‘What’s the earliest connection we could make?’ he asked.
‘For Rome, nine twenty-five. You’d arrive there at ten forty-five. That would get you to Venice at fourteen twenty-five.’ The woman tugged at her eyelashes, one of which came off on the tip of her finger like the leg of a spider.
‘OK,’ Pagan said. ‘We’ll go through Rome.’
He watched as she tapped her keyboard. The printer, whirring into life, issued two tickets. He paid with his credit card, stuck the tickets in his pocket, then, followed by the girl, wandered round the terminal. It was eight-thirty according to the departure screens. A brief time to kill. He got some coffee from a machine, thought about smoking, changed his mind.
He looked in the window of a shop selling souvenirs of France, jars of Dijon mustard, baguettes, wines. He perceived his own reflection in glass. He looked pallid, worn down. In the same window the girl seemed like a ghostly shadow standing just behind him. It was, he thought, an appropriate little cameo – a faded snapshot, a creased item you carried in the back of your wallet.
He sat down, finished his coffee. The girl sat alongside him. Pagan crushed his cardboard cup, dropped it in a waste bin. He gazed at the information screens, pondered faraway destinations.
‘When we get to Venice, what then?’ she asked.
‘We go to Barron’s.’
‘Together?’
‘You step inside – I’ll be right behind you, armed and ready. He’s expecting you. I’ll be the surprise.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘Why? Do you feel you’re betraying Barron? Is that what you feel?’
‘Maybe.’
‘My heart aches,’ he said.
She pressed her hands between her knees and looked at the floor and was silent a long time. When she spoke her voice was quiet. ‘In a strange kind of way I’m sorry we—’
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Pagan said. ‘You have any regrets, keep them to yourself. Spare me.’
She raised her face, looked into his eyes. She said nothing. Restless, he got up, moved around the terminal. The girl followed him a few yards behind. His attention drifted to the doorway of a news-stand, where there was a rack of the morning’s papers. The headlines concerned the devastation that had taken place in Prague, the assassination of Svobodin and several of his ministers inside the Castle. A picture showed smoke rising from the building.
Pagan, tired of bombs and destruction, weary of hatreds, allowed his eye to wander across the front pages of various newspapers – Italian, French, English. There were photographs of Vladimir Gurenko, looking small and startled, perhaps even vaguely deranged, by the flashbulbs of cameras. Three separate photographs – Gurenko shaking hands with the British Prime Minister, Gurenko in the presence of the French President.
And the third – Gurenko being greeted by Ambassador William Caan on the steps of the US Embassy in London. Caan looked positively beatific, glowing in the Russian’s presence. Gurenko wore a stressed-out laboured smile, that of a man obliged to carry on his back the burden of a nation splintered by factions.
Pagan stared at the Ambassador’s handsome face, then lowered his eyes and glanced at the text accompanying the pictures. The words he read caused a darkness to stir at the back of his brain. He’d been too preoccupied with the tunnel, and with Brennan Carberry, and Streik, and Carlotta, to pay anything but the most superficial attention to what was going on in the wider world around him. He’d been drawn so far down into his own depths that the movement of politicians was remote from him, like an ancient clock he heard from time to time ticking asthmatically in a distant room.
Caan greets Gurenko.
Gurenko, according to the text, is on his way to meet the Italian Prime Minister in Venice. A lover of art, the President will also visit the Scuola Grande di San Rocco …
Venice. Wintry Venice.
Where Tobias Barron resides …
Where Carlotta may be …
He seized a newspaper from the rack and gazed at the photographs and he had the curious sense he was in some way seeing beyond them, he was looking into another dimension, as if what he held in his hand was not a record of the recent past but an insight – slim and tenuous – into the future.
The girl stood behind him, looking over his shoulder. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
He wondered what his expression revealed. He stuffed the newspaper back in the rack. ‘I hope it’s me,’ he replied.
