The Pigeon Project

by Irving Wallace

  “My God, if this isn’t a hoax, he’s trying to say—he’s made the discovery.”

  “What discovery? Now I’m the one who’s in the dark.”

  “The secret to the prolongation of human life, to human longevity. He’s a renowned gerontologist. You mean you’ve never heard of him? He’s been experimenting on this for twelve years. He’s currently in the Soviet Union, in the area of the Caucasus Mountains near the Black Sea. doing his research—and now he’s saying… My God, this is tremendous news, no news on earth could be greater, if, if he really wrote that note—”

  “If he wrote this note,” repeated Jordan. “That’s the question. Would anyone else besides you and MacDonald know of his research?”

  “Oh, yes. Many people know of it through scientific journals through his writings.”

  “Then someone else could have written this note as a practical joke.”

  “Possibly. Still…” There was hesitancy in Dr. Edwards’ voice. “Mr. Jordan, I am a scientist. I have a precise and logical mind. Before we examine the authenticity of this note, let us logically figure out how the professor could have written the message, assuming he did write it. Let me think.” There was a brief silence. “All right. I believe I have a logical scenario. The professor is in the Soviet Union. He makes his discovery. The Communists want it—in fact, he says in the note they want it—for themselves, I would guess. Professor MacDonald wants it for the world. That would be in character. He leaves the Soviet Union for wherever he can go. In this case he comes to Italy. The Russians learn he has left. They chase him or intercept him near Venice. They keep him on this island, before taking him back to the Soviet Union. Are there Russians in Venice? Is that logical?”

  “A few, since Venice elected a Communist government recently.”

  “In the note—he speaks of being imprisoned by Communists. Could he mean Italian Communists?”

  “He could,” admitted Jordan, “but it doesn’t seem likely. I can’t see Italian Communists behaving this way. It’s possible, but hard to believe.”

  “Still, if the Russians made them a promise—said, Look, well share his long-life discovery with you if you hold on to him until we can return him to the Soviet Union—that could have happened.”

  “It could have,” conceded Jordan. “But it’s hard for me to accept. It’s all too fantastic. It sounds as if someone is having fun with whoever finds the note.”

  “It sounds real enough to me,” said Dr. Edwards slowly. “I mean, everything in the message is factual or possible. He uses my name. He knows I am going to be at the hotel I’m at in Paris. He announces his discovery, when in fact his recent letters to me hinted he was onto something big. It very much sounds as if Professor MacDonald wrote that note.”

  Jordan remained skeptical. “But the information in his message—would anyone else know the same facts? Would anyone else know your name, that you were going to be at the Plaza Athénée in Paris right now? Would anyone else know he could be on the verge of so great a discovery?”

  “Yes, any number of people would know all that.”

  “Then the note could have been written by someone else who happened to be in this area?”

  She hesitated. “I suppose so. Although why anyone would do such a thing I can’t imagine.”

  “Don’t try to be logical about human motives, Dr. Edwards.”

  “I guess you are right.”

  Jordan glanced at the slip of paper again. “The note says he is being sent to the Soviet Union in two days—the day after tomorrow. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she wavered. “Could you—can you go to the local police in Venice and get them to investigate?”

  Jordan considered the move. “No,” he said, “I don’t think that would be wise. If it is a hoax, I’d be laughed out of Venice. I’m willing to help a damsel in distress to a point, but I don’t want to be made ridiculous. On the other hand, if it is not a hoax, I might be getting myself and the professor into real danger by going to the Italian police, who may have cooperated with the Russians in a kidnapping. What about you? Why don’t you go to someone in authority in France? The note asks you to ‘tell the world.’”

  She was silent once more. Finally, she spoke. “I’m hesitating, because—well, if it proved to be a hoax, I don’t mind being ridiculed, but what I’m afraid of is—if he is still in the Soviet Union going about his normal work, and this got out—the big plot, imprisonment, derring-do—and it weren’t true, it would endanger his position there. At the same time, if I went to the Sûreté or Interpol or some of the important United Nations people the professor knows, and the news was leaked—the Communists on San Lazzaro would be alerted, and might rush him back to the U.S.S.R. before anything could be done, and then claim they’d never had him. It seems there is no way to act safely.”

