Diego Marani: God's Dog

‘Ivan, it’s very risky…’

‘Mirko, just think about it. It doesn’t affect you; I’m the only one in danger.’ The fair-haired man wiped the sweat off his forehead.

‘All right. Come round whenever you want,’ said Mirko wearily. He switched off his mobile and put it back in his pocket, placed his elbows on the paper and tried to continue reading. But he kept losing the thread and missing lines. So, Ivan was back! Now it could only end in a bloodbath. He leafed through the paper from beginning to end without taking in a word.

The man with the red moustache knocked on the door and went into the study. The Vicar was waiting for him, seated at his desk. He did not get up but waited for the visitor to cross the whole length of the room in silence.

‘I don’t like the news I’m getting, Kowalski!’ he said sharply, putting two little bottles of spray back into a drawer.

‘We’re working on it, Your Eminence. Salazar has vanished from the hospital, we don’t know how. The only people who can have helped him are the angels of death. That’s the proof that he was in cahoots with them all along,’ the man said defensively.

‘I couldn’t care less about any of that! And anyway, I don’t think it’s quite so clear-cut, Kowalski. Salazar is no fool. He is a hound of God. They’ve trained him well. Did you think you could cow him with a death threat? Within just a few days that fiend had managed to flush out a euthanasiast; you were on the job for months without managing anything at all. Now you have caused him to slip through our fingers with your persecution mania; and I don’t think that your men in Holland are doing much better!’ The Vicar got up suddenly and went towards the window; looking out at the changing pattern of the flowers in the garden below sometimes had a soothing effect.

‘Have you at least downloaded that scientist’s computer?’ he asked with unaccustomed courtesy.

‘The hard disks had already been removed by someone, probably by Pertiwi himself. We don’t know where they’re hidden. So we burned the lot, just to be on the safe side.’

‘So even that Darwinist’s archives are beyond our reach!’ remarked the Vicar with an effort at self-control, still contemplating the subtly coloured flower-bed.

‘We’re going through Salazar’s flat in Amsterdam. We think he may have copies of his friend’s research,’ proffered Kowalski nervously.

‘Yes, that friend who slipped through your fingers and who is still alive!’ shot back the Vicar, finally detaching his gaze from the flower-bed and turning it upon the man with the red moustache. He went back to his desk and sat down, drumming his fingers nervously on the table.

‘We set this whole thing up so as to lure Salazar to Rome, and you let him give us the slip. We should have intercepted him, dismantled his network of syncretists and got our hands on Pertiwi’s research. Now the whole thing’s gone up in smoke!’ continued the Vicar, continuing his effort at self-control.

‘Your Eminence, all is not yet lost. We are on Pertiwi’s trail; our agents are on his heels. And Salazar won’t make it out of Rome. He’s done for; he thinks he can outsmart us…’ Kowalski’s attempt at a damage limitation exercise seemed to leave the prelate unconvinced. He opened a drawer in the desk and took out Salazar’s china pipe-cum-holy-water sprinkler.

‘Kowalski, do you know what this is?’ he asked him, dangling the thing in front of the red moustache. Kowalski took the pipe and turned it over in his hands.

‘A holy-water sprinkler!’ he said, narrowing his eyes.

‘Exactly…’ replied the Vicar, stretching out a hand to regain possession of the object. He dropped it back into the drawer and said, almost to himself:

‘This is too much — he must be killed.’

‘And so he shall, Your Eminence!’

‘You may go now, Kowalski! And don’t come back until you’ve got results,’ the Vicar snapped without even bothering to raise his head; eye contact was not for him.

