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 crumpled 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.
‘I have two men in my office,’ Corinna told him. ‘They have identified themselves as Lessi, Roberto, and Ferraro, Alfredo. They claim to be working under your supervision on, quote, internal security, unquote, and want me to hand over the Limina papers to them. Can you verify that you are aware of this?’
‘My dear Corinna,’ the director replied in his most smarmy voice, ‘a woman as beautiful as you should never allow herself to lose her poise because the company is disagreeable. I apologize if these two young men have failed to make a favourable impression. But what they lack in charm, they make up for in efficiency.’
‘They are working for you, then.’
‘They’re working for all of us, my dear, as part of my constant attempts to make the lives of you and your colleagues safer and more productive. Speaking of which, I mustn’t detain you any longer. Just give your visitors the file relating to the matter which we discussed yesterday, and then you can get back to work.’
Sergio Tondo hung up. After a moment, so did Corinna. The gum-chewing man was still staring at her, his eyes moving at intervals to another part of her body as if taking exposures for a composite photograph. Corinna stepped over to the tower of box files in the corner. She grasped one with her right hand, steadied the pile above with her left, and in one decisive movement yanked the file free. The tower teetered for a moment, then settled back into place. Corinna returned to the two men, holding the file against her bosom.
‘I’ll need a receipt,’ she said.
Laurel frowned, as though Corinna had committed a minor lapse of good manners.
‘I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that,’ he said.
‘Then write one. “We, the undersigned, acknowledge receipt of file number such-and-such from Judge Corinna Nunziatella”, with the date and time. Spell out your names in block letters and then sign beneath.’
Laurel sighed.
‘I’ll need to consult the director.’
‘He’s just gone into a very important meeting,’ lied Corinna. ‘He won’t be very happy if this file isn’t on his desk when he comes out, and I’m not handing it over without a receipt. Here’s some paper and a pen.’
In the end the two men complied. Corinna took the receipt, read it through carefully, and only then handed over the file. Laurel and Hardy then left without a word, the latter breaking his sullen, intense scrutiny with apparent reluctance. Corinna Nunziatella listened to their footsteps receding on the marble floor outside. When they were no longer audible, she unlocked a drawer in her desk and removed another box file, identical to the one she had handed over except for the number marked on the spine.
She stood there for a moment, breathing rapidly and shallowly, her eyes unfocused. Then she opened the door, gave a quick glance in each direction, and strode off down the corridor to the main staircase. She went down two floors, then turned sharp left down to an unmarked door beneath the staircase. Inside, a stuffy, narrow passage led to another door, at which Corinna knocked. A moment later, the door was opened by a florid, elderly woman.
