"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 08" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

Saturday, 05.05-12.50



A chill, tangy wind, laden with salt and darkness, whined
and blustered about the ship, testing for weaknesses. By
contrast, the sea was calm. Its shiny black surface merged
imperceptibly into the darkness all around, ridged into
folds, tucks and creases, heaving and tilting in the moon-
light. The short choppy waves slapping the metal plates
below seemed to have no perceptible effect on the ship
itself, which lay as still as if it were already roped to the
quay.
A man stood grasping the metal rail pudgy with
innumerable coats of paint, staring out into the night as
keenly as an officer of the watch. The unbuttoned overcoat
flapping about him like a cloak gave him an illusory air of
corpulence, but when the wind failed for a moment he was
revealed as quite slender for his height. Beneath the
overcoat he was wearing a rumpled suit. A tie of some
nondescript hue was plastered to his shirt by the wind in a
lazy curve, like a question mark. His face was lean and
smooth, with an aquiline nose, and slate-blue eyes, their
gaze as disconcertingly direct as a child's. His hair, its basic
undistinguished brown now flecked with silvery-grey
highlights at the temples, was naturally curly, and the wind
~ossed it back and forth like frantic wavelets in a storm scene
on a Greek vase.
A few hundred metres astern of the ship, the full moon
was reflected in the sea's unstable surface. The shuddering
patch of brightness had an eerie illusion of depth, as if
created by a gigantic searchlight aimed upwards from the
ocean bed. It was deep here, off the eastern coast of the
island, where the mountains plunged down to meet the
sea and then kept going. Zen stood breathing in the wild
air and scanning the horizon for some hint of their land-
fall. But there was nothing to betray the presence of the
coast, unless it was the fact that the darkness ahead
seemed even more unyielding, solid and impenetrable.
The steward had knocked on the cabin door to wake him
twenty minutes earlier, claiming that their arrival was
imminent. Emerging on deck, Zen had expected lights,
bustling activity, a first view of his destination. But there
was nothing. The ship might have been becalmed in mid-
ocean.
He didn't care. He felt weightless, anonymous, stripped
of al] superfluous baggage. Rome was already inconceiv-
ably distant. Sardinia lay somewhere ahead, unknown, a
blank. As for the reasons why he was there, standing on