by Alen Mattich
“There’s trace protein in your urine. You can’t see it, but there’s blood. That suggests a kidney stone is probably what you’ve got, but we’re going to take some pictures of you just to make sure. Is it still hurting?”
“Better, Doctor.”
“Is there anybody in your family who’s had kidney stones?”
“My father . . . and my grandfather. I think my father’s grandfather had them too,” della Torre said, remembering how a few years before his father had called him from a hospital in Poreč to say don’t worry, it’s only kidney stones.
Only kidney stones? He wasn’t ever going to tell anyone that he’d “only” had kidney stones. He was going to say it was like being shot in the gut with a cactus, like he’d been eating fishhooks and molten lead, like some creature had crawled inside him and was eating its way out. It wasn’t “only” kidney stones.
They wheeled him on a gurney through the hospital’s labyrinthine corridors to a bit of hallway where he was left waiting behind another patient, an old woman on another bed on wheels. She was taken in and he was pushed to the front of a short queue of three.
Della Torre still felt the pulsing pain and then the low throb through the morphine and the bottle or so of wine he’d drunk during the evening. But it wasn’t crippling anymore. They pushed him into a room where a nurse sat him up in front of a big machine. She left him and went into a glass cubicle, coming back to readjust his position: front, back, side. As he sat there having his last X-ray taken, he looked into the booth.
He stared hard for a long moment. The pain, the morphine, and the alcohol were playing tricks with his mind. It was disconcerting not to be in possession of his faculties. The woman in the booth was such a spitting image of Irena that he almost called out her name. She looked up and caught his eye. The likeness was maddening. The only difference was the woman in the glass cubicle looked as if she’d had an electric shock.
“Marko?” she seemed to be shouting. “Marko?”
• • •
“So what now? You’re in charge of the investigation. You call the shots,” Anzulović said to the younger man. Messar, he thought, would rise high with his self-assurance, his unwillingness to be defeated. With his . . . momentum.
Messar gave him a glum look. They’d gone back to Branko’s flat, but the concierge said Mr. Smirnoff had already picked up his mail. Mr. Smirnoff? He’d been driving a pink sports car, she said. Pink like a strumpet’s underwear.
They couldn’t imagine who the hell it was until she described him. As improbable as it was, it sounded like Strumbić. The hard-drinking, womanizing cop, always good for a dirty joke or a double entendre, in a flaming pink car? Then again, there was a lot that was strange about the whole case.
They dropped Strumbić for the moment and thought about where della Torre might have gone from Venice. They went to have a look at the ferry terminal where the two UDBA men had been held up by the Venice caribinieri when they lost della Torre. Messar had insisted on asking some questions, but neither of them spoke particularly good Italian and no one remembered one passing tourist among thousands after more than two months. After unsuccessfully showing della Torre’s picture around a few bars and restaurants, they gave up and went back to the apartment building to see whether they could get anything more out of the old lady. Nobody answered either her buzzer or Branko’s.
They drove past the hospital but decided not to stop in. It was late, after visiting hours, and besides, the nurses would have probably knocked Branko out.
“That’s funny,” said Anzulović.
“What’s that?”
“There’s a green Zastava parked at the corner just around from the hospital.”
“So?” asked Messar.
“You don’t see a lot of Zastavas outside of Yugoslavia,” Anzulović pointed out.
“We’re pretty close to the Slovene border. There’s plenty of us Yugoslavs this side of it. Half of Trieste is Yugoslav. And everybody’s going to be trying to get out of the country now.”
“Yeah,” said Anzulović. “Except there’s something strange about that car.”
Messar ignored Anzulović for a while, lost in his own thoughts. “If you were Strumbić, what would you do?” he finally asked.
“Find a brothel in Las Vegas. I always figured Strumbić was a Vegas kind of guy. Or Marseilles — there’s something French Connection about him,” Anzulović said.
“French? This is Italy.”
“Yes, it’s Italy. The French Connection is a movie.”
“Oh.” Messar nodded. Anzulović and his movies.
“Shame we couldn’t get hold of the Bosnians,” Anzulović said with a mild rap on Messar’s knuckles.
“We will. Eventually. When we do, it’ll be no thanks to the local UDBA in Bosnia,” Messar spat. What was the world coming to? Nobody was co-operating with anyone else in Yugoslavia. It was all Serbs for Serbs, Croats for Croats, Slovenes for themselves. For someone who’d spent his life knowing that nationalism was the root of fascism, the way the country had turned was disgusting.
“Strumbić, the Bosnians, and della Torre — they’ve probably cooked up some sort of racket. Smuggling cars,” Messar prodded back at Anzulović, “or drugs. Maybe they fell out. But you know they’re tied into this together.”
“I’d be surprised,” Anzulović stressed.
Messar didn’t know anything about the files or the Dispatcher but he sensed he wasn’t being told everything. That Anzulović was keeping something from him. He considered Anzulović. Had the old man come along just to keep an eye on him? “Desperate men do desperate things,” Messar said.
