Where Dead Men Meet

by Mark Mills

  “Tell him,” said Borodin. “Tell him who he is and why you want him dead.”

  Before Didier could reply, two loud reports, sharp as whip cracks, echoed around the square, scattering the pigeons from the rooftops. Had a car backfired? Heads turned, searching for the source. A woman screamed, recoiling, pointing … at Pippi.

  A man lay prone on the cobbles at her feet, and the Browning was in her hand. Luke saw the look of blank panic in her face. He also saw the policeman who had been strolling around earlier come hurrying into the square.

  “Go!” Luke yelled to her. “Run!”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when Borodin came suddenly to life, bringing the walking stick down on Didier’s forearm. The Belgian yelped, and the small pistol he had drawn from behind his back fell from his fingers to the cobblestones. He let out another cry when Borodin dealt him two more vicious blows across the face with the cane. Didier blocked the third, seizing the end of the stick.

  The triumphal look in his eye was short-lived. With a twist of his hand, Borodin withdrew the long steel blade concealed within the shaft of the cane and, in almost the same movement, thrust it at Didier’s chest. Didier twisted desperately away, and the point passed clean through the muscle in his shoulder. He let out a strangled cry.

  “The gun,” said Borodin.

  The last thing Luke saw before he lunged for the pistol on the ground was the blood glistening on the steel blade as Borodin yanked it free. The first thing he saw as his head reappeared above the tabletop was Didier fleeing, stumbling off.

  Borodin rose to his feet, pulled a revolver from his pocket and took careful aim. Unable to draw a clean bead through the scattering crowd, he turned suddenly to Luke. “If you want to live, he must die.” He thrust the revolver at him. “Do it.”

  It was little wonder that he hesitated: a man he didn’t trust, ordering him to kill a man he didn’t know.

  “You must,” said Borodin.

  The policeman was dashing toward them, his hand fumbling with the leather holster at his hip. He shouted something. The words meant nothing to Luke, but they did to Borodin, who spun around suddenly.

  At a table near the café entrance, a tall man was on his feet. There was an uncertain, almost fearful look in his eyes, but the gun in his hand was pointing directly at Luke.

  Borodin lunged to the left, into the line of fire, and the shot sent him staggering back into Luke’s arms. Luke was dimly aware of the sword cane clattering onto the cobbles, and of the revolver in his hand, which he would never be able to aim and fire in time before the man finished the job.

  A shot rang out, fired at almost point-blank range into the back of the man’s head by someone hurrying from the café. The man crumpled and pitched forward, blood jetting grotesquely from the base of his skull. A summary execution, and the person responsible hadn’t even broken stride in the process. Luke looked up to see him hastening away. His back was turned and the brim of his hat was pulled down over his eyes, but there was something about his bulky frame that spoke to Luke. It might have remained no more than a suspicion if the man hadn’t flung a quick glance over his shoulder as he ducked into an alleyway.

  It was the big American he had met on the train from Strasbourg to Konstanz. Cordell Oaks, the dairy-industry bore.

  There was no time to dwell on this. Borodin was bleeding from his chest and reaching for a chair, and the policeman was almost on them, his weapon now out. Luke made a show of laying the revolver aside on a table and raising his hand in a gesture of surrender. The German words didn’t come to him, so he said in English, “Don’t shoot.”

  The policeman showed no interest in shooting. In fact, he seemed barely interested in them at all. Sweeping his pistol over the few other customers still cowering beneath their tables, he made straight for the dead man sprawled facedown near the café entrance, and picked up the pistol beside his outstretched hand.

  Luke was struck with a sudden sense that finally the story would come out, now that the authorities were involved. There would be no more running scared from an unknown enemy.

  “He is with me,” said Borodin. “A friend.”

  The bullet had struck Borodin high in the chest on his left side, and a crimson stain was already spreading across his white shirt. The policeman hurried over and examined the wound, talking away in a tongue unknown to Luke. Borodin snapped a short-tempered reply, then turned to Luke. “Do you have a motorcar?”

