Albatross (37 page)

Walden was asleep; he looked older, Davina thought, when the curtain came down and the extrovert retired out of the spotlight. His energy, his enthusiasm, his diversity of interests might exhaust at times, or tempt her into argument, but she had never been bored. As he lay beside her in the golden sunlight, he was a tired man in his late forties, with a vulnerability that touched her deeply.

She knew him better than anyone else, including his former wife and the present incumbent, or the numerous women he had had as lovers. Davina had seen him almost broken once, and quite alone. A man with everything and nothing, except her. That was when she had fallen in love with him, long before they became lovers. They were so different outwardly that they should have been incompatible. But he made no demands. She lived her professional life as a single woman, unencumbered by personal ties. She couldn't have done the job otherwise, in spite of feminist arguments that men married and ran high-level careers. She couldn't have done it and didn't want to try. And equally she stood aside for Tony Walden. His business commitments, his family duties came first. What was free in their lives they reserved for themselves. He had wanted to buy her a flat. She refused; she could afford a comfortable conversion in a sedate area near Sloane Square. She wouldn't let him give her expensive presents like furs and the car which was delivered last Christmas and had to be sent back. He had made a joke about her invulnerability to bribes. But it was based on hard fact. She couldn't take and she couldn't give, except on a modest scale that suited her much better. Minks and Mercedes reminded her of her sister Charlie. She didn't want to think about her. Or her parents, with their chilly response to her approaches. That hurt as much as ever, and Walden had stopped trying to bring the family together. They wouldn't let him. They hadn't forgiven her for ruining their younger daughter's life. And, contrary to her past form, Charlie Kidson had stayed at home with her baby son, and there wasn't a man in view.

According to the reports coming from Moscow, it wouldn't be long before she was a widow. Davina sighed and turned onto her back. The ceiling was painted; centuries of sunlight and modern pollution had faded the erotic nudes and the lascivious cupids. They were a soft blur in the painted sky, a suggestion of the silky, sensual figures that had aroused the passions of men and women long since dead.

Walden had insisted upon staying at the Gritti Palace. Davina would have preferred somewhere less ostentatious, less formidably expensive. But he had a childish love of luxury. He enjoyed being pampered, wallowing, as she unkindly put it, in red plush. He disarmed her by an innocent reminder of his hungry, hunted boyhood in Poland. He wasn't an upper-class Anglican with a guilt complex about spending money on being comfortable. They were going to the Gritti for their holiday. When they went to Paris they stayed at the Ritz, and in New York he took a suite at the Plaza. She had learned to live with it. And, she admitted to herself, to like it too.

She got up, careful not to wake him. He worked at a ferocious pace; he wouldn't admit it, but he needed the break. He was actually very tired. She looked at her watch. The phone call from Milan wasn't due for another forty minutes. She went into the bathroom, showered, and put on one of the long, uncrushable shifts that are a godsend to travellers. Their bedroom opened out onto a balcony, not wide enough to stand on. She perched on the window sill and leaned out. The panorama fascinated her. The faint smell of tainted water rose from the canal, the swish of waves following the water buses and the motor cruisers lapped against the walls below. To the left the exquisite church of Santa Maria della Salute gleamed whitely against the darkening blue sky.

London seemed a million miles away. The pleasant room on the first floor of the town house in Anne's Yard might have been on the moon. She had talked to Humphrey Grant, needing reassurance that everything was well; then she had forgotten him, and Johnson, and the excitement and the problems of work. That was the real purpose of a holiday. To escape from reality, to refresh the mind and the body for a return to the real world. She loved her work. She loved the challenge of it and the sense of personal achievement. She had succeeded, and confidence glowed inside her. And she was confident in her own feminine nature too. It was a Russian who had given her that. After his death she had taken off the wedding ring. She would never put another in its place.

She didn't hear Walden approach. He moved very quietly, which was surprising because he was stockily built and could run to fat if he wasn't careful. He put his hands on her shoulders and was pleased to feel her start.

He loved his little victories. They made him feel good. He enjoyed telling her something she didn't know, creeping up on her unsuspected, proving that, in spite of everything, she wasn't always on an equal footing.

‘You'll catch cold, sitting in that draught.'

‘Don't be silly, it's beautifully warm. Why don't you go and have a bath before your Milanese call comes through?'

‘Why don't you stop being bossy?' He kissed her neck.

