The Pigeon Project (27 page)

“Well, my God, bring him right up and let’s make him comfortable. I’ll ask one of Cedric Foster’s sycophants to vacate his room, double up with someone else, and the professor shall have a lovely bedroom to himself, with complete privacy.”

“Contessa, just one thing. No one, but no one—certainly not your guests—must know what he has done or that he is here.”

“You have my sacred word.”

“I’ll be by to see him tomorrow evening, to let him know how escape plans are progressing.”

“Tomorrow evening? About tomorrow evening, Timothy. I’m giving a small dinner party for Cedric Foster. Since you’re coming by anyway, why don’t you plan to attend the dinner? You can bring one of your many ladies. I’d love to have you.”

“I appreciate that. I’m not sure I’m in the mood for parties—”

“You need a diversion.”

“All right, I accept. I’ll bring the professor’s assistant, Dr. Alison Edwards. We’ll come by a bit early, so we can see the professor first. Now I’d better introduce you to our fugitive.”

* * *

The following morning, from the moment he had awakened early in the Hotel Danieli, Tim Jordan had determined to put Professor MacDonald out of his mind and for the first time in recent weeks concentrate on his work. After all, it was not often that the Venice Must Live Committee got a break like this, a chance to have its story told in 1,400 American newspapers by the most widely read columnists in the United States. This day, Jordan had known, he must give all his energies to the columnist, Schuyler Moore, and not be diverted by his role in MacDonald’s escape.

Yesterday, after leaving MacDonald with the pleased and excited Contessa De Marchi, he had devoted himself to trying to locate Bruno Giradi. He had left telephone messages at
Il Gazzettino
, at the mayor’s press office, at two restaurants he knew Bruno frequented, each time asking that Bruno contact him as soon as possible. By late this afternoon, he hoped, after he had returned from Voltabarozzo, he would have some favorable word from Bruno that he would be able to impart to Professor MacDonald tonight before the contessa’s dinner party.

Until then, though, his devotion must be entirely to Schuyler Moore and the Pirelli-Furlanis Dam that was to save Venice from sinking into the sea.

There had been five of them who had met at the main garage in the Piazzale Roma. Jordan and Marisa had picked up Schuyler Moore at the Hotel Bauer Grunwald, taken a motorboat to the Piazzale Roma. There the two young carabinieri guards assigned by Colonel Cutrone had been awaiting them, as well as the Mercedes sedan made available by the Italian Ministry of Public Works.

Jordan had driven, with Schuyler Moore beside him in the front seat and Marisa squeezed between the two guards in the back seat. Jordan had made the trip many times before with journalists, and once again he had reached Padua in forty minutes.

In Padua, he had driven the Mercedes to the Corso Milano, and across from the Teatro Verdi had parked in front of the modern building housing the Genio Civile, the local branch of the Ministry of Public Works. While the others waited, and accompanied by one guard, Jordan had gone inside briefly and from the chief of the department had obtained the special pass that would allow them to inspect the miniature model of the Venice lagoon.

Now they were on their way to Voltabarozzo, the small community outside Padua where the Centro Sperimentale di Idraulici—the Center for Experiments in Hydraulics—was located. As they rolled along the Strada Statale, between rows of typical Italian dwellings on one side of the highway and artificial canals and meadows on the other, Jordan listened to Marisa describing the area to Schuyler Moore. The columnist had twisted in the front seat, facing Marisa in the rear to hear her better, and Jordan had a closer and more careful look at him. Moore appeared to be about forty years old, with a rather squarish, slightly acned face. His hair was dark blond, thinning, parted neatly on one side. Hornrimmed glasses perched on his short straight nose, and the lenses somewhat exaggerated his small, doubtful blue eyes. His mouth was small and constantly puckered. Until now, he had not talked much, preferring to listen to Jordan’s anecdotal highlights of Venice’s history and Marisa’s occasional interjections.

As Marisa caught her breath, Schuyler Moore spoke up. “All very interesting and helpful,” he said. “But until now you haven’t told me a word about this flood-control apparatus we’re going to see.”

