Jigsaw (58 page)

Pagan raised his hands to show they were empty, then, in a pantomime of caution, reached inside his coat for his identification – at which point the soldier undid the safety-catch on his rifle and prodded Pagan hard. The soldier, you could see, had quickly reached his limits. He was under orders to take no prisoners. His imagination had been fired by his superior officer, who had given long lectures on certain radical elements in Italian society, of which there were many – extreme rightists, remnants of the Red Brigade, hardline Communists who felt Gurenko was betraying the muddy ideals of Stalin. Pagan could belong to any such murderous outfit.

‘Look,' Pagan said, flashing his ID, which might have been a library card for all the soldier knew.

‘Look,' Pagan said again. ‘For God's sake.'

The soldier seemed alarmed when a couple of nearby journalists, having witnessed this altercation, crowded around, firing all kinds of questions, trying to get a look at Pagan's identification, sniffing as they always did around the periphery of any story that might alleviate their tedium. They'd followed Gurenko from London to Paris and now to Venice, and they were due to track him to Bonn next, and Brussels after that, and so far the statements that had emerged from his meetings with heads of state invariably amounted to the usual platitudes. Here, for their diversion, was a little human drama, and it galvanized them.

They wanted to know what Pagan was trying to do here, did he have sinister intent, was he merely demonstrating against Gurenko, was he a radical or what, what was the goddam scoop? The soldier popped Pagan again with the rifle, forcing him back. One of the journalists, a wild-haired Irishman from Radio Telefis Eireann with booze on his breath, muttered something about the inherent brutality of the military mind. It was, Pagan thought, getting out of hand, the whole situation drifting away from him, the scribblers clustered at his side, the guard in front of him. It had begun to assume a raggedness he hadn't expected. He could make no headway with the soldier, and the journalists were clamouring in their abrasive manner for information. The soldier stuck his gun into Pagan's flesh again, this time with a certitude that meant he intended to use the damn thing, he was a hair away from pulling the trigger, he had a heavy responsibility. Nobody was allowed under the tape unless they'd been authorized.

A man in a navy-blue coat appeared just behind the guard. An Italian, tall, bespectacled, with an air of control about him, he was the kind who took charge of matters in a quiet, persistent way. Nothing flustered him. He was the voice of reason itself, reason bolstered by the fact he had a gun concealed in his clothing and immediate access to back-up. He stared at Pagan in a stiffly officious fashion. He seized the identification card and studied it and then said, ‘You are a long way from home, Mr Pagan. A very long way.'

He raised the yellow tape and allowed Pagan to pass under it. Pagan's access to a forbidden area agitated the hacks, who pleaded for information, firing questions, bitching, whining, wondering just what the hell was going on and who was this guy who'd been allowed under the tape and into the sacrosanct space beyond.

Pagan was led to the side of the Scuola, where immediately a swarm of Italian security agents surrounded him and began frisking him thoroughly. His holstered gun was discovered and confiscated. The bespectacled agent still had Pagan's ID in his hand.

‘My name is Androtti,' he said. ‘I am in charge of security here.'

Pagan said, ‘I don't think we have time for polite introductions, Androtti. I work with Special Branch, anti-terrorist section—'

‘I have read your identification. I know your affiliation,' Androtti said. ‘What I do
not
know is the reason for your presence here. Explain.'

‘I don't think there's time for that,' Pagan said.

‘How so?'

‘You've got a bad situation on your hands. I have good reason to believe there's an explosive device inside the building.'

Androtti raised an eyebrow, took off his glasses, rubbed the lenses in the folds of his scarf. ‘And this good reason – what is it?'

‘It's too long to go into—'

‘And what do you expect of me? I should clear the building, interfere with the proceedings on the grounds of your claim? I will need more knowledge, Mr Pagan.'

‘I'm telling you, you don't have time to fuck around.'

‘Let me be the judge of that.' The Italian replaced his glasses and looked ecclesiastical for a second, a priest awaiting a confession.

‘For Christ's sake,' Pagan said. He stared past the Italian, looked at the entrance to the Scuola, wondered what might happen if he made a rush towards it. Guns would be drawn, the night filled with bullets. He'd never reach it.

