Michael Dibdin - End games

A stunning guttural rumble that would have had any rap artist weeping in awe shook the city like a celestial earthquake.

‘Young Newman also tried to pick up one of the female Digos agents. She took advantage of the situation to read the number Mantega had just called off the screen of his mobile, in case we didn’t have an intercept in place.’

‘What’s the agent’s name?’

‘Mirella Kodra.’

‘Tell her to get in touch with young Signor Newman, co-operate up to a certain point, find out whatever she can about what he’s up to and report back.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Zen heard his desk phone ringing and dashed into his office.

‘I’ve found someone who is willing, subject to certain provisos, to talk to you about the subject we discussed,’ Giovanni Sforza said, as though choosing his words carefully. ‘I’ve got him on the line now and will put him through to you.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Don’t ask. And don’t ask him either.’

‘Very well, I’ll try to avoid the tough questions.’

‘Avoid jokes too. These people take themselves very seriously indeed.’

After a number of fuzzy clicks, an unfamiliar voice spoke.

‘ Buona sera, dottore. I have been given to understand that you wish to contact a certain individual of my acquaintance. For the purposes of this conversation, we will refer to him simply as Roberto.’

‘That is correct.’

‘And that you wish to obtain a DNA sample from him. May I ask why?’

‘To positively identify the victim of a murder I’m investigating. Circumstantial evidence appears to suggest that he was Roberto’s nephew. Genetic profiling would instantly confirm or exclude that hypothesis, which in turn might well have a decisive effect on the progress of the case.’

There was a silence at the other end.

‘So you don’t wish to interview Roberto in person?’ the other man said at length.

‘Ideally, yes. He might well be able to supply other details relating to his family which are at present either vague or unknown. But I appreciate the sensitivities of your department, so if you insist I will settle for the DNA material. As you perhaps know, this isn’t an invasive procedure. A mouth swab would suffice. What is crucial, however, is that there should be irrefutable evidence that the sample was indeed taken from the individual under discussion.’

‘I can provide immaculate paperwork to support the authenticity of any sample, should Roberto consent to provide one.’

‘I haven’t the slightest doubt that you are in a position to provide any type of paperwork whatsoever,’ Zen replied with a touch of steel in his voice. ‘But should the case go to court, the person named in the documents you provided would be required to present himself before the judges in order to validate under oath the statements made therein. Do you really want to risk one of your agents being blown like that?’

A further silence ensued.

‘As it happens, Roberto is willing to meet you in person, subject to stringent conditions.’

‘Name them.’

‘First, that the meeting be here in Rome. How do you propose to arrive?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes.’

‘When would this be?’

‘Tomorrow at the earliest.’

‘Then tomorrow. I’ll take the night train.’

‘Very well. Please ask Dottor Sforza to contact me with the estimated arrival time and other details in due course. You will be met at the station and conveyed to the meeting place. A medical orderly will be present to ensure that the correct procedures for taking the DNA samples are observed. Following that, you may speak to Roberto for a limited period, on condition that his refusal to respond to any given question is accepted as binding, and that no record of your conversation with him — whether written, electronic or in any other medium — is made. Do you agree?’

‘I don’t appear to have any option.’

‘Correct. I hope the results of your visit prove helpful, dottore. Buon lavoro.’

Splayed out on the bed behind two layers of closed curtains, with CNN murmuring from the television, Martin Nguyen devoured the club sandwich that he’d ordered up from room service. It didn’t look like a club sandwich, being layered on slices of a freshly baked roll, but it tasted better than any he’d ever had. Even the fries were great. They were nicely crisp but dense inside, and tasted earthily of potato. Martin had kind of forgotten that fries were made from potatoes, but when you had to chew on them a little the whole process became clear. Al dente, he thought.

He had been forced to listen to a lot of Italian since his arrival, and found that he understood it perfectly. Not so much the content, although he was picking up quite a bit of that too, but the form. This was atavistically familiar to him, unlike the incoherent lexis-free mumblings he had to deal with back on the West Coast, where the key point of the exchange often seemed to be the speaker’s appeal to anyone present to give him a helping hand with the almost impossible task of articulating whatever banal thought had sparked and then immediately died in his brain. Every utterance ended up as a collaborative effort, like raising a barn. It was tough, backbreaking work, but it brought the community together. Italian, on the other hand, was a language much like Martin’s own lost Vietnamese: pure, plain and declarative. In neither tongue was there even an approximate equivalent for such phrases as ‘So I was, kind of, like, you know?’

Martin had necessarily learned to speak that dialect on demand, but he also had a number of other registers at his disposal when the need arose. He had been acutely aware of such a need many times that day, but all he had to fall back on were Tom Newman’s translations. The loss of his verbal karate skills had been the greatest trial during an incredibly long working day which had left Martin feeling exhausted, baffled and all the more foreign for the apparent similarities to his own native culture. First there had been the crack-of-dawn meeting at the Aeroscan base, followed by an unpleasant encounter with the local police chief, who had turned out to be both tough and intelligent, qualities which Nguyen respected but preferred not to encounter in opponents in a position of power.

Then after lunch, during which Tom and the waiter had made the simple transaction of ordering a goddamn meal sound like the finale of some Three Tenors extravaganza, he had spent hours in a dingy, stifling office with the notary that Newman had hired as a fixer trying to figure out the current state of play plus how the hell anything got done in this Latino dump, if it ever did. Throughout, he had been dependent on Tom’s translations of what was said on either side. The kid’s English was way more sophisticated than Jake’s, but Martin had no way of knowing what his Italian was like, and hence of how he, Martin Nguyen, was coming across.

To cap it all off, on the way back to the hotel Tom had blurted out the news that his father was dead. Here was cause for genuine grief. In Martin’s view, there was a time and a place for homicide. Plumb in the middle of the stealth-bomber strategy he’d devised for this project, with the victim a declared Rapture Works contractor, was just totally inappropriate. He was furious that his hefty incentive bonus had been put at risk by a bunch of peasant bandidos with more balls than brains. This one was going to need heavy spin on it. It was essential that Aeroscan’s operations continued as smoothly and invisibly as possible until the mission had been accomplished.

His mobile phone burbled into life. Martin didn’t want to answer it, but he could no more ignore a ringtone than a mother could her crying baby.

‘Yo.’