Blood would draw attention.
As the feeling of faintness receded and his brain emerged from the shock of the attack, he realized that an opening had presented itself to him. He had cut her head, and no doubt it was bleeding copiously, as all such cuts did. She could not hide such a cut and the blood, not even with a scarf. She could not pursue him around Florence with blood pouring down her face. She would have to retreat somewhere, clean herself up. And that gave him the window of opportunity he needed to escape from her, to shake her off—forever.
Now was the moment. If he could escape from her cleanly, he could assume another identity, and from there proceed to his final destination. She would never find him there—never.
He strolled as casually as possible through the streets toward the taxi stand at the end of Borgo San Jacopo. As he walked, he could feel the blood soaking through his clothes, trickling down his leg. The pain was minor, and he was sure the cut had merely sliced along his rib cage without penetrating his vitals.
He had to do something about the blood, however—and fast.
He turned into a little café at the corner of Tegolaio and Santo Spirito, went up to the bar, and ordered an espresso and a spremuta. He downed both, one after the other, dropped a five-euro bill on the zinc, and went into the bathroom. He locked the door and opened his raincoat. The amount of blood was shocking. He quickly probed the wound, confirming that it hadn’t pierced his peritoneum. Using paper towels, he mopped up as much blood as he could; and then, tearing away the lower half of his blood-soaked shirt, he tied the strips around his torso, closing the wound and stanching the flow of blood. Then he washed his hands and face, put on his raincoat, combed his hair, and left.
He felt the blood pooling now into his shoe, and he looked down to see that his heel was leaving a bloody quarter-moon on the sidewalk. But it was not fresh blood, and he could sense that the bleeding had slowed. A few more steps and he arrived at the taxi stand, slid into the backseat of a Fiat.
“Speak English, mate?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes,” came the gruff reply.
“Good man! The railroad station, please.”
The cab shot forward and he lay back in the seat, feeling the blood sticky in his groin, his mind suddenly loosening itself in a tumult of thoughts, a shower of broken memories, a cacophony of voices:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
73
In the convent of the Suore di San Giovanni Battista in Gavinana, Florence, twelve nuns presided over a parochial school, a chapel, and a villa with a pensione for religious-minded visitors. As night gathered over the city, the suora behind the front desk noted with unease the return of the young visitor who had arrived that morning. She had come back from her tour of the city cold and wet, her face bundled up in a woolen scarf, body hunched against the weather.
“Will the signora be having dinner?” she began, but the woman silenced her with a gesture so brusque the suora closed her mouth and sat back.
In her small, simply furnished room, Constance Greene furiously flung off her coat on her way to the bathroom. She bent over the sink, turning on the hot water tap. As the sink filled, she stood before the mirror and unwound the woolen scarf from her face. Beneath it was a silk scarf, stiff with blood, which she gingerly unwrapped.
She peered closely at the wound. She could not see much; her ear and the side of her head were crusted with clotted blood. She dipped a washcloth in the warm water, wrung it out, and gently placed it over her skin. After a moment, she removed, rinsed, and reapplied it. Within minutes, the blood had softened enough for her to cleanse the cut and examine it more clearly.
It wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first. The scalpel had scored deeply across her ear but had only nicked her face. She gently probed with her fingers, noting that the cut was exceedingly sharp and clean. It was nothing, although it had bled like a stuck pig—it would heal with hardly a scar.
Scar. She almost laughed out loud as she threw the bloody washcloth into the sink.
She leaned over and examined her face in the mirror. It was thin and haggard, her eyes hollow, lips cracked.
The novels she had read made pursuit sound easy. Characters followed other characters halfway around the world, all the while remaining well rested, fed, refreshed, and groomed. In reality, it was an exhausting, brutal business. She had hardly slept since she first picked up his trail at the museum; she had barely eaten; she looked like a derelict.
On top of that, the world had proved to be a nightmare beyond all imagining: noisome, ugly, chaotic, and brutally anonymous. It was not at all like the comfortable, predictable, moral world of literature. The great welter of human beings she had encountered were hideous, venal, and stupid—indeed, mere words failed to describe their true loathsomeness. And chasing Diogenes had proved expensive: through inexperience, being cheated, and rash expenditure, she had run through almost six thousand euros in the past forty hours. She had only two thousand left—and no way of getting more.
For forty hours, she had followed him relentlessly. But now he had escaped her. His wound would not slow him down: it was undoubtedly a trifle, like hers. She was certain she had lost his trail for good—he would see to that. He was gone, on to a new identity, and no doubt heading for the safe place he had prepared for just such a flight, years ago.
She had come so close to killing him—twice. If she had a better handgun . . . if she had known how to shoot . . . if she had been a millisecond quicker with the blade . . . he would be dead.
But now he had escaped her. She had lost her chance.
