Thursday, 13.40 -- 16.55



'So what's the problem, Aurelio? A little trip to Sardinia,
all expenses paid. I should be so lucky! But once you're in
business for yourself you learn that the boss works harder
than...'
'I've already explained the problem, Gilberto! Christ,
what's the matter with you today?'
It was the question that Zen had been asking himself
ever since arriving at the restaurant. Finding his friend free
for lunch at such short notice had seemed a stroke of luck
which might help Zen gain control of the avalanche of
events which had overrun his life.
Gilberto Nieddu, an ex-colleague who now ran an
industrial counter-espionage firm, was the person Zen
was closest to. Serious, determined and utterly reliable,
there was an air of strength and density about him, as
though all his volatility had been distilled away. Whatever
he did, he did in earnest. Zen hadn't of course expected
Gilberto to produce instant solutions, but he had counted
on him to listen attentively and then bring a calm,
objective view to bear on the problems. As a Sardinian
himself, his advice and knowledge might make all the
difference.
But Gilberto was not his usual self today. Distracted and
preoccupied, continually glancing over his shoulder, he
paid little attention to Zen's account of his visit to Palazzo
Sisti and its implications.
'Relax, Aurelio! Enjoy yourself. I'll bet you haven't been
here that often, eh?'
This was true enough. In fact Zen had never been to
Licio's, a legendary name among Roman luxury res-
taurants. The entrance was in a small street near the
Pantheon. You could easily pass by without noticing it.
Apart from a discreet brass plate beside the door, there was
no indication of the nature of the business carried on there.
No menu was displayed, no exaggerated claims made for
the quality of the cooking or the cellar.
Inside you were met by Licio himself, a eunuch-like
figure whose expression of transcendental serenity never
varied. It was only once you were seated that the unique
attraction of Licio's became clear, for thanks to the position
of the tables, in widely-separated niches concealed from
each other by painted screens and potted plants, you had
the illusinn of being the only people there. The prices at
Licio's were roughly double the going rate for the class of
cuisine on offer, but this was only logical since there were
only half as many tables. In any case, the clientele came
almost evclusively from the business and political worlds,
and was happy to pay whatever Licio wished to ask in
return for the privilege of being able to discuss sensitive
matters in a normal tone of voice with no risk ofbeing either
overheard or deafened by the neighbours. Hence the
place's unique cachet: you went to other restaurants to see
and be seen; at Licio's you paid more to pass unnoticed.
On the rare occasions when Zen spent this kind of money
on a meal he went to places where the food, rather than the
ambience, was the attraction, so Gilberto Nieddu's remark
had been accurate enough. That didn't make Zen feel any
happier about the slightly patronizing tone in which it had
been made. Matters were not improved when Gilberto
patted his arm familiarly and whispered, 'Don't worry! This
one's on me.'
Zen made a final attempt to get his friend to appreciate
the gravity of the situation.
'Look, I'll spell it out for you. They're asking me to
frame someone. Do you understand? I'm to go to Sar-
dinia and fake some bit of evidence, come up with a
surprise witness, anything. They don't care what I do or
how I do it as long as it gets the charges against Favelloni
withdrawn, or at least puts the trial dates back several
months.'
Gilberto nodded vaguely. He was still glancing com-
pulsively around the restaurant.
'This could be your big chance, Aurelio,' he murmured,
checking his watch yet again.
Zen stared at him with a fixed intensity that was a
reproach.
'Gilberto, we are talking here about sending an inno-
cent person to prison for twenty years, to say nothing of
allowing a man who has gunned down four people in
cold blood to walk free. Quite apart from the moral
aspect, that is seriously illegal.'
The Sardinian shrugged. 'So don't do it. Phone in sick
or something.'
'For fuck's sake, this is not just another job! I've been
recommended to these people! They've been told that I'm
an unscrupulous self-seeker, that I cooked the books in
the Miletti case and wouldn't think twice about doing so
again. They've briefed me, they've cut me in. I know
what they're planning to do and how they're planning to
do it. If I try and get out of it now, they're not just going
to say, "Fine, suit yourself, we'll find someone else."
They've already hinted that if I don't play along I could
expect to become another statistic in somewhere like
Palermo. Down there you can get a contract hit done for a
few million lire. There are even people who'll do it for
free, just to make a name for themselves! And no one's
going to notice if another cop goes missing. Are you
listening to any of this?'
'Ah, finally!' Gilberto cried aloud. 'A big client,
Aurelio, very big,' he hissed in an undertone to Zen. 'If we
swing this one, I can take a year off to listen to your
problems. Just play along, follow my lead.'
