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

sandy beach and wave-smoothed rocks dynamited and
bulldozed out of the foreshore, barnacles and all. And the
bamacles throve, because one of the biggest surprises
awaiting Burolo's guests as they padded off for their first
dip was that the water was salt. 'Fresh from the Mediter-
ranean,' Oscar would explain proudly, 'pumped up here
through 5,437 metres of sixty-centimetre duct, filtered for
impurities, agitated by six asynchronous wave simulators
and continuously monitored to maintain a constant level


of salinity.' Oscar liked using words like 'asynchronous'
and 'salinity' and quoting squads of figures: it clinched the
effect which the villa was already beginning to have on his
listener. But he knew when to stop, and at this point
would usually slap his guest on the back -- or, if it was a
woman, place his hand familiarly at the base of her spine,
just above the buttocks -- and say, 'So what's missing,
except for a lot of fish and crabs and lobsters? Mind you,
we have those too, but they know their place here -- on a
plate!'
Zen paused the video again as footsteps sounded in the
street outside. A car door slammed shut. But instead of the
expected sound of the car starting up and driving away,
the footsteps returned the way they had come, ceasing
somewhere close by.
He walked over to the window and opened the shutters.
The wooden jalousies beyond the glass were closed, but
segments of the scene outside were visible by looking
down through the angled slats. Both sides of the street
were packed with cars, parked on the road, on either side
of the trees lining it and all over the pavement. Some
distance from the house a red saloon was parked beyond
all these, all by itself, facing towards the house. It
appeared to be empty.
The scene was abruptly plunged into darkness as the
street-lamp attached to the wall just below went out.
Something had gone wrong with its automatic switch, so
that the lamp was continually fooled into thinking that its
own light was that of the dawn and therefore turned itself
off. Then, after some time, it would start to glow faintly
again, gradually growing brighter and brighter until the
whole cycle repeated itself.
Zen closed the shutters and walked back to the sofa.
Catching sight of his reflection in the large mirror above
the fireplace, he paused, as though the person he saw
there might hold the key to what was puzzling him. The
prominent bones and slight tautness of the skin especially
around the eyes, gave his face a slightly exotic air, prob-
ably due to Slav or even Semitic blood somewhere in the