‘What shall we do this evening?'

He reached over and pulled the long window shut. ‘If you get a cold,' he said, ‘you'll give it to me. So you mustn't be selfish. There's a marvellous restaurant off the Piazza San Marco. Why don't we go there?'

‘Why not?' Davina got up. ‘We can have a drink in the bar first.'

When the man called Italy went back to his pensione for dinner, the girl who sat behind the desk called out to him. His brother had telephoned. Would he call back as soon as possible? The young man said, thank you, yes. Could he use the phone in the padrone's office – it would save him going out? She opened the office for him and he dialled the number he knew off by heart. The contact was on schedule; he hoped the message would confirm his plan. The door was closed, but he was certain the girl would try to listen. The Venetians were as curious as their colonies of cats. After five rings the number answered. For the girl's benefit he wasted a full minute asking about his parents, nonexistent nieces and nephews, and then opened the real conversation.

‘Venice is a miracle,' he said. ‘I've never had such a good holiday.'

The voice on the line responded. ‘They're going to the Cipriani for lunch tomorrow. Proceed as arranged. If there are difficulties, have you an alternative?'

‘Yes,' Italy answered. ‘I've already provided for that. But I think the original route will be the best one. Kiss the family for me.' He rang off. He said to the girl outside, ‘I've left a hundred lire for the call'

She looked up at him with an expectant smile. ‘Everything well at home?'

He nodded. ‘I should have sent a postcard – my mother worries.'

‘All mothers worry,' she said.

He ran up the short flight of stairs to his room. They had a contact in the Gritti Hotel. It was wonderful how well informed they were. Little links in an enveloping chain, and all along the line the connections were broken so that one link couldn't lead to other links. Who was working for them in the Gritti? A waiter, a chambermaid, one of the switchboard operators? Someone with sharp ears and a telephone number to ring with information. A tiny link in the human chain that was known to its members as the Company of Saints.

The target was lunching at the famous island hotel the next day. The motor launch left the Gritti at just before noon; he had already timed it, followed it in a hired motor boat. Everything was planned on his part. But if anything went wrong, then he would use the alternative plan and attack in the hotel itself. There would be innocent casualties – his shoulders lifted unconsciously as he dismissed the qualm. Individual lives were not important compared with the objective. He didn't rely on reaching his haven in the Street of the Assassins. Nothing mattered but the target and the plan. He pulled his suitcase out from under the bed. The handle unscrewed, and the small metal cylinder, insulated against the metal detector at the airport, fitted into his hand. It looked like a short cigar tube. He checked it, replaced it, and went down to the crowded room where the clients ate their dinner in the evenings.

He paid his bill, had a glass of wine with the padrone and his wife, and said how sorry he was to be going the next morning. His next stop was the ancient city of Padua where he wanted to study the cathedral. Such a pity that so much industry was creeping round the coastline. The padrone agreed, but then he shrugged. Without industry there was no work – Venice in the winter was cold and dead, shrouded like a widow in her grey sea mists.… They talked well, the man called Italy admitted, with an ear for a poetic phrase. They'd be talking about something else this time tomorrow. He nodded, agreeing with the old man's nonsense. Industry for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Pollution for profit, exploitation for the sake of those already bloated with money like gas-filled corpses.

They said goodbye to him and sent a present of a bottle of wine to his table. They liked him – he despised them for it. If they remembered him at all, it would be as one of themselves. He drank the wine and called them names under his breath. He went early to bed and slept very well. When the morning came he was fresh, and only the slightest flickering of a nerve near his left eye betrayed his excitement.

The temperature had risen unexpectedly; the sun blazed off the canal as he walked to the Rialto Bridge and the stage where he had found his hired motor boat. Business was brisk already. He pushed and shoved his way to the front and hailed one of the two empty boats remaining.

‘The Gritti Palace,' he said. He stripped off his jacket; the heat was lapping over them. ‘Slowly,' he said. ‘Just idle along, I don't want to miss anything. Then pull up by the Gritti – I want to sketch the façade.'

‘Can't do that,' the boatman said. ‘There's no mooring place on the other side and you can't tie up there – it's a concession and I don't have it.' He said something in dialect that sounded, and was, a very vulgar curse.

‘Never mind,' Italy said. He had known about the mooring and the concession. ‘Just go there and take your time.' He checked his watch and reckoned they would reach the hotel just as the Cipriani boat pulled out. He sat crouched forward slightly as they made a leisurely way up the Grand Canal.

