God's Dog (13 page)

Ivan's phone call had stirred up old memories. She looked in the bathroom mirror and tidied her hair, as though she wanted to look decent should he happen to be outside the door and suddenly walk in. She had been ill-advised to tell him everything; now she was putting him in danger too. In any case, Ivan himself was half-crazed by a desire for revenge: he might do something rash. But she had been unable to help herself. At times she thought she heard affection in his voice; or was she just imagining things? Could he really be completely indifferent to her? He too must surely still feel something. Even if she hadn't heard from him for almost two years. Of course, he had other worries: his escape, his non-appearance in court, and then his father's awful death. By now he would certainly have found another woman, and the thought of Ivan looking tenderly at someone else was more than she could bear. She could no longer remember how his voice sounded when he spoke lovingly to her. Yet they had been happy together; perhaps it had been the rape which had ruined everything. No, that's not right, she thought, everything was already over when that happened. Perhaps, though, without that horror story, they would have been able to start afresh; everything could have been as it had been before. The nearest ‘before' for which she still felt nostalgia was so far away! Now she was running headlong towards the ‘after'. Only the ‘after' could save her from the unbearable ‘now'. But how had he been able so easily to forget her? She couldn't have been very important to him if he had been able to detach himself from her so light-heartedly. Yet what did she know about Ivan's deepest feelings? They had not been able to communicate during the ten months she had spent in prison, and seeing each other during the other three years of probation had not been easy, either. It had always all been such a rush, and they had always been terrified of being caught. Perhaps he was avoiding her for her own good; at all events, that was what Marta liked to think. So why did she persist in wanting to see him now? To help him, that was what she told herself at the time. But he was difficult: it was as though he came to those meetings on sufferance. She had hoped that she might be able to wipe out the past by her mere presence, but Ivan had his mind on other things. He was making plans for his escape; she was not in the forefront of his mind. At the time, she had had to make do with that; she would have to make do with that now as well. Ivan wasn't coming back to her; he was lost to her for good. He was as caught up in his hatred as she was in her loneliness.

The common grave lay on the other side of a lawn running along the west side of the hill. Ivan went up to the yellow stone with the dates of the earliest and most recent burials carved into it. A light wind blew through the grass, ruffling the cypresses that overlooked the tomb. On the slope that ran down towards the road, yellow mimosa bushes were in flower, giving off a delicate scent of early spring. He thought back to the last time he had seen his mother alive, and that was many years ago by now. It was a summer's day, he'd just come back from an afternoon at the seaside with Marta. He remembered her mild look, her eyes distorted behind thick glasses, the vague smile she put on in an attempt to please him and above all not let him see that she was worried. At least she had died quickly. Whereas his father…Who knows where they had dumped his corpse? More than the pain, it was the thought of the fear his father must have felt that caused Ivan such gut-wrenching fury. And the loneliness. Locked up in prison, watched over like a murderer, there in his filthy cell. Ivan tried to get these images out of his head, but they kept coming back to him as though he had been a physical witness to his father's suffering. In fact, he knew nothing of his father's death. When he had been taken into the hospital on the Caelian Hill, he hadn't been able to see his own doctor; he tried to decipher the reports of the military doctors to get some idea of his condition. The telephone conversations he had had with Ivan had not been reassuring; not much was said. He had talked like a medical chart, addressing him in the polite form; he knew that his conversations with Ivan were recorded. The police had allowed them hoping they might reveal something about Ivan's whereabouts. He remembered how wretched he'd felt during that time. He'd desperately wanted to go to see his father, but that would have meant another stint in prison, and this time there would have been no reprieve. At least this way they would leave his father in peace. He would never have thought that they would take it out on him, an old man who was already serving a death sentence. How could they be so cruel? But it was that fanatic Novak who was the wild beast among them, it was he who spurred on all the rest; he was an obsessive, and his underlings were ready to obey him in order to further their own careers. Ultimately Ivan had decided to go back, to get himself arrested. He had been on the road when he had received Boris's phone call. His father had died, perhaps some days ago. A routine letter had arrived at his old address. The date of death was uncertain. Novak would have liked to keep it secret, in order to lure Ivan to Rome, but the bureaucrats at the papal registry office had overridden him, powerful though he was. Ivan dried his eyes on the back of his hand. He picked a daisy and threw it onto the slab of stone that covered his mother's tomb.

