by Gregg Loomis
Gowen/Gorin turned to Gurt and actually gave a bow. “Since this lout isn’t going to do it, let me introduce myself. I am Andrew Gower.” He indicated his companion. “And this lovely lady is Angelia Sprayberry. You must be the current Mrs. Lang Reilly.”
Gurt rolled eyes at Lang before returning the bow with a curtsy. “Gurt Fuchs, the last Mrs. Lang Reilly. It does me glad to meet you.”
Gower gave her a knowing look. “The modern woman: keeps her own persona as well as her name. Good for you.” He turned back to Lang. “Don’t you find it exciting to be in the very city where Marco Polo began his extraordinary journey?”
Lang glanced out the window, noting the drizzle had turned to full-fledged rain. “I can understand why he left.”
Unfazed, Gower continued. “And in the very building where the great lover Casanova was imprisoned?”
“Lucky him; he escaped.”
Gower had to reach up to give Lang’s back a pat as he brayed a laugh. “Always the comedian! Now where are you two staying? Angelia and I are at the Gritti Palace on the Grand Canal.”
“We’re at the Motel Six on the beach.”
A flicker of a smile came and went, a man unsure whether or not he was the butt of the joke. He forced a chuckle, dropping Angelia’s hand long enough to rub his own hands together. Lang remembered he did that a lot, one hand rubbing the other as though washing them.
“Well, perhaps we can do lunch at Harry’s.”
Harry’s American Bar, located nearby, past the southwestern corner of the Piazza San Marco. The owners were named Giuseppe or Antonio or anything but Harry, the only Americans to be seen there being those willing to pay an exorbitant price for a very good lunch of typical Venetian fare. And the place was a restaurant, not a bar, though it boasted two elegant wooden bars behind which were possibly the only bartenders in Italy who knew that a proper martini contained more gin than vermouth. Make that dry vermouth.
“C’mon, Drew. I want to dance,” Angelia whined.
Gower smiled apologetically, showing teeth several generations younger than Lang guessed he was. “Duty calls.” He took a step toward the music and stopped. “By the way, you know Metaccelli died?”
The longtime Venetian contact for Save Venice, Inc.
“So I heard.”
“It’s not well-known, but he was very friendly with the current pope. Old pals.”
Reilly waited expectantly. When nothing further was forthcoming, he asked, “And?”
“The patriarch of Venice will say a requiem mass for his friend in Saint Mark’s tomorrow.”
“The church invited us specifically,” Angelia chimed in. “And Drew isn’t even a Catholic.”
“During Carnevale?”
Gower shrugged. “Metacelli loved Carnevale. Besides, it’s the one time of year when many of his friends from Save Venice can attend, since they’re here anyway.”
“Drew . . .” Angelia’s lips, Botox pouty, were frowning.
Gurt was still holding Lang’s arm. She tugged him toward the music. “Let us go while they are still playing something we can dance to, before they start that . . . What is it, hip-hop?”
Lang seriously doubted the band was going to play anything to this audience that Sinatra hadn’t sung, but it was a good excuse to terminate the conversation. “See you later!”
After three hours, even Gurt’s enthusiasm had waned. She let herself be led to the eastern edge of the room, where a number of white tablecloths floated like ships adrift on the dark wood of the floor. On the nearby wall, Tintoretto’s huge Paradise depicted a congregation of saints.
She fanned herself with her hand. “It is hot!”
Lang ran a hand across his forehead, surprised when it came away dry instead of wet with sweat. “Let’s take a walk outside.”
She looked apprehensively at those still dancing.
“Don’t worry,” Lang assured her. “We can come back.”
She picked up her purse, a bag the size of a small suitcase, slung it over her shoulder by its strap and followed him from the room.
Outside, the rain had stopped and a chilly breeze flitted from building to building. Careful not to step off the planks that served as the only dry paths across the Piazza San Marco, they turned right to walk north, stopping in front of a basilica bathed in light.