It was late afternoon when Pablo had arrived outside the storeroom. As he passed the door, he glanced inside. Some workmen were stowing things on to the lorry parked in the courtyard. The red-faced one nearest the doorway, his overall unbuttoned to the waist, was drinking water from a bottle; he glanced at Pablo absent-mindedly as he wiped his mouth. Inside, a radio was blaring. Glancing sunlight fell through the skylights, causing the men’s shadows to flicker over the end wall. The first-floor offices were empty, the blinds lowered. On the ground floor, next to the storeroom, was a changing-room with small cupboards and two benches up against the wall. Pablo walked round the building until he came to the courtyard. Wooden duck-boarding and cans of paraffin cluttered the narrow space, which was entered through a gate of stakes and rusty bedsprings, with a chain and padlock hanging from it; but it was open. Weeds were sprouting from the walls and pavement; the place was largely in shadow, but the pile of cans was in partial sunlight. Two workmen were standing on the truck and the others were passing crates up to them. Inside the storeroom, the red-faced man was now singing along to the music on the radio at the top of his voice; another man was begging him to stop. The narrow alleyway led to the back of other sheds. There were few shops in the neighbourhood, just a tobacconist on one corner of the avenue. A few desolate blocks of flats were perched at the crest of a rise, surrounded by tangled undergrowth. Dreary edge-of-town streets; rubbish-strewn ditches; illegal immigrants’ shacks among scrubby bushes. Pablo retraced his steps to the avenue and went to wait for the others under the bus shelter. It was four against four; they couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. They pushed the car up against the gate at the back. The truck was now fully loaded, the ropes firmly secured; the radio had been switched off. The workmen were in the changing-room, their voices audible above the noise of the shower. Pablo put on the belt with his toolkit, opened the gate and jumped up on to the truck. This was the trickiest bit: he had only a moment to locate the correct crate. He found it under several others, two smaller crates of oil-lamps and some cans of fuel oil. The others were standing by with the replacement boxes of candles. They passed them up to him hurriedly, almost holding their breath while Mirko, in the driving seat, had his hand on the ignition key. If something went wrong now, that would be that. Pablo didn’t have time to secure one end of the rope; the workmen’s voices were getting louder, they were coming out of the changing-room. He slipped through the gate and ran off with the others; Mirko reversed slowly after them. At the end of the alleyway they all climbed in, closing the doors quietly behind them. They stopped on a track in the countryside around Torre Lupata and threw the candles into a canal.

That night Marta woke up suddenly, drenched with sweat. She had had a nightmare, but she couldn’t remember any details, only a vague sense of dread, and a series of rambling images. She checked the time: four in the morning. Her eyes were still burning with tiredness, but she could not get back to sleep. She tossed and turned; every fold in the sheet felt like a blade. Finally she got up and went to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Or milk, perhaps: she’d read somewhere that milk had a calming effect; she took a gulp straight out of the carton, but it was too cold. She went back into the bedroom and curled up on a chair, pulling a blanket round her shoulders and glancing out at the street through the shutters: one winking traffic-light and four large rubbish bins. Everything was laid out ready on a chair: her clothes, the train tickets, her suitcase, a guide to Venice. She had to look like a tourist. By now the substitute candles would be in place, but she wouldn’t know how it had gone until the next day. All contacts put on hold until Thursday, by which time they would all be well out of Rome. What about Ivan? There was no way out for him. Mirko had told her that he’d come to Rome to kill Novak, but Ivan himself hadn’t said a word about it. Why not? Did he not trust her? Or, yet again, was it so that she wouldn’t get any fancy ideas? Trying to kill Novak was tantamount to suicide. Even if he did manage to fire a shot, he was doomed anyway. Marta sensed that it was late. She saw herself, on the run once again, in yet another house, another town. More safe houses, more shadowing, more attacks, cocaine capsules hidden amongst the omega-3, the dealers’ suspicious faces, weapons slipped into her handbag, the panic that seized her at the sight of a man in uniform. And that enduring sense of loneliness, that fear. The impossibility of even sitting down quietly on a park bench. How would it all end? Sooner or later, they’d get her. Suppose she fell ill? Worse still, she might end up in prison. But might she not also come through unscathed? If only she had managed to persuade Ivan to stay with her. They could have got out of there, they could have gone away together, perhaps even to America. It was still possible.