Numero Zero Read Free Page A

horses, and champagne. You’ll be able to take it easy, look around.”
    â€œLet me get this straight. You’re offering me six million lire a month—and (if I may say so) who knows how much you’re getting out of this—there’ll be other journalists to pay, to say nothing of the costs of production and printing and distribution, and you’re telling me someone, a publisher I imagine, is ready to back this experiment for a year, then do nothing with it?”
    â€œI didn’t say he’ll do nothing with it. He’ll gain his own benefit from it. But me, no, not if the newspaper isn’t published. Of course, the publisher might decide in the end that the newspaper must appear, but at that point it’ll become big business and I doubt he’ll want me around to look after it. So I’m ready for the publisher to decide at the end of this year that the experiment has produced the expected results and that he can shut up shop. That’s why I’m covering myself: if all else fails, I’ll publish the book. It’ll be a bombshell and should give me a tidy sum in royalties. Alternatively, so to speak, there might be someone who won’t want it published and who’ll give me a sum of money, tax free.”
    â€œI follow. But maybe, if you want me to work as a loyal collaborator, you’ll need to tell me who’s paying, why the
Domani
project exists, why it’s perhaps going to fail, and what you’re going to say in the book that, modesty aside, will have been written by me.”
    â€œAll right. The one who’s paying is Commendator Vimercate. You’ll have heard of him . . .”
    â€œVimercate. Yes I have. He ends up in the papers from time to time: he controls a dozen or so hotels on the Adriatic coast, owns a large number of homes for pensioners and the infirm, has various shady dealings around which there’s much speculation, and controls a number of local TV channels that start at eleven at night and broadcast nothing but auctions, telesales, and a few risqué shows . . .”
    â€œAnd twenty or so publications.”
    â€œRags, I recall, celebrity gossip, magazines such as
Them, Peeping Tom
, and weeklies about police investigations, like
Crime Illustrated
,
What They Never Tell Us
, all garbage, trash.”
    â€œNot all. There are also specialist magazines on gardening, travel, cars, yachting,
Home Doctor
. An empire. A nice office this, isn’t it? There’s even the ornamental fig, like you find in the offices of the kingpins in state television. And we have an
open plan
, as they say in America, for the news team, a small but dignified office for you, and a room for the archives. All rent-free, in this building that houses all the Commendatore’s companies. For the rest, each dummy issue will use the same production and printing facilities as the other magazines, so the cost of the experiment is kept to an acceptable level. And we’re practically in the city center, unlike the big newspapers where you have to take two trains and a bus to reach them.”
    â€œBut what does the Commendatore expect from this experiment?”
    â€œThe Commendatore wants to enter the inner sanctum of finance, banking, and perhaps also the quality papers. His way of getting there is the promise of a new newspaper ready to tell the truth about everything. Twelve zero issues—0/1, 0/2, and so on—dummy issues printed in a tiny number of exclusive copies that the Commendatore will inspect, before arranging for them to be seen by certain people he knows. Once the Commendatore has shown he can create problems for the so-called inner sanctum of finance and politics, it’s likely they’ll ask him to put a stop to such an idea. He’ll close down
Domani
and will then be given an entry permit to the inner sanctum. He buys up, let’s say, just two percent of shares in a major newspaper, a bank,