The American Read online

  The case requires a false bottom. This is not difficult. It will only be there to fool a casual inspection. No one rifles through a briefcase. I line the bottom and sides of the case with the film bags, cut to fit. They are lead lined. Into the base I then glue pre-shaped pieces of firm grey plastic foam to form the pockets in which the constituent parts of the gun will fit. Over this is clipped with the hooks and eyes a false tough card cover on to which are pasted papers—several invoices, a few letter heads, a shorthand notebook, some envelopes. To any casual observer looking beneath the central flap of the case, the whole is stuffed with documents. A visit to an office suppliers provides the final touches: on the central divider are a steel ruler, a small stapler, a pair of scissors, a miniature dictating machine, a very small transistor radio, two metal pens and a thin plastic box of paperclips. With the lead suppressing any X-rays, these will all appear vaguely and are positioned so as to confuse the outline of the weapon. It is not foolproof, but it will do. One might as well be prepared.

  It takes an hour to work out the best positioning but once this is done, I draw an outline of the plan, item by item marked so the girl does not need to experiment herself. I provide service as well as expertise.

  Finally, I assemble the gun for the last time.

  I am more than pleased with it. It is very well balanced, has a good feel to it. The inscription is clear but not obtrusive. I put it to my shoulder. It is a little short for me. I could not use it. I loosely point it at the basin and wonder at what, at whom, it will be aimed within the next few months, who will die by my handiwork and her practised application of it.

  It is so good to hold a gun. It is like grasping destiny. Indeed, this is what it is. The gun is the ultimate destiny machine. A bomb can be ill-placed or dropped off target, a bazooka can over-shoot, poison can have an antidote. Yet the gun and the bullet. So simple, so artful, so utterly unperfidious. Once the ’scope is aligned and the trigger is pressed, there is nothing to halt the journey of the slug. No wind to blow it off course, no hand to halt it, no anti-bullet bullet to bring it down in mid-flight.

  To hold a gun is to have a beautiful power flush through the veins, cleaning out the arteries of their fat and lazy cells, priming the brain for action, pushing the adrenalin up.

  I should have preferred my last weapon to be a handmade one, not an adaptation of another’s product. I should have preferred to have had my expertise pushed to its limits, perhaps being asked to make a silent, gas-propelled dart gun. I should have had then to make the barrel, to sleeve and rifle it, to forge and finish the mechanisms, design the darts. It would have taken six months of work and relentless testing. It would have cost a good deal more, too.

  Yet those days are gone. I must instead be grateful my final employment is to be used in the traditional manner of the assassin, a hit from not too long a distance, with classic, time-proven explosive shells.

  I dismantle the Socimi, placing it in its snug foam. The metal is only slightly darker than the padding.

  Setting the combination at 821, I snap the case shut and spin the little brass wheels.

  The job is done. I have only to deliver it, receive payment and retire.

  The autostrada is busy. There are long-distance trucks pulling slowly up the hills, buses filled with passengers crawling past them, holding up the sedan car traffic. Drivers flash their lights like whores blinking cheekily at sailors in a bar. In my Citroën, I am obliged to remain behind the trucks, frequently smothered by black diesel smoke and only passing when there is a free half a kilometre or the autostrada goes downhill.

  Despite this unpleasant inconvenience, I am in high spirits. The contract is fulfilled, on time and to the agreed specifications. It works well. This one will not jam.

  As I drive, I gaze at the mountains through which the autostrada wends, twisting along the contours of foothills, spanning gorges on breathtaking viaducts, plunging through hillsides in long tunnels in which are suspended vast, slow moving fans to shift the traffic fumes.

  This is a good place to live. The sun shines cleanly down, the summer rains are warm, the snows in winter pristine, the mountains young and sharp and beautiful. In autumn, the wooded hillsides turn to delicate hues of chestnut and oaken mahogany and in spring the lentil fields in the high valleys are a patchwork of green. I like it here within my little coterie of companions.

