Cosi Fan Tutti - 5 Read Online Free
Author: Michael Dibdin
forced on me as the least of various evils on offer, but I do not feel the slightest degree of professional involvement or responsibility. I am sure that you and your colleagues are perfectly capable of carrying out your duties in a satisfactory manner, and my only wish is to leave you free to do so without interference or supervision. In short, just pretend I’m not here and carry on as you always have done. Do I make myself clear?’
Caputo flashed his shark’s smile.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The only thing that concerns me is that nothing occurs which might draw unwelcome attention to this detachment, and hence give my enemies an excuse to move me to the killing fields of Sicily or some God-forsaken hole up in the mountains. I’m sure I can count on your experience and discretion, Caputo, to ensure this does not happen.
As far as everything else is concerned, I leave matters entirely in your hands. In fact the less I know about it, the better pleased I shall be.’
Caputo nodded briskly and stood up.
‘Will there be anything else, sir?’
Zen was about to shake his head when a thought struck him.
‘Actually, I’d like a cappuccino scuro. Not too hot, lots of foam, no chocolate.’
He lay back, glancing at the clock on the wall. Less than five minutes later there was a knock at the door and a uniformed patrolman entered bearing a tray laden with a
glass of mineral water, a selection of freshly baked pastries and the cappuccino.
Every morning after that, an identical tray appeared a few minutes after Zen’s arrival at the office. For a while, that was all. Then, about three weeks after his conversation with Caputo, he came in one day to find a large cardboard box in the corner of the room. It proved to contain fifty cartons of Nazionali, 10,000 cigarettes in all. Zen removed three cartons and took them home, and stacked the rest in the empty drawers of his filing cabinet.
After that, things improved by leaps and bounds. He was greeted in respectful yet friendly fashion by every one he met, and his orders and requests were obeyed with alacrity, sometimes before he even realized that he had made them. He normally showed up at work each morning about eleven, unless he had something better to do,
leaving again shortly before lunch. Today he was entertaining Valeria at home, so he planned to make no more than a token appearance before stopping by the market to shop for whatever took his fancy.
Cars and vans and lorries surged sluggishly along the partitioned channel supposedly reserved for the trams, but in practice used by all and sundry as a relief route from the traffic-clogged Via Cristoforo Colombo. Once in a while, the city’s vigili would swoop down and start handing out fines, but such actions were sporadic and
tokenistic, repressive blitzes by a colonial power which knew that the struggle against the local population was unwinnable but could not afford to concede this openly.
In the dock area behind Zen, the white Tirrenia line steamer which had arrived from Sardinia that morning was tied up on one side of the passenger terminal. On the other lay a sleek grey warship flying a flag he found familiar but which he couldn’t identify. Farther back, in one of the outer docks, a huge aircraft carrier displayed the unmistakable emblem of the Stars and Stripes.
A dull ringing from the embedded rails announced the arrival of an elderly tram, swaying and nodding its way out of the tunnel burrowed under the Monte di Dio. Zen
folded up his newspaper and waited patiently while it trundled through the massed traffic towards him, its bell jingling plaintively. Ten minutes later, the tram deposited him in Piazza del Carmino, outside one of the main entrances to the port area. Zen walked in through the open gates, nodding perfunctorily to the armed guard,
who sketched a salute.
He crossed the concrete yard inside the gates and turned right towards the four-storey building which housed the detachment of the Polizia
Caputo flashed his shark’s smile.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The only thing that concerns me is that nothing occurs which might draw unwelcome attention to this detachment, and hence give my enemies an excuse to move me to the killing fields of Sicily or some God-forsaken hole up in the mountains. I’m sure I can count on your experience and discretion, Caputo, to ensure this does not happen.
As far as everything else is concerned, I leave matters entirely in your hands. In fact the less I know about it, the better pleased I shall be.’
Caputo nodded briskly and stood up.
‘Will there be anything else, sir?’
Zen was about to shake his head when a thought struck him.
‘Actually, I’d like a cappuccino scuro. Not too hot, lots of foam, no chocolate.’
He lay back, glancing at the clock on the wall. Less than five minutes later there was a knock at the door and a uniformed patrolman entered bearing a tray laden with a
glass of mineral water, a selection of freshly baked pastries and the cappuccino.
Every morning after that, an identical tray appeared a few minutes after Zen’s arrival at the office. For a while, that was all. Then, about three weeks after his conversation with Caputo, he came in one day to find a large cardboard box in the corner of the room. It proved to contain fifty cartons of Nazionali, 10,000 cigarettes in all. Zen removed three cartons and took them home, and stacked the rest in the empty drawers of his filing cabinet.
After that, things improved by leaps and bounds. He was greeted in respectful yet friendly fashion by every one he met, and his orders and requests were obeyed with alacrity, sometimes before he even realized that he had made them. He normally showed up at work each morning about eleven, unless he had something better to do,
leaving again shortly before lunch. Today he was entertaining Valeria at home, so he planned to make no more than a token appearance before stopping by the market to shop for whatever took his fancy.
Cars and vans and lorries surged sluggishly along the partitioned channel supposedly reserved for the trams, but in practice used by all and sundry as a relief route from the traffic-clogged Via Cristoforo Colombo. Once in a while, the city’s vigili would swoop down and start handing out fines, but such actions were sporadic and
tokenistic, repressive blitzes by a colonial power which knew that the struggle against the local population was unwinnable but could not afford to concede this openly.
In the dock area behind Zen, the white Tirrenia line steamer which had arrived from Sardinia that morning was tied up on one side of the passenger terminal. On the other lay a sleek grey warship flying a flag he found familiar but which he couldn’t identify. Farther back, in one of the outer docks, a huge aircraft carrier displayed the unmistakable emblem of the Stars and Stripes.
A dull ringing from the embedded rails announced the arrival of an elderly tram, swaying and nodding its way out of the tunnel burrowed under the Monte di Dio. Zen
folded up his newspaper and waited patiently while it trundled through the massed traffic towards him, its bell jingling plaintively. Ten minutes later, the tram deposited him in Piazza del Carmino, outside one of the main entrances to the port area. Zen walked in through the open gates, nodding perfunctorily to the armed guard,
who sketched a salute.
He crossed the concrete yard inside the gates and turned right towards the four-storey building which housed the detachment of the Polizia
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