The Pigeon Project (4 page)

MacDonald hadn’t the faintest idea where he was, but he was sure his pilot knew the way to Venice, and that they would be circling inward toward the city’s concentration of lights any moment. Waiting for the happy landfall, he sat back and smoked with contentment.

In minutes, the motorboat was slowing, rocking to a stop, quietly gliding, and finally, it banged against something wooden, shuddered, halted. His watch told him the trip had taken thirty-two minutes. The passport woman at the airport had said it would be twenty minutes. Well, he thought, nothing is ever on time in Italy, or so he had read.

Now he heard voices, the boatmen calling up to someone above them.

MacDonald squinted through the window again. There were steps leading up to a pier, and just beyond, the outlines of a large old two-story building with several windows here and there showing yellow lights.

“Signore,” he heard someone summon. It was the short boatman, holding the cabin door open.

Stooping, MacDonald left the cabin. Once he was in the open part of the boat the burly boatman reached for his arm and propelled him up the craft’s steps to a landing. Here there were six or seven steps to the top of the pier. At the top stood two men, one in a business suit, one in a uniform, and the man in the business suit was silently beckoning him.

Confused, bewildered, MacDonald turned around to the boatmen. “Where am I? This isn’t Venice.”

“Arrivederci,” the burly boatman called out, pushing the motor launch away from the pilings. It was drifting away, and MacDonald saw in a panic that already the gap of water between himself and the boat was too wide to cover.

He turned back to the pier steps, heart tripping.

He waited.

“Come up here,” he heard someone order him. “We have a gun pointed at you.”

His legs leaden, MacDonald slowly began to climb up the steps. As he attained the pier, he found the two men directly before him. The squat one in khaki uniform, a white strap running from his shoulder to one hip, plainly an Italian, possibly a member of the carabinieri, was pointing a small-caliber pistol at him. The other man, curly black hair, beady eyes, a pointed nose on an angular Slavic face, attired in a natty double-breasted dark blue suit, wore an expression of amiability.

“What is this?” demanded MacDonald, voice quavering. “I’m supposed to be in Venice. Where am I?”

“You are on the island of San Lazzaro,” the one in the business suit said, with the trace of a Russian accent. “You are eight minutes outside Venice.”

“What does this mean? Why am I here?”

“For your own safety, my friend. You are far too valuable a property to be anywhere but here.”

MacDonald felt panic. “What are you going to do with me?”

“We are going to hold you in protective custody, Professor. Then, after a few days, we are going to send you home. Yes, home. We are going to send you back to the Soviet Union.”

* * *

In the morning, neither the warm sunlight slanting through the barred windows nor the delicious breakfast served a half hour ago could comfort him. The cold fact of his situation remained. He had not escaped. He was not free. He was a prisoner.

MacDonald, in mussed shirt and wrinkled trousers, still slumped before his breakfast tray, which sat on what resembled a bridge table, felt confused and helpless. Normally a calm and pacific man, who handled each of life’s new experiences thoughtfully and logically, he had never suffered or enjoyed high drama in his existence. Except for his visits to foreign countries, his interviews with native octogenarians, his work was largely mental and his routine somewhat sedentary. The events of the last sixteen hours following his discovery of C-98—his flight from Sukhumi, his abduction in Venice—were events he had always assumed happened in the cinema or suspense novels. Now, to have had them happen in real life, and to himself, of all people, was almost too unreal to accept.

Yet here he was, an innocent, harmless scientist with one of history’s greatest secrets locked in his head, being held captive by a foreign nation in a medieval monastery on an island in Italy. The consequences of this captivity—imprisonment for the rest of his life in an alien land—were too frightening for him to imagine.

He recalled that last night, at gunpoint, he had been led from the pier across a court into the entry of what he had been told was a monastery. He had been prodded up four short flights of stone steps to the second floor. There, after passing through a long corridor hung with framed tapestries, he had been brought to a gilded doorway where another armed member of the Italian carabinieri, fiercely moustached, stood guard.

The door had been unlocked, and MacDonald had gone inside, followed by his civilian Russian host.

