“I have taken the liberty of reserving a seat for you, seat number 45, car 8. It’s reserved as far as Rome, so no one else will occupy it in Bologna or in Florence. You see, in exchange for the inconvenience I’m causing you, I make sure that you will travel comfortably and not have to make do in the dining car. I didn’t dare buy your ticket, of course, not wanting you to think I meant to discharge my indebtedness in such an indelicate fashion.”
A real gentleman, Belbo thought. He’ll send me a case of rare wine. To drink his health. Yesterday I wanted to dispatch him to the bowels of the earth and now I’m doing him a favor. Anyway, I could hardly refuse.
Wednesday morning, Belbo went to the station early, bought his ticket to Bologna, and found Agliè standing beside car 8 with the suitcase. It was fairly heavy but not bulky.
Belbo put the suitcase above seat number 45 and settled down with his bundle of newspapers. The news of the day was Berlinguer’s funeral. A little later, a bearded gentleman came and occupied the seat next to his. Belbo thought he had seen the man before. (With hindsight, he thought it might have been at the party in Piedmont, but he wasn’t sure.) When the train left, the compartment was full.
Belbo read his paper, but the bearded passenger tried to strike up conversations with everybody. He began with remarks about the heat, the inadequacy of the air-conditioning, the fact that in June you never knew whether to wear summer things or between-seasons clothing. He observed that the best was a light blazer, just like Belbo’s, and he asked if it was English. Belbo said yes, it was English, from Burberry’s, and resumed his reading. “They’re the best,” the gentleman said, “but yours is particularly nice, because it doesn’t have those gold buttons that are so ostentatious.
And, if I may say so, it goes very well with your maroon tie.” Belbo thanked him and reopened his paper. The gentleman went on talking with the others about the difficulty of matching ties with jackets, and Belbo continued reading. I know, he thought, they all think me rude, but I don’t take trains to establish human relationships. I have too much of that as it is.
Then the gentleman said to him, “What a lot of papers you read! And of every political tendency. You must be a judge or a politician.” Belbo replied that he was neither, but worked for a publishing firm that specialized in books on Arab metaphysics. He said this in the hope of terrifying his adversary. And the man was obviously terrified.
Then the conductor arrived. He asked Belbo why he had a ticket for Bologna and a seat reserved to Rome. Belbo said he had changed his mind at the last moment. “How lucky you are,” the bearded gentleman said, “to be able to make such decisions, according to how the wind blows, without having to count pennies. I envy you.” Belbo smiled and looked away. There, he said, now they all think I’m either a spendthrift or a bank robber.
At Bologna, Belbo stood up and prepared to get off. “Don’t forget your suitcase,” his neighbor said.
“No. A friend will collect it in Florence,” Belbo said. “For that matter, I’d be grateful if you’d keep an eye on it.”
“I will,” the bearded gentleman said. “Rest assured.”
Belbo returned to Milan toward evening, shut himself in his apartment with two cans of meat and some crackers, and turned on the TV. More Berlinguer, naturally. The news item about the train appeared at the end, almost as a footnote.
Late that morning on the Intercity between Bologna and Florence, a bearded gentleman had voiced suspicions after a passenger got off in Bologna leaving a suitcase on the luggage rack. True, the passenger had said someone would pick it up in Florence, but wasn’t that what terrorists always said? Furthermore, why had he reserved his seat to Rome when he was getting off in Bologna?
A heavy uneasiness spread among the other travelers in that compartment. Finally, the bearded passenger said he couldn’t bear the tension. It was better to make a mistake than to die, and he alerted the chief conductor. The chief conductor stopped the train and called the Railway Police. The train was stopped in the mountains; the passengers milled anxiously along the tracks; the bomb squad atrived…. The experts opened the suitcase and found a timer and explosive, set for the hour of arrival in Florence. Enough to wipe out a few dozen people.
