The Nosferatu Scroll (24 page)

The driver of the blue boat obliged him.

He was just coming up to the entrance to another
canal on the right, and swung the boat into it. As he did so, the man in the bow of the boat raised his own pistol and fired off a shot toward Bronson.

That was what he’d been waiting for. Pulling back on the throttle, Bronson spun the wheel hard to the right, to make sure that the boat would circle in more or less the same place. Then, rising in his seat, he clutched at his chest and slumped down out of sight, the Browning still in his hand, just in case the two men decided to come alongside his boat for a closer look.

From his position on the floor of the powerboat, Bronson could see nothing except the sky and the tops of the buildings that lined the canal, so he was relying entirely on his ears to deduce what was happening. He heard the sound of the engine of the other boat fade away sharply, which meant the driver had chopped back the throttle. Then the engine noise—and Bronson was sure it was the same engine—increased again, and appeared to be getting closer, though it was difficult to be certain of this because of the way the noise echoed from both sides of the man-made canyon. It certainly sounded as though the two men were approaching to make sure he was dead.

Bronson checked the Browning was ready to fire, and waited as the sound of the other boat’s engine grew louder.

About an hour later, Angela was taken out of the main door of the house into the pale watery light of a cloudy afternoon in the Venetian lagoon.

After the hooded man had left the drawing room, Marco had instructed her to make a complete translation of the rest of that section of the diary as quickly as possible, obviously hoping that the remainder of the Latin text would provide details of the precise location of the source document. It didn’t. The only reference Angela found was to the “campanile of light,” which just served to confirm her assumption that the document must be somewhere in the ancient bell tower. From her reading of the chapter dealing with the history of Poveglia, she knew that the bell tower had for a time been converted into a lighthouse. But she still had no idea exactly where to start looking.

Marco and another of his men hustled her down the path toward the jetty at the end of the island, where two
men were already waiting, standing in the stern of a powerboat, the rumble of the engine clearly audible.

“Why do you want me to go with you?” Angela asked, as Marco pushed her inside the small cabin.

“You’ve read and translated the Latin,” he replied. “We don’t know what we’ll find when we get there, but there might be something, some clue, that you’ll see and understand but we won’t. That’s why you’re here.”

“What happens if you don’t find what you’re looking for?”

“You’d better pray that we do. Finding the source document is the only thing that’s keeping you alive right now. If it isn’t there, then we have no further use for you.”

The casual, almost conversational, tone of his voice scared Angela even more than the words he’d used, and she sat in silence as Marco handcuffed her wrists together, looping the link between the cuffs behind a handrail, immobilizing her. Then he left the cabin.

A few moments later the door opened again and the hooded man entered, the now-familiar stench preceding him. Angela shrank back in her seat as the figure passed right beside her, and then took a seat at the opposite end of the cabin.

Moments later, she felt the boat start to move, and soon the bow was cutting through the choppy waters of the lagoon, the waves thumping rhythmically against the hull.

She had no idea how long the journey would take,
because she didn’t know where she’d been imprisoned, and the view through the side windows of the boat was so restricted that she could see almost nothing of her surroundings. And in truth, her thoughts were dominated by the hooded man she was sharing the cabin with. He had said nothing to her, and gave no sign that he was even aware of her presence, but the all-pervasive smell of rotting meat seemed to fill the air, and she was simply terrified in case he came close or, worse, touched her.

A few minutes later, Marco returned to the cabin and sat down opposite Angela, which actually made her feel safer and slightly more comfortable. At least the menace Marco represented was clear and tangible. The hooded man inspired only feelings of horror and revulsion, which were far worse than any physical threat.

“Who is that man?” she asked quietly, nodding toward the silent figure. “He terrifies me.”

Marco smiled bleakly. “He should.”

Bronson tensed as the sound of the boat drew closer, and a moment later he felt a slight bump as some part of the other craft touched his boat. He kept his eyes half-open, and lay as still as possible, the Browning held loosely by his side but ready to fire.

