And then you die az-8

by Michael Dibdin

  'Well, that’s what happened. And you'll be pleased to know that there's some evidence that the incident at Versilia may have been a contributing factor. In their view, it seems, that was their last hope of preventing your appearance at the event in America, and when it failed the outcome was preordained. So one of the protagonists, the one you mentioned, apparently decided to make a deal. His cooperation in return for a new identity and a new life over there’

  'Any chance of that for me?'

  'Better still, you can have your old one back. You're to return immediately for a complete briefing at your normal place of employment. Our embassy in Copenhagen will send full details to the consul shortly. I wish you a pleasant journey and a safe return home.'

  When Zen reappeared in the living room, Snaebjorn Gudmundsson looked at him curiously.

  "The embassy in Denmark is going to contact you about my travel arrangements,' Zen told him.

  'Ah’

  'Basically, I'm going back to Italy.' ‘I see.'

  'Immediately’

  The consul nodded his understanding of the rules of this game. He glanced at his watch. 'Well, that'll probably be the two-thirty to Copenhagen.'

  Zen looked surprised.

  'What time is it now?'

  'Half past ten. Plenty of time.'

  'It can't be only half past ten! It must be noon at least.'

  'No, half past ten in the evening. The flight's in the early morning. We're so remote, you see. It takes three hours to get to Europe, and we're on British time, so that's another hour. If you want to get to a business meeting on time, you have to leave after midnight. But don't worry, I'll get you there in plenty of time.'

  He looked at Zen and smiled.

  'You asked to see my paintings. Come this way.'

  Zen, who had completely forgotten this aspect of their conversation, followed the consul into his kitchen, then out into the back yard of the house, a concreted rectangle containing a large pile of black ash.

  'There they are,' said Gudmundsson. 'The most recent ones, that is. The others are feeding the flowers in the beds at the front. What do you think?'

  Zen gave a nervous smile.

  'Are you some sort of performance artist?' he asked.

  He had heard of people like that, who did things associated to his mind with circus performers and children's entertainers.

  'Well, maybe I am,' Gudmundsson replied. 'I hadn't thought of it that way. This business has disrupted my normal schedule, of course, but on the whole I work hard, six hours a day at least. And at the time I'm always convinced that I've finally managed to produce something worthwhile. But then when it's finished I look at it and realize that I was wrong. If s just another botched job, one more piece of ugly nonsense. And God knows there's enough ugly nonsense in the world already. So I bring it out here and burn it.'

  Zen gave what he hoped would be perceived as a judicious nod.

  'If s like the Hippocratic Oath,' the consul went on with a face as straight as a priest. 'All would-be artists should be made to sign it. Rule number one, "Do No Harm". If I can't achieve something even vaguely resembling the sort of art I saw every day while I lived in Italy, the very least I can do is not clutter up the planet with any more trendy bric-a-brac. It seems that all I can manage is the clever, and who needs that? We're all clever these days. We're all so fucking clever. I'd rather make a nice bonfire and at least feel clean afterwards.'

  He closed the door and led the way back inside.

  'I'd better call the embassy in Copenhagen and find out about your flights.'

  Zen went back to the storeroom where he had spent the night, and packed up his bags. When he reappeared next door, Gudmundsson was already there.

  'Right They've booked you on the two-thirty to Copenhagen, as I thought, with an onward connection to Rome. You're to contact someone named Brugnoli on arrival. The tickets will be waiting at the SAS counter at Keflavik. If you're all set, we might as well go’

  Zen lugged his bags back to the car and they set off. As soon as they were past the outskirts of the bleak, cheerless town, Zen felt his spirits rise. He still felt half drunk and totally disorientated, and had had no time to work out the implications of what had happened. But all that mattered was that he was leaving. He had never felt such a visceral urgency to get away from any place.

  Suddenly the car drew in to the side of the highway.

  'Do you see that rock over there?' asked the consul, pointing.

