Free Let the Games Begin by Niccolò Ammaniti

feeling her giving in, wrapped his arms around her back and squeezed his chest up against hers, testing its firm consistency. She raised one of her marvellous legs. He pushed his erection against her. She then lifted her other marvellous leg. And he put his hand between her thighs.
    Federico Gianni, the managing director of Martinelli, and his faithful steed Achille Pennacchini were leaning on the banister of the grand terrace that overlooked the garden and Rome.
    Gianni was a dapper beanpole in his windswept Caraceni suits. When he was young he had played basketball in the A2 league, but at twenty-five years of age he had given up the sport to take on the management of a sports-shoe company. Then, who knows by way of which street and contacts, from starting in a small Milanese publishing house he came to land at Martinelli. He didn't know squat about literature. He treated books like shoes, and was proud of his way of thinking.
    The exact opposite of Pennacchini, who Gianni had pulled out of the University of Urbino, where he taught comparative literature, and placed at the head of the publishing house. He was an academic, a literary man, and everything about him was proof of this: his round, tortoiseshell glasses that sat in front of blue eyes ruined by books, the worn checked jacket, the rough cotton shirt with the buttons on the collar, the woollen ties and striped cotton trousers. He spoke very little. Always in a soft voice. And he hesitated. It was never possible to understand what he was really thinking.
    â€˜Another one over.’ Gianni stretched. ‘I think it went well.’
    â€˜Very well,’ Pennacchini echoed.
    Rome appeared like an enormous dirty blanket encrusted with diamonds.
    â€˜This city is big,’ Gianni mused, staring out at the panorama.
    â€˜Very big. It goes from Castelli across to Fiumicino. It is really immense.’
    â€˜How big would its diameter be?’
    â€˜Hmph, I don't know . . . At least about eighty kilometres . . .’ Pennacchini guessed.
    Gianni glanced at his watch. ‘How long till we go to the restaurant?’
    â€˜About twenty minutes, maximum.’
    â€˜The buffet was disgusting. The two salmon sandwiches I ate were dry. I'm hungry.’ He paused. ‘And I need to piss, too.’
    Following his boss's last statement Pennacchini bounced his head backwards and forwards like a pigeon.
    â€˜I may piss right here in the garden. Out in the open. There's nothing better than pissing in front of this panorama. Look down there, it looks like a storm.’ Gianni leaned over the terrace and looked down into the darkness of the bushes. ‘Can you check to make sure no one can see me? Actually, if anyone comes this way, stop them.’
    â€˜What should I say?’ Pennacchini murmured, uncertain.
    â€˜To whom?’
    â€˜To whomever comes by this way.’
    Gianni thought about it for a second. ‘What do I know . . .? Entertain them, stop them.’
    The managing director walked down the steps that led to the garden, unzipping his trousers. Pennacchini took position, like a Swiss Guard, at the top of the stairs.

 
    13
    Larita.
    She was the chosen one. They would sacrifice the singer from Chieti Scalo to the Lord of Evil. During the party, Mantos would decapitate her with the Durendal.
    â€˜Beats a nun any day . . . I'll show you, Kurtz,’ Saverio sniggered while he started jumping around the living room.
    What would happen once everyone knew that the singer who had sold ten million copies across Europe and Latin America, and had sung in front of the Pope on Christmas Day, had been decapitated by the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon? The news would be printed on the front page of newspapers across the globe. It was would rank there with John Lennon and Janis Joplin . . .
    Saverio hesitated. Was Janis Joplin actually assassinated?
    Who cares . All he cared about at that moment was that, with such a deed, he'd be remembered for ever.