  “There, by the church.” The white facade could be seen at the end of the short street across from the café.

  “Get the case,” Borodin ordered. “And my stick.”

  The policeman called to the timorous faces peering out the café windows: “This man needs to go to the hospital. Call police headquarters and tell them what has happened.”

  Together they helped Borodin across the square.

  “Who is the man Pippi shot?” Borodin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Luke replied. The body lay only a few yards from them, but the face was turned away.

  “And the man who shot me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know that bullet was meant for me.”

  Borodin gave an amused grunt. “Don’t worry, there will be others.”

  Pippi was at the wheel of the Citroën. A look of wild relief broke across her face when she spotted them approaching. She sprang from the car and pulled open the rear door.

  “Hello, Pippi,” said Borodin. “This is a friend of mine, Andrej.”

  Luke tossed the attaché case and the sword cane onto the passenger seat, then snatched the key from the ignition. “I’ll get something for the bleeding.” He hurried to the boot and unlocked it. Pippi joined him as he was ferreting for a shirt in his suitcase.

  “Did you see?” she said. “It was Wilke.”

  “Wilke? How?”

  She shook her head. “I heard the shots. I thought …”

  Despite everything they’d been through together, it was the first time he had seen her properly shaken.

  “He saved my life—again. I’ll explain later. We have to go.” He slammed the boot shut and handed her the keys. “You drive.”

  He dropped into the backseat beside Borodin, and was using his teeth to tear the shirt in two when the Citroën lurched away with a squeal of rubber on cobblestones.

  “Where are we going?” Pippi asked in German.

  “Where did you park the lorry?” said Borodin.

  “We need to get you seen to first,” Andrej replied.

  “Just show her the way.”

  “Turn right at that junction,” said Andrej, pointing.

  Luke worked half of the shirt into a tight ball, pressed it to the wound in Borodin’s chest, and held it there. “The man Pippi shot is a captain with the German Abwehr. I’m guessing the man who shot you was with him.”

  “The Abwehr?” groaned Andrej. “You didn’t tell me the Abwehr were mixed up in this!”

  “Because I didn’t know,” Borodin replied calmly.

  “He was the one who stole the paintings you delivered to us,” said Pippi. “The one who killed Johan.”

  “What paintings?” Andrej demanded. “And who is Johan?”

  “Put it from your mind,” said Borodin. “It’s another matter altogether—a piece of bad luck, bad timing, that’s all.”

  Andrej wasn’t to be silenced, though, and switched from German to another tongue.

  “I knew it. You changed your mind, didn’t you, you old fool?”

  Borodin smiled weakly. “When it came to it, sending a lamb to the slaughter …”

  “Well I hope the lamb is worth it.”

  “Oh, I think he is. And look at them. They make a fine couple, don’t you think?”

  “What, I risked my life for a pi
ece of matchmaking by a crazy old Croat?”

  “And for the large sum of money I left in the bottom drawer of your desk. It’s enough to give you and Frieda a good start somewhere else, although I don’t think it will be necessary. You’re unrecognizable in that uniform, especially with the mustache. Even I wasn’t sure it was you, at first.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “Think of it as a wedding present.”

  “What?”

  “She’s a fine woman, Andrej. You should ask her to marry you before she realizes how much better she could do for herself.”

  Andrej smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in his eyes. “I’ve heard of a doctor out near Regensdorf. He’s very discreet.”

  “Wrong direction. And no time. I have to get them over the border, out of the country.” He reached out and squeezed Andrej’s hand. “My jacket pocket, the left one—there’s a letter. Take it. Wait a few days; then post it for me.”

  By the time they pulled up beside the lorry, Andrej had shed most of his police uniform, revealing another layer of clothes beneath. He forced his feet back into the long leather boots and pushed the hems of his twill trousers down over them. He peeled off the two halves of his mustache, which Luke had never once suspected of being false. He then wished them well in German, shook Borodin’s hand, and clambered out of the car.