“On purpose,” said Jordan from the wheel. “This is one of those things that are better understood when seen—even in miniature. It’ll all be very clear once you set eyes on it. We just didn’t want to confuse you.”

“Fair enough.”

“In fact, the Center is coming into view,” said Jordan. In a few seconds he pointed out the window, adding, “There, to the left, up ahead, Mr. Moore. The Center complex forms a triangle. At one end of the triangle is a two-story office building. Next, an area for open-air experiments. Finally, the dominant part of the Center, the part that will interest you, the mammoth metal building that resembles a plane hangar—that’s where the model of the Venice lagoon has been built You’ll see for yourself in a few minutes.”

After they turned off the road, and parked, and got out of the car, Jordan guided Schuyler Moore up ahead of the others. As they approached the hangar-like structure, Jordan began to fill Moore in on the background. Moore quickly pulled a small, cheap notebook out of the pocket of his seersucker jacket, located his ball-point pen, and began to jot notes.

“There are many reasons why Venice is gradually sinking into the sea,” said Jordan, “and there are many proposed solutions to save it, but we are only concerned with one, the best and most practical one. But first, why is Venice sinking? Answers. The world’s ice masses melt, the world’s oceans rise, and because of this the water level here is one inch higher every five years. Further, the city rests on a muddy foundation of soil. Then, more important, private industry in Marghera and Mestre pumped water out of the lagoon . bottom, out of the subsoil, forcing the land to sink. But the main reason for the city’s sinking—and in fact, its being slowly eroded and destroyed—is that high tides come in from the Adriatic through three channels and fill the lagoon. The lagoon, in turn, rises and engulfs, or floods, the city. Often, when the waters are at high tide, the sirocco, a windstorm or gale, sends the lagoon smashing over Venice. Almost every winter, floods put the Piazza San Marco under three inches of water. As you may recall, the disastrous flood of 1966 had the Piazza over six inches underwater, left oil from the central heating tanks six feet high on buildings, wrecked shops, homes, walls, paintings, boats, left 5,000 people homeless. And any future storm that generated a wind velocity of sixty miles an hour would put the city under nine inches of water. What can be done to prevent these annual floods? There is one solution. Now you shall see it for yourself.”

After Jordan handed his permit to a guard, they entered the gray interior of the building, and what stretched before them for a great distance was a concrete layout of the city of Venice without a single one of its structures and landmarks. The slabs of concrete represented the ground, the soil, the land foundation of Venice, and gouged into the concrete were deep depressions representing the canals of the city. Even as they studied the layout, real water was being pumped into the model, and the canals were being filled.

“This model took two years to construct,” said Jordan, “and was supervised by four teams of experts using bathymetric maps. The building covering this model is 16,000 square meters, and the model of Venice itself with its lagoon is 12,000 square meters—in all, roughly the area covered by the real Piazza San Marco.”

Schuyler Moore was mesmerized by the water streaming into the toy canals. His small eyes shone through his thick spectacle lenses. He shook his head. “Truly astonishing,” he said, and resumed making notes.

Jordan began pointing at certain locations. “The Piazza San Marco would be there. The Doges’ Palace there. That’s the Grand Canal in miniature, and then the Rialto Bridge. Now, way out there at the far left, at the other end—you can’t see it well from here—is a large tank that represents the Adriatic Sea. Let’s walk over there, all around the model, and I can show you fairly close up the source of Venice’s problem and our prevention apparatus in miniature and exactly how it works.”

Jordan led Moore, Marisa, and the two policemen along the side of the concrete model to the rear, where they ascended steps leading into a four-room electronic center. In one room, where an engineer was at work at a computer, they all gathered about Jordan at a wide window looking out upon the model.

“The equipment in use here,” said Jordan, “is a 100,000,000-lire Siemens System 300. This controls the action of the nearby pumps that make the water flow and simulate the tide in either direction, entering Venice and leaving Venice. If the flow of the high tide in real life takes six hours, the flow of the same tide on this model occurs in six minutes.”

