"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 02" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

Burolo himself, had specified armour-plating and bullet-
p;roof windows, and the kidnappers' shots rattled harm-
lessly away. When he reached the corner, Oscar reversed
on to the shoulder to turn the car round. As hc did so, the
youngest of the four men sprinted forward, leaped on to
the bonnet, pressed the muzzle of his rifle against the
windscreen and fired. In the event, the shot barely chip-
ped 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 into 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 north-west. 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 kid-
nappable 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 lionized, 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 placed on a man against his will,
destroying him and everyone close to him because of
something he had nothing to do with and of which he
perhaps even disapproved. Young Oscar had been
deeply impressed by these stories. To his childish ear
they had the ring of absolute truth, matching as they did
the violent and arbitrary rituals of the world he shared
with other boys his age. Just as he had known the kid-
nappers the moment their eyes met, so now he knew
they would not rest until they had avenged the death of
their colleague.
Faced with this knowledge, a lesser man might have
called it quits, sold off the villa -- if he could find a pur-
chaser! -- and taken his holidays elsewhere in future. But
Oscar's realism had its limits, and it ended where his
vanity began. Had it been a business deal, with no one but
himself and the other party any the wiser, he might have