‘Please, Mr Pagan. Your story. I am waiting.'

‘I don't think you understand me,' Pagan said. ‘This place could blow at any second.'

‘I have serious reservations,' Androtti said. ‘If I were to believe every crazy story I hear—'

‘This one isn't so crazy—'

Androtti raised a hand. ‘Enlighten me. Give me sufficient reason to interrupt the situation inside the building.'

Pagan was quiet a moment. He gazed at Androtti and the clutch of agents standing behind him. There was no way in the world he could shove his way past them. And even if he could, what might he achieve inside the building? Where to search? Where to start?

‘OK,' he said ‘It's your funeral, friend. If this place goes up – and I believe it will – the guillotine's coming down on your head. Not mine. I warned you. I've done all I can. When the smoke clears, you're the one covered in ash, not me. I'll be back in London, nice and safe. You'll be busy trying to explain your dereliction of duty. Sound good to you? Sound like a cheerful prospect?'

Androtti stepped forward; there might have been a vague menace in his movement, as if Pagan's story were a testimonial to the failure of Androtti's security detachment, something that offended the Italian's dignity. He brought his face very close to Pagan.

‘Mr Pagan. We have declared the building safe. The Russians, who conducted their own examination after us, have declared it safe
also
. And now you descend from nowhere to tell me that we might have overlooked something?'

‘That's exactly what I'm telling you.' Pagan shrugged and moved back from the man. ‘If you're through with me, I'll leave. The rest is up to you. Give me my gun and my ID because I don't fancy lingering here in the circumstances.' He stared at the building, pondering its lethal potential. He imagined it erupting, the night on fire, a great sunburst of destruction over the city.

Androtti looked hesitant. Whether he feared more for his position than the chance of the Scuola Grande exploding all about him, Pagan couldn't tell. Androtti turned his face, glanced at the doorway, then looked back at Pagan again – who was conscious of how time diminished in ways he had no means of measuring. There was no schedule, no timetable: there might be minutes, there might be hours.

Androtti spun round, spoke hurriedly in Italian, and his agents dispersed, moving toward the entrance of the building. ‘Very well, very well,' he said to Pagan. ‘We'll see.'

There was instant flurried activity, people abruptly leaving the Scuola, Gurenko bustled quickly away, followed by a thicket of aides and associates and security men. Seconds later, a group of men and women carrying aluminium cases of electronic equipment hurried into the building with the anxiously concentrated expressions of people whose work takes them routinely along the borderlines of sudden death.

Androtti hooked his arm firmly through Pagan's, moving him away from the Scuola, where soldiers had already begun to disperse the crowds, who showed a moblike reluctance to be chased away without acceptable explanation. Somebody was bellowing into a megaphone, issuing warnings in English and Italian, shouting that the square had to be cleared immediately.

Androtti steered Pagan into a quiet street which led to a small bridge over the Rio della Frescada. Ungathered laundry, stiffened by the night air, hung across the canal. Inverted shirts, palely lit from windows, were ghostly presences. Androtti took a small cheroot from his coat pocket and lit it with a gold-plated Zippo. He blew smoke past Pagan's shoulder.

‘Now what?' Pagan asked. Wind fluttered the laundry. The sound made him uneasy, as if somebody were whispering in the dark.

‘We wait. We see.'

Pagan, who felt the danger imminent in the night, sniffed the aroma of Androtti's cheroot, and was filled with tension. He had a sense of being suspended in a place where time was measured only by Carlotta's chronometers, mad devices that ticked in an arhythmic way, now fast, now slow, sometimes not at all. He imagined her somewhere in the city, cold and wet, walking the darkened bank of a canal, seeking a place where she might hide for a time and then, when she was ready, resurface. In what form, though? he wondered. And where?

He shut his eyes, propped himself against the stone parapet. He understood he had reached the limits of himself; his mind had become an unfocused collage of faces and voices – Barron, Carlotta, Katherine Cairney, others who passed in and out, the bit-players of consciousness.

