Blood rain az-7 Read online

  ‘I almost regret the old days,’ Baccio Sinico had remarked at one point. ‘At least they fought us openly then.’

  ‘They?’ queried Aurelio Zen.

  Sinico gave him a sharp look, as though trying to decide whether Zen was being ironical or just plain stupid.

  ‘Gli amid degli amici,’ he replied in a voice so low that Zen almost had to lip-read the coded phrase — ‘the friends of the friends’, meaning the Mafia’s presumed patrons and protectors in the government.

  ‘But those “friends” are no longer in power,’ he reminded Sinico. ‘Some of them are even under arrest or on trial.’

  ‘Precisely! In the old days, you knew who was who and what was what. Everyone knew where he stood, and what was at stake for both sides. Now it’s all done by indirection and inertia. The implication is that the great days are over, the Mafia is as good as beaten, and that all remains to be done is a low-level mopping-up operation without any real importance, glamour or risk. In other words, we’re being treated like traffic cops by Rome and like arrogant prima donnas by all our colleagues outside the department.’

  ‘The pay’s good, though!’ Zen had replied in a jocular, one-of-the-boys tone of voice suitable to the avuncular but slightly dim persona he cultivated for these professional encounters.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ Sinico had conceded. ‘Which is yet another reason why we’re resented and obstructed by all the other branches of the service down here. But money’s not everything. And, without undue bravado, it’s not really that I’m frightened of the risks involved. No, it’s the sense of isolation that’s getting to me. My family and friends are all back in Bologna, and here I am holed up in a fortified barracks deep in enemy territory, trying to do a job which no one seems to think needs doing any more.’

  ‘Have you noticed a weakening of support from the local population?’

  Sinico laughed sardonically.

  ‘What support? There was a wave of protests and demonstrations after Falcone and Borsellino were killed, but that soon faded. In my view it was mostly window-dressing anyway. It wasn’t so much that two selfless and dedicated servants of the Italian state had been blown to bloody pulp that got to people, it was the fact that it happened here, on their doorstep. It made them look bad, and Sicilians hate that.’

  He paused to toy with the largely uneaten food on his plate.

  ‘But we never expected much cooperation from the locals. What’s harder to take is the fact that the people at the top have started to distance themselves from us and our work. The old alliances have broken down, but new ones are in formation.’

  ‘With whom?’ asked Zen.

  Sinico made a gesture indicating that this was an unanswerable question.

  ‘We don’t know yet. But the Mafia has always allied itself with the party of the centre, and they’re all in the centre nowadays, even the former Fascists. Meanwhile our work is obstructed by insinuation and neglect. “With everyone in prison except Binu,” they say…’

  ‘Except who?’

  ‘Bernardo Provenzano, also known as Binu. Toto Riina’s right-hand man, and now effectively running the Corleone clan through his wife. Communicates only by written messages, doesn’t trust the phone. On the run for the last thirty years. He’s the last of the historic capi. The rest are all under arrest or serving life sentences, and have been dispersed to remote prisons. So the back of the Mafia has been broken, we’re told. “All thanks to people like you, of course, but the moment has perhaps come to take the longer view, the broader perspective, etcetera, etcetera”’

  He sighed deeply and shook his head.

  ‘It’s depressing, particularly when you know what’s really going on.’

  ‘And what is going on?’ asked Zen.

  Sinico looked up at him.

  ‘Dottore, the drug trade channelled through the port of Catania alone generates hundreds of millions of US dollars every year. There’s also a lucrative export market in firearms and military supplies, to say nothing of the usual construction scams, prostitution and protection rackets. Meanwhile, the youth unemployment rate is running at fifty per cent. There are seventy thousand people in this city with no visible means of support. Do you think the Mafia is going to have any trouble finding new recruits?’

  ‘But if the bosses are all in jail…’

  ‘Then new bosses will emerge. Someone said that only two things are certain, death and taxes. The Mafia combines both. It’s not going to go away. But whereas we knew who the old capi were, even if we couldn’t lay hands on them, we have virtually no idea at all who’s in charge now. Not only that, but the structure of power is shifting. The Corleonesi are more or less finished, having wiped out all their rivals. But other clans have emerged, two of the most powerful based in Belmonte Mezzagno and Caccamo.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Exactly Villages up in the mountains behind Palermo. No one’s ever heard of them except the DIA. Ragusa is also emerging as a major centre. In Catania and Messina, you have shifting alliances. The Limina family is on the way out, although they don’t seem to realize it yet. And as if all this weren’t enough, there are reliable rumours that alliances are being formed with the Calabrian n’drangheta, who are the real top dogs now, to say nothing of the start-up Albanian mobs in Puglia, some of which have opened branch offices right here in Sicily. In short, it’s an unbelievably complex and obscure situation, far more so than ever before. But no one wants to know. People here used to say, “What Mafia? There’s no such thing!” The only difference now is that they add “any longer”. Well, I’ve just about had enough, and I’m not the only one, believe me.’

  Zen did believe him, but could hardly afford to say so. His remit was to report on the operations of the Catania DIA, not connive at its dissolution.

