The Parsifal Mosaic (12 page)

The glow moved to the right; the guard had gotten off his stool and was sliding the door of the booth open. A second figure could be seen walking through the mist from the wide avenue fronting the row of piers. He was a medium-sized man in an overcoat, wearing a hat, the brim angled as a stroller’s might be on the Via Veneto. The clothes were not the clothes of the waterfront; they belonged in the city streets. The man approached the glass booth, stopped by the door, and spoke with the guard. Both then looked toward the end of the pier, at the warehouse; the guard gestured and Michael knew they were talking about him. The man nodded, turned and raised his hand; within seconds his summons was obeyed. Two other men came into view, both large, both wearing clothes more suited to the waterfront than those of the man who commanded them.

Havelock leaned bis head against the edge of steel, a deep, despairing sense of futility mingling with his pain. Exhaustion overwhelmed him. He was no match for such men; he
could barely raise his arms, nor his feet. Since he had no other weapons, it meant he had no weapons at all.

Where was Jenna?
Had she gone aboard the
Cristóvão
after the decoy had fulfilled its function? It was a logical—No, it wasn’t! The commotion would have centered too much attention on the freighter and would have roused unfriendly or unpaid officials too easily. The ship itself had been a decoy, the blond whore the lure. Jenna was boarding one of the other two!

Michael turned away bom the wall and hobbled across the wet planks toward the edge of the pier. He wiped his eyes, staring through the heavy mist. Involuntarily he gasped, the pain in his stomach was so acute. The
Elba
was gone! He had been pulled to the wrong pier, duped into an uncontrollable situation while Jenna went on board the
Elba
. Was the captain of the
Elba
, like the skipper of the
Cristóvão
, a master navigator? Would he—could he—maneuver his awkward ship close enough to an unpatrolled shoreline so that a small boat might ferry his contraband to a beach?

One man had the answer. A man in an overcoat and an angled hat, clothes worn on the waterfront by someone who did not haul and fork-lift but, instead, bought and sold. That man would know; he had negotiated Jenna’s passage.

Havelock lurched back to the corner of the warehouse wall. He had to reach that man; he had to get by two others coming for him. If only he had a weapon,
any
kind of weapon. He looked around in the faintly lessening darkness. Nothing. Not even a loose board or a slat from a broken crate.

The water. The drop was long, but he could manage it. If he could get to the far end of the pier before he was seen, it would be presumed he had plunged over while unconscious. How many seconds did he have? He inched his face to the edge and peered around the molding into the wash of the floodlights, prepared to push himself away and run.

He did not run. The two men were no longer walking toward him. They had stopped, both standing motionless inside the fenced gate. Why? Why was he being left where he was without further interference?

Suddenly, from out of the impenetrable mist several piers away came an ear-shattering screech of a ship’s klaxon. Then another, followed by a prolonged bass chord that vibrated
throughout the harbor. It was the
Santa Teresa!
It was his answer! The two men had been summoned not to punish him further, but to restrict him to the first pier. There was no delayed schedule for the
Teresa;
that, too, was part of the setup. She was sailing on time, and Jenna was
on board
. As the ship’s clock ran down, there was only one thing left for the negotiator to do: keep the disabled hunter in place.

Fiercely he told himself he had to get to that pier, stop her, stop the freighter from casting off, for once the giant lines were slipped off the pilings there was nothing he could do, no way to reach her. She would disappear into one of a dozen countries, a hundred cities—nothing left, not for him, not any longer. Without her he didn’t want to go on!

He wished he knew what the blaring signals meant, how much time he had. He could only estimate. There had been two blasts from the
Cristóvão;
moments later the blond decoy had emerged from the shadows of the warehouse door. Seven minutes. Yet there had been no bass chord following the high-pitched whistles. Did its absence signify less time or more? He probed his memory, racing over scores of assignments that had taken him to waterfronts everywhere.