From the basement in which he now found himself, Salazar could see a dense grove of pine trees, a strip of sand and the iron gateway to a villa. All he knew of his whereabouts was that he was on the coast. A patch of sky, overcast but bright, a quiet road, a lot of dust. Salazar didn't know what day it was, but from his calculations it should be Easter Saturday. The only noise filtering in from the outside was the chirping of sparrows. Suddenly, he was deafened by the sound of a plane landing; the runway must be extremely close. It was probably early morning, because there was a smell of fresh bread in the air. He looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing a track suit and trainers. All there was in the room was the camp-bed on which he had been lying, and a bottle of water, on the floor. Beyond the wall he could hear the cackle of a radio. Suddenly the door opened and four people came in, the bogus Chiara Bonardi and three others with stockings over their faces. They pushed him into the next room and sat him down at a table; one of the three stood opposite him with a pen and paper, the others took up positions behind him. Salazar looked around him as best he could, trying not to move his head. He was in the living room of a holiday home, but the furnishings seemed past their prime: he noted the faded nautical motifs on the wallpaper, some blue pottery covered with dust, a large fish-shaped vase with a chipped rim. There was a divan beneath the tall window and a small bamboo table between two non-matching chairs. The wrought-iron table at which he was seated had a glass top covered with an old discoloured sheet. There were patches of mould on the brick floor. Four rucksacks were piled up against the wall near the door.

‘Don't strain yourself, there's nothing to see!' said the man opposite him. The other two were peering out through the blinds. A car drove up, and the driver switched off the engine. They nodded, as though to confirm that everything was under control.

The woman went round to the other side of the table. ‘Now you must tell us everything, inspector. That was our agreement!' she said in a rasping tone, looking distinctly nervous by now.

‘I'll do my best,' said Salazar. He was in no position to foil their plans; all he could do was string them along, but his subterfuge had to be carefully considered, bearing in mind what he had read on the phone belonging to the hit-man who'd been sent to kill him. The members of the brigade almost certainly knew something already. It should be enough to tweak the truth a little in order to seem credible and lead them into making some mistake.

‘Where are the marksmen? We've located four positionings around the portico, but we know there are others.'

‘Yes, there are two others, one on the Leonine Walls and one on the roof of the Galleria Aurora.' It wasn't true, but it was plausible.

‘Any others?'

‘They usually post them between the statues on the façade of the basilica.' This was invention pure and simple.

‘What about plainclothes men, how many will there be? How will we recognise them?'

‘I don't know how many there'll be, but you can recognise them by the yellow buttons on the collars of their shirts.' That, at least, was true. But Salazar knew that during an event as momentous as the canonisation of a pope, nothing and no one would be recognisable. The police would mingle with the pilgrims, the friars, the nuns and even the sick in search of a miracle.

‘What about the podium. Do you know when it will be ready?'

‘No, but usually everything is in place before the maximum security measures come into force. The workmen have to be out of the area so that the papal guard can make their inspections. Not even the pope can enter it without their authorisation. So I presume that the podium will be completely finished by the evening of the day before the ceremony.' At least that made good sense, even if it was not very informative.

‘And who keeps watch over the place during the night?'

‘I don't know about such details. All I know is that the night patrol comes on at midnight, when the Swiss Guards finish their shift.' From his time at police school, Salazar knew that the six o'clock changing of the guard in Saint Peter's Square was just a show put on for tourists; the real change took place at midnight. But the real guards were not those who relieved one another outside the basilica; there were many others in readiness behind the wall of the colonnade.

‘What about the telecameras? Where will they be?' That was something else he could tell them. Those telecameras were indestructible. Perhaps if they realised what they were up against they might lose heart and give up the whole endeavour.

‘Under the colonnade, every ten metres. Four on the façade of the basilica and one at the top of the obelisk.'

