appeared at nine o’clock sharp. He looked terrible: pallid, exhausted and depressed. Since his father’s death had been in Mantega’s mind, it occurred to him that the boy might finally have realised the full horror of what had happened. But when he suggested that they adjourn to a bar for a restorative coffee and brioche, the next thing he knew Tom was standing in the street waving enthusiastically to an attractive young woman.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Oh, just a friend,’ Tom replied airily.

Over their coffees, Mantega elaborated at some length on what fools the police had made of themselves by arresting him the day before. It was vital to get this idea across to the
americani
. The last thing Mantega wanted was for them to suspect that they might be getting involved with someone complicit in criminal enterprises, especially since they were. Tom made sympathetic noises, but his attention was evidently wandering off in directions that Mantega couldn’t identify.

‘So, I understand that the package has arrived,’ he said once they were back in his office. ‘Am I to understand that your employers have succeeded where so many previous efforts have failed? Have they indeed located the site where Alaric the Goth was buried?’

His tone was studiously jocular if not ironical, but the young man’s response was an abrupt return to his earlier mood of sullen gloom.

‘Hell exists, but it may be empty,’ he said.

‘Scusami
?’

‘They’ve found what they think is Alaric’s tomb, only when they dug it out, all that was there was a circle of stone walling filled with river rock. So now they’re thinking it must have been discovered earlier and all the stuff looted and they’re packing up to leave on their private jet this afternoon. The only question is whether I go with them.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ murmured Mantega. ‘Judging by the encounter I just witnessed in the street, you seem to be doing quite nicely back in your ancestral home. My congratulations! The only problem now is to find a way in which you can support yourself here and enjoy to the full the ripe fruit of our soaring peaks and fertile valleys, so to speak. I know that you have ideas about opening a restaurant, but that sort of venture requires a lot of money to be done successfully.’

He leant forward and gazed at Tom intently.

‘Luckily for you, I have an idea. Some three or four years ago, I was approached by a certain party with a very unusual proposition.’

Mantega broke off and looked around cautiously.

‘You understand that I am speaking now in the strictest confidence,’ he went on in a conspiratorial undertone. ‘Nothing of what I say must be repeated beyond the four walls of this room. Agreed?’

Tom jerked his body in a spasm combining a shrug and a nod.

‘The individual’s name need not concern us,’ Mantega continued. ‘Suffice it to say that his story was so incredible that I didn’t even bother hearing him out to the end. On the contrary, I laughed in his face, told him in no uncertain terms not to bother me with such nonsense again and showed him the door.’

Mantega leant still nearer to Tom.

‘But after what you have just told me, I’m now asking myself if that wasn’t perhaps the biggest mistake that I’ve ever made in my life!’

He straightened up again, brisk and businesslike, marshalling the facts in his mind before proceeding.

‘This man claimed that by using advanced technological equipment called ground-penetrating radar, mounted on the back of a four-wheel-drive vehicle during the dry season when there’s no more than a trickle of water in the Busento, he and his associates had located the tomb of Alaric and then returned with mechanical diggers, cracked the vault and plundered the contents.’

He paused to let this sensational statement sink in. Tom Newman’s reaction was minimal, but at least he appeared to be listening.

‘The reason this person approached me, according to him, was that having got his hands on those untold treasures, he had belatedly realised that they were almost impossible to dispose of at a profit. None of the items concerned could be sold legally without a validated provenance and the necessary documentation. On the other hand, he was understandably reluctant to melt them down and sell them for the value of the raw materials. He therefore hoped that I could either arrange the necessary paperwork, or help him locate a potential purchaser who would overlook such tedious details.’

Mantega shot his visitor a glance. Tom was still listening, but he didn’t seem particularly interested.

‘So you’re saying that there’s someone around here who has the stuff that my guys were looking for stashed away in his basement or something?’

Mantega wiped the air with his hands forcefully.

‘I absolutely do not say that! Apart from anything else, I have had no contact with the man in question since that occasion several years ago. Even supposing his claims to have been true, there is no telling what he may have decided to do with the treasure in the meantime. But since, according to your account, the tomb has indeed been opened and cleaned out by someone at some stage, there is just a possibility that the artefacts it contained are still in existence, located not far from where we are now sitting, and in the hands of someone whom I can contact at any moment with one phone call. That’s all.’

He got up and strode to the window, where he stood for a moment looking pensively down at the street.

‘So?’ Tom demanded.

Mantega turned back to him with a loud laugh.

‘Quite right! Your
bella ignota
seems to be awaiting you below, so let us by all means wrap this up speedily.’

He started to walk back, then stopped and clutched his forehead.

