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

Madonna come down from her mosaic in some chilly apse,
a Madonna not of sorrow but of joy, of secret glee, who
knew that the universe was actually the most tremendous
joke and could hardly believe that everyone else was
taking it seriously. Like himself, Tania was a northerner,
from a village in the Friuli region east of Udine. This had
created an immediate bond between them, and as the days
went by Zen had learned of her interest in films, music,
sailing, ski-ing, cookery, travel and foreign languages. He
also discovered that she was fourteen years younger than
him, and married.
'I don't care what your dealer told you,' Vincenzo Fabri
proclaimed loudly. 'Until a gearbox has done ioo,ooo kilo-
metres -- under on-road conditions, not on some test track
in Turin -- not even Agnelli himself knows how it's going
to hold up.'
'What do I care?' retorted Travaglini. 'With the discount
I'm getting I can drive it until the warranty runs out and
still break even on the trade-in. That's a year's free
motoring.'
'Would you do me a favour?' Tania whispered hur-
riedly.
'Of course.'
'You don't know what it is yet.'
'It doesn't matter.'
Zen saw nothing wild or extravagant in this claim,
which represented the simple truth. But as she turned
away with a disconcerted look he realized that it had
sounded all wrong, either too gushing or too casual.
'Forget it,' she told him, disappearing through a gap in
the screens like an actor leaving the stage.
Zen sat there taking in her absence with a sharp pain he'd
forgotten about, the kind that comes with love you don't
ask for or even necessarily want, but which finds you out. It
was normal to suffer like this in one's youth, of course, but
what had he done to deserve such a fate at his age?
He tore open the memorandum she had brought him.

'From: Dogliotti, Assistant Registrar, Archives.
'To: Zeno, Vice-Questore, Polizia Criminale.
Subject: 46429 BUR 4gg/K/95 (Video cassette, one).
You are requested to return the above item at your
earliest convenience since it is ...................
in the blank space, someone had scrawled an illegible
phrase.
Zen stuffed the memorandum into his pocket with a
weary sigh. He had been so concerned about the large-
scale repercussions if the tape fell into the wrong hands
that he had completely forgotten the immediate problems
involved. The Ministry's copy of the Burolo video was of