Transient Desires

by Donna Leon

  Ten minutes passed and then another ten, and then the motors slowed. In the silence, Brunetti heard footsteps coming down the steps and got to his feet. Alaimo pushed open the doors. ‘It was the one with the Maltese flag,’ he said. ‘Borgato’s boat stopped alongside it about fifteen minutes ago, but now it’s cleared away and heading west, towards the coast.’ He pulled out his phone and tapped in a message, quite a long one.

  When he was finished, Alaimo said, ‘I’ve told my squad that they’re heading towards Cortellazzo. It’s the best place for them to unload cargo.’ Brunetti noted that he did not name that cargo.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Brunetti asked.

  Alaimo surprised him by laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘We’re sure, believe me,’ Alaimo said, unable to suppress a smile. ‘Last weekend, a colleague of mine and I took our sons and four of their friends, all of them dressed in their Boy Scout uniforms, and we went to where the river empties into the sea. We sailed up the river a bit, stopping at different spots and explaining to the kids the tidal patterns and the differences between the fish that swim in sweet water and salt.’

  Seeing Brunetti’s reaction, Alaimo went on. ‘It was the only way I could think of for us to take a look at the possible landing places without calling attention to ourselves.’ He smiled and shrugged, looking embarrassed, ‘Just in case Borgato has friends who fish or live along there and might tell him about anyone showing interest in that patch of river.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Cold. But the kids loved it and keep nagging me about when we can do it again.’

  ‘Kids,’ Brunetti said the word the same way parents sometimes spoke it: a combination of dismissal and adoration.

  There was a sudden vibration as a message slid into Alaimo’s phone. He bent over it and then looked up and said, ‘The crew is there. They have to hide the cars and the van and then get to the place where we think they’ll land.’

  ‘Won’t there be . . . ?’ Brunetti started to ask.

  ‘People to meet them?’ Alaimo asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s why they’ll leave the vehicles. They’ll go downriver on foot.’

  Only then did Brunetti think to ask, ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Commandos, from the Navy Special Forces. They’ve scouted the place, too. They’re used to high risk night-time operations.’

  Brunetti considered these words while thinking about what they were all going to be doing. They sounded bad when the person who said them had some experience of their reality. ‘Risk for whom?’ He asked.

  It took Alaimo a while to find an answer, but even that couldn’t take the menace out of it. ‘Everyone.’

  28

  Brunetti leaned against the padded back of the seat and pulled the jacket closer around him, still not zipping it up. He found the pulsing of the engine, both the sound of it and the easy bobbing of the boat, comforting. His thoughts turned to the dinner he had left and the woman he had left at the boat stop. Although he had not thought the call would come that evening, he had still drunk only two glasses of wine and had turned down the offer of grappa. He wished now that he had had a coffee, even two, before getting on this boat, only to be comforted and rocked by . . .

  ‘Guido, Guido,’ he heard someone call him, and he was immediately awake. And it was then that he remembered his gun. Safe in the metal box in their wardrobe, where he always kept it when it was in the house, the key equally safe on the key ring in his pocket. He looked to the right. The two sailors were still asleep, and the third was still engrossed in whatever he saw on his phone.

  He looked at Alaimo, who was standing in the doorway. ‘There’s no question about it: they’re heading for Cortellazzo.’

  ‘How far are we from them?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘About two kilometres,’ Alaimo said in a normal voice.

  Brunetti had no trouble hearing him. There was no hum, although the boat seemed still to be nodding its way through the waves. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, nervous at the lack of noise.

  ‘It’s the electric motor,’ Alaimo said.

  ‘Oddio, what a difference.’

  ‘Borgato’s little more than a kilometre from the estuary.’

  ‘Do we follow him?’

  ‘We can. It depends on the squad.’ Alaimo held up his phone as though he wanted it to speak to Brunetti. ‘They’ve been in touch. They’ve found two empty vans parked close to the access road, and they can hear voices ahead of them.’

  ‘How big is your squad?’

