The Pigeon Project

by Irving Wallace

  “No,” she begged. “You must save my mother first. You owe this to me. We’ve been together, Tim, close together for a long time. I have done things for you. Now you must do this one thing for me. I’ve never asked anything of you. Now I ask this. Please, Tim!”

  Momentarily unnerved, he held fast. “Impossible, Marisa. I wish I could, but—”

  “You won’t do it?” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  “All right,” she said. She walked quickly to the antique table, yanked open a drawer. “All right,” she repeated, and she turned around facing them, “then I’ll make you do it.”

  In her right hand she was clasping that ugly Italian revolver, a Beretta. She pointed it at Jordan.

  “You are not leaving here,” she said hoarsely.

  “Marisa, don’t be foolish…”

  He started slowly toward her.

  The gun wavered in her hand.

  Gently, he reached out, removed the revolver from her grasp, and pocketed it.

  She broke down, bursting into tears, sobbing.

  He stared at her a moment, with wrenching sorrow, then leaned forward to kiss her. She tore away, still sobbing.

  “We must go, Marisa,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  He beckoned to MacDonald and they started for the door.

  He heard her voice.

  “I’m sorry too,” she called after him.

  There was a special quality in her voice. Only later did he realize it was that of love turned to hate.

  * * *

  It was five minutes after eleven in the morning, and the three of them—Alison, MacDonald, Jordan—were securely aboard Rocco’s large, powerful walnut-colored motorboat, a sea rocket, and on their way.

  Sitting back, as the waters of the lagoon churned around them, Jordan thought it was a miracle to be here at all, to have got this far without detection. The walk from Marisa’s apartment to the lagoon pier near the Hotel Danieli had been a heart-stopping experience. The two men had gone swiftly but warily, as if terror lurked at every corner. At least five times, they had passed posters—to the mind’s eye they loomed as gigantic—showing their faces, offering the rewards on their heads. Every minute had been terrifying until they had reached Alison, suitcase in hand, on a constant lookout for them.

  Yards away, a burly stranger, one foot on the side of his motorboat, was beckoning to them. At first, Jordan had not recognized him, and then he had remembered that Rocco would be disguised. Jordan realized that the stranger must be Rocco. He was wearing dark sunglasses, an elongated hooked nose probably made of putty, a fake flaring moustache, and an enormous bush of black beard.

  “There he is,” Jordan had said to MacDonald and Alison.

  They had hurried toward him. He had helped them down into the craft, settled MacDonald and Alison in the rear and Jordan right behind him.

  “It’s really you, Rocco?” Jordan had asked.

  Steering the motorboat backward, away from the pier, swinging it gradually around, he had chuckled. “For this kind of money, it’s Rocco, you bet.”

  And now they were on their way, all chips in the pot.

  Rocco’s craft slithered along the water, close to the shoreline of Venice, going past the empty berth where The Delphic Oracle had stood little more than an hour ago, skimming past the public park Jordan had visited yesterday, then rounding the tip of Venice. For a short time, they rode in a northerly direction toward Murano. Then Rocco gradually began to bend his craft away from the open lagoon, heading southeast, bearing down on the waterway between a small cluster of islands and a larger island.

  They had been traveling for twenty minutes without any of them speaking a word.

  Now, above the hum of the engine, Rocco pointed ahead, announcing, “There’s the entrance to the Porto di Lido.”

  Jordan could feel the tension growing, behind him and in his own chest.

  Noticing a leather case on the floor beside the pilot, Jordan asked, “Are those binoculars?”

  “Yes,” Rocco answered.

  Jordan bent forward for the case, removed the black binoculars, pressed them to his eyes, and began to adjust the focus. What he saw directly in front of him, brought right to him by magnification, was the narrow Lido channel leading into the Adriatic Sea. On the edge of the shore to the left were the pilings that held steel cables attached to the inflatable dam below the water. To the right was the short pier that ran into steps leading up to the electronic pump station.

  The binoculars still at his eyes, Jordan squinted straight into the Adriatic. Then he saw it, the funnels, the steam from the funnels, the white sliver of the Greek cruise ship moving slowly on the horizon line.