He remembered; more accurately, he
thought
he remembered as a blurred recent memory struggled to surface. The high-pitched shrieks were for ships in the distance, the vibrating lower tones for those nearer by—a rule of thumb for the sea, and the docks. And while he was being beaten, the outer vibrations of a low, grinding chord had fused with his own screams of protest and fury. The bass-toned whistle had followed shortly after the shrieks—prelude to imminent departure. Seven minutes—less one, more likely two, perhaps three.

He had only minutes. Six, five—four, no more than that. The
Teresa
’s pier was several hundred yards away; in his condition it would take at least two minutes to get there, and that would happen only if he could get past the two jacketed men who had been called to stop him. Four minutes at the outside, two minimum. Jesus!
How?
He looked around again, trying to control his panic, aware that every second reduced his chances.

A stocky black object was silhouetted between two pilings ten yards away; he had not noticed it before because it was a stationary part of the dock. He studied it now. It was a
barrel, an ordinary barrel, undoubtedly punctured during loading or unloading procedures, and now used as a receptacle for coffee cups, trash, predawn fires; they were on piers everywhere. He ran to it, gripped it, rocked it. It swung free; he lowered it to its side and rolled it back toward the wall. Time elapsed: thirty, perhaps forty seconds. Time remaining: between one and a half and three-plus minutes. The tactic that came into focus was a desperate one, but it was the only one that was possible. He could not get past those men unless they came to him, unless the fog and the translucent, brightening darkness worked for him and against them. There was no time to think about the guard and the man in the overcoat.

He crouched in the shadows, against the wall, both hands on the sides of the filthy barrel. He took a deep breath and screamed as loud as he could, knowing the scream would echo throughout the deserted pier.

“Aiuto! Presto! Sanguino! Muoio!”

He stopped, listening. In the distance he heard the shouts; they were questions, then commands. He screamed again:
“Aiuto!”

Silence.

Then racing footsteps. Nearer … drawing nearer.

Now! He shoved the barrel with all the strength he could muster. It clanked as it rolled laterally over the planks, through the fog, toward the edge of the pier.

The two men rounded the corner of the warehouse in the misty light; the barrel reached the edge of the dock. It struck one of the pilings. Oh,
Christ!
Then it spun and plunged over. The sound of the splash below was loud; the two men shouted at each other and raced to the edge.

Now!

Havelock rose to his feet and ran out of the shadows, his hands extended, shoulders and arms battering rams. He forced his unsteady legs to respond, each racing step painful but calculated, sure. He made contact. First the man on the right, pummeling him with both outstretched hands; then the Italian on his left, crashing his shoulder into the small of the man’s back.

A deafening blast from the
Teresa
’s funnels covered the screams of the two men as they plummeted into the water below. Michael swung to his left and hobbled back toward
the comer of the warehouse; he would go out onto the deserted pier and face the once obsequious guard and the elegantly dressed man. Time elapsed: another minute. Less than three remained at most.

He ran unsteadily out onto the vast expanse of the pier with its fog-laden pools of floodlights and immobile machinery. Pitching his voice at the edge of hysteria, he shouted in broken Italian: “Help me! Help
them!
It’s
crazy!
I’m hurt. Two men came to help me. As they drew near there were gunshots!
Three gunshots!
From the next pier. I could hardly hear them because of the freighter, but I did hear them!
Gunshots!
Quickly! They’re wounded. One dead, I think! Oh,
Christ
, hurry!”

The exchange between the two men was verbal chaos. As Havelock staggered erratically toward the gate he could see that the guard’s automatic was drawn, but it was not the same guard; he was shorter, stockier, older. The guard’s broad face was full of resentment, in contrast to that of the civilian—in his mid-thirties, tanned, suave—which was cold and without expression. The man in the overcoat was ordering the guard to investigate; the guard was shouting that he would not leave his post, not for 20,000 lire! The
capo regime
could look into his own garbage:
he
was no frightened
bambino
of the docks. The
capo
could buy a few hours of his time, his disappearance, but not more!

A setup. From the beginning, a charade,

“Andate voi stessi!”
yelled the guard.