  ‘Four, plus Claudia and Captain Nieddu.’

  Immediately concerned by the mention of their names, Brunetti asked, ‘These Navy guys are good?’

  ‘These guys are good,’ Alaimo confirmed and disappeared up the stairs.

  Brunetti ran his hands across his face and scratched at his head, then got up and left the cabin. A cold wind hit him in the face and made his eyes water. He moved to the side of the boat and looked behind them: the black was absolute, punctuated only by tiny specks of light so small it was impossible to calculate their distance. The light from the control panel was so dim that it cast only the faintest glow of the bodies of the two men standing in front of it, Alaimo and the pilot.

  Brunetti moved over to put himself between but slightly back from them. On the right side of the panel in front of the other men, equally spaced white rings radiated out from the centre. A bar of light swept round from sharp north to declining west, passing over and flicking at the same white blip of light.

  Alaimo leaned down and pointed to the white dot. ‘That’s Borgato’s boat,’ he said softly.

  In the same barely audible voice, Alaimo asked the pilot, ‘What do you think, Crema?’

  ‘I’d say about ten minutes until he enters the river, sir, then another ten or so to get up to where he’s going.’

  Alaimo nodded and pulled out his phone. He tapped in a message and kept his eyes on the screen until an answer slipped in. However soft the vibration, Brunetti still heard it, marvelling at the lack of any competing sound. Alaimo spent a moment pushing keys on his phone until he seemed satisfied. ‘Turn off the sound on your phone,’ he said, as though Brunetti were an enlisted man. Brunetti obeyed.

  ‘You too, Crema,’ Alaimo added.

  ‘It’s already off, sir,’ the pilot said softly.

  ‘I don’t want even the sound of a message coming in,’ Alaimo said. He put the phone in his pocket and asked the pilot, ‘You think you can follow them?’

  ‘If they’re going to offload at the place you showed me on the map, sir, I can. But if he goes any farther, one of the sailors will have to lie on the front and keep testing the depth with an oar.’

  That was in some movie, Brunetti thought but kept it to himself. He moved a bit to the side and leaned forward to look across the prow of the boat. He thought about himself lying there, perhaps anchoring himself to some bit of protruding metal, testing the depth of the water, as he had done as a young boy, out in the laguna.

  The door behind them opened, and the sailor who had been playing with his iPhone came out to stand with them. ‘We almost there, sir?’ he whispered to Alaimo.

  ‘Yes.’

  The young man nodded and looked at the instrument panel. Turning away, he said, ‘I’ll wake the others up.’

  ‘Good. Tell them we’re getting very close to the landing place.’

  ‘I’m going to switch on the night vision, sir,’ the pilot said and flipped a switch on the panel. Brunetti raised his eyes to look ahead, but there was only darkness visible.

  Alaimo tapped him on the arm and pointed to another instrument to the left of the radar. The screen showed the same approaching coast, the scene entirely composed of various shades of green on a black base. Brunetti made out trees on the right and left, even thin vines hangin
g from them. The centre was a dark path leading into farther darkness.

  ‘Is that the river?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Alaimo all but whispered.

  ‘Do I follow them, sir?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘Wait,’ Alaimo answered, and the boat slowed to a stop. He pulled out his phone. Careful to use the tips of his fingers, Alaimo pushed in the letters of a message and sent it off. Less than a minute passed before he felt the arrival of an answer.

  ‘They’ve got men along the river. He’s almost there.’

  The pilot said nothing but shifted from foot to foot to demonstrate his impatience.

  ‘Let’s go, Crema,’ Alaimo said, and an instant later the boat began to move forward.

  Because he could see only darkness ahead, Brunetti kept his eyes on the screen, marvelling as their boat moved unerringly in the centre of the river. The water was dead still: the other boat had passed through long enough ago for the water to forget its passage.

  Alaimo reached for his phone again. He sent a message, turned to Brunetti, and whispered, ‘My men are in the trees behind the landing. Three men have come out onto the dock.’ Then, after a moment’s pause, he added, ‘Two of them have rifles.’

