Killing Pilgrim (36 page)

“How does Horvat tie into this?”

“Horvat?”

“Yes. The man who introduced us at the Excelsior. The man you and your Mr. Dawes met up with in Dubrovnik the other night.”

“Have you been playing spy, Gringo?”

“I was in town having a drink, and noticed you all going into the same restaurant.”

“With your Canadian friend?”

“So what’s the deal with Horvat?”

“No deal. He was just being polite. Keeping up with developments.”

“Did you tell him about the Bosnians?”

“He was very interested in the .50-calibre they had.”

“Should have been, since he smuggles them in.”

“Not that one, apparently. It was a Chinese gun.”

There was a sound overhead, on the landing, someone falling. Della Torre sprang up the stairs to find Snezhana on the floor near the top. He lifted her tiny, almost weightless frame and carried her back to the bedroom.

“Are you okay? Have you hurt yourself?”

The little girl struggled to make herself clear. “I’m fine. I was listening,” she said. “The woman with red hair isn’t Milady de Winter.”

“No? Who is she, then?” he asked, smiling with relief.

“You’ll see one day.”

“Oh?” della Torre said, puzzled

“She’s not Milady. My name comes from the word for snow,” the little girl said. “I am.”

She unsettled him. In that tiny, fragile, twisted frame there flickered a cool ferocity. What child imagined herself the villain, the vengeful Milady de Winter?

“So who,” he asked, “am I?”

It
wasn’t dawn yet when they took Strumbić’s motorboat across the strait. Della Torre had had to wake Snezhana. She shook with the cold of the early morning, though he’d left her pyjamas on, pulling a dress over them and wrapping her up in a blanket to protect her from the night air.

The water was calm, but the three-kilometre-long passage was still tense. There were no dangerous rocks, but they went faster than della Torre would have liked. Strumbić’s plastic-hulled motorboat bounced against the small waves, sending up spray. None of them was wearing a life jacket.

The forty-horsepower engine made it a quick trip, though they slowed sharply as they approached the other side, wary of the stone jetty. Rob sat on the covered bow, lighting their way with a powerful torch, while Rebecca steered, the motor chuntering leisurely. She manoeuvred the boat alongside the fenders that cushioned the mooring. Bill jumped out, and tied the boat fast. No one had spoken during the whole journey.

Rebecca and the two Americans carried the hard plastic and metal cases from the boat to the Hilux, which was parked in the shadow of the fisherman’s house. The village was asleep, though a dog, picking up their scent on the faint breeze, sounded a warning.

Rebecca drove to Dubrovnik’s walls, parking the truck within easy access of the citadel’s northern gate. One of the Americans wired up della Torre to a radio, a discreet earpiece fixed onto his right ear. The unit was attached to his belt and a microphone clipped onto the lapel of his cream linen jacket, a souvenir from London. Della Torre sat in the truck while the Americans wandered a short distance into the night to give the radio system a last-minute run-through. All four were on the same speech-activated channel. Della Torre was astonished at how well it worked, even when more than one person was speaking.

Rebecca collected one of her cases from the back of the truck and took it with her into the old town. The rest of them settled into the truck to wait, the silence broken only by Snezhana’s involuntary low grumble and grinding teeth. Della Torre thought he felt her tremble. But then he realized it had been him. He’d slept badly the night before, going over the permutations of Rebecca’s plan, and he was cold with fatigue and nerves. He reached into his jacket pocket for a cigarette but then stopped himself. He wasn’t going to smoke in the truck with the little girl there, and he didn’t want to leave her.

“Number one in position,” he heard Rebecca say through the earpiece.

“Number two heading out.” Rob left the truck, taking a rucksack from the back with him.

The sky lightened at the top of the mountain overlooking Dubrovnik, and slowly they began to pick out more and more of the city’s walls in the pre-dawn wash.

“Time to go, Mr. della Torre,” said Bill.

They walked along the walled road, over the wooden drawbridge that connected the wider world with the ancient town, and through the massive gatehouse. They followed the twisting stone passage to the edge of the Stradun. He could see the full length of the wide white pedestrian road, which ended at the square by the walled harbour.

No one was awake in the city. The street lights were still on, though dawn filtered down onto the rooftops. Della Torre sat with Snezhana on the edge of the Onofrio fountain, the broad white stone cylinder that marked the Stradun’s northern limit. The little girl sat on della Torre’s lap, wrapped tightly in the blanket. Bill stood somewhere in the darkness.

