Michael Dibdin - End games

Martin finished the rest of his drink in one.

‘Get over here,’ he told Larson. ‘I want large-scale maps of the area and a full report.’

Back in his room, he called home over an encrypted Skype internet connection. It was twenty after noon where Jake was, which turned out to be his personal gym.

‘Zup?’ Jake said, gasping like a landed fish.

Martin let him sweat his heart rate down a few beats without an answer. He was no longer powerless and humiliated, and in no hurry to spread the excellent word.

‘That exec jet you have on hold?’ he said finally. ‘What’s the lead time on that baby?’

‘Couple of hours? More, maybe. It’s like in Fresno.’

‘Get it warmed up, Jake.’

There was a pleased laugh the other end.

‘How come?’

‘The Aeroscan rep is swinging by momentarily to report in depth, but from what he just said on the phone it looks like we just struck gold. Literally.’

‘Awesome!’

‘How soon can you be here?’

‘The leasing outfit said ten, eleven hours? What time do you have there?’

‘Nine twenty-three.’

‘In the morning?’

‘In the evening.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t worry about that. Just get here as soon as you can. Call me from the plane when you’re an hour out and I’ll come meet you. It’ll be good whatever because we can’t move until after dark. Meanwhile I’ll chase up our Iraqi expendables and get busy renting the machinery we’ll need.’

A sudden thought struck him.

‘Hey, Jake? You have got a passport, haven’t you?’

‘A password?’

‘No, a passport. You know, a little blue booklet issued by the Feds with your name and picture inside? You’ll need one when you arrive.’

‘Bullshit. You just show them your driver’s licence. I’ve been all over. Canada, Mexico — ’

‘That’s just the attic and the basement, Jake. This is a different house. Believe me, you need a passport to get in.’

‘Okay, I’ll buy one online and have it overnighted.’

‘The process doesn’t work like that. It takes weeks.’

‘Fuck, that’s so totally twentieth century.’

‘Yeah, but listen. Remember a couple years back you visited with Paul on that Caribbean island he owns a chunk of?’

‘So?’

‘So you had a passport then which will still be valid. And another thing. The candlestick you mentioned? I’m guessing that you’ll want to export it. Could you give me a little more detail about the payload so I can start figuring out the logistics? Weight, dimensions, packaging requirements…’

‘Not off the top of my head. It’s like the Jewish national logo, only the real thing is solid gold. Let me get showered off and I’ll shoot you an email attachment. Hey, this is great news, Martin! Maybe you deserve a bonus.’

‘Maybe I do.’

Martin Nguyen sat back, a smile growing on his thin lips. It was not a pleasant smile, although Martin was in fact pleased. He Googled around a bit, then got on to eBay and typed ‘temple menorah’ in the Search box.

Nicola Mantega cracked shortly after four o’clock in the morning. It wasn’t so much what the interrogators had done to him physically as their crushingly contemptuous, mean-spirited attitude. By then the original gorillas had been relieved by a fresh pair, who would in due course be relieved by another, and so on, on and on, world without end. But what really hurt was the chief of police calling him silly.

Mantega had always prided himself on being furbissimo, a maestro of cunning schemes and shady short-cuts to riches. To be called silly was far worse than the slaps in the face and kicks to the ankle administered by Zen’s underlings when their verbal skills failed them. He, Nicola Mantega, silly? He’d show these bastards who was silly, and in the process extricate himself from this nightmare. Summoning up what remained of his dignity, he informed his tormentors that he was prepared to talk, but only to their superior. They appeared dubious, maybe even disappointed, but various phone calls were made and forty minutes later Aurelio Zen appeared in the basement interrogation room. He looked even more exhausted and dispirited than Mantega, which gave the latter hope.

‘I want to make a deal,’ he announced in a decisive tone which suggested that the terms would be his, and slapped his right palm down hard on the battered desk which, with the stool on which he was perched, constituted the only furnishings in the small, stuffy room. Zen lit a cigarette, rubbed his eyes, coughed several times, then set the cigarette down on the back of Mantega’s hand. When the latter’s cries subsided and he had been forcibly reseated on the stool, Zen looked at him blearily.

‘So sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you were an ashtray.’

Mantega was still reeling from the pain, and the thought of what might yet lie in store for him.

‘Why did you hurt me?’ he demanded, his voice on the brink of breaking down.

‘Why did your friends murder the American and mutilate that poor boy?’

‘What are you talking about? They’re not my — ’

Zen sprang to his feet, grabbed Mantega’s hair and tried to jerk his head back, but the fibres he was holding came away in his hand to reveal a gleaming bald pate.

‘And you want to make a deal with me?’ laughed Zen, tossing the toupee on the desk. ‘Well, the product had better be good, because the salesman certainly doesn’t impress much.’

‘It’s good, it’s good,’ mumbled Mantega. ‘And it’ll lead you to the people you really want.’

‘I’m listening.’

Mantega took a deep breath.

‘You know that helicopter that’s been circling round the valley? Everyone thinks it’s searching out locations for that film they’re supposed to be making here. But I happen to know what it’s really doing.’

‘Which is?’

‘Searching for buried treasure.’

‘I’m not interested in treasure hunts.’

‘Of course not, signore. Neither am I, and in any case it’s very unlikely to succeed. Which is why I’ve convinced Giorgio — ’

‘Ah, so you do know him,’ Zen murmured.

‘Only by that name, which may well be false. I don’t know his family name or where he’s from and I’ve never seen his face.’

‘What did you tell Giorgio?’

‘I suggested to him…’

‘When was this?’

‘Two nights ago.’

‘On the phone?’

‘In person.’

‘That’s a certain lie. You’ve never been out of sight of my surveillance team, and they reported no such meeting.’

Mantega smiled archly. He had finally scored a point.

‘Giorgio came to my house in the early hours of the morning. He knew that there was a police cordon there, but he managed to get through it without being seen. He grew up in the mountains hunting boar and wolves and told me that he can move more silently than a leaf falling from a tree.’

‘You just said that you’d never seen his face.’

‘He wore a mask.’

‘Well, it was certainly kind of him to run such risks to drop in on an old friend,’ Zen remarked sarcastically. ‘What did he have to say?’

‘He didn’t want to talk. He came to kill me.’

‘Why?’

‘He said he’d decided that I was of no further use to him, and a possible risk.’

Zen laughed and lit another cigarette.

‘Any chance of a coffee?’ he asked one of the other officers.

The man hesitated.

‘That place by the bus station,’ the other prompted.

‘Signor Mantega?’ Zen enquired.

‘ Un cappuccino scuro. Lots of sugar.’

When the officer had left on his errand, Zen turned his eyes back to the prisoner, who was eyeing the glowing tip of his cigarette nervously.