  Brunetti nodded. The boat continued, with serpentine silence, to make its slow way through the dark water.

  Again, Alaimo glanced at his phone, then held it to show Brunetti, who read the message: ‘Where are you?’

  The Carabiniere pulled back his phone and answered. He leaned close to Crema and said, ‘Speed up now if you can. I’d like to get there while they’re still moored to the dock.’

  Again, Brunetti felt but did not hear the increase of energy that quickened the speed of the boat. He kept his eyes on the green panel: looking ahead was no help. He had lost all sense of distance: how far were they from the green shapes in front of them? How close were they to the invisible banks of the river? And if this was a tidal river, how high were the embankments to left and right, and how easily could they get out of the water if they had to swim from the boat?

  There was, he noticed now, the sound of nature; creatures rustled in the trees, birds made noises, other animals rustled on the ground. How mysterious and frightening nature was, so uninterested in what we did or what we were.

  He and Alaimo heard the voice in the same instant: male, angry, authoritarian. ‘No, over here.’ There followed a shushing noise, then another one, and then silence. How far ahead was the speaker? There was still no sign on the screen.

  And then there was. At first Brunetti thought it was ghosts, so pale, so ethereal did the figures seem. Some heads were wrapped in what could be burial dressings, their bodies draped to the ground; others had visible legs and arms; they gasped and groaned quietly and made spectral noises. Alaimo grabbed the pilot by the shoulder, and the boat slowed, then stopped without making a sound.

  There was a heavy, thick noise, a flash of motion, and something large fell into the water. The man’s voice said, ‘Cazzo.’

  Another voice said, ‘Pull them out, for God’s sake. We have to deliver them alive.’ Brunetti saw motion on what appeared to be a platform above the water; there was the sound of splashing and muffled screams. What could have been two green men lay on the dock and reached down to the water. Slowly, they pulled up a writhing creature with two heads and let it fall beside them. The screaming stopped.

  Alaimo took a bullhorn from beside the steering wheel and switched it on. He tapped the pilot on his shoulder, and three searchlights on the prow of their boat flashed across the scene, illuminating the dock and the people on it, the boat moored to it, and the shore behind it. Everyone in the light froze: the two men with rifles, the third kneeling next to what looked like a pile of moving rags, and a large, tight circle of women, everyone shocked to paralyzed silence.

  ‘Drop the rifles,’ Alaimo’s amplified voice commanded. The two men made no attempt to do so; one of them turned his body so that the rifle was pointing in the direction of the blinding lights.

  From the tree-scattered land behind the dock, a man’s voice barked, ‘He told you to drop the rifles.’ The one who had not moved bent down very slowly and placed his rifle on the ground near his feet. ‘Now kick it away,’ the voice from the land said, and the man obeyed. ‘Arms over your head,’ the voice added, and the man did that, as well. The two unarmed men raised their hands above their heads and stood motionless.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ the voice said, and the other man tossed his rifle onto the ground as though he were suddenly tired of holding it. ‘Arms,’ the voice shouted, and they went up in the air.

  Alaimo called out, in English, ‘Does one of you ladies speak English?’ As though his voice had freed them from a spell, the women began to talk among themselves, to put their arms around one another. Some broke into sobs. Finally, from the ­centre of the group, a woman’s voice said, ‘I do, sir.’

  Alaimo continued, speaking slowly. ‘Tell your friends to move away from those men and go over onto the land behind you.’ The same woman’s voice spoke for a moment in some other language, and then a woman in a long flowered skirt, pulling with her the woman to whom she was handcuffed, moved to the edge of the group, took the arm of another, and led them towards the promised land at the end of the dock.

  The others followed slowly, bumping into one another in their eagerness to get away from the men.

  Alaimo spoke into the bullhorn in a normal tone and said, ‘Good, good, now walk towards the woods. There are people there who will help you.’

