"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 11" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

Sunday, 11.20 -- 13.25



It was only as he approached the series of hairpin bends by
which the road descended from the village that Zer:
realized Vasco Spadola might well have sabotaged the
Mercedes's brakes as well as its engine. By then the car
was doing almost ~o kph and accelerating all the time.
The brakes engagea normally, and a moment later Zen
saw that his fears had been groundless. Spadola's exacting
sense of what was due to him made it unthinkable that he
would choose such an indirect and mechanical means ot
executing his revenge. His desires were urgent and per-
sonal. They had to be satisfied personally, face to face, like
a perverted sex act.
The car drifted downhill in a luxurious silence
cushioned by the hum of the tyres and the hushing of thc
wind. The hairpin bends followed one another with bareli
a pause. The motion reminded Zen of sailing on the
Venetian lagoons, continually putting the boat about from
one tack to the other as he negotiated the narrow channels
between the low, muddy islets. He felt strangely exhilar-
ated by that moment when life and death had seemed
balanced on the response of a brake lever, as on the toss of
a coin. In Rome, when he first sensed that someone was
on his trail, he had felt nothing but cold, clammy terror, a
paralysing suffocation. But here in this primitive land-
scape what was happening seemed perfectly natural and
right. This is what men were made for, he thought. The
rest we have to work at, but this comes naturaly. This is
what we are good at.
Even in this euporic state, howtever, he realized that
some men were better at it than others, and that Vasco
gpadola was certainly too good for him. If he was to
survive, he had to start thinking. Fortunately his brain
seemed to be working with exceptional clarity, despite the
pangover. There was as yet no sign of pursuit on the road
above, but as soon as Spadola emerged from the hotel he
was bound to notice that the Mercedes was gone, and to
realize that it could only have moved under the force of
gravity. All he needed to do after that was follow the road
downhill, and sooner or later -- and it was likely to be
sooner rather than later -- he would catch up.
Below, the road wound down to the junction where Zen
had stopped to consult the map on his way to the Villa
Burolo twenty-four hours earlier. On the other side of the
junction, he remembered, an unsurfaced track led to the
station built to serve the village in the days when people