  I allow my mind to wander. If I was to marry Clara, I would be even closer to them. Father Benedetto would be pleased to see me joined so, Galeazzo would share my happiness and probably re-marry himself under the influence of my evident joy, Visconti and the others would rejoice that I had joined them in their matriarchal state of slavery.

  Yet the shadow-dweller puts all this in jeopardy. I curse him as I pull out to overtake a truck. He is the only fly in my ointment, he will not go away of his own volition, not until he has achieved his goal, whatever that may be.

  All through my journey, I watch the autostrada. On the long straights, I look backwards and forwards: one can be followed from the front, if the tracker is experienced. I do not see any blue Peugeots, not even in the opposite carriageway.

  It takes me a little over forty-five minutes to reach the service centre and my rendezvous. My client is correct. There is a back way into the services but I have elected not to arrive that way but to exit through it. I suspect she will do the same.

  The services consist of a large petrol station with several rows of Agip and Q8 pumps, a convenience shop, a repair garage and a café selling soft drinks, coffee and buns. The car park is not large. I stop the Citroën in a slot, facing the illegal exit. There is a single bar across it but I notice this is raised and wonder if the girl did this or if she has an accomplice with her who might assist in such matters, who has already arrived.

  The possibility of a second person makes me vigilant. I slip the Walther into my jacket pocket, checking first the magazine is full. Stepping out of the Citroën, I look around the car park. No blue Peugeot 309. I take the case from the rear seat and walk away. I do not lock the car, although I make a play of doing so. I want to be able to make a rapid getaway if necessary.

  Inside the café, I sit at a table near the window and place the case on the chair beside me: I put a paper bag on the table next to the sugar dispenser. From here, I can see the Citroën and most of the parking lot. I am a few minutes early and order an espresso. Nevertheless, before the coffee is served, the girl is at my table. Today, she is dressed in a tight black skirt, a simple blue blouse and a dark blue jacket. Her flat shoes are polished, her makeup immaculate and heavier than I have seen her wear before. She looks like the kind of lady who would carry a Samsonite briefcase.

  ‘Hello. I see you have brought it in from the car with you.’

  She speaks quietly, her voice low and attractive.

  ‘All there, as agreed.’

  ‘And the paper bag?’

  The waitress comes over with my coffee and the girl orders another for herself.

  ‘Sweets. For your journey.’

  She opens the bag and takes out one of the tins. She can immediately feel it is heavier than it should be.

  ‘That is most thoughtful of you. Someone will enjoy them.’

  ‘Will you not taste them?’ I ask.

  ‘No. They are for another, somebody who has, I am told, a sweet tooth.’

  She smiles at me and I sip at my coffee. The waitress returns with the second coffee and I pay for them both.

  She stirs her coffee to cool it. She is in a hurry. Such a place is a good rendezvous. Everyone is in a hurry here.

  ‘I do not know the hit,’ she admits quietly. ‘I shall not be the . . .’ She pauses to search for an appropriate phrase. ‘. . . end user.’

  This is, to me, something of a small quandary; the gun was made for her, to fit her arm, her shoulder, her strength. I had assumed all along that she was to be the one to use it.

  ‘I did work to your personal measurements.’

  I sou
nd like a bespoke tailor addressing a customer who has just taken delivery of a new suit.

  ‘Those were my instructions,’ she explains.

  ‘I suppose I shall read of the event in the Times or the International Herald Tribune,’ I say. ‘Or Il Messaggero’.

  For a moment, she is pensive then replies, ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  She drinks her coffee, holds her cup in mid-air and looks out of the window. I casually follow her gaze to assure myself she is not signalling to an accomplice. She replaces her cup on the saucer. I am confident she has not communicated with another.

  ‘They say this is your last job.’

  I nod.

  ‘They?’ I enquire.

  She smiles once more and says, ‘You know. The world. Those who know of you . . . Are you sad?’

  I make no reply. It has not occurred to me to be sad. Life will merely be different from now on.