  It was a massive outcropping of volcanic basalt, worn and weathered by the elements into myriad fantastic gullies and crevices.

  'Thafs where they're supposed to live, in rocks like that one, hidden away in the crannies and crevasses. Allegedly they can be very vindictive if disturbed.'

  Zen glanced at the consul, who restarted the car and drove on.

  'The huldufolk, I mean,' he explained. 'There's a rock much like that on the property where my family's summer house is. My father was a member of parliament for the Alpyduflokkurinn, a very radical, left-wing party. He was also a close friend of Halldor Laxness, our Nobel Prize-winning writer, and generally prided himself on being a progressive, forward-looking individual. But when we had a new driveway put in to the summer house, he made the builders go all the way round that rock rather than blow it up, even though it added almost half a kilometre to the length of the drive, and of course to the cost "You surely don't believe in that superstitious nonsense?" I asked him mockingly. I've never forgotten his reply. "Of course not," he said. "But you can't be too careful.'"

  They drove on for a while in silence. At last the structures of the airport appeared in the distance. Zen lit a cigarette and turned to Gudmundsson.

  'You said that I was only the second case you're heard of where a foreigner had this…'

  'Fylgja. Yes.'

  'Who was the other?'

  Gudmundsson laughed.

  'Ifs a droll story. I told you that Keflavik was originally built as a military base during the Second World War. Well, one of the servicemen stationed there started showing symptoms of the condition, going on about people that no one else could see and so on. A lot of those rocks were torn up and blown apart to lay out the runways and base facilities, and so many of the "hidden people" must have been made homeless. At any rate, the medics who examined the man had never heard of the huldufolk, of course. They decided the guy was crazy and shipped him back to the States. This was just before the Normandy landings.'

  Zen smiled.

  'Lucky man!'

  'Not really. The ship he was on got torpedoed by a U-boat off Newfoundland and went down with all hands.'

  The parking lot at the airport was almost empty. Snaebjorn Gudmundsson pulled up right in front of the handsomely sterile terminal building.

  'Now before we part,' he said, turning to Zen, 'I would suggest that you bear in mind what happened to that GI.'

  Zen frowned.

  'How do you mean?'

  Gudmundsson sighed.

  'I absolutely believe everything that you told me about what happened to you last night. I also give you my word that I shall not reveal it to anyone else. I strongly advise you to do the same. What may seem quite plausible here in Iceland will sound like arrant lunacy back in Italy. People will remember that car accident you had, and begin to wonder if the injuries you sustained were purely physical. Do you see what I mean?' Zen nodded.

  'Yes, yes. Of course. I thought you meant something else.' 'What?'

  'When you said I should bear in mind what happened to the American. I thought you meant that my seeming good luck might turn out to be a death sentence in disguise too.'

  Snaebjorn Gudmundsson laughed.

  'Of course not! Actually, he was very much the exception. Most people who are skyggn enjoy excellent health and live to an exceptionally old age.'

  They both got out of the car. The consul fetched a trolley for Zen's bags. Once they were loaded, the two men stood there awkwardly.

  'Thank you fo
r your help,' said Zen. 'And good luck with the painting.' Snaebjdrn Gudmundsson grimaced.

  'Just one authentic piece before I die, that’s all I ask. It doesn't matter how small or insignificant, still less whether anyone else notices or cares. Just one true thing, so that I can feel that my life hasn't been wholly wasted.'

  They shook hands.

  'It's been a pleasure to meet you, whoever you may be,' Snaebjorn Gudmundsson commented with an arch smile. 'I wish you a safe and pleasant onward journey. And please try and forget about what we've been discussing. It's really just a strictly local folk myth of no wider significance. It may or may not be true here, but it certainly isn't anywhere else. There are no hidden people where you're going!'

