Gesualdo and Sabatino sat quite still at their table, staring at the ground as though in shock. They were still there when Aurelio Zen returned, having escorted Orestina and Filomena out to the waiting taxi.
'Where are they?' muttered Sabatino, looking up with a start.
'They've gone/ Zen told him.
'It's all so sudden!' Gesualdo exclaimed.
He seemed to be talking to himself. Zen sat down between them.
'Pull yourselves together, lads! It's not the end of the world. In fact, it might even be helpful.'
'Helpful?' said Gesualdo aggressively, all his emotion bursting out. 'And what's your interest in all this, anyway?'
Zen handed them each one of the cards he had had engraved in the name Alfonso Zembla.
'If you drop by here this evening between nine and ten, I'll tell you. And I'll also tell you a really easy way in which you can get yourself into the good graces of your sweethearts' mother.'
The men took the cards, but it was clear that their thoughts were elsewhere. Silence fell. Over to the east, above the city, an airplane lumbered laboriously into the pale azure sky, its engines straining at the seemingly impossible task of lifting such a massive weight. Gesualdo and Sabatino followed it with their eyes, willing it to succeed. The plane climbed steadily up through the clear, still air, out over the calm waters of the bay, its lights winking brightly against the deeper blue of the gathering dusk, then turned slowly in a wide circle over the shadowy outline of the peninsula and islands, heading north.
Gesualdo rose, followed by Sabatino. Without a word to Zen, they walked off across and into the restaurant.
Zen clicked his fingers to summon the waiter.
'Bring me the same again/ he told him. 'And a phone.'
When the phone arrived, on a long white cable, he called Valeria.
'They're on their way/ he said.
'How did it go?'
'The two lads seem to be taking it very hard, but that could work to our advantage. People who exaggerate their emotions are usually the first to change them.'
Outside the restaurant, Gesualdo and Sabatino walked over to their parked cars.
"I still can't believe it/ said Sabatino, shaking his head slowly.
'Maybe because it isn't true/ suggested Gesualdo.
Sabatino stopped dead, staring at him.
'What do you mean?'
A shrug.
"I don't know. But I don't quite buy this. The girls take off without any notice, supposedly to study English.
How do we know where they've gone?'
'We can call them/ said Sabatino.
Gesualdo shook his head.
'They didn't leave a number, did they? Or an address.
Just the name of some school that may not even exist, for all we know.'
'Filomena said she'd call me twice a day!' protested Sabatino.
'Yes, but from where? They could be anywhere in the country, or abroad for that matter. This could all be a ruse to get them out of our influence. I sense the fine hand of their mother in all this. And this Alfonso Zembla character gives me the creeps. Where did he spring from?' "'A friend of the family," he said. I've never heard Filomena mention him before. And what's he doing here in Naples? With that accent, he has to be from somewhere in the North/ He took out the card Zen gave him and inspected the address.
'You think we should go?' he asked his friend.
'Of course. If this is some kind of set-up, Zembla has to be in on it. Maybe we can worm it out of him. He didn't seem that bright to me.'
Sabatino unlocked his car.
'Maybe we're getting a little carried away here/ he said with a loosening-up gesture of his right hand. 'That's the trouble with being in this line of work. You end up thinking that everyone's as devious as the people we hang out with.' "I hope you're right.'
Sabatino got into his car.
'I'm going round to Dario's to play cards for a while, put my ear to the ground about this other business. You want to come?'
Gesualdo shook his head.
'I've got an appointment.'
'Business or pleasure?'
'Business. I'll swing by and pick you up around nine.'
'Take care.'
'You too.'
Gesualdo drove out of the car park along a steep, narrow, switchback street that ended at the main road a few hundred metres up the hillside. There he turned right, coasting down the cobbled corniche whose extensive views out over the bay have proved fatal to so many drivers.
Dipping down to water level at Mergellina, he drove along the front past the gardens of the Villa Communale and back into the city.
In the inverted ghetto of Posillipo, where the wealthy and powerful have paraded their wealth and power for well over two thousand years, Gesualdo had felt ill at ease, an interloper. The shocking news of the girls' departure was fully in keeping with other subliminal messages he was picking up, a kind of white noise which the place generated along with the obedient hum of luxury cars, the murmur of conversation between people who never need to raise their voices to be heard, the silence of exclusion and the discreet hushing of a tame, respectful sea.
Here, plunged into the deafening clamour and random trajectories of the streets, he was at home once more, back in the innards of the city he knew so well. He turned out of Piazza dei Martiri into a gateway in the wall of a nineteenth-century palazzo. Inside a concrete ramp led steeply down into a cavern, its dimensions too huge and complex to be grasped at once. The vaulted ceiling, barely visible in the gloom, must have been over fifty feet high. The space below extended back at least twice that distance, irregular in shape and divided by walls of bare stone left to support the streets and houses on the hill above.
Gesualdo angled his car into a vacant slot in the middle of one of the rows of vehicles parked there, for a fee, by office workers and other commuters. Unlike them, however, he did not walk back the way he had driven in, towards the steps leading up to street level, but the other way, into the deepest recesses of the subterranean car park. The ground underfoot was dusty with particles of stone scuffed up from the soft volcanic tufa forming the walls, floor and ceiling of this gigantic excavation, one of a series of such cavities underlying the entire city.
It was the Greeks who first realized that the stratum of solidified lava beneath their new city, Neapolis, was at once easy to extract and work, and strong enough to resist collapse. Both they and the Romans exploited this fact to install a complex system of subterranean aqueducts, reservoirs, road tunnels and storage spaces for grain, oil and other goods. The temperature at these depths was consistently cool, the humidity constant.
But the boom period for the underground city dated from the Spanish conquest. In one of the earliest attempts to enforce zoning regulations within the city walls, the invaders prohibitively taxed the importation of building materials. The response of the inhabitants was to reopen the ancient tunnels and caverns, this time as secret quarries, and to use the tufa to extend or amplify their homes.
The fact that they were thus undermining the very houses they were constructing apparently struck no one as ironical.
The branch of the cavern which Gesualdo was following narrowed progressively to form a giant ravine no more than ten feet across, but even higher than the main body of the cave. The lower walls had been widened, presumably to accommodate the vehicles whose tire tracks were imprinted in the fine dust covering the ground. The passage ended at a pair of rusty iron doors, from behind which a variety of industrial noises were audible: drilling, sanding, hammering. Occasional brief flashes of incredible brilliance enlivened the prevailing darkness.
Gesualdo pressed a button mounted beside the doors.
After a long pause, a muffled voice inside said something incomprehensible. Gesualdo leant forward, pressing his face to the metal.
'Roberto sent me/ he shouted.
Another long pause ensued. Then there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and a man's face appeared between the two doors. He was wearing welding goggles, through which he inspected the intruder cautiously.
'It's about a car/ said Gesualdo.