The Woman Who Knew Too Much

by Tom Savage

  “Oh dear,” Frances said. “They’re already digging out the airports and airfields, and this will only make matters worse. I hope it doesn’t delay us again.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ears,” Nora said. Then, remembering that she was currently standing in a guesthouse on the grounds of a cloister, she laughed.

  Frances laughed too. “That’s a short trip in this place. Good night, Nora.”

  She went upstairs, and Nora returned to the lounge. The fireplace crackled, warming the room. The card game was just finishing, with Jeff the surprise winner. Galina and Patch were laughing and demanding a rematch.

  Nora jumped on the opportunity. “Yes, darling, you must give them a chance to get their own back. I think you should continue this tomorrow after breakfast. I’d place money on Galina, but I don’t think we should be betting in a convent—playing cards here is bad enough.” She went over to the nearest window, pulling aside the curtain so they could see out. “We may be here for a while.”

  Everyone stared, and Galina immediately looked nervous again. Nora took her arm and led her to the door. The men followed them.

  “Let’s all retire early, shall we?” Nora said. “Then we’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

  As they went out into the lobby, the silent nun from the dining room slipped past them into the lounge, bestowing the inevitable smile on them as they passed her. They smiled back, and Nora assumed the woman would put the fire out and take the tea things to the kitchen and wash them before going back to the main house. For all her relaxed friendliness, Mother Agnes ran a tight ship.

  They parted ways at the top of the stairs, Patch and Galina going into their rooms with repeated good nights. As soon as they were gone, Jeff pulled his cellphone from his pocket.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he whispered to Nora. Raising the phone to his ear, he moved silently back down the stairs.

  Nora went into their room, sat on the bed, and called her daughter in New York. She wasn’t surprised when Dana told her she was on the other line with Patch. Nora said a quick good night and got off the phone, smiling at the thought of her daughter and the young man two doors down. She really liked this boyfriend.

  She took a hot shower and put on her nightgown. When she came back into the room, she went to the window and opened the curtains to see how the snow was doing. It continued its steady fall, which worried her. As she stood looking out, she saw a dark shadow in the garden below her detach itself from other shadows and move stealthily along the garden wall. Nora stared, a thrill of fear welling up in her. Jeff came into the room, and Nora turned from the window.

  “Darling, there’s a man sneaking around in the garden. I think it’s a man, but I can’t be—”

  “Don’t worry, Pal,” he assured her. “That’s Aldo. And you remember my contact at the opera house, the guy who saw all the strange activity of loading and unloading scenery? He’s in the campo in front of this place, also watching. I just spoke with both of them. They’ll be out there all night.”

  She smiled, relieved. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me; thank Mr. Green. I also checked all the doors and windows, with a little help from my new friend, Sister Jeanne—she’s the gal who served us tonight. The place is secure, and I’m tired again.” He began taking off his clothes.

  “And thank you for playing cards with Galina,” Nora said. “I need you and Patch to keep her occupied after breakfast.”

  “How long?” he asked

  “An hour should be enough,” Nora said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  Chapter 36

  She would have to be quick. Nora slipped the key Mother Agnes had given her last night into the lock and opened the door, then went inside and shut the door behind her. The light switch was on her left, just like in her room next door. Now, in the light, she could see that the rooms were identical. Patch’s room was the same as well.

  She’d gone to Patch’s room before breakfast and borrowed his camera, because her burner phone from Mr. Green didn’t have a camera feature. She looked around the room: the rumpled bed, the Agatha Christie paperback on the night table, a teacup and saucer. A toothbrush, toothpaste, and a few basic cosmetics were on the sink in the bathroom. Otherwise, the place was empty. Nora went over to the closet and opened it.

  There it was: the black trench coat from Friday. She didn’t bother removing it from the hanger, merely plunging her hand into the pockets. She came up with a folded sheet of paper, a dog-eared paperback book, and a cellphone.

