Michael Dibdin - End games

‘Are you a doctor as well?’

‘No, but I’ve got excellent first-aid skills. We have to take basic training and then refreshers every year. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing and it won’t hurt.’

She piled up a stack of plates and dishes and set them in the sink.

‘And then, if you’re not too tired, we might fuck.’

Clatter, bang went the pots and pans.

‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to move much,’ Tom said.

‘That’s all right, we’ll work something out. It’ll help you sleep.’

‘And you?’

She shrugged.

‘I like being manhandled once in a while, and opportunities for casual sex don’t come along often in Calabria. Besides, since you’re staying here everyone will assume we’ve done it anyway, so I’d be a fool not to take advantage. But if you don’t want me…’

‘Are you crazy? Of course I want you!’

‘Then there’s nothing more to say. Go and lie down.’

Tom stood there uselessly, taking up space in the tiny kitchen, getting in Mirella’s way. He had no idea what to say or do, so he asked the question that was uppermost in his mind.

‘May I kiss you, Mirella?’

‘No, that’s too intimate.’

Once again he was tongue-tied and ended up speaking the truth.

‘You’re the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met.’

Mirella laughed dismissively.

‘Nonsense, I’m very normal and boring. But I’ll try not to bore you tonight, and tomorrow I’ll take you to the hospital for your final check-up and then pack you off on the plane home to your American beauties with their stainless-steel teeth.’

Tom met her eyes.

‘You can’t get rid of me that easily, Mirella. I do have to go now, but I’ll be back. I may not qualify as a Calabrian in your eyes but even you can’t deny that I’m an American. We don’t quit just because the going gets tough.’

Mirella held up her right hand and extended the little finger and thumb.

‘What’s that?’ demanded Tom angrily. ‘Some superstitious gesture against that thing you believe in here…’

She flashed him a mischievous smile.

‘ Cuntru l’affascinu? No, I’m not that fascinated by you. Not yet, at least. Anyway, that sign is made with the forefinger, not the thumb. All I meant is that I want you to phone me while you’re away. Now go to bed and get some rest, because that’s not the only thing I want.’

The trap was set. There had been no phone calls to any of Nicola Mantega’s numbers, but piecing together the previous evidence, including the recent delivery and return of the genuine Roman gold artefacts, Aurelio Zen had concluded that Giorgio was now on red alert and communicating only in writing. The team watching Mantega had therefore been instructed to keep a close eye on possible maildrops.

Shortly after six that evening, a roughly shaven individual of about thirty with the piercing gaze and rolling gait of the mountain folk had walked down the block of Corso Mazzini where Mantega’s office was situated, entered the building and emerged precisely six seconds later. He was followed back to his car and at a hastily improvised road-block near Camigliatello he was pulled over by the Polizia Stradale and arrested for drunk driving, even though his blood alcohol level was in fact zero. Long before that, Nicola Mantega’s compartment in the letter boxes mounted on the wall just inside the entrance of the office block had been opened and the plain brown envelope inside extracted. This was rushed to forensics for tests, then opened, the contents copied and replaced, the envelope resealed and replaced in Mantega’s letter box.

The allegedly drunk driver had meanwhile used the one telephone call he had been allowed to make to contact the house in San Giovanni in Fiore which was the incoming conduit for Giorgio’s communications network. Shortly afterwards, Dionisio Carduzzi was observed leaving his house and walking up the long, twisting main street of the town to Via del Serpente, part of the slum area of apartment blocks built illegally in the 1970s, many of them unfinished and unoccupied and all lacking double glazing and insulation and improperly positioned to face the full blast of the Siberian winds that dragged the temperature far below zero for much of the winter. Dionisio had entered the unit that contained Silvia Fardella’s address of official record, but his visit was a short one. No sooner had he stepped back on to the street than Nicola Mantega’s mobile in Cosenza rang and a woman’s voice said, ‘Check your mailbox.’ The yob who had apparently passed out in a shady corner of the entrance hall, clutching an empty bottle of limoncello, confirmed a moment later on his encrypted mobile that Mantega had done so. What il notaio didn’t do was inform the police of these interesting developments, but Aurelio Zen already had a copy of the missive in question in his hands. Stripped of its many orthographical errors, it read as follows:

I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE NICOLETTA BUT IT’S TOO RISKY COME TO THE DAM ON THE MUCONE RIVER AT EIGHT THIS IS URGENT AND I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE

Zen smiled unpleasantly as he put the note down on his desk. Right now Nicola Mantega must be wondering how in the name of God it had come to this, running his mind back over each of the steps which had brought him to where he stood now, on the brink of a precipice, yet unable to fault himself for a single one of them. It had all made complete sense at the time, so how on earth had he ended up having to drive off after dark to a rendezvous on a remote country road up in the Sila mountains with a drug-addicted psychotic who would slit his throat if he found out what Mantega had been up to in his collaborations with the chief of police and the late Martin Nguyen, and for that matter might very well slit his throat anyway? But Mantega would go nevertheless, because he knew that if he didn’t then sooner or later Giorgio would come to him. Better to calm him down now, deny Rocco Battista’s absurd allegations and press a large bundle of banknotes into Giorgio’s hand with the promise of more to come.

So the trap was set. Springing it, though, would be a delicate and complex operation, and Zen knew that he would only get one chance. He had therefore assembled a small group of hand-picked officials. Six of them, comprising Zen himself, Natale Arnone and four of the Digos agents, who had access to high-tech kit such as night-vision goggles, were to form the unit which tailed Mantega from the rendezvous point to wherever Giorgio was in hiding. In two separate but simultaneous operations, the residences of Dionisio Carduzzi and Silvia Fardella in San Giovanni in Fiore would be raided and searched and all persons present taken into custody.

Meticulous and detailed planning was the key to a successful outcome. The raids on the two homes in San Giovanni were relatively routine interventions straight out of the standard operating manual, needing only to be co-ordinated in time with each other and whatever events occurred after Mantega’s meeting with Giorgio. It was the latter event that was the wild card in the pack. Zen spent almost an hour poring over a large-scale military map of the area with Natale Arnone and the Digos agents, working out various scenarios and planning an appropriate response, but he knew that Giorgio was both canny and crazy, an impossible combination to finesse against with any certainty of success.

Mantega had been told to come to the dam on the Mucone river at eight o’clock that evening. This dam had been constructed shortly after the war to create an artificial lake beneath the heavily wooded slopes of Monte Pettinascura, one of the tallest peaks in the Sila range at 1,700 metres, and one of the most remote. Zen’s first step was to send one of the Digos men to the spot dressed like a hiker, to be dropped off by one of his colleagues as though he had thumbed a lift. He would not be part of the operation itself. His job was to walk up on to the foothills overlooking the Lago di Cecita, observe any activity at the scene and report back by radio. It was entirely possible that Giorgio might decide to arrive early and conceal himself until Mantega got there, or that one of his associates had been told to monitor any suspicious comings and goings in that isolated zone and warn his boss off if necessary.