Michael Dibdin - Cabal

It was then he decided that his cousin must die. Ruspanti had in fact seriously miscalculated. Not for a moment did Falcone think of agreeing to the Prince’s demands, which now ran to private planes to smuggle him out of the country and secret hideouts in Switzerland or Austria where he could lie low until the affair blew over. It was not just his commercial success that was at stake, but his very self! He was no longer Falcone, but Falco. If Falco were to be revealed as a void, an illusion, then what would become of him? As long as Ludovico Ruspanti remained alive, Falco’s existence had hung in the balance.

As it did now, he thought. The intruder stood quite still, the pistols aimed at his queasily yawing head.

‘Until this moment, I had no idea that any such organization as the Cabal existed,’ Falcone said wearily. ‘If I have inadvertedly offended or inconvenienced you, I apologize. If there is any way in which I can make reparations, I am more than willing to do so.’

The man in cleric costume raised his hands slowly.

‘No!’ shrieked Falcone in sheer terror. ‘For the love of God forgive me, I beg of you!’

The empty eyes of the mask stared at him.

‘I? I have nothing to do with it.’

Falcone grovelled on the floor, abasing himself utterly.

‘I meant the Cabal.’

The intruder laughed.

‘The Cabal doesn’t exist.’ And he raised his mask like a visor.

The effect was as stunning as the detonation of the grenade. Slack-jawed, pale, seemingly paralysed, Falcone just stared and stared. He, who had fooled everyone around him for so long, had now himself been made a fool of — and by a dowdy creep whose suits looked as though they were made by his mother! How was it possible? Why had it been permitted? The world had stopped making sense.

‘Don’t worry, dottore, you’re in good company,’ said Zen, tossing the latex mask aside. ‘The best minds in the Vatican fell for it when Ruspanti spun them the tale. The press and the public fell for it when Grimaldi wrote his anonymous letter. I fell for it myself when the Vatican seemed to be covering the matter up, and the top man at the Ministry did when I passed the story on.’

Falcone studied him watchfully from the floor.

‘The shock’s wearing off now, isn’t it?’ Zen continued. ‘You’re starting to ask yourself why I bothered going to all this trouble. After all, everyone else has had a reason. Ruspanti used the Cabal to get into the Vatican. Grimaldi used it to stir up speculation about Ruspanti’s death, so that he could put the squeeze on you and Zeppegno. You two used it to try and lead me up a blind alley. But what’s in it for me? That’s what you’re asking yourself, isn’t it dottore?’

He took out his packet of Nazionali and lit up.

‘Of course, I could say that I’m just getting even for that session in the confessional. My knees just about seized up solid! Where were you, anyway?’

Falcone gave a pallid grin. He didn’t know what this man wanted, but he sensed that his life was no longer in danger.

‘In a car on the Gianicolo hill. It was Marco’s idea. He provided the gadgetry and set it all up. Mind you, we had a few tricky moments, like when that police car passed by with its siren going.’

‘What you told me about the Vatican — the schisms and feuds, all the various groups jockeying for position — sounded very authentic.’

‘I got all that from Ludovico. He knew all the right-wing weirdos and religious eccentrics in Rome, of course. These people are actually quite harmless, like the ones who want to restore the monarchy. All I did was make them sound a significant threat.’

Zen nodded.

‘It sounds like you were on quite good terms with your cousin. And Ariana is still in love with him, isn’t she?’

A chill ripple passed over Falcone’s skin.

‘What?’ he croaked.

Zen waved a pistol casually.

‘Look, let’s get one thing clear. I’m not here in my professional capacity.’

Falcone stared at him.

‘You mean…’

‘I mean I’m on the make,’ Zen replied. ‘I’m a corrupt cop. You’ve read about them in the papers, you’ve seen them on television. Now, for a limited period only, you can have one in your own home or office.’

Raimondo Falcone stood up, facing Zen.

‘How much?’

Zen let his cigarette fall to the floor and stubbed it out with the toe of his right shoe. Falcone watched anxiously to make sure it was properly extinguished. Fire in the atelier was the great terror of every designer.

‘How much do you think it’s worth?’

Falcone’s eyes narrowed.

‘How much what ’s worth?’

Zen looked past him at the window of the inner office, where the lighted dome of the Galleria rose into the gathering fog.

‘You killed your cousin to keep it secret,’ he said as though to himself. ‘That would seem to make it quite valuable.’

Again the chill spread over Falcone, eating into his complacency like acid. With an effort, he pulled himself together. There was no need to panic. He was in no danger. All this crooked, taunting bastard wanted was money. Give it to him, promise him whatever he wanted, and get him the hell out of here.

‘We agreed fifty million for the transcript,’ he said decisively, the businessman in him taking charge.

‘I no longer have the transcript.’

Falcone couldn’t help smiling. He knew that, having wrested most of it from Zeppegno before pushing him out of the train. Instead of hanging on to the door, poor obtuse Zeppegno had clutched the transcript, still believing that it was the real object of the exercise. The idea had been that Zeppegno would join the pendolino at Florence, engage Zen in conversation and get hold of the document. Falcone, in drag again, would go to the vestibule as they approached the Apennine tunnel and turn off the lights. While Zeppegno walked through to the next carriage, Falcone was to go back to the seat where Zen was sitting and shoot him dead.

At least, that’s what Zeppegno thought was going to happen. Falcone had quite different ideas, and in the event they prevailed. Once he’d opened the door and pushed his startled accomplice out, he’d taken the part of the transcript he’d managed to seize back to the lavatory. Luckily it included the page where Ruspanti phoned Ariana. He’d burnt that and flushed the ashes down the toilet. This was no doubt an unnecessary precaution, but he preferred to err on the safe side. Then he’d pushed the other pages out of the window, checked his appearance in the mirror and gone out to face Zen and the train crew. As he’d expected, all they’d looked at was his bum.

‘I’m not interested in the transcript,’ he said.

‘There’s no reason why you should be,’ agreed Zen. ‘You weren’t even mentioned.’

‘I was simply using that figure as a benchmark.’

‘Your sister was, though.’

For a moment Falcone hoped he’d misheard, even though he knew perfectly well he hadn’t.

‘And her dolls,’ added Zen. ‘And the journalist who supposedly wanted to write about them. That’s who she thought I was when I went there yesterday. What really shook me was that she seems to think that Ruspanti is still alive.’

Falcone stood perfectly still, his hands clasped and his eyes raised to the ceiling, like a plaster statue of one of the lesser saints.

‘Of course, given the isolation in which she lives, there’s no reason why she should ever find out. Unless someone told her.’

There was no reaction apart from a fractional heightening of Falcone’s expression of transcendental sublimity.

‘I’m no psychologist,’ Zen admitted, ‘but I’d be prepared to bet that if Ariana was told that her beloved cousin Ludo was dead, and exactly how he died, then the consequences would be extremely grave.’