  She’d been right in her guess. Galina Rostova had a phone, and she’d brought it with her, even though she’d been instructed not to for obvious security reasons. Yesterday afternoon, Galina had sent Nora upstairs to get her coat before meeting her in the garden, while Galina herself had borrowed a cloak from the pegs beside the kitchen door. Why hadn’t Galina simply told Nora about the complimentary cloaks and saved her a trip upstairs? Because she needed some time alone, time to do something.

  Nora had thought about that, concluding that Galina had probably contacted someone. She’d finally agreed to tell the Americans her big secret, and her first impulse was to make a phone call. Cellphone service had been restored by then—Nora had just spoken with Ham Green on the stairs before joining Galina in the lounge. It must have been a short call—Galina had been alone in the garden for only a few minutes before Frances and Patch had found her at the gate. And she was hiding the phone here, in her room, when she didn’t need it.

  Nora studied the instrument in her hand. It was a plain black cellphone with the usual buttons, as simple as Nora’s own CIA-issue burner phone. She knew little about cellphones—she could barely manage her own—but her husband would know how to retrieve information from it, if that became necessary.

  She sat on the bed and unfolded the paper. It was a computer printout, and the main body of the message was in Cyrillic letters, but the letterhead was in Spanish. She flattened the page on the night table and raised Patch’s camera, grateful that he’d set it up for her. All she had to do was point and shoot.

  That was all she could do for now. She hadn’t needed an hour after all. Galina was in the lounge, playing her card game with the others. Nora was aware of the irony of what she was doing. Galina had told her that people in Russia had searched her apartment and gone through all her things, and now Nora was doing precisely that. She didn’t feel good about it, but she’d known Galina wasn’t telling her the whole truth about her situation.

  Nora had been hoping that this search would help her fill in the blanks. She’d expected to find a cellphone, and here it was. The letter, dated Friday, was a bonus. The message was in Russian, but she could read the destination address: Hotel Danieli. She could read numbers, including the one with an American dollar sign: $56,000,000.00. And she could read the letterhead: Banco Dorado, Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá.

  She rose, picking up the letter, the cellphone, and the paperback. She was about to go back to the closet to return everything to the coat pockets when she glanced down at the book. It was in Russian, of course, with the single-word title клика and the author’s name, but what arrested her attention was the picture on the front cover.

  Nora stood in the center of Galina’s room, staring down at the illustration on the thick, much-read paperback, feeling a sense of dizziness. She studied the details of the cover. What on earth? she thought.

  There wasn’t time to figure it out now; she had to leave this room quickly. She placed the book on the night table and took a photo of its front cover. Then she turned it over and got a shot of the back cover, the brief description of the plot and brief lines of Cyrillic that were presumably laudatory comments from other authors and book reviews from news sources.

  Nora snatched up the paperback and ran to the closet, carefully putting everything back where she’d found it. She ran to the door, slipped outside, and locked it. She glanced at her watch: 10:57. Mother Agnes had said they’d be back by eleven, and t
hey were probably on schedule.

  Nora descended the stairs, the key in one hand and the camera in the other. She went through the kitchen door and along the connecting walkway to the convent. Her timing was perfect: The nuns had just arrived home, and they were filing into the refectory, where their early lunch would be waiting. Nora went over to Mother Agnes, who stood in the center of the main hall, talking in Italian with Frances and an older nun.

  “Good morning, dear,” Mother Agnes said. “This is Sister Dorothea, my good right arm. If we were a corporation, I suppose she’d be the CFO. Sister, this is Nora Baron.”

  “Ah, yes,” the older nun said in Italian-accented English, smiling at Nora. “You are one of the people who don’t exist. Signora Camillo—who also doesn’t exist—was at Mass with us. How lovely to meet you, Signora Baron.”

  Nora laughed. “How do you do, Sister? Thank you for helping us. I hope the snowdrifts didn’t engulf you all on the way to church.”