  “Not as long as we don’t know if this note is authentic or not.”

  Suddenly, the tone of Dr. Edwards’ voice heightened. “I know what to do,” she said with decision.

  “I’m going to find out whether that note you have is authentic.”

  “How?”

  “By looking at it. Of course. I know Professor MacDonald’s handwriting. If I see your note, I’ll know whether he wrote it or not. If someone else wrote it, then this is all nonsense and we can forget it. But if I can verify that the note is in his hand, then we’ll know it’s all true, and we won’t have to be afraid to take some action. Since our timing is so important, I’ll take the first flight I can get to Venice. Hold on, let me find out when there is a flight. I’ll ring the concierge on the other phone.”

  Jordan sat with the dead phone in his hand and pondered what fate had got him mixed up in this improbable affair with this strange lady.

  In a minute, she was back on the line. “Hello, are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “There’s a flight in two hours from De Gaulle. Alitalia. It takes an hour and a half to get from Paris to Venice. I’ll be there at four-thirty. Can you meet me at the airport with the note? It would be kind of you. We could solve it then and there. If Professor MacDonald wrote that note, and made his discovery, it would be a matter of life or death for the whole world.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Jordan. “Hey, whom do I look for?”

  “Look for the prettiest young woman leaving the jetliner.”

  With that, she hung up.

  Jordan dropped the receiver into, the cradle of the phone, stared at it a few seconds, then lifted it up again. He punched the intercom and pressed down Marisa’s number.

  “Marisa? About dinner tonight—I’m afraid I’m going to be tied up—an emergency—I have to be at the airport to meet a visiting fireman… What is a visiting fireman? I’ll explain it the next time I see you. For now, let’s say it is someone important. Okay?”

  * * *

  She was indeed the prettiest young woman off the airplane.

  Originally, when he had spoken to her on the telephone and she had told him she was a scientist, Professor MacDonald’s research associate, he had conjured up a picture of a stereotype. He had envisioned her as a cold, efficient virgin, fortyish, wearing bangs, hornrimmed spectacles, compressed lips, and lots of jaw. This picture had gone up in smoke when, just before hanging up, she had frankly told him that she was pretty. During the next hours in his office, making time until he would meet her, he had tried to frame a new picture and it had come to nothing. He had decided, upon arriving at Marco Polo Airport, that he would be watching for a glacial blonde who was probably an aggressive feminist.

  Now, posted outside the air terminal looking in, Jordan smoked his straight-stemmed pipe and kept an eye out for her as he watched the first passengers from Paris go through customs with their hand baggage.

  Then he saw her—was certain it was she—because she had the kind of good looks that made you turn your head on the street. She was rather tall, maybe five feet six, erect, poised, graceful, carrying a short beige
jacket and wearing a blouse of some material that clung to her pointed, shimmying breasts and a short skirt. She was neither glacial nor blond. She was animated and brunette. She had a short gamin haircut, smooth brow, big eyes behind her oversized lavender sunglasses, a pert nose, full red lips, and she was in her ripe mid-twenties. He had seen her before in a half dozen lush paintings by Boucher—Marie Louise O’Morphi.

  She was coming directly at him, carrying an Hermes overnighter in one hand and a brown leather purse under her other arm.

  “Mr. Jordan,” she said. No question mark. “I’m Alison Edwards.”

  “I know,” he said. “How did you know?”

  She looked him over. “You’re just what I pictured. Maybe a little flabby, less muscular.”

  “Well, you’re not,” he said with a laugh. “Not what I pictured, I mean.”

  “The ‘Doctor’ in Dr. Edwards’ always puts people off. It’s formidable. I’m not. Right now I’m scared and nervous, and trying to hide it.”

  “Nothing to worry about yet. Here, give me your bag.” He took it. “I have a boat waiting. I think we’d better be moving.”