  “Where to now?” asked Pippi.

  “South.” Borodin pointed. “That way.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They drove in silence, alert and watchful, Borodin issuing directions to Pippi as necessary. They began to relax only when the outskirts of the city fell away and they found themselves in open countryside. It helped that the pressure on the wound was beginning to take effect. The hole in Borodin’s chest was no longer leaking blood as it had been before.

  Luke was steeling himself to ask the question that only the wounded man beside him could answer, when Borodin said, “Tell me everything that has happened since Paris. Every detail. It’s important.”

  “You first,” said Luke. “Who am I?”

  Borodin fell silent for a moment, as if deciding whether to reply. “Your name is Vincenzo Albrizzi.”

  Hearing his true name spoken for the first time sent a tremor through him.

  “I’m Italian?”

  “Half of you. The other half is Dalmatian—from the coast of Croatia, like me.”

  “How did I end up in an orphanage in England?” The need to know and to know quickly had become an almost physical discomfort.

  “It means nothing if I can’t find a way to keep you alive. For that, I need to know everything that happened since Paris.”

  “Later,” said Luke.

  Pippi took her eyes off the road and fired a sharp look at Borodin. “Tell him,” she ordered.

  “I’m trying to think of a way to do that,” Borodin replied.

  “The beginning is as good a place as any to start,” said Luke.

  It was a glib statement, but it seemed to capture Borodin’s imagination. “The beginning. Yes. Why not?” He paused. “It started before you were born. It started with a rock.”

  “A rock?”

  “I don’t know who threw it. Someone said it was Bartol Nicolic, but he denied it. I know this, though. If that rock had not hit your grandmother, everything would be different.”

  “Go on,” said Luke.

  It brought to mind the many times he had sat in his father’s study as a boy, listening to tales of adventure and derring-do. But this was his story, the story of his family, the Albrizzis, Venetians by origin, who had made the Dalmatian port of Spalato the base for their shipping business. Borodin sketched out some basic history of Dalmatia, in particular the building tensions between the Italian minority and the Croat majority in the years before the Great War of 1914.

  “It was the key to everything that happened with the Karaman brothers.”

  “Tell me about my family, my parents. I don’t want to know about the Karaman brothers.”

  “You should, because they are the ones who had you kidnapped. And they are the ones trying to kill you now. They are the people I work for.”

  “Kidnapped …”

  It was one of the wilder theories he had flirted with during those early years of tormented speculation. Could it really be true?

  “In Venice,” said Borodin. “When you were a baby.”

  “Why?”

  “I was getting to that when you interrupted me.”

  “Sorry,” said Luke. “Tell me about the Karaman brothers.”

  “No, you’re right, they can wait,” said Borodin. “Your father’s name was Alessandro. There was a younger brother. I don’t remember his name. Their father, your grandfather Vittorio—he ran the business, Albrizzi Marittima. A good business. They lived in one of the biggest houses in Spalato.”

  “And my mother?” Luke asked tentatively.

  “Marta. Marta Urlic. Her father owned the shop where your father bought his books. He was a student then.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Everyone knew Marta Urlic. She was beautiful.”

  “Was?”

  Borodin hesitated. “Maybe she still is; I don’t know. It was a long time ago. You have her eyes … and something in the mouth.”

  Marta Urlic and Alessandro Albrizzi, parents to Vincenzo. This was his reality, and it felt like a dream.

  “I never spoke to her, but I saw her many times with your father, walking together in town, at cafés, restaurants. Her father was not happy with the relationship. Many people were not happy. Maybe it played a part in what happened.” Borodin lingered on this thought for a moment. “No, like most things, it was about money and power.”

  It was also about an unfortunate incident that had seen the Albrizzi family drawn into the violence taking hold in Dalmatia: a big brawl down at the port between some of their Italian dock workers and a gang of Croats. Borodin hadn’t been present, but the following night he had helped raise the angry mob that marched on the Albrizzis’ home—a mob fired up by the Karaman brothers, small-time smugglers looking to make their mark.

