The Parsifal Mosaic (9 page)

He climbed the worn stone steps of the apartment building to the fifth floor, found the name “Mascolo” on the door and knocked. The red-faced conductor was dressed in loose trousers held up by wide suspenders over an undershirt. His breath reeked of cheap wine, and his eyes were not entirely focused. Havelock took a 10,000-lire note from his pocket.

“Who can remember one passenger among thousands?” protested the man, seated opposite Michael at the kitchen table.

“I’m sure
you
can,” said Havelock, removing another bill.
“Think
. She was probably one of the last people you spoke to on that train. Slender, medium height, a wide-brimmed hat—you were in the vestibule.”

“Si! Naturalmente. Una bella ragazza!
I remember!” The conductor took the money and drank some wine; he belched and continued. “She asked me if I knew where she could make connections for Civitavecchia.”

“Civitavecchia? That’s a town north of here, isn’t it?”

“Si. A seaport on the Tyrrhenian.”

“Did you know?”

“There are very few trains between Rome and Civitavecchia, signore, and certainly not at that hour. It is at best a stop for freight, not passengers.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Just that. She appeared reasonably well dressed, so I suggested she negotiate a taxi for a flat rate. If she could find one. Rome is a
manicomio
!
”

Havelock nodded thanks, placed another bill on the table and went to the door. He glanced at his watch; it was twenty past one in the morning. Civitavecchia. A seaport on
the Tyrrhenian. Ships heading out to sea on a given day invariably left with the early light. At dawn.

He had roughly three hours to reach Civitavecchia, search the waterfront, find a pier, find a ship—find an unlisted passenger.

He raced out of the marble lobby of the hotel in Bernini Circle and rushed blindly up through the winding streets Until he reached the Via Veneto. The desk clerk at the hotel had not been able to help him but not for lack of trying; spurred by the thick folds of lire, he futilely punched the telephone bar and screamed numbers at the sleepy switchboard operator. The night clerk’s contacts were limited; he could not raise a rented car.

Havelock stopped for breath, studying the lights on the Veneto. The hour was too late for the full array, but several cafés and the Excelsior Hotel were illuminated. Someone had to help him—he had to get to Civitavecchia!
He had to find her. He could not lose her
. Not again, not
ever
again! He had to reach her and hold her and tell her that terrible things had been done to them, tell her over and over again until she saw the truth in his eyes and heard that truth in his voice; and saw the love he felt so deeply, and understood the unendurable guilt that never left him—for he bad killed that love.

He began running again, first into the Excelsior, where no amount of money interested an arrogant clerk.

“You’ve got to help me!”

“You are not even a guest, signore,” said the man, glancing to his left.

Slowly Michael angled his head. Across the lobby two policemen were watching the scene. They conferred; obviously, the night operation at the Excelsior was under open official scrutiny. Peddlers of capsules and pills, white powder and syringes, were working the world-famous boulevard. One of the uniformed men stepped forward. Havelock turned and walked rapidly to the entrance, once again running into the half-deserted street, toward the nearest profusion of light.

The tired maître d’ of the Café de Paris told him he was a
capo zuccone
. Who would have an automobile to rent to a stranger at this hour? The American manager of a third-rate version of a Third Avenue bar told him to “pound sand.”

Again the winding streets, again the sweat drenching his hairline, rolling down his cheeks. The Hassler—the Villa Medici! He had used the name of the elegant hotel in the luggage shop by the Ostia.…

The night concierge at the Hassler’s Villa Medici was accustomed to the vagaries of Rome’s wealthiest hotel guests. Arrangements were made for Michael to rent a Fiat, one of the Hassler’s staff vehicles. The price was exorbitant, but with it came a map of Rome and its environs, the most direct route to Civitavecchia marked in red.

He reached the port city at three-fifteen and by three-forty-five he had driven up and down the waterfront, studying it until he decided where to park the car and start his search for Jenna Karas.