  ‘Not really,’ I reply candidly, yet perhaps I am: sad at relinquishing my position as the world’s acknowledged best in my profession. Sad at having my desire to remain in these mountains thwarted.

  ‘Tell me,’ I ask her, ‘have you put a tail on me? A minder?’

  She gives a brief, hard stare.

  ‘I did not think that was necessary. Your reputation . . .’

  ‘Quite. But someone has. I feel I should tell you.’

  ‘I see.’ She is thoughtful for a moment. ‘A description?’

  ‘Young, male, white: slim, about your height, I should say. Brown hair. I have not been closer. He drives a blue Peugeot 309 with Rome plates.’

  ‘This must be your problem, not ours,’ she answers positively. ‘But thank you for the warning.’

  She drinks the rest of her coffee.

  ‘I am just going to the ladies,’ she says, standing up. ‘Wait here.’

  She picks up the briefcase. There is nothing I can do about this. She has grasped the initiative, taken advantage of me and I have been caught napping, wrong-footed. Perhaps, I readily convince myself, the time most definitely has come for me to retire. I wait. I can do nothing else. It is now all down to trust and distrust. I have my hand on the Walther in my pocket and carefully survey the car park, the door to the lavatory at the end of the café and the other customers.

  After a few minutes, she returns.

  ‘Shall we go?’

  This is not a suggestion but a command. I am obliged to stand up and we leave.

  ‘You don’t need your piece,’ she comments as we walk towards the parked cars. Her use of the noun is almost comical. This might be the scene from a television detective show.

  ‘One never knows.’

  ‘True, but I see no blue Peugeot here.’

  She stops beside a large Ford. Seated at the wheel is a man. He has short blond hair and wears Ray-Ban sunglasses of the type US highway patrolmen use. The electric window whirs open.

  ‘Hi!’ he greets me. He is possibly an American.

  ‘Hello.’

  I still have my hand on the Walther in my pocket. Both his hands are on the steering wheel. He is familiar with the conventions of our business world and abides by them.

  ‘Okay?’ he enquires of the girl.

  ‘Everything’s just fine,’ she says. I wonder then if she too is an American.

  His right hand slips out of sight. I twist my wrist upwards and thumb the cocking lever. At such short range, the slug will easily penetrate the door, retracted window, interior trim and his rib cage.

  ‘Final payment.’

  He hands me the envelope. It feels right.

  ‘We’ve added another six grand,’ she says. ‘You can buy yourself a retirement clock.’

  To my amazement, she leans forward and kisses me lightly and quickly on the cheek, her lips dry. It could have been a trick and I was totally unprepared for it.

  ‘Have you taken your mistress up to the meadow yet?’

  ‘No. I have not.’

  ‘Do it.’

  Not Do so. Do it. So she is an American, after all.

  The Ford starts up. She gets into the front seat and swings the briefcase into the back.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she calls. ‘Take care, y’hear?’

  The driver raises a hand in farewell.

  The car reverses, pulls away and disappears down the slip-road onto the autostrada. I relax, thumb back the lever on the Walther, go to the Citroën, get in and drive off under the raised pole and on to a country road.

  The road twists through vineyards. I keep my concentration despite the desire to relax. The gun is gone. I am in retirement. Yet I am not. Like the man who has to return the day after his company party to clear his desk, I have to see to my final affairs, the shadow-dweller. Only when he has gone, or I have escaped him, will it be over.

  Two hours later in the apartment, after a circuitous route back, I very carefully open the envelope. There are no wires adhering to sticky tape, no tricks and six thousand extra US dollars. Americans are such a perplexing people.

  On my way to my apartment from the Banco di Roma in the Corso Federico II, I am accosted by Galeazzo. He insists I come immediately to his shop. He has brought a new consignment of books up from his secret source in the south. They have arrived by truck in four small tea chests upon the sides of which are stencilled ‘Best Ceylon Tea’.

  ‘These cases were owned by the old lady. She is getting rid of many of her books now. She is dying and wants to go without encumbrance.’

