Michael Dibdin - Vendetta

The first hint of what was to come was that one end of the station roof had fallen in. Then he saw that the windows and doors were just gaping holes. By the time he reached the yard, it was evident that the station was a complete ruin. The ground-floor rooms were gutted, strewn with beams and plaster from the fallen ce!ling, the walls charred where someone had lit a tire in one corner.

Outside, the gable wall still proclaimed the name of the village in faded letters, witn the height in metres above sea-level, but it was clearly many years since the station had been manned. The whole line was a pointless anachronism whose one train a day served no purpose except to keep the lucrative subsidies flowing in from Rome.

Zen shook his head. He couldn't believe this was happening. It was 1!ke a bad dream. Automatically he reached for a cigarette, only to remember that Spadola had taken his lighter. He blasphemed viciously, then tried to force himself to think. It was tempting to think of spending the night at the station and catching the train the next morning, but that would be as short-sighted as staying in the shepherd's hut. It would be equally foolish to try and make off across country. The Barbagia was one of the wildest and least populated areas of the country. Without a map and a compass, the chances of getting lost and eventually dying of starvation or exposure were very high, That left just two possibilities: he could walk back along the track to the main road and then walk or try and hitch a lift to the nearest town, or he could follow the railway line up into the mountains. The problern with taking the road was the high risk ot Spadola coming along it. Walking along the railway would be a long and tiring business, and he might have to spend a night in the open. But if the worst came to the worst he could flag down the train the next morning, or even jump aboard, at the speed it would be going. The decisive advantage, however, was that the railway was out of sight of the road, which Spadola would now be patrolling with increasing frustration.

The unlit cigarette clenched between his lips, Zen stepped across the disused passing-loop where pulpy cacti ran riot, and started to walk along the line of rusty rails which curved off to the left, following the contours of the hillside. He had imagined walking along the railway as being tedious but relatively relaxing, but in fact it was every bit as demanding as negotiating the scrub. The ancient sleepers, rough-hewn, weathered and split, were placed too close together to step on each one and too far to take them two at a time, while the ballast in between was jagged, uneven and choked with plants.

A thunderous rumble sounded in the distance once again. Zen stopped and looked up to spot the jets at their sport in the mountains. It was only moments later that he realized another sound had been concealed in their cavernous booming, a rhythmic purr that was quieter but much closer. For a moment it seemed to be coming from the railway line, and Zen's hopes flared briefly. Then he swung round and saw the yellow Fiat driving along the track to the station.

Instinctively he crouched down, looking for cover, but this time it was too late. Its engine revving furiously, the Fiat had left the track and was smashing its way through the scrub towards him. Zen leapt up and started to run as fast as he could away from the car. Almost immediately he tripped over a rusty signal-wire and went fiying, landing on a small boulder and turning his ankle over agonizingly.

Behind him, the frantic roaring of the car engine reached a peak, then abruptly died. A car door slammed. Zen forced himself to his knees. Some fifty metres away the yellow Fiat lay trapped in a thicket of scrub. Beside the car, a shotgun in his hand, stood Vasco Spadola.

Zen tried to stand up, but his left ankle gave way and he stumbled. He tried again. This time the ankle held, although it hurt atrociously. But although he now knew that Spadola was going to kill him, he couldn't just stand there and let it happen, even though it meant torturing himself in vain. He started to hobble away as fast as he could, gasping at every step. Repeatedly he tripped, lost his precarious balance and ended up on his hands and knees in the rocky dust. He did not look back. There was no point. At the best pace he could manage, Spadola would catch up with him in a matter of minutes. He wondered how good a shot Spadola was, and whether he would hear the blast that killed him.

When he finally stopped to look round, he found that Spadola was still some fifty metres away, dawdling along. the shotgun balanced losely in the crook of his arm. With a groan, Zen hobbled off again. So that was how it was going to be. Spadola was in no hurry to finish him off. On the contrary, the longer he could draw out the agony, the more complete his revenge would be. Only the approach of night would force him to close in for the kill, lest his prey escape under cover of darkness. But that was many hours away yet. In the meantime, he was content to dog Zen's footsteps, not trying to overtake him but not letting him rest either, harrying him on relentlessly towards the inevitable bloody conclusion.

Zen plodded blindly on in a nightmare of pain, confusion and despair. He now neither knew nor cared which direction he was going in. All his hopes and calculations had come to nothing. Unless Palazzo Sisti managed to throw a political spanner in the works at the last moment, Renato Favelloni would be convicted of the Burolo murders, while Furio Padedda and the Melega family watched with ironic smiles, never guessing that they owed their freedom to a vendetta very similar to the one which had cost Oscar and the others their lives. To cap it all, Spadola would probably get away with it too. The villagers would say nothing, particularly since it would involve them as accessories to Zen's murder. When his corpse was eventually discovered, it would be assumed ge gad fallen victim to the long-running guerilla war between the islanders and the state. His colleagues in gome would shake their heads and agree that it had been crazy to improvise a one-man undercover operation in Sardinia without even telling anyone what he was doing.

'He was asking for it!' Vincenzo Fabri would crow ~umphantly, just as people had said about Oscar when pe chose a villa so close to the kidnappers' heartland. No one would want to tug too hard on any of the loose ends ~hat remained. As Zen well knew, the police were part of the forces of order in more senses than one. They liked things to make sense, they liked files to be closed. If this order happened to correspond to the truth, well and good, but in the last resort they would rather have a false solution than no solution at all. Certainly there was never any encouragement to throw things back into chaos by suggesting that things might not be quite what they appeared.

Without the slightest warning, something impossibly fast for its monstrous size overshadowed the world and the sky fell apart with a hellish roar. At first Zen thought that Spadola had fired at him. Then, swivelling round, he saw the second jet sharking silently through the air towards him. Absurdly, he started to wave, to call for help! Vasco Spadola broke into hoots of derisory laughter that were lost in the din as the fighter screamed past overhead, not deigning to notice the antics of the petty creatures which crawled about on the bed of this sea of air it used as a playground.

After that, Zen lost all track of time. Reality was reduced to a patch of baked red soil always the same, always different. His sole task was to find a way through the dense, prickly plants that grew there. Sometimes they were widely spaced. Then he had only the constant jarring pain from his ankle to contend with, the choking thirst and the hammering headache. But usually the plants formed patterns restricting his moves like hostile pieces in a boardgame. Then he had to raise his eyes and try and find a way through the maze. If he got it wrong, or when the plants ahead of him closed up entirely, then he had to force his way through. Branches poked him, thorns ripped his clothes and scratched his skin. Several times he almost go~ stuck, only to wrench himself free with a final effort. But stopping or turning back was not permitted, though bv now he could hardly remember why.