Michael Dibdin - End games

Fratelli Girimonti turned out to be an old-fashioned ironmonger’s shop, opposite the square hollowed out of the hillside where the country bus routes terminated. It sold nails and screws and nuts and bolts and washers of every size and type, drills and chisels, hatchets and hammers, nippers and clippers, not to mention the cast-iron cooking pans, barbecues and patio furniture suspended on hooks from the ceiling. For your ferrous metal needs, this was clearly the place to come. The left-luggage facility was a minor aspect of the services available there, a remnant of an earlier era when peasants and travelling salesmen arrived by bus and needed a place to deposit their baggage until they moved on or found lodgings. Nicola Mantega handed over the ticket, paid the miniscule fee due and took possession of a large and surprisingly heavy cardboard box.

He went outside and looked around for a taxi. There were always a few of them hanging around the bus station.

‘ Prego.’

It took Mantega a moment to adjust his sightline to focus on the saloon double-parked outside the ironmonger’s. It took him another to recognise the face of the new police chief staring at him through an opened slit in the tinted rear window.

‘No really, thanks so much, very kind of you but I’d really rather take a taxi,’ he blurted out.

‘I’m not being kind,’ Zen returned. ‘Get in.’

Feeling horribly conspicuous, Mantega elbowed his way through the mobile mass of street people, students, African pedlars, gypsy beggars and bargain seekers.

‘How do you know Giorgio’s people didn’t see this?’ he demanded angrily of Zen as the car pulled away.

‘Why should Giorgio expose his people to stake out a perfectly routine transaction? Besides, the surveillance team that followed you here didn’t report the presence of any competition, so I decided to take a chance. Cosenza is starting to bore me and I want to force the pace a little. Let’s have a look at the goods.’

With the aid of a nasty-looking knife supplied by Zen’s driver Mantega slit open the plastic strip sealing the cardboard box perched on his knees, revealing multiple layers of faded newsprint. Like children opening Christmas presents, both men started pulling out the packaging and flinging it on to the floor. Mantega got there first, and lifted out the most beautiful object that he had ever handled in his life. It was a beaten gold plate engraved with patterns of intertwined curling vines in relief. Zen had meanwhile found the other item, a shallow dish with intaglio designs of nymphs and satyrs. The gold glowed with all the intensity, depth and provocation of human flesh. Mantega felt himself caressing it as he would a woman’s body. He was not given to feelings of awe and had no precedent for the ones that overwhelmed him now. Somehow the objects that had emerged from their tawdry wrappings in a reused cardboard box seemed more alive than he was.

‘Where in God’s name did Giorgio get these?’ Zen asked.

‘I have no idea. He wants me to take them back to that ironmonger’s and deliver the receipt to an address up by the cathedral. He said they were not for sale. But of course you already know that.’

‘Yes, but I don’t have the address. Show me that note.’

Mantega handed it over with a sigh.

‘Please be discreet in the manner in which you handle this aspect of the operation, dottore. If Giorgio begins to suspect that I have betrayed him, he will come to me and kill me! You understand?’

For a moment he had forgotten himself, and immediately feared that the chief of police might take offence. But Zen ignored not only his remarks but the entire subject.

‘So now you have to show these little beauties to the American treasure hunters in order to demonstrate the genuinita del prodotto.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, get busy. Things are moving more and more quickly, Signor Mantega. We must adjust to their rhythm if we don’t want to be left behind.’

‘I’ll do it as soon as I return to my office.’

‘You fool! I’ll be listening in anyway. Do it now.’

It was an order. Mantega got out his phone.

‘How are you, Tommaso? Good, good. Listen, I have a message for your boss. The samples we discussed are now in my hands and I can bring them to your hotel at half an hour’s notice. But they are extremely valuable and I have been given strict orders not to let them out of my sight at any time. I therefore feel that on balance it might be best not to proceed until the person who is to examine them has arrived. Could you therefore let me know as soon as that occurs, whatever hour of the day or night it may be? I’ll expect your call.’

He closed the phone and glanced at Zen. They were on the superstrada, near Carabinieri headquarters and the new railway station. He could pick up a cab there.

‘Can I go now?’ he asked.

There was no reply. Zen’s silences felt far more menacing than anything he said, so Mantega was relieved when he finally spoke.

‘Let’s suppose that these samples are indeed certified as genuine. How do you propose to supply the merchandise for sale?’

Mantega had given a considerable amount of thought to this.

‘I shall handle that part of the negotiations. Obviously we can’t invite them to view the assembled treasure and then pick and choose what they want, since we don’t have anything to show them. But such a sale would have to be shrouded in secrecy, for the protection of the buyer just as much as the vendor, and even the richest man on earth wouldn’t be able to afford the whole hoard. When the time comes, I shall play on that aspect of the matter and try to elicit from the Americans what sort of objects they are interested in.’

Zen picked up the gold plate, whose essence seemed to hover fascinatingly between the soft glow apparent to the eye and the substantial weight of the mass beneath.

‘All right, suppose that they say that they really fancy this dinner service, only they’d like the whole eighteen-piece set.’

Mantega smiled complacently.

‘We have a long tradition of artisan work in Calabria. The lute and guitar makers of Bisignano are famous all over the world. Their ancestors were brought here from Naples centuries ago by the Calopezzati family. Isolated from all subsequent developments, they went on making their instruments just as they always had. When the use of those old instruments was rediscovered, they were the only craftsmen in the world with an unbroken tradition. It’s as if the heirs of the great Cremona violin makers were still turning out seventeenth-century fiddles. What’s true for them is true for many other trades, including goldsmiths. You may consider us ignorant provincials, dottore, but our isolation has served us well in that respect. Once we discover what it is exactly that these people want, a suitable replica can be discreetly crafted at very short notice.’

‘Very well, but Giorgio is only likely to appear when the money is handed over. How and when exactly will that take place?’

‘I shall follow a variant of the procedures for a kidnapping ransom.’

Zen eyed Mantega in a way that instantly deflated his earlier pride.

‘Ah! I’ve suspected all along that you were familiar with such matters.’

Mantega swallowed that down.

‘The case is of course not identical. With a kidnapping, the sentiment of the family is a major factor. On occasion, they will even pay without seeing the hostage first. That doesn’t apply here. Clearly the payment and the handover of the goods must be simultaneous, giving both parties a chance to ensure that all is in order. I shall suggest my villa as a suitable location, and I guarantee that Giorgio will be present. When it comes to large amounts of money, he doesn’t trust anyone but himself.’