“It will be fine,” he said softly into her ear. “It’s almost over and you’ll be fine. You’re a brave girl.”

She murmured something in his ear, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying.

“She will die,” she repeated, her voice laboured.

He felt his scalp tighten and a ripple of cold trace his spine. Something in him believed the girl.

They sat still for a while. Della Torre checked his watch for the third time and then got up, the little girl straddling his left hip, and started walking down the Stradun.

“Gringo, where are you going?” Rebecca said in his earpiece.

He looked around and up. He knew she was somewhere above. At this time of morning, access to the walls was prohibited. The main entrances were barred until the ticket sellers arrived, though they weren’t selling many these days. But he remembered how when they’d visited, playing tourist, she’d climbed up a tree and the ruins of a building on the seaward side of the wall, where the high walk had been nearest the ground.

“Just stretching my legs,” he said.

“You’ll have time to stretch them. Right now I want you to sit,” Rebecca said into his earpiece.

He remembered how Rebecca had spent time crouching so that she could only just see through the arrow loops. She’d spent the most time over the Pile gatehouse, looking down along the Stradun with field glasses. And she’d had him stand, stock still, three-quarters of the way along. Two hundred and fifty metres from the top of the Pile gatehouse.

He looked up but couldn’t see her. He returned to the fountain and sat down, willing control into his muscles, which had become as rigid and trembling as the girl’s. He sat her on his lap again, pulling back his jacket sleeve so that he could keep an eye on the luminous dials of his watch. He watched the seconds turn. At exactly twenty minutes to the hour he stood up again.

“The girl needs a pee. I’m just taking her round the corner to a gutter,” he said, speaking into the mike on his lapel.

“Wait for Bill.”

“Sorry, got to run, poor girl.”

“I said wait for Bill.”

“Can’t. It’s an emergency. She can barely hold it in.”

“Don’t make me shoot you.”

“You’re going to shoot me because a little girl needs to pee?”

He was running now along the Stradun, counting the side streets as he passed. They all looked the same. He prayed he hadn’t missed one. Two. Three. There it was, the fourth along. Snezhana was feather-light, but it was still awkward carrying her, and his left elbow hurt. He worried it would give way under the strain but dared not stop to swap her to the other arm.

“Gringo . . .” Rebecca said, her frustration audible.

He heard the footsteps behind him, the flat pancake sound of running shoes on stone. His were leather-soled and he was afraid he might slip on the glass-smooth paving slabs. But he’d reached the narrow alley he was looking for, one of the ones that spread perpendicular to the Stradun like the bones off a fish’s spine. He ran along it, up a flight of steps, and then along another flat section and another flight of steps rising towards the city’s massive east wall. The Stradun alone was unbroken by stairs in this hilly city carved out of stone.

Could he remember the place? It had been night when he’d been there. He thought it was close but he still hadn’t reached it. Had he gone up the wrong street? He didn’t know Dubrovnik that well and didn’t have the luxury of getting it wrong. If he screwed this up, he wouldn’t be given another chance. Rebecca would make sure of it. She’d probably replace him with Bill, make Bill sit with the girl on the bench.

“Lost the girl,” he heard Bill say in his earpiece.

“Where are you, Gringo?” Rebecca hissed, her voice betraying impatience and strain.

Where was he?

Giving up on his objective, della Torre ducked into a smaller side passage.

He heard footsteps, though he couldn’t tell where they were coming from. The city was still, silent in its early morning sleep.

He tried to control his breathing, but the run had winded him and his lungs wheezed. The girl ground her teeth as she made a heroic effort to stay quiet.

A man passed, moving in the direction della Torre had just come from. Shit.

Della Torre ran back to the mouth of the passage and saw the man moving cautiously, uncertainly, staying firmly in the buildings’ shadows. Della Torre called out in a hoarse whisper, “Here.”

The man was holding something. When he turned, della Torre could see it was a big pink stuffed bear wrapped in a hotel beach towel. Higgins. Della Torre held his finger to his lips.

Higgins came running up to him. Della Torre gave him the little girl and took the bear in return. The transaction passed in silence, though Snezhana made quiet guttural moans. Without saying a word, Higgins wrapped her in the beach towel. Della Torre made a motion for him to stay while he left, the pink bear covered by Strumbić’s blanket. He kissed Snezhana on the forehead and then went back down the alley stairs to the Stradun.