“This is a library housing Armenian manuscripts as well as other rare treasures,” his captor had told him. “You will find it roomy and comfortable. We’ve moved in a cot for you. You will take your meals here. A monk will deliver them. If you have need for the water closet, tug at that maroon bell rope in the corner. It will summon the monk assigned to you, and he will take you down the hall. Since we have real concern for your health, you will be escorted outside twice a day to take a walk and enjoy fresh air. Do not be foolish enough to consider another escape. You are on an island, in the midst of a lagoon, and you will be under constant surveillance. Our Italian allies have provided us with eight members of the carabinieri—four in the building here, four on the grounds—to guard you. As for your quarters here, you can see that the two windows are grilled, and both doors are securely locked. Accept your lot, and try to enjoy it. Do not fear what is ahead. If you cooperate, you will become a hero of the Soviet Union. For now, welcome to San Lazzaro. Have a good sleep. I will see you tomorrow.”

And here it was tomorrow. And he had not had a good sleep.

Rising from his chair, MacDonald scanned the library room once more. Hanging from the ceiling, an ornate brass chandelier. On either side of the second door, ancient books behind glass. To one side, a white marble bust on a pedestal. Nearby, a showcase containing an 8th-century manuscript of the Koran, a gift to San Lazzaro from one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s scientists. Next, the low-slung cot on which he had slept.

His eyes went to the two windows. Each was covered by heavy bars. On the ledge of one window, four fat gray pigeons were perched. MacDonald remembered, from his first visit, the density of pigeons pecking at kernels of corn in the Piazza San Marco. These four, he decided, must be on a holiday.

For want of something better to do, MacDonald went to his breakfast tray, picked up a white roll, tore a piece from it, and broke that into smaller pieces as he walked to the window. The window was on a latch. MacDonald opened it. The pigeons, accustomed to tourists, did not fly off. MacDonald held out a palm filled with bread crumbs, and immediately, the pigeons waddled to his hand and began eating. When they had finished, two of them waddled away, fluttered their wings, and flew off.

MacDonald inspected the iron bars covering the window, gripped one. It was immovable. Leaning forward, brow pressed against the bars, MacDonald was able to make out a grass yard at what seemed to be the rear part of the monastery. To his right there was a dirt walk leading to three or four steps that went to a small hillock where two uniformed men sat on a green bench beneath a large olive tree. Each wore a white strap from shoulder to hip. Carabinieri. Each held a rifle.

MacDonald turned away from the window in despair. The place was escapeproof.

A slight rattle drew MacDonald’s attention to the main door. It was being unlocked, opened, and a tall, thin, boyish-looking monk with a thatch of brown hair entered. He wore a full-length black robe with a narrow leather belt held together by a single pearl clasp. At his neck was an open starched white collar. His black sandals were mesh and sporty. He was not the same monk who had silently delivered breakfast earlier.

“I have come for your breakfast tray,” he said in English. Reaching MacDonald, he stopped. “I am Padre Pashal Nurikhan,” he said. He appeared eager to offer friendship, to allay MacDonald’s apprehension. “You may call me Pashal. Easier to remember. I am assigned to serve you meals and to take you on your daily walks. If you require anything, you need only ring for me.”

“I require more information,” said MacDonald, testing the monk. “Where am I? What is this? What is going on?” MacDonald paused. “Or aren’t you allowed to talk?”

“I can speak,” said Pashal, “but I have not much to tell you. Because I do not know anything, except that I observe you are being held by force. Are you a criminal?”

“Absolutely not,” said MacDonald indignantly. “I am a scientist, a respected one. I’m British by birth, although an American citizen now. I was undertaking experiments in the Soviet Union when I made a—an important discovery. The Russians wanted it for themselves. I felt it belonged to the world. I left the Soviet Union last night, taking the only plane I could get, one that happened to be going to Venice. Apparently, when the Russians learned where I had gone, they contacted their Communist allies in Venice. When I got off the plane, they were waiting for me. They brought me here. They are going to hold me, and return me to the Soviet Union. They are the ones who are criminals. You seem a perfectly decent fellow. How did you get mixed up with that lot? Or are you one of them?”