  Once they were shut inside the cabin of the motor launch, seated facing each other, the craft cast off, rocked around, and was soon cutting the water toward Venice.

  Her face had become anxious. “Do you have the—the note?”

  “I left it in my suite. I thought it better if you saw it and discussed it in privacy.”

  “Do you have any new thoughts?”

  He glanced at the pilot. “If I did, I wouldn’t discuss them here. Actually, I don’t. Everything depends on what you say about the handwriting.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’ll tell.”

  “Have you ever been to Venice?”

  “No. I’ve always dreamed of coming here—under different circumstances. In fact, this is my first time away from the States.” She peered outside across the prow of the motorboat. “Exactly where are we going?”

  “Hotel Danieli, right in Venice. I keep a year-round suite there. I reserved an adjoining room for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be here long enough for that. I made a reservation on the last flight back to Paris a few hours from now.”

  “Then you think it’s all a hoax, and your boss is safe and sound in—in wherever he is in the Soviet Union?”

  She evaded the question. “I put through a call to him, to see if he was really there, just outside Sukhumi, a town in western Georgia. It was hopeless. You never get through. I’ve tried before. Never once got a call through to him. We stay in touch by mail.” Her eyes—brown, he guessed—held on him through the lavender sunglasses. “Fact or fiction. I don’t know what to think.”

  “You’ll know in twenty minutes,” he said, and he sat back to smoke, wondering why he wished he were less flabby and more muscular.

  In twenty minutes, as he had predicted, they were at the Danieli, ready for the moment of truth. They stepped out onto the boat landing alongside the Danieli, went into the lobby, climbed one flight of broad red-carpeted marble stairs to the first floor, turned right and crossed to the second flight of stairs, climbed them, and near the top of the staircase entered suite 226.

  The familiar large sitting room—brown diamond-patterned, carpet, beige walls, three-cushioned green sofa, two green armchairs facing the sofa, small brown refrigerator with its tray of bottles and glasses, leather-topped desk, another sofa—was cool and darkened, since the maid had closed the heavy green wooden shutters against the sun. While Alison Edwards washed her face and touched up her lips, Jordan deposited her overnighter on the light brown bedspread in her adjacent bedroom. Then he crossed the sitting room to his own larger bedroom, unlocked the suitcase resting on his double bed, and retrieved the note signed by Professor MacDonald.

  Back in the sitting room, he pushed the shutters on each window aside and allowed the day’s last sun to stream in. Remaining at one window, he shaded his eyes and squinted in the direction of San Lazzaro, which was blocked from sight by the island before it. Could one of the most prominent scientists in the world, with a discovery that would shake the foundations of mankind, actually be imprisoned on a piece of land in the midst of this placid lagoon and this busy tourist paradise? It seemed most unlikely.

  As Alison Edwards came into the room, he turned toward his desk and motioned for her to sit down.

  “Okay, here it is,” he said.

  She had removed her sunglasses, and her wide brown eyes followed his hand as he laid the slip of paper on the desk before her.

  She stared at it as if mesmerized, reached out and took it by each end, and brought it up closer to her eyes. She studied it in silence, her features rigid. She raised her head toward him. Her face was sheet-white.

  “It’s his,” she said almost inaudibly. “It’s in Professor MacDonald’s handwriting and it’s his signature.

  I’ve seen his handwriting a thousand times. There’s no mistaking it. This appeal for help was written by Professor MacDonald, no other. It’s for real!”

  The single hand now holding the note began to quiver, and she looked as if she might cry. Gently, Jordan took the note from her and slipped it into his pocket.

  She was on her feet. “He’s actually a prisoner on San Lazzaro. They’re going to send him back to the Soviet Union in two days. The world will never see him—or his secret—again. Mr. Jordan, we’ve got to save him.” She clutched Jordan’s arm. “What should we do?”

  * * *

  A half hour later, her question still echoed in his head.

  What should we do?

  We.

  Any further involvement with her, any part at all in this mysterious and potentially troublesome enterprise gave him pause. It was not his sort of thing, not at this time in his rattled life. He was not seeking commitment. Yet maybe in some hidden reach of his heart, he was seeking—something.

