by Tom Savage
“Hello,” Nora said. “Are you ready to be Galina?”
Natalia nodded. “Yes, I am, how you say, ready for my close-up.” She smiled at Nora, but Nora could see only her red lips turning upward. Between the glasses and the wide-brimmed hat, most of her head was obscured. Perfect.
Nora crept forward and peeked around the corner of the building into the piazzetta. Galina was walking through the square toward the two columns, with Patch trailing ten feet behind her, filming her, and they were taking their sweet time about it, as she’d instructed. Nora looked up: Saint Theodore loomed almost directly above her, with the Lion of San Marco beyond him, on the other end of the main entrance.
The sun was behind her, but it was blocked by clouds, barely casting shadows from the black, wet sky. A pall hung over the scene, the dark before the storm. The waterfront was unnaturally silent. The gondolas bobbed roughly at their moorings in the canal on her right, whipped by the sudden wind. Beyond them, across the water, the island of San Giorgio and its glorious church glowed, even in the surrounding gloom. A lone tourist couple, a middle-aged man and woman with guidebooks and shopping bags, walked by from behind her, heading east along the quay. They smiled over at Nora and Natalia as they passed, and Nora heard the man say something to the woman in German.
She turned her head to look behind her, relieved to see the familiar water taxi tied back there, past the gondolas, facing toward the familiar San Marco Vallaresso landing farther down the shore. Aldo stood silently at the wheel, his back to her, but the sight that arrested her attention was the man in the boat with Aldo, standing in the foreground mere yards away from her, by the gunwale at the stern, waiting for them.
It was Jeff. He wore a navy peacoat, a watch cap, and jeans, blending right into the nautical scenery. His right hand was thrust into his coat, Napoleon style, and she suspected he had that hand on a concealed weapon. He looked at Nora and nodded. She nodded back and returned her attention to the piazzetta, reassured. Jeff was here: She could do this.
Here came the fabulous Galina, being fabulous. She swanned along the row of lampposts, dancing all the way around the last one, her open trench coat flapping behind her like a cape. Then she glided out into the center of the space before the two tall columns. She raised her arms to them, the lion and the saint, and dropped into a deep curtsy. Patch had backed away to film this, a panoramic shot of the two columns with Galina between them, and he was grinning. Beyond him, the others watched from the far end of the square. A few people had ventured back into the space with umbrellas: two or three couples, a scattering of loners, and a group of tourists with a guide. Everyone stopped to look as Galina bowed before the symbols of Venice.
Nora thought of Fellini. No wonder Patch was delighted. He was a fan of Italian cinema, and Galina was evoking the most Italian of film directors at this most Italian of landmarks. She was doing for the Portal of Venice what Anita Ekberg had done for Rome’s Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita, while Patch lovingly captured her tribute for posterity. Nora was so mesmerized, so caught up in the sheer drama of it, that she nearly forgot what they were all supposed to be doing there.
But not for long. With a final, formal bow to the statues high above her, Galina turned to face the library and began a slow, stately walk across the pavement, gliding out of the range of Patch’s camera. She walked directly toward the two women who crouched beside the building, waiting for her.
And the sky opened up once more.
It was worse this time, a torrent of hard rain. Galina’s eyes widened in surprise, and she was immediately soaked, but she kept walking at her regal pace. She was watching Nora now, and the expression on her face was the one Nora had seen last night, across the banquet room. She was terrified. A few more steps, and she was past the edge of the building and out of sight of the people in the square. She threw herself into Natalia’s arms, bidding her friend a swift, final goodbye.
“Do svidanija, moj dorogoj drug!” she cried, gently pushing the other woman toward the columns. “Davaj!”
“Do svidanija, Galina,” Natalia replied. She drew herself up, wiped the rainy tears from her face, and prepared to walk out into the piazzetta.