  Roma

  The first thing he did, after being flushed out of the side entrance of the Stazione Termini in a party of hearty young foreign backpackers and their parasitical horde of touts, rogue cabbies, beggars and pickpockets, was to get something to eat. Not that he had any excuse for feeling hungry. They'd fed him something called 'breakfast’ on the flight to Denmark, and something else called 'a snack' on the connecting plane to Fiumicino. But this wasn't a question of physical hunger. His needs were deeper and more complex than that, and luckily he knew just how to satisfy them.

  He crossed the busy street, delighting in several near misses and a very ripe insult from one of the drivers vying for position, then headed towards Piazza della Repubblica. After a few more life-enhancing, near-death traffic experiences, he turned left along Via Viminale, humming a sprightly melody he eventually identified as the national anthem, last heard in truncated electronic form emanating from Snaebjorn Gudmundsson's cellphone. 'L’Italia chiamo, stringiamoci a coorte, siam pronti alla morte…'

  Opposite a curvaceous section of a redbrick rotunda, once the southern corner of a vast complex of public baths erected by some Roman emperor, stood a poky little establishment about the size of a neighbourhood barber's shop. Inside the window, a roast piglet reclined languidly in a glass case as though taking an afternoon nap. Once through the doorway, there were a few rough wooden tables, chairs and benches. The proprietor, Ernesto, a short man who had come to closely resemble the product he sold, presided from a zinc serving bar at the back. He gave a mock start of astonishment as Zen walked in.

  'I thought you were dead!' he exclaimed in a Roman accent that would have needed one of his own knives to cut.

  Zen nodded.

  'There was a rumour to that effect.'

  The two men shook hands, the owner having wiped his off on his filthy apron.

  'That shocking business in Sicily!' exclaimed Ernesto with a massive shrug which effectively erased that island from the atlas. 'It was all over the TV and papers, but of course De Angelis and the rest of the lads gave me the inside story. It's sickening, just sickening! What are we supposed to do with those people? We've tried everything, and nothing works. Let’s face it, they're just not like us. Never were, never will be. And now they're talking about building that bridge to the mainland, at the taxpayers' expense, needless to say. You know what I say? Forget it! Stop the ferries! Patrol the straits with gunboats and shoot the bastards if they try to smuggle themselves into the country. They're worse than the Albanians.'

  At any other time, Zen might have been inclined to agree, but in his present state he felt like gripping Ernesto by the arms and trying to convince him that they were all – yes, even the Sicilians – fratelli d'Italia. He had enough common sense left, though, to realize that this would not do. Although open to the general public, Ernesto's establishment also functioned as a private club for a circle of privileged regulars, and like any club it had its rules. One of these was that a certain amount of purely rhetorical racism had to be tolerated in the spirit in which it was offered, as an innocuous way of establishing commonality and bonding, expressing solidarity and exasperation, and excluding outsiders. Like the human body, a community could only tolerate a certain degree of invasive otherness without internal collapse. The Romans had had fifteen hundred years of practice in the necessary strategies of passive aggression, and Zen for one did not feel that it was his business to criticize them. The baths which once covered this whole area of the city might have been pillaged and quarried and razed to the ground, but the people were still here.

  'So where have you been all this time?' Ernesto went on. 'They told us you'd survived that Mafia bomb, but when you didn't show up here I began to wonder. Maybe they're not telling us the truth, I thought. Even De Angelis didn't seem to know anything definite. Maybe we're all out of the loop, I thought. Maybe the whole thing is just a huge lie! After all, it wouldn't be the first time, would it?'

  Zen seated himself at one of the narrow tables.

  'It certainly wouldn't.'

  'So where were you?'

  'At the end of the earth, Ernesto. If s a long story, and I've got an appointment at the office in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile I'm ready for some real food.'

  'Right away, dottore, The usual?'

  'The usual.'

  Ernesto took one of the filled rolls from the glass cabinet, set it on a plate, then added two more thick slices from the roast and set it down in front of Zen along with a small carafe of white wine and a knife and fork.

  ‘I carved it extra fatty,' he said with a conspiratorial wink. 'You're looking a bit peaky, dottore. We'll have to feed you up.'