  “Oh, no,” the nun said. “They’ve cleared most of the alleys and campos, and the canal traffic has resumed. People are out walking again, and the churches were full of the faithful, I’m glad to say. The city is slowly recovering, but the Good Lord put on quite a show for us, didn’t He?”

  “That He did,” Nora said. “Mother Agnes, may I speak with you a moment?”

  “Of course.” She waved Sister Dorothea into the refectory. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Nora handed the abbess the master key. “Thank you. Do you happen to have any women in your order who read Russian?”

  Mother Agnes immediately turned her head and called to the retreating nun. “Sister Dorothea, could you come back, please?”

  The elderly nun smiled and returned. “Yes, Reverend Mother?”

  “Let’s step into my office, shall we? Mrs. Baron needs your help.”

  “Of course.”

  Nora caught Frances’s eye and pointed toward the door that led to the guesthouse. Frances nodded and went to join the card players while Nora followed the two nuns into the office. When they were seated, Nora held up the camera.

  “I have photos of the front and back covers of a Russian book, and I’d like to know what the book is.” She clicked through the pictures on the screen until she came to the one of the front cover, then she handed the camera to the nun.

  Sister Dorothea squinted at the photo. “My, this is a small camera!” She produced a pair of reading glasses. “Ah, now I can see. клика, a novel by Pyotr Sarnoff. The title is—ooh, how do you say this in English? It is a group of people who get together to make a secret plan. In Italian, we call it cabala.”

  Nora stood beside the nun’s chair, staring down at the painting on the cover of the book in the photo. A group of shadowy figures in Russian military uniforms stood around a table in a dimly lit room, gazing down at a map. The central figure in the painting was a tall, imposing, bearded general. In the background behind the group, a young blond woman peered out at them through the cracked door to the next room, an expression of horror on her face.

  “Cabal,” Nora whispered.

  Chapter 37

  Nora hurried along the alleyway, clutching the collar of the surprisingly warm black cloak. Mountains of snow were everywhere, but they’d been pushed to the sides of alleys and canal-side walkways, clearing narrow paths. Whenever she met a pedestrian traveling the other way, they did an awkward sort of dance around each other to pass and continue their journeys. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits about it, so there was much good-natured laughter shared with strangers along the way. The people of Venice seemed to regard the blizzard as an exotic adventure, not a tiresome nuisance. Nora smiled to herself, thinking how New Yorkers usually reacted to snowstorms. The Venetian civility was a delightful contrast.

  She checked her watch: 4:23. She’d be there on time. The meeting had been difficult to arrange, but Mario Naldi had managed it. Nora had been reluctant to bother Mario at this special time for his family, but she hadn’t been able to think of a more expedient plan. Mario had claimed to be grateful for the temporary break from all the fawning and cooing over the new arrival, but Nora hadn’t really believed him. He was doing her a favor, and she knew it. He’d called an intern from his detective agency, a young man named Rocco who’d presumably been enjoying his weekend before Mario interrupted it, and sent him to the Danieli with a dozen roses and a memorized message. Rocco had bluffed or sneaked his way to the correct hotel room door and delivered them.

  “Buona sera, Suor,” a passing woman murmured.

  “Buona sera,” Nora replied with a smile before quickly moving on. The hood of the cloak concealed her chestnut hair, and she’d borrowed a cross pendant from Mother Agnes. Her favorite black boots were the only attire visible under the full-length cloak. The woman who’d just greeted her hadn’t looked at her face but at the cross, bobbing a little curtsy as she hurried by. If the woman had lifted her gaze to Nora’s face, she would have noticed that Nora wasn’t wearing a wimple and therefore probably wasn’t a nun. Yes; even in heavily Catholic Venice, Nora’s theory about what people noticed in the street was proving to be correct. Good.