Patch stopped her. He stood in the downpour about thirty feet from them, looking back over his shoulder toward the Campanile where the rest of the group was waiting. He suddenly whipped his head around and made eye contact with Nora, who stood beside the two identically dressed women, reaching for Galina’s arm to spirit her off to Aldo’s boat. Nora saw the wide-eyed, panicked expression on his face and froze. Patch held up his hand, palm out, and jerked his head to indicate the unseen TV crew. He stared into Nora’s eyes and silently mouthed one word: Sergei. He then made a violent pushing motion with the hand and mouthed another word: Go!
Nora understood him perfectly: Sergei was coming across the piazzetta, probably with an umbrella to shield Galina from the rain. Nora told Natalia to stop. There was no point in sending her out there as Galina, not now. They were about to be discovered.
Chapter 22
Nora shut her eyes and made a swift decision. She grabbed Galina’s hand and raced down the quay to the stern of Aldo’s boat. Her husband was ready, reaching out to help Galina into the water taxi. Then he turned and reached out for Nora.
“No!” Nora cried. “Get her out of here now! Abort the mission; take her somewhere secure here in Venice. I’ll catch up with you later. Go, go, go!” Galina stared and opened her mouth to protest, but Nora shook her head. “Not a word, Galina. This is my husband; he’s an American agent. He’ll keep you safe. Go!”
Jeff was surprised, but he recovered quickly. He untied the craft and shouted to Aldo, who revved the engine and pulled away from the pier. Nora glanced over at the front corner of the library, but Sergei hadn’t appeared yet. Patch was still watching her from the square, rain-soaked, jerking his head to indicate that the Russian guard was getting closer. As she ran back to join Natalia, Nora looked up and down the quay. A pair of teen girls ran down the waterfront from the direction of the columns, screaming with laughter at how wet they were. They ran by Nora and past a young mother coming the other way, from the direction of the garden behind the library, clutching the hand of a little boy and an umbrella.
Nora grabbed the startled understudy’s arm and dragged her swiftly down the length of the library, rounding the corner behind it and flattening herself against the wall in the space between the building and the iron fence that enclosed Giardini ex Reali. The edge of a small canal that ran through the garden was mere feet away from her cramped hiding place, beyond the fence. She yanked the other woman out of view and shoved her against the wall beside her. She held a finger to her lips, and Natalia nodded and remained still.
Aldo’s water taxi was away from land now, moving west toward the Grand Canal. Galina and Jeff stood at the stern outside the glass-enclosed passenger cabin, looking back at Nora and the other woman pressed against the wall. Then they both shifted their gaze toward the other end of the library, and Galina raised her hands to her face. Jeff frowned, shoved Galina into the passenger cabin behind him, and reached inside his coat again. His expression and the angry shouts Nora heard a moment later informed her that Sergei had arrived on the fondamenta and had immediately spotted the distinctively dressed actress standing in the boat.
“Prekratite!” the unseen guard yelled. “Stop!”
The woman and the little boy were walking by the spot where Nora and Natalia were concealed. They were on the fondamenta near the water, perhaps fifteen feet away from Nora, who could see the woman’s face in profile. The woman was looking toward the spot where Sergei was shouting, and she suddenly dropped the umbrella and screamed. She sank to her knees on the wet pavement, drawing the child to her, wrapping her arms around him, shielding him with her body. She screamed again.
Nora slipped past Natalia and peered out. Sergei was charging along the walkway directly toward the woman and the little boy, staring after the water taxi as he held a
pistol straight out in front of him, aimed at her husband in the boat. He was still shouting, but he stopped his noise when he became aware of the screams.
He halted on the quay, looking over at the screaming woman and child huddled together ten feet in front of him, and quickly shoved his weapon inside his jacket, into a shoulder holster. Just before the water taxi rounded the curve beyond the Vallaresso landing into the Grand Canal and disappeared, Sergei thrust his cellphone up in front of him, clicking off at least two shots of the retreating craft. But he hadn’t fired at Jeff, and for that Nora nearly cried out in relief.
Sergei strode over to the very edge of the quay, furiously shouting something across the water after the vanished boat. From the sound of it, Nora was glad she didn’t understand Russian. The woman jumped to her feet, picked up the little boy in her arms, and ran off sobbing through the rain, leaving her dropped umbrella where it lay.