Jordan gestured off. “There you can see the three channels, or openings, reduced, through which water flows from the Adriatic Sea into Venice. The nearest channel is the Lido, the next is Malamocco, and the farthest one is Chioggia. To prevent a high tide from entering through these channels and drowning the city, we contracted with Industrie Pirelli, which specializes in rubber, and Furlanis, which specializes in construction, to build flexible barriers or dams across each of those channels. One has already been completed and installed in the actual Lido channel outside the lagoon. You will see it in miniature on the model out there. Now, what is this flexible barrier or dam? It is a long container, resembling a kind of flattened-out dirigible, made of nylon fabric and a rubber compound. It is stretched across the mouth of the Lido channel and held fast on either side by anchor chains tied to metal pylons set in concrete. The container or bag, deflated, lies fastened to the bottom of the sea, on the seabed, so that it does not interfere with ships passing into the lagoon. But suppose a high tide is coming, or a gale, and Venice is about to be flooded? Here is what happens…”

Jordan signaled to the engineer, who nodded and bent over his electronic console. Jordan pointed below.

“Keep your eye on the Lido channel there. Water from the sea is mounting, starting to pour through the channel toward the lagoon and the city. An engineer activates hydraulic pumps, fills the nylon bag on the sea bottom with water, and inflated, filled, blown up, the top of the dam rises to the surface—there, look…”

In the model before them, a miniature elongated bag rose out of the water, setting up a dam that stopped the high tide from going through the channel into the lagoon. The lagoon’s water level was effectively protected by this inflated artificial barrier.

“You see,” said Jordan, “the bags keeps out the sea, and Venice is saved from flooding and destruction. Now, as soon as the high tide recedes, or the storm has ended, and the sea and lagoon levels are the same, the bag barrier is automatically emptied of water, deflated, and it sinks to the bottom, out of sight, to permit shipping to resume from the sea into the lagoon and the industrial port.”

“Remarkable,” said Schuyler Moore, intrigued by the device. “Once there is a warning that the channel should be closed, how long does it take for one of those barriers to be inflated and rise out of the water?”

“It used to take thirty minutes,” said Jordan. “But the pumps have been improved with a new invention, and now the flexible barriers can be filled and stretch from the seabed to the top in less than five minutes.”

“And that can save Venice?” said Moore.

“It can.”

“Has it been installed yet?”

“A real one has been installed in the Lido channel. It has not yet been installed in either of the other two channels.”

“Well, the one that’s been installed—is it being used at all?”

Jordan hesitated, weighing how much information he should give out to this journalist. But he knew Moore was shrewd, and one could not play games with him. If he was not given the truth here, he would learn it elsewhere.

“To answer your question honestly,” Jordan said, “no—no, the Lido flexible barrier has never been used.”

“Why not?”

“For the same reasons the device has not been installed in the other two channels. Business and politics. The political obstacles are that two new inflatable dams would cost between $16,000,000 and $20,000,000 to install, and after the Ministry of Public Works has approved, nine other government agencies such as the Ministry of Cultural Works have to give their approval. But the main problem is the lobbying of big business interests representing petrochemical, aluminum, steel, ammonia plants on the mainland. Right now, shipping goods to their doorstep at Marghera and Mestre is easy and cheap. They want to keep it that way. They don’t want any inflatable barriers to hamper shipping. These industrialists are not sentimental or romantic. They don’t give a goddamn about saving Venice as a museum. They would just as soon let it sink into the sea and have its area as a bigger harbor for importing and exporting. That’s why the Lido barrier has been installed—yet never used. Its installation soothed the romantic museum faction. Its immobility satisfied the business and labor elements. That’s why the other two haven’t been installed at all.”

Moore raised his head from his notes and squinted at Jordan. “I appreciate your frankness,” he said. “If I quote that, will it give you trouble?”

“Probably. But let the truth be told. Let everyone know what the Venice Must Live Committee is up against.”

Marisa stepped forward. “Mr. Moore, if you use that, please use it without attribution. Do not use Mr. Jordan’s name.”

He smiled at her. “Protective, aren’t you? Of course, I won’t use his name.”

“Let me show you around further, Mr. Moore,” said Jordan.

For the next half hour, Jordan guided the columnist and the others around the interior of the Center, explaining more about the operation and its potential, and answering Moore’s incisive questions.