for Venice. They’ll like that rank, so they’ll talk to you.’ He dialled a number with easy familiarity and, while he waited for a response, pulled the file back towards him. Rather fussily, he lined up the few papers in the file and placed it squarely in front of him.
He spoke into the telephone in heavily-accented, but correct, English. ‘Good afternoon, Tiffany. This is Major Ambrogiani. Is the Major there? What? Yes, I’ll wait.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and held the phone away from his ear. ‘He’s in conference. Americans seem to live in conference.’
‘Could it be . . .’ Brunetti began but stopped when Ambrogiani pulled his hand away.
‘Yes, thank you. Good morning, Major Butterworth.’ The name had been in the file, but when Ambrogiani said it, it sounded like ‘Budderword’.
‘Yes, Major. I have the Chief of the Venice police here with me now. Yes, we brought him out by helicopter for the day.’ A long pause followed. ‘No, he can spare us only today.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘In twenty minutes? Yes, he’ll be there. No, I’m sorry, but I can’t, Major. I have to be in conference. Yes, thank you.’ He set the phone down, placed his pencil in a neat diagonal across the cover of the file, and said, ‘He’ll see you in twenty minutes.’
‘And your conference?’ Brunetti asked.
Ambrogiani dismissed the idea with a wave of the hand. ‘It’ll just be a waste of time. If they do know anything, they won’t tell you, and if they don’t know anything, then they can’t. So there’s no reason I should waste my time by going.’ Changing the topic, he asked, ‘How’s your English?’
‘All right.’
‘Good, that’ll make it much easier.’
‘Who is he, this major?’
Ambrogiani repeated the name, again gliding over all of the sharper consonants. ‘He’s their liaison officer. Or, as they say, he “liaises”‘ - he used the English word - ‘between them and us.’ Both grinned at the ease with which English allowed its speakers to turn a noun into a verb, a familiarity which Italian would certainly not permit.
‘Of what does this “liaising” consist?’
‘Oh, if we have problems, he comes to us, or he goes the other way, if they have problems.’
‘What sort of problems?’
‘If anyone tries to get in at the gate without the proper identification. Or if we break their traffic rules. Or if they ask a Carabiniere why he’s buying ten kilos of beef at their supermarket. Things like that.’
‘Supermarket?’ Brunetti asked with real surprise.
‘Yes, supermarket. And bowling alley’ - he used the English word - ‘and cinema, and even a Burger King’ - the name was said without a trace of an accent.
Fascinated, Brunetti repeated the words ‘Burger King’ with the same tone with which a child might say ‘pony’ if promised one.
Hearing him, Ambrogiani laughed. ‘It’s remarkable, isn’t it? There’s a whole little world here, one that has nothing to do with Italy.’ He gestured out of his window. ‘Out there lies America, Commissario. It’s what we’re all going to become, I think.’ After a short pause, he repeated, ‘America.’
That was precisely what awaited Brunetti a quarter of an hour later, when he opened the doors of the NATO command headquarters and walked up the three steps to the lobby. The walls held posters of unnamed cities which, because of the height and homogeneity of their skyscrapers, had to be American. That nation was loudly proclaimed, too, in the many signs which forbade smoking and in the notices which covered the bulletin boards along the walls. The marble floor was the only Italianate touch. As he had been directed, Brunetti climbed the steps in front of him, turned right at the top, and went into the second office on the left. The room into which he walked was divided by head-high partitions, and the walls, like those on the floor below, were covered with bulletin boards and printed notices. Backed up against one of them were two armchairs covered in what appeared to be thick grey plastic. At a desk just inside the door, to the right, sat a young woman who could only be American. She had blonde hair which was cut off in a short fringe above her blue eyes but hung down almost to her waist at the back. A rash of freckles ran across her nose, and her teeth had that perfection common to most Americans and to the wealthiest Italians. She turned to him with a bright smile; her mouth turned up at the corners, but her eyes remained curiously expressionless and flat.
‘Good morning,’ he said, smiling back. ‘My name’s Brunetti. I think the Major is expecting me.’
She came out from behind the desk, revealing a body as perfect as her teeth, and walked through an opening in the partition, though she could just as easily have phoned or called over the top. From the other side of the partition, he heard her voice answered by a deeper one. After a few seconds, she appeared at the opening and signalled to Brunetti, ‘In here, please, sir.’
Behind the desk sat a blond young man who appeared to be barely into his twenties. Brunetti looked at him and as quickly away, for the man seemed to glow, glisten. When he looked back, Brunetti saw that it was not radiance but only youth, health, and someone else to care for his uniforms.
‘Chief Brunetti?’ he said and rose to his feet behind his desk. To Brunetti, he looked like he had just come from a shower or bath: his skin was taut, shining, as though he had set down his razor in order to take Brunetti’s hand. While they shook hands, Brunetti noticed his eyes, a clear, translucent blue, the colour the
‘I’m very glad you could come out from Venice to speak to us, Chief Brunetti, or is it Questore?’
‘Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, giving himself a promotion in the hopes that it would assure him greater access to information. He noticed that Major Butterworth’s desk held In and Out boxes; the In was empty, the Out full.
‘Please have a seat,’ Butterworth said and waited for Brunetti to sit before taking his own seat. The American pulled a file from his front drawer, this one just minimally thicker than the one Ambrogiani had. ‘You’re here about Sergeant Foster, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it you’d like to know?’
