The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage (9 page)

Jansen danced and giggled in a poor but sufficient imitation of childish high spirits. Several strollers laughed. Jansen fitted another dart into his gun.

I wanted badly to rush him before he had time to fire, and to drop-kick him into the canal. But a crowd had collected to watch the fun. And at least three people in that crowd were not amused.

One of them was Carlo. One was the red-faced shoefighter from the vaporetto. And the third was the fat man who had taken my taxi when I first arrived at Marco Polo airport.

Then I understood the premise of the scene that Forster, with his taste for dubious tableaux, had arranged for me. Maddened with rage, I was supposed to assault the dwarf before he had time to puncture me with his indigo needles. The crowd, apparently seeing a child thus attacked, would react with violence. During the scuffle, Carlo would slip a knife between my ribs.

I turned and walked away. Forster’s men followed, and Jansen skipped along in front of them. I lengthened my stride, wondering about the effective range of his peashooter.

I tried to lose myself in the complex interconnections of streets and canals and bridges. But the streetlights threw my treacherous shadow behind me; I dragged it after me like a tail. I crossed a bridge, went down an alley, and found myself in the Ghetto Vecchio, in front of the little synagogue. As usual, I was lost. I turned a corner and found myself on the Viale di San Lazzaro. I wasn’t particularly surprised. In the maze of Venice it is difficult to find anything quickly; but it is equally difficult to lose anything for long.

Number 32 was at the end of the street near the canal. It lay behind a high stone wall with a glitter of broken glass on top. There was a heavy iron gate, which was locked. I shook it, heard the bolt slide, and the gate swung open. A voice said, “Hurry!”

I went through the gate, took a few blind steps in the darkness and something knocked me down. I got up and saw that it was a stone cupid.

The gate closed and the bolt slammed home. Then Karinovsky was standing beside me, gripping me fiercely by the shoulder.

“Nye!” he said. “My dear friend, you are late. I began to fear that you would not come.”

“I was unavoidably detained,” I heard myself say in a light, amused voice. “But you should have known that I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

I had spoken in the voice of vanity: that quality which serves so well in place of courage, and which is almost indistinguishable from it.

15

Behind the stone wall was a barren little garden, and just past that was a house. Karinovsky led me inside, waved me to a chair, and offered me a drink.

“I cannot honestly recommend the slivovitz,” he said. “Guesci must have sent it as a joke. But the Lachryma Christi, despite its unconvivial name, is an honest drink.

I took wine and studied the man I had come to rescue. Karinovsky’s left arm was carried high on his chest in a black silk sling. Aside from that, he seemed as tough and competent as ever. I had forgotten the faintly Mongol tilt to his eyes, and how his black hair was touched with a distinguished feather of gray. He had that look of amused and ironic detachment which comes to men who live through rapid changes of fortune; South American presidents, for example. I was glad I had come, and hoped I could be of service.

“How is your arm?” I asked.

“Serviceable,” he said. “Luckily for me, my attacker was using a mere half inch of point.”

“That’s enough to cut your throat with.”

“Such was his intention, which I foiled by a clever movement of my shield-arm. Unfortunately I was lacking a shield.”

“What did you do?”

“I decided that the fellow was entirely too fast for an old fellow like me,” Karinovsky said, spreading his hands in a pathetic gesture. “So I slowed him down by the simple expedient of breaking his back.”

I nodded, wanting to applaud but restraining myself. I have always been a sucker for the grand manner.

“But you also seem to have had your troubles,” Karinovsky said, glancing at my torn left leg.

“A scratch,” I assured him. “It was my misfortune to meet a man with extremely sharp shoes.”

“One meets all kinds in Venice,” Karinovsky said, and settled back comfortably in his chair. All part of the grand manner. But a little irritating, since the success of his pose depended upon my playing the alarmed straight man.

I was damned if I was going to do it. I took out my, cigarettes, offered one to Karinovsky, lit one for myself. We blew out gray plumes of contented smoke. I thought I heard footsteps in the garden. Karinovsky offered me another drink. The iron gate rattled suddenly. I decided to play the straight man.

“All right,” I said. “What do you suggest we do now?”

“1 suggest that you rescue me.”

“And how do you suggest that I go about it?”

Karinovsky flicked ash from the end of his cigarette. “Knowing your boundless resources, my friend, and your collection of varied skills, I have no doubt that you can find a way. Unless, of course, you prefer to follow Guesci’s somewhat dubious scheme.”

“Dubious?”

“Perhaps I don’t do it justice,” Karinovsky said. “Guesci’s plan is certainly very ingenious. Perhaps a little too ingenious, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t. I don’t even know what his plan is.”

“It will amuse you,” Karinovsky said. “It is based, of course, upon your renowned and diverse talents.”

I felt a sudden cold chill. What had Guesci planned for us? And what did it have to do with the talents of Agent X? I tried to remember what accomplishments were imputed to me, and I couldn’t. I felt that it was time to clear up the situation.

“Karinovsky,” I said, “about those skills—”

“Yes?” he said pleasantly.

“I’m afraid they may have become exaggerated in the retelling.”

“Nonsense,” he said.

“No, really. As a matter of fact, I’m quite an untalented person.”

Karinovsky laughed. “It is apparent that you are given to sudden attacks of modesty,” he said. “It is a chronic disease of the Anglo-Saxon mentality. Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t really consider yourself a secret agent.”

I managed to produce a sickly grin. “That would be going a little too far,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “Come now, we’ll have no genteel disclaimers. Not between us, my friend.”

“All right,” I said. Apparently it was not the time to clear up the status of Agent X. “But remember—I may be a trifle rusty.”

“Accepted. Some more wine?”

