The Parsifal Mosaic (11 page)

“The percentages say otherwise. It’s the
Teresa
. Let’s go.”

Outside the noisy café the narrow thoroughfare was comparatively silent; naked light bulbs shone weakly, enveloped in mist above intermittent doorways, and centuries-old smooth cobblestones muffled the sound of footsteps. At the end of the alley the wide avenue that fronted the piers could be seen in the glow of the streetlamps; until one reached it the alley itself was a gauntlet of shadows. One walked cautiously, alert to the spaces of black silence.

“Ecco!”
whispered the Italian, his eyes up ahead. “Someone’s in that doorway. On the left. Do you have a weapon?”

“No. I haven’t had time—”

“Then
quickly!”
The owner of Il Tritone suddenly broke into a run, passing the doorway as a figure lurched out—a stocky man with arms raised, hands poised for interception. But there was no gun in those hands, no weapon but the thick hands themselves.

Havelock took several rapid strides toward the prowler, then spun into the shadows on the opposite side of the alley. The man lunged; Michael spun around again and, grabbing his assailant’s coat, hammered his right foot up into the man’s midsection. He pivoted a third time, now yanking the
man off the ground, and hurled him into the wall. As the man fell, Havelock sprang downward, his left knee sinking into the man’s stomach, his right hand gripping the face and clawing at the eyes.

“Basta! Por favor! Se Deus quiser!”
choked the prowler, holding his groin, saliva dribbling from his mouth. The language was Portuguese, the man one of the crew of the
Cristóvão
. Michael yanked him up against the wall, into the dim light; he was the seaman who had spoken a few words of English at the table in Il Tritone.

“If you’re going into theft with assault and battery, you’re not doing it very well!”

“No, senhor! I wish only to talk, but I cannot be seen! You pay me, I’ll tell you things, but not where I can be seen with you!”

“Go on.”

“You pay!”

Havelock clamped the sailor’s neck against the brick with his forearm, reached into his pocket and took out his money. Shoving his knee into the man’s chest and freeing his hand, he removed two bills. “Twenty thousand lire,” he said. “Talk!”

“It’s worth mora. Much more, senhor! You will see.”

“I can take it back if it’s not.… Thirty thousand, that’s it. Go
on!”

“The woman goes aboard the
Cristóvão
 … 
sete
 … seven
minutos
before we sail. It is arranged. She comes out the east warehouse door. She is guarded now; you cannot reach her. But she must walk forty meters to the cargo boarding plank.”

Michael released him and added another note to the three in the seaman’s hand. “Get out of here,” he said. “I never saw you.”

“You must
swear
to it, senhor!” cried the man, scrambling to his feet.

“Sworn. Now get out.”

Suddenly voices were heard at the end of the alley; two men came running out of the light.

“Americano! Americano!”
It was the owner of Il Tritone; he had returned with help. As the Portuguese started to race away they grabbed him.

“Let him go!” yelled Havelock. “It’s all right! Let him go!”

Sixty seconds later Michael explained to the owner of Il Tritone. “It’s not the
Teresa
. It’s the
Cristóvão.”

“It’s what was missing!” cried the Italian. “The knowledgeable
capitano
, the great seaman. It was there and I did not see it. Aliandro. João Aliandro! The finest captain in the Mediterranean. He could work his ship into any dangerous coastline, dropping off cargo wherever he wished, wherever the rocks and shoals called for no observers on shore. You have found your woman, signore.”

He crouched in the shadows of a stationary crane, the open spaces of the machinery allowing him unobstructed sight lines. The freighter’s cargo had been loaded; the teams of stevedores dispersed, swearing as they went their various ways across the wide avenue and down the narrow alleys into cafés. Except for the four-man cast-off crew the pier was deserted, and even those men were barely visible, standing motionless by the huge pilings, two men to a line, fore and aft.

A hundred yards behind him was the entrance gate, the obsequious guard inside his glass booth, his figure a gray silhouette in the rolling early-morning fog. Diagonally to the left in front of the crane some eighty-odd feet away was the ribbed, weather-beaten gangplank that went up to the
Cristóvão
’s forward deck. It was the last physical connection to the ship to be hauled on board before the giant hawsers were slipped off the pilings, freeing the behemoth for the open water.

