The Mazovia Legacy

by Michael E. Rose

  Across the street, some upmarket clothing shops were opening. A stunning brunette in a red-andwhite pantsuit that would have cost her several months’ salary, if she owned it at all, was unfurling a canvas awning over the entrance and fixing the doors wide open for the very few customers who would likely come through that day. The balconies in the several buildings facing the hotel were empty, except for a Burmese cat that was stretching out on one. Above the hotel entrance, curtains billowed out of windows and a chambermaid shook a pillow in the brightness.

  All appeared perfectly normal. It was a normal midmorning on Via Sistina. But Delaney had watched streets before and knew that the unusual did not always make itself known right away. Patterns take some time to be established, or disrupted.

  It took almost an hour. There had been little action of any sort in front of the hotel. But then the first taxi in the line of three parked there got a fare: two men in dark business suits, carrying mobile phones and canvas laptop-computer bags. Delaney thought he remembered them from the breakfast room that morning. The second driver ended his conversation with the first man, got out of the car, and moved his own car up into position when the first car left.

  The driver of what had been the third car in line did not move up. He continued to read his paper. Then another taxi pulled up. It was the one Delaney himself had taken that morning. The driver honked at Number Three to move up so he could take his place in the line. But Number Three motioned for him to park in front, which the new arrival managed to do with only some difficulty in the narrow street.

  Not very concerned about a fare.

  But then Number Three, still third in line after so generously letting his colleague in, got out of the car and leaned over the driver’s side of the car now in front of him, suddenly craving conversation. Cigarettes were lit. The new arrival got out to lean against his car and chat to the Good Samaritan. Delaney was now sure the new arrival was the young man who had driven him around to the bottom of the Spanish Steps.

  A cluster of what looked like American tourists suddenly poured out of the hotel, perhaps nine or ten in all. There were some negotiations with the two first drivers and then with the third. That one shook his head repeatedly. More negotiations. Then, most of the tourists got into the first two cars, and the final small group hailed a cab passing by on the street. Driver Three got back into his car and resumed reading his newspapers. Another car arrived and its driver, too, was waved ahead to take the better spot.

  That new arrival got a fare and moved off. Still Driver Three did not start his engine or move forward. When he refused yet another fare, Delaney knew he had his man. Or one of them. Which side he was playing cab driver for, Delaney could not say.

  As he was turning to go, he saw Mr. Viviano standing at the exit to the roof, watching him quietly. He had a look of grave disappointment on his face.

  “No photos today, signore?” Viviano said.

  “No. Just looking at the view.”

  “It is a lovely one, no?”

  “It is.”

  “Something of particular interest for you today, maybe.”

  “Yes.” Delaney sensed Viviano had been around. He did not struggle for explanations.

  “Perhaps you have had long enough on this lovely roof of mine, signore.”

  “I think so. Yes. Thank-you.”

  “I think so too.” Viviano silently escorted him down in the elevator, and saw him right out to the sidewalk. He then ostentatiously unhooked the white security door that had been opened for the air and sunshine, and shut it firmly.

  “I will not see you again will I, signore? Not here, OK?” Viviano said evenly through the iron grille.

  “No. I am finished here now.”

  “Bene.”

  There were no messages, no letters, and no packages when Delaney got back. He had climbed the Spanish Steps and walked back to the main entrance of the hotel along Via Sistina. His side and his head ached. The reluctant taxi driver was still there, reading the news, and missing out on fares. He looked up as Delaney walked by, and then down again at his paper.

  Delaney came back onto the street after checking with the clerks at the front desk. He sat down at one of the sidewalk tables at the café next to the hotel. He sat facing the cabstand, daring Driver Three to make eye contact, watching the driver’s now all-too-obvious failure to do any work that morning. After about thirty minutes, the driver was alone in the rank with his engine still off. Delaney paid for his coffee and walked quickly over, climbing in to the back seat.

  “Can you take a fare?” Delaney asked in English. The driver looked coolly at him back over the seat, not at all perturbed. A professional, Delaney thought.

  “No,” the driver said in accented English.“Not at this moment.”

  “Why not?”

  There was slight menace in the driver’s eyes now. “Not at this moment, signore. There will be another taxi along soon.”

  Delaney had the Browning out of his equipment bag now, and he held it low in his lap. The driver looked calmly down at it and then out at the passersby and the doorman on the sidewalk.

  “That is not so smart I think now, Signore Delaney,” the driver said. “Go,” Delaney said.

  The driver started the engine and drove slowly down Via Sistina. The street ended not far past the upper entrance of the apartment where Delaney had kept watch that morning. The driver made a difficult U-turn and began driving slowly the other way. The doorman at the hotel did not look up as they passed.

  “We are going where?” the driver said.