“No, thank you. Let’s get down to business. This house is probably surrounded, you know.” “Guesci’s plan assumed that eventuality.”

“Are we supposed to walk out of here disguised as delivery men?”

“Nothing so obvious.”

“Then how?”

“Let us examine the problem,” Karinovsky said, with infuriating nonchalance. “What do you think about a flight over the rooftops?”

“Forster must be prepared for that.”

“True. But what about the canal? Could we make our escape by boat, do you think?”

I shook my head. “Forster would have thought of that. The canals of Venice are fairly conspicuous.”

“Very well,” Karinovsky said. “The obvious exits are blocked. Now, following Guesci’s line of reasoning, we must look to the inobvious. That is to say, we must seek out the apparently impractical, the unreasonable, the unlikely. We must do what Forster does not expect; or better, we must do what he has never even considered. We must—”

Karinovsky’s flight of oratory was ended by the sound of glass breaking upstairs. For a moment there was silence, and then we heard something land on the floor with a heavy thump.

“Commando tactics,” Karinovsky said scornfully. He leaned back and lighted another cigarette. I wanted to stuff it down his ham actor’s throat.

We could hear the man or men upstairs moving cautiously in the darkness. Then the outer gate began to rattle. There was a brief ringing noise; it sounded as if the bolt had been cut. After a moment, we could hear the gate creak open.

“I suppose,” Karinovsky said, “that we should be on our way.”

He stood up, slipped his left arm out of the sling, and glanced at his watch. He took a final drag on his cigarette and stamped it out on the carpet. Then, having run out of gestures, he led me out of the room and down a hallway.

We stopped beside a heavy wooden door. A flashlight was set in brackets beside it. Karinovsky took the flashlight and pulled the door open. We entered, and he threw the bolts.

We went down a shallow staircase into a bare stone chamber. The walls were watersoaked, and smelled of sour antiquity: an odor compounded of garlic, mud, crushed granite and stagnant water. There was an iron door in the far wall, and something lay in a shapeless heap beside it.

Karinovsky crossed the room and opened the iron door. I saw a gleam of light upon water. We were at the canal entrance of the house.

I started to lean out, but Karinovsky pulled me back. “You might be spotted,” he told me. “I am quite sure that Forster has this exit under surveillance.”

“Then how do we reach the boat?”

“We have no boat out there,” Karinovsky said. “We crossed out that possibility, did we not?”

I heard footsteps on the floor above us. Then there was a sound of blows on the door to our chamber.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “Swim?”

“After a fashion,” Karinovsky said. He pointed his flashlight at the heap near the door. I saw bright yellow cylinders, splay-footed fins, air regulators, and grotesque black rubber masks with oval cyclops’ eyes.

“We swim,” Karinovsky said, “but in a manner that Forster might not have anticipated. I am sorry for the delay; but we had to wait for full high tide, otherwise some of the canals on our route are impassable. Now I suggest that we change rather hurriedly and make our departure. The door might not hold for long.”

16

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, to give praise for cleverness or curses for folly. Perhaps fortunately, there was no time to evolve an attitude. We changed quickly and adjusted our face masks. Forster’s men were hammering at the door, and the hinges were beginning to tear loose. Karinovsky bit down on the mouthpiece of his regulator and slipped into the dark water of the canal. I followed close behind. As I went in, I heard an angry shout. I turned my head and saw a boat less than twenty feet away. Forster had not overlooked the water gate.

I could just make out Karinovsky’s flippers ahead of me. The water was warm and faintly slimy, and it smelled of sewage and marsh gas. I controlled a desire to retch, and followed Karinovsky to the bottom of the canal, a depth of perhaps ten feet. He turned left, found the canal wall for a guide, and began to swim strongly. I had to work hard to stay up with him.

I knew roughly where we were. Karinovsky’s house had fronted on the wide Rio San Agostin, near the center of the city. He had turned left, following the canal under the Calle Dona and the Calle della Vida bridges. If we continued long enough in this direction, and if we succeeded in finding our way through the intricate canal system, we would come out on Venice’s northern periphery, facing the lagoon and the encircling mainland. At the moment, the plan seemed eminently reasonable, though not for tender stomachs.

I stayed less than a foot behind Karinovsky’s flippers, gliding just above a bottom of foul-smelling black mud. My fingertips brushed the gummy outlines of a barrel, a half-buried plank, the edge of a steamer trunk. The canals of Venice serve as unofficial garbage dump for the bordering houses. This one evidently had not been drained and cleaned in a long time. We swam through a thin, revolting soup in which orange peels, half-eaten bananas, eggshells, lobster claws and apple cores hung in suspension. It was quite unpleasant. I tried to convince myself that it was preferable to a last desperate run through narrow alleys.

Karinovsky’s fingertips located an intersection and swung right into the Rio San Giacomo dall’Orio. As turned, there was a muffled explosion overhead, and I saw a small, shiny object plunge past me and bury itself in the sand. I looked upward and saw a long, narrow shadow like a monster barracuda glide near me.

I braked, letting it slip past. Karinovsky had done the same. The boat from the water-gate had evidently given chase. From its length and shape, I knew that it was a gondola.

The strong yellow finger of a searchlight probed the water. I could hear men talking. The gondola was braked expertly, and then began to slide backward. Karinovsky tugged at my arm, gestured, and I nodded. We sprinted under the boat’s keel, toward the Terra Prima bridge. I knew almost at once that we weren’t going to make it.

The silent gondola, propelled by its single big oar, was easily capable of four times our speed. Our position was given away by the telltale stream of bubbles from our respirators. Glancing back, I saw the narrow black shadow of the gondola overhauling us. The searchlight beam rested on my back, and I heard the dull explosion of a gun.