Nora pressed back against the wall beside Natalia. Sergei was standing in profile twenty feet away—if he looked over toward the edge of the building and the garden, he would see them there. She held her breath, staring at the man, willing him not to turn his head.
“Hey! What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
Nora recognized the voice, and she whispered a prayer of thanks. As she watched from her hiding place, Patch came running into view. He joined Sergei on the quay, his camera clutched in his hands, planting his tall body directly between the man and the place where Nora and Natalia were hiding, blocking the Russian’s view of them. The downpour had intensified, and both men were soaked to the bone.
Sergei didn’t reply. He thumbed a number on the cellphone and marched away through the rain toward the piazzetta, raising the phone to his ear as he went. Patch watched him go, waiting until he disappeared around the corner before running over to Nora.
“What now?” he said.
“Get back to the others. You don’t know anything, and they don’t know anything—you’re all totally shocked by this, okay? I’ll be returning from the ladies’ room in a few minutes, and I don’t know anything, either. Find out whom Sergei’s calling and let me know. Go!”
Patch nodded and took off after Sergei. Nora turned to the young woman beside her. She reached up to remove Natalia’s cobalt blue picture hat and sunglasses and handed them to her. “Go back to the hotel, get out of these clothes, and get rid of them. The rest of your company is on a boat tour, right?”
“Yes. I said I am not feeling well; I stayed behind in my room. I’ll be back there before they return.”
“Good. When you hear that Galina is missing, you will be surprised. And you will go on in the play tonight. This never happened, do you understand? You were never here today.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Nora smiled at her and squeezed her arm. “Break a leg tonight. Now, go!”
Natalia ran off down the waterfront toward the Danieli, pausing to discard the telltale hat and sunglasses in a trash receptacle. Without them, she didn’t look like Galina anymore; she was just a woman in a black raincoat. When she was gone, Nora ran back the way she’d come to Piazza San Marco, opening her umbrella as she went. She dashed across the piazza toward the Campanile. When she saw her group clustered there under umbrellas, she slowed to a walk and strolled over to them.
Frances, Patch, and the Italians gave her grave looks. Vera seemed truly upset, as though she might burst into tears at any moment. Sergei stood a little way from the others, holding his cell up to his ear. The rain continued, showing no sign of stopping anytime soon.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” Nora said, smiling sheepishly. “There was a line for the loo, and I got soaked in this torrent, and…” She trailed off, staring around at their stricken faces. “What? What’s the matter? Has something happened? Where’s Galina?”
Chapter 23
The next two hours were agony for Nora.
She and her associates kept up the charade in the piazza for an audience of two—the distraught Vera and the furious Sergei—until they could decently get away from them, with much confusion and scratching of heads, and return to Pensione Bella. As soon as they entered the guesthouse, Nora ran upstairs to her room, not bothering to turn on the lights. She sat on the bed and called her husband.
No answer, so she left a message. She considered texting, but she knew his phone was off and stowed in a pocket. She dropped her phone on the night table. She’d just have to wait to hear from him. But where was he? What was he doing? Were he and Galina and Aldo safe?
Patch could tell her only that Sergei had called a fellow Russian and that everything Patch had heard him say into the phone was unintelligible. Almost everything: He’d understood Galina Rostova and Nyet, sjer and Da, sjer. Sergei had uttered these last two phrases several times, so Nora assumed he’d been reporting Galina’s getaway to a superior officer. Patch had seen Sergei perform a function on his smartphone that looked suspiciously like sending an email with attachments. She thought of the photos he’d taken—photos of Galina in the boat. With her husband.