  Suddenly, from either side of the binoculars, two other boats intruded. They were white-and-blue patrol boats with the word polizia plainly painted on their bows. Each carried four armed guards of the local questura.

  Jordan lowered his glasses just as the motorboat beneath him slowed down.

  Rocco said loudly, “The police boats are coming toward us to see our permit or turn us away from the channel. I am lowering my speed. The minute they are upon me, in shouting distance, I’ll gun the boat and leap between them, straight ahead. The second I do that, all of you hold tight and duck far down. In case they shoot at us. I don’t think they’ll have time, but protect yourself. We go straight through the channel full speed and burst out into the open sea and make for the liner. They’ll never be able to keep up with us. We’ll be free.”

  Up front, on either side of them, Jordan could see the patrol boats bearing down, and Rocco’s craft seemed to be floating ever so slowly toward them.

  A uniformed guard at the bow of the patrol boat to their left had raised an arm, palm outward, gesturing to them to come to a halt.

  Rocco spoke quickly over his shoulder. “Get ready.”

  He was idling his craft at a crawl into the hole between the patrol boats.

  “Alto W” a guard yelled. “Halt! The Porto di Lido is blocked! No one allowed—unless you have a mayor’s permit!”

  Rocco nodded, nodded again, then hunched over his wheel, accelerated his motorboat in a roar, and plunged between the rocking patrol boats. His streamlined bow lifted high out of the water, his engine screamed, and his craft catapulted ahead into the mouth of the channel.

  Dropping to a knee, as he knew MacDonald and Alison had done behind him, Jordan looked over his shoulder as the gap grew between Rocco’s speeding craft and the patrol boats caught surprised and flat-footed behind them.

  The distance was opening further and further, while the patrol boats tried to maneuver and give futile chase.

  Jordan could see land on either side of them as they zoomed into the channel. Grabbing up the binoculars, bracing himself in the shaking boat, he brought the glasses to his eyes and aimed them at the patrol boats. The guards aboard came into focus, and they seemed to be shouting at one another in utter confusion.

  The expanse of lagoon was widening between Rocco’s craft and their receding pursuers. Freedom was minutes away. Exalted, Jordan was about to lower the binoculars when unexpectedly some kind of streak, something in motion, caught the corner of his field of vision. Jordan moved his head and the glued binoculars sideways for a better view. Puzzled, he began to focus on this distant movement.

  Gradually, the thing grew and enlarged.

  It was a huge mahogany motor launch with a small cannon protruding in front. It was kicking up water, slicing through the lagoon, coming toward them at a dazzling speed.

  “Rocco!” Jordan shouted. “There’s another boat, a big one, coming after us!”

  He thrust the binoculars at Rocco, who gripped them with his free hand, keeping one hand on the wheel. Rocco turned his head, lifted the binoculars to his eyes. Then he almost threw the glasses at Jordan as he cursed in Italian.

  “It’s the Squadra Mobile launch, the big police one I warned you about!” Rocco cried out. “It is the fastest vessel in Italy!”
<
br />   “Can’t you outrun it?”

  “No chance,” Rocco snapped. “Twice as fast as mine. It’ll overtake us before we’re much into the Adriatic. We haven’t got a chance. I warned you, the police must not know. But somebody told them.”

  Somebody told them.

  Jordan’s trembling hands had the binoculars up to his eyes again. He tried to focus on the distant onrushing vessel, bring it into sharper view. It expanded in his glasses, and he clearly saw the faces of four men at the prow. Two were police officers unknown to him. One, grim-faced, was Colonel Cutrone, head of the carabinieri. And the other—the other—no mistake about it—was Bruno—Bruno Girardi.

  Jordan lowered the binoculars, shattered.

  Somebody had told them, Rocco had said. Somebody indeed. I’m sorry, Jordan had said on leaving Marisa. I’m sorry too, Marisa had replied. Now he understood. She was sorry for him, for them, for having to turn them over to the police. No question. After he and MacDonald had left her, she had gone to Bruno, and he had gone to the police—to reveal that MacDonald was in a motorboat heading for the Greek cruise ship—telling this in return for the promise that MacDonald would be forced to treat Mrs. Girardi for cancer before he was shipped to the Soviet Union.