  The café was across the campo from the opera house. The members of the Moscow State Theater company had discovered it while they were preparing for their performances, and the assistants were sent across the square on frequent snack runs. It was a small, cozy, dimly lit room not unlike the coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, with half a dozen small tables, a glass pastry cabinet, a pretty young waitress, and a handsome young man behind the counter who whipped up espressos, lattes, and many varieties of tea to go with the sweet desserts. Frances had suggested the place as the perfect setting for this particular meeting, and Nora wished she’d brought Frances with her. But Frances and Patch were needed to keep the asset entertained back at the convent, so Nora had come alone.

  Not quite alone, she thought as she went inside the warm room and selected a tiny table in the back, away from the front windows and the window table, which was occupied by a couple, the only other customers at the moment. Nora assumed they were Venetian; tourists didn’t usually notice places like this, and it was a Sunday afternoon after a crippling storm. All the tourists currently stranded in Venice were probably stuck on their cruise ships or staying close to their hotels today. These patrons would be locals from the neighborhood. Nora hung the cloak over the back of her chair, tucked the pendant inside her sweater, and sat facing the door.

  The waitress knew only a bit of English, so Nora pantomimed the fact that she was waiting for someone and would order when her companion arrived. The waitress nodded and withdrew. Nora pulled her phone from her pocket and made a call.

  “I’m here,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “In the square by the opera house. I can see you.”

  “Good,” Nora said. She glanced out again, spotting her husband near the front steps of La Fenice.

  “Keep your phone handy,” Jeff said. “I’ll call you if there’s a problem. Here comes your date.”

  “Right.” She placed the phone on the table just as Vera Gubalova entered the shop. Nora waved, and Vera came over, peeled off her white fleece coat, and sat down across from her.

  “Hello, Vera,” Nora said. “Thank you for meeting me.”

  “I am glad for something to do, Joan,” Vera said with a smile. “We are in the hotel two days without going outside, so I sneak by the guards and go out the kitchen. They think I am sleeping in my room. I am happy to walk here; it is no trouble to me—we have snow like this in Moscow all of the time. And I love the fluffy coffee in this shop, so I am happy.”

  The waitress appeared again, and they ordered lattes. Nora noticed Vera eyeing the pastries in the cabinet, so she ordered a sampler plate of miniature cannoli, chocolate-drizzled lace cookies, and pistachio biscotti. When they were settled in with the sugary feast before them, Vera began the conversation.

  “Thank you for the beautiful flowers! The man who came to the
hotel said you needed my help with your television story. How can I help?”

  Nora didn’t know if being frank with this gossipy young woman was a good idea, but at this point she had no choice, so she’d decided to take the chance.

  “Vera, have you heard any more about what happened to Galina since we spoke the other night at the opera house?”

  “Oh, yes,” Vera said. “Everyone in the company says she has defected, she has gone to America. They say she used the tour and her television talk with you to hide what she was really doing. So I suppose we all have been surprised—even you, Joan, yes?”

  “Um, yes,” Nora said. “But I’ve been trying to figure out how she managed it. The other day, Thursday, the men at the opera house who take care of the scenery were told to pack it up and ship it to Paris two days early. Then, two hours after they started doing that, they were told to stop. They said their order came from the director, but that the person on the phone was a young woman named Vera. Do you know anything about that?”

  To Nora’s surprise—and relief—Vera nodded. “Yes, that is right. When we are leaving the island with the glass, Galina gives me her phone and tells me to call the scenery people to say we are leaving Venice early. She says it is a joke the director, Mr. Lovanko, is playing on them, and he wants me to make the call. So I tell them to pack everything. We get back to the Danieli—we left you in the boat there, remember?—and a while later she tells me to call them again and cancel the order. So I tell them to stop. She pays me money for helping her and Mr. Lovanko with the joke.” Now Vera frowned. “Did I do something wrong, Joan?”

  “No,” Nora said quickly. “No, not at all. You told Frances Camillo that there were certain rumors about Galina and General Malinkov, rumors about her seeing other men—one man in particular: Lieutenant Marius Tarkovsky, the young man who vanished last September. Do you remember where you first heard about him?”