  ‘But surely you must have had some successes recently?’ he said encouragingly. ‘That case of the body on the train, for example.’

  Baccio Sinico gave a massively expressive shrug.

  ‘It seems it wasn’t the Limina kid after all.’

  ‘It wasn’t?’

  ‘It seems not.’

  Zen frowned at him.

  ‘How do you mean, “seems”? Either it was or it wasn’t.’

  Sinico smiled his humourless smile once again.

  ‘With all due respect, dottore, it’s easy to see that you’ve only just arrived here. The dualistic, northern approach to life is completely alien to the Sicilian mind. So far from there being just two possibilities, there are, in any given case, an almost infinite number.’

  ‘Skip the philosophy, Sinico,’ Zen retorted gruffly. ‘I’ve never had a head for it.’

  The young officer smiled, this time with genuine warmth.

  ‘I apologize, dottore. A hobby of mine. It’s what I studied at university, until I realized that the job market in that particular subject was rather restricted. And for that matter I make no claims to understanding the Sicilian mentality either. You have to be born here to do that. But to get back to the point, it seems that the judiciary has seen fit to accept the statement of the Limina family that their son is alive and well, on holiday in Costa Rica, despite their reluctance to say exactly where he is, still less produce him in person.’

  ‘So you don’t think their story is true?’

  Baccio Sinico laughed again.

  ‘If you start asking yourself questions like that here in Sicily, you’ll drive yourself mad. I’m just telling you what’s happened. The case is closed and that’s that. As for the truth, who knows? Or cares?’

  Aurelio Zen considered this in silence for a while.

  ‘What about the magistrate who was investigating the case?’ he asked at length.

  ‘Nunziatella? She’s been taken off it. The case has been officially downgraded to a routine accidental death enquiry. They’re no doubt writing up the press release as we speak. It’ll be all over the papers and the television tomorrow, if you’re interested.’

  He sniffed and lit
a cigarette.

  ‘Besides, the judge in question has her own problems, if the office gossip is to be believed.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Sinico gave him a quick glance.

  ‘The word is that la Nunziatella doesn’t like men.’

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that she does like women.’

  Another shrug.

  That’s not illegal.’

  Baccio Sinico sighed again.

  ‘Despite some recent changes, this is a very conservative society, dottore. I’ve heard that there is a photograph in existence, showing Corinna Nunziatella and another woman in a restaurant.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They’re kissing,’ Sinico went on. ‘On the mouth.’

  Zen got out his battered pack of Nazionali cigarettes and lit up.

  ‘Who took the photograph?’ he asked.

  ‘No one knows.’

  ‘Well, where is it now?’

  ‘No one knows.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘But in a sense it doesn’t even matter whether the photo actually exists or not,’ Sinico went on. ‘All that matters is that the word is out that it does. And if it were to be sent to the local paper and printed on the front page, all of which could easily be arranged by certain people, then it would become difficult, if not impossible, for Judge Nunziatella to continue to carry out her duties in a satisfactory manner. In which case, of course, she would have to be replaced.’

  Walking over to the window at the rear of the apartment, overlooking the courtyard, Aurelio Zen unlatched the twin panes. It was like opening the door of an oven which is no longer turned on, but still stocked with heat from the long hours when it was blazing away. A spent wave of exhausted air invested the room, scented lightly with the basil and rosemary, thyme and oregano which a neighbour grew in pots on her balcony.

  The doorbell sounded. It was Carla, looking relaxed in loose, wheat-coloured linen trousers and a peach ribbed cotton-knit top, her radiance and energy instantly enlivening the room. All Zen’s previous apprehensions about the success of the evening were swept away. Together they rummaged through the kitchen cupboards for cooking utensils, then poured the soup from its jar into a saucepan that proved to be too small, getting a stain on Carla’s trousers in the process. It didn’t matter. They laughed and sorted it out and put the soup on to warm, opened a bottle of wine and gossiped about the latest political and social scandals, and discussed what to do about Carla’s birthday, which fell on the following Saturday.

  The conversational tempo slowed a bit once they had eaten, and at length Zen found himself resorting to a rather tired old standby.

  ‘So how’s work?’

  ‘The usual,’ said Carla. ‘I can never understand why so many people seem to find computers interesting. To me, they’re about as fascinating as a light switch — which is really all they are, when you get down to it. That’s why I like working with them. They’re soothing company.’

  She paused, pushing the salt cellar to and fro across the table.

  ‘I found something interesting today, though.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Another pause, followed by an embarrassed shrug.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you. All this stuff is supposed to be highly confidential. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork they made me sign.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Carla! We both work for the same side, after all. And anyway, I’m family’

  Carla conceded the point with a smile.

  ‘Well, someone’s been pinging the DIA system. I discovered a sequence of packet hits, all in the middle of the night, when none of the registered users was logged on.’

  Zen smiled weakly.

  ‘Well, that does sound interesting.’

  Carla laughed.

  ‘Actually, it is, sort of. In plain language, it means that someone outside the DIA has been looking at their work, checking their files and opening their mail. And what’s really interesting is that this doesn’t look like your average hacker. These people seem to be coming in with virtual sysadmin status, which means they can open, alter or even delete any file — even so-called “closed” files, inaccessible to other co-users. And they can do that not just here in Catania, but over the entire DIA network.’