The police were unable to find the bearded gentleman. Perhaps he had changed cars and got off in Florence because he didn’t want to end up in the newspapers. The police were appealing to him to get in touch with them.
The other passengers remembered, with unusual precision, the man who had left the suitcase. He must have looked suspicious at first sight. He was wearing a blue English jacket without gold buttons, a maroon necktie; he was taciturn, and seemed to want to avoid attracting attention at all costs. But he had let slip the information that he worked for a paper, or a publisher, or for something having to do (the witnesses’ testimony varied) with physics, methane, or metempsychosis—but Arabs were definitely involved.
Police stations and carabiniere headquarters had been alerted. Anonymous phone calls were already coming in and being sifted by the investigators. Two Libyan citizens had been detained in Bologna. A police artist had made a sketch, which now occupied the whole screen. The drawing didn’t resemble Belbo, but Belbo resembled the drawing.
Belbo, plainly, was the man with the suitcase. But the suitcase had contained Agliè’s books. He called Agliè. There was no answer.
It was already late in the evening. He didn’t dare leave the house, so he took a pill to get some sleep. The next morning, he called Agliè again. Silence. He went out to buy the papers. Luckily the front page was still occupied by the funeral; the story about the train and the copy of the police sketch must be somewhere inside. He skulked back to his apartment, his collar turned up, then realized he was still wearing the blazer. At least he didn’t have on the maroon tie.
While he was trying once more to sort out what had happened, he received a call. A strange foreign voice, a slightly Balkan accent, mellifluous: a completely disinterested party acting out of pure kindness of heart. Poor Signor Belbo, the voice said, finding yourself compromised by such an unpleasant business. You should never agree to act as someone else’s courier without first checking the contents of the package. How awful it would be if someone were to inform the police that Signor Belbo was the unidentified occupant of seat number 45.
Of course, that extreme step could be avoided, if Belbo would only agree to cooperate. If he were to say, for example, where the Templars’ map was. And since Milan had become hot, because everyone knew the Intercity terrorist had boarded the train there, it would be prudent to deal with the matter in neutral territory: for example, Paris. Why not arrange to meet at the Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de la Manticore, in a week’s time? But perhaps Belbo would be better advised to set off at once, before anybody identified him. Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de la Manticore.
At noon on Wednesday, June 20, he would find there a familiar face, that bearded gentleman with whom he had conversed so cordially on the train. The bearded gentleman would tell Belbo where to find other friends, and then, gradually, in good company, in time for the summer solstice, Belbo would tell what he knew, and the business would be concluded without any trauma. Rue de la Manticore, number 3: easy to remember.
Saint-Germain … very polished and witty … said he possessed every kind of secret….He often employed, for his apparitions, that famous magic mirror of his … and through its catoptric effects summoned up the usual, well-known shades. His contact with the other world was unquestioned.
—Le Coulteux de Canteleu, Les sectes et les sociétés secrètes, Paris, Didier, 1863, pp. 170—171
Belbo was devastated. Everything was clear. Aglié believed his story, he wanted the map, he had set a trap for him, and now Belbo was in the man’s power. Either Belbo went to Paris, to reveal what he didn’t know (but he was the only one who knew he didn’t know it, since I had gone off without leaving an address, and Diotallevi was dying), or all the police forces of Italy would be after him.
But was it really possible that Aglié had stooped to such a sordid trick? Belbo should take that old lunatic by the collar and drag him to the police station; that was the only way to get out of this mess.
He hailed a taxi and went to the little house near Piazza Piola. Windows closed; on the gate, a real estate agency’s sign, FOR RENT. This was insane. Aglié was living here just last week; Belbo had telephoned him. He rang the bell of the house next door. “Oh, that gentleman? He moved out yesterday. I have no idea where he’s gone, I knew him only by sight, he was such a reserved person. Always traveling, I suppose.”
The only thing left was to inquire at the agency. They had never heard of Aglié. The house had been rented by a French firm.