Its multiple domes and arches were far more Byzantine than Gothic. Not surprising, since Venice had always looked east to Constantinople rather than west to Rome for its alliances, customs and, in some respects, religion. The cardinal of Venice, for example, was referred to as the patriarch, a title usually reserved for the Eastern, or Orthodox, church.
“Look.” Gurt pointed.
At first, Lang thought she was calling his attention to the mosaic over the door. “It shows Saint Mark’s body being smuggled out of Alexandria, past Muslim guards. Two Venetians hid the relic under slices of pork.”
Gurt shook her head. “No, the door. It stands open.”
Lang had thought it was merely shadows playing tricks, but closer inspection showed the door was cracked open.
“Had no idea they left the place open at night,” Lang said. “Let’s take a look.”
The inside was lit by low-wattage bulbs. Even so, it was obvious that the ceiling and walls were covered in gold mosaics, more like the churches Lang had seen in Istanbul than those in Europe.
He was about to comment when he heard a low whine.
“What . . . ?” Gurt whispered.
“Maybe they’re getting ready for the requiem mass tomorrow,” Lang suggested softly.
“With an electric drill?”
It was only then Lang recognized what he was hearing. He and Gurt instinctively moved closer to the wall, where the shadows were deepest. Moving from column to gilded column, they made their way toward the altar, which sat in the center of a dim spotlight, its two hundred fifty golden panels shining in spite of the low light.
At first mere shadows, forms moved back and forth under the alabaster altar canopy like ghosts. As Gurt and Lang got closer, the shapes took on distinct human shape. Both peered around a column.
“Why are they drilling?” Gurt asked just loudly enough to hear over the whine.
Lang shook his head, having no idea. “I don’t know, but the fact they they’re working at this hour tells me it’s probably not kosher.”
“And that they are not Italians.”
“And maybe we’re intruding on something we weren’t intended to see. Let’s go.”
Lang was walking backward, keeping an eye on what was going on as he moved toward the exit while feeling his way. Gurt was a few feet closer to the altar.
With the next step, something hard and cold was pressing against the back of his head, something very much like the muzzle of a gun. Freezing, he slowly raised his arms.
He almost stumbled as he was roughly shoved forward. By the time he regained his balance, he was pushed again. Whoever was behind him wanted him to head toward where the drilling was going on.
Years of Agency training kicked in. When you have no choice, cooperate, don’t give someone an excuse to kill you. But keep your eyes and mind open. Use whatever assets you have.
Like Gurt.
Instead of going directly to the source of the noise, Lang moved cautiously along the row of columns that had guided him before being taken prisoner. Even in the dim light, anyone could see his hands raised in surrender.
Including Gurt.
He was hoping that the dusky twilight, the deep shadows, had prevented his captor from seeing her, leaving her free to go for help once they passed the spot where he had last seen her.
It had never occurred to him he might need a weapon at Carnevale. He had left the Browning HP 9 mm in his bedside table back in Atlanta. Damn! How dumb could he get? Arriving by the foundation’s Gulfstream, neither he nor Gurt were subject to security screening. Either or both could have brought the firearms he wished they had. On the other hand, had the Browning b
een in the small of his back, he could well have gotten himself killed trying for it. But Gurt . . .
His stream of self-condemnation ended with the sound of a very solid thump, an expulsion of breath and the sound of metal hitting the marble floor. The gun was no longer against the back of Lang’s skull.
Spinning, he caught sight of a man trying to regain his balance as he took a second blow from Gurt’s handbag, swung on its strap like the weapon it had become. Now Gurt was between Lang and the light. He could only see her silhouette as she moved forward on her victim.
The man yelled something in a language Lang didn’t understand, but he heard Gurt clearly say, “The gun, get his gun. He dropped it.”
There was a grunt as Gurt’s adversary apparently launched a counterattack.