“Like rent a pink Merc.”
“What was he thinking?”
“Maybe he thought nobody would think somebody running from the cops would do it in a pink Merc.”
“Maybe we should look for a pink Merc.”
“He’ll be long gone by now.”
They drove through the public car park at the Mestre railway station and the one at the end of the bridge in Venice. They drove past every hotel they could find in the phone book and every public space, spreading ever more widely from the centre of the industrial town. Eventually, it took them to the airport parking lot. Messar slowly cruised up and down the aisles, racking up short-stay charges.
“There.” Anzulović bounced in his seat so that his head hit the car’s padded roof.
“What?”
“There. A pink car.”
“You sure? This evening light makes white cars look pretty garish.”
“Not that colour pink.”
They drove closer. A pink Mercedes convertible was parked in the section reserved for hire cars. There couldn’t have been another like it in the whole of Italy.
“MARKO, WHAT ARE you doing here?”
“Well, you see, I arranged this kidney stone as a clever ruse to find you because I couldn’t be bothered trying the phone book.”
They were in a private room. Irena had saved her questions for when they were alone.
“I always wondered what it would take to knock the flippancy out of you. Not a kidney stone, anyway. Though it seems to have knocked your moustache off. You look better without it.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t feeling very flip before the morphine.”
“Yes, I’m told it’s painful.”
“Like labour.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Sorry.”
“Listen, Marko, we’ve got to talk. I’m glad you found me. Have you been in touch with your father?”
“No.”
“I’ve spoken to him a few times. He’s worried about you. He knows you’re often out of contact when you’re on a job, but the UDBA sent some people to talk to him a couple of times. He couldn’t understand why
they didn’t know where you were.”
“They’ve probably kept an eye on you too.”
She shuddered. “I’ll give you my details. I don’t live far from here; it’s just the next underground stop after Hampstead, a place called Golders Green. So you don’t disappear again,” she said.
“Oh, yes. I vaguely remember you talking about it now. I’d completely forgotten the name of the hospital. I kept thinking Partizan Pediatric Centre in Pazin or something. The irony is, I’m staying less than half a kilometre away.”
“Where?”
“Strumbić’s place, if you can believe it.”
“Strumbić has a place in London?”
“In Hampstead, virtually in the middle of the Heath, about two hundred square meters of luxury like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Sounds like you fell on your feet.”
“Sounds like it. Until he comes looking for us. Then there’s a risk we end up on our backs, in a hole, two metres down.”
“Us? What has this got to do with me?”
“Not you. Me and a . . . a friend.”
“You have a friend?” Irena’s eyebrows rose. “I guess that explains the moustache.”
“It’s not what you think. It really isn’t,” della Torre said, lying badly.
“Look, Marko, that’s okay. I don’t have a problem with it. You see, I think I’ve found somebody else.”
“You’ve found somebody else?” Della Torre suddenly felt hurt, wounded in a way that got right under the painkillers. “How could you find somebody else? I haven’t found somebody else.” Harry wasn’t somebody else. Was she?
“I didn’t know I had to wait for you to go through the door first.”
“You didn’t. It’s just, you know, kind of quick.”
“It’s three years, Marko.”
“But we’ve had good times since then. Even better than when we were properly married.”
“Yes, Marko. But that’s because they were always a last waltz. Nostalgia. I don’t know if this will lead anywhere. But it’s got more of a chance of going where I want to be than I’ve had with you for a long time.”
“Sure. Sure . . .”
“Listen, Marko, you need some sleep. The pain exhausted you and the morphine is knocking you out. It’s not really the time to talk. But can you remember something?”
“What?”
“I haven’t told this guy about you. I mean, I told him I’d been married but now I’m divorced.”
“They say that fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce.” Della Torre’s mind ambled around the subject.
“Yes, and the other fifty percent end in death. Anyway, he’s a doctor, he does emergency trauma here. There’s no real reason he should visit you, but if he does, can you be my ex-husband’s cousin who happened to be coming through town and just got unlucky?”
“Sure. Ex-cousin’s husband.”
“Ex-husband’s cousin.”
“Like I said.”
“I’ll be back in the morning. I’ll go over the X-rays with you and we’ll talk some more.”
“Night night, love.”
“Sleep well, Marko.”
• • •
“Where do you think he flew to?” Anzulović asked, having confirmed that somebody who looked a lot like Strumbić had dropped the car off, paying the additional fee for not returning it to its original hire location.
“London.”
“Yes. It’s likely.”
“Have you got the address of the place he was calling in the files?” Messar asked.
“It’s somewhere in the centre, near Piccadilly — you know, where all the lights are and there’s that statue of the angel trying to skewer people.” Anzulović had been to London a few times, including once on a holiday with his wife. His English was rudimentary, but good enough to order in restaurants and to find his way around town. Messar didn’t speak any at all.
