comatose indifference induced by the news of his mother’s imminent death, which had protected him through the turbulent flight to Rome, was no longer operative. He was sane again, and the only sane way to look at flying was to be utterly terrified.
‘What happens if the propeller falls off?’ he asked in a tone of forced jocularity as they taxied to the end of the baked-earth runway.
‘It won’t.’
‘But suppose you have a heart attack or something?’
The pilot stroked his black moustache.
‘Well, we’ll be flying low, to keep off the radar screens, so you’ll have about fifteen seconds to put your worldly and spiritual affairs in order. Not enough, probably’
A moment later, the plane was lined up, the pilot pulled back the throttle, and all talk became impossible.
By then it was past eleven o’clock at night. Zen had spent most of the intervening hours locked up in a stuffy apartment whose windows were covered by exterior grooved metal shutters which he had been strictly ordered not to open.
Shortly after half-past six, he had gone down to the reception of his hotel, settled the bill and ascertained that the bar Piju was no more than a ten-minute walk away. He then seated himself in a corner of the lounge from where he had a clear view of the entrance and lobby. If the ROS men did come looking for him, there was just a chance that he would be able to slip out while they were upstairs hammering on the door of his room.
In the event, no one came in except couples, evidently tourists, but he was still nervous about showing himself on the street. There was nothing to be done, however, and after studying a map of Valletta displayed in the lobby and determining his route, he pushed open the glass door and turned sharp left down a narrow, steeply inclined alley. It had occurred to him that the telephone line of Gilberto’s Sardinian friends might be under surveillance, and possibly that of the hotel as well. Of course, ‘they’ could grab him at the bar if they wanted to, but it had also occurred to him that they might prefer not to act so publicly. He had therefore located the steps where the bar was situated on the map, and then planned an alternative way to get there. This was not difficult, since the city was built on a grid plan.
And a very handsome city it was too, he thought, as he made his way along St Mark Street and turned left on to a long straight paved thoroughfare swooping downhill and then up again like a carnival ride. The buildings to either side were of pleasant proportions, the architecture sober and restrained, the material a golden sandstone which glowed in the late-afternoon sunlight like warmed honey. The balconies were enclosed with wooden walls painted green or left bare, which made a charming contrast with the stonework. There could hardly have been a more complete contrast with the tortuous baroque excesses of Catania, executed in the black solidified lava which had so many times overwhelmed the city. Although he was hundreds of kilometres south of Sicily, almost half-way to Africa, Zen felt quite at home with this form of urban planning, where all was calm, functional and restful.
At the bottom of the street he turned left and then immediately right, and walked up the steps to the bar. It was a small, poky place, obviously designed to appeal to a circle of regulars and to repel anyone else. Zen strode up to the bar and ran through his ritual exchange with the owner, whose jolly, tubby physique was belied by a pair of startlingly direct black eyes. Once their dialogue was completed, the man served Zen the beer, picked up the phone and spoke a few phrases in the guttural false-Italian of the island.
It was another half hour before his contact showed up. At first, Zen paid him no attention. Various people, all men, had come in and gone out while he waited, and this skinny, pimply, gangly youth seemed an unlikely candidate for a mission of this presumed importance. It was only later that Zen realized that this had been precisely the point. They were not yet sure of Zen, so they had left him to stew while they checked the comings and goings in the neighbourhood. Then, once they felt reasonably sure that he had come alone, they’d sent this expendable kid to make the first approach, just in case they were wrong.
The owner of the bar had appeared to speak, or at least be able to pronounce, some Italian, but the youth gave no sign of having any use for language at all. He appeared at Zen’s side, standing close enough in the uncrowded bar to draw attention to himself, then jerked his head sharply back and to one side and walked out. Zen duly followed. Under the circumstances, he didn’t bother paying for his beer. They could take it out of the five million.
They walked down through a warren of steps and alleys to a dock on the waterfront, where they boarded a small ferry. During the crossing to the other shore of the harbour inlet, the youth closely inspected each of the other half dozen passengers, but made no eye contact with Zen and still did not speak. When they disembarked after the short crossing, he took up a pose of stoic resignation near the top of the gangplank and remained there until all the other passengers had dispersed. Then he gave Zen another of his violent head gestures, like someone slinging water out of a bucket, and crossed the street to a blue Renault saloon. He opened the passenger door for Zen, who noted that the car had been left unlocked. Either Malta was an incredibly crime-free country, or these people enjoyed a level of respect which made such routine security precautions unnecessary.
They drove at what seemed to Zen a remarkably sober and steady pace — considering that his chauffeur was not only about twenty-two, but presumably also a gang member — up a wide street leading from the harbour to a sprawling development of apartment blocks with a vaguely Arab air: clusters of white cubes of different heights and sizes all jammed together in apparent disorder like a residential souk. The youth drew up by one of the entrances to this labyrinth, gave Zen another of his patented cranial swipes, and led him inside.
Despite the folkloristic appearance of the complex, the interior was completely modern and remarkably luxurious. They rode in a lift up to the fifth floor, where the youth opened a door — once again, unlocked — and gesturally jerked Zen through to a room to the left. He switched on the light, pointed to the shutters over the window and made a savage slicing motion with his right hand, looking Zen in the eye for the first time.
Zen nodded.
‘I won’t open them,’ he said.
The youth looked at him in astonishment, as though his dog had just given voice to a political opinion. Then he walked out, closing the door behind him. A moment later, Zen heard the lock engage.
The room was minimally furnished with a sofa, a chair and a table, all in what appeared to Zen to be execrable taste. Hiere was no telephone, radio or television, and the walls were bare. It was as neutral and impersonal as some hutch at a cut-price hotel on the autostrada.
Zen had long ago decided not to concern himself too much about those aspects of life which he could not control, and he certainly could not hope to control or influence his fate in this situation. Gilberto had come up with a solution to his problems, Zen had accepted it, and now it was out of his hands. He was still very tired after his night on the ferry and all that had preceded and followed it, so he lay down on the sofa, covered in some garish acrylic material. He closed his eyes, thought about Stephanie and wondered where she was now, and so fell asleep.
He awoke, sensing that there was someone in the room. It was the gangly youth, standing over him where he lay on the sofa. Half asleep as he was, Zen knew what was going to happen next, and indeed the head-jerk was duly performed. Zen staggered groggily to his feet and followed the kid out of the apartment and down to the street. He glanced at his watch. It was half-past nine.
They got into the car and drove out of the city along narrow, gently winding roads. There was little other traffic, and what there was proceeded, like them, at a moderate pace, giving way to other drivers where necessary and never using the horn or flashing headlamps. The light was fading fast, but Zen could just make out a crooked grid of dry-stone walling all around, enclosing small fields with the occasional isolated house.
The drive lasted another hour, broken by regular stops when the youth got out and scanned the road behind them, and then made a cellphone call in his incomprehensible dialect. So he could talk, thought Zen, lying back in his seat and smoking cigarette after cigarette. He had always had a good innate sense of direction, and by reference to his internal compass, the glow in the west and the rising moon, he soon worked out that they were taking an extremely circuitous route to their destination.
In the end, though, they arrived, bouncing off the tarred road on to a dirt track which they followed for another kilometre or so, before pulling into a large field with a metal barn of recent construction at one end. In front of it stood the tiny single-engined plane, and beside it a short, stocky man with a moustache, wearing a pair of blue overalls and an old-fashioned flying cap with flaps over the ears.
Without waiting for another head-jerk, Zen got out of the car. The man in overalls walked over to him.
‘Signor Zen!’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you. I apologize for the delay, but we needed to wait for dark and also
