Where Dead Men Meet

by Mark Mills

  It was chilling to hear just how close he had come to completing his mission. The night before their encounter at the Spanish pavilion, he had followed Luke home through the darkened streets and been within seconds of dispatching him, before curiosity stayed his hand. Unbeknownst to Borodin, though, suspicions were growing about how long he was taking to finish the job.

  “I followed you to the Spanish pavilion, and two people followed me. They saw us talk. That was enough for Petrovic.”

  “Who is Petrovic?”

  “The head of the Paris operation. You just met him. Didier.” Borodin hesitated before adding, “That’s right. I came to Zurich to sell you back to them.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Thank you,” said Luke.

  “You think I have done you a favor? All I have done is open the gates of hell. They will come for you, as they did for me.”

  He described the attempt on his life at his apartment, and how he had extracted Luke’s whereabouts from the female assassin. Ironically, his only hope of survival lay in keeping alive the man he was assigned to kill. That was why he had hurried to the restaurant and intervened. That was why he had then dispatched Luke to Konstanz, to Pippi, because no one would think of searching for him there. With Luke safely beyond their reach, the Karamans would be obliged to negotiate.

  “Which way now?” asked Pippi.

  The wide river valley they had been traveling along for the past half hour narrowed suddenly and bifurcated in front of them, mountains rising on all sides.

  Borodin pointed. “There, left.”

  The road sign read: cazis, thusis, andeer. Below it was another panel: italien.

  “Italy?” said Luke.

  “First a doctor for me, then Venice for you.”

  Borodin knew of a small pass through the mountains, open only in summer. It would be the safest place for them to cross into Italy. With luck, the tiny border post might even be unmanned.

  He let out a low groan and closed his eyes. Luke caught Pippi’s concerned look in the rearview mirror.

  “Why did you change your mind in Zurich?”

  “You think I am not asking myself the same thing? Three times in my life I have been shot, and twice you were there.” Borodin opened his eyes and smiled weakly. “No, you are not good for my health, Vincenzo Albrizzi.” He coughed, and from his chest came a liquid rattle, faint but unmistakable.

  “We need to get you to a doctor now, before Italy.”

  “You want to be arrested by the police? They can’t protect you from the Karamans. Only your family can, only the Albrizzis. No, we keep moving, and you tell me everything that happened in Konstanz.”

  They left the twisting valley road and struck out into the mountains proper at Splügen, a picturesque jumble of wood- and stone-built houses straddling a milky torrent. They crossed the bridge and wound their way up the steep green pasture south of the village, toward the dense belt of pines. The gradient didn’t ease as they entered the tree line, and the Citroën strained its way through the snake of hairpin switchbacks. The road finally began to level out, and the gloomy world of the pines gave way to a tortured, harsh, and rocky landscape.

  “The border is close,” said Borodin. “We need to prepare.”

  He pointed out a track up ahead. There was no saying where it led, not until they had cleared a steep and stony rise and saw that it petered out at a wooden chalet. Low, lopsided, and grayed with age, it backed onto a clump of pines. The shutters were closed, and there was no sign of life except for a big hawk perched on the rickety rail fence that enclosed the property. It flapped off lazily into the blue as the Citroën drew to a halt.

  Borodin eased himself from the backseat and took in the view, savoring it. “Yes, this is good.”

  The rooftops of Splügen were just visible far below, and on the other side of the valley a mountain peak capped with summer snow seemed to tower over them, even at such a distance.

  Borodin set off up the grassy rise toward the chalet. Pippi laid a hand on Luke’s arm, holding him back.

  “So now you know the truth.”

  “Do I?” he replied.

  “You don’t believe him?”

  He hadn’t meant it that way, and he struggled to find the right words. He had lived so long with the not-knowing that it had become an elemental part of him. He felt like a prisoner released from a long stint behind bars: happy to have been given his freedom, but ill-equipped to deal with it. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “You will,” said Pippi. Her eyes flicked toward Borodin. “He’s dying.”

  “Don’t write him off yet. He’s a tough old bugger.”

  By the time they joined Borodin, he had installed himself on a crude wooden bench beside the front door and was shrugging off his jacket. He peered inside his blood-soaked shirt with an air of mild curiosity.

  “Do you have another shirt? A dark color would be good.”

  “I have a navy-blue one.”

  Borodin asked Pippi to fetch it from the car. As soon as she was out of earshot, he said, “She is strong, but she is not a killer. What she did today …” He trailed off briefly. “There will be a reaction.”

  “I’ll be ready for it.”

  “Good, because you are all she has now.”

  “I know.”

  Borodin gripped his forearm and said with a sudden intensity, “You understand, don’t you? There is only one way this will end, and you cannot do it alone.”

  “Then it’s a good job I’ve got the two of you.”

  “No, I am staying, and Pippi is not enough. The Karamans must die. Your family is rich, powerful. They can help. You must persuade them who you are, and that won’t be easy.”