Androtti said, ‘You seem to have angered some people along the way, Pagan. Of course, I recognized your name as soon as I saw your identity card. We had received a bulletin issued by Scotland Yard to the effect that you are a fugitive wanted for questioning. The matter of a dead nurse in a French hospital. Assault on a fellow officer. Disregard of regulations. Insubordination. It's an impressive list.'

Nimmo's acumen, Pagan thought. He was a fast man with a bulletin. ‘Are you arresting me?'

‘We'll see,' said Androtti.

‘If you knew I was wanted, why did you listen to my story?'

Androtti studied the glowing tip of his cheroot. He smiled, shrugged. ‘Let us say you have the desperate look of a man convinced he is telling the truth. If you are not, I will detain you and turn you over to your superiors. If you are …' The Italian flicked his cheroot into the canal. ‘Then I have no reason to hold you, Pagan. You will go back to London where you will have your own gods to answer to.'

‘I don't have gods,' Pagan said wearily, ‘only demons.'

‘We are all cursed with a little of each, I think.'

Pagan looked down into the water. Somebody appeared on the other side of the bridge, a young man who was one of Androtti's people.

Androtti asked, ‘Well?'

‘We found it,' the young man said. ‘It wasn't difficult. Whoever placed it must have been very confident. Or arrogant. We calculate it would have blown in about two minutes.'

‘Two minutes,' Androtti said, impressed. ‘Then you are a hero, Pagan.'

A hero, Pagan thought. He felt no elation, no relief, no sense of achievement. Instead, he was haunted by emptiness and exhaustion. Androtti took Pagan's gun and ID card from his pocket and handed them back to him. ‘Your property,' he said, and was quiet for a moment. ‘We need to sit down together, Pagan. I need to hear the whole story. How you got on to this business. How it started. Who is responsible. A great many people will have questions for you, Pagan.'

Pagan said, ‘It may take some time.'

‘I will make the time,' said Androtti.

‘Tomorrow,' Pagan said.

‘I prefer tonight. By tomorrow you may have disappeared. Returned to England. I can't predict your movements.'

‘Tomorrow. You have my word.'

‘An Englishman's word,' said Androtti. ‘What is that worth in today's world?'

‘Tomorrow,' Pagan said again. ‘I need to rest.'

Androtti appeared uncertain. ‘Telephone me at nine in the morning. Here.' He produced his card and Pagan took it.

‘Nine sharp,' Pagan said.

‘If not, you may be sure I will come looking for you.'

‘I imagine you will.'

Pagan walked back to Barron's house on the Calle dei Avocati. The night was a black windblown void. He travelled backstreets, passageways, crossed the Rialto, then the dark square of San Marco. He had the sense he was being followed, observed – but not by Androtti or his people. It was Carlotta who dogged him, although whenever he turned to look he saw nobody. Imagination, he thought. He was going to carry her presence around inside him for a long time. He would half-expect to see her whenever he turned a corner or sat in his car at a traffic light or notice her waiting among the trees of the grim little square beneath his apartment. A kind of haunting manufactured from the notion that she was at liberty in the world. She was free.

When he reached the Calle dei Avocati he saw that the door of Barron's house was open. He stepped inside. Somebody had tossed a sheet over Barron's body. There was no sign of the servant, no sign of Katherine Cairney. Broken glass crunched under his feet as he walked toward the stairs. He paused to look down at the sheet; a makeshift shroud.

He passed on, climbed the stairs until he came to the room from whose balcony Carlotta had jumped. Night had entered the space, carrying the smell of an ancient mildewed basement. He wondered about Katherine. Where was she? Had she seen and heard enough and then walked away from here?

He looked at the door which led, according to Carlotta, to the soul of Tobias Barron. It was shut, probably locked. He moved toward it, tried the handle; it yielded. Katherine Cairney sat on a swivel-chair and turned her face when Pagan stepped inside. Drawers had been opened in filing cabinets, folders removed, papers spread across the desk. An ungainly length of fax paper hung from her hand.

‘What happened?' she asked.

‘We got there in time,' Pagan answered, wondering if he had the inclination to expand on this, but then his attention was drawn away from the girl to the room. On electronic wall maps coloured cursors moved, blinking like tiny tics of anxiety. Computer screens were lit, displaying a series of menus, curiously named – floral, herbal, delicate names.