The boatman pointed out a few landmarks and then gave up when he saw that his passenger wasn't listening. Nor was he taking much interest in the palazzi on either side of them; his jacket had fallen off the seat and was lying in a patch of water at the bottom of the boat. He must remember to mop it up when this sullen craphead got out. He could get his feet wet, so far as he cared.

The Cipriani boat was just ahead of them. He could see the target very clearly, wearing white, sitting forward by the bow.

‘Why don't you have the concession?' He asked the question suddenly.

The driver turned to look at him. ‘Because I can't pay for it,' he said. ‘In Italy, you want something, you have to grease the other man's hand. You're an Italian, you ought to know that!'

‘I think the practice stinks,' the young man said. ‘Get up close, give the rich bastards a few waves.'

‘I'll lose my licence,' the Venetian said.

‘No wonder they get away with it.' Italy sounded contemptuous. ‘You looked as if you had balls. But still …'

It was a challenge no Italian could ignore. The accelerator drowned out the richness of the language, remarkable for its scope and imagery. The little boat cut close to the cruiser. He slipped the cylinder out of his pocket, leaned slightly over the side and trailed his hand in the water. It was a technique he had practised over and over again in simulated conditions. When to activate the magnetic device. The wash from the little vaporetto gently rocked the bigger boat. As they sped past, Italy pressed the tiny homing button and released the cylinder. The waves carried it backwards and the metal hull of the cruiser drew it inexorably through the water. He had seen the hurried screening of his target by the security men pretending to be passengers, when his little craft came close. Much good that human shield would do him now.

The Venetian said sullenly, ‘Where do you want to go?' No balls, eh …? He'd charge the pig double for that remark.

‘Get a move on,' the man said abruptly, looking over his shoulder. ‘Go to the Lido.' He hoped they'd get clear, but he had taken no chance of the mine going astray. He had released it within the distance of maximum accuracy.

What was the saying – the only reliable assassins are Bulgarians, because they blow themselves up as well? He checked his watch; they had gathered speed very quickly, partly because the Venetian was hoping it would upset his passenger. The little vaporetto was skimming out towards the lagoon. Italy felt a surge of panic in those last few seconds when he turned again to stare after the cruiser. Thirty seconds was the timing after the mine attached itself. He had turned round when the explosion boomed out, shaking the air and convulsing the water. A pall of thick black smoke rose into the air, shot through with piercing tongues of orange flame.

‘My God!' The Venetian swung the wheel and cut the engine. The little boat curved into a semicircle and then lost speed. ‘My God, what was that …?'

‘I don't know,' his passenger said. ‘It sounded as if something blew up.'

‘We should go back,' the driver said. ‘If it was a boat.'

‘What can we do? I want to go to the Lido.'

‘Then swim!' The Venetian's temper blazed. He wasn't going to drive off and leave the accident. Watermen didn't desert each other. Also he was curious.

He didn't get time to start the engine. The passenger killed him with a blow that broke his neck as if he had been a dangling rabbit.

The body slumped and he climbed over, pushing it aside, shoving it down and out of sight. He had exceeded his instructions. But never mind. There had been too much incident to let the man live. He would have remembered cutting in on the other boat, remembered the gibe that had made him break the law of the canals. It was better to kill him. Sirens were wailing close astern. There were boats converging on what lay behind. Nobody even glanced at the little taxi boat as it began its journey across the water. He saw a beach near the Lido; it was stony and uninviting. Nobody swam or sunbathed there when the gleaming sands of the huge public beach beckoned only a few hundred yards farther on. He cut the engine and took his time. He tied the dead man down with his own anchor; he found a box with a few tools and, kneeling on the floor, smashed a hole through the deck below the waterline. The sea gushed in. He switched on the engine and wedged the dead man against the wheel, the bows pointing out to sea. The boat began to move forward as he dived off the side. He trod water, watching her make way, listing as the hull filled up. She'd be well out from the shore by the time she sank. There was no craft in sight. Luck was on his side.
La bella fortuna
. He turned and swam towards the empty beach. When he reached it, the boat had vanished. He stripped and lay in the sun while his clothes dried – shirt, trousers, canvas shoes. The jacket was ruined. He bundled it over his arm when he set off. He caught a water bus back late in the afternoon.