He could hear the two men talking as they maneuvered their boat alongside his, their efforts hampered by the fact that the engine of Bronson’s craft was still running, and the boat was describing a small circle at the junction of the two canals.

“I can see him,” one of the men said. “He’s not moving.”

“He must be dead, then,” the other replied, “or at least he’s badly wounded. Let’s get out of here before a police launch comes along.”

Bronson heard the noise of another boat’s engine approaching, he thought from the opposite direction, though it was difficult to tell. But what he was quite certain
about was that the blue boat was moving away. That sound was unmistakable.

For about thirty seconds he did nothing; then he eased himself up cautiously, and risked a quick glance over the side of the vessel. There was a slight bend in the canal to the east and, as he looked in that direction, he saw the blue powerboat disappear around it. The moment it was out of sight, he sat up, centered the steering wheel to stop the circular motion of the boat, grabbed his map of the Venetian waterways, and quickly worked out where he was.

He’d ended up in a canal called the Rio della Racchetta, and the men he’d been chasing would have to continue down the adjoining waterway until they reached the larger Rio del Gesuiti, because they’d already passed the only other canal entrance. What he didn’t know was which way they’d turn when they reached it. Left would take them the shorter distance, out into the Canale delle Fondamente Nuove, the open water that lay on the northeast side of Venice. If they swung right, they’d have a longer run down the canal until they reached the Canal Grande—the Grand Canal—itself.

A wooden launch—its engine had been what Bronson had heard—swept down one side of the powerboat, the driver staring at him with some curiosity as he passed. He had obviously seen the pirouettes that Bronson’s craft had been describing in the water, and probably thought he was drunk.

Bronson ignored him. His only concern was to try to
second-guess the men he was following. The trouble was, he had very little to go on. When the blue powerboat had pulled away from the Island of the Dead, the driver had headed southeast. If his destination had been one of the islands at the northeastern end of the Laguna Veneta, somewhere near Burano, for example, Bronson would have expected them to head in that direction. The fact that they’d continued along the north side of Venice suggested that they were going to sail around the eastern end of the island, and perhaps then turn southwest, toward the other end of the lagoon, where he knew there was a scattering of small islands.

It was a long shot, though, and for perhaps half a minute, Bronson sat at the wheel of the boat, his mind racked by indecision. He had just one chance. If he guessed wrong, he’d never see the blue boat again, which would mean he’d lose Angela. He had to get it right.

His mind made up, he spun the wheel and opened the throttle, sending the boat speeding south down the Rio della Racchetta, retracing the course he’d followed just minutes earlier. At the end of the canal, he turned the boat right and almost immediately left, back into the Rio di San Felice, where he’d seen the jam caused by the gondolas. As he made the turn, he prayed that this time the waterway would be clear.

It wasn’t, but there were far fewer boats in the way. Bronson kept the speed up as much as he dared, then pulled the throttle back as he reached the nearest gondola. He started to weave his way through the jostling
boats, his passage attracting a torrent of abuse in high-speed Italian, all of which he ignored.

A couple of minutes later he was through, and swung the boat to the left, into the Grand Canal itself. As he did so, he glanced to his left and saw a long wooden-hulled launch bearing down on him, just yards away. Bronson knew immediately that if he continued turning toward the boat, he’d never miss it. He reacted instantly, spinning the steering wheel to the right and pushed the throttle forward, sending his boat straight across the bow of the oncoming vessel.

There was a bang from the rear of Bronson’s boat, as the bow of the much larger launch hit the left-hand rear of his powerboat, cracking the fiberglass and scattering paint flakes across the water. But the outboard motor was undamaged, and he was certain that the impact had been well above the waterline, so there was no danger of him taking in water. And in fact fiberglass boats of the type he was in were so full of air pockets that they were virtually unsinkable.

