"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

tility. The situation was totally out of control. Nothing he
could say or do would have any effect whatsoever.
For a moment he thought that they might be going to
assault him, but in the end Furio Padedda and his friend
Patrizio had just turned away and walked out. Then the
man called Turiddu threw some banknotes on the table
and he and his companions left too, without a word.
putside, the air was thick with scents brought out by the
rain: creosote, wild thyme, wood smoke, urine, motor oil.
yo judge by the stillness of the street, it might have been
tpe small hours. Then a motorcycle engine opened up the
night like a crude tin-opener, all jagged, torn edges, The
pike emerged from the shadows of an alley and moved
slowly and menacingly towards Zen. By the volatile
~oonlight, he recognized the rider as Furio Padedda. The
Sardinian bestrode the machine like a horse, urging it on
with tightenings of his knees. From a strap around his
shoulders hung a double-barrelled shotgun.
Then a figure appeared in the street some distance
ahead cf Zen. One ahead and one behind, the classic
ambush. The correct procedure was to go on the offensive,
take out one oi the other before they could complete the
squeeze. But if Zen had been following correct procedures
he would never have been there in the first place without
any back-up. Even in his prime, twenty years ago, he
couldn't have handled either man, never mind both of
them. As Zen approached the blocker, he saw that it was
Turiddu. With drunken fatalism, he kept walking. Ten
metres. Five. Two. One. He braced himself for the arm
across the throat, the foot to the groin.
Then he was past and nothing had happened. He
sensed rather than saw Turiddu fall in behind him, his
footsteps blending with the raucous murmur of Padedda's
motorcycle. Zen forced himself not to hurry or look round.
He walked on past rows of darkened windows, closed
shutters and locked doors, followed by the two men, until
at last he reached the piazza and the hotel.
Now, mulling it over in his room, his thoughts crawling
through the wreckage of his brain like the stunned sur-
vivors of an earthquake, Zen realized that he owed his
escape to the enmity between the two Sardinians. Each

had no doubt intended to punish the impostor, but neithe
was prepared to allow the other that honour, and co-
operation was out of the question. Back at the hotel, the
proprietor, alerted by Padedda's associate Patrizio, had
delivered his ultimatum. There was no other accom-
modation in the village, and in any case there was no point
in Zen remaining, now that Reto Gurtner had been
exposed as a fraud. Whatever he said or did, everyone