He sprang to his feet to greet a stocky, balding man with
an air of immense self-satisfaction who was being guided
to their table by the unctuous Licio.
'Commendatore! Good morning, welcome, how are
you? Permit me to present Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen.
Aurelio, Dottor Dario Ochetto of SIFAS Enterprises.'
Lowering his voice suggestively, Nieddu added, 'Dottor
Zen works directly for the Ministry of the Interior.'
Zen felt like walking out, but he knew he couldn't do it.
His friendship with Gilberto was too important for him to
risk losing it by a show of pique. The fact that Gilberto had
probably counted on this reaction didn't make Zen feel
any happier about listening to the totally fictitious account
of Paragon Security's dealings with the Ministry of the
Interior which Nieddu used as a warm-up before
presenting his sales pitch. Meanwhile, Zen ate his way
through the food that was placed before them and drank
rather more wine than he would normally have done.
Occasionally Gilberto turned in his direction and said,
'Right, Aurelio?' Fortunately neither he nor Ochetto
seemed to expect a reply.
Zen found it impossible to tell whether Ochetto was
impressed, favourably or otherwise, by this farce, but as
soon as he had departed, amid scenes of compulsive hand-
shaking, Gilberto exploded in jubilation and summoned
the waiter to bring over a bottle of their best malt whisky.
'It's in the bag, Aurelio!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'An
exclusive contract to install and maintain anti-bugging
equipment at all their offices throughout the country, and
at five times the going rate because what isn't in the
contract is the work they want done on the competition.'
Zen sipped the whisky, which reminded him of a tar-
based patent medicine with which his mother had used to
dose him liberally on the slightest pretext.
'What kind of work?'
Nieddu gave him a sly look. 'Well, what do you think?'
'I don't think anything,' Zen retorted aggressively.
'Why don't you answer the question?'
Nieddu threw up his hands in mock surrender. 'Oh!
What is this, an interrogation?'
'You've gone into the bugging business?' Zen
demanded.
'Have you got any objection?'
'I certainly have! I object to be tricked into appearing
to sanction illegal activities when I haven't even been
told what they are, much less asked whether I mind
being dragged in! Jesus Christ almighty, Gilberto, I don't
fucking well need this! Not any time, and especially not
now.'
Gilberto Nieddu gestured for calm, moving his hands
smoothly through the air as though stroking silk.
'This lunch has been arranged for weeks, Aurelio. I
didn't ask you to come along. On the contrary, you phoned
me at the last moment. I would normally have said I was
busy, but because you sounded so desperate I went out of
rny way to see you. But I had'to explain your presence to
Ochetto, otherwise he would have been suspicious. This
way, he'll just think I was trying to impress him with my
contacts at the Ministry. It worked beautifully. You were
very convincing. And don't worry about repercussions.
He's already forgotten you exist.'
Zen smiled wanly as he dug a Nazionale out of his
rapidly collapsing pack. 'You were very convincing.' Tania
had said the same thing the night before, and it had
apparently been Zen's 'convincing' performance in the
Miletti case which had recommended him to Palazzo Sisti.
Everyone who used him for their own purposes seemed
very satisfied with the results.
'So you're in the shit again, eh?' continued Nieddu,
lighting a cigar and settling back in his chair. 'What's it all
about this time?'
Zen pushed his glass about on the tablecloth stained
with traces of the various courses they had consumed. He
no longer had any desire to share his troubles with the
Sardinian.
'Oh, nothing. I'm probably just imagining it.'
Nieddu eyed his friend through a screen of richly fragrant
smoke.
'It's time you got out of the police, Aurelio. What's the
point of slogging away like this at your age, putting your
life on the line? Leave that to the young ambitious pricks
who still think they're immortal. Let's face it, it's a mug's
game. There's nothing in it unless you're bent, and even
then it's just small change really.'
He clicked his fingers to summon the bill.
'You know, I never had any idea what was going on in
the world until I went into business. I simply never
realized what life was about. I mean, they don't teach you
this stuff at school. What you have to grasp is, it's all there
for the taking. Somebody's going to get it. If it isn't you, it'll
be someone else.'
He sipped his whisky and drew at his cigar.
'All these cases you get so excited about, the Burolos
and all the rest of it, do you know what that amounts to'?
