folds of the yellow robe.
‘Wait here while I intercede with Mago, that he may suffer you to enter in unto him.’
The creature drew back one edge of the curtain a little, releasing an overpowering whiff of fetor, and slipped inside. The curtain dropped into place again.
‘My grandfather used to move his bowels first thing every morning,’ Nieddu remarked conversationally. ‘Afterwards, he’d inspect the result carefully, then go outside and eat the appropriate herb or vegetable, raw, with the dirt still on it. He lived to be a hundred and four. He saw Garibaldi once.’
There were muffled voices from behind the curtain, which twitched aside to reveal the robed figure.
‘Mago is graciously pleased to grant your request for an audience.’
As the two men stepped inside, the curtain fell shut behind them, leaving them in a darkness which was total except for a glow emanating from the far side of the room. Nauseating odours of unwashed flesh, stale sweat and spilt urine made the air almost unbreathable. As Zen’s eyes gradually adjusted, he made out the reclining figure bathed in the toneless radiance.
‘Hi, Gilberto!’
‘Nicolo! How’s it going?’
Nieddu put his arm around Zen, forcing him forwards.
‘Let me introduce a friend of mine. This is Aurelio. Aurelio, meet Nicolo.’
Propped up in bed lay a teenage boy with delicate features, flawless pale skin and fine dark hair. His big expressive eyes rested briefly on Zen, and his slender hand stirred in welcome from the keyboard where it had been resting. A length of coiled wire connected the keyboard to a stack of electronic equipment on a table beside the bed. On an old chest of drawers at the foot of the bed stood a video screen.
‘Aurelio’s got rather an amusing little puzzle for you,’ said Nieddu.
‘Oh goody!’ the boy cried gleefully. ‘It’s been a bit boring lately. Is it like that one I did for you last month, Gilberto, the one where you wanted to find out how much money…?’
‘No, no,’ Nieddu interrupted, ‘it’s nothing to do with that at all. Aurelio wants to break into a database at the Ministry of the Interior.’
The boy’s face fell.
‘Government systems are easy peasy.’
Nieddu nudged Zen.
‘Tell Nicolo what you want to know, Aurelio.’
Zen was busy trying to block his nasal passages against the pervading stench.
‘I want a copy of a confidential file on an organization called the Cabal.’
The supine figure fluttered his fingers over the keyboard like a blind man reading braille.
‘Like that?’ asked Nicolo.
Zen followed his gaze to the glowing screen, which now read CABAL. He nodded.
‘It’s in a part of the database which you need special security clearance to get into,’ Zen explained. ‘The problem is that it’s quite urgent. Have you any idea how long it might take?’
Nicolo gave a contemptuous sniff.
‘I could get the system on-line while you wait, but if this is restricted-access data that isn’t going to help.’
He stared at the screen in silence for a while.
‘There are various ways we could do it,’ he mused. ‘There are probably a few guest passwords left lying around in the system. We might be able to use one of those.’
Zen shook his head.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, let’s say some VIP like Craxi comes to visit the place, they’ll set up a password customized just for him, for example…’
‘ Duce,’ suggested Nieddu.
Zen laughed. Bettino Craxi, the leader of the Socialist Party, was notoriously sensitive about comments likening his appearance and style to that of Benito Mussolini. Nicolo paid no attention to the joke.
‘Yes, that would do. After the visit, the guest password is supposed to be erased, but half the time people forget and it’s left sitting in the control system, waiting to be used. And it’s easier to guess a password than you might think. They have to be relatively straightforward, otherwise the designated users can’t remember them. Anyway, that’s one possibility. Another would be to run a key-stroke-capture programme, but if this level is classified then it may be accessed relatively infrequently, so that would take time.’
‘I need to know in the next day or two,’ Zen told him.
Nicolo nodded.
‘In that case, we’d better go in via Brussels. I cracked the EEC system last month. This mate of mine in Glasgow and I had a bet with the Chaos crowd in Hamburg to see which of us could get in there first and leave a rude message for the others to find. We won. From Brussels we can log on to the anti-terrorist data pool, and then access the Ministry from say London or Madrid. That way we circumvent the whole password procedure. If you’re on-line from a high-level international source like that, you come in with automatic authorization.’
Zen nodded as if all this made perfect sense.
‘Oh, and just one other thing,’ he said. ‘If you do manage to access this area of the computer, I’d like to see the file on an official named Zen. Aurelio Zen.’
Nieddu looked at him sharply but said nothing.
‘Zen,’ said Nicolo, spelling the name on the screen. ‘I’ll get to work on it right away. Give me a ring tomorrow. With any luck I should have something by then.’
Gilberto bent over the bed and handed something to the boy, who slipped it hastily under the covers with a guilty grin as the curtain drew aside again and the robed figure reappeared to usher the visitors out.
Back in the car, Zen burst into the hysterical laughter he had been suppressing. Nieddu grinned as he slalomed the Lancia through the twists and turns of the narrow country road.
‘I know, I know! But believe me, Nicolo’s the best hacker in Italy, and one of the best in Europe. He’s done things for me I didn’t believe were possible. And when he says he’ll get to work right away, he means exactly that. The boy lives and breathes computers. He’s capable of going for forty-eight hours without sleep when he’s on the job.’
‘But that… thing in the fancy dress!’
‘That’s his grandmother. Nicolo was born with a spinal deformity so severe he wasn’t expected to live. The family’s from a village near Isernia. Nicolo’s parents had their hands full working the land and looking after their other seven children, so they handed him over to Adelaide, who’d moved up here to Rome with her other daughter. One of the grandsons was given a computer for Christmas, but he couldn’t figure out how to work it properly, so they passed it on to Nicolo. The rest is history.’
‘But what’s all this Mago business?’ demanded Zen.
Nieddu laughed.
‘Adelaide thinks the whole thing is a con. Well, what’s she supposed to think? Here’s this crippled adolescent invalid, never leaves his bed, can’t control his bladder, kicks and screams when she tries to change the sheets, yet is supposedly capable of roaming the world at the speed of light, dodging in and out of buildings in Amsterdam, Paris or New York and bringing back accounts, sales figures, medical records or personnel files. I mean come on! I’m in the electronics business and even I find it barely credible. What’s a sixty-year-old peasant woman from the Molise to make of it all? Yet the punters keep rolling up to the door and pressing bundles of banknotes into her hand! It’s a scam, she thinks, but it’s a bloody good one. So she’s doing her bit to help it along by dressing up like a sorcerer’s assistant.’
Zen lit cigarettes for them both.
‘What did you give the boy at the end?’
‘Butterscotch. It’s some sort of speciality from Scotland. This friend of his in Glasgow — they’ve never met, needless to say — sent him a packet, and now Nicolo can’t get enough. I’ve bought a supply from a specialist shop in Via Veneto and I take him some every time I go.’
They had reached the Via Appia Nuova, and Gilberto turned left, heading back into the city. Zen felt totally disoriented at the sight of the shiny cars and modern shopping centres, as though he’d awakened from a dream
