Michael Dibdin - End games

‘You are too kind,’ Zen replied smoothly. ‘As it happens, I agree that Cosenza is the most attractive city in Calabria — not that the competition is exactly fierce. But you are of course biased in these matters, since your father is a native.’

Zen had had very few dealings with Americans, but the volatility with which Tom Newman’s mood altered in a moment was completely familiar to him.

‘You’re the second person who’s tried to get me to believe that bullshit!’

‘Might the first have been Signor Nicola Mantega? I understand that he met you at the airport last night.’

‘How did you know?’

Zen looked at him curiously.

‘How do you know Signor Mantega?’

‘My father mentioned the name to me when he called during his first week here. After the disappearance, I got Mantega’s phone number from my father’s office and then called him. He’s been very helpful and supportive.’

‘I’m sure he has,’ Zen said drily. ‘Apart from his personal legal situation regarding this matter, he may well turn out to be the intermediary once negotiations for your father’s release get under way.’

‘But why wouldn’t the kidnappers deal directly with me? I can talk to them as well as Signor Mantega.’

‘In such interactions they will want someone they know and trust. Besides, they may prefer to express themselves in dialect. It’s a very different language from standard Italian and is incomprehensible even to me but preferred by many native Calabrians, particularly at moments of great intimacy or intensity. Which no doubt explains why your father had recourse to it during his stay here.’

Tom Newman flashed his deep hazel eyes at Zen in a way that was not at all cherubic.

‘What is this crap? My father is one hundred per cent American! Is that clear?’

Zen picked his words carefully.

‘It’s clear that that is what you believe, signore, but the fact remains that during his stay in Cosenza your father has been heard speaking a variety of dialect distinctive to that mountain range over there.’

He gestured to the window, where the verdant flanks of the Sila plateau could be seen sloping down to the valley where the city lay. From the wide expanse of the flood plain came the persistent drone of the helicopter that an American film company had hired to scout out suitable locations for their next project. It was a noisy pest, but both the mayor and the prefect had given the enterprise their blessing and there was nothing to be done.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Tom Newman said in a hard tone.

Zen shrugged.

‘He would hardly have been the first Calabrian to have emigrated to la Merica. In fact he wouldn’t even have been in the first hundred thousand. But as it happens you don’t need to believe me.’

He leafed through some papers and then passed across the naturalisation details of Peter Newman supplied by the consulate in Naples together with an Italian birth certificate in the name of Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati.

‘Are these official?’ Tom asked after reading them.

‘As official as can be. Your father assumed the name Peter Newman in 1969. Before that he was Pietro Calopezzati, born in the comune of Spezzano della Sila up in those mountains half an hour’s drive from here. Are you telling me that you are completely ignorant of these facts?’

‘Why would I lie to you?’ Tom Newman snapped. ‘I didn’t even know there was anything to lie about! Anyway, what’s all this got to do with the kidnapping? That’s what you’re supposed to be investigating. Who cares if my father concealed his origins for some reason?’

‘I care about everything that may be connected to the case, Signor Newman. One never knows what may turn out to be relevant. For instance, the Calopezzati were, until the political changes shortly after your father’s birth, among the richest landowners in Italy. At this point I have no information about the present state of the family finances, but the kidnappers certainly will. That may well affect the amount of the ransom they demand. I take it you have a mobile phone.’

Newman stubbed out his cigarette.

‘It doesn’t work in Europe.’

‘Then you’ll basically be deaf and dumb over here, and as is often the case with those who suffer from those disabilities, people will take you for an idiot.’

‘All right, I’ll get one.’

‘Pass the number on to me immediately. Once the kidnappers make their move, it’s essential that we are able to react quickly. The gang will almost certainly set a timetable for further negotiations, and if they don’t receive a prompt reply they may well break off contact. At that point things can rapidly get out of hand, with terrible results.’

Zen’s face clouded over.

‘Odd, your father deceiving you like that,’ he murmured. ‘I hope everything’s going to be all right.’

The watcher outside Nicola Mantega’s office on Corso Mazzini was getting bored. Thanks to his work with the Digos anti-terrorist squad, Benedetto was an old hand at stakeouts despite his relative youth, and knew that boredom was a surveillance operative’s worst enemy. It eroded your concentration, imperceptibly but continually, and when something finally happened, your reflexes would be stiff and your reaction time sluggish. If the wait was long enough and the event sufficiently discreet, you might even miss it altogether.

The night before, Mantega had been followed back to his villa by the motorcyclists, who reported that he had gone straight to bed. In the morning, a fresh team had tailed him back to the city in what was seemingly one of the ubiquitous Ape three-wheeled vans used by smallholders and rural tradesmen, but in this case powered by a very quiet 1.5-litre engine mounted in the covered rear cargo space. The target had spent the entire time since then in his office, in which an assortment of listening devices had been installed in the course of a nocturnal visit by members of the technical support group. Later in the day, the motorcycle duo had relieved the Ape team at the rear of the office building, while Benedetto kept his eyes on the front door from the specially equipped delivery van, which had been repainted green and given a fresh logo overnight.

The end result of all this effort had been precisely zero. Mantega had left home and arrived at the office at the normal hour, and his phone calls had been entirely routine, relating to his work facilitating contracts, payments and legal issues for various nominally legitimate business enterprises. A total yawn, in short, and Benedetto was in fact yawning when Mantega emerged from the utilitarian 1960s office building shortly after noon. This was a perfectly reasonable hour for a libera professionista to begin winding down towards lunch, but two features of the situation immediately struck Benedetto. The first was that Mantega had changed out of the jacket, pullover and tie he had worn to work into decidedly unsmart jeans, an open-necked sweatshirt and work boots. The second was that instead of walking towards his favourite restaurant or driving off in the Alfa in which he had arrived, he got into a taxi which had drawn up near by a few minutes earlier. Benedetto started the van and radioed the others to get their MotoGuzzi going. The taxi headed east across the Crati river and then south, where the bikers overtook both the van and the taxi with breathtaking arrogance. A few minutes later, the front tail came through on the radio link.

‘He paid off the cab in Casali and is now in a cafe opposite the station.’

‘Understood. I’ll take over.’

At one time, Casali had been a small and undistinguished village on the main road south from Cosenza, but that highway had long been superseded by the autostrada and the community itself subsumed into the suburbs of the city. Its centre was a modest piazza completely clogged with parked cars. Benedetto left the van a block further on and then doubled back, apparently talking non-stop on his mobile. In reality he was moving his lips silently while his colleague from the MotoGuzzi crew briefed him on the current situation. Mantega was still in the bar, drinking a cappuccino which he had already paid for, a slightly unusual thing to do in such a humble establishment. He had not apparently made contact with anybody.