Traffic accidents, that's all. If you have roads and cars, a
certain number of people are going to get killed and
injured. Those people attract a lot of attention, but they're
really just a tiny percentage of the number who arrive
safely without any fuss or bother. It's the same in busi-
ness, Aurelio. The system's there, people are going to use
it. The only question is whether you want to spend your
time cleaning up after other people's pile-ups or driving
off where you want to go. Fancy a cognac or something?'
It was after three o'clock when the two men emerged,
blinking, into the afternoon sunlight. They shook hands
and parted amicably enough, but as Zen walked away it
felt as though a door had slammed shut behind him.
People changed, that was the inconvenient thing one
always forgot. It was years now since Gilberto had left the
police in disgust at the way Zen had been treated over the
Moro affair, but Zen still saw him as a loyal colleague,
formed in the same professional mould, sharing the same
perceptions and prejudices. But Gilberto Nieddu was no
longer an ex-policeman, but a prosperous and successful
businessman, and his views and attitudes had changed
accordingly.
On a day-to-day level this had been no more apparent
ihan the movement of a clock's hands. It had taken this
crisis to reveal the distance that now separated the two
men. The Sardinian still wished Zen well, of course, and
would help him if he could. But he found it increasingly
difficult to take Aurelio's problems very seriously. To him
they seemed trivial, irrelevant and self-infiicted. What was
the point cf getting into trouble and taking risks with no
prospect of profit at the end of it all?
Gilberto's attitude made it impossible for Zen to ask him
for help, yet help was what he desperately needed for the
Project that was beginning to form in his mind. If he
couldn't get it through official channels or friendly con-
tacts then there was only one other possibility.
The first sighting was just north of Piazza Venezia. After
the calm of the narrow streets from which most traffic was
banned, the renewed contact with the brutal realities of
Roman life was even more traumatic than usual. I'm
getting too old, Zen thought as he hovered indecisively at
the ke rb. My reactions are slowing down. I'm losing my
nerve, my confidence. So he was reassured to see that a
tough-looking young man in a leather jacket and jeans was
apparently just as reluctant to take the plunge. In the end,
indeed, it was Zen who was the first to step out boldly into
the traffic, trusting that the drivers would choose not to
exercise their power to kill or maim him.
It was marginally less reassuring to catch sight of the
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
engaged in a heated argument about Craxi's line on com-
batting inflation. Zen flashed his police identity card at
them and then at the woman perched on a stool at the
entrance, a two-way radio in one hand and a paperback
novel in the other. Without looking round to see if Leather
Jacket was following, he walked through the gateway and
into the Forum.
To his untutored eye, the scene before him resembled
nothing so much as a building site. AII that was missing
were the tall green cranes clustered together in groups like
extraterrestial invaders. It seemed as if this project had only
just passed the foundation level, and only then in a frag-
mentary and irregular way. Some areas were still pitted and
troughed, awaiting the installation of drainage and wiring,
while in others a few pillars and columns provided a
tantalizing hint of the building to come. Elsewhere, whole
sections of the massive brick structures -- factories? ware-
houses? -- which had formerly occupied the area had still
not been demolished completely. For the moment, work
seemed to have ground to a halt. No dump-trucks or
concrete-pourers moved along the rough track running the
length of the site. Perhaps some snag had arisen over the
financing, Zen thought whimsically. Perhaps the govern-
ment had been reshuffled yet again, and the new minister
was reluctant to authorize further expenditure on a project
which had already over-run its estimated cost by several
hundred per cent -- or was at least holding out for some
financial incentive on a scale similar to that which had
induced his predecessor to sign the contract in the first place.
A Carabinieri helicopter was thrashing about overhead
like a shark circling for the kill. Zen tossed away his
cigarette and strolled along a path in the patchy grass
between the ruins. A fine dust covered everything, beaten
into the air by passing feet from the bone-dry soil. The sun
crouched low in a cloudless sky, its weak rays absorbed and
reflected by the marble and brick on every side. Overhead
the helicopter swept past periodically, watchful, alien,
remote. Halfway up the path, which veered off to the right
and started to climb the Palatine hill, Zen paused to survey
the scene. At that time of year there were only a few tourists
about. Among them was a young man in a leather jacket
and jeans. Oddly enough, he was once again having prob-
lems with his laces.
Zen resumed his walk with a fastidious smile. If Leather
Jacket thought that bending down to tie up your shoes
made you invisible then he shouldn't prove too difficult to
unload. In fact he felt slightly piqued that such a third-rate
operator had been considered adequate for the task of
shadowing him. Evidently he couldn't even inspire respect
in his enemies.
