The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage (5 page)

“How absurd!” Guesci cried. “What made you think he would release you?”

“It was in his best interests to let me go.”

“What if Forster hadn’t agreed?”

“In that case,” I murmured, “I would have been obliged—” Here I paused and lighted a cigarette, then looked up and smiled without mirth, “—yes, obliged to convince him, by one means or another.”

It sounded almost plausible to me. I waited to see if Guesci would buy it. With a creased and thoughtful face, he did. He said, with a certain grudging respect, “The tales about you, Mr. Nye, are evidently true. Personally, I would not care to be in a room alone with Forster.”

“The man cuts a good figure,” I conceded, “even if it is somewhat overinflated.”

Guesci looked at me with a mixture of irritation and admiration. Then he grinned, shrugged with huge and comic resignation, and patted me on the shoulder. I think he suspected that I was lying; but it was the sort of large-scale, flamboyant lie that appealed to him. As he told me later, only pettiness annoyed him. He delighted in color and movement, and in the protean appearance of things. In this respect, he told me, he was a true Venetian. Like many other subjects of the Serenissima, he believed in style over content, art over life, appearance over reality, and form over substance. He believed simultaneously in fate and free will. He viewed life as a sort of Renaissance melodrama, complete with unexpected appearances and disappearances, heartrending confrontations, preposterous coincidences, disguises and doubles, switched twins and mysteries of birth; all revolving around an obscure and melancholy point of honor. And, of course, he was perfectly right.

Guesci had booked a room for me in the Excelsior, and we went there after finishing our drinks. Through the muslin curtains I could see the elusive reflection of dragons in the Grand Canal. Guesci lay back on a chaise longue, looking terribly old and wise, with his eyes half-closed like a temple cat, smoking a cigarette in the Bulgarian manner. He had shed his businesslike exterior, leaving it perhaps in the saddlebag of his motorcycle. What remained was a pleasant, high-flown fellow direct from the cinquecento.

I asked him how I was supposed to get Karinovsky out of Venice. The answer inevitably involved Guesci in a flight of discursive philosophy.

“To escape from Venice,” he told me, “is a profound and disturbing problem. In a very real sense, you could say that no one escapes from Venice, since our city is a simulacre—or worse, a simulacrum—of the world.”

“In that case, let’s just escape from Forster,” I suggested.

“I’m afraid that doesn’t help us,” Guesci pointed out sadly. “If Venice is the world, then Forster is that ancient antagonist whom we call Death. No, my friend, in absolute terms an escape of any kind is clearly impossible.”

“Why not settle for relative terms?” I asked.

“I suppose we will be forced to. But still, we encounter difficulties. The nature of the city operates against us. Venice owes its very existence to the art of illusion—which is one of the Black Arts. It is a city of mirrors; the canals reflect the buildings, the windows reflect the canals. Distances slide and twist, earth and water interpenetrate. Venice advertises its falsehoods and conceals its truths. In a city like this, events cannot be predicted as in Genoa or Milan. The relative and conditional are apt to turn into the absolute and irrevocable without notice.”

“That’s really terribly interesting,” I said. “But couldn’t you attempt a tentative and conditional prediction as to how—relatively, of course—we are going to get out of here?”

Guesci sighed. “Eternally the man of action! My dear Agent X, you have yet to learn the folly of vanity. But I suppose you are anxious to use your much-advertised talents.”

I shook my head. “I just want to get Karinovsky out of here in the simplest, safest way.”

“Your terms are mutually contradictory,” Guesci said. “In Venice, that which is simple is rarely safe; and that which is safe is much too complicated even to consider. However, I have certain hopes. An opportunity presents itself for tomorrow night It is both simple
and
safe. Relatively.”

“Tell me about it.”

“A few days ago, a cousin of mine died. He will be buried tomorrow at the Cimitero Communale on San Michele.”

I nodded. San Michele is a small rectangular island off the north side of Venice.

