Michael Dibdin - End games

The convoy of vehicles that would form a box around Mantega’s Alfa were scattered around Via Piave, Viale Trieste and Piazza Matteotti by six o’clock. A Digos agent on the roof of an adjacent building was watching the private courtyard where the car was parked. The air was oppressively close and muggy down in the valley, while over the mountain range that was their destination stacked thunderheads loured and scoured the sky. A bad silence, against which the squeals and grunts and yelps of the traffic were powerless, had saturated the streets. Zen felt his energy drained and his will sapped, but there was nothing to do but wait.

In the end, Mantega did not leave the building until shortly after seven. This meant he would have to drive fast, which was good news. The vehicles and drivers at Zen’s disposal could easily keep up with anything that wasn’t airborne, and if Mantega had to keep his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road he was that much less likely to notice that his supposedly lonely pilgrimage up into the mountains actually had more in common with the convoy enveloping the Popemobile when the Supreme Pontiff, in his infallible way, decides to pay a visit to the shrine where the cult of a miracle-working saint is celebrated. The lead man astride the MotoGuzzi played a classic hand of hiding in plain view, aggressively harrying the Alfa on the many tight bends and spectacular viaducts of the superstrada leading up from the river valley to the heights above, tailgating the luxury saloon with his headlamp blazing and making little darting movements that were blatantly obvious in both of Mantega’s rear-view mirrors before roaring out to overtake and vanish in the manner of motorcyclists the world over, only to slacken speed as his machine demonstrated that it had more zip than stamina on the long, steep gradients, and eventually be passed himself in turn, at which point the whole game started again.

The sweeper on the team was in the modified Ape van. His job was to ensure that the Popemobile didn’t have an alternative escort provided by Giorgio, and to take care of them in a suitably convincing manner if it did. The filling in the sandwich was provided by a vehicle that even Zen found interesting, despite not giving a toss about cars for the simple reason that the city in which he had grown up was one of the very few civilised niches on earth where they didn’t exist, any more than horses had before them. Back then, if you wanted to go riding, you had to row over to the Lido. Even now, if you wanted to go motoring you had to go to Mestre. And no one in his right mind would ever go to Mestre.

But this item of Digos equipment had caught Zen’s attention. As they proceeded up into the mountains, he elicited from the driver and his colleague, who were seated in the front, that the chassis was the military version of the Ferrari Laforza all-terrain vehicle and the engine — ironically enough, given their quarry — a specially tuned Alfa Romeo V6. There were six seats inside, as well as ample space for any extra gear, but the exterior bodywork was as near as makes no difference an exact replica of the cheap Fiat vans used by provincial tradesmen and wholesalers all over the country, to which no one ever paid the slightest attention. At the moment it was painted bright blue with yellow lettering which proclaimed that it belonged to Scatamacchia Formaggi e Salumi.

There was only one logical route for Nicola Mantega to get to his destination in time, so when they were past the summit a few kilometres from the Camigliatello exit, the MotoGuzzi put on a surprising turn of speed on the downward gradient, overtaking with some panache and surging ahead so far that it was able to take the turn-off while the Alfa was out of sight around the long bend behind. The driver swerved left and then right under the slender stone viaduct that carried the abandoned railway line across the ravine, turned off his lights, donned night-vision glasses and waited in the straggling outskirts of Camigliatello for Nicola Mantega to catch up, reporting in the meanwhile via the mouthpiece attached to his helmet.

Things almost went wrong when Mantega turned the opposite way, up into the village, to buy a packet of cigarettes and knock back a coffee. But Natale Arnone had been tracking the relative distance and direction of the transmitter attached to the Alfa, and the Laforza was able to park unobtrusively opposite a mini-market and wait for Mantega to proceed, at which point the convoy reformed. Because of this delay, it was now sixteen minutes to eight, of which it took il notaio another fourteen to cover the remaining stretch of twisty country road in the rapidly failing light. By the time he reached the dam, the motorcyclist had cut the power and noise of the MotoGuzzi’s engine to the absolute minimum, then turned it off and free-wheeled down a path leading to the lake which Zen had identified from the map earlier. He then ran back along the shoreline to the dam, climbed up near to the roadside and reported in when Mantega’s car came to a halt in a lay-by on the other side of the road. Once again, there was nothing to do but wait.

Two cars passed in the ensuing period of time, during which the darkness became absolute. The registration numbers of both were noted and checked against records at the Questura, but they appeared to belong to harmless local residents. No one will ever know what Mantega thought as their headlights appeared in the distance, swept across the vehicle where he sat listening to the radio and smoking cigarette after cigarette, but time in Calabria has its own rhythms which cannot be hurried. In the end he was rewarded when a black Jeep pulled up alongside the Alfa Romeo. According to the Digos agents watching the scene, the driver was a woman in her thirties or early forties, later identified as Silvia Fardella. After a brief parley, Nicola Mantega got into the Jeep, which turned right on to a steep minor road leading up into the mountains and disappeared.

This was the crunch, and it could hardly have been worse from an operational point of view. Zen had to make an instant decision which might prove disastrous. He finally ordered the motorcyclist to remount and track the Jeep as best he could. It was a risk, but Mantega might well have other preoccupations at this point and ballsy bikers were two a penny up here in the Sila high pastures. He then called off the other Digos officer on the ground and the Ape van behind and told the driver of the Laforza to proceed slowly and with due caution. Eight minutes passed before lightning freeze-framed the thickly wooded landscape and a thundercrack shook heaven and earth, followed immediately by rain that broke on the windscreen like surf, overwhelming the wipers. Aurelio Zen finally relaxed. Now, he knew, everything would go well.

Next the man on the MotoGuzzi called in to say that the Jeep had turned off the paved road and taken a dirt track leading up still more steeply into the forest. Giorgio was presumably waiting at some spot high in the wilderness above, just as Maria had predicted, and there was nothing for it but to go after him, hoping that the deafening violence of the torrential rain would force any watchers to take shelter and also cover the sound of the Laforza’s engine. The headlights could be dispensed with, thanks to the high-tech Digos toys — or so Zen assumed until on one particularly tight reverse curve of the precipitous, contorted and now seriously flooded track they unaccountably started moving sideways rather than forwards.

‘Shit!’ yelled the driver. ‘Landslip’s washed out half the road.’

The vehicle slid gently downhill for some distance before coming to rest.

‘Can you get it back on the track?’ asked Zen.

‘Maybe,’ the Digos agent replied. ‘But I’d have to use full revs and they’d be bound to hear. I say we continue on foot and hope it’s not too much further.’