God's Dog (14 page)

‘Dear Domingo,
I got your message just today because I spent all yesterday in a seminary out of town. All's well here, no news. Or rather, to tell the truth, I feel slightly worried: I have the feeling I'm being watched. Yesterday I thought I saw the flash of cameras from the other side of the glass, though it might just have been a sailor from one of the barges taking a photo of the quay for a souvenir. But then I have another worry; I must be overdoing things. I was afraid that Django might start talking in front of Henk, the keeper who comes to feed him and clean his cage. Then I realised that Henk probably wouldn't understand that the chimp was doing anything other than grunting. Tomorrow I'm expecting this Aren De Smet from Leyden. Meanwhile, I carry on encouraging Django with recordings of voices in Swahili and other exercises. I'm eager to get on with my research, but I need time to perfect certain experiments, and it's complicated doing all this in secret. It would be good to be able to talk to colleagues, and consult scientific journals. But I'm staking my all on this neurolinguist, and I'm expecting material from America which might prove decisive. How are you getting on in Rome? I don't suppose that you can tell me much about your mission. I'd thought of asking for a visa and coming to visit you in May, if you're not back by then, that is. It would be good to see you here when the first new catch of herring of the year arrives; we could go to supper again with my Friesian friend. Apparently his place has become all the rage with yuppies and intellectuals and other toffs. But I discovered it when it was just a rough-and-ready bar, with paper tablecloths and sawdust on the floor. I wonder if Rik still gets drunk now that his place is in the good restaurant guide!

My warmest greetings, Guntur.'

The message was four days old. Salazar deleted it. All communication with Guntur now had to cease; he might get him into trouble, and put someone on his own trail. By now his e-mails would certainly be being checked. But was Guntur really being watched? If they'd got their hands on him, they would certainly also have located Guntur, whose experiments would upset a lot of people. Salazar feared for his friend; he would have liked to put him on his guard. Then another alarming thought struck him. He googled Guntur Pertiwi, University of Amsterdam. What came up was a photograph of a burned-out ruin on the Nieuwe Diep.

‘On Tuesday evening, during the storm which hit the whole north Dutch coast, causing flooding and serious damage, a fire broke out in the Amsterdam university complex, probably caused by the collapse of a high-tension pylon. The building which houses the biological research laboratory run by Professor Guntur Pertiwi and the adjacent greenhouse were completely destroyed. The fire brigade was on the spot within minutes, but a high wind prevented them from bringing the flames under control. Their situation was made more difficult by the nearby presence of reservoirs containing diesel for the river barges which moor at the adjacent quay. During the night the fire also spread to this same quay, destroying a barge and causing the reservoirs to explode. Only at first light were the firemen able to approach the quay and train seawater on to the building, which was by now a mere burnt-out hull. There do not seem to have been any victims on the barge, which was carrying sand and gravel. However, while work was going on to make the place safe, the charred body of a man was found at the foot of the embankment, together with that of a monkey. The body has not yet been identified, but is presumed to be that of Professor Pertiwi. The monkey is undoubtedly to be identified as the chimpanzee Django, originally from the Kibale Nature Reserve in Kenya, on whom Professor Pertiwi was conducting various experiments. There do not seem to be any other victims. The police have opened enquiries into the cause of the fire.'

The fair-haired man rolled up the shutters, picked up the newspapers and went back into the bar. The coffee-machine was already on. He poured some coffee into the filter-paper, put it in place and pressed the switch; what he wanted was the smell of coffee. He spread the newspaper out over the counter and put his cup on it. Every so often he glanced out into the street, unable to resist the urge to check that nothing unusual was happening. He saw the dustcart, the wholesaler who served the greengrocer, the night-watchman from the nearby lawyer's office getting on his scooter, the seven o'clock bus. Between the colourfully-packaged Easter eggs he could also see the ramparts of the Vatican bristling with white and yellow flags. Then he felt his mobile buzzing in his pocket; he pulled it out and snapped it open. The number was that of a public phone box.

‘Are you alone?'

‘Yes. Who's speaking?'

‘It's me, Ivan.'

‘Ivan! Where are you?'

‘Here in Rome. I've just arrived.'

‘Are you completely mad? They're still after you here!'

‘I know. And I'm still after them. Zladek Novak is on the hit list.'

‘Ivan, do you realise what's going on?'

