Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery by Michael Dibdin Read Free Book Online Page B

country’s future by pointless litigation, he reluctantly agreed to accept a settlement which barely covered his expenses. To sweeten the pill, he asked for and was given the Lincoln Continental as well.
    At the time, Oscar had seen the car as just another of the fancy gadgets with which he loved to surround himself, but it undoubtedly saved his life when the kidnappers tried to take him. He was driving back from the local village church when it happened. Much to most people’s surprise, Oscar never missed Sunday Mass. Experience had taught him the importance of keeping on the right side of those in power, and compared with the kind of kickbacks, favours, and general dancing of attendance which some of his patrons expected, God seemed positively modest in His demands. It was true that you could never be absolutely certain that He was there, and if so, whether He was prepared to come up with the goods, but much the same could be said about most of the people in Rome, too. As long as all that was needed to stay in good with Him was taking communion every Sunday, Oscar thought it was well worth the effort. Unfortunately the local village church lacked a suitable landing place for the Agusta, so he had to drive.
    As he rounded one of the many sharp bends that Sunday, Oscar found the road blocked by what appeared to be a minor accident. A car was lying on its side in the ditch, while the lorry which had apparently forced it off the road was slewed around broadside to the approaching limousine. Three men were kneeling beside a fourth who was lying facedown in the road.
    As Oscar got out to help, the men turned toward him.
    “Instantly, I knew!” he told countless listeners later. “Don’t ask me how. I just knew!”
    He leapt back into the car as the accident victim rolled to one side, revealing the rifles and shotguns on which he’d been lying. Several shots were fired, one of which wounded Oscar slightly in the shoulder. He didn’t even notice. He threw the Lincoln into reverse and accelerated back up the road.
    The kidnappers gave chase on foot, firing as they ran. But the African president, even more of a realist than Burolo himself, had specified armour-plating and bulletproof windows, and the kidnappers’ shots rattled harmlessly away. When he reached the corner, Oscar reversed onto the shoulder to turn the car round. As he did so, the youngest of the four men sprinted forward, leaped onto the bonnet, pressed the muzzle of his rifle against the windscreen, and fired. The shot barely chipped the toughened glass, but for a second Oscar had stared death in the face. His reaction was to slam on the brakes, sending the man reeling onto the road, and then accelerate right over him.
    By the time the police arrived at the scene there was nothing to see except a few tyre marks and a little blood mixed in with the loose gravel in the centre of the road. A few days later the funeral of a young shepherd named Antonio Melega took place in a mountain village some forty kilometres to the northwest. According to his grim-faced, taciturn relatives, he had been struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking home from his pastures.
    The abortive kidnap made Oscar Burolo an instant hero among the island’s villa-owning fraternity, eminently kidnappable every one. One enterprising shopkeeper did a brisk trade in T-shirts reading “Italians 1, Sardinians 0” until the local mayor protested. But although Burolo was quite happy to be lionised, in private he was a frightened man, haunted by the memory of that dull bump beneath the car and the man’s muffled cry as the tons of armour-plating crushed the life out of him. He knew that by killing one of the kidnappers he had opened an account that would only be closed with his own death. Burolo had been born in the north, but his father had been from a little village in the province of Matera, and he had told his son about blood feuds and the terrible obligation of vendetta which could be