Wu Ming - 54

An MI6 operation.

Cary was disgusted: Subtler and less noisy tactics!

‘Gentlemen, I don’t know what you want of me, but I think this conversation has gone on too long, and —’

‘Mr Grant,’ Sir Lewis began, showing him the palms of his hands in a gesture of surrender, ‘yes you’re right, we’re about to get to the point.’

At least they’d finally stopped calling him ‘Mr Leach’. They had worked out that there was little to be gained from mentioning loyalty to the Crown. ‘Mr Grant, the NATO governments need your help in a delicate matter of international importance. It may seem paradoxical, but we are approaching you as an actor and an. elegant man.’

Raymond pursed his lips, trying to keep from smiling. Cary’s eyebrow arched again, and remained in that position for much of the next hour. Raymond’s face exploded into a joyful expression, as though his shares in the Union Pacific Railroad had just risen by twenty points.

Chapter 13

Between Naples and Caserta, 30 January

The shining shoes sank into the mud and the smell of shit and stables rose up from below. Some makeshift fences planted in the slime in the midst of the dung-heaps, men wandering about among buffalo and cattle, about twenty cars parked not far away, and the buzzing of the flies often louder than the mooing of the cattle. The livestock market in Marcianise, near Caserta.

Zollo eyed the moron’s convertible. Only a son of a bitch could come to a place like this in a luxury car. Zollo complimented himself for leaving his own in his garage at home. Trimane called his attention to a well-dressed man — hat, scarf, coat — in the middle of the crowd of yokels and livestock breeders. He couldn’t make out his face from where he was standing, but he was the one.

They came down from the hill where they had been lying in wait, cursing the mud that stained the hem of their trousers. They reached the dirt path leading down to the village. A few hundred metres further, they found the Fiat 1900 borrowed for the occasion. They got in. Trimane lit a cigarette.

He said, ‘So, you see this road?’

‘Well, yeah, I see it.’

‘In Italy the roads are not good. If there’s no mud, there’s dust, if there’s no dust there are holes, if there are no holes —’

‘There are always holes, Vic. E niente highways.’

Zollo peered into the rear-view mirror to see if anyone was coming. He wanted to get things over with and head back to Naples. The silence of the countryside made him strangely agitated.

‘No good roads, no good cars. Just carts.’

‘Jesus! Tin cans on four wheels, they make more noise than a tank, more stench than a gas can, and in the summer you’d think you were in a goddamned oven.’

The backwardness of Italy was another of Lucky Luciano’s favourite subjects. When he had been pardoned for unexplained meritorious wartime service, and sent across the ocean, Salvatore Lucania had expected something more from his country of origin. For Stefano Zollo, the effect had been no different. He had often heard it said that the Italians had brought organised crime to America, and yet even from that point of view the old country seemed rather antiquated. Would anyone in New York have been dumb enough to slap Don Luciano? One such person, in America, had already ended up in the bay of the Hudson River, with a pair of snugly fitting concrete shoes. A clean and secure system for the concealment of corpses, which had won Zollo the nickname of ‘Steve Cement’.

The only good things in Italy were the climate and the women. But even that was only partly true, as was demonstrated by the freezing January they had just endured. The women were, indeed, very beautiful, but, as Don Luciano said, they were stay-at-homes, and their clothes were designed for concealment rather than display.

‘What do you think, Vic, Marilyn or the Italian actresses?’

‘Well I’ll say this, my friend, the Italian girls certainly have tits! When I got here, there were posters showing a girl all covered with mud, a peasant, wearing short short pants and a tight sweater. I found out her name, too. Mango, Mogano, can’t remember.’

Behind him there was the sound of an approaching car. Victor checked the mirror and nodded. The moron’s convertible. Steve got out and grabbed a big wrench from under the bonnet, which was open to look as though they had broken down. He wrapped it up in a copy of Il Mattino and went to stand by the edge of the road. The moron and his friend were laughing their heads off. They had clearly done some good business.

Zollo took a step forwards.

He stopped with one hand raised, the newspaper gripped in the other, lined up along his body.

The moron’s car slowed down and stopped abruptly.

Zollo approached the passenger.

Zollo said, ‘Could I have a word?’

The man looked at him quizzically.

The wrench came down twice on his head, hard. Despite the hat and the paper, Zollo heard the sound of the skull cracking. The man’s friend heard it too, and as soon as he gave a sign of wanting to react, he saw Trimane, standing beside the Fiat 1900, aiming a gun at him.

‘If you know anyone else who’s planning on slapping anyone, tell them what happened to your pal.’

Zollo took a step backwards and the car, skidding in the mud, set off again.

Trimane got moving and Zollo joined him.

‘Let’s stop off at my house, Vic. I’ve got to change these filthy bloody shoes.’

Chapter 14

Palm Springs, California, 30 January, afternoon

Bill Brown cleared his throat. It was only at that moment that Cary noticed his moccasins, brown penny loafers that clashed with everything else he was wearing. To tell the truth, the whole outfit was a disaster: his trousers and black socks were too short, and revealed the hair of his legs. Christ almighty, was it really possible that Uncle Sam was sending his men about the place dressed like that? Didn’t the FBI agents all wear black suits, white shirts and black ties? Perhaps that Saturday was Brown’s day off and they’d called him in at the last minute. But not even during one’s leisure hours should anyone be guilty of such a lack of taste.

The American took off his dark glasses, tried to assume a solemn expression and said, ‘Mr Grant, before my colleagues. ’ Cary noticed horror and a sense of superiority in the eyes of the two Englishmen. ‘Before my colleagues continue, it is my duty to ask you a few questions in the name of the United States Government. First of all, what do you think of the country that has granted you citizenship? Do you consider yourself a good American?’

‘Do you?’ Cary fired back.

‘I would like you to answer my question, Mr Grant,’ Brown repeated.

Sir Lewis and Raymond stared at Cary. Their faces showed irritation with the presence of the American and an urgent need to explain the reason for their visit. With vague nods, they made it clear that they had done their best to spare him the third degree, but they were guests of the local government and had to let Brown get on with his job.

Cary tried to avoid vulgar expressions. ‘What is this, another of those investigations you’re so fond of? You’re expecting me to plead the Fifth Amendment, in my own home , to allow you to conclude that I have something to hide, that I’m not “anti-communist”?’ The two Englishmen could almost see smoke issuing from the actor’s ears. ‘Brown, just as I let you in, I can also throw you out. You’re already standing up, you just have to put one foot in front of the other until you reach that damned door.’

‘Mr Grant, I’m asking you this because it is a well-known fact that your friends include Clifford Odets, a writer with socialist sympathies, who financed the Spanish communists during the civil war —’