Had it been any other woman, or most men, Lang would have felt compelled to protect her. Instead, it was her opponent who was going to need protection, he guessed. At the top of her martial-arts class of women in the Agency, she had insisted on practicing with the men. The only problem was finding competition after breaking one man’s arm and the ribs of another.
Lang contented himself with a hands-and-knees search of the area as he heard flesh meet flesh and a very masculine yelp of pain. He found what he was looking for and came to his feet just in time to see the man make a slicing motion toward Gurt’s throat with the heel of his open right hand.
It was his final mistake. Ducking under the blow that would have seriously damaged if not crushed her larynx, she grabbed the hand, snatching downward, diverting the force of the blow and sending her assailant headfirst into a nearby pillar with a clearly audible crunch of bone versus stone. He slumped to the floor with a fluid motion that almost denied his status as a vertebrate. He didn’t move.
Lang slid back the slide on the automatic, checking with a finger to make sure there was a bullet in the chamber. “Hope you didn’t have anything breakable in your pocket-book.”
Gurt was peering into the gloom in the general direction from which the noise of the drill had ceased. “I should have thought of that.”
With the hand not holding the gun, Lang took Gurt’s. “I’d be surprised if someone didn’t hear that guy yell. Let’s get out of here before—”
A shot split the quiet, filling the basilica with sharp echoes. Marble chips from a pillar stung Lang’s face. Both he and Gurt dropped to the floor, where they merged with the inky darkness.
“You see where that came from?” Lang whispered
“No.”
Lang took a second to think. On the floor, he and Gurt could remain hidden in a darkness as deep as Jonah must have experienced. They could move on their bellies commando-style but to get out of the church they would have to navigate a puddle of light just where narthex met nave. He had little doubt whoever had been drilling would come looking for the man lying beside the column and then for whoever had left him there. There was equal certainty that that person would also be armed.
“Give me your purse,” he whispered.
“Now is not the time to be checking for damage.”
He told her what he wanted.
“On the count: one, two, three . . .”
He was never quite sure what object she had removed from her purse and looped overhand in the general direction of the altar. Whatever it was, it smashed against something with a gratifying clatter.
The response was a second shot, a noise that again sent sound caroming from wall to wall. But there was also a muzzle flash, a pinprick of light in the gloom.
Lang was on his knees before the echoes stopped. He fired three quick rounds at the place he had marked as the source of the shot and violently rolled to his left. The reply was a scream and more shots that filled the air with malignantly humming fragments of stone. Lang noted there were at least two shooters.
“They’ll spread out and try and find us,” he said. “I’ll give you cover. Run for it.”
“And you?”
“I’ll think of something. Right now, you best get moving or our son will be an orphan.”
She needed no further incentive.
Lang spread three rapid shots toward the same spot where he had fired previously. Before the second, Gurt was up and dashing for the exit. She drew two shots which, as far as Lang could tell, damaged only the church’s interior.
Moving quickly before his opponents could fire at the source of his volley, Lang was at the edge of the lighted place at the entrance. He heard a footstep behind him and to his right, another from his left. However many of them there were, he could not be sure, but the fact they had distributed their forces was bad news. It meant they were probably professionals, not some random thieves using the distraction of Carnevale to loot the church.
Professional or not, Lang was going to draw fire the instant he crossed that lighted spot. Either that or stay here, hoping Gurt could bring help before they found him.
Then the lights went on.
Not brilliant illumination, but bright enough in contrast to the murk in which he had been. It was also enough to momentarily blind him.
Instantly, he understood.
That was the purpose! Gurt had somehow found a light switch and blinded whoever had been shooting at them.
He leaped across the space between himself and the narthex like a running back stretching into the end zone.
The impact with the floor knocked the breath from his lungs as two bullets ricocheted from the place he had been a split second before.
Gurt tugged him to his knees. “Hurry! They may be right behind us!”
