Michael Dibdin: And then you die

'We have a car outside,' she said, gesturing at the door. Zen did not move.

'How do I know who you are?' he asked. The woman smiled grimly.

'How do you think we know who you are, Dottor Zen?'

'Do you have identification?'

'If we did, it would be from the same source as the papers you have identifying you as Pier Giorgio Butani. And just as reliable’

The man had finished his call.

'Come on!' he said. 'We've wasted enough time’

A blue saloon was parked right outside the door. Another, in the middle of the street further down, flashed its headlights as they appeared. Once again Zen stopped dead, struck by the overwhelming sensation that all this had happened to him before. Tail lights, headlights… What was the connection?

He had no time to think about it, as his escorts bundled him into the waiting car, which immediately drove off through the sleeping town, ignoring traffic signs and lights. Five minutes later they were heading south on the A12 autostrada.

'Where are we going?' he asked the female agent, who had seated herself with him in the back of the car.

'Pisa,' she replied. 'From there you'll be flown to another destination.'

'Where?'

'We are not ordered to know.'

The car sped along the almost deserted freeway with its central divider of tall flowering bushes.

'But what about my things?' protested Zen. 'My clothes and personal possessions. They're all back at the villa in Versilia’

'Someone will be sent to collect and pack them up and they will be forwarded to you in due course. In the meantime a supply of clothing and toiletries will be provided at your destination’

Zen sighed in disgust.

'You might have given me some notice,' he said. The woman turned to him.

'You don't seem to understand, dottore. The first we heard about all this was when Girolamo Rutelli contacted us with the news that his brother had been killed. He had been phoned by the authorities in Versilia, partly with a view to positively identifying the victim. Once we learned from him what had happened, we of course took urgent steps to remove you from the vicinity as soon as possible’

'What have I got to do with it?'

'All the evidence suggests that the killing of Massimo Rutelli was a case of mistaken identity, and that you were the intended victim. The modus operandi was that of a classic professional hit. The implication is that the Mafia discovered where you were staying and made an attempt to silence you before you could testify against the Rizzo brothers in the States. Having failed, they would of course have tried again, possibly even tonight.'

The car swept through the automatic payment lane at the Pisa Centro exit and accelerated away along the dual carriageway leading to the airport. When the female agent spoke again, she sounded more conciliatory.

'Don't worry, dottore. The danger has passed. Wherever they're sending you next, you'll be well looked after.'

It was when the light stopped dazzling him that Aurelio Zen realized that something odd had happened. He had ill-advisedly chosen a seat on the port side of the plane, so that the sun shone directly in on him, its low-inclined rays empowered with the brittle brilliance of February and the stultifying heat of August.

To make matters worse, it was all his own fault The place he had originally been assigned was on the cool, shady, norm-facing side of the plane, but this had not been apparent immediately after take-off, while the fat businessman in the next seat doing important things to a laptop computer had been. Spying an empty row of seats opposite, Zen had moved over, at which point the businessman promptly took possession of his original place and dumped all his voluminous gear in the place where he had been sitting, Theoretically, Zen supposed, he could call a cabin attendant and insist on being reseated in his rightful place, but it didn't seem worth the trouble. Along with everyone else, he had pulled down his blind when the cabin lights were turned off after lunch, but the insistent glow was still enough to bleach all substance from the ghostly figures cavorting about on the video screen in front of him.

Now, though, that intrusive radiance had disappeared. He raised the blind a fraction. No, the sun was no longer there. For a moment he wondered if it might have set, but the ocean vastness miles below still glittered in its reflected light. The sun must still be in the heavens, only it was now apparently aft of the plane. In which case they must be flying north. And even Zen's elementary knowledge of global geography included the information that America was not north of Europe.

He had spent the two weeks since his precipitate departure from Versilia on the small island of Gorgona, thirty-five kilometres off the Tuscan coast, which was mainly occupied by a prison camp for non-violent juvenile offenders. Following his flight in a military helicopter from Pisa, Zen had been accommodated in a spare wing of the spacious quarters reserved for the director of the camp. The latter turned out to be a tall, perpetually stooping man with a whispery voice, diffident to the point of defensiveness, who – according to some camp lore which Zen later picked up from one of the warders – had been the principal of a college in Bari until certain rumours about the sexual activities of the staff and pupils came to the attention of the authorities. 'So he got a job with the Grazia e Giustizia, and they sent him here,' the man commented with a wry grin. 'It keeps him off the street corner back on the mainland, and he certainly can't corrupt these thugs. They'll corrupt him, if anything. One of them offered me a blow job the other day for a cigarette end I was about to throw in the toilet. "What would you do for a whole pack?" I asked him. The little bastard looked me in the eye and said, "No disrespect, capo, but I'm not sure you could handle that level of service all by yourself. Better invite a couple of your pals along.'"

Zen ate his meals in the canteen, which served excellent food based on the products of the farm where the prisoners worked during the day. He had introduced himself to the staff as an academic ornithologist pursuing research into the behaviour of various rare local breeds of gulls. As he had hoped, the possibilities for conversational tedium opened up by this supposed professional interest ensured that no one ever addressed him. The rest of his time he spent exploring the maze of paths criss-crossing the island, which thanks to its 130-year vocation as a penal colony, remained completely unspoilt. The eastern slopes of the rugged interior were covered in pine forests like those which had once lined the coast, dimly visible through the haze to the east. Elsewhere, the prickly evergreen scrub of the macchia stretched as far as the eye could see, while occasional surviving groves of imported olives, holm oaks and sweet chestnuts provided shade. The air was utterly limpid, and as subtly perfumed as honey.

His idyll was disturbed only by thoughts of Gemma, and above all by the fact that he had been forced to leave so hurriedly, and was unable to contact her to explain why. All phone calls and correspondence had been strictly banned, so as far as Gemma was concerned Zen – or rather Pier Giorgio Butani – had simply vanished from Versilia overnight, without so much as a word of farewell. Even though he told himself repeatedly that the affair could never have amounted to anything, it remained a brutal, ugly and unsatisfying conclusion which left a very bitter taste behind.

He was entering his third week of seclusion when he received a message passed on by the director, instructing him to be packed and ready to leave at nine the following morning. Promptly at five minutes to that hour, a twin-rotor military helicopter identical to the one which had brought Zen to the island touched down in the parade ground where the inmates of the prison camp had to assemble each morning for their roll call and work assignments. He trudged across the concrete towards it, lugging the bags which had been shipped over on the ferry from Livorno shortly after his arrival. The sun was bright and clear in the cloudless sky, the air sweet and fresh, and until the helicopter's arrival the silence had been absolute. Zen felt as if he were being exiled from a paradise to which he could never return.