Michael Dibdin - And then you die

Having failed to get a reply, the man Zen had spoken to first snapped his phone shut.

'The flight had over seven hours to go, there are three hundred and seventy-something passengers and crew aboard, and all but one of the lavatories were out of action. Think about it, signora. The alternative would have been no joke at all.'

The woman wrinkled her nose in disgust.

'I prefer not to think about such things,' she declared haughtily. 'It's disgusting, just disgusting. Only on Alitalia!'

An ambulance had now pulled up to the steps leading to the front of the aircraft. Two paramedics got out, unloaded a stretcher from the rear doors, and carried it up into the plane. Zen was desperate for a cigarette, and the woman's mention of lavatories, whatever it might have been intended to mean, made him realize that he might be able to get away with smoking one there. Looking around, he spotted two doors marked with the universal symbols for men and women.

Ten minutes later, with two Nazionali-worth of nicotine coursing through his blood, he emerged a changed man, totally confident about whatever questions the US immigration officials were going to throw at him, despite the fact that his FBI escort apparently hadn't shown up to whisk him through these formalities as had been promised. The only problem was that the immigration people apparently hadn't shown up either. In fact there was no sign of any activity whatsoever. All the passengers were just standing around looking glum, and staring at the men working on the plane from the tanker. Zen tried asking one of the uniformed blondes what was going on, but he or she would only reply in English, which Zen couldn't understand.

They had been there over an hour, during which time Zen made three further trips to the lavatory, when he heard someone calling what sounded like 'Pier Giorgio Butani!'. The speaker was another of the uniformed clones, and Zen's first thought was that that he was going to get arrested for smoking in a non-designated area. Then he realized that what must have happened was that the FBI agents had finally arrived. He showed his passport to the man, who nodded and gestured to Zen to follow him.

He was led through the crowd of passengers, all of whom looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and envy for having been singled out for special exemption from this communal purgatory. Zen gave them a politely superior smile. They went through a door and along a corridor, then into an office where two people were seated. One was a very striking young woman with the natural pale blonde hair which seemed to be as common here as it was rare in Italy. Zen's escort handed her the passport and then left. The other person was a thin, balding man in his late thirties with the startled expression of one who has been unexpectedly woken from deep sleep. He was wearing a hideous brown acrylic suit, battered ankle-length boots, a pink button-down shirt and a patterned yellow tie. The woman wore a dark blue uniform and white blouse buttoned at the collar. She rose and handed Zen a card which read: 'Borunn Sigurdardottir', with a line of incomprehensible script and some phone numbers beneath.

The man also stood up, searching in his pockets.

‘I should also have a card somewhere,' he said in heavily accented Italian. 'Maybe in my wallet. No, I must have left them in my other jacket. Wait a minute!'

He finally produced a crumpled business card with a telephone number and someone's name written on it.

'Sorry, other side,' the man told Zen, who turned the card over. It was embossed in blue and gold with the words 'Gruppo Campari: Campari, Cinzano, Cynar, Asti Cinzano, Riccadonna. Snaebjorn Gudmundsson.'

'What’s Campari got to do with it?' asked Zen.

"That s just my private business card,' the man explained. 'I'm also the Italian consul here.'

He indicated the uniformed woman.

'Signora Sigurdardottir is a police officer. She wishes to ask you a few questions. I will translate. Please sit here.'

Zen took a chair facing the desk and the interview began. The form was invariable: the woman spoke in a language utterly alien to Zen, the man followed with a question in Italian, Zen answered, the man spoke to the woman in the language she had used, and she made notes on a pad open in front of her.

'Signor Butani, I have already spoken to members of the crew on this flight. I have been given to understand by them that you were boarded ahead of all the other passengers, and through a separate entrance, bypassing the normal controls.'

'Yes.'

'Why was this?'

‘I have recently spent several months in hospital, recuperating after a serious accident. The ground staff had been informed of this fact, and kindly arranged for me to be given priority boarding.'

'What kind of accident?' 'A car crash.'

'What injuries did you sustain?'

'Serious concussion, head injuries, compression injuries to chest including two fractured ribs and a collapsed lung, limb fractures requiring pinning, plus the usual assortment of relatively minor fractures, lacerations and contusions.'

'Yet you now appear to be fully mobile.'

'The accident occurred almost a year ago. I still suffer from limb stiffness and some psychological effects, particularly when forced to spend long hours in a small, crowded space such as an aircraft. Fortunately I had contacts at Alitalia who were able to ensure that I was not inconvenienced any more than was strictly necessary.'

The female officer made lengthy notes. She was stunningly beautiful, Zen thought abstractly, and would certainly have cut a wide swathe through the herds of ragazzi on any Italian street. But somehow her beauty remained purely theoretical. He didn't feel remotely interested or excited by her.

'Do you have your boarding pass, please?' Borunn Sigurdardottir asked.

Zen found it in his wallet and handed it over.

This identifies your seat number as 24A,' the woman said.

'Yes.'

'But I understand from the crew members I interviewed that you were in fact seated in 25F.'

'That's right. There was someone sitting in the next seat to mine, and he didn't really seem the sort of person I wanted to be beside for ten hours unless I had to. The plane wasn't full, and I spotted an empty seat on the other side of the cabin, so once we were airborne I moved over there.'

'And the passenger who had been sitting next to you then took your original seat, is that correct?'

'It is. May I ask why any of this is of the slightest significance?'

The uniformed woman spoke rapidly in her incomprehensible tongue. It didn't sound to Zen's ears much like English – it was probably some regional American dialect, he supposed – but he had no difficulty in understanding the tone of voice. This was confirmed when the consul translated.

'Signora Sigurdardottir has indicated that she wishes you to confine yourself to answering her questions.'

Zen beamed ingratiatingly.

'Please assure la signora ispettrice of my willingness to cooperate to the full with her enquiry, whatever it may concern.'

Snaebjbrn Gudmundsson duly translated, or at least said something to the woman, who had been eyeing Zen sharply. She nodded, then asked another question.

'What is the purpose of your journey to the United States?'

'Business.'

'What kind of business?'

Here Zen paused for the first time, at a loss how to answer. On me one hand, this woman was an accredited member of an American law-enforcement body, and therefore entitled to the truth. On the other, she had accepted Zen's passport in his cover name at its face value, and therefore evidently wasn't of a sufficiently high status to have been briefed about the real purpose of his trip. As usual, the safest option seemed to be a lie. He justified the pause with a laugh.