The path ran up a shallow valley, between masses of
ancient brickwork emerging from the grass like weathered
rocky outcroppings. The signs and fences installed by the
authorities had imposed some superficial order on the hill's
chaotic topography, but this simply made its endless anom-
alies all the more incomprehensible. Nothing here was
what it appeared to be, having been recycled and can-
nibalized so many times that its original name and function
was often unclear even to experts. Although no archae-
ologist, Zen was intimately familiar with the many-layered
complexities of the Palatine, thanks to the Angela Barilli
affair.
The daughter of a leading Rome jeweller, eighteeen-year-
old Angela had been kidnapped in 1975. After months of
io6
negotiations and a bungled pay-off the kidnappers had
broken off contact. In desperation, the Barilli family had
turned to the supernatural, engaging a clairvoyant from
Turin who claimed to have led the police to three other
kidnap victims. The medium duly informed Angela's
mother that her daughter was being held in an under-
ground cell somewhere in the vast network of rooms and
passages on the lower floors of the Imperial palace at the
heart of the Palatine.
Unlikely as this seemed, the political clout wielded by
the family was enough to ensure that Zen, who was direc-
ting the investigation, had to waste three days organizing
a painstaking search of the area. The Barilli girl's corpse
was in fact discovered the following year in a shallow
concrete pit beneath a garage in the Primavalle suburb
where she had been held during her ordeal, but Zen had
never forgotten the three days he had spent exploring the
honeycomb of caverns, tunnels, cisterns and cellars that
lay beneath the surface of the Palatine. It was an area so
rich in possibilities that Zen could simply disappear into
the mathematics, leaving his follower to solve an equation
with too many variables.
When he reached the plateau at the top of the hill, Zen
turned left behind the high stone wall which closed off a
large rectangle of ground surrounding a church, and
waited for Leather Jacket to catch up. There was no one
about, and the only sound was the distant buzzing of the
helicopter. It had now moved further to the east, circling
over the group of hospitals near San Giovanni in Laterano.
No doubt an important criminal was being transferred
from Regina Coeli prison for treatment, with the helicopter
acting as an eye in the sky against any attempt to snatch
him.
Footsteps approached quickly, almost.at a run. At the
last moment, Zen stepped out from behind the wall.
'Sorry!'
'Excuse me!'
The collision had only been slight, but the young man in
the leather jacket looked deeply startled, as Zen had
intended he should be. Close to, his sheen of toughness
fell apart like an actress's glamour on the wrong side of the
footlights. Despite a virile stubble, due no doubt to
shaving last thing at night, his skin looked babyish, and
his eyes were weak and evasive.
'It always happens!' Zen remarked.
The man stared at him, mystified.
'When there's no one about, I mean,' Zen explained.
'Have you noticed? You can walk right through the
Stazione Termini at rush hour and never touch anyone,
but go for a stroll up here and you end up walking straight
into the only other person about!'
The man muttered something inconclusive and turned
away. Zen set off in the opposite direction. Not only
would the encounter have shaken Leather Jacket, but it
would now be impossible for him to pass off any future
contacts as mere coincidence. That constraint would force
him to hang back in order to keep well out of sight, thus
giving Zen the margin he needed.
He made his way through a maze of gravelled paths
winding among sections of ruined brick wall several
metres thick. Lumps of marble lay scattered about like
discarded playthings. Isolated stone-pines rose from the
ruins, their rough straight trunks cantilevering out at the
top to support the broad green canopy. Here and there,
excavations had scraped away the soil to expose a fraction
of the hidden landscape beneath the surface. Fenced off
and covered with sloping roofs of corrugated plastic
sheeting, they looked like the primitive shelters of some
future tribe, bringing the long history of this ancient hill
full circle in the eternal darkness of a nuclear winter.
A line of pines divided this area from a formal garden
with alleys flanked by close-clipped hedges. Screened by
the dense thickets of evergreen trees and shrubs, Zen was
able to move quickly along the paved path leading to a
parterre with gravel walks, a dilapidated pavilion and
terrace overlooking the Forum. A fountain dripped,
bright dabs of orange fruit peeped through the greenery,
paths led away in every direction. In the centre, a flight
of steps led down into a subterranean corridor running
back the way he had come. Dimly lit by lunettes let into
the wall just below the arched ceiling, the passage
seemed to extend itself as Zen hurried along it. The walls,
rough, pitted plaster, were hung with cobwebs as large
and thick as handkerchiefs, which fluttered in the cool
draught.
At length the passage ended in another flight of steps
leading up into the middle of the maze of brickwork and
gravel paths which Zen had passed through earlier.