  ‘So who are they?’

  Carla shrugged.

  ‘That I can’t say, yet. But I’ve identified the string code of the machine they’re using, code name “nero”. That’s like a fingerprint. It doesn’t tell you who or where the user is, but there are ways of tracking it back. Which is what I plan to do next.’

  She fumbled around in her bag and produced a folded piece of paper.

  ‘Look at this. This is just one of the entries I found on the DIA server’s var-log-messages file.’

  Zen took the sheet of printout and read: Aug 12 23:19:06/falcone PAM_pwdb[8489]: (su) session opened for user root by nero (uid=o)

  Carla pointed a finger at the page.

  This means that at nineteen minutes and six seconds past eleven at night on Tuesday last, someone identified as “nero” accessed the DIA system and used the “su” command to switch to user root status. Don’t look at me like that, Dad! This is important, because the root user has permission to do anything he likes on or to the system. Anything at all.’

  Zen nodded gravely.

  ‘And what action did you take?’

  ‘Well, of course I wrote a report and sent it to the DIA director. He’ll have to decide what to do next.’

  While Carla unwrapped the dessert she had bought, Zen got to his feet and set about making coffee. He had accepted the fact that he would never understand the new technology that was sweeping the world, where everything was intangible and instantaneous, and occurred at once everywhere and nowhere. A street vendor in the fish market had told him with great bitterness that most of the local tuna were now snapped up by the Japanese, taken to that country to be processed, and then sold back to Italians in those cheap cans of fishy slurry that came in packs of six. This story might be true, or it might be one of those urban myths with a built-in ethnic slur such as the Sicilians themselves had endured for many centuries. The only certain thing was that it was now possible. The technology was there, and a primitive, hard-wired circuit in Zen’s brain told him that if something could be done, then somebody was going to do it.

  ‘And apart from your work?’ he asked over his shoulder as he assembled the coffee pot. ‘What do you get up to in the evening?’

  ‘Not much, to be honest,’ Carla replied from much nearer than he expected.

  She lifted two plates down from a shelf and set about opening drawers in search of forks.

  ‘That one,’ Zen told her.

  ‘But I’ve been asked out to dinner tomorrow,’ she said, returning to the table.

  ‘Anyone interesting?’

  ‘One of the judges at the DIA. We’ll probably have soldiers lurking under the table and tasting the food to make sure it’s not poisoned.’

  The coffee burbled up.

  ‘Good for you! Is he good-looking? Or married?’

  There was a brief silence during which Zen poured out the coffee.

  ‘Actually, it’s a woman,’ Carla replied. ‘The one I told you about this morning, Corinna Nunziatella. She’s really been very nice to me. I think she’s lonely. She needs a girlfriend to talk things over with, but in her position…’

  Zen nodded slowly, not looking at her.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, almost inaudibly, then went on in a tone of forced bonhomie, ‘Well, congratulations! It looks as though you’ve inherited the family skill for making friends in high places.’

  ‘You’ve always done that, then?’ asked Carla.

  ‘Sometimes. But it didn’t do me any good.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I made an even greater number of highly placed enemies.’

  He gave her an odd smile, like a crumple
d photocopy of the original.

  ‘Anyway, it sounds as if you might be in for an interesting evening,’ he said, swigging the pungent black coffee down in one go. ‘Let me know how it turns out.’

  They came for Corinna Nunziatella just after she arrived for work the next day. There were two of them, in their twenties, both dressed in the all-purpose leisure uniforms of the trendy young: leather baseball caps, synthetic jackets, jeans and gigantic boot-style shoes. One was thin and ingratiating, the other squat and silent. Corinna instantly dubbed them Laurel and Hardy. She had never seen either of them before.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, dottoressa,’ said Laurel with a charming smile. ‘We’ve been told to come and pick up the file on the Limina case.’

  Corinna got up from her desk and turned to face them.

  ‘And who are you?’

  Laurel removed his small oval-lensed sunglasses and produced a plastic card identifying him as Roberto Lessi, a corporal of the Carabinieri. The card was overstamped ROS in large red letters.

  Corinna indicated Hardy, who was chewing gum and staring overtly at her in a way that she found extremely disturbing, all the more so in that there was nothing remotely sexual about his attentions.

  ‘My partner, Alfredo Ferraro,’ said Laurel, with an even more winning grin. ‘We work together.’

  ‘On what?’ Corinna demanded pointedly

  ‘Security.’

  ‘What kind of security?’

  Laurel paused, as though unsure how to answer.

  ‘Internal,’ he said at length.

  ‘And you are responsible to whom?’ demanded Corinna.

  ‘To the director, Dottor Tondo,’ was the reply, delivered with a definite taunting edge, as though to say, ‘Trump that!’

  Corinna picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Nunziatella,’ she replied when Sergio Tondo’s secretary answered. ‘I need to speak urgently to the director.’

  After a silence broken only by the distant sound of a siren, Tondo came on the line.