“This matter is serious,” I said. “Yes, Olivetti’s people do read my weblog-they even comment there. But that doesn’t mean that I can leak some breakthrough that deserves a Nobel Prize. Olivetti would want to know, they would have to know, the source of that.”
He shook his head. “They don’t want to know, and neither do you.”
“Oh yes, I most definitely do want to know.”
“No, you don’t. Trust me.”
“Massimo, I’m a journalist. That means that I always want to know, and I never trust anybody.”
He slapped the table. “Maybe you were a ‘journalist’ when they still printed paper ‘journals.’ But your dot-com journals are all dead. Nowadays you’re a blogger. You’re an influence peddler and you spread rumors for a living.” Massimo shrugged, because he didn’t think he was insulting me. “So, shut up! Just do what you always do! That’s all I’m asking.”
That might be all that he was asking, but my whole business was in asking. “Who created that chip?” I asked him. “I know it wasn’t you. You know a lot about tech investment, but you’re not Leonardo da Vinci.”
“No, I’m not Leonardo.” He emptied his glass.
“Look, I know that you’re not even ‘Massimo Montaldo’-whoever that is. I’ll do a lot to get news out on my blog. But I’m not going to act as your cut-out in a scheme like this! That’s totally unethical! Where did you steal that chip? Who made it? What are they, Chinese super-engineers in some bunker under Beijing?”
Massimo was struggling not to laugh at me. “I can’t reveal that. Could we have another round? Maybe a sandwich? I need a nice toasty pancetta.”
I got the waiter’s attention. I noted that the TV star’s boyfriend had shown up. Her boyfriend was not her husband. Unfortunately, I was not in the celebrity tabloid business. It wasn’t the first time I’d missed a good bet by consorting with computer geeks.
“So you’re an industrial spy,” I told him. “And you must be Italian to boot, because you’re always such a patriot about it. Okay, so you stole those plans somewhere. I won’t ask you how or why. But let me give you some good advice: no sane man would leak that to Olivetti. Olivetti’s a consumer outfit. They make pretty toys for cute secretaries. A memristor chip is dynamite.”
Massimo was staring raptly at the TV blonde as he awaited his sandwich.
“Massimo, pay attention. If you leak something that advanced, that radical… a chip like that could change the world’s military balance of power. Never mind Olivetti. Big American spy agencies with three letters in their names will come calling.”
Massimo scratched his dirty scalp and rolled his eyes in derision. “Are you so terrorized by the CIA? They don’t read your sorry little one-man tech blog.”
This crass remark irritated me keenly. “Listen to me, boy genius: do you know what the CIA does here in Italy? We’re their ‘rendition’ playground. People vanish off the streets.”
“Anybody can ‘vanish off the streets.’ I do that all the time.”
I took out my Moleskin notebook and my shiny Rotring technical pen. I placed them both on the Elena’s neat little marble table. Then I slipped them both back inside my jacket. “Massimo, I’m trying hard to be sensible about this. Your snotty attitude is not helping your case with me.”
With an effort, my source composed himself. “It’s all very simple,” he lied. “I’ve been here a while, and now I’m tired of this place. So I’m leaving. I want to hand the future of electronics to an Italian company. With no questions asked and no strings attached. You won’t help me do that simple thing?”
“No, of course I won’t! Not under conditions like these. I don’t know where you got that data, what, how, when, whom, or why… I don’t even know who you are! Do I look like that kind of idiot? Unless you tell me your story, I can’t trust you.”
He made that evil gesture: I had no balls. Twenty years ago-well, twentyfive-and we would have stepped outside the bar. Of course I was angry with him-but I also knew he was about to crack. My source was drunk and he was clearly in trouble. He didn’t need a fist-fight with a journalist. He needed confession.
Massimo put a bold sneer on his face, watching himself in one of the Elena’s tall spotted mirrors. “If this tiny gadget is too big for your closed mind, then I’ve got to find another blogger! A blogger with some guts!”
“Great. Sure. Go do that. You might try Beppe Grillo.”
Massimo tore his gaze from his own reflection. “That washed-up TV comedian? What does he know about technology?”
“Try Berlusconi, then. He owns all the television stations and half the Italian Internet. Prime Minister Berlusconi is just the kind of hustler you need. He’ll free you from all your troubles. He’ll make you Minister of something.”
Massimo lost all patience. “I don’t need that! I’ve been to a lot of versions of Italy. Yours is a complete disgrace! I don’t know how you people get along with yourselves!”
Now the story was tearing loose. I offered an encouraging nod. “How many ‘versions of Italy’ do you need, Massimo?”
“I have sixty-four versions of Italy.” He patted his thick laptop. “Got them all right here.”
I humored him. “Only sixty-four?”
His tipsy face turned red.“I had to borrow CERN’s supercomputers to calculate all those coordinates! Thirty- two Italies were too few! A hundred twenty-eight… I’d never have the time to visit all those! And as for your Italy… well… I wouldn’t be here at all, if it wasn’t for that Turinese girl.”
“‘Cherchez la femme,’” I told him. “That’s the oldest trouble-story in the world.”
“I did her some favors,” he admitted, mournfully twisting his wineglass. “Like with you. But much more so.”
I felt lost, but I knew that his story was coming. Once I’d coaxed it out of him, I could put it into better order later.
“So, tell me: what did she do to you?”
“She dumped me,” he said. He was telling me the truth, but with a lost, forlorn, bewildered air, like he couldn’t believe it himself. “She dumped me and she married the President of France.” Massimo glanced up, his eyelashes wet with grief. “I don’t blame her. I know why she did that. I’m a very handy guy for a woman like her, but Mother of God, I’m not the President of France!”
“No, no, you’re not the President of France,” I agreed. The President of France was a hyperactive Hungarian Jewish guy who liked to sing karaoke songs. President Nicolas Sarkozy was an exceedingly unlikely character, but he was odd in a very different way from Massimo Montaldo.
Massimo’s voice was cracking with passion. “She says that he’ll make her the First Lady of Europe! All I’ve got to offer her is insider-trading hints and a few extra millions for her millions.”
The waiter brought Massimo a toasted sandwich.
Despite his broken heart, Massimo was starving. He tore into his food like a chained dog, then glanced up from his mayonnaise dip. “Do I sound jealous? I’m not jealous.”
Massimo was bitterly jealous, but I shook my head so as to encourage him.
“I can’t be jealous of a woman like her!” Massimo lied. “Eric Clapton can be jealous, Mick Jagger can be jealous! She’s a rock star’s groupie who’s become the Premiere Dame of France! She married Sarkozy! Your world is full of journalists-spies, cops, creeps, whatever-and not for one minute did they ever stop and consider: ‘Oh! This must be the work of a computer geek from another world!’”
“No,” I agreed.
“Nobody ever imagines that!”
I called the waiter back and ordered myself a double espresso. The waiter seemed quite pleased at the way things were going for me. They were a kindly bunch at the Elena. Friedrich Nietzsche had been one of their favorite patrons.
Their dark old mahogany walls had absorbed all kinds of lunacy.
Massimo jabbed his sandwich in the dip and licked his fingers. “So, if I leak a memristor chip to you, nobody will ever stop and say: ‘some unknown geek eating a sandwich in Torino is the most important man in world technology.’ Because that truth is inconceivable.”
Massimo stabbed a roaming olive with a toothpick. His hands were shaking: with rage, romantic heartbreak, and frustrated fury. He was also drunk.
He glared at me. “You’re not following what I tell you. Are you really that stupid?”
