Cosi Fan Tutti - 5 (29 page)

have been audible.

At this point there was an unexpected touch. Two

young men appeared in the street ahead of the garbage

truck, one waving a pistol, the other talking urgently into a mobile phone. The gunman fired twice, bringing down

two of the blueoveralled crew, then sprinted forward

and blasted another shot into the control console, disabling the ram. He then clambered aboard the orange

truck, which was by now accelerating away.

His companion had meanwhile also drawn a pistol and

forced the remaining members of the crew to lie on the

ground. Far below, in the dense jumble of the old city, sirens started to wail and whine. The garbage truck spun around in a tight turn, almost spilling the first gunman from its roof, but he managed to cling on to a metal reinforcing ridge until the manoeuvre was complete, then

inched his way forward along the roof as the truck bore down at speed on the crew members being held at gunpoint by his companion.

Three more shots sounded out, fired directly down

through the roof of the cab. Like a stricken fish, the truck went wild, veering all over the street and smashing into a succession of parked cars which gradually broke its headlong progress, albeit at considerable expense to the owners, few of whom have been able to get insurance for their

vehicles from those tight-arsed sons of bitches in Milan who seem to regard Naples as some sort of war zone. The resulting series of violent impacts finally dislodged the gunman whose shots were responsible for all this

damage. He landed on the roof of a pale blue Lancia, which buckled beneath his weight like silk sheets as the garbage truck roared away into the night.

If there had been anyone about in Via Bernini on the

night in question, this is what they would have seen. And in fact lots of people were about. The only thing stronger than otnerta was curiosity, and the combination of shots, crashes, screams and sirens had been simply too much to resist. They craned out of windows and peered down

from balconies and roofs. A few hardy souls even ventured tentatively forth from their doorways.

Catching sight of a man in uniform - a fireman visiting one of his mistresses, it emerged later - the gunman who had been covering the garbage crew pressed the pistol

into his hands and told him to keep them covered until

the police got there. The shrieks of the converging emergency vehicles were much closer now. The man ran across

the street to his partner, who was sitting up on the roof of the Lancia like someone awakening after a heavy night.

‘Oh, Gesua!’ he shouted. ‘The cops are almost here!

Let’s go, for Christ’s sake.’

laportadell’inferno

His first conscious thought was that this was definitely the worst hangover he had ever had, on a scale and of an intensity that he had not previously believed possible.

The smell, to take just one aspect of the prevailing vileness, was such as he had not experienced since the age of

seven, when a combination of freak flood tides in the

Venetian lagoon and a collapsed sewer had transformed

the toilet in the Zen household into a seething cornucopia of filth, spewing forth the accumulated faecal products of the neighbourhood which cascaded down the staircase

and into every corner of the living area. But even that memorable event was no more than a dress rehearsal in a provincial theatre compared with the world-class, stateof-the-art, no-expense-spared, cast-of-thousands-in-a

football-stadium production currently being visited

upon his nostrils.

Nor were the other senses neglected. His ears, in particular, were taking a battering on an unprecedented

scale, rather as if he were trapped inside the electronically enhanced bass drum during the Grand Triumphal March

from the aforementioned spectacular. This hypothesis

would also have accounted for the darkness, which was

total except for brief, jagged, laser-like beams which traversed his surroundings without illuminating them, as in

some high-tech light show designed to keep the crowd

amused until the star tenor finally came on to do ‘Nessun dorma’. Was this another clue? Sleep, although devoutly to be wished, was certainly out of the question.

But none of this began to explain the agony in his skull, external as well as internal, or the smell of blood on his fingers when he worked them around, squirming in the

glutinous mess pressing in on him from every side, to

explore the sticky patch on the back of his head, still less the fact that everything was so violently jolting and swaying, or the acrid aftertaste of vomit which coated the membranes of his mouth.

The last thing he could remember was leaving Valeria’s

apartment after drinking a glass and a half of her cousin’s cherry brandy made ‘with fruit from his country estate’.

Christ almighty, what did he use for crop-spray? Cyanide?

Or was the problem with illegal additives in the alcohol, as with the tainted wine scandals that were such a regular feature of Italian life?

Or was the problem with him? Was he blocking out

some truth too horrible for remembrance, some news

unfit to be imprinted? Only a glass and a half! A likely story. He must have drained the entire bottle, and then raided the remaining stocks in the cupboard like those

American sailors who had gone to mix drinks, pouring

the stuff down his throat as though there were no tomorrow, or rather to obliterate the possibility of one.

Nevertheless, it had arrived, his tomorrow. And just

when he had consoled himself in the traditional way that things could not get any worse, in the traditional way

they did. Back in the distant past, maybe a couple of seconds earlier, it had seemed absolutely impossible to

improve on what had gone before, yet it now turned out

that there wasn’t the slightest problem about this.

As with all good dramatic effects, things got better

before they got worse. The appalling noise died away to almost nothing, the flashing slivers of light ceased, the terrifying shudders subsided to a mild and constant

vibration. Only the stink and foul taste remained, and

even they were by now coming to seem familiar and tolerable. And of course it was then, when his defences were down and he was starting to think that maybe things

weren’t so bad after all, that all hell broke loose.

Broke in, rather - not that finicky distinctions of this kind were uppermost in his mind as the surface beneath

him suddenly reared up with astonishing rapidity, tilting at an alarming and apparently impossible angle which

nevertheless turned out to make perfectly good sense as he started to rollback, hands helplessly outstretched. His cramped confinement receded as the darkness opened up

to receive him, one item among many falling in purposeful disorder. Even the terminal impact, when it finally

came, was mercifully soft.

Dove son?

