The Pigeon Project (12 page)

Would Pashal emerge with Professor MacDonald?

How would he manage it?

Would anyone else be alerted?

He held his breath and concentrated on the front door of the monastery. Except for crickets, a bird, the night was still. He stood frozen, expectant.

Suddenly a sliver of light, then a beam pierced the semidarkness from the monastery front. The door was opening. One figure slipped out, followed by another, as the door was partially closed.

Jordan came up the remaining steps, attaining the top of the pier, and hastened across it toward the forecourt. At the end of the pier, they met him.

The tall, thin young monk came first, his Adam’s apple continuously jumping.

“Pashal?” Jordan whispered.

“Yes.”

“You have him?”

“Here is a Professor MacDonald.” He backed aside, revealing a much shorter elderly man, white hair, wire-framed spectacles, white moustache, his face a mixture of confusion and fear.

Jordan grabbed the professor by the arm, drawing him toward the wharf. “Go to the end of the pier, down the steps—carefully, they’re wet. Get into the motorboat. Dr. Edwards is waiting. I’ll be right behind you.” He turned quickly back to the monk. “Pashal, we don’t know how to thank you. I’ll never know how you did it, but what you’ve done will have God’s blessings forever. Good-bye.”

As he wheeled to leave, the young monk’s strong hand clamped on his shoulder.

“Wait,” Pashal Nurikhan whispered. “What is it?”

“I must have some explanation,” the monk said urgently. “I had to take him to the bathroom, that is how I got him past Antonio, his carabinieri guard outside his room. When I return without the professor—I have concocted a story to protect me—you must help—”

“Tell me, but hurry.”

“I will say a stranger came with a gun as we left the bathroom, forced me out here. I tried to overcome him. He knocked me down and fled in a motorboat. So, please, now. Knock me down, so it looks real—now…”

Jordan recoiled. “Just hit you? I can’t—”

“You must,” Pashal whispered fiercely, “to protect me. Then I will stumble back and shout what has happened and collapse.”

“Hey, hold it,” said Jordan. “If you alert the whole damn monastery, I’ll have no time to get them to the Piazzale Roma and out of the country. The second you yell out, the Venice boat patrols will be called—”

“It is not my business what happens after you go. We have made a deal. MacDonald will save my father if I save MacDonald by bringing him to you. I have done my part.”

“Yes, Pashal, but don’t you see, getting him out of Venice was also…”

That instant, the illumination from the front door of the monastery widened, engulfed them like a searchlight. Terrified, they both spun toward the monastery.

In the doorway, filling it, was a bulky uniformed man, rifle slung over his shoulder. His hand had gone up to his mouth. “What’s going on out there?” he bellowed.

Frantically, the monk had Jordan by the lapels. “Hit me,” he implored.

On reflex, Jordan’s hand snaked to his pocket, yanked out the pistol, and he slammed the butt flat against Pashal’s head. The monk cried out in pain, clutched at his bleeding temple, and went down to his knees, groaning.

For a split second, Jordan looked up. The uniformed guard had shouted, “Who is it?” He was pulling the rifle off his shoulder as he came out of the doorway on the run.

Jordan whirled toward the empty pier, tucking his pistol into his pocket. He rushed across the pier, stepped down, gripped the rail as he maneuvered his descent of the slippery steps. The motorboat was there, rocking in the water, with Alison at the rope and MacDonald in a seat.

“Let’s go!” yelled Jordan, leaping into the motorboat, staggering behind the wheel, as Alison freed the rope.

Jordan had the engine coughing, coughing, and at last it started with a roar. He reversed the boat, pulled the wheel around sharply, arcing the craft away from the pier. He pointed the boat for the lights of Venice and opened up the throttle.

As the boat practically leaped out of the water, Jordan turned his head, saw the guard silhouetted on the pier, his rifle up to his shoulder.

“Get down, get down!” he shouted at Alison and MacDonald.

The other two dropped to the boat bottom, and Jordan fell to a knee as the first shot whistled overhead. Then came a second shot and a third, like handclaps, past his ear.

They were hurtling toward Venice, and his last glimpse of San Lazzaro was that of lights going on everywhere in the monastery. In seconds, the island had disappeared from sight.

Jordan rose to his feet behind the wheel, signaling the others to get up.

“We got you free of there,” he said breathlessly to the professor, “but I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going to happen to you next.”