It was a section common to most waterfronts where the floodlights washing the piers remained on all night and activity never stopped; where groupings of dockworkers and deckhands mingled like slow-moving automatons, crisscrossing each other—men and machinery meshed in volatile conflict—loading the cargo holds and preparing the massive boilers and outdated engines of the larger vessels soon to head out into deep water. Where cafés and coffeehouses lined the mist-laden alleys, punctuated by the diffused light of the streetlamps—places of refuge serving the harshest whisky and the most glutinous food.

To the north and south were the smaller piers, halyards and masts swaying in silhouette against the moonlight; filthy marinas for the fishing boats and the trawlers that ventured no more than forty kilometers out to those watery places that decades of experience and tradition told the captains were
where the catches were most plentiful. These piers did not begin to stir until the early light was closer, faint sprays of yellowish white inching their way over the southwest horizon, pushing the night sky upward. Only then did groaning, dull-eyed men walk down the wooden planks toward oily gunwales and the interminable, blinding day ahead. Jenna Karas would not be in these places where the boats cast off at dawn only to return home when the sun went down. She would be somewhere in that complex of larger piers, where ships looked to the tides and the charts and sailed to other ports, other countries.

She was somewhere in this stretch of the waterfront where swirling pockets of mist rolled off the sea and across the docks, through intersecting pools of floodlights and the hammering tattoo of nocturnal labors. She would be hidden—not visible to those who should not see her:
controllor!
of the piers, paid by the state and the shipping companies to be on the lookout for material and human contraband. Keep her out of sight; the moment will come when she can be taken on board, after a
capo operaio
has inspected a hold and signed the papers that state the ship in question is free to depart, free from the taint of transgressing the laws of land and sea. Then she can walk swiftly out of the shadows and down a pier,
controllor!
and
operai
themselves out of sight, their duties finished.

Which pier? Which ship?
Where are you, Jenna?

There were three freighters, all medium tonnage, berthed alongside each other at three of the four major cargo docks. The fourth housed two smaller vessels—barge class—with conveyor equipment and thick piping machinery transporting and pumping bulk cargo up into the open holds. She would be taken aboard one of the freighters; the immediate thing to learn was the departure time of each.

He parked the Fiat on a side street that intersected the
vials
fronting the four piers. He walked across the wide avenue, dodging several vans and trucks, to the first pier on the left, to the gate manned by a uniformed guard, a civil servant of questionable civility. He was unpleasant, and the nuisance of having to piece together Havelock’s barely fluent Italian added to his hostility.

“What do you want to know for?” asked the guard, filling the doorway of the gatehouse. “What’s it to you?”

“I’m trying to find someone who may have booked passage,” said Michael, hoping the words he used were close enough to his meaning.

“Passaggio? Biglietto?
Who buys a ticket on a Portuguese freighter?”

Havelock saw his opening; he leaned closer, glancing about as he spoke. “This is the ship, then. Forgive my poor use of your language,
Signor Controllore
. It’s unforgivable. Actually, I’m with the embassy of Portugal in Rome. In my way an—inspector, as you are. We were told there may be certain irregularities with this vessel. Any cooperation from you could be duly conveyed to your superiors.”

The human ego when tied to opportunity was not affected by the lowliness of a civil service rating. The hostile guard was abruptly pleasant, moving aside to admit the
straniero importante
.

“Scusatemi, signore!
I did not understand. We who patrol those holes of corruption must cooperate with one another, no? And, in truth, a word to my superiors—in Rome, of course.”

“Of course. Not here.”

“Of course. Not here. They are brutes down here. Come in, come in. It must be chilly for you.”

The
Miguel Cristóvão
was scheduled to leave port at 5:00
A.M.
Its captain was a man named Aliandro, who had been in the wheelhouse of the
Cristóvão
for the past twelve years, a skipper who knew every island, every shoal in the western Mediterranean, it was said.

The two other freighters were of Italian registry. The guards at the gates were wearily cooperative, perfectly willing to give whatever information the oddly spoken foreigner requested. What he wished to know he could read in any newspaper under
Navi Informazione-Civitavecchia
, the pages of which were usually torn out and tacked to the walls of the various cafés around the waterfront. They helped when crewmen got drunk and forgot their schedules.

