“No,” said the officer. “No cell. Please switch off.”
“Am I under arrest? Because otherwise I can make a call.”
“Switch off the cell or I am going to arrest you.”
He looked at his guard, saw that he was serious, cut his message to Ike short (“stopped at linate”) and turned off his phone.
“Can you tell me what this is about?”
“Someone come,” said the officer, and resumed his inspection of the opposite wall.
“If they don’t come soon I’m going to miss my flight.”
This was Italy. It could be hours. Resigned to being here for some time Webster took yesterday’s newspaper from his bag. Forty minutes passed, and he began to be frustrated with the silence. His guard didn’t move. Eventually the door opened a few inches and someone that Webster couldn’t see beckoned to the officer to leave the room. After a moment or two he was replaced by two men in suits, one old and balding gray, short and tensed, the other younger and less compact, his black jacket scarcely covering his paunch.
They stood in front of the table and the younger man spoke; his partner merely cocked his head and looked at Webster with implacable gray eyes.
“Signore Webster. I am sorry that you are made to wait. Please, come with us.”
Webster shook his head. “No. Either you tell me what is going on or I call my lawyer right now. And my embassy.” He reached for his phone.
“Signore, we need you to answer questions about Giovanni Ruffino.” Webster stopped and looked up. “Please, come with us.”
Ruffino. Webster thought he had heard the last of him long ago.
“YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO ITALY in a long time, Signore Webster,” said the younger policeman. He had the high, sing-song voice of the Milanese, a little open trill on the end of any word that would take it.
“Not for a while.”
“Not in seven years.” He referred to a file that he had opened on the table in between them. “Is that a choice?”
“No. Just chance.”
A little nod. “So we must not feel hurt.” A quick, perfunctory smile at his joke and then a pause. “Why do you come here now? Chance?”
“No. I came to have a meeting. With a client.”
“An Italian client?”
“A client with a house in Italy.”
“Can you tell me the name?”
“Of the house?”
The detective smiled. He was being indulgent. “Mr. Webster, you will find it easier to be cooperative. We will all find it easier.” He looked sideways to his colleague, who sat with his legs crossed, one elbow over the back of his chair, tending to his nails with what looked like a toothpick. “His name?”
“I might tell you when you tell me why you’re wasting my day.” They were now in a police station in the city, on via Malpensa. Webster didn’t know enough about the complicated organization of the Italian police to know which branch was detaining him or what that might mean. All he knew was that it was eleven now, and the day was slipping into nothingness. He didn’t know whether to feel concerned or simply angry. That Ruffino should come up now was strange: he hadn’t given him a moment’s thought in years and could hardly believe that he was of interest to anybody still. He watched the two detectives and tried to learn something from their carriage, from their body language. The younger officer was resting his arms on the table and his back was curved, his shoulders slumped. It was hot in the room and he had taken off his jacket to reveal dark-blue patches under his arms. But he wasn’t anxious. He looked like a man with right on his side. His colleague continued to pick at his nails, unconcerned.
“Bene.” The younger detective ignored his question and looked down at the folder. “The last time you were here you came to Milano and saw a company of investigators. Investigazioni Indago. Yes?”
Webster merely returned the detective’s look.
“You had a meeting with them at two o’clock on Thursday, March 8th, 2004. You attended, with Antonio Dorsa and Giuseppe Maltese, two detectives. Private detectives. At that meeting you ordered them to put a wiretap on the home and office telephone lines of Giovanni Ruffino, a lawyer, from Milano also.”
“No, I didn’t.”
The detective looked at him for a moment with raised eyebrows before resuming.
“Also, you gave instructions to look in Signore Ruffino’s bank accounts, here and in Switzerland, and in his medical history and his garbage.”
Webster shook his head, partly in denial, partly in wonderment that this old, old story, which he had long presumed dead, had been merely dormant all this time. The interesting question was what had awakened it.
“No. I didn’t. This is all nonsense. Old nonsense.”
“Can you tell us what you discussed at that meeting?”
“Until you arrest me I’m not going to tell you anything. I have no idea why I’m here or why you’re dragging up this crap again. If you’re not going to charge me with anything you can open that door and drive me back to the airport.”
The younger officer looked at the older, who gave the slightest nod.
“OK.” The younger man shrugged. “That is fine. Benedict Webster, we are placing you under arrest on charges of illegal wiretapping, breaking of banking secrecy law, breaking of data protection law, commercial espionage and harassment. You have the right to speak to a lawyer. We can find one if you cannot.”
Webster shook his head, dumbstruck. Alarm took hold of him. To be questioned was one thing: in Italy an investigation was a political plaything to be started, discredited, ditched and revived at will, and he had assumed until now that he had merely been dropped by accident into some game being played many levels above him whose purpose he might never guess. They were accusing him of things that happened in Italy every day and almost always went unpunished, so this had to be mere harassment. But if these two were prepared to arrest him, then the game was about him, and it was being played with intent. He said nothing, watching the two policemen watch him with the ease of those who have all the power on their side.
“Now would you like to talk?” said the younger, smiling a slick smile.
“Only to a lawyer.” Webster sat back and crossed his arms.
At this the older man looked up from his nails and fixed a severe eye on him. There were dark hairs on his cheekbones and the skin on his cheeks was pockmarked and rigid with gray stubble. He didn’t smile.
“Wiretap. Six years.” He counted the charges out on his fingers as he spoke, his accent coarser and stronger than his colleague’s, his voice a slow rasp. “Banks. Eight years. Other things. Five years.” He leaned forward over the table until his face was a foot from Webster’s. “Serious,” he said, nodding slowly. “No game.” He shook his head gently and sat back, resuming his former position, looking at Webster all the while. “No game. Your children grow old while you in Italy.”
Webster felt his body tense and a powerless fury hold him. The questions that had been crowding for attention left him and were replaced by pure imaginings: interrogations, meetings with lawyers, spells in prison, extradition requests, Elsa furious and scared.
These men across the table would once have had no power over him. He had sat in rooms like this before, with worse men than this, answering their questions and trying to work out what they really wanted, what part he was playing in their careful fantasies. But he had never known a fear like this. It wasn’t fear of them, or what they could do; it was fear of what he might once have done to destroy what he now held most precious.
He needed air, and time to consider, and for the first time that day it dawned on him that he wasn’t free. He couldn’t walk out of the door, take a stroll around Milan, call some people and return with the situation in hand. He couldn’t take the next flight home and pick up the children from school. He was here, and here was all there was.