III

The city hall of Venice, located on the Grand Canal—one passed it en route to the humpbacked Rialto Bridge—consisted of two palaces, the Palazzo Loredan, built in the 12th century, and the Palazzo Farsetti, built in the 13th century by Doge Enrico Dandolo and later, the residence of the aristocratic Farsetti family. The buildings were connected by a covered passageway over the Calle Loredan, which otherwise separated them.

In the more than a century since these palaces had been converted into the
municipio
, or city hall, they had been the scene of many historic occasions. But none, perhaps, exceeded in importance the emergency meeting that had been called by Sindaco Accardi—Mayor Accardi—so recently elected headman of this city of 100,000 inhabitants by Venice’s sixty councillors, of whom forty-one were members of the local Communist party and who in their turn had been elected by the people in the last municipal election.

It was predawn, four o’clock in the morning, and the brightest lights that partially illuminated the darkened Grand Canal came from the mayor’s office on the first floor, above the ground floor of the Palazzo Farsetti. In this spacious office, six men and one woman, several of them just roused from their beds, had assembled. The last to arrive had been Aleksandr Veksler, the Soviet Union’s cultural attaché, accompanied by a forbidding bull of a man with a Mongolian face named Major Boris Kedrov, who less than a hour ago, had landed at Marco Polo Air Terminal in a special Soviet military aircraft assigned to him by the premier himself.

Mayor Accardi’s office seemed ill suited for an emergency meeting. The office was exquisite and graceful, as if designed for easy small talk and long, pointless anecdotes. On the felt-covered walls with their floral patterns hung three framed pictures: a portrait of Cato by Molinari, a portrait of Antony and Cleopatra by Molinari, a portrait of Podesta Angelo Corner by Maganza.

Mayor Accardi, a portly man of fifty-five with a double chin, had a face as smooth and round as an infant’s bottom. His thinning hair was plastered straight back, and by habit he always smiled even when he did not feel like smiling. He sat down in the high-backed swivel chair behind his overpolished, uncluttered 19th-century desk, waiting for the others to be seated in a semicircle before him. Momentarily distracted, Deputy Mayor Santin, almost all nose, almost chinless, adjusted the giant map of Venice and environs, tacked to a plywood board, propped on a sturdy easel to his left. Finished, Deputy Mayor Santin picked up his pointer and went back to his red upholstered chair.

Everyone was assembled. Mayor Accardi surveyed the cast of characters, reading from left to right. There was his secretary, Mrs. Rinaldo, a nondescript widow, her gray hair mercilessly drawn tight into a bun, her pencil poised over her shorthand pad. The next chair was occupied by Deputy Mayor Santin. Beside him sat , Colonel Cutrone, commandante of the carabinieri, the federal police force in the area. He was an impressive man—full head of hair, darkly attractive, resembling a young opera bass in the role of a military officer. At his left, fidgeting, was Questore Trevisan, superintendent of the local Venice police force—short, bandy-legged, his most striking feature two poached-egg eyes set in a vacant face. Next, chain-smoking, Ragazzi, unofficial leader of the Communist party in Venice—square countenance, intense, brooding, with muscles like bands of steel. Then came the two foreigners, the Russians: Aleksandr Veksler, his close-set eyes fixed on the map of Venice, and the newly arrived Major Boris Kedrov, who appeared curiously uncomfortable in an ill-fitting navy blue suit.

Mayor Accardi pushed his desk lamp aside, took in the group once more, and addressed them in a conversational tone.

“Gentlemen, you all know why we are gathered here at this ungodly hour. We are here to review what has happened in the case of Professor Davis MacDonald, to discuss the actions already taken, and to decide what further actions we should take. Normally, this meeting would be conducted by Prefetto Gasparini, but he is on a visit to America, attending an international law-enforcement convention in Chicago, and in his absence the home secretary in Rome has invested me with the authority to organize our effort.

“Very well. As best I could, I have collected the relevant facts in the case, and now I shall briefly review these facts. As those of you in this room know, from my preliminary phone calls last night, Professor MacDonald, a naturalized American citizen, was a guest of the Soviet Union when he made a startling and earth-shaking discovery—the means of prolonging human life, increasing the human lifespan from the average seventy years to the probability of 150 years.”