On the right, no more than sixty feet from the crane, was the door to the pier’s warehouse office; it was locked, and all lights were off inside. And beyond that door was Jenna Karas, a fugitive from her own and others’ betrayal—his love, who had turned on that love for reasons only she could tell him.… In moments now, the door would open and she would have to walk from that door to the gangplank, then up the cracked wooden causeway to the deck. Once on board, she would be free; giant lines would be thrown over the pier, whistles would blow, and the gangplank would be whipped in the air, sucked up on deck and stowed. But until then she was not free; she was human contraband in open transit, crossing territory where no one would dare protect her. Inside the warehouse office she could be protected; an
intruder breaking in could be shot for the act itself. But not in the open; men would not risk being caught smuggling human flesh on board ships. The prison sentences were long; a few thousand lire was not worth that risk.

A hundred and forty-odd feet, then, was the span she had to cross in order to disappear. Again. Not in death, but in an enigma.

Michael looked at his watch; it was four-fifty-two, the second hand approaching the minute mark—seven minutes before the
Ctistóvão
was scheduled to blare its bass-toned departure signal, followed by sharper, higher sounds that warned all vessels of its imminent thrust out of its secure haven, the rules of the sea instantly in force. High up on the deck, fore and midships, a few men wandered aimlessly, pinpointed by the erratic glow of their cigarettes. Except for those on the rope winches and the gangplank detail, there was nothing for them to do but smoke and drink coffee and hope their heads would clear without excessive pain. From inside the massive black hull, the muffled roar of the turbines was heard; behind the fires the coarse, muted meshing of giant gear wheels signified the approaching command to engage the mammoth screws in third-torque speed. Oily, dark waters churned around the curve of the
Cristóvão
’s stern.

The warehouse door opened, and Havelock felt a massive jolt in his chest as the blond woman stepped out of the darkness into the lesser darkness of the swirling mists and shadows. The living corpse from the Costa Brava entered the wall-less tunnel that would take her aboard the
Cristóvão
, lead her to an unknown coastline in an unknown country, and escape. From him.
Why?

The hammering in his chest was intolerable, the pain in his eyes excruciating; he had to endure both for seconds longer. Once Jenna reached the midpoint of the pier, in sight of the gate, and the guard and the alarms he could raise, Michael would intercept her. Not an instant sooner.

She was there!
Now
.

He lunged from behind the crane and raced forward, not caring about the sound of his footsteps, intent only on reaching her.

“Jenna! For God’s sake,
Jenna!”

He grabbed her shoulders; the woman spun around in terror.

His breath exploded from his throat. The face that was turned up to him was an old face, an ugly face, the pockmarked face of a waterfront whore. The eyes that stared at him were the wide, dark eyes of a rodent, outlined with thick, running borders of cheap mascara; the lips were blood-red and cracked, the teeth stained and chipped.

“Who are you?”
His scream was the scream of a madman.
“Liar! Liar!
Why are you
lying!
Why are you
here!
Why
aren’t
you here!
Liar!”

Mists not of the sea blurred his mind, crosscurrents of insanity. He was beyond reason, knowing only that his hands had become claws, then fists—scraping, hammering—
kill
the rodent, kill the impostor! Kill, kill!

Other screams, other shouts, commands and countercommands filled the roaring caverns of his consciousness. There was no beginning, no end, only a furious core of frenzy.

Then he felt blows, but did not feel pain. Men were all around him, then above him; fists and heavy boots struck him. Repeatedly. Everywhere.

And then the darkness came. And silence.

Above the pier, on the second floor of the warehouse office, a figure stood at the window looking down at the scene of violence below. She breathed deeply, her fingers stretched across her lips, tears welling in her clear brown eyes. Absently Jenna Karas pulled her hand away from her face and pressed it against the side of her head, against the long blond hair that fell beneath the wide-brimmed hat.

“Why did you do it, Mikhail?” she whispered softly to herself. “Why do you want to kill me?”