  “You tell me,” Delaney said. “Where do you think I might be wanting to go this morning?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  Delaney resisted the impulse to stick the gun up against the driver’s head. A rage was building as he thought that this might be one of those responsible for taking Natalia. It was a dangerous deep-seated rage and could bubble over at any time. He was no stranger to rages of various sorts in his life but they were a long time coming. Few and blessedly far between. He generally had been able to save his rage for the right targets, but not always. He thought he might have such a target now.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” the driver said.

  “Pull over here. Now.”

  Delaney’s hand was beginning to shake ever so slightly. It was not fear. The adrenalin was interfering. He would have to watch that. For the rest of this assignment.

  The driver pulled over. They were on another of Rome’s million narrow cobblestone streets. Tall balconied apartments lined it. Few people passed.

  “Take me to her,” Delaney said.

  “To who?”

  “I am not going to waste time with you, friend.”

  “What will you do?” the driver said, very cool. He was about thirty; stocky, with badly pockmarked skin. He wore the most fashionable of pale tortoiseshell sunglasses.

  He has been in situations like this before, Delaney thought.

  “I think what I might do is wound you badly, so that you bleed all over this lovely leather in here but not so badly that you can’t drive to your people and tell them the Canadian is very, very pissed off and wants to see the young lady. Or I could kill you.”

  “Then you would never see her.”

  “Oh, I will see her all right.”

  “Signore Delaney, I am guessing that you are not professional enough at this to kill me. You are a journalist, an amateur. You should leave these matters to others.”

  Delaney thought he could hear echoes of Hilferty in the phrasing. But he thought: Not CSIS.

  Vatican.

  “Which others?”

  “Others with your best interests at heart. You would be smarter to do what you were doing this morning. Sometimes it is better to watch and wait. We were impressed by that.”

/>   “How did you know about Natalia?”

  “We are good watchers too. You watch them, we watch you.”

  The driver reached for a package of cigarettes on the seat beside him and pushed in the lighter in the dashboard.

  “Where is she?” Delaney asked.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe this?”

  “You have no real choice, signore. I either truly don’t know or I won’t tell you. I very much doubt that you would kill me for that.”

  “I will kill you if I have to,” Delaney said.

  “I doubt you would kill me here, now. But if you did you are no further ahead in this thing.”

  Delaney wanted no part of logic today. He wanted action, results, maybe even revenge. Not logic.

  “Well, here’s the message,” he said. “You tell the people you are working for that the Canadian guy is now very, very pissed off and wants to see the girl. Today. You tell them that he has a lot to say about Quebec and Poland and the Catholic Church, but he won’t say it until he sees the girl. You tell them that. And if they aren’t the ones who have her, you tell them they’d better find out where she is and tell me as soon as they do. Because if she dies I have some information that will make everybody in this game very, very uncomfortable and I know exactly how to use it. You understand. I will see that girl today.”

  “This is a big city to find one person, Signore Delaney.”

  “I will see her today. Or tomorrow there are no more little secrets. You understand? Now take me back to the hotel and then you go pass this message on to whoever you’re working for.”

  The driver tossed his cigarette out the window and drove slowly back to Via Sistina. Delaney put the gun back in the bag, got out, and watched as the cab moved off. His hand was no longer shaking. He was past that now.

  There was a message waiting for him this time when he went back into the lobby. On Vatican stationery; handwritten once again. The clerk told him it had arrived just minutes after he had gone off in the taxi. Delaney could not imagine that it was connected, so soon, to his excursion in the cab. It was from Fiorentino: “Greetings, Signor Delaney. Perhaps you might get in contact with me today to say what you have decided in the regard of our conversation yesterday. We would value your assistance in these matters and could possibly be as you know of assistance to you.”

  Ambiguous. Delaney decided an equally ambiguous reply was in order.

  At a small desk in the lobby he wrote, on hotel stationery: “Monsignor Fiorentino, I am sorry to say I will be unable to speak to you today about the matters you mention in your note to me this morning. Signora Janovski is indisposed. When all is well with her I would be happy to come in to see you, and may have some useful information for you at that time. But, of course, I could not do that until I am sure Signora Janovski is well.” The desk clerk seemed impressed when Delaney told him where the courier was to take the note.

  Delaney went up to his room and rested on the bed for a while, the back of his right hand over his throbbing forehead, willing the telephone to ring, knowing it would ring eventually. Even so, he was badly startled when it did ring about an hour later. He was dozing in the warmth of the Roman afternoon. The voice at the other end was gruff. He could hear heavy traffic noise in the background. Screeching tires and clattering motorbikes.

  “Delaney, you listen now,” the voice said in English. Polish accent or some other East European. “OK? You listen now.”

  “All right.”

  “We want to see you. About the girl. And about these other things you know about.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “You will see that.”

  “When?”

  “In one hour. You make sure to be alone, no one after you, OK? OK? You come to the Terminal Station, the big train station. You know where?”

  “Yes.”

