The Venetian Affair

by Helen Macinnes

  Ballard sat quite silent, not altogether believing, yet wanting to know; like a patient listening to a doctor’s diagnosis which he resists but can’t ignore either.

  Holland’s eyes were looking beyond Ballard to another table. “Over there is a good example of what I’ve been talking about.”

  Ballard came out of the fog and glanced around. A group of three men had risen and were making their goodbyes. One of them, tall and thin, was wearing a suit whose excellence caught Ballard’s attention even at this distance.

  “Do you know him? Tarns is his name.”

  “Sir Felix Tarns? Sure, I remember him. He used to hang around the United Nations. He still goes to the same tailor, I see.” Ballard remembered Holland’s phrase and repeated it, astounded. “A good example?”

  Holland nodded. “In 1944, he was a quiet civil servant, with his father’s title and his grandfather’s money to help make life agreeable in the Establishment. He liked the ladies—his one human trait, as far as I know. There was a messy adultery, hushed up before it reached the News of the World. The Communists discovered it, and applied pressure. He caved in. Then in 1949, one of our traitors skipped to Russia. Sir Felix had carefully nurtured the young man’s career, helped place him in a sensitive job. So just before a quiet investigation was started—very quiet; we like to keep those things within the family, you know—Sir Felix resigned. No fuss. No scandal. No headlines. The family congratulated itself, rather blindly. For Sir Felix started another career, as political observer and freelance journalist. And that has been a most expert snow job.” Holland thought, there goes another of Neill Carlson’s phrases; and he paused, staring at nothing. He went on. “One small group kept pushing his name into adulatory articles, reviewed his collected essays most favourably, arranged lectures, sponsored important little luncheons. And now honest people are following the same pattern: everyone loves to get into the act, when it comes to celebrities. Yes, it has been one of the best public-relations jobs that the Communists ever put over. Beats your Madison Avenue, any day.”

  Ballard was absorbed in Sir Felix as he strolled past their table. His attention seemed more on the cut of Tarns’s jacket than on Holland’s words.

  “You don’t believe me?” Holland asked, shaking his head. It was always like this. Why had he bothered to waste valuable time? Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad, alas...

  “Why blame the Communists for everything? Sure, they are a bunch of twisters, but they aren’t that smart.”

  “I didn’t blame them for everything,” Holland said coldly. “I’m blaming them for setting up a man who is a walking, talking lie.”

  “He has his own point of view.” Ballard looked with indulgence at the Englishman sitting beside him. Narrow-minded little squirt, he thought. “I may not agree with it, but that doesn’t mean he’s a Commie mouthpiece.”

  “He hasn’t any point of view,” Holland said. “He only repeats what Fernand Lenoir tells him. Why else do you think he is in Venice, all expenses paid?... Dear me, are you leaving? So soon?” He watched Ballard walk away.

  To Lieutenant Rusconi, who had moved over to Ballard’s vacated chair, he said, “Well, Pietro—what’s your guess?”

  “You made him sweat a little,” Pietro said in genuine American. “I’d have got nowhere with him.” He grinned and added, “Haven’t the stamina.”

  “Did he listen?” Holland was still watching Ballard’s retreating back. He was suddenly depressed.

  “Well,” said Pietro encouragingly, “we got Aarvan, anyway. I just hope the French make that murder rap stick.”

  “They will. There’s a bullet in a man’s back that will fit Aarvan’s pet revolver.” Yes, we got Aarvan, thought Holland. His eyes flickered to the pink lights of the restaurant across the Piazza. “You never can tell, can you?” he asked incredulously. Amateurs rushed in where most professionals feared to tread. It pleased him, somehow, that amateurs could sometimes get away with it, too. His eyes followed the retreating Ballard: no need to make him any angrier. Stir a man up a little, and he could be made to think; but add anger to anger, and a man’s mind was sealed tight with blazing emotion. As Ballard, far off, a small dark dwarfed figure walking up a couple of steps into the brightly lit colonnade at the western end of the Piazza, abruptly halted and looked back, Holland shook his head. “No,” he told Ballard as he moved between the giant pillars toward the narrow streets of Venice, “we didn’t follow you. We’re sitting right here where you left us.” He said to Pietro, “Time for you to stride off. You are checking with Rosie?”