‘Pronto?’

‘Dottore, is that you?’

‘Is what me?’

‘You’re alive?’

Tarn?’

Pause.

‘Am I speaking to Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen of the Polizia dello Stato, serial number 4723 stroke vz stroke 798?’

‘Present and correct, sir!’

‘Identify your present whereabouts.’

‘Unknown.’

‘Describe same.’

‘A pit of some kind. Dark, silent. Abundance of foul

smelling and slimy materials all around.’

He took out his cigarette lighter, producing a feeble,

flickering flame.

‘Proximity of one, possibly more, human corpses.’

‘Do not break this connection! Repeat, do not break this connection. How long will your mobile phone go on

functioning?’

‘The battery indicator light is flashing. Five, possibly ten minutes operational time remaining.’

‘Jesus Christ! I don’t think we can trace you in time.

Can you get out yourself?’

‘Negative.’

‘Is there anything you can do or tell me to indicate your position?’

‘Negative. But don’t worry, I still have Pasquale’s box.’

‘Sorry?’

the miracles work

Mm mi fate piufare tristefigura!

of the dog, you know.’

It was almost four in the morning when they finally

found him. By then the power pack of his mobile phone

had long since failed, but one of the bullets fired by Gesualdo into the cab of the stolen garbage truck had pierced

the oil line and the resulting trail of drops led the investigators step by step into the heart of the labyrinth to the

deep pit where Aurelio Zen was lying on a mound of

garbage next to a hideously mutilated cadaver, as peaceful as a child in bed with his bear. He looked up, blinking in the glare of torches and spotlights.

‘There he is!’ yelled a voice.

‘And isn’t that Attilio Abate?’

‘No, there’s Abate over there. That’s one of Vallifuoco’s henchmen, what’s his name …?’

‘Marotta. And there’s Don Ermanno himself!’

‘Get the chief over here! This is going to be huge.’

Rope ladders were lowered and men clambered down.

Zen sat up, feeling distinctly under-dressed for the occasion.

Almost everyone else seemed to be wearing uniform

and carrying guns. Not only was he unarmed and in

civilian clothes, but he seemed to have a large pool of dried vomit on his shirt and trousers.

Much to his surprise, the intruders seemed solicitous

rather than critical. Two hefty types in battledress lifted him on to a stretcher which was then hoisted to the rim of the pit in a series of fits and starts reminiscent of the elevator at the Squillace apartment building. One of the few

persons in plain clothes, apparently a doctor, examined him physically and then gave him a little quiz. This was quite fun, involving questions about his name, address, age, background, as well as a few general-knowledge

teasers: what year it was, the name of the current prime minister, the capital of EmiliaRomagna, the numbers

and playing positions of the Juventus team, Moana

Pozzi’s vital statistics, the percentage of Trebbiano grapes permissible in Chianti Classico, and so on. He was able to answer all of these correctly - except of course for the second, which had been deliberately inserted as a trick question to trap malingerers.

Once Zen’s mental competence had been established,

he was hurried into the presence of a compact, sturdily suited man wearing dark glasses and a lethal smile who

appeared to be directing the proceedings.

‘This whole operation must be planned down to the

last detail!’ he was telling his clustered subordinates.

‘Nothing must be left to chance. This is our great chance to smash these people once and for all. I want everything to go like clockwork. Understand?’

A chorus of dedicated assent greeted this rhetorical

question.

Tiero? You handle the TV people. We’re talking all

three RAI channels, naturally, but also the leading independents and cable providers. Pack the room, lots of confusion,

a sense of breaking news. I want jagged conflictual

lighting, a mass of urgent but chaotic motion, then a segue into the strong, firm presentation from the podium restoring a sense of order and control. Mario, you handle the

print media. Pack them in as extras for the TV coverage, get that quality of grainy actuality. Then line up the Corriere, Stampa and Repubblica for the off-air, in-depth, back

story pitch.’

‘What about the Mattino, dottoreV

Even through his shades, the suited man’s stare was

perceptibly cutting.

‘Mario, I assumed it was clear that we were talking national here.’

‘Right, chief. Of course.’

‘Keep the locals in the picture, but at a distance. They’ll be only too glad to pick up the scraps from the table. These are not some small-time provincial gangsters we’re talking about here. This is a world-class event of national and even international proportions, and I want it treated with the proper respect, God damn it!’

‘You’ve got it, chief.’

‘All right, get to work.’

The suited man turned his blank regard towards Zen.

‘Now then, dottore, let’s discuss what we’re going to tell them. After that we’ll get you showered, shaved and

suited up. Or maybe we should go for the haggard, backfrom-the-brink look. What do you think? There’s a lot riding

on this, for both of us. Let’s not screw it up.’

Eormegiudiziarie

‘Are you saying that this operation began even before the communication from the group calling itself Strade Pulite was made public?’

The question came from a man in the first row, identified on his name tag as a reporter for the International Herald Tribune, but in fact an aide who had been planted

among the audience to ‘facilitate efficient and expeditious coverage of this historically significant event’.

The Questore, whose eyes were no less dark and

obscure than the glasses he had worn earlier, nodded

briefly.

‘My officers have been aware of the existence of these

terrorists for several months. Indeed, it was for this very reason that I arranged for the transfer of a noted specialist from the Criminalpol squad in Rome..
p>

He turned to Aurelio Zen, who was standing slightly

behind and to one side of him, facing the melee of

reporters, cameras, microphones and lights.

‘To preserve the secrecy of our operation, Dottor Zen

was nominally appointed to an administrative post in the Port of Naples. It was there that we had our first breakthrough, with the arrest of one of the men whose bodies