Swearing, the civilian started toward the warehouse and broke into a run, the abruptly slowing his pace he cautiously approached the corner of the building.

The guard was now in front of the glass booth, his gun leveled at Michael. “You! Walk to the fence,” he shouted in Italian. “Raise your hands above you and grab the wire as high as you can! Do not turn around! I’ll fire into your head if you do!”

Barely two minutes left; if it was going to work, it would happen now.

“Oh,
Jesus
!
”
Havelock screamed as he gripped his chest and fell.

The guard rushed forward; Michael remained motionless in a fetal position, dead weight on the damp, hard surface.
“Get up!” commanded the uniformed man. “Get to your feet!”

The guard reached down and grabbed Havelock’s shoulder. It was the movement Michael had been waiting for. He spun off the ground, clasping the weapon above his head, and gripped the wrist at his shoulder, wrenching it clockwise as he rose and hammering his knee into the falling guard’s throat. The gun barrel was in his hand; he swung it down, crashing it into the base of the Italian’s skull. The man collapsed. Havelock dragged him into the shadows of the booth, then raced out of the open gate, jamming the weapon into his jacket pocket.

A prolonged, belching sound came from the distance, followed by four hysterically pitched screeches. The
Teresa
was about to slip away from its berth! Michael felt a sickening sense of futility sweeping over him as he ran breathlessly down the wide avenue, his legs barely able to carry him, his feet swerving, slapping the pavement. When he reached the
Teresa
’s pier, the guard—the same guard—was inside his glass booth, once again on the telephone, nodding his outsized head, his dull eyes accepting other lies.

There was now a chain stretched across the open gate—only an official hindrance, not a prohibition. Havelock grabbed the hook and yanked it out of its cemented base; the chain curled snakelike into the air and clattered to the ground.

“Che cosa? Fermati!”

Michael raced—his legs in agony—down the long stretch of the pier, through the circular pools of floodlights, past immobile machinery, toward the freighter outlined in the swirling mists at the end of the dock. His right leg collapsed; his hands broke the fall but not the impact, his right shoulder sliding across the moist surface. He grabbed his leg, forcing himself up, and propelled himself along the planks until he could work up the momentum to run again.

Gasping for air as he ran, he finally reached the end of the pier.

The futility was complete: the freighter
Santa Teresa
was floating thirty feet beyond the pilings; the giant hawsers slithered over the dark waters as they were hauled in by men who looked down at him through the shadows.

“Jenna!” he screamed. “Jenna!
Jenna!”

He fell to the wet wood of the pier, arms and legs throbbing, chest in spasms, his head splitting as if cracked open with an ax. He … had … lost her.… A small boat could drop her off at any of a thousand unpatrolled stretches of coastline in the Mediterranean; she was gone. The only person on earth he cared about was gone forever. Nothing was his, and he was nothing.

He heard the shouts behind him, then the hammering of racing feet. And as he heard the sounds he was reminded of other sounds, other feet … another pier. From where the
Cristóvão
had sailed!

There was a man in an overcoat who had ordered other men to come after him; they, too, had run across a deserted pier through shimmering pools of floodlights and the mist. If he could find that man! If he found him he would peel the suntanned flesh from the face until he was told what he had to know.

He got to his feet and began limping rapidly toward the guard who was running at him, weapon extended.

“Fermati! Alza le mani!”

“Un errore!”
Havelock shouted back, his voice both aggressive and apologetic; he had to get by the man, not be detained. He took several bills from his pocket, holding them in front of him so they could be seen in the spill of the floodlights. “What can I tell you?” he continued in Italian. “I made a mistake—which benefits
you
, doesn’t it? You and I, we spoke before, remember?” He pressed the money into the guard’s hand while slapping him on the back. “Come on, put that thing away. I’m your friend, remember? What harm is there? Except I’m a little poorer and you’re a little richer. Also, I’ve had too much wine.”

“I thought it was you!” said the guard grudgingly, taking the bills and ramming them into his pocket, his eyes darting about. “You’re crazy in the head! You could have been shot. For
what?”