Michael Dibdin - End games

‘I don’t have the facilities for that, Jake. I’ll try and keep it brief. Just listen up and tell me if I’ve got anything wrong.’

‘Sure, Mart. You’re the boss.’

Nguyen ignored this crack.

‘The material you sent me, plus some follow-up research I did online, tells me that we’re looking for the Great Menorah, one of the sacred vessels of the original temple in Jerusalem. It’s of cast gold, hollow within, with a hexagonal base and seven branches representing the planets plus the sun, and weighs in at about one hundred pounds. It stood beside the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple and was captured by the Romans when they sacked the city two thousand years ago.’

‘Correct.’

‘So the Romans take it back with them. We know that for sure because there’s an image of Jewish slaves carrying it in the triumphal procession carved on the Arch of Titus, after which it was stashed away in one of their temples. Seems they really hated the Jews. It wasn’t enough to beat them in battle, they had to steal their nutty one-god religion. Anyway, three and a half centuries later it’s the Romans’ turn to get conquered. Alaric cleans the city out, then heads south and ends up dying in this fleapit. His Goth homies bury him under the river with all the goodies he’d plundered, then do a total deniability with extreme prejudice operation on the work force.’

‘You got it.’

Martin knocked back his drink.

‘Let’s go outside,’ he told Jake. ‘I need to smoke.’

They stepped out into the muscular embrace of the night air. Thunder rumbled and stumbled and then a fragmentation bomb exploded overhead, showering huge drops of water on the patio and the parched lawns, hedges and trees, raising a cool, sensuous freshness that reeked of growth and decay.

‘Wow!’ said Jake. ‘They do like weather here too?’

‘So if the story about Alaric is true,’ Martin resumed, ‘then there must be a ton of other valuable stuff in the tomb, worth probably billions, supposing you could find a buyer. But we’re not interested in the money, just the menorah, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Why? Are you Jewish?’

Jake grinned.

‘Are bears Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?’

‘Okay, okay! Sorry I asked. It’s just that what we’re going to be doing from here on in is very high-risk. Are you sure you want to be there tonight, Jake? If anything goes wrong, I might be able to talk my way out of it. I’m just an employee, but you’re the mandante, as they say here. Might be smarter to stay here at the hotel and then cut back to your jet and get the hell out if the flares go up.’

‘No way. I’ve been waiting over a year for this moment. Chickening out now would be like not showing up for your honeymoon.’

‘Or your funeral.’

‘Don’t let that motion sickness thing get to you, Mart.’

Tom Newman sidled up to them.

‘Sorry to intrude, guys, but your food’s on the table. Crostini rossi piccanti, caciocavallo ai ferri, zuppa di finocchi. Best they could do at this hour.’

‘Cool,’ Jake replied cordially. ‘I just love ethnic food.’

It was in the small hours of the morning, about ten past four, when Nicola Mantega finally heard from Giorgio. So did the police technicians who were monitoring the new phone that Mantega had been given, and as a result the call was immediately traced to a public phone in Cerenzia, about ten kilometres east of San Giovanni in Fiore but with easy access to the superstrada. When a police car arrived twenty minutes later there was no one about, and it was unlikely that anyone in the town had seen Giorgio come or go. Nevertheless, he had been terse.

‘They moved in during the night with heavy equipment. Dug around a bit, took a look at the rocks inside, then left in a hurry.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I was watching. Oh, and I hear you got arrested and then released a few hours later. I hope you didn’t make a deal.’

‘Of course not! They simply had no evidence against me, so I — ’

‘I’ll kill you if I have to, Nicoletta. Whether you’re behind bars or walking the streets makes no difference. Remember that in the days to come and honour our agreement. If anything goes wrong, you’re a dead man whatever happens to me.’

The phrase kept recurring to Mantega as he drove into Cosenza. Sei un morto. That was how the shattered trunk of the man he had known as Peter Newman was invariably described in the media: ‘dressed like a corpse’. Giorgio might not be as powerful a figure as he liked to make out, but he was crazy. The thing about crazy people was that you never had the slightest idea what they were going to do next, any more than they did.

Tom Newman appeared at nine o’clock sharp. He looked terrible: pallid, exhausted and depressed. Since his father’s death had been in Mantega’s mind, it occurred to him that the boy might finally have realised the full horror of what had happened. But when he suggested that they adjourn to a bar for a restorative coffee and brioche, the next thing he knew Tom was standing in the street waving enthusiastically to an attractive young woman.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Oh, just a friend,’ Tom replied airily.

Over their coffees, Mantega elaborated at some length on what fools the police had made of themselves by arresting him the day before. It was vital to get this idea across to the americani. The last thing Mantega wanted was for them to suspect that they might be getting involved with someone complicit in criminal enterprises, especially since they were. Tom made sympathetic noises, but his attention was evidently wandering off in directions that Mantega couldn’t identify.

‘So, I understand that the package has arrived,’ he said once they were back in his office. ‘Am I to understand that your employers have succeeded where so many previous efforts have failed? Have they indeed located the site where Alaric the Goth was buried?’

His tone was studiously jocular if not ironical, but the young man’s response was an abrupt return to his earlier mood of sullen gloom.

‘Hell exists, but it may be empty,’ he said.

‘Scusami?’

‘They’ve found what they think is Alaric’s tomb, only when they dug it out, all that was there was a circle of stone walling filled with river rock. So now they’re thinking it must have been discovered earlier and all the stuff looted and they’re packing up to leave on their private jet this afternoon. The only question is whether I go with them.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ murmured Mantega. ‘Judging by the encounter I just witnessed in the street, you seem to be doing quite nicely back in your ancestral home. My congratulations! The only problem now is to find a way in which you can support yourself here and enjoy to the full the ripe fruit of our soaring peaks and fertile valleys, so to speak. I know that you have ideas about opening a restaurant, but that sort of venture requires a lot of money to be done successfully.’

He leant forward and gazed at Tom intently.

‘Luckily for you, I have an idea. Some three or four years ago, I was approached by a certain party with a very unusual proposition.’

Mantega broke off and looked around cautiously.

‘You understand that I am speaking now in the strictest confidence,’ he went on in a conspiratorial undertone. ‘Nothing of what I say must be repeated beyond the four walls of this room. Agreed?’

Tom jerked his body in a spasm combining a shrug and a nod.

‘The individual’s name need not concern us,’ Mantega continued. ‘Suffice it to say that his story was so incredible that I didn’t even bother hearing him out to the end. On the contrary, I laughed in his face, told him in no uncertain terms not to bother me with such nonsense again and showed him the door.’