The driver of the launch immediately reduced speed, obviously intending to do the Italian marine equivalent of exchanging names and addresses. But Bronson had not the slightest intention of stopping or even slowing down. His boat’s throttle was still wide-open and the outboard engine roaring, so he twitched the steering wheel to the left and sped away, heedless of the angry shouts echoing from behind him.

The Grand Canal in Venice follows an S-shaped course
from the Stazione Ferrovie dello Stato Santa Lucia, the railway station, to its southern end near the Piazza San Marco, where it opens out into the Bacino di San Marco and the much wider
canale
of the same name. Bronson had joined the canal about a third of the way along, so he knew he would have to contend with the fairly heavy water traffic for some time before he could get into the clearer and more open waters to the south of the city. And then, of course, he would have the even more difficult task of spotting the blue powerboat carrying the two men, among the hundreds of similar craft that plied the waters in and around Venice. And that assumed that he’d been right in his guess that the boat would be heading into the waters of the lagoon somewhere to the south of the city.

He also knew that although the men he’d been following now believed that he was dead or badly wounded, they would still be keeping their own eyes peeled for any sign of pursuit, and paying particular attention to anybody who looked like him. There was nothing he could do about the design and color of his boat, but Bronson realized that there were things—three things, in fact—that he could do to try to change his own appearance.

He was wearing his black leather jacket, so he took this off and dropped it on the floor of the boat beside him. Underneath, he had on a plain white shirt, which would give him an entirely different appearance to anyone viewing him from a distance. And in his shirt pocket he had a baseball cap and a pair of large sunglasses with impenetrable
mirrored black lenses. He took out the sunglasses and slipped them on as he powered the boat down the Grand Canal toward the open water at its end, then settled the cap on his head, ensuring that it completely covered the dressing over the wound on his scalp.

Unless he got so close to the other boat that the men in it could actually see his features, Bronson guessed that he now looked quite different. Rolling his shoulders to ease away some of his tension, and trying hard not to think about what could be happening to Angela, he focused on the task in hand: spotting the other vessel, a challenge that made finding a needle in a haystack seem easy by comparison.

Marco released Angela’s handcuffs, and led her out of the cabin. The boat was already moored, a bow and stern line attached, and it was easy enough to step from the side of the vessel onto the landing stage. She looked around. The boat was positioned a short distance down the channel between the small octagonal island that lay at the southern tip of Poveglia and the middle island. In the distance, looking south, she could make out buildings on the Lido.

The octagonal island looked like a flat-topped fort, the inward-sloping sides made of stone, and mooring alongside that would have been difficult. But that wasn’t their objective. A short distance along the level stone landing stage that marked the southern end of the larger island was an impressive-looking building. It reminded Angela of a typical Venetian palazzo, and must, she thought, have been part of the retirement home on the island, before being abandoned in the 1960s. The facade was
covered with a weblike exoskeleton of rusting scaffolding. That, Angela knew from her research, was not part of some renovation project, but had been erected almost a quarter of a century earlier simply to stop the buildings from falling down.

She looked over to the northeast, and there, beyond the trees, rose the imposing stone bell tower, looking something like a church steeple, its tall red-tiled roof supporting a large metal crucifix at the very top. All the openings in the tower appeared to have been bricked up, possibly when the scaffolding was put in place. A chill wind blew in suddenly from the waters of the lagoon, bringing with it a swirl of mist, and from somewhere nearby Angela heard the faint sound of a bell ringing.

She glanced at Marco. “Did you hear that bell?” she asked, and pointed toward the tower. “I thought it came from over there.”

He looked at her dismissively. “Impossible,” he said. “The bell was removed in nineteen thirteen.”

“I know what I heard,” Angela insisted, but her voice lacked conviction. She’d read in the guidebook that the sound of a bell was still sometimes heard on the island.

The hooded man emerged from the cabin of the boat and began moving silently—his feet never seemed to make a sound—toward the derelict building that lay closest to the tower.