Now read this extract from Linehan’s Trip
Linehan’s Trip
For once, Sean is happy that his flight is diverted, because it takes him somewhere he would rather be: Turin instead of Bergamo; the smog-free provincial city instead of the fog-shrouded capital.
His neuros are more welcome here than their owners, and he feeds a few into a line of luggage trolleys to release one. The trolley is not impressed.
“Only notes accepted,” it snaps, indignation apparent in its metallic voice.
Sean decides his luggage is light enough to carry, and stomps off to pay for it.
“Hey! Come back,” the trolley insists. “Please …”
Even though it is barely ten in the morning, a passenger café is already open. So is a lightly-stocked newsvendor. Sean buys “Padania Libera” for disguise and “Terzamano” for information. Then he eats as many doughy pastries as he can force himself to, and washes them down with coffee-stained hot milk, before going through the gates into the arrivals hall.
If he had landed at the international airport in Bergamo, there would have been a delegation, or at least someone from the Padanian Football Association to meet him. There has not been enough time for them to get someone to Borghezio Regional Airport, and Sean is on his own. Taxis are few, and the queue for them is long, but the airport shuttle is operating today. After having his luggage inspected and his wallet lightened, Sean is allowed on the bus. During the drive past wild fields into the city, Sean locates the ad he has placed in “Terzamano”, seeking a specific type of ceramic statuette made in the Lenci factory in Turin nearly a hundred years earlier. The diversion to that city has given him a good chance of fulfilling his quest.
The shuttle dumps him outside the main railway station, and he sets off on foot down Via Sacchi, under the arcades, to the hotel they should have booked him into once they found out where he would be landing. There are not many people about. Their clothing lacks the sharpness and elegance of the Italian days. Some are even wearing what look like cassocks, although they cannot all be priests or choirboys, or even boys at all. The dominant colour is green, in various shades, mostly dark. Sean gets several wary looks, and a few hostile glances, but no-one challenges him. He understands why he had been asked to wear the Irish team jersey.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Linehan,” the receptionist says.
“You’ve got a good memory,” he replies.
Sean remembers the Art Hotel Bossiton, but not the receptionist, from a previous visit. There had been a Lenci exhibition on. He had gone, been captivated by the statuettes’ mixture of naivety and optimism, colour and craftsmanship. He had started his collection soon after. The hotel had a slightly different name back then, and it was decked out with examples of contemporary art, Italian and foreign. There are far fewer now, and Sean does not recognise them. The receptionist notices him looking askance at one.
“That’s a Cerea. And the one next to it is a Bogianen.”
“Those names sound familiar, but I can’t quite place them.”
“They’re pseudonyms. The artists want the regime’s money, but not to be seen taking it. So they paint under names fashioned from words in dialect.”
Sean wonders whether the receptionist would have used the word “regime” if he had not been talking to a foreigner. As he takes his key, he asks who the airport was named after.
“Borghezio? A local independence hero. Assassinated on a tram.”
Sean notices a flicker of derision before an expression like mourning settles over the man’s face.
The instructions from FIFA headquarters in Zurich are to go out into the street as little as possible. Sean thinks that is an exaggerated precaution, but nonetheless takes the meagre lunch on offer in his room, while he tries to make sense of the sports pages of “Padania Libera”. There are laments about the parlous state of Padanian football, caused by foreign interference. After the pogroms made Padania a pariah state, most of the clubs, desperate to keep the television income they got from international competition, decamped – south to Italy, or north to France or Switzerland. The surrogates who replaced them were not up to scratch, and the only threat to Atalanta’s hegemony these days is a resurgent Pro Vercelli. Hundreds of professional players left, too, until the Wall made the very attempt a dangerous option. To make matters worse, Italy won the World Cup again in 2018, with a squad that included five “black” players, one Vietnamese-Italian and several born in Padanian territory who had the temerity to consider themselves “Italian”. Sean understands why the PFA is so keen to join FIFA, the world game’s governing body.
As he devours his lunch of sub-standard ingredients cooked well, Sean takes a call on the fixed phone from the PFA delegation. They will be there in two hours or so, depending on road blocks. Two hours is a long time in a hotel room.
“How about a girl?” Sean asks. “Like, now.”
“Sure,” comes the answer, “any preference?”
“Dark.”
“How dark?” There is worry in the voice.
“Oh, I get it. OK, Mediterranean.”
“All right.” Relief in the voice. “The receptionist will send her up in half an hour.”
An hour later, there is a knock on Sean’s door. He looks through the spy-hole then opens it cautiously. The young woman has a haunted look, but she is slim and raven-haired.
“OK,” says Sean. “You’ll do. Come on in.”
***
He keeps them waiting. They do not look much of a challenge to him. Sean strides into the hotel’s dimly lit meeting room and sits himself at the head of the long table.
“Only two?”
“One now, one tonight. That’s what you asked for, isn’t it?”
“Two of you. I know I’m not Uwe Splatta, who couldn’t, who could never … but you did ask for me personally, Sean Linehan, out of all the FIFA officials on the planet, of whom there are many.”
“We, too, in Padania, have Celtic roots. Among Celts, there is a feeling, an understanding.”
“Well, this Sean Linehan was born in Kentish Town.”
“Kent?”
“London. Now, where’s my expenses? I had to pay for my luggage, pay for a luggage trolley, pay to jump the taxi queue, pay for the taxi, tip the bloody driver and his guard …”
One of the Padanians takes a brown envelope from a pocket inside his dark green blazer and proffers it to Sean. Sean takes it. It is reassuringly heavy.
“OK,” he says, “let’s get straight to the matter in hand. You want to join FIFA, and we can’t let you in.”
[continues]