‘Here, my friend, we move into the realm of the purely hypothetical,’ he pronounced, in a manner suggesting that he was perfectly at home in this abstruse sphere. ‘But since I note with pleasure that your grasp of the subjunctive has improved markedly since our initial meeting, let us suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that the person whom I mentioned earlier were still in possession of Alaric’s fabled treasure in its original form. Let us further suppose that certain other persons might wish to acquire one or more items for an agreed price, having of course inspected samples of the merchandise and had them authenticated by an independent expert of their own choice. Should any or all of this prove to be the case, then given the language problem and the need for absolute confidentiality, you –’

He flung out a dramatic digit in Tom’s direction.

‘– would in effect be the necessary and sole mediator between the interested parties. As such, you should in my professional opinion both expect and demand a percentage of the sale price.’

Tom got to his feet and walked over to the window, positioning himself where his host had stood earlier.

‘It is her, isn’t it?’ remarked Mantega. ‘I hope she’s waiting for you. Rather than for me, I mean.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Tom said earnestly, turning back to face him. ‘Last I heard, you wanted me to collaborate on this business because you had ethical issues with this priceless Calabrian heritage site being despoiled and the contents exported by my employers. Now you’re telling me that I can make a lot of money on the side by facilitating the sale of some or all of the treasure to those very same people. Is it just me, or is there something here that doesn’t quite add up?’

Mantega smiled broadly.

‘Ah, Signor Tommaso! Your grasp of the verbal subjunctive may have improved, but you evidently haven’t yet understood that in Calabria life itself is subjunctive. Reality here has always been so harsh that we have by necessity learnt to content ourselves with the possible, the desirable and the purely imaginary.’

He went over to Tom and grasped his arm. The young man flinched, a startled look in his distant eyes. Too bad, thought Mantega. It was about time for young Tommasino to forget the American culture of crisp deals and binding handshakes and learn the intricate round-dance of male power courtship here in the south.

‘Everything I said the other day was utterly sincere,’ he declared. ‘Supposing that Alaric’s horde of treasure has indeed been found, my principal object is to secure whatever may be secured for the public good of this province, and indeed the whole nation.’

He released his grip on the other man’s arm in favour of a more flexible choreography, punctuating his remarks with intense rhetorical gestures like someone signing for the deaf.

‘But how can that be achieved? I know for a fact that the man who came to see me cares nothing for such selfless aspirations. He wants money, only money, and unless he gets it the historic artefacts from that burial site will without doubt be dispersed if not destroyed. It’s like a kidnapping! Only he knows where they are, which is certainly not in his house, or anywhere associated with him. But if your employers can be persuaded to ransom one of the items that he has seized at a sufficiently high price, it is possible that I may be able to convince him, by a mixture of cajolery and threats, that his interests are best served by taking the money on offer and handing over the rest of the loot to the authorities, rather than having me denounce him to the police.’

Breaking his tense pose, he relaxed with a fluid gesture of his right hand.

‘There will undoubtedly be some personal danger involved. I know this man to be both violent and unpredictable. Nevertheless, I ask nothing for myself but the satisfaction of having served my people. You, on the other hand, are a returning fellow-countryman,
un immigrante
, and it is only right that your return fare should be paid by those who neither know nor care about these matters so dear to us.’

He waved helplessly.

‘All this may well come to nothing, of course. But we owe it to ourselves and to our common heritage to try. Please, return to your employers and tell them what I have told you. Emphasise that samples of the merchandise will be provided for validation under whatever circumstances they may demand. If they show the slightest interest, then I’ll get in touch with my contact as soon as I hear from you. After that, matters should move very quickly.’

Mantega grinned broadly, as though mocking his own fervour.

‘But not a word to your girlfriend, mind. Poor women! They only have one thing to sell, but for us the possibilities are endless.’

A terrible thing had occurred. For the first time in his life that he could recall, rare periods of illness aside, Aurelio Zen couldn’t face the prospect of lunch.

Until now, this quasi-sacred Italian rite had been the high point of his working day, the central pillar that supported the whole edifice. Zen was not greedy, but given that he had to eat anyway he preferred to do so as well as possible. In every single one of his numerous postings all over the country down the years he had always succeeded, after a few days, in tracking down a restaurant or
trattoria
that satisfied his needs. But not in Cosenza, and the reason was clear. The city was so small that most people went home for lunch, and so far off the tourist trail that there was little or no passing trade. Good restaurants did exist, but they only served dinner and Sunday lunch. Moreover, Natale Arnone’s remark about his being feared had given Zen an uneasy feeling that if he returned to one of his usual haunts the food would not only be unpalatable but one of the staff might have spat in the tomato sauce curdling in his dish of pasta.