Free End Games - 11 by Michael Dibdin Page A

file marked “For Official Use Only”. And finally, the Calopezzati family used to be the greatest landowners in these parts. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.’
    Sforza shook his head.
    ‘So what? The latifondo system is as obsolete as Russian serfdom. Far enough removed from us now, in fact, that we can even afford to indulge in a little nostalgia. If you ever drive over to the east coast, take a look around the Marchesato. You realise instantly that the only viable way to make any economic sense of that lunar landscape is intensive, centralised wheat farming on a massive scale with low labour costs.’
    Zen laughed.
    ‘You’re sounding a little sentimental, Giovanni. Are you sure you’re not secretly voting for the Lega Nord ?’
    Sforza erased that suggestion with a decisive swipe of his hand, but his eyes smiled.
    ‘You know the old saying – once a Communist, always a Communist.’
    ‘So you still believe in that line in the Marxist creed: “to each according to his needs”?’
    ‘Devoutly.’
    ‘Well, my needs presently include tracking down any surviving members of the Calopezzati clan and getting as much information as possible about their whereabouts and activities during the war years. Can you help?’
    ‘Yes, but I need to smoke. Let’s pay these swine and adjourn to a café.’
    They found a suitable place a few doors away, with tables on the street where they could smoke. The coffee was tolerable, but Giovanni Sforza was incredible. He swung into action as one to the manner born, calling a dozen of his contacts and gouging the information he needed out of each until a complete network had come into being and formulated a result, which he then communicated to Zen.
    ‘The man you need is Cataldo Antonacci. He curates the archives and local history section of the provincial museum. What he doesn’t know about events around here for the last thousand years is not worth knowing. He’s expecting you within the hour.’
    ‘Did you explain the nature of my interest?’
    ‘Naturally not. I merely said that the chief of police wished to consult him about a matter that he had not disclosed to me but which might quite possibly be legally privileged. He sounded very impressed.’
    Twenty minutes later, Zen was in an elegant building on a quiet piazza high above the sterile grid of the modern city below, discussing the origins of the latifondo system in general and of the Calopezzati family in particular with Cataldo Antonacci. The historian’s expression of benign bemusement suggested that Zen’s visit possibly constituted a slight indelicacy, but one which he was too well bred to bring to his guest’s attention. Nor, needless to say, did he enquire why such an eminent official as the capo della polizia for the province of Cosenza was so interested in a dry subject that most people had learned about at school and promptly forgotten.
    With exquisite tact and a welcome gift for concise synthesis, he related the origins of the huge southern estates in land grants made by the Spanish viceroys of Naples during the eighteenth century, and in their subsequent enlargement by shrewd purchases from adjoining landowners, often ancient noble families who had got into debt and needed cash fast. The key to success, the archivist explained, was to get possession of a property large enough to be virtually self-sufficient, to allow diversity of production involving economies of scale thus insulated from the vagaries of the market. The continuing integrity of the operation was then guaranteed by strict adherence to the primogeniture system, under which the eldest son inherited everything, the other males being maintained on an allowance but forbidden to marry.
    ‘To do that successfully over many generations requires good luck or good genes. The Calopezzati were gifted with both. They were of humble origins, small landowners from Cosenza, but they proved exceptionally astute and energetic in developing and managing their