Nora had to assume that the superior officer was General Malinkov. The actual escape from Italy had been canceled, so she didn’t have to worry about Galina being detained at Marco Polo Airport, but this didn’t allay her sense of panic. Was there some way for the Russians to track Galina? If so, what would they do to her when they found her? And what would they do to anyone they discovered who’d aided and abetted in the escape? If Jeff were to be found with her…
No. That way lay madness. Nora wouldn’t even entertain thoughts like that—at least, not until it was necessary. But she kept seeing a mental image of Sergei holding up his phone, snapping photos of her husband in the water taxi. Half the Kremlin could probably identify Jeffrey Baron, the thirty-year veteran field operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wasn’t that the main reason she, Nora, was here under cover as a television interviewer named Joan Simmons? If Malinkov or his associates in Moscow linked Jeff to Galina’s disappearance, how long before they connected his actress wife to the American newswoman who was so conveniently in Venice?
If Nora wasn’t safe, her team wasn’t safe. They were her first responsibility. Patch and Frances were booked on a flight from Marco Polo tomorrow morning. They must go back to America before the whole operation was exposed. The two Italian detectives could presumably take care of themselves, but she felt responsible for them as well. Paolo’s wife was having a baby any minute. Would this failure of Nora’s endanger that child’s father—or, perhaps, its grandfather? Mario Naldi had been the most visible member of Sound Byte Productions, the ostensible man in charge. What would the Russians—or, perhaps, the Italian government—do to him when his involvement in the international incident became apparent?
She removed the jacket of her blue suit, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It was dark in the room, with all the curtains drawn against the freezing weather outside, but inside it was warm and comforting. Well, it would have been comforting, if Nora could have been comforted by anything at this point. She shut her eyes, willing her body to relax, but the awful weight of responsibility would not leave her. Her new friends were in their rooms down the hall, probably wondering what they were supposed to do now. Now that the operation had gone south. Now that Nora Baron had screwed up her first—and, no doubt, her last—official assignment.
She opened her eyes and sat up on the bed. This was the real problem, the one she hadn’t yet confronted. She had been entrusted by her government, her husband’s employers, to do this thing because they thought she’d be able to do it. Ham Green had admired her courage in England and France. He knew she was an actor, and he’d mistaken her for some other actor, someone like Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. Someone entirely more capable, more intelligent, more heroic.
She glanced over at the cellphone on the night table, willing it to ring as she had willed the operation to go smoothly. And we all know how that worked out, she thought. N
ora needed a distraction; perhaps she’d call her daughter. She’d spoken to Dana twice, briefly, since arriving in Venice, and she knew Patch had been in constant contact with her. Dana knew little about the activities here, merely that Mom and Dad were on official business and Patch was helping them. Nora had deliberately told her as little as possible, for the same reason she’d initially kept Patch and Frances in the dark: Ignorance is the best form of deniability.
No. She’d call Dana later, when this was behind her. When she knew where Dana’s father was, and that he wasn’t in danger—
The soft knock on the door startled her. She blinked, returning to the present, to the darkened hotel room in the quiet vialetto in the inscrutable city. With a sigh, she rose from the bed and went to open the door.
Her team stood silently in the hallway, gazing at her, and Frances was holding out a steaming teacup on a saucer. Nora saw their kind, concerned faces, and she nearly began to cry. She moved aside and opened the door wider, allowing them to troop into the room.
“Drink this,” Frances said, placing the tea on the night table. “There’s lots of honey in it; it’s just what you need.”
It was. Nora sipped, feeling better almost instantly. She sank back down onto the bed, and Frances sat beside her. Patch dropped to the carpet, sitting cross-legged before her, and the Italians stood behind him.
“I’m sorry, everyone,” Nora said, unable to look up at them. She stared down at her bare feet on the carpet. “I screwed the whole thing up.”
“Nonsense,” Frances said, reaching over to place her cool hand on Nora’s arm. “It was the rain. You can’t control the weather, Nora. Not even the CIA can do that.”
“It was a bad break,” Paolo said. “But you got us out of it brilliantly. What do they say in your country about hurting and fouling?”
“No harm, no foul,” Patch supplied. “He’s right, Nora. As far as the Russians are concerned, we don’t know anything, and it’s all thanks to your quick thinking. And we have Galina! Jeff will take her somewhere safe, and Mr. Green will figure out some way to get her to Washington. Everything’s gonna be—”