“London’s where della Torre’s wife called his father from too, wasn’t it? Looks like the criminal conspiracy might be meeting up for round two,” Messar said
“So what now? Do we follow? I don’t trust any of the UDBA people in London. I doubt the Yugoslav embassy would have anything to do with us anyway. So it’s either us or nobody,” Anzulović said.
“We go. We drive. Tonight. We can get through to France by the morning and then to London by tomorrow night. One sleeps, the other one drives.”
Anzulović nodded, expecting nothing less of the younger man. “We have three days. That’s it. That’s as much as we can justify. Then we go back. Somebody’s going to be needing us after that. Maybe Zagreb,” Anzulović said, watching Messar. “Or maybe Belgrade.”
Messar’s lip curled with distaste. The politicians in Belgrade were no better than the ones in Zagreb these days. When religion dies, everybody’s an apostate.
“How’s your English?” Anzulović asked.
“It’s not. Yours?”
“I can order food.”
Messar shrugged.
“We’ll learn on the way,” Anzulović said encouragingly.
“We’ll hunt them down and bring them back even if we have to use sign language to do it,” Messar said. “And even if they’re in bits and in the boot.”
THE PAIN WOKE della Torre. Irena was already there, sitting, reading some notes.
“Ow, Jesus, does this never stop?” he said, clutching his side.
“I’ve got good news and good news for you.”
“Don’t tell me. The suffering will end soon because I’m going to die. And the other good news is that you won’t need to divorce me then.”
“Pessimist. Take this tablet and stick it up your rear end. I’ll leave you in privacy while I get a coffee.”
He did as he was told. She was gone longer than he’d expected, but even before she’d come back, the pain had completely disappeared. It was as if he’d never suffered at all. The agony of the previous night seemed an abstract memory.
“Wow. What was that?” he asked, smiling when she walked back into the room.
“That was your first bit of good news.”
“Powerful medicine. Works miles better than the morphine. What was it?”
“Ibuprofen. A pill you take when you’ve got a sore head. It merely confirms where yours is.”
“Ha,” he said, though his smile was genuine.
“It’s a very effective anti-inflammatory.”
“So what’s the other good news? I’m assuming it doesn’t also involve my head being up my ass.”
“No. Your X-ray shows that your stone has almost dropped out. A couple of hours and it should be gone completely. You’ll pee it out and it’ll be as if it had never been there. Even better news is that it’s the only one. You might get another one in the future. If you don’t take care of yourself, you will. But it might not happen for a long time. And I had a look at your lungs as well while I was at it. Clear as a baby’s, though I haven’t a clue why.”
“I keep telling you, my great-grandfather on my mother’s side smoked from before he could talk, wasn’t sober a day in his life, and lived to be ninety-six.”
“Somebody has to win the lottery. But it’s a bad basis on which to plan your future.”
“Speaking of tests, I meant to ask you something in Zagreb, but there wasn’t time.”
“It’s too late, Marko.”
“Too late for what?”
“For whatever you wanted to ask.”
“About centrifuges?”
“Oh, sorry, I thought it was something else.” Irena blushed slightly. “So ask me about centrifuges.”
Della Torre was momentarily puzzled but then ploughed on.
“What do you know about them?”
“Centrifuges? They’re a spin cycle on a washing machine.”
“No, real ones. The sort you use in hospitals.”
“What about them? They separate solids out of liquid solution. Blood, mostly — they spin the blood cells and platelets out of the plasma. You can test each component separately. Or at blood centres they use it to separate the products so that plasma, red cells, and platelets can be transfused to people who need them.”
“Do they use it to get rid of AIDS from blood?”
“Are you worried about becoming infected? You don’t need a transfusion, you know.”
“No, it’s not about me. I want to know why somebody would want a whole bunch of centrifuges, whether it might have something to do with AIDS.”
“As far as I know, AIDS is viral, and I’m not sure they’d be willing to use suspect samples for transfusion. I don’t know anything about purifying contaminated blood with centrifuges. How many is a whole bunch, by the way?”
“Thousands.”
“For blood? That really is a lot. I doubt there’s a thousand centrifuges in all the hospitals in Yugoslavia.”
“I don’t know that they’re for blood. I’m just guessing. But I don’t know what else they’d be for.”
“What kind of centrifuges are you talking about? I mean, what do they look like?”
“Tall, fairly narrow cylinders, as far as I can remember. About two metres long, and they look like water-mains pipe, I think.”
“And lots of them?”
“Yes, apparently there were a few thousand sent from Sweden to Belgrade in the mid-1980s. I thought they might have something to do with AIDS.”
“They don’t sound like hospital centrifuges. They sound more like the ones they use to purify nuclear fuel. What level of purity you’re looking for and how much of the fuel you want determine how many centrifuges you need.”
“Nuclear fuel?” he asked, puzzled.
“We’ve got some at the university in Zagreb. About a dozen or so. That mostly covers what we need at the hospital for radiotherapy and the physics department’s uses.”