  Zen cut a chunk of the pale, perfumed meat and started to chew. Apart from wine, Ernesto only served one thing: porchetta, choice young piglets from farmers personally known to him, stuffed with fennel and herbs, slowly roasted to moist perfection on a spit and served cold with chewy fresh bread. The crackling was a crisp layer of rich delights, the fat a creamy, unctuous decadence, the flesh tender and aromatic. Even the generic Castelli Romani wine, which couldn't have been given away free as a household cleanser in Venice, tasted blandly acceptable to Zen today.

  As he turned his attention to the roll, having satisfied his immediate craving for flavourful protein, he began to wonder what lay ahead in his imminent interview at the Ministry just down the street. The name Brugnoli meant nothing to him, but this in itself was not surprising. Zen had been out of commission and away from his desk for almost a year, and in Italian politics a year is a very long time. Indeed, he had heard rumours that in his absence there had been yet another general election. But while the players might have changed, the game was likely to remain fairly predictable. The Craxis and Andreottis might be either dead or in retirement, just like their erstwhile enemies, the hard men of the Red Brigades, but to this day no one knew for sure how Aldo Moro had been kidnapped with such breathtaking ease and efficiency, nor why he had been killed. It was like Argentina after the collapse of the military dictatorship. The old regime had been swept away, but a general amnesty and a still more general collective amnesia were in effect.

  The implications for Zen's career were not positive. From what the Foreign Ministry official had told him in coded euphemisms on the phone, the case against Nello and Giulio Rizzo, if it ever came to court, could be resolved without Zen's testimony. That removed any further threat to his life from Mafia hit men, but it also removed any interest that the Italian authorities might have had in him. The early retirement which had been hinted at back when he was still convalescing now beckoned. There would be polite speeches, perhaps even a few perks in the way of his pensionable grade and so on, but basically he would be out. At the very best, they might kick him upstairs to a position as Questore at some sleepy provincial police headquarters where he would shuffle files, oversee routine administrative work and generally watch the clock until he was eased out altogether.

  But what he needed was work, and more urgently than ever before. He had never felt particularly zealous or committed to his job until now, when it was in danger of being taken away from him along with his mother, his adopted daughter and a whole way of life he had casually taken for granted, as though it would always be there. Now it looked like it very
well might not be, he asked himself in a sort of panic what he was to do. He would have enough money to live on comfortably, but how was he going to get through the day? What would he do at nine o'clock and noon and six in the evening, and why? What would be the point of it all?

  He wiped his mouth on the paper napkin, paid the modest bill, assured Ernesto of his satisfaction and continued custom in the future, and continued down the street to the cafe at the next corner, where he downed an espresso and smoked a cigarette which tasted as acrid as the one traditionally offered to the condemned man.

  The guard at the gate of the Interior Ministry building did not recognize Zen, but after some discussion allowed him to proceed as far as the security checkpoint at the main entrance. The plain-clothed functionary who presided here was a big man with squidgy features, clumsy gestures and the embittered air of someone painfully coming to terms with the fact that his boyhood dream of some day becoming a small-time pimp in Centocelle had probably passed him by.

  He demanded to see identification. Zen explained that he had been working undercover and was not carrying any. The failed pimp retorted that no one got in without identification, in a tone suggesting that the very fact that Zen had been unaware of this already made him a potential suspect.

  'I have an appointment with someone named Brugnoli’ said Zen. 'Does the name ring a bell?'

  'We don't disclose the identity of Ministry personnel.'

  'Well, can you call him and let him know I'm here?'

  The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  'The phone's at the main desk.'

  Zen started forward, and was immediately restrained by an outstretched hand.

  ‘I can't let you in without valid identification.'

  The official's tone of voice indicated clearly that there was no point in trying to reason with him. Zen turned away, walked down the steps into the courtyard of the building and dialled a number on his mobile phone. A voice he didn't recognize answered.

  'Si’

  •C’e De Angelis?' 'Un momentino.'