The entrance was as dark as a tunnel, wide and high enough to accommodate a carriage and team, lit only by a single dim lantern suspended from the curved ceiling. At the other end it opened into a small courtyard tightly packed with limousines, whose drivers, dressed in neat cheap suits like funeral attendants, were standing around swapping gossip and polishing the chrome.
A glass door to the left suddenly opened, and an elderly man no bigger than a large dwarf scuttled out.
'Yes?' he called brusquely to Zen.
A young woman carrying a large pile of files followed him out of the lodge.
'Well?' she demanded.
'I don't know!' the porter cried exasperatedly. 'Understand? I don't know!'
'It's your job to know.'
'Don't tell me what my job is!'
'Very well, you tell me!'
Zen walked over to them.
'Excuse me.'
They both turned to glare at him.
'Aurelio Zen, from the Ministry of the Interior.'
The porter shrugged.
'What about it?'
'I'm expected.'
'Who by?'
'If I knew that, I wouldn't need to waste my time talking to a prick like you, would I?'
The woman burst into hoots of laughter. A phone started to ring shrilly in the lodge. Throwing them both a look of deep disgust, the porter went to answer it.
'Yes? Yes, dottore. Yes, dottore. No, he just got here.
Very good, dottore. Right away.'
Emerging from his lodge, the porter jerked his thumb at a flight of stairs opposite.
'First floor. They're expecting you.'
'And the Youth Section?' the young woman asked.
'How many times do I have to tell you, I don't know!'
The staircase was a genteel cascade of indolently curving marble which made the one at the Ministry look vulgar and cheap. As Zen reached the first-floor landing, a figure he had taken to be a statue detached itself from the niche where it had been standing and walked towards him. The man had an air of having been assembled, like Frankenstein's monster, from a set of parts, each of which might have looked quite all right in another context, but didn't get along at all weli together. He stopped some distance away, his gaze running over Zen's clothing.
'I'm not carrying one,' Zen told him. 'Never do, in fact.'
The man looked at him as though he had spoken in a foreign language.
'You see, it's no use carrying a gun unless you're prepared to use it,' Zen went on, discursively. 'If you're not, it just makes matters worse. It gives you a false sense of security and makes everyone else nervous. So you're better off without it really.'
The man stared at Zen expressionlessly for a moment, then turned his back.
'This way.'
He led Zen along a corridor which at first sight appeared to extend further than the length of the building. This illusion was explained when it became clear that the two men walking towards them were in fact their own reflections in the huge mirror that covered the end wall. The corridor was lit at intervals by tall windows giving on to the courtyard. Opposite each window a double door of polished walnut gleamed sweetly in the mellow light.
Zen's escort knocked at one of the doors and stood listening intently, holding the wrought silver handle.
'Come!' a distant voice instructed.
The room was long and relatively narrow. One wall was covered by an enormous tapestry, so faded that it was impossible to make out anything except the general impression of a hunting scene. Facing this stood a glassfronted bookcase, where an array of more or less massive tomes lay slumbering in a manner that suggested they had not been disturbed for a considerable time.
At the far end of the room, a young man was sitting at an antique desk in front of a window that reached all the way up to the distant ceiling. As Zen came in, he put down the sheaf of typed pages he had been perusing and walked round the desk, his hand held out in greeting.
'Good morning, dottore. So glad that you felt able to see your way clear to, ah…'
He was in his early thirties, slim and refined, with thin straight lips, delicate features, and eyes that goggled slightly, as though they were perpetually astonished by what they saw. His fastidious gestures and diffident manner gave him the air of a fin de siecle aesthete, rather than a political animal.
He waved Zen towards a chair made of thin struts of some precious wood, with a woven cane seat. It looked extremely valuable and horribly fragile. Zen lowered himself on to it apprehensively. The young man returned to the other side of the desk, where he remained standing for a moment with hands outspread, like a priest at the altar.
'First of all, dottore, let me express, on behalf of… the interest and, ah… that's to say, the really quite extraordinary excitement aroused by your, ah…'
He picked up the pages he had been reading and let them fall back to the desk again, as a knock resounded in the cavernous space behind.
'Come!' the young man enunciated.
A waiter appeared carrying a tray with two coffee cups.
'Ah, yes. I took the liberty of, ah…'
He waggled his forefinger at the two cups.
'And which one is…? 'With the red rim,' the waiter told him.
The young man sighed expressively as the door closed again.
'Unfortunately caffeine, for certain people…'
Zen took his cup of undecaffeinated espresso and unwrapped the two lumps of sugar supplied by the bar, studying the 'Interesting Facts about the World of Nature' printed on the wrapper, while he waited for his host to proceed.
'As you are no doubt aware, dottore, this has been a sad and difficult time for us. Naturally, we already knew what your report makes abundantly clear, namely that the evidence against Renato Favelloni is both flimsy and entirely circumstantial. There is not the slightest question that his innocence would eventually be established by due process of law.'
Zen noted the conditional as the coffee seared its way down his throat.
'But by then, alas, the damage will have been done!' the young man continued. His seemingly compulsive hesitations and rephrasings had now been set aside like a disguise that has served its purpose. 'If mud is thrown as viciously as it has been and will be, some of it is bound to stick. Not just to Favelloni himself, but to all those who were in any way associated with him, or who had occasion to, ah, call on his services at some time. This is the problem we face, dottore. I trust you will not judge me indiscreet if I add that it is one we were beginning to despair of solving. Imagine, then, the emotions elicited by your report! So much hope! So many interesting new perspectives! "Light at the end of the tunnel", as 1'onorevole saw fit to put it.'
Zen set his empty cup back in its saucer on the leather surface of the desk.
'My report was merely a resume of the investigations carried out by others.'
'Exactly! That was precisely its strength. If you had been one of our, ah, contacts at the Ministry, your findings would have excited considerably less interest. To be perfectly frank, we have been let down before by people who promised us this, that and the other, and then couldn't deliver. Why, only a few days ago we asked our man there to obtain a copy of the video tape showing the tragic events at the Villa Burolo. A simple enough request, you would think, but even that proved beyond the powers of the individual in question. Nor was this the first time that he had disappointed us. So we felt it was time to bring in someone fresh, with the proper qualifications. Someone with a track record in this sort of work. And I must say that, so far, we have had no reason to regret our decision.
Of course, the real test is still to come, but already we have been very favourably impressed by the way in which your report both exposed the inherent weaknesses of the case against Favelloni, and revealed the existence of various equally possible scenarios which, for purely political reasons, have never been properly investigated.'