  “Walk inside. Only you. Walk in, walk around, in an hour from now. Go into the crowds to the back, and then come out the front again. OK? Through a different door. At the front again. Watch for us there.”

  “How will I know you?”

  “Just watch for us there.”

  The line went dead. Delaney looked at his watch. One hour. He now had a lot to do and not much time.

  He quickly packed his bag and then Natalia’s bag and placed them together in his room. He checked the gun again, sighted along its short barrel, hefted it, knowing he might need it soon. Placed it carefully back in his equipment bag. Zipped that shut.

  He went down to the desk and told the clerk that he and Ms. Janovski would be checking out immediately and would be leaving their bags in the storage room for a few hours. He paid the bills and then went to the public telephone near the entrance. He dialled the number of another hotel he knew well, down the Spanish Steps, not far away, and reserved a room for that night, possibly for several nights. Then he had a quiet word with a bellboy in a foolish quasi-military uniform and pillbox hat with chinstrap. New York, circa 1929. The boy’s English was good.

  “I need a service from you today,” Delaney said, pulling out a thick bundle of lire. “But discreetly, discreetly. You understand?”

  “Si.” The bellboy eyed the bundle of notes.

  “I have checked out. My bill is paid,” Delaney said. He nodded over to the desk clerk, who grinned and waved at them. “I am leaving my bags here for a few hours. Here is what you can do for me. It is very important.”

  He peeled off about fifty dollars’ worth of lire. The bellboy’s eyes shone.

  “In an hour, perhaps two, when it’s quiet here, I want you to go outside and put my bags in a taxi and get in with them and bring them to the Hotel de la Ville, just down at the bottom of the steps. You tell no one else but the people at that hotel whose bags they are and you leave them in the storeroom down there for me. You tell them I’m coming soon. You do it fast and get back here right away. You tell no one here what you’ve done. When I get to that hotel later today, if you’ve done it right, I’ll give you the same amount again. I’ll send it to you. But only if it has been done right.”

  “I will do it right,” the boy said.

  “I hope so,” Delaney said. “It’s very important.

  You see?”

  “Yes, I can see,” the bellboy said, looking conspiratorially around the lobby. “Do you not like our hotel, signore?”

  There was no sign outside of the agent who had been playing taxi driver that morning. He would have been replaced. Delaney loitered for a moment out front and then hurried over to the Spanish Steps and moved down as fast as his sore side would allow him. Cars could not follow on the stairs and anyone in an apartment or on a roof could not get down to the street and then down the stairs fast enough to follow him. At the bottom he hailed a cab and told the driver to hurry off.

  “Vatican,” he said.

  No one seemed to follow them. About halfway there, Delaney got the driver to stop, paid him, and got out on a busy street. He hailed another cab going in the opposite direction. “Terminal Station,” he said this time.

  Still no one seemed to be with him. It seemed too easy.

  Time was short and the traffic was heavy. Delaney arrived about five minutes late, and hurried into the mammoth, echoing train station, worried he had missed his contact. He rushed to the back, through the crowds, and out onto the street again. About ten minutes later than he had been expected.

  Lines of taxis were ranged at the curb. Cars, trucks, and motorbikes roared this way and that. Travellers piled out of taxis with bags, baskets, boxes, pets. He recognized no one.

  Then he saw the Suzuki van rolling up fast. It stopped directly in front of him.The cargo door was braced open.

  “In. In. Get in,” the driver shouted.

  He was one of the two who had taken Natalia, Delaney could see that immediately as he got i
n. The man was sweating, nervous. He roared off so fast that Delaney was sent flying to the back of the van, onto the floor. As the van careened through the traffic around the station, the driver shouted: “Close door, close door, close door.”

  Delaney managed to slide the cargo door shut with difficulty. He sat on the wheel hump at the back. The tiny van moved with astonishing speed through the traffic with the driver looking out often into his side mirrors to see who might be with them. His driving would be a hard act to follow. Delaney had no doubt they would lose anyone who might be behind them, but he doubted very much anyone was there in any case.

  Eventually, the driver slowed down. “Sit on floor,” he said, without looking back. This made it difficult to see where they were going. Delaney did as he was told.

  After about fifteen minutes the van slowed and then pulled through what looked like an archway and into a courtyard of a decaying apartment block. The driver sat for a moment with the motor off.

  “You have a gun?” he asked, looking in the rearview mirror at Delaney. “No,” Delaney said.

  “We think you do. Give your gun now.”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “My friend up there, he has your girl,” the driver said. “She says you have a gun. If he hears a problem now, he will kill her right away. You see? So you give your gun now.”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  Delaney could see the driver reaching into his leather jacket, so he pulled out the Browning fast and kneeled upright on the floor of the van.

  “If you touch that pocket I’ll kill you right now,” he said.

  “If my friend hears a gun, your girl is dead,” the driver said.

  “And you too. Do you want to die right now?” Delaney said.