  Jordan dropped the binoculars to the bouncing motorboat floor. With his own eyes he could see the Squadra Mobile launch pointing toward them like an avenging devil, eating up the water that separated them, closing in for the kill.

  Numbed though he was by Marisa’s betrayal, Jordan had no time to dwell on that.

  Above him, Rocco was cursing to himself again and saying bitterly, “It’s no use, no use, they’ve got us all. They’ll have us in ten minutes.”

  Rocco’s craft was half out of the water, coughing spray on either side as it drove through the Lido channel. They were approaching the width of the channel where the inflatable dam lay resting on the seabed. To his right, Jordan could see the electronic pump station that had been installed but had not once been used.

  Some survival impulse, something long buried deep in a corner of his head, flashed on and told him what to do.

  He leaped to his feet, almost fell, held on to the shuddering windshield. “Rocco!” he bellowed. “Turn to your right! Pull up at the pump station! Let me off and wait! I know how to work it. I don’t know if it’ll work—but it’s our only chance!”

  Rocco asked no questions. Instinctively, he understood. He slowed his craft, jerked the wheel around, and started his boat toward the pump station.

  Reaching the small Pirelli pier, Rocco slid alongside it, bumping it, bringing his boat to a halt.

  “Stand by!” shouted Jordan, jumping from the boat to the pier.

  “What’s happening?” MacDonald cried out.

  “Rocco will tell you!” Jordan yelled over his shoulder. He bounded up the pier, turned to the steps of the cement blockhouse that was all windows on top, ran up the steps to the station. Fumbling, he found his key ring, sorted out the red key, stuck it into the door, and opened it.

  The electronic equipment, the panel of levers and buttons inside, held no mysteries for him. He had seen it all duplicated on the Voltabarozzo model. He had brought dozens of visiting journalists to this very room.

  Jordan glanced toward the Venice lagoon behind the channel. The Squadra Mobile launch was flying past the hapless diminutive patrol boats, zooming nearer and nearer to the channel.

  Galvanized, Jordan’s fingers darted over the panel, punching keys, buttons, moving levers.

  In seconds it was done. The pump had been activated. If it was working, then at the bottom of the channel, only twelve meters beneath the surface, the long, flat inflatable dam was speedily filling with water, filling up, beginning to balloon out, to reach gradually toward the top of the water.

  Perspiring, Jordan counted the seconds, the brief minutes, waiting in agonizing suspense.

  The mahagony launch with its menacing cannon had reached the mouth of the channel, was screaming into it, swerving toward the pump station and Rocco’s motorboat.

  Five minutes had passed since Jordan had activated the inflatable dam. Nothing, so far as he could see, was happening. The Squadra Mobile launch, foaming at the prow, was driving toward the stretch of water under which the rubberized dam lay.

  It won’t work, it won’t work, Jordan moaned to himself, temples throbbing. They’ve got us, they’ve got MacDonald.

  That instant, before his widening eyes, the giant rubber tubing, inflated with water, burst into view across the channel. Like an unbelievable surfacing whale, it rose and expanded, like a solid rock wall, a barrier covering the width of the channel, blocking the channel from the Adriatic.

  Seconds later, the Squadra Mobile launch was upon it full speed, trying to swing away, trying to avoid it, trying to avert hitting the giant barrier that blocked it from Rocco’s boat.

  The police launch smashed into the barrier at full speed before Jordan’s eyes, lifted high in the air, breaking in two, splintering, spitting out its occupants, flinging them into the air and into the channel.

  Anchored to where he stood, Jordan watched the incredible sight. There was a singing in his head. He had won. They had won.

  He wheeled around, ran out of the pump station, scrambled down the stairs, and continued to run toward the pier.

  As he reached the boat, MacDonald was on his feet, coming forward to help Jordan into the escape craft.

  “Fantastic!” Rocco roared with joy.

  Starting to step down, Jordan looked off at the savior water dam.