  “I’ll call him to report—”

  “No. See him. I’ve got a message for him.” Although they had been talking in low voices, Holland dropped his still more. “Can you hear? Good. Tell him that the big blow-up could be tomorrow evening, Monday. Got that?”

  Pietro nodded.

  “I think it will be. That’s my own opinion.” Holland took a deep breath. He had stuck his neck out, there. His job was to report, not to form any opinion. “Tomorrow evening,” he repeated tensely. “All right. Get cracking. But carefully!”

  Pietro looked thoughtfully at Holland. “So you got something besides making him sweat?” He rose and left.

  “Watch it,” Holland told Pietro under his breath, as a middle-aged, sensibly dressed woman stopped mothering the pigeons and stumped after Rusconi. But Pietro was taking no chances. He melted into a large group of sight-seers, the first batch of after-supper visitors drifting back into the Piazza to view the floodlighted cathedral. Even Holland’s practised eye could not be quite sure where he had left them, or in what direction. My turn, Holland thought, rising, and dropped five hundred lire on Ballard’s coffee tray as an extra bonus for the tactful waiter who had followed instructions not to disturb this table. He set out at a gentle pace toward the eastern end of the Piazza.

  He would be followed. He had asked for that, sitting down quite openly with Ballard. But ever since Fenner’s unexpected move at Florian’s, a lot of quick decisions and immediate action had developed. And if ever he had been justified in following up Fenner’s second surprise, the message that seemed so impossible, he certainly was now: old Rosie would light up like this cathedral, and the austere little Inspector Bernard, all the way back in Paris, would be fizzing off in every direction like a Guy Fawkes rocket, when they got his message.

  His problem, at this moment, was not that he was being tailed. (Hello, Neill, still talking over my shoulder? How do you like the way we sewed up Jan Aarvan?) Rather, how was he to make contact with the French agent, André, who had been waiting somewhere in front of the cathedral in case of any emergency? For the message he had given Pietro might not get through: it was crucial enough to be worth sending twice, once to the English and Americans, once to the French themselves. Where, oh where was Bernard’s man? Over there, looking very much like a retired Swiss schoolmaster standing among the insomniac pigeons. André had seen Holland, too, for he had begun to move, leisurely and nonchalantly. Which would he choose: the cathedral itself, the clock tower to its left, or the Campanile on its right? The Campanile it was, rising high above all Venice from its own small island at this southeast corner of the Piazza. André vanished inside its doorway along with a thin straggle of tourists.

  Holland didn’t change his slow pace. He let a group of Austrian students (short leather trousers, and open-necked shirts, even a couple of rucksacks) cluster into the Campanile ahead of him, before he veered up the few steps into a square, stone-floored hall. Speed was essential now. He had a few lire ready, to buy his ride up into the sky.

  The students were checking the cost, counting out the small coins worriedly, so Holland could slip ahead of them and enter the big elevator, fairly full, but still waiting for more customers. He had a brief attack of anxiety as a newcomer entered the hall quickly and made straight for the elevator. “Tickets over there!” its attendant said severely, and pointed. The newcomer protested. The attendant’s finger sti
ll pointed, and the man had to obey, but with ill grace. The attendant noticed it, waited for the first six students, said “That’s all!” and closed the door. Down in the hall, the impatient man was left with the remaining students, who were keeping him firmly at the tail of their line.

  Around Holland, the students were joking about their friends who were left behind, drawing him good-naturedly into this small triumph of one-upmanship. He smiled and relaxed. But once he reached the small observation terrace, which ran around the four sides of the bell tower, he would have to move quickly, before the next elevator load came up. André would be startled, probably disapproving. But this was a night for rules to be broken. This was a night for urgency. If I can’t make contact in two minutes, Holland thought, I can’t make it at all.