He didn’t need the encouragement. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled the few feet to the door out onto the lighted piazza, just behind Gurt. Once outside, they both flattened themselves against the basilica’s facade rather than present a target to whoever might choose to fire from the church’s door.
After two or three minutes, Lang asked. “Guess our friends aren’t willing to step out into the light. Want to go back to the dance?”
Gurt pointed. “You will go nowhere with that in your hand.”
Lang had forgotten he still held the gun. He looked at it for the first time he could actually see. “Tokarev TT30. First time I’ve seen one of those in a long time.”
Gurt snorted. “Seven-point-six-two millimeter with an eight-round box clip. Based on the Colt .45. Used to be the standard Russian sidearm.”
Agency training included a working knowledge of small arms—recognizing them and using them.
“Underpowered piece of crap, if memory serves. But reliable in the worst of conditions.” Lang was examining the weapon more closely. “But this one isn’t Russian.”
He held it up for her inspection.
She pushed it down out of sight. “If someone sees you waving a pistol, the police will not care whether it is Russian or not.”
Lang took a brief glance around the square, confirming its only occupants were a group of very drunk couples staggering at the far end of the Procuratie Nuove toward the long-closed Museo Correr, too far away for them to notice what he might have in his hand.
“Not only not Russian, it’s Chinese. I can see the characters on the barrel.”
“During the Cold War, the Chinese manufactured a number of Russian small arms for their own army, the AK-47 for example.”
Lang held the weapon flat against his leg, invisible to any passerby. “But why would anybody use a gun that dated? I mean . . .”
“You wish to go back inside and inquire?”
“Not that curious.”
She took his hand. “I have had excitement sufficient for the evening.” She looked at him under half-lidded eyes, an expression he found sexy if not provocative. “Come, let us take the boat back to our hotel and I will provide even more.”
“That’s an offer I can’t refuse.” His hand went to his face. “My nose!”
Gurt looked at him inquisitively. “Your nose? It does not seem to be hurt.”
Lang’s eyes were searchi
ng the paving around him. “My clown’s nose. It must have come loose when I hit the floor.” He touched his bare head. “And my clown’s hat, too.”
She gave him a tug toward the canal and, hopefully, the old Chris-Craft. “You have been clown enough for tonight. Drop the gun into the canal before you have to explain it to the police.”
Calle Fiubera 32, Venice
The next morning
Lang looked down the short, narrow street to the point it ended in a corte, or courtyard, in which a small limestone church, San Zulian, perched like a Baroque wedding cake on a platter. It was one of the few in the San Marco district Gurt had not dragged him into to see paintings and sculpture by Bellini, Giorgione, Tintoretto and a dozen or so more names he could remember no better than he could pronounce them. He offered up a brief prayer of thanksgiving as Gurt entered the shop paying no particular attention to the church.
Inside, the place had the same sweet, musty smell he recalled from two days ago, when he and Gurt arrived to be fitted for the costumes she had reserved by e-mail months before. Somehow using electronics to visit an event that had its roots in the Shrove Tuesday celebration of the republic’s 1162 victory over the patriarch of Aquileia seemed anachronistic. The older Lang got, the more that word came up.
The shopkeeper, himself in Carnevale costume, examined the set of hangers Gurt handed him, his eyes going to a ragged tear in the bodice of the copy of the seventeenth-century costume. He tsk-tsked when he noted Lang’s hat was missing. The nose Lang had had to purchase, it being not reusable “for sanitary reasons,” the first time he recalled ever hearing that phrase used in connection with anything Venetian.
Reluctantly, Lang agreed to the deduction of a hundred and fifty euros from his deposit.
“Rip-off!” Lang growled as they left. “The damn hat couldn’t have cost more than fifteen, twenty bucks and it will take less than that to sew up the tear in your costume.”
The store’s door had hardly closed behind them when the merchant began punching numbers into his cell phone as he read them from a slip of paper. “The clown costume you wanted to rent?” he asked in English. “It has been returned. Yes, just this moment . . .”