She gripped the sink, staring into her bloodshot eyes. She knew with a certainty the trail would end here. He would flee by taxi, train, or plane, cross a dozen borders, crisscross Europe, before ending up in a place and in a persona he had carefully cultivated. It would be somewhere in Europe, she was sure of that—but the certainty was of little help. It might take a lifetime to find him—or even more.
Nevertheless, a lifetime was what she had. And when she found him, she would know him. His disguises had been good—but no disguise would deceive her. She knew him. He could alter everything possible about his appearance: his face, clothes, eyes, voice, body language. But there were two things he could not alter. His stature was the first. The second, the more important, was something she was sure Diogenes had not thought of: and that was his peculiar scent. That scent she remembered so well, strange and heady, like a mixture of licorice underscored by the keen, dark smell of iron.
A lifetime . . . She felt a wave of despair so overwhelming that she swayed over the sink.
Could he have left some clue behind in his hasty departure? But that would mean returning to New York, and by the time she did so, the trail would have grown too cold.
Perhaps he had dropped some unconscious reference, then, in her presence? It seemed most unlikely—he had been so careful. But perhaps, because he had expected her to die, he might have been less than vigilant.
She walked out of the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the bed. She paused a moment to clear her mind as best she could. Then she thought back to their earliest conversations in the library of 891 Riverside. It was a mortifying exercise, excruciatingly painful, like peeling back a raw bandage of memory: and yet she forced herself to continue, summoning up their first exchanges, his whispered words.
Nothing.
She then went over their later meetings, the books he had given her, his decadent disquisitions on sensual living. But there was still nothing, not even the hint of a geographical location.
In my house—my real house, the one that is important to me—I have a library . . . That was what he had told her once. Was it, like everything else, just a cynical lie? Or was there perhaps a glimmer of truth?
I live near the sea. I can sit in that room, all lights and candles extinguished, listening to the roar of the
surf, and I become a pearl diver . . .
A library, in a house by the sea. That wasn’t much help. She ran over the words again and again. But he had been so careful to hide any personal details, except for those lies he had so carefully crafted, such as the suicide scars.
The suicide scars. She realized that, in her recollections, she had been unconsciously avoiding the one event that held out the greatest chance of revealing something. And yet she could not bear to think of it again. Reliving those final hours together—the hours in which she gave herself to him—would be almost as painful as first reading the letter . . .
But once again a coldness descended over her. Slowly she lay back on the bed and stared upward into the darkness, remembering every exquisite and painful detail.
He had murmured lines of poetry in her ear as his passion mounted. They had been in Italian:
Ei s’immerge ne la notte,
Ei s’aderge in vèr’ le stelle.
He plunges into the night,
He reaches for the stars.
She knew that the poem was by Carducci, but she had never made a careful study of it. Perhaps it was time that she did.
She sat up too quickly and winced from a sudden throbbing in her ear. She went back into the bathroom and went to work on the injury, cleaning it thoroughly, covering it with antibiotic ointment, and then bandaging it as unobtrusively as possible. When she was done, she undressed, took a quick bath, washed her hair, put on fresh clothes. Next, she stuffed the washcloth, towel, and bloody clothes into a garbage bag she found stored in the back of the room’s armoire. She gathered up her toiletries and returned them to her suitcase. Pulling out a fresh scarf, she wrapped it carefully around her face.
She closed the suitcase, buckled and strapped it. Then she took the garbage bag and descended to the greeting room of the convent. The sister was still there, and she looked almost frightened by this sudden reappearance.
“Signora, is there something not to your liking?”
Constance opened her wallet. “Quanto costa? How much?”
“Signora, if there is a problem with your room, surely we can accommodate you.”
She pulled out a rumpled hundred-euro bill, placed it on the counter.
“That is too much for not even one night . . .”
But Constance had already vanished into the cold, rainy dark.
74
Two days later, Diogenes Pendergast stood on the port rail of the traghetto as it plowed through the heaving blue waters of the southern Mediterranean. The boat was passing the rocky headland of Capo di Milazzo, crowned by a lighthouse and a ruined castle; behind him, sinking into the haze, stood the great hump of Sicily, the blue outline of Mount Etna thrusting into the sky, a plume of smoke trailing off. To his right lay the dark spine of the Calabrian coast. Ahead lay his destination, far, far out to sea.
The great eye of the setting sun had just dipped behind the cape, casting long shadows over the water, limning the ancient castle in gold. The boat was heading north, toward the Aeolian islands, the most remote of all the Mediterranean islands—the dwelling place, or so the ancients believed, of the Four Winds.
Soon he would be home.
Home. He rolled the bittersweet word around in his mind, wondering just what it meant. A refuge; a place of retreat, of peace. He removed a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, took shelter in the lee of the deck cabin, and lit one, inhaling deeply. He had not smoked in more than a year—not since he had last returned home—and the nicotine helped calm his agitated mind.