THIRTY-FIVE
VENICE
SHE WALKED QUICKLY THROUGH THE NARROW STREETS. HERE AND there flags fluttered. Festive Venice: the city was welcoming the President of Russia. The wind in the shiny plastic bunting made whiplike sounds as if the air were filled with birds of prey. Sunlight in the squares, fat women strutting in fur coats, kids running back and forth. Happily ever after was what Barron had said. What did he see in the future for them? Some Caribbean island where they’d grow ancient together? Walks along glistening beaches? Meals eaten on stuccoed terraces?
That wasn’t happiness, not for her. That was boredom. Barron’s little world.
She was happy right now, happy doing what she was doing, she was vibrant with the idea of death. Her blood rushed. She was electric, on fire, it seemed to her that anyone looking at her would see around her an aura of flame, a burning in the depths of her eyes. Barron could never begin to understand her, Barron was weak when you got right down to the place where he lived. What could he offer her in the future?
She crossed a small bridge, heard the click of her own urgent footsteps. When she reached the Rialto she barely noticed the shoppers perusing the silk scarves and T-shirts and costume jewellery on display. These things belonged in another world, one that didn’t have anything to do with Alyssia Baranova from Smolensk. She was a tourist in this place, a stranger, she was merely passing through. She turned her face up, looked at the sun, blinked.
On the other bank of the Grand Canal she found herself moving in the shade of an alley, passing cafés, conscious of voices raised in small talk. Alyssia Baranova wouldn’t understand Italian. She wouldn’t know how to go inside a café and order a drink except by pointing to a menu and nodding her head in the silly apologetic way tourists had. She might be thinking of her father, the engineer, and wondering how he was surviving the ravages of winter in Russia. Or her mother, her careworn mother with the grooved forehead and the intricate network of wrinkles round her lips and the hands that were chapped and cracked by the cruelty of the season. Alyssia Baranova might stop and pick out a picture postcard and pay for it in the clumsy manner of foreigners who don’t understand currency. Yes, these were the things Alyssia would do.
She emerged from the alley into the direct white flash of sunlight falling on a small square. The Scuola wasn’t far away. She looked up, saw banners being shifted by the wind. She was aware of policemen now, scores of them, and soldiers standing idly round in groups with their automatic rifles held lazily against their bodies. Certain alleyways had been cordoned off. Venice, vigilant host, protector of the man called Gurenko. She smelled all around her the inherent decay of the city, the odour of canals, the creeping damp of old stone lapped for centuries by water.
She walked to the Campo San Rocco, where already journalists and cameramen were gathering. Armed soldiers thronged the square. The reporters, the TV analysts, the commentators, the cameramen – they strained to get closer to the Scuola. Here and there angry words were traded; a soldier seized the camera of a particularly persistent photographer and threw it on the ground, where it shattered.
Alyssia Baranova had to show her identity card to an armed guard before she was allowed access to the doorway of the building, a sombre place corroded by fog and damp in winter and heat in summer.
It was exactly two o’clock.
The interior of the building, the gloomy main hall, was chilly, despite the body heat generated by the milling security personne
l. She understood that the preservation of the Tintorettos depended on the temperature. Too much heat might crack or damage them. She passed through a metal-detector, had her ID card scrutinized by a silver-haired Russian security agent in an Italian double-breasted suit, who smiled at her. She understood: this was the one. This was the one who had cleared the way for her. There were going to be no obstructions, the machine had been lubricated.
She entered the hall. A long table had been placed in the centre, ten chairs on either side. All around her Russian security people, thirty men and women, scanned the walls with electronic sweeping devices. They were thorough: walls, the floor, the chairs, the table, everything. Perched on long aluminium stepladders, agents examined the ceiling. There were lengths of thick black electric cable across the floor. Portable consoles, attached to the electronic devices, depicted graphs, like those machines you saw measuring heartbeats in hospitals.
She raised her face, looked up at the paintings, which meant nothing to her; there was no artistic appreciation in Alyssia Baranova’s character. The Adoration of the Magi. The Circumcision. The mystic nature of the works was lost to her. Their dark colours, enlivened here and there by flecks of red and gold, didn’t touch her.