The man who was questioning him looked away for a moment. The others were discussing something in low voices over a map they had spread out at the other end of the table. Chiara Bonardi was shaking her head, indicating a point on it with her finger. Salazar took advantage of the moment to take a closer look at the man's face behind the stocking mask. He saw a beard, but that was all he could make out; the stocking distorted his other features.

‘What time does the papal procession arrive?' the man persisted, seeing himself being looked at. Salazar had a perfect memory of the pope's prospective movements; that was what he had paid most attention to when he'd studied the cadet's mobile phone. Then he remembered the leaflets and posters he'd seen in Saint Peter's Square, and came out with something he hoped was plausible.

‘There isn't going to be a procession. On such occasions the pope comes out of the basilica on foot. He has to be on the podium by eleven, so I imagine he will be going down the flight of stairs around ten forty-five. He's usually accompanied by the papal prefect, the secretary of state, the chief of the papal police, the heads of the congregations and the commander-in-chief of Propaganda Fide. But they don't go up on to the altar; they stay down on the lower part of the podium; and they will already be in their places when the pope arrives. The only person who is always with him is the deacon.'

‘Where will Benedict XVI's sarcophagus be placed?' There had been nothing about this on the cadet's phonecard, so Salazar had to improvise. Even though he had been just a boy when Karol Wojtyla had been canonised, he remembered the event, which he had watched on television.

‘It will be borne on to the podium and placed in front of the altar, probably leaving the basilica at the same time as the pope.' That was fairly plausible. The man who was questioning him was taking notes, tapping his biro nervously over the paper. The others were now folding up the map and putting on their rucksacks.

‘This had better all be true, inspector, or we'll be taking you back to the hospital! And your mates will see to it that you meet your maker!' Salazar nodded, giving him a defiant look.

‘Now we're going to have to blindfold you and take you to another hiding place.'

‘Can I refuse?'

‘I don't think so. It won't be for long, forty-eight hours at most.'

‘Perhaps it would be better if you killed me straight away.'

‘We won't be doing that; you're of no interest to us.'

Salazar was put into the back of a van with his hands tied behind his back and a towel around his head. The driver set off at some speed, but had to brake continually to negotiate sharp curves. Short climbs, followed by short descents, suggested that the van was going over bridges; sometimes it jolted along what might have been a gravelled surface. There was a smell of dust. He was taken out of the van in an underground car park and taken to another basement, in part of an old garage; there was a smell of petrol, and old tyres. A room with the camp-bed that had come with them in the van; two small windows with frosted glass, and bars. A metal door led into a lavatory; there were oil stains on the floor, and piles of sawdust. One of the men freed his hands, but tied his feet together with a bicycle chain. Before going out, the woman put a bag on the floor. ‘Something to eat and drink,' she said, darting him a sympathetic glance. He made a move to go towards her, but the bicycle chain prevented him.

‘Wait…' said Salazar. The woman paused on the threshold.

‘I wanted to thank you. I think you've saved my life…'

‘It's nothing…' she said, embarrassed; then she looked away and went out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Trains full of pilgrims were arriving at Stazione Termini one after the other. Hundreds of monks and nuns were thronging the platforms and wandering off into the station entrance. Men and women of every conceivable hue were calling to each other in a Babel of tongues, waving the flags of their various countries and forming orderly lines, their vast array of uniforms and insignia attesting to the Church's awesome power. Salazar looked like a beggar in his tattered track suit and trainers. He wandered around the station in search of an internet point. It had taken him several hours to free himself, patiently working the bicycle chain against the metal door of the lavatory; but the hard part had been getting out of the basement. Luckily he had heard voices on the other side of the wall, and had called out. He had been heard by an electrician who'd come down into the basement to do some repairs, who had told the watchman, who had come down with the spare key. Salazar told him that he'd recently rented the storeroom and locked himself in by mistake, then made himself scarce, not leaving the man time to wonder at his stupidity. At the bus station he had at last seen an Italcom sign, and gone in. He hadn't a penny on him, so was obliged to wait until someone went off leaving some credit on the computer. An Indian seminarist had grasped his predicament, possibly having been in the same position himself, and let him take his place. There were still twenty minutes left on the phonecard. The first thing Salazar did was to check his e-mails. He found a message from Guntur.