  ‘A colonial dame,’ I remark, observing the tea chests which are lined with tin foil.

  ‘I want to show you these,’ Galeazzo says and he lifts from the table by the window one of a six volume set. ‘It will interest you.’

  The book is bound in green cloth with a leather spine blocked in gold. I hold it to the sunlight. It is a volume of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, edited by Hill. I open the book at the title page and see it is the Oxford University Press edition of 1887.

  ‘You have the set?’

  ‘All of them.’

  He pats the pile on the table.

  ‘Worth having.’

  ‘More so! Look inside the cover.’

  I open the volume again: on the dark green endpaper is a white bookplate printed from a steel engraving. On either side are printed daffodils. In the distance between them are hills and a smoky city with a river wending to the foreground where stands, behind a scroll, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. On the scroll is printed, One of the books of David Lloyd George.

  The arrogance of this old womaniser, this political tightrope walker, this Liberal do-gooder and philanderer astounds me. The peasant Welshman, the miners’ Dick Whittington, has inscribed his entire library with this motif of his conceit. How small men risen to the thrones of politics like to puff themselves up like peacocks. How like peacocks they are, all colours and feathers and nothing more.

  ‘What do you think?’ Galeazzo asks.

  ‘I think,’ I reply, ‘this is a masterful expression of the absurdity of power.’

  Galeazzo is plainly crestfallen. He was hoping for praise at his bookbuying find, his bibliophilic success. I try to reassure him.

  ‘As a purchase, it is of course a triumph. To find such a complete set, in southern Italy, in such fine condition, is the proof of a true book-hunter at work. Still, it is the most obscene and pornographic book in your shop.’

  Knowing Galeazzo to have a private collection of Italian erotic literature, most of it illustrated quite graphically, in his bedroom, to not a single volume of which I have been privy, this statement has the desired effect. He stares at me as if I am a buffoon.

  ‘This is literature,’ he exclaims. ‘The best of literature.’

  ‘Obscenity and pornography are not restricted to stories of two girls and a man sucking each other’s privates,’ I retort. ‘There is more gross profanity in one corner of the political world than in the whole of the red-light areas of Naples, Amsterdam and Hamburg all rolled into one.’

  He decides n
ot to enter into this argument. Instead, he pours out a glass of wine. It is pale red in colour and frizzante. I take a mouthful of it. It is dry and has a tar-like aftertaste.

  ‘Parasini. From Calabria. It is good, you will agree?’

  ‘It is good.’

  The sun streams in through the grimy window and I undergo what is a unique experience for me, a positive longing to repeat this afternoon many times in the future.

  I have a strong presentiment that matters in my life are coming to a head. I may merely feel this way because the gun is delivered, the money in the bank, my not altogether unlucrative career at a close. It may be in the stars, although I am not an astrologically-minded individual and I do not eagerly anticipate the weekly assessment of my horoscope in one of the tabloids. I dismiss astrology as irrational drivel.

  The truth, of course, lies in the fact that the shadow-dweller is about. I feel him every waking hour and meet him, on occasion, in my sleep. I have not seen him for several days but he is somewhere in the town, his presence itching my spine like a creeping cancer. For certain, he is closing in, street by street, alleyway by alleyway, bar by bar, biding his time until his moment arrives. All I can do is wait.

  Father Benedetto is to be away longer than he anticipated. He has left a message for me with his housekeeper. He has gone from Florence to Verona for he knows not how long. His bedridden octogenarian aunt, he writes, is dying and has asked for him to give her absolution. She may die tomorrow, she may last the month out. To me, the visit seems to need to be only a brief one. At over eighty, and confined to her deathbed, she can hardly commit more sins before she dies.

  I am sad: I want to drink good wine and eat his home-cured ham with him, share with him my misgivings, my dilemma, perhaps ask his advice. The grapevine in his little garden is surely laden with dark mauve fruit by now, and he is certain to have offered me to taste them in abundance.