“Done,” he said. “I’m just coming back.”

“We were getting worried about you,” Rebecca said.

“Like I said, it was an emergency.”

“Where’d you go?”

“In an alleyway.”

“Okay, go back to the fountain. And don’t do anything like that again.”

He held the bear covered in the blanket tight to him and returned to the fountain’s white stone lip. Bill flashed him a dirty look as he passed, breathing hard from his dash around Dubrovnik’s dark alleyways.

Della Torre waited.

“Car,” he heard Rob say in his earpiece. “Subject exiting alone. Has found rucksack. Doesn’t look like he trusts it.”

“Talk to him, Gringo. Bill, put what della Torre says through on the rucksack radio channel.” Rebecca exuded calm authority.

“Mr. Djilas?” della Torre said. “Mr. Djilas?” There was a long pause. “Mr. Djilas?”

“Gringo?”

“That’s me. Do you have the money?”

“In my bag,” the Montenegrin said.

“Are you alone?”

“I’m alone. Do you have my daughter?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Walk down the middle of the Stradun towards the Pile gate.”

“Am I being set up, Gringo?”

“No, Mr. Djilas, you’re not being set up.”

“Because if I am, I know where your wife is. She is working at the hospital in Vukovar. I have a man at that hospital. If he hears nothing from me in two hours, your wife is dead. I know where your father lives in Istria, Gringo. He too will be dead. Anything you have ever touched or loved will be dead. Do you understand, Gringo?”

“I understand, Mr. Djilas. Now come the way you’re meant. Quickly, please.”

There was silence.

“Contact switched off between della Torre and subject,” Rob narrated. “Subject entering the south gate, walking towards the main square. Will pursue once subject has gone sufficiently far along the high walk.”

“Well done, Gringo,” said Rebecca.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Somewhere I can see you,” she said.

There was a long wait. He listened. Dubrovnik was starting to wake. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the east walls, he heard a cock crow. A dog bayed in response. The faint strains of a transistor radio made their way from one of Dubrovnik’s tall, tightly packed houses. The grey light of shadowed morning was starting to lift.

Away in the distance he heard footsteps. He shifted a little to see all the way down the Stradun. Pink dawn crept into the centuries-old man-made canyon of stone. He saw the form of a man enter the Stradun from the city’s inner harbour. The man’s movement was deliberate, slow, as if he was listening for something. He had in one hand the Americans’ rucksack and in the other a holdall.

The man hadn’t gone far, two of those narrow Stradun blocks, less than a quarter of the way along the broad main street, when he stopped, disappearing into a blind arch.

“What’s he doing?” della Torre heard Rebecca ask.

Backing up against a wall to look up the side street, the Montenegrin had all but disappeared. Della Torre guessed he was roughly where the little alleys rose from the Stradun to the city’s only eastern gate.

Without warning, he heard a metallic clank from somewhere overhead and behind him. That same instant, the Montenegrin sprinted across the width of the Stradun and into the opposite passage. Della Torre heard the clank again, and then the crack of splintering stone.

The Montenegrin was gone.

“Where is he? Where the fuck did he go?” Rebecca shouted so that he not only heard her in his earpiece but could hear her from the city wall far above him.

Bill was already racing along the Stradun.

“Subject disappeared toward the eastern gate,” said Rob.

“Get on his tail. The walls go too far around for me to catch up with him. I’ll stay here. Gringo, you move a muscle, you move an inch, and you’re a dead man. I mean that. You are in my sight right now. You sneeze and your head comes off. Show me the girl.”

“What?” della Torre said.

“I said take the girl out of that blanket. Let me see her.”

“Subject is with accomplice. Accomplice holding bags. Subject seems to be carrying something big. Out of sight again.” The American was breathing hard. “Subject and accomplice disappeared.”

“Show me, Gringo.”

Della Torre slowly unwrapped the bear from its blanket.

“What the hell? What is that?”

“A bear. From the Argentina.”

“The bear from the Argentina? Gringo, you are in a world of shit. You hear me? You are in a world of shit.”

“Subject disappeared. Seems to have left in car. No further sight of him.”

Della Torre kept still, sitting on the edge of the Onofrio fountain, holding a large stuffed teddy bear on his lap, his heart pounding, any happiness mitigated by fear of what would happen to him next.