Keeping under cover of the fragments of wall, he
worked his way towards the massive ruins of the
Imperial palace itself. The gate was just where he
remembered it, giving access to a yard used for storing
odds and ends of unidentified marble. It was supposed
to be locked, but one of the things that Zen had leamed
in the course of his abortive search for Angela Barilli was
that it was left open during the day because the staff
used it as a short cut. Ignoring the sign reading 'No
Admission To Unauthorized Persons', Zen walked through
the yard to a passage at the back. To the left, a modern
doorway led into a museum. Zen turned the other way,
down an ancient metal staircase descending into the
bowels of the hill.
At first, the staircase burrowed through a channel cut
into the solid brickwork of the palace. As Zen walked
down, the light diminished above, and simultaneously
the darkness beneath began to glow. Then, without
warning, he emerged into a vast underground space in
which the staircase was suspended vertiginously, bolted
to the brickwork. The other walls were immeasurably dis-
tant, mere banks of shadow, presences hinted at by the
light seeping in far below, obscuring the ground like thick
mist. Zen clutched the handrail, overwhelmed by vertigo.
Everything had been turned on its head: the ground
above, the light below.
Step by step, he made his way down the zigzag staircase
through layers of cavernous gloom. The floor was a bare
expanse of beaten earth illuminated by light streaming in
through large rectangular openings giving on to the sun-
ken courtyard at the heart of the palace. Zen walked across
it, glancing up at the metal railings high above, where a
trio of tourists stood reading aloud from a guidebook. A
rectangular opening in the brickwork opposite led into a
dark passage which passed through a number of sombre
gutted spaces and then a huge enclosed arena consisting
of rows of truncated columns flanking a large grassy area.
He sat down on one of the broken columns, out of sight
of the path above, and lit a cigarette. At the base of the
column lay a large pine cone, its scales splayed back like
the pads of a great cat's paw. The air was still, the light
pale and mild, as though it too was antique. The match-
stick figures displayed on Zen's digital watch continued
their elaborate ballet, but the resulting patterns seemed to
have lost all meaning. The only real measure of time was
the slow disappearance of the cigarette smouldering
between Zen's fingers and the equally deliberate progress
of his thoughts.
Who could Leather Jacket be working for? Until this
moment Zen had assumed that he must be connected with
the break-in at his flat and the envelope full of shotgun
pellets which had been left there, but now, after some
consideration, he rejected this idea. Leather Jacket simply
didn't look nasty enough to have a hand in the attempt to
scare Zen by copying the warnings sent to Judge Giulio
Bertolini before his death. He didn't care enough. It wasn't
a personal vendetta he was involved in, Zen was sure of
that. He was in it for the money, a cut-rate employee hired
by the hour to keep track of Zen's movements. But who
had hired him? The longer Zen thought about it, the more
significant it seemed that Leather Jacket had put in his first
appearance shortly after Zen's interview at Palazzo Sisti.
The only surprising feature of this solution was that
they should have chosen such a low-grade operative to
do the job, but this was no doubt explained by the fact
that Lino was in charge of that department. They might
even prefer Zen to know that they were keeping tabs on
him. He was their man now, after all. Why shouldn't
they keep him under surveillance? What reason had they
to trust him?
It was only when he had posed this question to himself
that Zen realized that it wasn't rhetorical. 'Once your
accomplishments in the Miletti case had been brought to
our attention,' the young man had told him, 'the facts
spoke for themselves.' But who had brought those 'accom-
plishments' to their attention in the first place? Pre-
sumably one of the 'contacts at the Ministry' the young
man had mentioned earlier. 'We have been let down
before by people who promised us this, that and the other,
and then couldn't deliver. Why, only a few days ago we
asked our man there to obtain a copy of the video tape
showing the tragic events at the Villa Burolo. A simple
enough request, you would think, but even that proved
beyond the powers of the individual in question. Nor was
this the first time that he had disappointed us.'
Zen looked up with a start. The sheer stone walls of the
arena appeared to have crept closer, hemming him in.
Only the day before he had asked himself why Vincenzo
Fabri had gone out on a limb with his hare-brained notion
about Burolo not being the murderer's intended victim,
that the killings had actually been a Mafia hit on the
architect Vianello. The answer, of course, was that this
had been a bungled attempt to divert suspicion from
Renato Favelloni. Fabri's mission to Sardinia had only
nominally been undertaken on behalf of Criminalpol. His
real client had been l'onorevole. And he'd blown it! That
was why Fabri had not been offered the chance to exploit
the new evidence about Furio Pizzoni's real identity. It
was too good a chance for Palazzo Sisti to risk wasting on
someone in whom they no longe~ had any faith. Instead,
they had plumped for Zen, whose record 'spoke for itself'.
