The Pigeon Project (22 page)

“Tell him I wouldn’t have interrupted him this way, but it’s an emergency.”

The nurse disappeared into the doctor’s office, only to reappear seconds later.

. “Of course, Dr. Scarpa will see you, Mr. Jordan,” she said. “Please go right in.”

Jordan took MacDonald by the arm and led him to a sofa. “Let me go in alone first, Professor. You get off your feet, rest that leg.”

Once MacDonald had settled down, wincing as he sat, Jordan made directly for the open door of the doctor’s office and entered it. Dr. Giovanni Scarpa was standing, occupied with some papers fanned out before him on his desk. He was taller than the average Italian male, and his height was accentuated by his thinness. Only a patina of black-gray hair covered his baldness. His face was long and bony, and possessed a faintly clinical air. His noise was sharp and long above a thin-lipped mouth. At the sound of Jordan’s approach, he raised his head, and his dark eyes were warm.

“Tim,” he said, putting out his hand.

“Giovanni, good friend,” said Jordan, clasping the other’s extended hand, “and you are indeed a good friend to see me without notice.”

Dr. Scarpa’s eyes took in Jordan’s person, head to foot, before he said dryly, “You look vigorous enough.

But looks can lie. Sit down and tell me what is wrong.” Jordan remained standing. “Oh, I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me, knock wood.” He rapped his knuckles on the desk. “It is a friend of mine, a close friend. We were running for a vaporetto just now, and he stumbled and fell and injured his leg. I decided to bring him right over here, to find out how serious it is. Can you have a look at him?”

“Of course.”

Jordan’s relief was audible. “I’ll bring him right in.”

He left the office and returned to MacDonald, who struggled to his feet awkwardly. “Will the doctor see me?” asked MacDonald.

Jordan nodded. “This minute. Can I help you?” He reached to take MacDonald’s arm, then realized that the professor was still wearing the black cassock. Jordan hesitated. “Wait…” His hand touched the top of the garment. “We’d have to explain this. The nurse didn’t seem to notice, but the doctor might ask questions. What are you wearing underneath this thing?”

“My suit.”

“Better, much better. Let’s get you out of this clerical outfit.” Quickly, he helped MacDonald divest himself of the robe, then rolled it up and stuffed it into the side of the sofa. “Okay, that’s better. Now let’s go in to see him. I’ll introduce you as Professor—Professor Dawson.”

Jordan led the limping older man into the office as Dr. Scarpa came around his desk to meet them.

“Dr. Scarpa,” Jordan said, “this is an old friend of mine from New York—Professor Dawson.”

The Italian shook MacDonald’s hand. “Professor of what?” he asked politely.

MacDonald looked at Jordan blankly, and Jordan answered, “Renaissance history. He’s well known in his field.”

Dr. Scarpa addressed MacDonald. “Tim explained to me that you had an accident. What seems to be troubling you?”

“It’s mainly my knee—my left knee.”

Dr. Scarpa’s eyes had narrowed as they held on MacDonald’s face. He nodded absently. “All right, let’s find out what it is. Let’s go into the examination room. I’ll have a look and then take an X-ray.”

He guided MacDonald into a small adjacent room and shut the door.

Jordan remained behind, alone in the doctor’s office. Finding his pipe, filling and lighting it, he remembered that Dr. Scarpa had several recovery rooms with cots in the rear where he sometimes kept anesthetized patients overnight. He wondered if he could prevail upon the physician to keep MacDonald in one of those rooms for two or three days, until word came from Bruno that an escape had been arranged. Smoking, Jordan stood beside the doctor’s neat desk, staring at a set of hypodermic-syringe containers. After several minutes, he heard the door behind him open and close, and Dr. Scarpa appeared at his desk.

“I had a look at the knee,” he said. “I don’t think it is anything serious. But we’ve taken a picture. We’ll soon know for certain. I’ve left him in there for some heat therapy and”—he moved to the swivel chair at his desk and sat down—“because I wanted to speak to you alone.”

This sounded mildly ominous. Jordan found a place on the couch across from the desk. “Yes, Giovanni, what is it?”

Dr. Scarpa’s features were unmoving as a mask. His hands fiddled with a Florentine letter opener on his desk. His eyes were lowered. “Your friend in there,” he said softly. “Examining him, I felt rather like your famous—or infamous—American doctor, Dr. Mudd.”