‘Marta has told me everything. Your madcap plans will cause utter bedlam, and I'll take advantage of it to murder that swine.'

‘Leave it to us. He'll be made mincemeat of along with Benedict XVIII...'

‘No, he might not go up on to the podium and escape the explosion. And anyway, I want to kill him with my own hands. I want to see the terror in that one eye when he sees me pointing a pistol at his head.'

The fair-haired man sat bolt-upright in his chair. He looked out of the window at the passers-by, hoping they didn't include an imminent customer.

‘Do the others know you're here?' he asked, raising his hand and putting it on the coffee-machine.

‘Only you and Marta. The fewer the better.'

‘You do realise that you might be putting a spanner in the entire works?'

‘I shan't be interfering with your plans. You go ahead. But I need somewhere for tonight. Only tonight. By tomorrow it will all be over.' The fair-haired man pulled a face.

‘Ivan, it's very risky…'

‘Mirko, just think about it. It doesn't affect you; I'm the only one in danger.' The fair-haired man wiped the sweat off his forehead.

‘All right. Come round whenever you want,' said Mirko wearily. He switched off his mobile and put it back in his pocket, placed his elbows on the paper and tried to continue reading. But he kept losing the thread and missing lines. So, Ivan was back! Now it could only end in a bloodbath. He leafed through the paper from beginning to end without taking in a word.

The man with the red moustache knocked on the door and went into the study. The Vicar was waiting for him, seated at his desk. He did not get up but waited for the visitor to cross the whole length of the room in silence.

‘I don't like the news I'm getting, Kowalski!' he said sharply, putting two little bottles of spray back into a drawer.

‘We're working on it, Your Eminence. Salazar has vanished from the hospital, we don't know how. The only people who can have helped him are the angels of death. That's the proof that he was in cahoots with them all along,' the man said defensively.

‘I couldn't care less about any of that! And anyway, I don't think it's quite so clear-cut, Kowalski. Salazar is no fool. He is a hound of God. They've trained him well. Did you think you could cow him with a death threat? Within just a few days that fiend had managed to flush out a euthanasiast; you were on the job for months without managing anything at all. Now you have caused him to slip through our fingers with your persecution mania; and I don't think that your men in Holland are doing much better!' The Vicar got up suddenly and went towards the window; looking out at the changing pattern of the flowers in the garden below sometimes had a soothing effect.

‘Have you at least downloaded that scientist's computer?' he asked with unaccustomed courtesy.

‘The hard disks had already been removed by someone, probably by Pertiwi himself. We don't know where they're hidden. So we burned the lot, just to be on the safe side.'

‘So even that Darwinist's archives are beyond our reach!' remarked the Vicar with an effort at self-control, still contemplating the subtly coloured flower-bed.

‘We're going through Salazar's flat in Amsterdam. We think he may have copies of his friend's research,' proffered Kowalski nervously.

‘Yes, that friend who slipped through your fingers and who is still alive!' shot back the Vicar, finally detaching his gaze from the flower-bed and turning it upon the man with the red moustache. He went back to his desk and sat down, drumming his fingers nervously on the table.

‘We set this whole thing up so as to lure Salazar to Rome, and you let him give us the slip. We should have intercepted him, dismantled his network of syncretists and got our hands on Pertiwi's research. Now the whole thing's gone up in smoke!' continued the Vicar, continuing his effort at self-control.

‘Your Eminence, all is not yet lost. We are on Pertiwi's trail; our agents are on his heels. And Salazar won't make it out of Rome. He's done for; he thinks he can outsmart us…' Kowalski's attempt at a damage limitation exercise seemed to leave the prelate unconvinced. He opened a drawer in the desk and took out Salazar's china pipe-cum-holy-water sprinkler.

‘Kowalski, do you know what this is?' he asked him, dangling the thing in front of the red moustache. Kowalski took the pipe and turned it over in his hands.

‘A holy-water sprinkler!' he said, narrowing his eyes.

‘Exactly…' replied the Vicar, stretching out a hand to regain possession of the object. He dropped it back into the drawer and said, almost to himself:

‘This is too much – he must be killed.'

‘And so he shall, Your Eminence!'

‘You may go now, Kowalski! And don't come back until you've got results,' the Vicar snapped without even bothering to raise his head; eye contact was not for him.

