After a brief pause, a lighted cigarette was pushed between his lips. He inhaled urgently. It was a bionda, by the taste of it, probably American. That made sense. The Mafia would smoke the cigarettes they smuggled, and these wouldn’t be the low-cost, low-profit Nazionali. He took two or three puffs, then spat the cigarette out to one side.
‘Carla naturally assumed that the intruder was someone working for Cosa Nostra, so she informed the director of the DIA in Catania about her discoveries. Unfortunately, her assumption was almost certainly mistaken. For one thing, you and your friends don’t strike me as being any more computer-literate than I am. No doubt you could hire someone to try to hack into the DIA server, but I doubt that such an idea would even occur to you. More to the point, according to Carla, the DIA network hadn’t been forcibly entered. The access which the intruder was using had been planted in the system from the start. Well, we know who specified the system to be used by an elite judicial and law-enforcement department, and it wasn’t you or your friends.’
Zen tried to loosen slightly the bonds on his wrists and ankles, which were beginning to ache intolerably. To his surprise, the voice barked an order in dialect, and the cords were untied.
‘Thank you, Don Gaspare,’ he said.
‘So they kill your daughter because she knows that they exist. But who are they, and what are their aims?’
Zen rubbed his wrists, trying to get the circulation going again.
‘The short answer, of course, is that we’ll never know. But on the basis of the events we do know about, I think we can make a pretty accurate guess. Are you familiar with that famous trick picture, Don Gaspare? You can see it either as a vase or as the profile of two faces in silhouette. I think that this affair has been a similar trick. Everybody assumes that the Corleonesi killed your son, that you or some other clan killed Judge Nunziatella, and that some equally shadowy party di stampo mafioso strangled Spada.’
‘Well, it certainly looks like that’s what happened, doesn’t it?’
Zen smiled again.
‘But what would it look like, if it looked like my version of events? What would it look like if someone had an interest in promoting violence between the clans here in Sicily, and in showing that they are still capable of killing heavily protected DIA judges? What would it look like if that someone had ordered your son to be kidnapped and then left to die in that wagon, in such a way as to make the killing appear to be a message from Palermo? What would it look like if they had discovered that my daughter had unearthed evidence which would identify this someone, and that Spada was about to give me further details when we met that evening? What would it look like if all this were the case, Don Gaspare?’
There was a pause, then a low cough.
‘It would look the same as it does in fact look,’ the voice replied.
‘My point precisely.’
‘But who is this “someone”?’
‘Who knows? There must be plenty of people in Rome who regret the good old days of the Red Brigades and the Mafia wars. Too much stability is the last thing a politician wants. Who needs a strong government when everything is going well? Politicians have a vested interest in problems, crises and general unease. And if those things don’t happen to exist at a given moment, then they have to invent them. And that’s what this whole bloody business has been from start to finish — an invention.’
‘You don’t need to lecture me about the terzo livello,’ the other man replied drily. ‘But believe me, it’s dead. All our contacts are either in prison, in exile, or politically disgraced and powerless.’
‘The old Third Level, perhaps,’ Zen replied. ‘But there may be levels that you don’t even know about. The fact is, Don Gaspare, and I say this with all due respect, I get the impression that neither you nor the Corleonesi are quite at the cutting edge of organized crime here in Sicily these days.’
Footsteps sounded out loudly, stomping towards him. The voice said loudly, ‘No!’ The steps ceased in a sigh of mute frustration.
‘Forgive me, Don Gaspare,’ Zen went on. ‘I’m simply repeating what I’ve heard. And I’m all the more inclined to believe it, because it would explain why these people in Rome chose your two clans as subjects for their destabilization project. You both still have a high profile, which will guarantee lots of publicity in the event of another Mafia war breaking out, but the truth of the matter is that you’re both finished as major players. The real action now is in smaller places like Caccamo and Belmonte Mezzagno, and above all in Ragusa, where I was “met at the airport” tonight. Those are the people that the politicians will be courting. You and your friends are yesterday’s men, just like me. We’re all expendable, counters in whatever game they’re playing.’
He paused significantly.
‘And if you kill me, you’ll be playing their game.’
There was a mutter of voices, a subdued argument, a sense of suppressed dissension. Then the voice returned, quite close to Zen, and slightly to his right.
‘We’re not going to kill you, Dottor Zen. You have treated me with respect, and I shall accord you the same treatment. You have never set eyes on me, and the place where we are is nowhere near my home. You therefore pose no threat to us, although those pushy little squirts in Ragusa could be in trouble if you reveal the location of the landing strip they use for their drug runs. But fuck them!’
A wave of laughter enveloped the room.
‘It has been a privilege meeting you,’ the voice went on, ‘but for both our sakes I hope that our paths do not cross again. You cannot be my friend, and I would hate to have you as my enemy. We shall be leaving now. Your wrists and ankles have been freed. In your own interests, I ask you not to remove your blindfold for at least five minutes after we leave. If you do, and any of us are still here, we shall have no compunction about killing you. Once we are clear of this area, one of my men will place a call to the authorities in Catania and report your whereabouts. Goodbye, Dottor Zen.’
‘Goodbye, Don Gaspare.’
The herd of footsteps trooped out, and then Zen heard the roar of car engines. Soon they faded, and a perfect silence formed.
It was not broken for another three hours, much longer than Zen had reckoned on. He spent the time sitting on the steps of the abandoned farmhouse in which he had been questioned. The moon was up, but the only other light to be seen was a curved stripe of glowing red in the night sky, as vivid and troubling as an open wound. He finally realized that it must be the molten lava flowing down one of the many flanks of Etna after the eruption which had been signalled by the earlier tremors.
Then, at long last, other lights appeared: mere points at first, two fixed, the other mobile, weaving from side to side and up and down and sometimes disappearing for minutes at a time. Eventually sound was added to the spectacle, a low thrumming and a slightly higher and more abrasive grating. All these phenomena increased in intensity, until a car and an accompanying motorcycle swept into the farmyard and came to a stop at the foot of the steps. The man seated astride the bright red motorbike started talking into a two-way radio, and Baccio Sinico leapt out of the car.
‘Thank God you’re safe!’ he exclaimed as Zen stood up. I’m sorry it took us so long to get here, but our colleagues in the Carabinieri were worried that it might be a trap and wanted to make certain preparations, all of which took some time. Then, to cap it all, their car got separated from us somehow on the drive up. They must have taken a wrong turning, I suppose. But, oh, dottore! Why did you run off like that? Look how it turned out! All we were trying to do was protect you. As it is, you’re lucky to be alive.’
‘We’re all lucky to be alive, Baccio,’ Zen remarked sententiously ‘The problem is that we often forget it.’
They walked down the steps and over to the waiting car. As they passed the man on the motorcycle, he removed his helmet and put away his radio.
‘We’re cleared to go,’ he told Baccio Sinico. ‘We’ll be taking a slightly different route, via Belpasso. I’ll stay about fifty metres ahead. Keep my tail-light in view at all times.’
Sinico turned to Zen.
‘This is our colleague from the Carabinieri, Roberto Lessi. I think you’ve met before.’
The ROS agent stared silently at Zen, who nodded slowly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve met before.’
Lessi replaced his helmet and revved up his engine. Sinico was holding the back door of the car open, but Zen