“A discovery made,” Major Kedrov interrupted, “because of the cooperation of the scientists of the Soviet Union.”

“Exactly,” Mayor Accardi quickly agreed. “However, instead of sharing his find with the Soviet Union, this Professor MacDonald slipped out of Russia, intent on taking the discovery of his American masters, to do with it as they pleased. Our Soviet comrades”—he nodded amiably at Veksler and Kedrov—“were quite understandably upset by and concerned about Professor MacDonald’s unfair and hostile behavior. They knew MacDonald had taken a special Soviet flight with Venice its destination. They called upon us, as allies and friends, to detain MacDonald for them upon his arrival. We were only too happy to cooperate with our comrades, and I requested that Colonel Cutrone apprehend MacDonald and keep him in protective custody until our allies could return him to the Soviet Union and convince him that the U.S.S.R. was a partner in the discovery and deserved to share it.

“Colonel Cutrone did his job well. MacDonald was apprehended and detained under guard on San Lazzaro until he could be returned to the Soviet Union. Then, by some means or other—precisely what means we have not yet learned, although there was some mention of a carrier pigeon, which sounds unlikely—MacDonald was able to inform some persons on the outside of his situation and arrange for them to attempt to remove him from San Lazzaro. This attempt to help him escape was carried out six hours ago. Mr. Veksler was in charge at the monastery when the escape was undertaken.” The mayor nodded at the Russian. “Perhaps you can fill us in on the firsthand details, Mr. Veksler.”

The Russian twisted in his chair to speak to the others. “We had arranged with the Armenian abbot to give us two of his young monks to look after Professor MacDonald—this aside from the company of armed guards Colonel Cutrone so kindly provided. We were given the most trustworthy and obedient monks to take care of the professor, to serve him, to walk him, to take him to a bathroom down the hall when he needed use of it. Last night, at approximately nine-fifty, the professor rang for his monk and asked to be accompanied to the bathroom. The carabinieri guard outside the door saw MacDonald and his monk go down the hall and around the corner, toward the spot where the bathroom is located. As far as I can reconstruct what happened next, when MacDonald and his monk, Pashal, emerged from the bathroom, a masked figure stepped out of the shadows and poked a gun into the monk’s ribs. He commanded the monk to lead them out of the building by some route in which they would be unobserved by the guards. When the monk, Pashal, objected, the masked intruder said he would kill him. Afraid for his life, the monk led the two out the front door to the pier, where a motorboat was waiting. Meanwhile, the carabinieri guard posted outside MacDonald’s room became worried. The rule was that MacDonald was to be back in his room in five minutes. The guard realized that more than ten minutes had passed. He decided to investigate and find out what was delaying MacDonald and his monk. He could not find them in the bathroom or anywhere on the floor.

He went downstairs, saw the front door ajar.” The Russian paused, craned his neck toward the commandante of the carabinieri. “I believe you have his report, Colonel Cutrone, on what followed.”

“Si,” said Colonel Cutrone. He spoke in a measured tone. “Our man, Antonio, the guard, he went to the door and looked outside. He saw, at the pier, the monk, Pashal, with another man. Professor MacDonald was nowhere in sight. Antonio called out to the two he saw. Neither replied. Instead, the other man, the stranger, pistol-whipped Pashal, knocking him down. Antonio pulled his rifle off his shoulder and began to run toward them. The stranger immediately fled across the pier and into a waiting motorboat. By the time Antonio reached the edge of the pier, the motorboat had turned away toward Venice—”

Major Kedrov interrupted. “There can be no mistake that the boat was going to Venice?”

“No mistake at all,” said Colonel Cutrone. “Antonio had his rifle up and fired three shots before the boat was lost in the dark and out of his sight.”

“Did he hit either of them?” asked Major Kedrov.

“He could not tell. Actually, there were three in the boat—three men, he thought. They all ducked down very low as the boat pulled away. One he definitely identified as Professor MacDonald, being familiar with him.”

“And the other two?” asked Major Kedrov.

“Very little to go by. No identification from the guard. It all happened too swiftly. There was darkness, and the lighting was poor. The boat went away fast, throwing up spray. However, the monk Pashal—when he recovered consciousness, he gave a vague description of the one with the gun. He had been too frightened to take a good look until they reached the pier. He said the stranger had a crooked nose and thick lips and spoke with some kind of accent, possibly German.”