completely evades attention, even though the bagno was packed at the time.'
Zen nodded.
'I suppose you're right.'
'Of course we are. Which is why we've decided to move you yet again, this time to the United States.'
Catching Zen's look of alarm, he held up a soothing hand.
'The trial's not due to start for some time, but the safest option in the meantime seemed to be to get you out of the country and into the hands of the federal authorities. They have a lot of experience in protecting witnesses, and America is a very large country. To make matters even more secure, we are flying you not to New York, where the trial will take place, but to the west coast. There you'll be met by Italian-speaking agents of the FBI who will meet you airside, bypass all the immigration and customs procedures, and escort you to a safe house in a location which hasn't been disclosed even to us. It will be impossible for the Mafia to find you there.'
Zen looked out of the window again. The aircraft was passing over the Apennine chain. They were sending him away. He suddenly felt very small and helpless and desolate.
'Our immediate destination is Malpensa’ the diplomat continued. 'There you will transfer to the regular Alitalia flight to Los Angeles. You will be boarded separately from the other passengers, and without passing through passport control and all the other nonsense, and seated in the business-class cabin. I take it that you packed your bags yourself, that they have not been out of your possession at any time since then, and that they do not contain any explosive or inflammable substances.'
It was only after Zen had solemnly shaken his head that he realized that this had been intended as a joke.
'Have you any questions?' his companion enquired urbanely.
Zen thought for a moment.
'Yes’ he said. 'If I write a letter, will you post it for me?' The diplomat looked embarrassed. 'That would depend’ he replied. 'On what?'
'On whom you wished to write to and on what you intended to say.'
'In other words, you would have to read it.'
The young man gestured in a pained way.
'Somebody would’ he said. 'There's no point in trying to conceal that. There's a lot at stake in this operation in terms of national honour and prestige. I'm afraid it would be naive to pretend that any obvious precautions are going to be overlooked out of motives of delicacy.'
Zen nodded.
'Thank you for being candid. You could have lied. It doesn't matter, anyway. It was a stupid idea.'
When they arrived at Malpensa, Zen was transferred to an airport authority car and taken to a windowless lounge in a remote wing of the terminal. Here he had been left to cool his heels for over an hour, before being led back to the car and driven along a succession of vast concrete taxiways to a parked Alitalia 747 which was loading the in-flight food and beverage trolleys. Zen was loaded too, via a stepped ramp which was wheeled up to the aircraft's rear door. It all reminded him oddly of his experience on his return from Malta to Sicily, where he had been 'met at the airport – a strip of abandoned motorway – by members of the Ragusa Mafia for delivery to Don Gaspare Limina. Once again, he was just a package, to be shunted around and stowed away, just like the packages of drugs unloaded from the Malta flight Packages don't have feelings or opinions about the process this involves or their ultimate destination. Zen did, but they were equally irrelevant.
Some three hours later, twisting uncomfortably in his seat and worrying about the disappearance of the sun, these views had not changed. The prospect of finding himself in America filled him with terror. Like many Italians of his generation, he had never been abroad before, apart from day trips into Austria, Switzerland and recently Malta. He had never even owned a passport, and it seemed highly appropriate that the one he was now carrying should be in a false name. Il bel paese could offer the traveller every conceivable variety of landscape, climate, natural beauties and cultural treasures. Why waste a lot of time going to some foreign country where they used funny money, spoke some barbaric dialect, and couldn't be relied upon to make a decent cup of coffee, still less know how to cook pasta properly? It was-a stupid idea, however you looked at it. And if the foreign country in question was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, it became quite literally insane.
Zen's rule of thumb in these matters was very simple. In theory, at least, he was prepared to at least consider going to any country which had formed part of the Roman Empire. If it had also been part of the political or trading empire of the Venetian Republic, so much the better. Egypt, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, the Balkans, Austria, Bavaria, France, Iberia, North Africa – even England, at a pinch – he could contemplate as a hypothetical destination. Beyond those limits, he just didn't see the point. The Romans had been brutal bastards, but they were no fools. If they hadn't bothered to conquer Sweden or Poland; there was probably a good reason. And they certainly hadn't been to America. Maybe they didn't know it was there. Or perhaps they'd heard rumours, but just didn't care enough to investigate further. Either way, Zen was inclined to trust their judgement.
As if this wasn't enough to stoke his anxiety, there was the small matter of his testimony at the trial. The Ragusa thugs who had delivered Zen to Don Gaspare Limina had been given to understand that he would be killed, and so they had not bothered to conceal their faces. But thanks to the Catania clan's mercy, or rivalry, he had survived to find himself in the almost unprecedented position for a non-mafioso of being able to identify two prominent members of 'those pushy little squirts from Ragusa', as Limina had contemptuously referred to his upstart neighbours.
But life is a moving target, and never more so than for Mafia capi. Don Gaspare had been arrested in the course of a massive operation following the attempt on Zen's life, and was now serving a multiple life sentence in a particularly cold and primitive prison high in the mountains near Matera. Meanwhile Bernardo 'The Tractor' Provenzano, the last remaining Corleonesi chieftain, still unapprehended after almost forty years as a fugitive, had managed to impose his control on the relatively free market and regional competition which had started to evolve following the breakdown of the old hierarchies. Following a spate of violent deaths and a judicious selection of the classic unrefusable offers, the Ragusa clan had been brought under his control, but also under his protection. Whoever testified against Nello and Giulio Rizzo would be testifying against Cosa Nostra itself, and would be a marked man for the rest of his days.
For a while Zen toyed with the idea that maybe they weren't going to America after all, given that they seemed to be flying north, but a glance at the route map in the Alitalia magazine dispelled this illusion. It appeared that when aeroplanes went from place to place, they never did so directly, but took a long curving roundabout path by way of such outlandish localities as Baffin Island and Labrador. Perhaps it had something to do with the prevailing winds, as in the days of sailing ships. Or maybe it was a planned diversion designed to give everyone a chance to get some sleep. Overnight trains often went deliberately slowly so as not to arrive at some ungodly hour and decant the passengers half awake at a deserted station in a slumbering city.
He flipped through the magazine, pausing to skim an article about the city he was bound for. Apparently it had originally been settled by the Spanish, who named it El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles. There was a translation in Italian, 'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels', and photographs of an old stone monastery gleaming white in the sunlight. Maybe Los Angeles wouldn't be so bad after all, he thought. It sounded like a pleasant, old-fashioned sort of place, and at least the people would all be Catholics. Although by no means a committed believer, Zen preferred to be surrounded by his own sort. Protestants were an enigma to him, all high ideals one minute and ruthless expediency the next. You knew where you were in a Catholic culture: up to your neck in lies, evasions, impenetrable mysteries, double-dealing, back-stabbing and underhand intrigues of every kind. With which comforting thought he lowered the blind again and dozed off.
The next thing he knew was being woken by the stewardess and asked to fasten his seatbelt for landing. Were they there already? Ten hours, the captain had said before take-off. Surely he hadn't been asleep that long? The cabin lights had been turned on and the other passengers looked restive, all except the businessman who had taken Zen's seat after he moved. He was sprawled back, his chair in full recline position, a blackout mask over his eyes and his mouth wide open as if snoring. The cabin attendant in the other aisle bent over him and said something and then, not getting any response, buckled up the man's safety belt.
The scene outside the window looked like nothing on earth, a rough first draft of creation fresh from the drawing board: deep ocean rollers going about their restless immemorial business, then breaking up in spectacular confusion on the ragged coastline, and beyond that an uneven wasteland torn to shreds by outcrops and crags of raw rock breaking the surface in random profusion. There were no buildings, no fields, no farms, no roads, no
