Three-Card Monte by Marco Malvaldi, Howard Curtis Page B

presentation and going over it. No, he didn’t know what Professor Asahara had been referring to when he had said those words.
    â€œNow, Dr. Kubo,” Fusco said, with a hint of kindness that struck Massimo, “I must ask you to make one last effort to cooperate. We have here Professor Asahara’s laptop, which we got from his room. At this point, given the scarcity of clues, we have to analyze its contents. We need a person who knew the dead man and who can help us to analyze them, in the presence of our experts.”
    Here, Fusco was downplaying the fact that the large, efficient group of people suggested by the term “our experts” consisted, sadly, of a single person, Officer Turturro, who had joined the police after two years studying computer engineering.
    Having said this, Fusco leaned down and picked up a case from which he extracted a brand-new laptop, which he placed on the desk while Massimo and Koichi were translating. Kubo listened to Koichi’s translation with a frown, and after looking at the laptop turned in surprise to Koichi and quickly said something. Before the translation arrived, Massimo had the feeling that he already knew what he would have to tell Fusco, and, unusually, the feeling turned out to be accurate.
    â€œHe says this isn’t the late Professor Asahara’s computer.”
    Fusco gave him a sidelong look. “How can he say that? We took it from the dead man’s room. Of course it’s his.”
    After a brief Italo-Anglo-Japanese exchange, which didn’t actually seem necessary given that Kubo seemed to understand the questions perfectly well in English, Massimo was able to give a more comprehensive explanation:
    â€œDr. Kubo says this isn’t the laptop he always saw Asahara work on, which he brought with him to Italy. This one is a different model.”
    â€œI understand. But I don’t see why this one couldn’t also be his. We found it in his room. I know there are sometimes thefts from hotel rooms. But those are thefts, not swaps. We can try turning it on anyway, and seeing what’s in it. If this computer was the dead man’s, Dr. Kubo here might be able to recognize the contents.”
    There followed a medium-length exchange.
    â€œDr. Kubo says we can try, and that if the computer is Asahara’s, it can easily be ascertained. Apparently, the professor always used the same password for every computer he had access to, and Dr. Kubo, just like all the other members of the group, knows it. But he still maintains that Professor Asahara usually worked on another laptop, the one he referred to before, and that he probably meant that one when he spoke those words during the coffee break. He says that if you haven’t found it, it means it’s been taken.”
    â€œI understand, I understand,” Fusco replied. “I’d already gotten there myself. I know perfectly well what it means if there was another laptop and we haven’t found it. We’ll look for it. As if this whole mess wasn’t already complicated enough, all we needed was for someone to steal the computer. In the meantime, though, we have this one, and that’s what we have to start with. Will you at least give me the satisfaction of switching it on and seeing if we find anything?”
    Fusco wasn’t completely wrong. Massimo waited a few moments, then, given that for some mysterious reason everybody seemed to be expecting him to be the one to switch on the computer, he took it, opened it, and pressed the
on
button. The object reacted with an irritable beep, then started humming softly while strings of tiny characters appeared one after another on the screen, so quickly as to make any attempt to read them impossible.
    While the laptop completed its reawakening, Massimo helped Kubo to describe to Fusco the model and make of the missing computer. Then, going back to the computer screen, he saw a message in English stating that the