It was late afternoon when Pablo had arrived outside the storeroom. As he passed the door, he glanced inside. Some workmen were stowing things on to the lorry parked in the courtyard. The red-faced one nearest the doorway, his overall unbuttoned to the waist, was drinking water from a bottle; he glanced at Pablo absent-mindedly as he wiped his mouth. Inside, a radio was blaring. Glancing sunlight fell through the skylights, causing the men's shadows to flicker over the end wall. The first-floor offices were empty, the blinds lowered. On the ground floor, next to the storeroom, was a changing-room with small cupboards and two benches up against the wall. Pablo walked round the building until he came to the courtyard. Wooden duck-boarding and cans of paraffin cluttered the narrow space, which was entered through a gate of stakes and rusty bedsprings, with a chain and padlock hanging from it; but it was open. Weeds were sprouting from the walls and pavement; the place was largely in shadow, but the pile of cans was in partial sunlight. Two workmen were standing on the truck and the others were passing crates up to them. Inside the storeroom, the red-faced man was now singing along to the music on the radio at the top of his voice; another man was begging him to stop. The narrow alleyway led to the back of other sheds. There were few shops in the neighbourhood, just a tobacconist on one corner of the avenue. A few desolate blocks of flats were perched at the crest of a rise, surrounded by tangled undergrowth. Dreary edge-of-town streets; rubbish-strewn ditches; illegal immigrants' shacks among scrubby bushes. Pablo retraced his steps to the avenue and went to wait for the others under the bus shelter. It was four against four; they couldn't afford to make any mistakes. They pushed the car up against the gate at the back. The truck was now fully loaded, the ropes firmly secured; the radio had been switched off. The workmen were in the changing-room, their voices audible above the noise of the shower. Pablo put on the belt with his toolkit, opened the gate and jumped up on to the truck. This was the trickiest bit: he had only a moment to locate the correct crate. He found it under several others, two smaller crates of oil-lamps and some cans of fuel oil. The others were standing by with the replacement boxes of candles. They passed them up to him hurriedly, almost holding their breath while Mirko, in the driving seat, had his hand on the ignition key. If something went wrong now, that would be that. Pablo didn't have time to secure one end of the rope; the workmen's voices were getting louder, they were coming out of the changing-room. He slipped through the gate and ran off with the others; Mirko reversed slowly after them. At the end of the alleyway they all climbed in, closing the doors quietly behind them. They stopped on a track in the countryside around Torre Lupata and threw the candles into a canal.

That night Marta woke up suddenly, drenched with sweat. She had had a nightmare, but she couldn't remember any details, only a vague sense of dread, and a series of rambling images. She checked the time: four in the morning. Her eyes were still burning with tiredness, but she could not get back to sleep. She tossed and turned; every fold in the sheet felt like a blade. Finally she got up and went to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Or milk, perhaps: she'd read somewhere that milk had a calming effect; she took a gulp straight out of the carton, but it was too cold. She went back into the bedroom and curled up on a chair, pulling a blanket round her shoulders and glancing out at the street through the shutters: one winking traffic-light and four large rubbish bins. Everything was laid out ready on a chair: her clothes, the train tickets, her suitcase, a guide to Venice. She had to look like a tourist. By now the substitute candles would be in place, but she wouldn't know how it had gone until the next day. All contacts put on hold until Thursday, by which time they would all be well out of Rome. What about Ivan? There was no way out for him. Mirko had told her that he'd come to Rome to kill Novak, but Ivan himself hadn't said a word about it. Why not? Did he not trust her? Or, yet again, was it so that she wouldn't get any fancy ideas? Trying to kill Novak was tantamount to suicide. Even if he did manage to fire a shot, he was doomed anyway. Marta sensed that it was late. She saw herself, on the run once again, in yet another house, another town. More safe houses, more shadowing, more attacks, cocaine capsules hidden amongst the omega-3, the dealers' suspicious faces, weapons slipped into her handbag, the panic that seized her at the sight of a man in uniform. And that enduring sense of loneliness, that fear. The impossibility of even sitting down quietly on a park bench. How would it all end? Sooner or later, they'd get her. Suppose she fell ill? Worse still, she might end up in prison. But might she not also come through unscathed? If only she had managed to persuade Ivan to stay with her. They could have got out of there, they could have gone away together, perhaps even to America. It was still possible.