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  'How young?'

  Gemma shrugged and looked at Zen.

  'Thirty?'

  Zen nodded.

  'Early thirties, I'd say’

  'That's right,' said Gemma. 'He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with some writing on the front. In English.'

  'He was English?' demanded the carabinieri officer.

  'No, no. At least, I don't mink so. He looked typically Italian, like any of the young Florentine teppisti who hang out down at Viareggio at the weekend’

  'Do you remember what this writing said?'

  'Only one word’

  'What was that?'

  '"Beach". La spiaggia. I recognized that from those signs the council put up everywhere in all the different European languages, warning people about the currents and all the rest of it. But mere was another word I didn't get’

  '"Life",' said Zen unexpectedly.

  The major regarded him with an air of professional triumph.

  'Signor Butani, you have testified that you did not see this man until he was running away after his collision with Signora Santini. How then could you possibly have seen anything printed on the front of his clothing?'

  'No, this wasn't him. Well, it might have been, I suppose, but it was later, after I left the beach. I was coming out of a shop in Via Puccini when I noticed some young man in a shirt like that. I didn't understand "beach", but the first word was "life's". That s the Anglo-Saxon genitive form, so the whole phrase must have been "A life's beach". La vita della spiaggia.'

  His triumph at remembering this detail of English grammar from a long explanation once given to him by his American girlfriend Ellen was short-lived.

  'La spiaggia di una vita,' Gemma corrected.

  'It still doesn't make any sense!' the major rapped out.

  'It's probably the name of some pop group,' said Gemma, rising. 'Well, is that all? Because if so I wouldn't mind getting home.'

  'Just one more question. This is to both of you. Did either of you at any point during your time on the beach either hear or see anything unusual occurring in the immediate vicinity of your chairs?'

  'Not apart from the incident I've mentioned,' said Gemma. The major looked at Zen, who shook his head. 'No, that’s all.'

  'Very well. Signora Santini, you're free to go. Thank you for your cooperation and good night'

  He now sounded eager to be rid of her. Gemma bent towards Zen, who immediately stood up.

  'Thanks for a wonderful evening,' she said.

  'I'm glad you enjoyed it'

  ‘I really did, despite all this nonsense.'

  'So did I’

  She pecked him briefly on both cheeks. 'See you tomorrow,' she said, and slipped out of the room. Zen turned back to find the major regarding him with his knowing smile.

  ‘I fear you may have to postpone that appointment, dottore,' he said.

  Zen noted the title, which the carabinieri officer had not used before. He sensed that something was happening which he did not understand and could not control, for now at any rate.

  'What more do you need from me?' he asked, sitting down again.

  'Just a few brief questions.'

  'But in that case I could have gone with Signora Santini!' Zen exclaimed, genuinely annoyed. 'She would have given me a lift. As it is, I'll have to call a taxi and…'

  'No, you won't,' the major replied, sitting down heavily behind his desk.

  He took a packet of cigarettes from a drawer and offered one to Zen, who accepted, mainly to see what this latest ploy forebode.

  'Shortly after seven this evening,' the major went on, having lit their cigarettes, 'I received a phone call from my immediate superiors at provincial headquarters in Lucca. They relayed a message from their superiors at the Ministry in Rome, but I was given to understand that the original source lay still elsewhere.'

  Zen smoked quietly and said nothing.

  "The message was to the effect that a certain Pier Giorgio Butani, temporarily resident in this district, might fall within the scope of the murder enquiry I was undertaking.'

  'What murder enquiry?'

  "The one we've been discussing, dottore.'

  'But Rutelli died of a stroke!'

  'That s the story which the owner of the bagno in question has been putting out, for obvious reasons. We have made no official statement.'

  'Rutelli was murdered?'

  The major nodded.

  'Shot once through the heart from very close range with a nine-millimetre pistol which was almost certainly silenced. The bullet was of the fragmenting type which breaks up inside the body, so there was no exit wound and very little bleeding. What there was was soaked up by the towel, which may have been placed there for that purpose. No one I have interviewed records having heard anything unusual, although many of them were sitting or lying just a few metres away. Nor does anyone recall a stranger going near the place where Rutelli was sitting, apart from the usual watermelon sellers and itinerant African merchants and the like. In short, it has all the hallmarks of a very professional job.'