“There will be a fine procession for him,” Guesci said. “I have hired the very best. My cousin was a Rossi, and his family’s name is inscribed in the Golden Book. He died while studying in Rome, but he will be buried as a Venetian.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “But what do you plan to do with Karinovsky and me?”

“I am going to transport you by funeral barge to the Cimitero; then I will load you onto a fishing boat bound for Seno di Tessera. Once on the mainland, the arrangements become easier.”

“I suppose you’ll transport us there in the casket?”

“So I planned,” Guesci said.

“Won’t that be rather crowded for your cousin?”

“Not at all,” Guesci said. “My cousin is in Rome, still very much alive and studying hard for his examinations. I took the family liberty of borrowing his death.”

“Admirable,” I said.

Guesci waved away the compliment. “It is an obvious little scheme,” he said, “but I think it just might suffice. Assuming, of course, that we get a chance to use it.”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“Because it is much
too
simple and clear-cut,” Guesci said. “Plans like that would be a certainty in Torino; but they dissolve into nothingness in Venice.”

“I think we should give it a try.”

“We most certainly will,” Guesci said. He sat up and took on a businesslike air. “It is settled. Tomorrow you will meet Karinovsky and proceed with him to the Quartiere Grimani. There, in front of the Casino degli Spiriti, a gondola will await you, and will transport you to the funeral barge in the Sacca della Misericordia. Later I will explain how you find the Casino. Are you armed?”

Colonel Baker had not brought up the question of guns, perhaps fearing that I would do more harm to myself than to an enemy. But I couldn’t say this to Guesci. Instead I shook my head, smiled faintly and glanced down at my hands—the merciless hands of Agent X.

“I didn’t think you would be,” Guesci said. “It would have been foolish of you to carry a weapon through Customs. Therefore I took the liberty of providing for you.”

He reached into his breast pocket and took out a huge, sinister-looking automatic. He patted it tenderly on the snout and handed it to me. Somewhat gingerly, I accepted it. Engraving along the barrel told me that it was a French .22 calibre Mab, known as “Le Chasseur.”

“Your dossier mentions your preference for a light target pistol,” Guesci said. “This was the best I could do on such short notice. It has the 7½-inch barrel to which you are accustomed, but I was unable to find your favorite hollow-point ammunition.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Colonel Baker had really taken pains with Agent X. I wondered what my favorite brand of whiskey was, and whether I favored blondes or brunettes.

“Personally, I would be useless with such a weapon,” Guesci said, with a self-deprecatory chuckle. “I use this.” He slipped another gun out of his waistband. It was a compact, snub-nosed, hammerless revolver.

“This has the stopping power which an indifferent marksman like myself requires,” Guesci said. “Of course, its accuracy is no greater than one would expect from a two-inch barrel.”

I nodded and tried to put the massive .22 into my jacket pocket. It wouldn’t fit. Finally I slid it under my belt and hoped it wouldn’t go off and shoot me in the leg. If it came to gunplay, I was going to be in trouble.

“Where do I meet Karinovsky?” I asked.

“In the building in the rear of the Palazzo Ducale. Karinovsky will meet you at five in the lower galleries, just past the dungeons and near the old charnel house.”

I didn’t bother to point out that we could have met just as easily on the Wide Stairs, or in the Ca’ d’Oro. Such a meeting place would have been an insult to Guesci’s mordant genius. Those who intend to play leading roles in a funeral should very properly meet in a boneyard.

8

The next day, late in the afternoon, I left the Excelsior and proceeded to the Piazza San Marco. I duly admired that grotesque square, renewed my acquaintance with the pigeons, and went on to the Palazzo Ducale. I was not burdened by the huge automatic. Before leaving the hotel, I had told Guesci that the rear sight was badly misaligned. He took my word for it without hesitation, and now his handy little revolver rested in my jacket pocket.