Jordan was confused. “Dr. who?”

“Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, the American physician who treated John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg in 1865 and was sent to jail for aiding Lincoln’s assassin. Just now, in there, I felt like Dr. Mudd.”

Jordan was momentarily speechless.

Dr. Scarpa went on. “I was aiding a criminal, an enemy of the state. Yes, Tim, I recognized your friend, the spy whose photograph is posted everywhere. He is no professor, no historian. He is a spy. All of Venice is trying to find him. Why did you lie to me?”

Jordan found his voice. “I didn’t know what to say. He is a friend. He needed help. I said whatever came to mind. I’m sorry, Giovanni.”

“You could compromise me. It could mean real trouble.”

Jordan hesitated, then grasped a straw. “If you know the truth, why are you treating him now? Why don’t you just pick up the phone and call the police?”

Dr. Scarpa’s thin lips curved upward slightly in the semblance of a smile. “Because you are my friend, and he is your friend, and my instinct tells me you would not aid a criminal.”

“Thank you, Giovanni. Your instinct is correct. The man is not a criminal. He is not a spy. That is some nonsense the police dreamed up. His name is not Dawson. It is MacDonald. And he is a professor, an English scientist who has his laboratory in New York. Why do the police want him? For no criminal act whatsoever. Quite the contrary. It is the police who are engaging in criminal behavior. MacDonald was doing experiments in the Soviet Union. He made a discovery the Russians wanted. He came to Venice, en route home, and the Russians asked your police to detain him. I don’t think he should be detained. So I’m trying to help him get out of the city.” He waited for the physician to absorb what he had said, and then he added, “I know my story is difficult to accept, but do believe me. It is true.”

Dr. Scarpa looked up. “I believe you, Tim.”

“I appreciate that.”

The nurse had entered the office carrying MacDonald’s X-rays. She placed them before Dr. Scarpa and left.

Picking up the X-rays, Dr. Scarpa came to his feet. “Now we shall see what shape your fugitive is in.” He carried the negatives to the far end of the room, hung them before a light box, and turned on the light. In less than a minute he was through studying them.

He made his way back to his swivel chair. “Good news, Tim. No fractures. Nothing of a serious nature. Most likely just a pulled ligament. It will take care of itself in a matter of days. Maybe three days or so. He should stay off his feet as much as possible.”

“Well, that brings up something else.”

“Yes?”

“Considering what you’ve done already, I don’t know how much further I can impose upon you. I am seeking a means of getting the professor out of the city. I need some safe, quiet place to keep him until I complete my plans. I was wondering if you’d mind keeping him for two or three days—we’d see that he gets meals—in one of your rooms in the rear?”

A buzzer sounded, and Dr. Scarpa lifted the receiver of his phone. “Yes?” he said in Italian… “The mayor?” He glanced at Jordan and then said, “Of course, I’ll speak to him. Put him on.” He waited, listened, said, “And good day to you, Your Honor. What can I do for you?” He listened again. “Well, I’m sorry she’s feeling that way. But don’t be concerned. It sounds like no more than a touch of the flu. But I’ll certainly want to see her. You tell your wife I’ll come by in an hour, in two at the most… It is quite all right. Margot is one of my favorite patients. Tell her to keep warm, and to expect me.”

He hung up and swung back to Jordan. “That was our Mayor Accardi. I take care of his wife. Now, wouldn’t he like to know whom else I’m taking care of today?” With hardly a pause, he went on. “As to your last question. Yes, you may leave Professor MacDonald with me. We’ll fix a comfortable place for him in a back room.”

Effusively, Jordan reached across the desk to shake his friend’s hand. “Giovanni, you’re a godsend.” He jumped up. “I’ve got to run now. I’ll be back—bringing him some food at dinnertime.”

* * *

This was a trip, Tim Jordan thought, he had never taken before with a serious purpose. It was a trip he had taken several hundred times—although not lately—for pure relaxation and pleasure.

The crossing from the Hotel Danieli to the Hotel Excelsior on Lido island opposite always took about eleven minutes. Now Jordan’s watch told him seven minutes had passed, with the island of San Lazzaro, so deceptively placid in the sunlight, already receding behind them. Up ahead was his destination, the Lido. Shortly, they would ran alongside it. Then their CIGA motor launch, or motoscafo, would swing left into a short dead-end canal, move under two bridges, and slide up to the awninged pier at the rear of the Hotel Excelsior.

