Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (36 page)

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Authors: Michael Dibdin

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To Zen’s dismay, the first familiar face he saw was that of Vincenzo Fabri, resplendent in an aerodynamically styled outfit that made Zen’s look as though it had been rented from a fancy-dress agency. Fabri approached with a smile that boded no good.

“I didn’t know you’d be here, Zen.”

“Life’s full of surprises.”

“Isn’t it just?”

Fabri beckoned him closer with a crooked finger. “Guess what?”

Zen gazed at him bleakly.

“I’ve made Questore!” Fabri crowed in a triumphant whisper.

He extended the forefinger of his right hand and poked Zen in the chest.

“To be fair, I suppose you should take some of the credit, as you said this morning. But it’s results that count in the end, isn’t it? Bari or Ferrara seem the most likely prospects at the moment, unless I decide to take a few months’ leave and wait for something better to come up. They say Pacini won’t last much longer in Venice. Now there’s a thought, eh? Well, I must circulate. See you at the Ministry. I’ll be in to clear my desk.”

Zen knew he had to leave quickly before he said or did something unforgivable. As he pushed through the crowd, not caring who he offended, he felt a grip on his arm.

“Wherever are you going in such a hurry, dottore? I was just about to, ah … that’s to say, I was on the point of, ah, introducing you to a certain person who has taken a very close, very
personal
interest in the events of the past few days.”

The young secretary steered Zen toward a distinguished-looking figure in his midsixties who was holding court in the centre of the room where the throng was thickest. Zen recognised him immediately. Unlike the other celebrities whose fleshly reality often jarred uncomfortably with their etherealised media image, this man’s appearance coincided perfectly with the photographs Zen had seen of him. Elderly without frailty, experienced but not resigned, he gave the impression of having reached just the prime of life.

“We were talking about you earlier,” the young man resumed, effortlessly inserting himself and Zen into the inner circle of initiates. “Indeed, I trust you will not think me indiscreet if I mention that
l’onorevole
was pleased to remark how deeply indebted we are to you for your, ah, effective and timely intervention.”

The distinguished figure, deep in conversation with two younger men whose enthusiastic servility was embarrassing to behold, paid not the slightest attention.

“It would be no exaggeration to say that the Party has been spared a most trying experience as the result of your, ah, initiative,” the young man went on. “It’s true that we were initially somewhat surprised by the choice of … that’s to say, by the fact that this woman, ah, proved to be the guilty party. However, on mature consideration we unreservedly approve of this solution, more especially since it allows us to retain the Padedda option as a fall-back position should any further problems arise. We are really most grateful, most grateful indeed. Isn’t that so,
l’onorevole?”

For a second, the elder man’s eyes swept over Zen’s face like the revolving beam of a lighthouse.

“If there’s ever anything you need …” he murmured.

Zen made the appropriate noises, then gracefully withdrew. As he headed toward the door, toward his evening with Tania, the words were still ringing in his ears:
If there’s ever anything you need
… Better than money in the bank, he thought. Better than money in the bank!

BOOKS BY M
ICHAEL
D
IBDIN

“Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader. He writes the unmentionable calmly and with devastating effect.” —Ruth Rendell

DEAD LAGOON

In this stylish novel, Michael Dibdin’s urbane and skeptical Italian detective Aurelio Zen returns to his native Venice to search for a vanished American millionaire. The result is a mystery rich in character and deduction, and intensely informed about the history, politics, and manners of its Venetian setting.

Fiction/Crime/0-679-75311-7

THE DYING OF THE LIGHT

The setting in this brilliant and haunting variation on the classic drawing-room murder novel is Eventide Lodge, where guests have gathered for tea. Colonel Weatherby is reading by the fire. Mrs. Hiram Hargreave III is whiling away her time at patience. And Miss Rosemary Travis and her friend, Dorothy, are wondering which of their housemates will be the next to die.

Fiction/Crime/0-679-75310-9

THE LAST SHERLOCK HOLMES STORY

Michael Dibdin pits the sleuth of Baker Street against the Butcher of Whitechapel—the archfiend Jack the Ripper. And in doing so, he gives us a Holmes possessed of greater and more disturbing depths than the one we thought we knew.

Fiction/Crime/0-679-76658

RATKING

In this chilling masterpiece of police procedure and psychological suspense, Dibdin introduces us to Aurelio Zen, sending his stoic Italian police commissioner to investigate the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti, a powerful Perugian industrialist.

Crime Fiction/0-679-76854-8

VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).

Just Published by Pantheon
END GAMES
An Aurelio Zen Mystery
by Michael Dibdin

“Clever and exuberantly witty.”
—
The New York Times Book Review

It’s a routine assignment, and Aurelio Zen is biding his time in Calabria while the locals go about their mysterious business. Routine, that is, until an advance scout for an American film company suddenly vanishes. Beneath the surface of a tight-knit traditional community—with secrets and loyalties that go back centuries—violent forces are at work. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth behind a brutal murder, but his mission is complicated by another secret that has drawn strangers from the other side of the world on a hunt for buried treasure—a search that has been launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing a bizarre and deadly obsession.

It’s a devilishly suspenseful and entertaining adventure that only Aurelio Zen could stumble into—and only Michael Dibdin could serve up. In
End Games,
the award-winning author has crafted a suspenseful, action-packed thriller full of unexpected twists and turns—a story that takes us deep into a proud and ancient culture and into the darkest corners of the human heart.