Michael Dibdin - End games

‘Car leaves in thirty minutes,’ Martin Nguyen snapped when Tom appeared back at the hotel. ‘You want a ride home, get your ass in gear. I’ve cancelled your room.’

Martin’s own room had been gutted and his impedimenta reduced to two armoured and combination-locked suitcases which stood beside the unmade bed. It had been a morning from hell. First the Iraqi work crew had had to be shipped off home, blissfully unaware that their death sentences had been revoked. Martin had got a break on the price from his Baghdad contact over that aspect of the deal, but he wasn’t about to pass this bit of good news on to Jake — not that he could have got through anyway. Jake’s site was down. He was offline. All you could get out of him was error messages and access denied.

‘Mantega says he knows the people who found Alaric’s treasure.’

For a moment, Martin thought that Tom was speaking Italian. He heard the words clearly but couldn’t make any sense of them.

‘Mantega?’ he queried.

‘The notary who was — ’

‘Notary!’ Martin screamed. ‘Who cares about fucking notaries? If they were any good they’d be lawyers. A goddamn fortune has just gone down the drain and you’re talking to me about notaries! Are you out of your mind? Letting crazies board a plane is against FAA regs. Buy your own ticket home!’

Tom stood his ground. On the way back to Rende that morning, he’d called Mirella and suggested dinner. She’d said she’d check her diary and would get back, but she’d taken his call and she hadn’t said no. Tom wasn’t afraid of Martin Nguyen.

‘Mantega is willing to get in touch with them and ask them to hand over samples for you to have verified as genuine by an independent expert of your choosing. If you’re satisfied that they’re authentic, further pieces would be available for purchase on an item by item basis.’

Martin speared Tom with a look.

‘How did Mantega know that we were looking for that treasure? What happened to our film location cover story?’

‘Well, there was that Aldobrandini interview. After that, knowing Mantega, he probably asked around. Quizzed the pilot or the ground staff. What do I know? It’s hard to keep an operation of that size secret in a place like this.’

That made a kind of sense, plus it was what Martin wanted to hear.

‘Okay, tell your friend the notary that we’ll give him twenty-four hours. That’s firm and non-negotiable. He has to get the samples to us for evaluation within that window.’

He tossed Tom out and started calculating time, money, ways and means. Martin had always been boss at multitasking, but he’d never had a chance to do it for such high stakes before. There was a certain drop-dead parcel of land above the Da Rang river that he’d had his eyes on for years. He’d often dreamt of wintering there, maybe even retiring and going home one of these days. The country was opening up more and more with every year that passed, even for the sons of former torturers. Most of the population was under forty and had only the vaguest memories of those times. Besides, the Vietnamese had by necessity always been pragmatists. They might still pay lip service to the party line, but all they really wanted was your money. Martin decided that it was time to assert his ethnic and cultural origins, to reassume his indochinite.

He logged on to an internet research site that employed brainy, underfunded college kids and golden-age retirees who knew everything there was to know about just one thing, and within twenty minutes had a list of a dozen possibles which he whittled down on the phone to six, then three, before selecting the curator of antiquities at a museum in Bucharest. Martin had always associated Romanians with campy vampires and taxi drivers who couldn’t find their ass in the dark without a flashlight and a map, but it turned out that the Romans had been there way back when and had left behind a ton of stuff on which this Gheorghe Alecsandri was a recognised world-class expert. Add in that the guy was cheap, available and spoke way better English than Jake and it was a no-brainer. Martin fixed for him to arrive that evening, evaluate the samples, return a thousand euros richer the next day, ask no questions and tell no tales. He then spent a half-hour online arranging for the overnight transport to the local airport of a product he had recently bought on eBay, before heading to the top floor to try and get Jake onside.

This wasn’t easy. Just getting Jake to unlock his door wasn’t easy. Getting Jake to respond to this new development really wasn’t easy, but if that sweet chunk of real estate was ever to be his then it had to be done. Jake never talked much, but now he wouldn’t talk at all. It took twenty minutes to elicit even the occasional ‘Eeeh’, but Martin doggedly kept going, repeating the gist of the story over and over again in different words. An eternity seemed to pass before he finally got Jake warmed up to a mental age of around three or four, at which point, just like a toddler, he wouldn’t shut up. Martin then had to listen to a rambling, incoherent monologue about how Jake had been totally scammed and suckered. By the rules of the game the menorah had to have been there, only it wasn’t, so the game itself must be screwed and that was like just such a total bummer, nothing made sense any more, what use was money if you couldn’t buy what you wanted…

‘Jake? Hello, Jake!’

‘Eeeh.’

‘Listen to me, Jake. Here’s something I haven’t told you. These guys mentioned some of the stuff they stole from the tomb when they opened it. One was a solid gold seven-branched candlestick. Mantega said it really impressed them because it was so big and an absolute bitch to haul away. Are you hearing me, Jake? The menorah was there, it’s safe in their hands and they’re willing to cut a deal. This ain’t over yet, so don’t go quitting on me now.’

‘Eeeh!’

‘Put the jet on hold. I’ve arranged for an expert to get here tonight, the director of a major European museum. He’ll look over the pieces that we’re being offered for evaluation purposes. If he says they’re genuine, that means their whole story and the rest of the treasure must also be genuine. In which case we get back to the other party and tell them that all we’re interested in buying is that big candlestick. After that, it’s just down to money.’

Jake scowled and slouched around a bit longer, but in the end he seemed to see the logic of this.

‘Yeah, well, like, whatever, I guess.’

The call that Nicola Mantega had been expecting came shortly after four that afternoon.

‘Check your mailbox,’ said Giorgio. ‘Collect the goods and take them to the buyers for assessment. Keep them in view at all times and bring them with you when you leave, then take them back to where you got them, put the receipt in an envelope and deliver it by hand to the address written on the paper enclosed. These items are not for sale.’

Mantega ran downstairs to the bleak entrance hall of the building and unlocked his slot in the metal bin on the wall. Alongside the usual pile of junk and bills lay a plain brown envelope, unstamped and unaddressed. Inside was a left-luggage ticket headed Fratelli Girimonti and an address near the bus station. That day’s date had been stamped below, along with the handwritten time of deposit, about five hours before. There was also a scrap of paper with an address up in the old city painfully written in block capitals.

Mantega decided to walk the length of Corso Mazzini to his destination and take a taxi back. The exercise would do him good and help calm his spirits, which were understandably in a state of some turbulence. He would also have a much better chance of spotting young Tommaso’s girlfriend or any other visible tail. At the end of the gun-barrel vista that the long straight boulevard afforded, a massive white thunderhead was visibly expanding in the thinner air high above, burgeoning out like the blast of dust and debris from a slow-motion explosion. Down in the street, every surface was denuded by the caustic sunlight whose brutal candour taught every Calabrian that what you saw was what you got and all you would ever get, thus making life easier for such people as himself, who traded in appearances that weren’t always quite so candid. He processed down Corso Mazzini, acknowledging the greetings of male acquaintances and the pointed glances of women young enough to be his daughter, telling him that while he might be a bit portly he was still powerful. They knew where the oil to cook their eggs came from. Mantega felt himself relaxing with every step he took. As long as he stayed here, in his own territory, surrounded by his people, nothing really bad could ever happen to him.