Authors: Michael Dibdin
Zen did not move.
‘How do I know who you are?’ he asked.
The woman smiled grimly.
‘How do you think we know who you are, Dottor Zen?’
‘Do you have identification?’
‘If we did, it would be from the same source as the papers you have identifying you as Pier Giorgio Butani. And just as reliable.’
The man had finished his call.
‘Come on!’ he said. ‘We’ve wasted enough time.’
A blue saloon was parked right outside the door. Another, in the middle of the street further down, flashed its headlights as they appeared. Once again Zen stopped dead, struck by the
overwhelming
sensation that all this had happened to him before. Tail lights, headlights … What was the connection?
He had no time to think about it, as his escorts bundled him into the waiting car, which immediately drove off through the sleeping town, ignoring traffic signs and lights. Five minutes later they were heading south on the A12 autostrada.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked the female agent, who had seated herself with him in the back of the car.
‘Pisa,’ she replied. ‘From there you’ll be flown to another
destination
.’
‘Where?’
‘We are not ordered to know.’
The car sped along the almost deserted freeway with its central divider of tall flowering bushes.
‘But what about my things?’ protested Zen. ‘My clothes and personal possessions. They’re all back at the villa in Versilia.’
‘Someone will be sent to collect and pack them up and they will be forwarded to you in due course. In the meantime a supply of clothing and toiletries will be provided at your destination.’
Zen sighed in disgust.
‘You might have given me some notice,’ he said.
The woman turned to him.
‘You don’t seem to understand,
dottore
. The first we heard about all this was when Girolamo Rutelli contacted us with the news that his brother had been killed. He had been phoned by the authorities in Versilia, partly with a view to positively identifying the victim. Once we learned from him what had happened, we of course took urgent steps to remove you from the vicinity as soon as possible.’
‘What have I got to do with it?’
‘All the evidence suggests that the killing of Massimo Rutelli
was a case of mistaken identity, and that you were the intended victim. The modus operandi was that of a classic professional hit. The implication is that the Mafia discovered where you were staying and made an attempt to silence you before you could
testify
against the Rizzo brothers in the States. Having failed, they would of course have tried again, possibly even tonight.’
The car swept through the automatic payment lane at the Pisa Centro exit and accelerated away along the dual carriageway leading to the airport. When the female agent spoke again, she sounded more conciliatory.
‘Don’t worry,
dottore
. The danger has passed. Wherever they’re sending you next, you’ll be well looked after.’
It was when the light stopped dazzling him that Aurelio Zen
realized
that something odd had happened. He had ill-advisedly chosen a seat on the port side of the plane, so that the sun shone directly in on him, its low-inclined rays empowered with the
brittle
brilliance of February and the stultifying heat of August.
To make matters worse, it was all his own fault. The place he had originally been assigned was on the cool, shady, north-facing side of the plane, but this had not been apparent immediately after take-off, while the fat businessman in the next seat doing important things to a laptop computer had been. Spying an empty row of seats opposite, Zen had moved over, at which point the businessman promptly took possession of his original place and dumped all his voluminous gear in the place where he had been sitting. Theoretically, Zen supposed, he could call a cabin attendant and insist on being reseated in his rightful place, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble. Along with everyone else, he had pulled down his blind when the cabin lights were turned off after lunch, but the insistent glow was still enough to bleach all
substance
from the ghostly figures cavorting about on the video screen in front of him.
Now, though, that intrusive radiance had disappeared. He raised the blind a fraction. No, the sun was no longer there. For a moment he wondered if it might have set, but the ocean vastness miles below still glittered in its reflected light. The sun must still be in the heavens, only it was now apparently aft of the plane. In which case they must be flying north. And even Zen’s elementary knowledge of global geography included the information that America was not north of Europe.
He had spent the two weeks since his precipitate departure from Versilia on the small island of Gorgona, thirty-five
kilometres
off the Tuscan coast which was mainly occupied by a prison camp for non-violent juvenile offenders. Following his flight in a military helicopter from Pisa, Zen had been accommodated in a
spare wing of the spacious quarters reserved for the director of the camp. The latter turned out to be a tall, perpetually stooping man with a whispery voice, diffident to the point of
defensiveness
, who – according to some camp lore which Zen later picked up from one of the warders – had been the principal of a college in Bari until certain rumours about the sexual activities of the staff and pupils came to the attention of the authorities. ‘So he got a job with the
Grazia e Giustizia
, and they sent him here,’ the man commented with a wry grin. ‘It keeps him off the street corner back on the mainland, and he certainly can’t corrupt these thugs. They’ll corrupt him, if anything. One of them offered me a blow job the other day for a cigarette end I was about to throw in the toilet. “What would you do for a whole pack?” I asked him. The little bastard looked me in the eye and said, “No disrespect,
capo
, but I’m not sure you could handle that level of service all by
yourself
. Better invite a couple of your pals along.”’