  Then he heard Alison scream, and he saw what she had seen. One member of the smashed police launch had been thrown atop the inflated barrier, was slipping and slithering, trying to maintain his balance. He had steadied himself, this battered man in uniform, and was planting himself on one knee, his gun whipped out of his holster.

  It was Colonel Cutrone, and he was pointing his gun toward them.

  As MacDonald continued to stand, groping for Jordan’s arm to help him into the boat, Jordan yelled at the scientist, “Get down, goddammit, get down!”

  There was a series of loud reports as Cutrone’s gun fired once, twice, three times.

  With the first shot, Jordan dived into the boat, falling against MacDonald. The old man staggered, went backward, collapsing to the floor, with Jordan spread-eagled over him.

  Cutrone was firing again as Rocco, crouched low, swung his craft away from the pier and opened up the throttle at full speed.

  They were leaving the Lido channel and the beaten police and the quarantined city of Venice behind them—soon very far behind them.

  As Jordan pushed himself off MacDonald, he could see Venice growing smaller and the Greek liner on the horizon growing larger, and he felt ecstatic.

  They had escaped. They were free.

  “Tim!” Alison cried out to him, and he saw that she was pointing at his chest. He looked down at his shirt It was stained with blood.

  Bewildered, Jordan peered at the prone professor, started to lift him, and then he saw the bullet wound in the professor’s chest, an ugly wound retching a slow ooze of blood.

  He took hold of MacDonald and tried to hold him up. He was limp, immobile, unconscious.

  Jordan sat dazed in the reverberating motorboat.

  Had they won or lost?

  * * *

  Two hours later, Jordan and Alison stood in a corridor of the main deck of The Delphic Oracle as the ship continued sailing south through the Adriatic toward Piraeus, the Greek port for Athens.

  Jordan paced, and Alison leaned against the wall, in the corridor outside the ship’s sick bay.

  For three-quarters of an hour, the ship’s physician, Dr. Canellos, and a nurse had been inside with MacDonald, and Jordan and Alison had waited apprehensively outside, with no word from the physician.

  Jordan and Alison did not speak. They had been standing by in silence and dread.

  The door of the sick bay opened and the nurse emerged, not mee
ting their anxious eyes, hurrying up the corridor, and now Dr. Canellos, a dour, wrinkled Greek, appeared and started toward them, and they came to meet him.

  Dr. Canellos looked from one to the other, and then he shook his head sadly. “Dr. Edwards, Mr. Jordan, I must tell you, there is no hope. The wound is a fatal one.”

  Jordan gripped the physician’s arm. “I don’t believe you. It can’t be. Something must be done. Can’t you radio Athens, have them fly the best surgeon in the country out to us by seaplane? Surely the military can—”

  “Mr. Jordan,” interrupted the physician, “he is dying. I have done what I can, but it is no use. It is only a matter of minutes. Believe me, I feel for you.”

  Alison broke down and began to weep. Gently, Jordan put an arm around her and drew her close.

  Dr. Canellos addressed Jordan once more. “The professor is semiconscious. I was trying to make out what he was saying. He spoke a few words, and I caught a name. Your name is Tim, isn’t it? I think he wants to see you. It may be too late, but go inside if you wish. I’ll take care of your young lady.”

  Jordan released Alison, went past the doctor into the ship’s sick bay. He went straight through the reception room and then through an open doorway. Professor MacDonald, in a pale green hospital gown, receiving blood intravenously from a bottle hanging above him, lay stretched out on a high hospital bed. His skin was the color of parchment, his features sunken, and his glazed eyes stared up at the ceiling.

  There was a chair beside the bed, with MacDonald’s jacket thrown over the back of it.

  Jordan tiptoed toward the chair, took it, and brought his head close to MacDonald’s.

  “Professor, can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  “This Tim Jordan…”

  The professor’s head moved, the motion barely perceptible, on the pillow. His eyelids fluttered. He tried to say something. No sound came. His dry lips worked again.

  Jordan rose, stood over him, head bent low to catch whatever he might say.

  He struggled to articulate something. There was a gurgling, then speech. “Tim—the formula…” A lengthy pause, and then, “… in my—my coat.”