As they made their approach to the Lido, he was reminded, once again, that Alison Edwards, beside him in the open back of the launch, had never made this trip before.

“We’re almost there,” he told her, and pointed to the land and canal entrance ahead.

She leaned against him, toward the side of the boat, for a better look. The warm touch of her body made him tingle, and he was instantly aroused. He understood immediately the impulse that had inspired him to invite her along to the Lido. It was simply that he wanted to be near her all the time. Until now, it had only been the bottle he wanted near. But now it was a living woman, the first since Claire of long ago, and it seemed unbelievable to him that it was happening. Especially unbelievable that it was happening in a time of such turmoil and danger.

He realized that the day was only half done, and it had been packed with more incident and excitement than the entire year preceding it. After leaving Professor MacDonald safely with Dr. Scarpa, Jordan had returned to the Hotel Danieli, where Alison had been waiting for him in his suite as instructed. She had been filled with anxiety, wondering what had taken place after Jordan had left her with Don Pietro and raced off to rescue MacDonald from Bishop Uberti and the party of priests taking him to Rome.

Coke in hand, Jordan had sat down and allayed all of Alison’s fears. MacDonald was safe, he had assured her. Briefly, he had recounted the events of the busy morning. He had intercepted MacDonald at the train depot in the nick of time. They had gone to Dr. Scarpa’s undetected. The problem there had not been MacDonald’s knee—his injury had been superficial—but the fact that the physician had recognized the professor from the posters he had seen. Happily, Jordan had reported, he had convinced his friend of the professor’s innocence, and the doctor had agreed to provide a hideout until Bruno came through with his bribed guard.

Then Alison had asked the unexpected. “What if Bruno doesn’t come through? What if the guard won’t be bribed?”

Until this moment, Jordan had been so fixed on Bruno as the means of Professor MacDonald’s liberation that he had not faced the possibility of failure. Alison had forced him to face it.

“You’re right,” he had told her. “I must find an alternative way out, just in case.”

“Any ideas?”

“Not this second. But I’d like to look into some of the different routes out of Venice, find out how thoroughly they are being patrolled. The Lido, for one—the island across the lagoon—it stands between Venice and the open sea, the Adriatic—it is the best escape hatch aside from Mestre. I think I’d better get over there, find out what’s going on.”

He had meant to go by himself. He travels fastest who travels alone, etcetera. But he had been looking at Alison—gamin bob, oversized lavender glasses, absolutely ravishing pert profile—and on impulse he had asked, “Want to come along?”

“If I won’t be in the way.”

“Of course not. In fact, forgot to tell you, but I keep a cabana on the Excelsior beach the entire season. Although I haven’t used it lately, it’s there. You can use it while I poke around and make inquiries on the security setup. You can take a sunbath.”

“It sounds too indolent and hedonistic, considering poor Davis’s situation.”

“You’ll be seeing him between six and seven. I promised Dr. Scarpa we’d look in and bring the professor a bite. There’s nothing you can do for him by sitting and fretting. But on the Lido, I might come up with something. And you can come up with a tan.”

She had smiled, devastatingly. “You’re persuasive, Mr. Jordan. Okay, I’m coming with you.”

He was jolted back to the present moment by the contact of the motor launch against the wide Hotel Excelsior pier. After the pilot’s assistant had secured the craft, Jordan helped Alison off the boat, then led her between the gaily striped poles that held up the awning into the cavern of the hotel arcade stretching beneath the upstairs lobby. He continued to lead her past the variety of display cases, until they reached the outdoor bar and restaurant.

As they faced the green Adriatic, Jordan indicated the rows of beach cabanas to the right and left of them. The cabanas, white canvas and brown-trimmed, each with a decorative glass ball on top, were as picturesque as ever.

Alison was enthusiastic. “Absolutely charming,” she said. “Where do we go?”

“Mine’s to the left,” he said. “Libra 5.”

He started her down a sidewalk running behind the row of cabanas directly on the waterfront, turned off into the sand between cabanas, and brought her under the awning that extended in front of his cabana.

“Here we are,” he said. “A cot in the sun, a beach chair in the shade, a porch furnished with table, chair, tub of water to get the sand off your feet, and inside behind the flap a private dressing room.”

“So this is how the rich live.”