Zen ate his meals in the canteen, which served excellent food based on the products of the farm where the prisoners worked during the day. He had introduced himself to the staff as an
academic
ornithologist pursuing research into the behaviour of
various
rare local breeds of gulls. As he had hoped, the possibilities for conversational tedium opened up by this supposed
professional
interest ensured that no one ever addressed him. The rest of his time he spent exploring the maze of paths criss-crossing the island, which thanks to its 130-year vocation as a penal colony, remained completely unspoilt. The eastern slopes of the rugged interior were covered in pine forests like those which had once lined the coast, dimly visible through the haze to the east. Elsewhere, the prickly evergreen scrub of the
macchia
stretched as far as the eye could see, while occasional surviving groves of imported olives, holm oaks and sweet chestnuts
provided
shade. The air was utterly limpid, and as subtly perfumed as honey.
His idyll was disturbed only by thoughts of Gemma, and above all by the fact that he had been forced to leave so
hurriedly
, and was unable to contact her to explain why. All phone calls and correspondence had been strictly banned, so as far as Gemma was concerned Zen – or rather Pier Giorgio Butani – had simply vanished from Versilia overnight, without so much as a
word of farewell. Even though he told himself repeatedly that the affair could never have amounted to anything, it remained a
brutal
, ugly and unsatisfying conclusion which left a very bitter taste behind.
He was entering his third week of seclusion when he received a message passed on by the director, instructing him to be packed and ready to leave at nine the following morning. Promptly at five minutes to that hour, a twin-rotor military helicopter
identical
to the one which had brought Zen to the island touched down in the parade ground where the inmates of the prison camp had to assemble each morning for their roll call and work
assignments
. He trudged across the concrete towards it, lugging the bags which had been shipped over on the ferry from Livorno shortly after his arrival. The sun was bright and clear in the cloudless sky, the air sweet and fresh, and until the helicopter’s arrival the silence had been absolute. Zen felt as if he were being exiled from a paradise to which he could never return.
A matter of minutes later they were back at Pisa, at the military end of the airport, away from the commercial terminal. Here Zen was led to a small fixed-wing jet aircraft with no markings. His baggage was placed in the hold while he climbed a set of
fold-down
steps to the interior. This consisted of a single cabin with comfortable chairs facing a low central table. Seated in one of these was the young diplomat who had visited Zen during his convalescence.
He immediately stood up, shook hands with Zen and showed him into a seat, then produced a flask of excellent coffee and two cups. A moment later the stepladder was folded up, the door closed and the engines started.
‘Forgive the rudimentary cabin service,’ Zen’s companion said as the aircraft started to taxi. ‘On the other hand, the
accommodation
is superior to what you’re likely to have for the rest of your journey, and at least you won’t have to listen to the usual sermon about what to do in the unlikely event of a landing on water. I wonder if anyone’s life has ever been saved by one of those cheap life-jackets they stuff away under the seats. It seems to me that all those safety announcements do is spread an irrational fear of
flying
, actually one of the safest forms of transport. Imagine if every time you got into a bus or train or taxi you had to listen to a lot of
euphemistic waffle about what to do if the thing crashed! No one would ever leave home.’
The aircraft veered jerkily to the right, the engines roared, and before Zen knew it they were off the ground. He watched the coastline turning into a map for several minutes, then turned back to his companion, who was filling their cups of coffee. When he looked up at Zen, his professional mask was firmly back in place.
‘I trust your stay on Gorgona was tolerable?’ he said.
‘Very pleasant, thank you.’
‘It seemed the best short-term solution, given the events in Versilia.’
He looked at Zen with a serious expression.
‘You’re a very lucky man. The Mafia have now tried twice to kill you, and failed both times. Very few people can say that.’
‘Is it certain that I was the intended target?’
The young diplomat gestured dismissively.
‘
Dottore
, there has never been a recorded case of a murder on the beach in that area. A few knifings late at night down at the Viareggio end, and the odd settling of accounts between drug gangs, but otherwise nothing. Then a corporate lawyer with no known enemies, seated in the place which you had occupied for several weeks, is shot through the heart at point-blank range with a silenced pistol in broad daylight by a killer who nevertheless completely evades attention, even though the
bagno
was packed at the time.’
Zen nodded.
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘Of course we are. Which is why we’ve decided to move you yet again, this time to the United States.’