The
Isola d’Elba
was leaving at five-thirty, the
Santa Teresa
twenty minutes later, at five-fifty.

Havelock started to walk away from the third gate. He looked at his watch; it was eight minutes past four. So little time.

Jenna! Where are you?

He heard the sound of a bell behind him. It was sudden, abrasive, echoing in its own vibrations, an outside bell meant to be heard above the shouts and machinery of the piers. Alarmed, he turned quickly. The guard had stepped inside the glass cubicle that was his gatehouse and was answering the telephone. The verbal flow of attentive Sìs emphasized the fact that whoever was on the other end of the line was issuing orders that were to be thoroughly understood.

Telephones and guards at checkpoints were sources of concern to Michael. For a moment he was not sure whether or not to run. The answer was given instantly. The guard hung up the phone and stuck his head out the door. “You! You want to know so much about this stinking tub, here’s something else! The
Teresa
stays put. She doesn’t sail until
six
godforsaken trucks get here from Torino, which could be eight hours from now. The unions will make those bastards pay, let me tell you! Then they’ll fine the crew for being drunk! They’re
all
bastards!”

The
Teresa
was out of the running, for a while at least. He could concentrate on the
Elba
and the
Cristóvão
. If Jenna was to be smuggled aboard the
Teresa
, he had hours, but not if it was one of the other two. If either was the case, he still had only minutes. He had to spend them wisely but swiftly, wasting as few as possible. There was no time for the subtleties of move and countermove, for circling the grounds of inquiry and selecting targets cautiously, being aware of whoever might be watching him. There was time only for money—if takers could be found. And force—if those same takers tripped themselves on lies that meant they knew the truth.

Havelock walked quickly back to the second gate, where the
Isola d’Elba
was berthed, altering his story only slightly for the weary guard. He wished to speak to a few of the vessel’s crew, those who might be on shore awaiting the ship’s call. Would the cooperative civil servant, having shaken a hand with several thousand lire folded in the palm, know which of the waterfront cafés were favored by the
Elba
’s crew?

They stick together, no, signore? When fights break out, seamen want their friends around, even those they hate on board. Try Il Pinguino. Or perhaps La Carrozza di Mare.
The whisky’s cheaper at the first, but the food makes one vomit It’s better at La Carrozza.”

The once hostile, now obsequious guard at the gate of the
Cristóvão
was more than cooperative; he was effusively friendly.

“There is a café on the Via Maggio where, it is said, many things pass hands.”

“Would the
Cristóvão
’s men be there?”

“Some, perhaps. The Portuguese do not mix well, of course. No one trusts them—Not
you
, signore! I refer only to the garbage of the sea. The same everywhere. Not
you
, may God forgive me!”

“The name, please?”

“Il Tritone.”

It took less than twelve minutes to disqualify Il Tritone. Michael walked through the heavy doors, beneath the crude bas-relief of a naked creature half man and half fish, into the raucous squalor of the waterfront bar. The smoke was thick, the stench of stale whisky thicker. Men shouted between the tables; others lurched, and not a few had collapsed, their heads resting on folded arms, small pools of alcohol surrounding hands and nostrils and bearded cheeks.

Havelock chose the oldest-looking man behind the bar and approached him first “Are there any here from the
Cristóvão?”

“Portoghese?”

“Sì.”

“A few—over there, I think.”

Michael looked through the smoke and the weaving bodies to a table across the room. There were four men. “What about the
Isola d’Elba?”
he asked, turning back to the bar tender.

“Porci!”
replied the man. “Pigs! They come in here, I throw them out! Scum!”

“They must be something,” said Havelock, scanning the Tritone’s clientele, his throat trembling at the thought of Jenna among such men.

“You want crew from the
Elba
, go to Il Pinguino. Over there, they don’t care.”

Michael took out a 10,000-lire note, and placed it in front of the bartender. “Do you speak Portuguese? Enough to be understood?”