  “What do you mean, you’re staying? Staying where?”

  Borodin spread his hands. “Here. I like this place.”

  “You need a doctor.”

  “I need a doctor we can trust.” There was no guarantee that an Italian doctor wouldn’t denounce them to the police. More crucially, though, if the Swiss border guards had been alerted about the incident in Zurich, they would be searching for a wounded man. “You are a young couple on holiday. You stayed last night in Luzern, and tonight you stay in Chiavenna.”

  Borodin refused to be swayed, even when Pippi reappeared and heard of his decision. At a certain point, he grew angry at their efforts to get him to reconsider. “Enough,” he snapped. “I have helped you; now I am a danger to you. I know of these things; you don’t, so stop talking and listen.”

  He spelled out their predicament with a grim succinctness. The Karamans would have assumed by now that he had revealed all to Luke, which meant Petrovic would be waiting for them in Venice. When they got there, they were to stay small, in the shadows. “You must think and you must be clever and you must trust no one.”

  He suggested that they drive as far as Bergamo, where they should abandon the car and take the train, though not all the way. They were to get off at Venice Mestre, the last stop on the mainland, and take a private water taxi across the lagoon to the island. Money was not a problem: the attaché case contained a small fortune. “There is also this.”

  He yanked at the lining of his jacket until the stitching along the hem gave way. Slim bundles of currency spilled out. He held a few back. “I have plans, too,” he said.

  Petrovic would have a lot of resources at his disposal, and they were to spend the money freely in order to stay ahead of him. “I know Petrovic. He will not stop until you are dead. You must kill him first.” Unfortunately, Borodin’s only contact in Venice had died some years ago, so there was nothing he could offer them in the way of assistance. They would have to finish the thing themselves, and it had to happen in Venice. On this he was firm. If Petrovic managed to slip away, he would be back, and Luke would know nothing of it unti
l it was too late. “If you see him, you must kill him: no thought, no hesitation. Can you do that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then maybe this will help,” said Borodin. “Petrovic was in England. I learned it after you left Paris.”

  Luke frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “He told me it was not easy to find the orphanage. That’s all he told me, all I know.”

  The warm breeze blowing in from the west seemed to take a sudden dip in temperature. “Sister Agnes …”

  “Think of it,” said Borodin. “Use it. Now, wash your hands; then go and find your family.”

  Luke glanced at his palms, stained with Borodin’s blood. He headed for the stone trough nearby. The water was clear as glass and pleasantly warm after a day beneath a cloudless sky. Dusk was drawing in, the lowering sun giving ground to great slabs of shadow that crept down the mountainsides into the valleys. He looked over to see Pippi helping Borodin into the shirt. It was a touching sight. He sat slumped on the bench and she knelt before him doing up the buttons, like a mother preparing her young son for school. No place was a good place to die, but there were many worse places to draw one’s last breath than here in the wild heights, far above the world, halfway to the waiting gods.

  Borodin insisted on accompanying them to the car. He wished to look over the vehicle one last time, to make sure any last smudges of his blood were wiped away and that the money was well hidden beneath the backseat.

  “When this is over, there is a favor you can do for me. I have a daughter, Simona. She hates me for many reasons, all of them good. I have not seen her since she was a child. I have never seen her son. They live on the island of Vis, a town called Komiza. She is married to a fisherman called Lasic. Can you remember that?”

  “Viz. Komiza. Simona Lasic,” said Pippi.

  “The money you do not use, give to her, to them.”

  “When this is over, you can give it to her yourself,” said Luke.

  Borodin smiled weakly. “She won’t take it from me. She probably won’t take it from you, but you can try.”

  He planted a kiss on Pippi’s cheek, then turned and shook Luke’s hand.

  “I don’t how to thank you.”

  “I do,” said Borodin. “Stay alive. Finish it.” He released Luke’s hand. “You should know, your family paid good money to get you back when you were taken.”

  “A ransom?”

  “Yes, a ransom. For the Karamans, everything is a way to get rich—even revenge.”

  Luke struggled to see what he was driving at. “What are you saying?”

  “I know what he’s saying,” said Pippi.

  “It is good that one of you has a brain,” Borodin said with a gleam of ironic mockery. “Now, go. And no more faces like that when you get to the border. Remember, you are on holiday; you are happy; you are in love.”

  At Pippi’s suggestion, Luke drove: a woman behind the wheel was more likely to draw the eye of an overzealous border guard. There was a knock on the roof as they were pulling away, and Luke braked.

  Borodin’s face appeared at the driver’s window.

  “One more thing. Have you seen Les Bas-Fonds?”

  “The film?”

  “With Jean Gabin.”

  “Yes.” He had taken Diana to see it at the Parisiana on Boulevard Poissonière.

  “What happens to Pépel at the end? Does he die?”

  “No, he goes to prison.”

  “Oh.”

  “But the girl is waiting for him when he gets out.”

  “Natascha.”

  “I don’t remember her name.”