Catching Zen’s look of alarm, he held up a soothing hand.
‘The trial’s not due to start for some time, but the safest option in the meantime seemed to be to get you out of the country and into the hands of the federal authorities. They have a lot of
experience
in protecting witnesses, and America is a very large
country
. To make matters even more secure, we are flying you not to New York, where the trial will take place, but to the west coast. There you’ll be met by Italian-speaking agents of the FBI who will meet you airside, bypass all the immigration and customs
procedures
, and escort you to a safe house in a location which hasn’t
been disclosed even to us. It will be impossible for the Mafia to find you there.’
Zen looked out of the window again. The aircraft was passing over the Apennine chain. They were sending him away. He
suddenly
felt very small and helpless and desolate.
‘Our immediate destination is Malpensa,’ the diplomat
continued
. ‘There you will transfer to the regular Alitalia flight to Los Angeles. You will be boarded separately from the other
passengers
, and without passing through passport control and all the other nonsense, and seated in the business-class cabin. I take it that you packed your bags yourself, that they have not been out of your possession at any time since then, and that they do not contain any explosive or inflammable substances.’
It was only after Zen had solemnly shaken his head that he realized that this had been intended as a joke.
‘Have you any questions?’ his companion enquired urbanely.
Zen thought for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If I write a letter, will you post it for me?’
The diplomat looked embarrassed.
‘That would depend,’ he replied.
‘On what?’
‘On whom you wished to write to and on what you intended to say.’
‘In other words, you would have to read it.’
The young man gestured in a pained way.
‘Somebody would,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in trying to
conceal
that. There’s a lot at stake in this operation in terms of
national
honour and prestige. I’m afraid it would be naive to pretend that any obvious precautions are going to be overlooked out of motives of delicacy.’
Zen nodded.
‘Thank you for being candid. You could have lied. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It was a stupid idea.’
When they arrived at Malpensa, Zen was transferred to an
airport
authority car and taken to a windowless lounge in a remote wing of the terminal. Here he had been left to cool his heels for over an hour, before being led back to the car and driven along a succession of vast concrete taxiways to a parked Alitalia 747 which was loading the in-flight food and beverage trolleys. Zen
was loaded too, via a stepped ramp which was wheeled up to the aircraft’s rear door. It all reminded him oddly of his experience on his return from Malta to Sicily, where he had been ‘met at the airport’ – a strip of abandoned motorway – by members of the Ragusa Mafia for delivery to Don Gaspare Limina. Once again, he was just a package, to be shunted around and stowed away, just like the packages of drugs unloaded from the Malta flight. Packages don’t have feelings or opinions about the process this involves or their ultimate destination. Zen did, but they were equally irrelevant.
Some three hours later, twisting uncomfortably in his seat and worrying about the disappearance of the sun, these views had not changed. The prospect of finding himself in America filled him with terror. Like many Italians of his generation, he had never been abroad before, apart from day trips into Austria, Switzerland and recently Malta. He had never even owned a passport, and it seemed highly appropriate that the one he was now carrying should be in a false name.
Il bel paese
could offer the traveller every conceivable variety of landscape, climate, natural beauties and cultural treasures. Why waste a lot of time going to some foreign country where they used funny money, spoke some barbaric dialect, and couldn’t be relied upon to make a decent cup of coffee, still less know how to cook pasta properly? It was a stupid idea, however you looked at it. And if the foreign country in question was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, it became quite literally insane.
Zen’s rule of thumb in these matters was very simple. In
theory
, at least, he was prepared to at least consider going to any country which had formed part of the Roman Empire. If it had also been part of the political or trading empire of the Venetian Republic, so much the better. Egypt, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, the Balkans, Austria, Bavaria, France, Iberia, North Africa – even England, at a pinch – he could contemplate as a
hypothetical
destination. Beyond those limits, he just didn’t see the point. The Romans had been brutal bastards, but they were no fools. If they hadn’t bothered to conquer Sweden or Poland, there was probably a good reason. And they certainly hadn’t been to America. Maybe they didn’t know it was there. Or perhaps they’d heard rumours, but just didn’t care enough to investigate
further. Either way, Zen was inclined to trust their judgement.
As if this wasn’t enough to stoke his anxiety, there was the small matter of his testimony at the trial. The Ragusa thugs who had delivered Zen to Don Gaspare Limina had been given to understand that he would be killed, and so they had not bothered to conceal their faces. But thanks to the Catania clan’s mercy, or rivalry, he had survived to find himself in the almost unprecedented position for a non-mafioso of being able to identify two prominent members of ‘those pushy little squirts from Ragusa’, as Limina had contemptuously referred to his upstart neighbours.