  The night breeze from the lagoon to the south welcomed them as they crowded on to the narrow terrace to join those visitors who were already there. It was dimly lighted, so that the brilliance of the scene far below them would not be dulled. There was a jostling for the best view, an exclamation of voices. André was moving slowly toward the west side of the Campanile, reconnoitering quietly, expecting, no doubt, to meet Holland coming around from the other direction. He froze in complete disbelief as Holland seemingly stumbled against him in the darkness. “The attempt is tomorrow, Monday night. Get going.” That was all. Holland crossed over to the parapet, near one of its few lights, looking for a view.

  He found it, as some visitors decided to take this elevator down. He heard its door clang shut. He could glance around. André had gone. So all I have to do now is wait, Holland thought: I’ll wait for fifteen minutes, until almost nine o’clock, and prove that whoever I was going to meet hasn’t shown up.

  The view of Saint Mark’s Basin was magnificent, at least. He waited, hair and tie ruffled by the wind, watching the contrast, far below, of dark waters and sparkling lights. The elevator made its staid and leisurely return to the terrace. He looked around at the new arrivals. The delayed Austrians were joining their friends, with laughter and excited talk. The man following him was there, too. Not alone, either. During his wait downstairs he had been joined by a reinforcement. This may be unpleasant, Holland thought as he let his eyes travel over all the new arrivals with equal disinterest, and glanced at his watch, but in another way it is good: the more concentration on me, the safer is that gentle, self-effacing Swiss schoolmaster.

  Holland stayed on the lagoon side of the terrace, observing each batch of visitors that the elevator unloaded, and the two men kept observing him. Twice he glanced at his watch. After fifteen minutes of this, he apparently decided to walk around and check the other sides of the terrace before he gave up waiting. He moved to the eastern balustrade, overlooking the flood-lit domes and pinnacles of the cathedral and the pink-and-white palace of the Doges. The Austrian students were gathered here. And suddenly, one of them began to sing. The others joined in. The young, Holland thought, had a genius for the spontaneous gesture. He listened to the gathering strength of their voices: what was that they were singing? Simple, yet complicated. One of those Bach hymns? Or perhaps one of Vivaldi’s pieces written for his choir of disfigured orphans who had sung his music down there, in the cathedral, their pitiful faces and crippled limbs forgotten, their clear voices soaring? Holland was thinking of Vienna as he turned the corner to reach the north side of the Campanile, of Vienna in 1947, when he had just met Neill Carlson, of Neill’s small room, where his prize Bach records were played almost to death, of death itself among the ruins outside, where peace had brought occupation and cold war, of nine bodies fished out of the grey Danube in one week—some Soviet, some Allied agents, others unrecognisable. Cold war... He felt a shiver of warning touch his spine lightly. The solitary man standing on this side of the terrace, watching the clock tower across the wide gulf of the Piazza, had turned as he heard Holland’s slow footsteps coming over to share the parapet. It was Robert Wahl.

  The two men faced each other for a split second before Holland rested his elbows on the parapet and studied the clusters of antlike people far below. Wahl was watching him. He has never seen me before, Holland reminded himself: I am only a name in one of his files. But he will know me again, that’s certain. A suspicious type, this Wahl. Or is it Kalganov? Stop speculating, just watch. There he is, and here I am, both leaning elbows on the same wall, not six feet apart. One good shove might save us a lot of bloody history.

  Who was Robert Wahl expecting to meet? Perhaps Jan Aarvan? Or was he just reviewing all his plans, taking a Napoleonic view of far horizons? The irony of the situation struck Holland—Wahl must have been here even as he was meeting the Swiss schoolmaster on the other side of the bell tower. Good God, he thought, if I had played the game correctly, we’d have both walked around and met right beside Wahl. He wanted to laugh—the best laughs always occurred when you couldn’t enjoy them—as he left the balustrade and walked on. (Suppressed laughter was hardly the mood for one good shove. The wall was too high, in any case: it would take two men to heave a body over. Besides, someone below was liable to be hurt or killed. And I’m no Jan Aarvan, Holland thought.)