Somebody approached her, fussing, worried, mumbling, a small man with rimless glasses, seemingly the curator. ‘I do not approve, I do not approve,’ he was saying as he rushed back and forth, making sure that nobody actually laid a hand on any of the art. ‘Clumsy people, such clumsy people, what do they care that this is all so priceless? Why did they choose this place when they could have chosen so many others? Politicians. Pah. Pah. They think the world revolves around them.’
Alyssia Baranova, pretending not to understand, moved away from him. She attached herself to the security personnel, buried herself among them, pretending to be officious, looking this way and that with an expression of grave concern. She melted into the crowd; perfect camouflage. She had the ability to appear busy, to look fussed, under pressure.
‘Are you new?’
Alyssia Baranova turned. The woman who’d asked the question was in her middle thirties, prettified by too much lipstick and rouge. She had a rather stern expression.
‘I haven’t seen you before,’ the woman remarked.
Alyssia smiled in a quiet way. ‘I was brought in at the last moment,’ she said.
‘That accent,’ the woman said. ‘Are you from Leningrad?’
‘I lived there for a time. But my parents moved around.’ Alyssia shrugged. She hadn’t expected conversation. Her Russian, which she hadn’t used in a long time, was still fluent.
The woman glanced at the silver-haired man in the doorway, then turned her face back to Alyssia, and her expression was one of knowing slyness. ‘I think I see.’
‘See what?’ Alyssia felt a very slight alteration of her heart. ‘What do you see?’
‘You’re one of his latest,’ the woman said.
Alyssia shook her head. ‘Whose latest?’
‘My dear. He picks us up and drops us when he feels like it. It’s nothing to be ashamed about. You’re Budenny’s new playmate.’
Why deny it? Just go along with it all. ‘I didn’t think anyone knew,’ she said coyly.
The woman laid a hand on Alyssia’s arm. ‘His appetites are enormous. Everybody knows that,’ and she laughed, although the sound was dry and brittle and perhaps even a little envious. ‘Good luck. You’ll need it.’
Alyssia moved away, walking to the rear of the grey stone hall. There she turned and looked in the direction of the man called Budenny, who was gazing back at her across the big room. Was that a wink, that flutter of eyelid? Budenny had turned his face away from her now. She felt like an excited participant in a clandestine love affair. Should she blush?
She made herself busy, going down on her knees, examining woodwork with her fingertips, scrutinizing it with a professional air, checking for anything the electronic sweepers might have missed – although, of course, they would have missed nothing. Her fingers encountered the ledge Barron had told her about, dark wood, shadowy, ancient. You can’t miss it. You go there after the electronic boys have worked the area.
She coughed, took a handkerchief from her pocket, raised it to her lips. She sneaked the small cylindrical object from the folds of the handkerchief and stuck it under the ledge, deftly pressing it in place with a short length of tape. The sweepers had already worked this spot; they wouldn’t be back. She stood upright, moving away from the taped object. She made her way across the room, passed close to The Assumption of the Virgin and then walked toward the doorway. Budenny looked at her – but it was difficult to read his expression. One eyebrow raised, he inclined his head toward her.
‘You’re the one with the head cold,’ he said.
Barron had told her to expect this remark. ‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘It’s the season. Go back to your hotel. Take it easy.’
‘I will. Thank you.’
He dismissed her with a languid gesture of a hand. She walked out of the Scuola. She crossed the Campo San Rocco, pushing past soldiers and journalists. When she was free of the area, she looked at her watch. Two-thirty. Her work was done. She went over the Rialto and decided to stroll across the Piazza di San Marco. Perhaps she’d even stop for coffee at the Florian in the archways. Then she’d go back to Barron’s apartment on Calle dei Avocati, and the fiction that was Alyssia Baranova would cease to exist.
