‘Okay,’ Martin continued weightily. ‘Before we go any further I need a verbal undertaking from both of you that nothing mentioned here today or resulting from it later will be disclosed to any other parties. Do you agree?’
Tom Newman nodded and muttered something in Italian to Nicola Mantega. After a pensive pause, he nodded too. Martin Nguyen flashed them his horrifying smile.
‘You may wonder why your agreement to this condition is necessary. The answer is that the scheme which I’m about to propose will mean laying ourselves open to charges of fraud, conspiracy and, at least in my case, tax evasion.’
He paused for the Italian translation — Tom seemed to have some trouble with the legal terminology — and then Mantega’s reaction. Everything seemed to be going smoothly so far, so he was amazed when Tom expressed an opinion.
‘I guess you can count me out, Mr Nguyen.’
Martin laid down his knife and fork, sipped his glass of sparkling mineral water and stared out at the lazy waves breaking on a beach that seemed both endless and pointless.
‘I have to get back home, anyway. The police called me this morning. They’re all set to release my father’s body for burial, so I’ll have to see to all that, contact the relatives, fix the funeral, get the will probated…’
His eyes clashed briefly with Martin’s as he speared a calamari ring.
‘Plus I don’t want to be involved in any criminal activities.’
Not the least of Martin’s talents was an instinctive understanding of the odds at any given juncture and a willingness to obey them.
‘I completely understand. You must of course see that poor Peter is appropriately laid to rest. But I’m not asking you to commit any crime. All I need is for you to translate my conversation with Signor Mantega and keep quiet about it afterwards. Once we have reached agreement, I will give you the balance of your wages due plus a bonus of one thousand euros towards the expenses of repatriating your father’s body. What do you say?’
The kid eventually settled for fifteen hundred, and Martin got down to business. He kept it brief and vague, partly because he suspected that Tom’s Italian wasn’t that great when it came to technical stuff, but mostly because he didn’t want him to know any more than the essential minimum even for the short period he had left to live.
‘The menorah which my employer wishes to buy is in fact in my possession,’ he announced. ‘However, it requires some work done before you, Signor Mantega, present it to the buyer at our agreed handover point. This process must take no longer than twenty-four hours.’
Mantega looked wary.
‘What kind of work?’
‘Ageing. Distressing.’
He caught Tom’s panicked glance and amplified his terms.
‘Making it look like it’s been around for ever and buried in a damp vault for the last fifteen hundred years.’
Mantega digested this.
‘So it’s a — ’ he began.
‘It’s whatever my client believes it to be,’ Martin interrupted with a significant glance.
Mantega thought some more, then nodded.
‘We can do this. But why do you need me?’
‘To clinch the sale, Signor Mantega. My client must believe in the provenance of the menorah that he will be offered for purchase. He must believe that it originally formed part of the treasure hoard in the tomb allegedly discovered by your clients. Capito?’
‘ Ho capito.’
‘Excellent. Then I think we can dispense with our translator’s services.’
He turned to Tom.
‘Run along and keep my chauffeur company. There’s a couple of matters I need to discuss privately with Signor Mantega.’
‘But you don’t speak Italian, Mr Nguyen.’
‘ Hablo il denaro. I speak money, kid. It’s a universal language. Beat it.’
Once they were alone, he and Mantega got along famously. It even turned out that the pudgy wop spoke some English. They concluded the deal in twenty minutes, after which Martin went off to the washroom for a lengthy pee during which he called Jake.
‘It’s down to the price and delivery,’ he said.
‘No way!’
‘So they say. We’ll find out tomorrow. Only I’m worried about the price, Jake. I mean strictly speaking this stuff is priceless.’
‘It’s worthless?’
‘It’s invaluable.’
‘It has no value?’
‘No, like no one knows what the market price is because there’s never been any market. I’ll jew them down as much as I can, but from what I’m hearing it looks like we’re talking seven figures. Maybe one and a half, two?’
‘Wow, you don’t know what this means to me!’
Martin Nguyen adjusted his dress before leaving.
‘I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what it’s going to mean to you,’ he said.
‘Congratulations on your demotion!’ Giovanni Sforza cried as Zen passed him in the corridor on the way back to his office.
‘What demotion?’
‘My spies tell me that the word in the bazaars and coffee houses is that Gaetano’s foot has been declassified from the list of species at risk of extinction. He’ll be taking over here on Monday, so prepare to be forcibly retired to your home in Tuscany. Beato te! Only wish I had your luck.’
‘Who’s Gaetano?’
‘Why, the man you’ve been standing in for! The silly ass who blew one of his toes off while fiddling around with the service revolver he hadn’t used in thirty years. Sometime chief of police in Catanzaro and now appointed Supreme Czar of all the Cosenzas, in which position he will no doubt wield the knout with a vengeance. Gaetano will wrap up that murder case that’s been baffling you in a matter of days. No disgrace for you, Aurelio. Down here it’s not who you are that counts, it’s who you know.’
With a twinkly smile, the bergamasco vanished into his office while Zen stomped back to his. As he crossed the open-plan area in the centre of the building, Natale Arnone emerged from one of the cubicles.
‘Ah, there you are, sir! It looks as though things are finally starting to move. Instead of going straight to his office this morning, Nicola Mantega drove to the square by the bus station and took a large cardboard box into Fratelli Girimonti. He was inside just a few minutes, then proceeded to a residential building facing Piazza del Duomo up in the old centre, where he delivered an envelope to the mailbox of an apartment owned by Achille Pancrazi, Professor of Ancient History at the university. Further enquiries revealed that Professor Pancrazi left yesterday on a flight for Milan, accompanied by his teenage son Emanuele, and has not yet returned.’
Zen lit a cigarette, as much for the symbolic warmth it represented as for the nicotine it contained. The Questura’s air-conditioning system had now been raised from the dead, so instead of his office being as sweatily airless as one of those containers in which illegal immigrants were found from time to time, it resembled the cold hold in a frozen-vegetable factory.