Cosi Fan Tutti - 5 by Michael Dibdin Page A

Nieddu had built up a thriving business in the electronic surveillance field, specializing in industrial espionage. He had never lost an opportunity of gloating more or less openly to Zen about his successes out there in the ‘real world’, the implication being that it was at once lazy and unenterprising of Zen to keep slogging away at his safe but dead-end statale job when such rich pickings were to be had, for those with the get-up-and-go to pursue them, in the private sector.
    But Gilberto was no longer gloating. A former client of his company, Paragon Security, had brought himself to the attention of the anti-corruption Mani Pulite team of judges in connection with a contract for the widening of a motorway in Lombardy. In the course of a lengthy interrogation, one of the regional politicians involved
    revealed that, in addition to the sums specified in the winning bid, several billion lire had also changed hands privately.
    One aspect of the affair of particular interest to the authorities was how the entrepreneur in question managed to be so well-informed about the competing bids and bribes being offered by other firms, all of which, thanks to the seizure of his extensive records, were also under investigation. In the circumstances, the contractor felt no compunction in throwing a minnow like Nieddu to the judges, in the hope - vain, as it proved - of appeasing their feeding frenzy for a while.
    It being just as onerous and risky to remove bugging devices as to install them, they were still in place. The truth of the contractor’s allegations was proven, and
    Paragon Security itself came under investigation. Unfortunately, in addition to providing a range of services which were illegal in the first place, Gilberto Nieddu had also been fiddling his taxes. According to the declarations he filed, he had been earning barely more than Aurelio Zen’s modest stipend from the State. The sums disbursed by his clients, though, were larger than this by a factor of about ten. The judges were naturally curious to learn how he proposed to account for this discrepancy.
    ‘My only hope is Wojtyla/ Gilberto announced in a mournful voice when he met his friend at Stazione Termini that afternoon.
    Zen looked askance.
    ‘How he help you?’
    ‘By dying. They still have an amnesty whenever a new Pope is elected. Anyone convicted of a non-violent crime with five years or less to serve gets out. My lawyer - who incidentally has already accounted for about half the assets I’d salted away where the judges can’t get at them - reckons he can get me off with five to seven, less whatever I’ve served before being brought to trial. So it’s a fine calculation. For example, if I get six, with nine months detention pre-trial, I want the big Polack to buy the dacha three months after sentencing. On the other hand if I get five, he should drop dead right away. It’s about time, anyway.
    Rosa and her friends are all ready to convert to Islam. They say it’s less repressive for women.’
    He swallowed some more beer and lit another cigarette.
    ‘On the other hand, of course, the case may never come to court. There seems to be a very encouraging political vacuum at the top these days. People are starting to realize that this ‘Clean Hands’ mentality is getting out of control.
    This sort of inquisitorial moralism is completely alien to our culture. Besides, if you really pursued it to its logical conclusion, you’d have to lock up eighty per cent of the population!’
    ‘Thereby providing jobs as jailers for the other twenty/
    Zen put in. ‘Who says a managed economy doesn’t work?’
    Joking aside, Nieddu’s position was anything but enviable.
    Although still at liberty, his office had been sealed, his assets seized and his business - so carefully built up over many years - ruined overnight. He was liable to be arrested at any moment, and meanwhile led a fugitive existence, shunned by his former friends and associates, waiting for