THIRTY-SIX
VENICE
FRANK PAGAN AND KATHERINE CAIRNEY ARRIVED AT MARCO POLO Airport at four o’clock and walked through the terminal, where a large contingent of local police wandered vigilantly around. They were looking, Pagan knew, for the kinds of weirdos, fruitcakes, axe-grinders, fringe radicals and conspiracy theorists who tended to congregate where prominent politicians appeared – the sort of people cops tended to lock up for the night just as a precautionary measure.
At the dock they boarded a launch headed for the city. In Rome, where they’d been obliged to spend time in the terminal waiting for the connecting flight, the sky had been gloomily overcast; here, in Venice, the sunlight was unexpected, almost caustic. Pagan observed the other passengers aboard the launch – a pair of ruddy backpacking Finns who looked impossibly healthy; a loud Englishman, armed with high-powered binoculars, who spoke at his timorous wife as if language were more a barrage of missiles than a means of communication. By God, I remember coming here with Duffy, what a time we had of it in those days, got to know Venice like the back of my bloody hand.
Pagan stepped on to the deck. The girl came after him. Despite sun, there was no trace of warmth. He shivered, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and thought that this might have been romantic in other circumstances – the glories of Venice, an attractive girl at your side. But not now.
As the launch approached the Grand Canal, where sunlight picked at the threadbare fabric of the waterside palaces, he thought of Barron, tried to imagine his way inside a man about whom he knew practically nothing. He turned to look at the girl, who had found in her bag a pair of amber-tinted glasses that made her appear remote and sullen.
‘Is Barron likely to have protection?’ he asked without looking at her. ‘Guns. Bodyguards.’
She shrugged. ‘I guess that’s something you’ll have to find out for yourself, Pagan.’
He gripped her arm. ‘Try again.’
She smiled coldly at him, shaking her arm free. She was, he noticed, a little wary of him; her expression was that of somebody in unpredictable company. ‘I only ever visited him in Florida. I didn’t notice any gunmen hanging around. He had a cook and a maid. I don’t remember anything else. Maybe he’s got a whole goddam arsenal in Venice. How would I know?’
He gazed along the banks of the Grand Canal, seeing wind-tossed banners here and there. His Italian was almost non-existent, but he understood the sense of the proclamations. Gurenko was being officially welcomed to the city. More, he’d been given the freedom of Venice, wh
atever that honour meant. Venice Greets Gurenko.
Pagan’s uneasiness, which had dogged him on the flight from Marseille to Rome, and hounded him on the leg to Venice, persisted as he stared at the flapping banners under which pedestrians strolled innocently in sunlight. It was almost as if he could smell in the air the gathering scent of disaster the way you might sense thunder in the distance before you heard it. He pushed the sensation into the back of his mind, a useful cellar where bottled notions sometimes fermented over time. But now they kept bubbling instantly back at him: Gurenko, the photographs in the newspaper at Marseille Airport. If Carlotta was here, if she could blow up a London Underground train, what did another body matter?
If she was here …
They disembarked some yards from the Rialto, wandered along the bank. He had picked up a tourist map at the airport and was trying to study it, shielding it with his body from the wind. What he saw was a twisted network of streets and waterways. Unknown cities always dislocated him, even when they were laid out in a comprehensible way – but he couldn’t figure out the logic of Venice. He glanced down at the surface of the canal, where barges loaded with fruits and vegetables skimmed past, the mosquito-like buzz of vaporetti, the laboured motions of sandoli. Then he concentrated again on the map, running a fingertip over it.
‘I’ve found the street,’ he said finally. ‘We have to cross the Rialto and head for San Marco.’ The wind flapped at the map, blowing it awkwardly back against his face.
‘You’re in charge, Pagan. Lead the way.’
They walked a few yards, reached the Campo della Pescaria where the street ran with the blood and slime of gutted fish from the seafood market. The entrails of squid, squashed prawns, mullet bones, scraps of eel, discarded eyes – these were cast aside and pilfered by cats. He and the girl moved cautiously past unidentifiable pink organs, mounds of wrinkled fish skins, scales. Somebody was hosing these relics aside and the air was filled with the decayed scent of a long-dead ocean.
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