  Zen crushed out his cigarette..

  'For reasons we won't go into, I have been staying for some time on the top floor of the Rutelli villa. The lower floor was unoccupied until yesterday, when I heard noises down there. This was presumably Massimo Rutelli arriving and settling in. For other reasons which need not concern us, I did not make myself known to him, and he clearly had no idea that I had been using the family's ombrellone at the beach. He therefore went there the next morning and settled in as usual. When I arrived, I saw someone in the place I had been using. I had no idea who it was, but since the place next to it had always been vacant during the week I sat down there instead. The towel was in place when I arrived, so Rutelli may already have been dead at that point. At no point did I hear or see anything remotely suspicious or untoward. Have you any other questions?' The major sighed histrionically.

  'There are numerous questions which I would very much like to put to you, dottore, but it has been made abundantly clear to me that this is not an option. Instead I have been instructed to turn you over to two operatives of a parallel authority who have driven up from Rome. That phone call earlier was to tell me that they have arrived.'

  'Which parallel authority?'

  The major gave him an unusually incisive look which made Zen realize the fatuity of his question.

  'The persons concerned are waiting for you downstairs,' he remarked dismissively.

  And mere indeed they were, pacing the floor of the entrance hall to the carabinieri station, a man and a woman in their twenties, both unexceptionably dressed in civilian doming. The only thing that announced their profession was the single quick glance they both gave Zen as he appeared on the stairs, head to toe and back up again, like executioners mentally measuring him for the drop.

  The man turned away and started speaking into a portable radio. The woman walked up to Zen.

  '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 f
emale 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.'

  ISLANDA

  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.

  A matter of minutes later they were back at Pisa, at the military end of the airport, away from the commercial terminal. Here Zen was led to a small fixed-wing jet aircraft with no markings. His baggage was placed in the hold while he climbed a set of fold-down steps to the interior. This consisted of a single cabin with comfortable chairs facing a low central table. Seated in one of these was the young diplomat who had visited Zen during his convalescence.

  He immediately stood up, shook hands with Zen and showed him into a seat, then produced a flask of excellent coffee and two cups. A moment later the stepladder was folded up, the door closed and the engines started.

  'Forgive the rudimentary cabin service,' Zen's companion said as the aircraft started to taxi. 'On the other hand, the accommodation is superior to what you're likely to have for the rest of your journey, and at least you won't have to listen to the usual sermon about what to do in the unlikely event of a landing on water. I wonder if anyone's life has ever been saved by one of those cheap life-jackets they stuff away under the seats. It seems to me that all those safety announcements d
o is spread an irrational fear of flying, actually one of the safest forms of transport. Imagine if every time you got into a bus or train or taxi you had to listen to a lot of euphemistic waffle about what to do if the thing crashed! No one would ever leave home.'

  The aircraft veered jerkily to the right, the engines roared, and before Zen knew it they were off the ground. He watched the coastline turning into a map for several minutes, then turned back to his companion, who was filling their cups of coffee. When he looked up at Zen, his professional mask was firmly back in place.

  'I trust your stay on Gorgona was tolerable?' he said.

  'Very pleasant, thank you.'

  'It seemed the best short-term solution, given the events in Versilia.'

  He looked at Zen with a serious expression.

  'You're a very lucky man. The Mafia have now tried twice to kill you, and failed both times. Very few people can say that.'

  'Is it certain that I was the intended target?'

  The young diplomat gestured dismissively.

  'Dottore, there has never been a recorded case of a murder on the beach in that area. A few knifings late at night down at the Viareggio end, and the odd settling of accounts between drug gangs, but otherwise nothing. Then a corporate lawyer with no known enemies, seated in the place which you had occupied for several weeks, is shot through the heart at point-blank range with a silenced pistol in broad daylight by a killer who nevertheless 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.'