  Luke’s grandfather had met the unruly crowd at the gates of the house and made a heartfelt appeal for calm, for cool heads, for unity.

  “He had us,” said Borodin. “We were silent, all of us. Then someone threw the rock.”

  It struck Luke’s grandmother square in the face, bringing her down. Two men burst from the house and rushed to help—company men, guards from the Albrizzi warehouses, brought in for protection. At the sight of their uniforms, the beast that had been soothed with words came back to life with a sudden, snarling vengeance. The air rang with curses, and the iron gates strained against the crush. Someone called for the gates to be lifted off their hinges, and backs bent to the task.

  Vittorio was making for the house, his wife in his arms, when the gates came free and crashed onto the gravel driveway. As the mob surged forward, one of the guards drew his pistol and fired. There was panic and pandemonium. Everyone scattered, vanishing into the night—all but one young man. He died later that night of the bullet wound to his neck. The guard who had fired the shot was arrested and charged with murder.

  Vittorio saw that he got the very best legal defense. During the trial, witnesses were called on both sides, although the Karamans did not take the stand, having distanced themselves completely from the affair. It was later said that what swung the day were the gruesome photographs that Luke’s grandmother had insisted be taken of her broken face before the surgeons and dentists went to work.

  Vittorio was the only Albrizzi in court when the judge delivered his verdict of justifiable homicide on the grounds of self-defense. It wasn’t known at the time, but all the other members of the family had left the country the night before on a ship bound for Venice—the last ship in th
e company fleet to steam away from Spalato. Marta, Luke’s mother, went with them, as did some of the household staff and a number of company employees. Albrizzi Marittima had ceased to exist in Dalmatia. The wharves and warehouses stood empty, as did the family home.

  The secret exodus had been meticulously planned. It only remained for Vittorio and the guard to be driven directly from the courthouse to an airfield on the edge of town, where a plane waited to fly them to Venice.

  “I don’t understand,” said Luke. “Why me if I wasn’t even born then? Why the Karamans?”

  “The boy who died that night, Toma Soric—he was a nephew of a cousin of the Karamans, or something like that, I forget.” Not a close relative, but family nonetheless. And in Croatia, when it came to family, you never forgave and you never forgot.

  “Retribution?” asked Luke. “An eye for an eye?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why am I alive?”

  “Because a man called Gotal could not kill a baby.”

  Pippi had remained silent until now. “Who could?”

  “A man like Gotal,” Borodin replied. “He had a reputation. They thought he would do it, but they were wrong. He took you in the street in Venice and he carried you far away, maybe as far as he could think, and left you there.”

  Gotal … the man standing in the shadows of the orphanage driveway, ankle deep in snow, waiting for the small package he had deposited on the front steps to be discovered. Only now did the scene that Luke had forced Sister Agnes to describe to him over and over during those early years make full and proper sense. Not his father, not a distraught husband who had lost his wife in childbirth, or any of the other theories distilled in the superheated retort of his juvenile imagination. No, just a bad man who had done a good thing.

  “He only made one mistake,” said Borodin. Having sat on his secret for so many years, Gotal unburdened himself to the priest who took his final confession. The priest then ran directly to the Karamans with the information.

  So that was what it boiled down to: a case of unfinished business brought to the Karamans’ attention by a snake of a priest. The picture was almost complete, and none too soon. Borodin was weakening, drawing breaths in ever shallower drafts as he laid bare his own role in the affair. He had known nothing of the Karamans’ involvement in Luke’s abduction, of Gotal’s change of heart, of the priest’s deceit, or even of Luke’s real identity—not at the beginning. He had simply been tasked with taking the life of an Englishman who worked at the Paris embassy—straightforward enough until he first set eyes on Luke and saw in his face dim echoes of long ago.