Within the Palazzo I joined a small party of tourists from Göteborg. They were all of a piece; heavy, slow men with cameras, their wives in flowering print dresses and sturdy shoes, with washed-out amiable faces devoid of makeup. They looked at the exhibits weightily, as if to make sure they received full esthetic value. No One would cheat these people of the spiritual goods they had paid for. Beside them, I felt weary, cynical and effete, as though these barbarians were crassly invading my ancient and defenseless homeland. I recognized this as one of the illusions that Venice casts over the visitor.

This cunning city fostered an endless capacity for self-deception. Labyrinthine, it encouraged convoluted thinking. It was the spell of Venice that lured Guesci into expanding the maximum of guile for the minimum of effect. This would have been fatal if Forster had not shared the same weakness. Like Guesci, he mistook complication for profundity. Eternally romantic, he sought dubious modern equivalents for cloak, half-mask and stiletto, and chose a painted-backdrop city upon which to stage the gaiety and terror of his Carnival.

Our guide led us through narrow arched passageways, across shuttered hallways and down winding stone staircases. We passed through endless high galleries. The walls were crowded with pictures, and the guide explained them all.

The mellow afternoon light began to fail; we marched on aching feet into the past of Venice. At one point I smelled orange peels and stagnant water, and knew that the Rio di Canonica di Palazzo was flowing beneath us, and that we were crossing into the old prison. We went down rough-hewn flagstones, and the air was filled with the odor of mold and decaying mortar. My fellow tourists sniffed it with grave pleasure; it was an authentic Renaissance stench. The guide talked about Casanova and the Council of Ten.

We came to the dungeons, and peered into them through tiny barred windows. They were illumined by naked light bulbs and we could see heavy chains stapled into the brick walls. The ossuary was at the end of the corridor, but there was still no sign of Karinovsky. I was getting nervous.

We passed the boneyard and came to the entrance of the Torture Chamber of the Doges, a big new attraction uncovered only last year. We reached it down a narrow winding staircase and past two iron-studded doors. It was a low-ceilinged, oppressive little room, lighted with a single electric bulb. Inside, I recognized the rack and the garrote. In a corner stood the Iron Maiden, her eyes downcast. Various king-sized finger-crushers and pincers hung along the stone walls, and there was a fine collection of chains.

Our guide explained some of the finer points of Renaissance torture. He was reaching some sort of a high point in his dissertation when the light went out.

We were plunged into a thick and incontinent darkness. The ladies screamed and the gentlemen swore, and the guide asked everyone to remain calm and accompany him back to the corridor. I started to move forward with the others, and felt a thick arm slide around my throat. At the same time, something bit into my side at about the location of the kidneys.

“Remain silent,” my mugger said. “Do not struggle.”

At moments like this, the all-purpose secret agent is supposed to flip his assailant over his shoulder, or kick him where it counts, or make some other positive move that catches the aggressor off-balance and disables him before he can drive in his knife. That is the theory. But I didn’t quite see how to bring it off. I was off-balance, gasping for breath, and I had half an inch of knife in my side. Under the circumstances, I decided to bide my time.

The tourists trooped away. They were laughing now, and accusing the guide of staging the whole thing. I heard the first door slam shut; then, more faintly, the second. No one-was left in the torture chamber but us chickens.

It grew extremely quiet. Some minutes passed. Then the door creaked open and heavy footsteps crossed the room.

“You may turn him loose.”

At that moment, the light came on. Beppo unwound his arm and withdrew his knife from my side. In front of me stood my old buddy Forster.

“Mr. Nye,” he said, “I had predicted that we would meet again very soon; but of course, I had no idea that it would be so
very
soon, and in such a convenient place.”

I had no snappy comeback for that, so I kept quiet. Forster said, “The Palazzo is closed after five; the last group of tourists is leaving now. With the doors shut, no sound can be heard in the corridor. The guide and the night watchman have received their payment. Mr. Nye, we have a long, undisturbed night ahead of us.”