"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 05" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

same young man just a few minutes later in Piazza del
Campidoglio. Zen had taken this route because it avoided
the maelstrom of Piazza Venezia, although it meant
climbing the long steep fiights of steps up the Capitoline
hill. Nevertheless, when he paused for breath by the
plinth where a statue of his namesake had stood until
recently succumbing to air pollution, there was the young
man in the leather jacket, about twenty metres behind,
bending down to adjust his shoe-laces.
Zen swung left and walked down past the Mamertine
prison to Via dei Fori Imperiali. He paused to light a
cigarette. Twenty metres back, Leather Jacket was loun-
ging against a railing, admiring the view. As Zen replaced
his cigarettes, a piece of paper fluttered from his pocket to
the ground. He continued on his way, counting his
strides. When he reached twenty he looked round again.
The young man in the leather jacket was bending to pick
up the paper he had dropped.
The only thing he would learn from it was that Zen had
spent xzoo lire in a wine shop in Piazza Campo dei Fiori
that morning. Zen, on the other hand, had leamt two
things: the man was following him, and he wasn't very
good at it. Without breaking his pace, he continued along
the broad boulevard towards the Colisseum. This, or
rather the underground station of the same name, had
been his destination from the start, but he would have to
lose the tail first. The men he was planning to visit had a
code of etiquette as complex and inflexible as any member
of Rome's vestigial aristocracy, and would take a par-
ticularly poor view of anyone arriving with an unidentified
guest in tow.
Without knowing who Leather Jacket was working for,
it was difficult to choose the best way of disposing of him.
If he was an independent operator, the easiest thing
would be to have him arrested on some pretext. This
would also be quick -- a phone call would bring a patrol car
in minutes -- and Zen was already concerned about getting
back to the house before six o'clock, when Maria Grazia
went home. But if Leather Jacket was part of an organiza-
tion, then this solution would sacrifice Zen's long-term
advantage by showing the tail that he had been burned. He
would simply be replaced by someone unknown to Zen,
and quite possibly someone more experienced and harder
to spot. Zen therefore reluctantly decided to go for the most
difficult option, that of losing the young man without
allowing him to realize what had happened. It was not until
the last moment, as he was passing the entrance, that it
dawned on him that the perfect territory for this purpose
was conveniently to hand.
In the ticket office, three men in shirtsleeves were