  His pace quickened as he was about to turn the corner onto the western side of the terrace, wondering if he could reach the Piazza in time to find one of the allied agents there and pass on the word that Robert Wahl was aloft and must descend sometime. He halted abruptly. The two men were blocking his path. They walked down on him, ready to jump him. They were Aarvan’s friends, all right. He backed, slowly, watching their hands. They moved forward, stopped as they saw Wahl over by the parapet. They hesitated for a fraction of a second that Holland needed. He sprinted back the way he had come, right into the cluster of students. They were too intent on their last harmony to pay attention to the white-faced intruder among them.

  He stayed with them, and regained a steady pulse. The two men didn’t follow. They might be waiting, but he wouldn’t give them another chance to find him alone on a narrow dark terrace, three hundred and twenty-five feet above marble pavement. As for Robert Wahl, he wouldn’t wait to be tagged and trailed by Holland’s friends—he was probably reaching the Piazza at this very minute. Aarvan’s two men had not known who Wahl was, far less Kalganov. In any supersecret organisation like theirs, working in enemy territory, the chain of command was carefully concealed. Kalganov’s talent for elaborate precaution had saved his own life a hundred times and more. Tonight, thought Holland, with a grim smile, it saved mine.

  The students moved off. He kept with them, talking about Vienna, all the way down, all the way across the Piazza San Marco to the labyrinth of narrow streets that spread out behind the clock tower. As they echoed his “Auf Wiedersehen!” he had already stepped into a side alley, and was lost in the shadows.

  22

  Sandra Fane was ready. She carried her handbag, a scarf to cover her head, her darkest coat. And that was all. She combed her hair, made up her face quickly, distributed some of the pieces of jewellery from the bulging bag to her coat’s pocket. As for the map—she’d need that to get out of this rabbit warren of a city. A bus or a train? Padua or Milan? And the letter, still secure within the map—she’d throw that into the nearest canal once she was well away from this house. It would take minutes to destroy it here, and there could be scraps of evidence left. Nothing must connect her with that letter. And every second was precious. Every second...

  At her door, she paused only long enough to make sure that none of the servants was wandering around. (There were three of them, two men and a woman, whom Lenoir had installed, bringing them mysteriously from nowhere: they seemed dull and stupid, but they were no doubt extremely dependable.) But there was no sound. She locked the bedroom door behind her, slipped the key into her pocket, and took off her shoes. Quickly, with sure footsteps and a fluttering heart, she started her silent journey down the curving staircase. Lenoir’s door was shut. Thick walls, dim lights, deep shadows... The hall below was as empty as a tomb. Her pace increased to a silent run.


  She reached the foot of the staircase, and started around the side of the circular hall, using the pillars that supported its dark vaulted ceiling as shelter. She flitted from one to another, passing several ornate doors, all deeply shadowed, all firmly shut—there were several rooms on this floor, but apart from the dining-room, the kitchen, and service quarters, no one used them any more. They were too close to the canal level for any comfort. Down here, she could feel the chill of the cool waters outside, even within these thick walls. The flagstone floor turned her feet to ice.

  She had half-circled the hall. The heavy wooden door that led to the little street was only a few yards away. From the comforting darkness of the last pillar, she glanced back up the staircase. She could see Lenoir’s sitting-room, closed and quiet. Now! she told herself. She stepped out of the pillar’s shadow, her eyes on the street door, studying its massive iron decorations. Which bars locked it, what ones were only part of the elaborate design?

  Sharply, the hall’s deep silence shivered into fragments. A bell’s clanging tongue railed at the house. She jumped. Almost cried out. She retreated behind a pillar, sagged against it for a long moment. Slow, heavy footsteps had come out of a room near the street door as the angry echo died away. That was the servant called Martin, the stupidest of the lot, thank her luck. But she had been stupid herself: she ought to have known that the door to this house would be guarded.