Vendetta

Angelis.

But how had Fabri found out so quickly that Zen had been t'he previous borrower? Presumably Archives must have told him. Unless, of course…

Unless it had been the video tape, and not a wallet or pocket-book, that had been the thief's target all along. It would have been a simple matter for Fabri to find some pickpocket who would have been only too glad to do a favour for such an influential man. Once the tape was in his hands, Fabri had put in an urgent request for the tape at Archives, ensuring that Zen was officially compromised. Now he would no doubt sell the original to the highest bidder, thus making himself a small fortune and at the same time creating a scandal which might well lead to criminal charges being brought against his enemy. It was a masterpiece of unscrupulousness against which Zen was absolutely defenceless.

As he emerged from the portals of the Ministry and made his way down the steps and through the steel barrier under the eye of the armed sentries, Zen wondered if he was letting his imagination run away with him. In the warm hazy sunlight the whole thing suddenly seemed a bit far-fetched. He lit a cigarette as he waited for the taxi he had ordered. He had decided against using an official car, since the caller had left him in some doubt as to whether or not this was an official visit. In fact, he had left him in doubt about almost everything, including his name. The only thing Zen knew for certain was that the call had come from Palazzo Sisti. The significance of this was still obscure to Zen, but the name was evidently familiar enough to the taxi driver, who switched on his meter without requesting further directions.

They drove down the shallow valley between the Viminale and Quirinale hills, leaving behind the broad utilitarian boulevards of the nineteenth-century suburbs, across Piazza Venezia and into the cramped, crooked intestines of the ancient centre. Zen stared blankly out of the window, lost in troubled thoughts. Whatever the truth about the video tape, there was still the other threat hanging over him. The form of the message he had received the night before had been disturbing enough, but its content was even more so. According to Signora Bertolini, her husband had 'received threats' before his death.

'There were tokens, signs,' she h d said. 'For example an envelope pushed through our letter-box with nothing inside but a lot of tiny little metal balls, like caviare, only hard.'

It was no doubt symptomatic of their respective lifestyles that the contents of the envelope had made Zen think of cake decorations and Signora Bertolini of caviare, but there was little doubt that they had been the same.

And a few days after receiving his 'message', Judge Giulio Bertolini had been killed by just such little metal balls, fired at high velocity from a shotgun.

Zen had no intention of letting his imagination run away with him to the extent of supposing that there was any direct connection between the two events. What he did suspect was that someone, probably Vincenzo Fabri, was trying to put the wind up him, to knock him off balance so that he would be too agitated to think clearly and perceive the real nature of the threat to him. No doubt Fabri's thief had first attempted to enter Zen's flat to steal the video, and, having been foiled by the blocked emergency exit, had picked Zen's pocket in the bus queue the following morning. Then Fabri had seen the newscast in which the judge's widow spoke about the envelope, and with typical opportunism had seen a way to further ensure the success of his scheme, by keeping Zen preoccupied with false alarms on another front.

The taxi wound slowly through the back streets just north of the Tiber, finally drawing up in a small piazza. By the standards of its period, Palazzo Sisti was modest in scale, but it made up for this by a wealth of architectural detail. The Sisti clan had clearly known their place in the complex hierarchy of sixteenth-century Roman society, but had wished to demonstrate that despite this their taste and distinction was no whit inferior to that of the Farnese or Barberini families. But neither their taste nor their modesty had availed them anything in the long run, and today their creation could well have been just another white elephant that had been divided up into flats and offices, if it had not been for the two armed Carabinieri sitting in their jeep on the other side of the piazza and the large white banner stretched across the faqade of the building, bearing the slogan A FAIRER ALTERNATIVE and the initials of one of the smaller political parties which made up the government's majority in parliament.

Zen nodded slowly. Of course, that was where he had heard the name before. 'Palazzo Sisti' was used by newscasters to refer to the party leadership, just as 'Piazza del Gesu' indicated the Christian Democrats. This particular party had been much in the news recently, the reason being that prominent among its leaders was a certain exMinister of Public Works who was rumoured to have enjoyed a close and mutually profitable relationship with Oscar Burolo, prior to the latter's untimely demise.

The entrance was as dark as a tunnel, wide and high enough to accommodate a carriage and team, lit only by a single dim lantern suspended from the curved ceiling. At the other end it opened into a small courtyard tightly packed with limousines, whose drivers, dressed in neat cheap suits like funeral attendants, were standing around swapping gossip and polishing the chrome.

A glass door to the left suddenly opened, and an elderly man no bigger than a large dwarf scuttled out.

'Yes?' he called brusquely to Zen.

A young woman carrying a large pile of files followed him out of the lodge.

'Well?' she demanded.

'I don't know!' the porter cried exasperatedly. 'Understand? I don't know!'

'It's your job to know.'

'Don't tell me what my job is!'

'Very well, you tell me!'

Zen walked over to them.

'Excuse me.'

They both turned to glare at him.

'Aurelio Zen, from the Ministry of the Interior.'

The porter shrugged.

'What about it?'

'I'm expected.'

'Who by?'

'If I knew that, I wouldn't need to waste my time talking to a prick like you, would I?'

The woman burst into hoots of laughter. A phone started to ring shrilly in the lodge. Throwing them both a look of deep disgust, the porter went to answer it.

'Yes? Yes, dottore. Yes, dottore. No, he just got here.

Very good, dottore. Right away.'

Emerging from his lodge, the porter jerked his thumb at a flight of stairs opposite.

'First floor. They're expecting you.'

'And the Youth Section?' the young woman asked.

'How many times do I have to tell you, I don't know!'

The staircase was a genteel cascade of indolently curving marble which made the one at the Ministry look vulgar and cheap. As Zen reached the first-floor landing, a figure he had taken to be a statue detached itself from the niche where it had been standing and walked towards him. The man had an air of having been assembled, like Frankenstein's monster, from a set of parts, each of which might have looked quite all right in another context, but didn't get along at all weli together. He stopped some distance away, his gaze running over Zen's clothing.

'I'm not carrying one,' Zen told him. 'Never do, in fact.'

The man looked at him as though he had spoken in a foreign language.

'You see, it's no use carrying a gun unless you're prepared to use it,' Zen went on, discursively. 'If you're not, it just makes matters worse. It gives you a false sense of security and makes everyone else nervous. So you're better off without it really.'

The man stared at Zen expressionlessly for a moment, then turned his back.

'This way.'

He led Zen along a corridor which at first sight appeared to extend further than the length of the building. This illusion was explained when it became clear that the two men walking towards them were in fact their own reflections in the huge mirror that covered the end wall. The corridor was lit at intervals by tall windows giving on to the courtyard. Opposite each window a double door of polished walnut gleamed sweetly in the mellow light.

Zen's escort knocked at one of the doors and stood listening intently, holding the wrought silver handle.