He thought back to the two days of hectic traveling he had just completed: Florence, Milan, Lucerne—where he’d had his wound stitched at a free clinic—Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Ljubljana, Venice, Pescara, Foggia, Naples, Reggio di Calabria, Messina, and finally Milazzo. A forty-eight-hour ordeal of train travel that had left him weak, sore, and exhausted.
But now, as he watched the sun dying in the west, he felt strength and presence of mind returning. He had shaken her in Florence; she had not, could not have, followed him. From there, he had changed identities several times, confused his trail to such an extent that neither she nor anyone else could hope to untangle it. The open borders of the EU, combined with the crossing into Switzerland and re-entry into the EU under a different identity, would confound even the most persistent and subtle pursuer.
She would not find him. Nor would his brother. Five years, ten years, twenty—he had all the time in the world to plan his next—his final—move.
He stood at the rail, inhaling the breath of the sea, feeling a modicum of peace steal over him. And for the first time in months, the interminable, dry, mocking voice in his head fell to a susurrus, almost inaudible amid the sound of the bow plowing the sea:
Goodnight Ladies: Goodnight sweet Ladies: Goodnight, goodnight.
75
Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast got off the bus at Viale Giannotti and walked through a small park of sycamore trees past a shabby merry-go-round. He was dressed as himself—now that he was safely out of the United States, there was no need for disguise. At Via di Ripoli, he took a left, pausing before the huge iron gates that led into the convent of the Sisters of San Giovanni Battista. A small sign identified it only as Villa Merlo Bianco. Beyond the gates, he could hear the mingled cries of schoolchildren at recess.
He pressed the buzzer and, after a moment, the gates opened automatically, leading into a graveled courtyard before a large ocher villa. The side door was open, and a small sign identified it as guest reception.
“Good morning,” he said in Italian to the small, plump nun at the desk. “Are you the Suor Claudia I spoke to?”
“Yes, I am.”
Pendergast shook her hand. “Pleased to know you. As I mentioned over the phone, the guest we spoke of—Miss Mary Ulciscor—is my niece. She has run away from home, and the family is extremely worried about her.”
The plump nun was almost breathless. “Yes, signore, in fact I could see she was a very troubled young lady. When she arrived, she had the most haunted look in her face. And then she didn’t even stay the night—arrived in the morning, then returned that evening and insisted on leaving—”
“By car?”
“No, she came and left on foot. She must have taken the bus, because taxis always come in through the gates.”
“What time would that have been?”
“She returned about eight o’clock, signore. Soaking wet and cold. I think she might have been sick.”
“Sick?” Pendergast asked sharply.
“I couldn’t be sure, but she was hunched over a bit, and her face was covered.”
“Covered? With what?”
“A dark blue woolen scarf. And then not two hours later, she came down with her luggage, paid too much money for a room she hadn’t even slept in, and left.”
“Dressed the same?”
“She’d changed her clothes, had on a red woolen scarf this time. I tried to stop her, I really did.”
“You did all you could, Suora. Now, may I see the room? You needn’t bother coming—I’ll take the key myself.”
“The room’s been cleaned, and there’s nothing to see.”
“I would prefer to check it myself, if you don’t mind. One never knows. Has anyone else stayed there?”
“Not yet, but tomorrow a German couple . . .”
“The key, if you would be so kind.”
The nun handed him the key. Pendergast thanked her, then walked briskly through the piano nobile of the villa and mounted the stair.
He found the room at the end of a long hall. It was small and simple. He closed the door behind him, then immediately dropped to his knees. He examined the floor, searched under the bed, searched the bathroom. To his great disappointment, the room had been fanatically cleaned. He stood up, looked around thoughtfully for a minute. Then he opened the armoire. It was empty—but a careful look revealed a small, dark stain in the far corner. He dropped
to his knees again, reached in, and touched it, scratching a bit up with his fingernail. Blood—dry now, but still relatively fresh.
Back in the reception room, the nun was still deeply concerned.
“She seemed troubled, and I can’t imagine where she went at ten o’clock at night. I tried to talk to her, signore, but she—”
“I’m sure you did all you possibly could,” Pendergast repeated. “Thank you again for your help.”
He exited the villa onto Via di Ripoli, deep in thought. She had left at night, in the rain . . . but for where?
He entered a small café at the corner of Viale Giannotti, ordered an espresso at the bar, still pondering. She had encountered Diogenes in Florence, that much was certain. They had fought; she had been wounded. It seemed incredible that she was only hurt, for normally, those who came within Diogenes’s orbit did not leave it alive. Clearly, Diogenes had underestimated Constance. Just as he himself had done. She was a woman of vast, unexpected depths.
The Book of the Dead Page 44