  “Natascha. She waited for him. That’s good.”

  The last Luke saw of Borodin was a juddering reflection in the rearview mirror as the rutted track dipped over a brow. He was leaning awkwardly on his sword cane, his other hand held high in a gesture of farewell, and even in the radiance of the sinking sun he looked pale as ashes.

  Luke glanced over at Pippi. He could tell she was teetering on the edge of tears.

  “I think I know what he meant. If the Karamans are so keen to make everything pay, are they really doing this just for the principle of the thing, to finish the job?”

  “Yes,” she replied quietly. “That is what he meant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Borodin eased the tip of the knife between the shutters and slipped the metal latch. The window proved to be more problematic, and he was obliged to break a pane of glass with his elbow before he could gain entry to the chalet.

  Standing in the close mustiness of the darkened interior, it struck him that his life had come full circle. Here he was again, back where he had started as a sixteen-year-old runaway, breaking into houses.

  There was nothing to eat in the kitchen, not even a tin of soup, although he did find a dusty bottle of schnapps in a cupboard. The liquor burned a path from the tip of his tongue to his stomach, and when he dribbled some of it on the wound, the pain was so great that his eyes watered and he cried out.

  He lit a kerosene lamp, wandered through to the living room, and dropped into an armchair. He had no illusions about the severity of the wound. Everything was still functioning, but with less force, like a mantel clock in need of a wind.

  He took another slug of schnapps and let his head roll back. He stared at the ceiling, at the intricate rib cage of rough-hewn beams and rafters supporting the planked roof. And when he closed his eyes, he saw a different structure, a pattern that had underpinned his actions over the past week and brought him inexorably to this place.

  Why had he sent Luke south to Konstanz, to Pippi, when he could just as easily have sent him north to Garstman in Antwerp, or even to Lucille in Nantes? Both were unknown to the organization, and both would willingly have given the young Englishman safe refuge while the deal was struck with Petrovic. So why hadn’t he even considered them as alternatives?

  Because Konstanz and Zurich were stepping-stones to Italy, to Venice. From the moment things had turned violent in Paris—even before, at the Spanish pavilion—he was never going to trade away Luke’s life. He was always going to steer him home to his family.

  Why was it only now so blindingly clear to him? Did he hold himself in such low regard that the notion that he might be capable of an act of charity was too absurd even to consider? Quite possibly. Then again, maybe he was deluding himself, sensing the end and casting about for evidence of his humanity—anything to salve his soul as he shuffled toward oblivion.

  He took another sip of schnapps, flattening it against his palate and inhaling the heady vapors.

  No, he wasn’t the type to seek some kind of private absolution. The explanation was far simpler. He had changed—a little late in life, admittedly, but it had happened. France had infected him, seduced him by slow degrees, getting beneath his skin, teaching him to look at the world and his place in it quite differently. Ten years ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have done the deed regardless of any suspicions he might have about Luke’s real identity.

  He was glad his curiosity had gotten the better of him, for what a story it had turned out to be: a man with a history of unthinking violence sparing the life of an infant boy, who had ticked off the years in happy ignorance of his good fortune until death came visiting once more.

  To have ended the thing there, betraying Gotal’s uncharacteristic display of mercy, would have been like rescuing a castaway and then beating him to death for his coral necklace. It was unconscionable. No, the underdog deserved a helping hand, a chance to rewrite the final chapter.

  Luke and Pippi were smart, determined, impressively calm in a crisis, but the odds were stacked high against them. He put their chances at poor to middling. Luke’s disappointment at what awaited him in Venice wouldn’t help matters. Should he have warned him, prepared him? He had wanted to, comin
g close during the drive from Zurich, and again just now, while Pippi was rummaging for the shirt in the back of the car. He hadn’t been able to find the words, though.

  Another slug of schnapps; another twist of the key in the clock.

  He knew that if he didn’t move soon, this was where they would find him: slouched in the armchair. It took a superhuman effort to force himself up and out of it.

  He had to get to a phone, or at least try. It could make all the difference in the youngsters’ prospects.

  Italy

  Chapter Thirty

  If Pippi had had her way, they would have driven through the night, deep into Italy, leaving the frontier far behind them, and only a lack of fuel kept them from it.

  Concealing their anxiety behind Cheshire-cat grins, they had passed through the border controls without too much difficulty. If anything, the Italians had been more thorough than the Swiss, demanding to know their itinerary and even poking around in the boot of the car before raising the barrier and waving them through.

  There had been little in the way of celebration. They had cleared another hurdle but lost an ally in the process. No, more than an ally—the man who had brought them together, the man who had handed Luke back his life. They made the descent down the long valley below the pass in almost total silence, each alone with their thoughts, the darkness deepening around them until, by the time they reached Chiavenna, all that remained of the day was a low smear of light in the west. Borodin had suggested they spend the night in the town, but Pippi was all for pushing on, and she was clearly in no mood to discuss it further.