"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

instead of meekly buying his way into the Costa like
everyone else, he did something unheard-of, something
so bizarre and outlandish that some people claimed after-
wards that they had always thought it was ill-omened
from the start. For his Sardinian retreat, Oscar chose an
abandoned farmhouse half-way down the island's almost
ininhabited eastern coast, and not even on the sea, for
god's sake, but several kilometres inland!
Italians have no great respect for eccentricity, and this
kind of idiosyncrasy might very easily have aroused
nothing but ridicule and contempt. It was a measure of the
panache with which Oscar carried off his whims that
exactly the opposite was the case. The full resources of
Burolo Construction were brought to bear on the humble
farmhouse, which was swiftly altered out of all recogni-
tion. One by one, the arguments against Oscar's choice
were made to look small-minded and unconvincing.
The security aspect, so important in an area notorious
for kidnappings, was taken care of by hiring the top firm in
the country to make the villa intruder-proof, no expense
spared. Used to having to cut corners to make security
cost-effective, the consultant was delighted for once to
have an opportunity to design a system without compro-
mises. 'If anyone ever manages to break into this place, I'll
believe in ghosts,' he assured his client when the work
was completed. Having purchased peace of mind with
hard cash, Oscar then added a characteristic touch by
buying a pair of rather moth-eaten lions from a bankrupt
safari park outside Cagliari and turning them loose in the
grounds, calculating that the resulting publicity would do
as much as any amount of high technology to deter
intruders.
But even Oscar couldn't change the fact that the villa
was situated almost zoo kilometres from the nearest air-
port and the glamorous nightspots of the Costa Smeralda,
zoo kilometres of tortuous and poorly maintained road
where no electronic fences could protect him from kidnap-
pers. Wasn't that a drawback? Well it might be, Oscar
retorted, for someone who still thought of personal trans-
port in terms of cars. But Olbia and the Costa were only
half that distance as the crow flies, and when the crow in
question was capable of zzo kph... To clinch the argu-
ment, Oscar would bundle his guests into the 'crow' -- an
Agusta helicopter -- and pilot them personally to Palau or
Porto Cervo for aperitifs.
As for swimming, since Oscar would not go to the coast
like everyone else, the coast was made to come to him. A
wide irregular hollow the size of a small lake was scooped
out of the parched red soil behind the farm. This was lined
with concrete, filled with water and decorated with a