“No, we have nothing to do with the ones who hold you,” said Pashal, obviously distressed. “I can only explain what I saw last night and heard this morning. There was a telephone call to our father superior, the abbot, and then they came in a motor launch from Venice—Colonel Cutrone, the
commandante
of the carabinieri, and Mr. Ragazzi, the head of the local Communist party, who won the recent municipal election, and Mr. Aleksandr Veksler, the Soviet cultural attaché in Venice—it is he whom you met last night. They also come with a force of eight police guards. They told our father superior they must have his cooperation for a week. They said a foreigner had stolen something important from the Soviet Union and was on his way to Venice. They expected to catch him. They wanted to keep him incarcerated here at the Mechitarist Monastery of St Lazarus—what visitors call San Lazzaro—until he could be returned to the Soviet Union. They wanted to leave Mr. Veksler and the eight carabinieri on San Lazzaro for a week to ensure security. Also, none of us—there are forty-five of us in the monastery—would be allowed to leave the island while the prisoner was here. Our father superior was appalled that this holy place should be converted into a prison. But he had to oblige. Honestly, what else could he say or do? We live by the sufferance of the Venetian government. Our abbot had no choice but to cooperate. That is all I know of the circumstances. I am sorry for you.”

“I understand,” said MacDonald. “I see now that you are as helpless as I am.” He stared at the monk. “Or are you? Could you get me off here to the mainland?”

“Even if I dared, I couldn’t. There is no way. For this week, every monk is a prisoner too.”

“Yes, this is foolish of me.” MacDonald sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to make the best of a bad thing.”

As Pashal Nurikhan started for the breakfast tray, MacDonald caught his arm. “One thing more. Can you tell me about this place—San Lazzaro? Exactly what is it?”

Pashal seemed happy to oblige, reciting his answer like one who had done so hundreds of times before to tourist groups coming over from the city. “Our Mechitarist Congregation—Armenian Catholics—was founded by Maning di Pietro, known as Abbot Mechitar or Abbot Counselor, in Constantinople in 1701. Fourteen years later, fleeing Turkish persecution, Abbot Mechitar escaped to Venice, and two years later, the Venetian government gave him the island of San Lazzaro as a gift. There was this two-story building on the island—it had been a monastery in the twelfth century, then turned into a leper hospital, then abandoned, and with Abbot Mechitar it became a monastery once again. While many people have not known about San Lazzaro, there have been some distinguished visitors who have come here in the last two centuries. The most distinguished was Lord Byron, who came to study the Armenian-language and who wrote an Armenian-English grammar book on these premises.”

“What do you do on the island?” asked MacDonald.

“We are one of the leading Armenian centers in the world. We have an important school here. We have a church. We have a printing press—in fact, eighteen modern presses, run by four of the brothers. We print Italian guidebooks, and—this may amuse you—we print Italian comic books to raise money to support ourselves. Otherwise, we are one of the most tranquil places on earth. In 1717, when we took over the island, it was only 6,000 square meters in surface size. In 1850, the emperor of Austria, who controlled Venice, enlarged our island with new soil, making it its present 30,000 square meters in size. These 30,000 square meters have been a garden spot. None of us ever dreamed they would be used for a prison. I hope—”

That moment, Aleksandr Veksler, in the same dark business suit he had worn the night before but now wearing a pink sport shirt, came into the room.

Observing that he had interrupted a conversation, he frowned. “You may go now, Padre,” he said. “I have some business with our guest. We must be alone.”

Hurriedly, the monk took up the breakfast tray and, with a quick nod at MacDonald, departed from the library room.

Veksler waited for the door to close, and then he gestured to the chair behind MacDonald. “Perhaps it would be better if you sat down. I want to have a little talk with you.”

MacDonald felt defiant and considered remaining on his feet, but he decided that this was childish, and he lowered himself into the chair.

Veksler drew another chair from beneath the windows and settled in across from MacDonald. “I have been authorized to make a proposition to you, a very generous one.” For the first time, MacDonald became aware of a sheaf of paper and a pen that the Russian had in one hand and was now holding up. “I have have brought you paper and a pen,” he said. He laid them on the table beside MacDonald. “I am going to leave them with you. As to the proposition…”