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

plates, fairly recently to judge by the bright scratches on
the rusty nuts. No registration or insurance documents
were displayed on the windscreen, but this would have
been a bit much to expect at such short notice. Zen took
out his wallet and inspected the Swiss identity card in the
name of Reto Gurtner which he had retained following an
undercover job six years earlier. It was a fake, but
extremely high quality, a product of the secret services'
operation at Prato where, it was rumoured, a large number
of the top forgers in the country offered their skills to
SISMI in lieu of a prison sentence. The primitive lighting
and Zen's constrained pose made the photograph look like
a police mug-shot, not surprisingly, since it had been
taken on the same equipment. Herr Gurtner of Zurich
looked capable of just about anything, thought Zen, even
framing an innocent man to order.
As he sat there, muffied by the Mercedes' luxurious
coachwork from the farting lorries and buses all around,
Zen reflected that whatever happened in Sardinia, he had
at least been able to clear up his outstanding problems in
Rome before leaving. The Volante patrol summoned by
his 113 call from the flat had arrested a man attempting to
escape in the red Alfa Romeo. He tumed out to be one
Giuliano Acciari, a local hoodlum with a lengthy criminal
record for housebreaking and minor thuggery. Zen recog-
nized him as the man who had picked his pocket in the
bus queue, although he did not mention this to the
police. Acciari was unarmed, and a search failed to turn
up the shotgun which he was assumed to have dumped
upon hearing the sirens. But the police were holding
Acciari for the theft of the Alfa Romeo, and had assured
Zen that they would spare no effort to extract any infor-
mation he might have as to the whereabouts of Vasco
Spadola.
A series of shudders and a change in the pitch of the
turbines announced that the ship had docked, but another
ten minutes passed before a crack of daylight finally pene-
trated the murky reaches of the car deck. The coaches and
lorries to either side of Zen rumbled into motion, and
then, too soon, it was his turn.
Zen had learnt to drive back in the late fifties, but he had
never really developed a taste for it. As the roads filled up,
speeds increased and drivers' tempers shortened, he had
seen no reason to change his views, although he was
careful to keep them to himself, well aware that they
would be considered dissident if not heretical. But in the
present case there had been no alternative: he couldn't
drag anyone else along to act as his chauffeur, and it
would not be credible for Herr Reto Gurtner, the wealthy
burgher of Zurich, to travel through the wilds of Sardinia