  It was at this point that Nieddu, quickly followed by Griffoni, emerged from the trees and waved the women towards them. The women were apparently still too shocked to react quickly, but the group, their sobs audible to Brunetti, began to walk towards the two women, beacons of safety, especially Nieddu, in uniform, her service pistol in her hand, aimed at the two men on the dock.

  Three men in military fatigues, carrying rifles, emerged from the trees and walked onto the dock. A fourth, weaponless, walked behind the two men standing with their arms in the air, lowered them, handcuffed their hands behind them, picked up their rifles, and led them from the dock.

  That left the boat. It bobbled quietly beside the dock, moored, knots neatly tied. It looked, however, more like a giant Toblerone than a boat. From the side, Brunetti saw a row of copper panels that appeared to have been screwed into place, tilted up to meet another row tilting in from the other side. Just as Alaimo had explained to him, radar waves would slide up and over them, leaving the boat invisible. In this case, the panels also left invisible anyone who might be on board.

  Alaimo called out, ‘Anyone on the boat: come out, hands above your heads. It’s over.’

  Nothing. Time passed. ‘You on the boat. Come out with your hands above your heads. It’s over.’

  After more waiting, Brunetti saw Alaimo raise the bullhorn again: apparently the man was patient enough to repeat the same message until the men on the boat grew tired of it and came out with their hands over their heads. But before Alaimo could give his orders again, the sounds of shouting came across the water.

  They heard two voices, both male, then they heard crashing noises. Suddenly something banged against one of the panels; it broke loose at the top and fell backwards, dangling into the water.

  Alaimo and Brunetti scrambled onto the dock. As he approached Borgato’s boat, Brunetti thought for an instant that it was made of gold, like the boats painted in Egyptian tombs. There was more shouting, and then Marcello Vio appeared at the opening left by the fallen panel and put one leg over the gunwale, then stepped onto the dock. An animal noise erupted from behind him, and a hand grabbed at his shoulder. But Vio took the hand with both of his and thrust it away from him. There was a crash from the boat and then a roar; Vio stopped and turned back towards the noise but then suddenly screamed in pain and fell forward onto his knees, arms wrapped around h
is broken ribs.

  From somewhere, from nowhere, a form flashed from between the trees and towards the dock. Duso. Brunetti had forgotten about Duso. He held up his hands and turned to shout at the armed men, ‘Leave him alone. He’s with us.’

  Duso fell to his knees beside Marcello. He wrapped one arm around him and said, ‘Come on, Marcello. You can’t stay here.’

  Everyone’s attention was on the two young men, kneeling face to face. ‘Berto,’ Vio said. ‘Berto, you’re here.’ He smiled and raised a hand to touch Duso’s face.

  So filled with emotion was the scene that everyone watched the two men. Except Griffoni, who had arrived at the edge of the dock and then stepped onto it, walking so calmly as to be invisible, her eyes not on the men but on the boat.

  She was the first to see Pietro Borgato appear in the gap between the panels and the first to see the boathook in his hands. ‘Watch out,’ she shouted, and both kneeling men turned to look at her.

  Borgato leaped from the boat onto the dock and walked quickly towards his nephew. Brunetti shouted, ‘Borgato,’ to distract him and started to run in his direction.

  Before Brunetti could reach him, the man had reached the two figures kneeling between him and the rifle-carrying Carabinieri. He pulled back the boathook, raised his right foot and kicked his nephew out of the way. He stood in front of Duso and pulled the horizontal boathook to the right. ‘You want to fuck my nephew, do you?’ he shouted at the kneeling Duso, who was stiff with shock. ‘Well, you get this, instead.’ With no hesitation, he spread his feet and swung the wicked point and hook towards Duso’s chest. Duso’s shriek did nothing to stop Borgato from swinging full cycle until the hook caught on something, a bone, perhaps, and he was forced to pull it free.

  Brunetti had reached him by then. Borgato turned and swung at him, but Brunetti was standing and was able to avoid the curve of the weapon’s point. Borgato pulled it back and swung again, and this time it caught in the green cashmere scarf and remained entrapped in the cloth.