Only it hadn't, of course. Someone had spoken for it first.
Someone had brought Zen's 'accomplishments in the
Miletti case' to the attention of Palazzo Sisti, and sug-
gested that this unscrupuIous manipulator of evidence
and witnesses might be just the right man to bring the
Burolo imbroglio to a satisfactory conclusion. And that
someone, it was nom clear, could only be the Party's 'man
at the Ministry', Vincenzo Fabri himself.
Zen lit another cigarette from the butt of the first, a habit
he normally despised. But normality was rapidly losing its
grip on his life. Vincenzo Fabri had recommended Zen to
his masters as the white knight who could save Renato
Favelloni from prison and 1'onorevole from disgrace. By
doing so, he had not only given his most bitter enemy a
chance to succeed, but to do so on the very ground where
he himself had recently suffered a humiliating failure.
Why would he do a thing like that?
The only possible answer was that Fabri knew damn
well that Zen was not going to succeed. So far from doing
his enemy a good turn, Fabri had placed him in a trap with
only two exits, each potentially fatal. If Zen failed to satisfy
Palazzo Sisti, they would have him transferred to a city
where his life could be terminated without attracting
attention. If, on the other hand, he did what was neces-
sary to get the Favelloni trial postponed, Fabri would tip
off the judiciary and have Zen arrested for conspiracy to
pervert the course of justice. Whatever happened, Zen
was bound to lose. If his new friends didn't get him, his
old enemy would.
By now the sun had disappeared behind the grove of
pines whose foliage was just visible above the far end of
the sunken stadium. All at once the air revealed its inner
coldness, the chill at its heart. It was time to go. Leather
Jacket would most likely have given up the search by now
and be waiting near the entrance on Via dei Fori Imperiali.
Zen got to his feet and started to pick his way through
the jumble of ruins opposite. A brick staircase and a cir-
cuitous path scuffed through the grass brought him out on
a track flanked by pines leading down to the exit on Via di
San Gregorio. The odours of summer, pine sap and dried
shit, lingered faintly in the undergrowth. There was no
sign of Leather Jacket, but in any case Zen no longer
greatly cared about him. Being tailed was the least of his
worries now, as for that matter was the missing video
tape. To think that just that morning he had worked out an
elaborate theory to explain the fact that Fabri had put in a
request for it. The reason for this was now clear: he had
been told to get hold of a copy by Palazzo Sisto. As for the
theft, it must indeed have been the work of a pickpocket,
as Zen had originally supposed. Vincenzo Fabri had bigger
and better schemes in mind than pilfered videos. Had he
not warned De Angelis that very morning to keep away
from Zen because he was being 'measured for the drop'?
The exact nature of that drop now seemed terrifyingly
clear.
I was always biddable, a born follower. Like those ducklings we
had, a fox killed the mother and they would follow whoever was
wearing the green rubber boots that were the first thing they saw
on opening their eyes. If the boots had been able to walk by
themselves, they would have followed the boots, or a bit of rubbish
blown past by the wind, whatever happened to be there when the
darkness cracked open. Even the fox that killed their mother.
I can see him now, standing there, the light at his back, and all
the forces of the light. Come with me, he said. I can't, I told him, I
mustn't. It seemed that all this had happened before. Where do
they come from, these memories and dreams? They must belong
to someone else. There was nothing before the darkness. How
could there be? We come from darkness and to darkness we
return. There is nothing else.
he told me. He would have taken me anyway, by force.
The light burned so much I had to close my eyes. When I opened
them there were men everywhere, rushing about, shouting at each
other, crowding in, their eyes swishing to and fro like scythes.
They took it in turns to pour their lies into me, filling me with
unease. Everything that had happened had been a mistake. I'd
done nothing wrong, it u~as all a mistake, a scandal, a tragic and
shocking crime. When I tried to say something my voice aston-
ished me, a raven's croak pa.=sing through my body, nothing to do
with me. After that I kept silent. There was no point in trying to
resist. They were too strong, their desires too urgent. Sooner or
later, 1 knno, they u>ould have their way with me.
In the end fhey tired and let me go. You're free, they said. Like the
follower I was, I believed them. I thought I could go back as
though nothing had happened, as though it had all been a dream!