  “Dr. Edwards,” he had said, “let me think about it. I’m going downstairs. I’m out of tobacco. I won’t be long. No more than a half hour. Then we’ll sit down and calmly discuss the best course.”

  He had left her, very much alone and very wretched, himself feeling a minor betrayer, since he would be weighing his role in Professor MacDonald’s fate and since he might return with a verdict that would cast her out on her own and helpless.

  Troubled, he had made his way downstairs through the hotel lobby and outdoors, and dutifully bought his pack of tobacco, although he did not need it, and continued to the Gran’ Caffé Chioggia in the Piazzetta. There, seated isolated in the third row, facing the facade of the Doges’ Palace, still dazzling in the late daylight, he erased the diverting sights of Venice from his vision and turned his mind’s eye inward.

  Jordan pictured Alison Edwards, and he liked what he saw. It was an incomplete picture, but there was enough of it to attract him. His first instinct was to help someone who was pretty and who was lost. Of Professor MacDonald he could form no clear picture, except that of some sort of savant, a blurred cross between Einstein and Schweitzer, who had made a remarkable, life-changing discovery and had been imprisoned for it and had communicated his terrible predicament in a most improbable way.

  But most sharply defined was the thing at stake.

  The Fountain of Youth, MacDonald had called it in his note.

  Jordan asked himself a single question: Was it worth a commitment that might seriously disrupt his euphoric, if discontented, life?

  His mind immediately rejected any commitment. Selfishly, he wanted no association with others, especially not with the lives of two strangers. He wanted no changes, no ventures into the unknown. He wanted no action, no move that would make him more conspicuous in Venice, no effort that would alter the routine of his near-empty days. Certainly, he wanted no role of decision-making that would make others dependent upon him.

  In this mood, he questioned what was at stake, was doubtful of its value. There were no details except that the essence of it was an extens
ion of human life. Was that so important? Either a God in heaven or some accident of nature had given humans their three score and ten years on earth, and there was no voice to say life would be improved by tampering with it. If such a discovery had been able to save Claire from her insane death, that would have been different. But it could no longer affect her or anyone like her. Or himself, the survivor, Claire’s survivor? Could it be meaningful to him? He had an instant answer. Today’s answer. For him, a prolongation of life meant only a prolongation of pain. He preferred to wait out his time to seventy rather than 100 or 170. As far as he was concerned, the damn discovery meant only that old people would grow older. With one except—except if one of the old people were his father.

  His father.

  Immediately, the cynical logic in Jordan’s mind faded and was supplanted by a feeling, the familiar other ache in his heart.

  He had been raised in a small, peaceful Wisconsin town, an hour’s drive north of Chicago, by his father, Michael Jordan, the only parent he had ever known and one whom he had admired and loved. Jordan’s mother had died of pneumonia a year after his birth. The women in the house had been his older sister and a spinster aunt, who was his father’s sister and junior, forever with a dishrag or dust mop in hand. His father, having sired him when past fifty, had already been advanced in years when Jordan entered college.

  Jordan found himself smiling as he remembered his father. The old man had been the most popular teacher in the local high school. Michael Jordan taught English—not grammar, but literature—and every evening, seven nights a week, he worked on his opus, The Land of Evermore, the story of life in a Utopia of the future. In dim memory throughout Jordan’s childhood, and in better memory throughout his adolescence, his father had been making preparatory notes on his epic Utopia and its story. About the time Jordan graduated from high school and had been accepted by a university, his father had finally felt ready to set his grand design on paper as a novel and had begun writing it.

  Several times before his graduation from college, Jordan had asked to read what his father had written to that point. The first time, his father had told him the manuscript was not yet in shape to be read. The next time, his father had told him to read Plato’s The Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Thommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun, and James Harrington’s Oceana, as a means of comparison before reading his own book. Enthusiastically, Jordan had undertaken the assignment. He had read three of the four books, with growing excitement at the opportunity of reading his father’s life work, when a midnight telephone call had summoned him home to Wisconsin.