He opened his eyes, aware of the sickening stench of cheap whisky, feeling the dampness about his chest and throat—his shirt, jacket and trousers had been drenched. In front of him were gradations of darkness, shadows of gray and black interrupted by tiny, dancing specks of light that bobbed and weaved in the farthest darkness. There was dull pain everywhere, centered in his stomach, rising through his neck to his head, which felt swollen and numb. He had been beaten severely and dragged to the end of the pier—the far right end, beyond the warehouse, if his blurred orientation was anywhere near accurate—and left to regain consciousness, or, conceivably, to roll over the edge to a watery death.

But he had not been killed; that told him something. Slowly he moved his right hand to his left wrist; his watch was there. He stretched his legs and reached into his pocket; his money, too, was intact. He had not been robbed; that told him something else.

He had spoken with too many men, and too many others had seen him in those strange conversations. They had been his protection. Murder was murder, and regardless of what Il Tritone’s owner had said, a “quiet knife” on the waterfront was a subject for investigation, as was assault and robbery when the victim was a wealthy foreigner. No one wanted too many questions asked on the piers; cool heads had ordered
him left as he was, which meant they had been paid to implement other orders, higher orders. Otherwise something would have been stolen—a watch, a few thousand lire; this was the waterfront.

Nothing. An inquisitive, wealthy foreigner had gone berserk, attacking a blond whore on the pier, and men had protected her. No investigation was called for, as long as the
ricco americano maledetto
had his property intact, if not his senses.

A setup. A professionally executed snare, the trappers exonerated once the trap had sprung shut. The whole night, the morning, had been a setup! He rolled over to his left; the southeast ocean was a line of fire beyond the horizon. Dawn had come, and the
Cristóvão
was one of a dozen small silhouettes on the water, obscure shapes diffusedly defined by the blinking lights, signals to other silhouettes.

Slowly Havelock got to his knees, pressing them against the wet planks beneath him, pushing himself up painfully with his hands. Once on his feet he turned around, again slowly, testing his legs and ankles, moving his shoulders, arching his neck, then his back. There was nothing broken, but the machine was badly bruised; it would not respond to quick commands, and he hoped he would not have to issue any.

The guard. Had the ego-stroked civil servant been part of the act? Had he been told to confront the foreigner with hostility at first, then turn to obsequiousness, thus pulling the mark in for the trap? It was effective strategy; he should have seen through it. Neither of the other two guards had been difficult, each perfectly willing to tell him whatever he wanted to know, the man at the gate of the
Teresa
’s pier even going so far as to inform him of the freighter’s delayed schedule.

The owner of Il Tritone? The sailor from the
Cristóvão
in a narrow, dark alley? Were they, too, part of it? Had the coincidence of logical progression led him to those men on the waterfront who had been waiting for him? Yet, how could they have been waiting? Four hours ago Civitavecchia was a vaguely remembered name on a map; it had held no meaning for him. There had been no reason for him to come to Civitavecchia, no way for an unknown message to be telegraphed. Yet it had been; he had to accept that without
knowing how or why. There was so much beyond his understanding, a maddening mosaic with too many pieces missing.

Anything you can’t understand in this business is a risk, but I don’t have to tell you that
. Rostov. Athens.

A decoy—a blond, pockmarked whore—had been paraded through the predawn mist to pull him out and force him to act. But
why?
What had they expected him to do? He had made it plain what he intended to do. So what was learned, what clarified? What was the point? Was she trying to kill him? Was that what Costa Brava was all about?

Jenna, why are you doing this? What happened to you? To us?

He walked unsteadily, stopping to brace his legs as his balance went out of control. Reaching the edge of the warehouse, he propelled himself along the wall past darkened windows and the huge loading doors until he came to the corner of the building. Beyond was the deserted pier, the wash of intersecting floodlights swollen with pockets of rolling fog. He peered around the steel molding, squinting to focus on the glass cubicle that was the guard’s post. As before, the figure inside was barely visible, but he was there; Michael could see the stationary glow of a cigarette in the center of the middle pane.