This was the crunch, and it could hardly have been worse from an operational point of view. Zen had to make an instant decision which might prove disastrous. He finally ordered the motorcyclist to remount and track the Jeep as best he could. It was a risk, but Mantega might well have other preoccupations at this point and ballsy bikers were two a penny up here in the Sila high pastures. He then called off the other Digos officer on the ground and the Ape van behind and told the driver of the Laforza to proceed slowly and with due caution. Eight minutes passed before lightning freeze-framed the thickly wooded landscape and a thundercrack shook heaven and earth, followed immediately by rain that broke on the windscreen like surf, overwhelming the wipers. Aurelio Zen finally relaxed. Now, he knew, everything would go well.
Next the man on the MotoGuzzi called in to say that the Jeep had turned off the paved road and taken a dirt track leading up still more steeply into the forest. Giorgio was presumably waiting at some spot high in the wilderness above, just as Maria had predicted, and there was nothing for it but to go after him, hoping that the deafening violence of the torrential rain would force any watchers to take shelter and also cover the sound of the Laforza’s engine. The headlights could be dispensed with, thanks to the high-tech Digos toys — or so Zen assumed until on one particularly tight reverse curve of the precipitous, contorted and now seriously flooded track they unaccountably started moving sideways rather than forwards.
‘Shit!’ yelled the driver. ‘Landslip’s washed out half the road.’
The vehicle slid gently downhill for some distance before coming to rest.
‘Can you get it back on the track?’ asked Zen.
‘Maybe,’ the Digos agent replied. ‘But I’d have to use full revs and they’d be bound to hear. I say we continue on foot and hope it’s not too much further.’
Zen was aware that this was an attempt to democratise the decision-making process, but he couldn’t fault the man’s thinking.
‘ Andiamo! ’ he said decisively.
The rain had diminished slightly for the moment, but there was little comfort once outside the vehicle. One of the Digos men produced a hooded torch whose pinched beam was the only point of reference in the darkness, and the other three followed him up what was now to all intents and purposes a river-bed. It rapidly became clear to Zen that he was falling behind, and eventually he came to a halt. The others had disappeared, leaving him in the dark. He was also ludicrously dressed for the occasion, in his office clothes and smooth-soled leather shoes that were already drenched and spouting water with every step. He found his key-ring and switched on the brilliant stiletto of light attached to it. The trees to either side looked monstrous, the trunks twenty metres or more in circumference, the last remnants of the primeval forest which had covered the area for hundreds of thousands of years. There were still wild cats here, he had heard, and wolves.
Not unlike the man who had been baptised Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati, Zen started up the cruelly steep and rutted track and all things considered was making good speed when a flash of inconceivable intensity imprinted the entire surrounding landscape on his retina and the sky squealed and drummed its feet like a gutted animal. An instant later the downpour began again in the form of pebbles of hail pockmarking the molten mud ahead. Zen began running, slipped on a sheet of exposed rock and tumbled over what seemed a cliff, landing on a steep slope where he rolled over and over again before coming to rest against the trunk of one of those giant trees. The hail continued to fall deafeningly on the foliage all around, but where Zen lay the ground was covered with a deep bed of pine needles that remained dry. He heard distant gunfire — one shot, then two almost together — and got to his feet, but immediately tripped over a varicose cluster of roots. His key-ring went flying, and the miniature torch with it. There was nothing to be seen except the glittering array of stars above, each one hard, determinate and precise, but his nostrils were full of ancient odours, dense and strange, familiar and benign.
Jake dreamt he was flying. At first it was awesome, the scenery scrolling away like on Google Earth, mountains and fields and rivers and roads and towns. Some flyover state. He longed to nuke something, but he couldn’t figure out which game it was, who the bad guys were or even the basic scenario. The only thing he knew for sure was that on an earlier level his character had spawned in the shining city upon a hill. That meant his game status was Exceptional and he had unlimited powers, which was way cool except he hadn’t a clue what to do with them.
Maybe it was these doubts that triggered off what happened next, one of those dream things where everything goes bad just because it does, no reason given. There was this coffin on the floor he was trying to push out of the open doorway of the plane, only it was super heavy and wouldn’t budge until suddenly the rollers kicked in and they both went flying, flipping over slowly down to the sea beneath and then into it, still tumbling. He ended up in a kind of desert with huge cracks in the ground and these giant spiders, except they were more like cockroaches, a gazillion of them coming at him, more and more all the time. It was a classic run ’n’ gun, first-person shooter death match with randomised portals, only the software was way over-specified for his game controller, a dumb brick on a string with two buttons and a D-pad dating back to the eight-bit Nintendo games of the 1980s. He was getting killed here! This wasn’t a game, it was a fucking cartoon. Loony Tunes Two. That’s all, folks.
‘Hate to wake you, but we’ve only got about an hour to run. Care for an eye-opener?’
Jake rolled over in bed and tried to focus on the babe who was shaking his shoulder. She totally wasn’t Madrona, but he got there in the end.
‘Sure.’
‘Coffee, tea or me?’
Huh? thought Jake, but then he caught the look on her face and realised she’d been doing that thing that was big with the kids these days and gave him a headache, where you say one thing but mean something way different, ironing or something.
‘I’ll take a Diet Rockstar and some RapSnacks YoungBloodz Southern Crunk BBQ.’
‘You want ice with that?’
He got out of bed and glanced out of the window. Mountains, fields, rivers, roads, towns, like on Google Earth. Some flyover state. He turned on ESPN and watched a bunch of ads. Black guys dunking big balls, white guys hurling oval balls, brown guys hitting white balls, all in sexy slow-mo. Ball games, celebrating designer sportswear and racial diversity. Cool. He sucked down his energy drink and tooled around the net a little till he found this site with a world map showing the area of darkness — kind of like a huge cock — over the places where it was night. Right now Madrona was in the light zone, but the edge of darkness was creeping towards her all the time. The image updated automatically every minute, so you could just sit there and watch the shadow line jerk forward a notch as the sun sank slowly in the west. You learn something every day, thought Jake. Like he’d never realised that the sun went round the earth, although it was kind of obvious once you thought about it.
Then Madrona rang.
‘Yo.’
‘Where are you, hon?’
‘Beats me. I get in in like an hour?’
‘Bummer. I got a bikini wax at four or I’d come meet you.’
‘Eeeh.’
‘Are you okay, hon?’
‘I had this weird dream? Kind of creeped me out.’
‘Really? You know Crystl?’
‘I totally know her.’