The Parsifal Mosaic Page 9

  A hundred and forty-odd feet, then, was the span she had to cross in order to disappear. Again. Not in death, but in an enigma.

  Michael looked at his watch; it was four-fifty-two, the second hand approaching the minute mark—seven minutes before the Ctistóvão was scheduled to blare its bass-toned departure signal, followed by sharper, higher sounds that warned all vessels of its imminent thrust out of its secure haven, the rules of the sea instantly in force. High up on the deck, fore and midships, a few men wandered aimlessly, pinpointed by the erratic glow of their cigarettes. Except for those on the rope winches and the gangplank detail, there was nothing for them to do but smoke and drink coffee and hope their heads would clear without excessive pain. From inside the massive black hull, the muffled roar of the turbines was heard; behind the fires the coarse, muted meshing of giant gear wheels signified the approaching command to engage the mammoth screws in third-torque speed. Oily, dark waters churned around the curve of the Cristóvão’s stern.

  The warehouse door opened, and Havelock felt a massive jolt in his chest as the blond woman stepped out of the darkness into the lesser darkness of the swirling mists and shadows. The living corpse from the Costa Brava entered the wall-less tunnel that would take her aboard the Cristóvão, lead her to an unknown coastline in an unknown country, and escape. From him. Why?

  The hammering in his chest was intolerable, the pain in his eyes excruciating; he had to endure both for seconds longer. Once Jenna reached the midpoint of the pier, in sight of the gate, and the guard and the alarms he could raise, Michael would intercept her. Not an instant sooner.

  She was there! Now.

  He lunged from behind the crane and raced forward, not caring about the sound of his footsteps, intent only on reaching her.

  “Jenna! For God’s sake, Jenna!”

  He grabbed her shoulders; the woman spun around in terror.

  His breath exploded from his throat. The face that was turned up to him was an old face, an ugly face, the pockmarked face of a waterfront whore. The eyes that stared at him were the wide, dark eyes of a rodent, outlined with thick, running borders of cheap mascara; the lips were blood-red and cracked, the teeth stained and chipped.

  “Who are you?” His scream was the scream of a madman. “Liar! Liar! Why are you lying! Why are you here! Why aren’t you here! Liar!”

  Mists not of the sea blurred his mind, crosscurrents of insanity. He was beyond reason, knowing only that his hands had become claws, then fists—scraping, hammering—kill the rodent, kill the impostor! Kill, kill!

  Other screams, other shouts, commands and countercommands filled the roaring caverns of his consciousness. There was no beginning, no end, only a furious core of frenzy.

  Then he felt blows, but did not feel pain. Men were all around him, then above him; fists and heavy boots struck him. Repeatedly. Everywhere.

  And then the darkness came. And silence.

  Above the pier, on the second floor of the warehouse office, a figure stood at the window looking down at the scene of violence below. She breathed deeply, her fingers stretched across her lips, tears welling in her clear brown eyes. Absently Jenna Karas pulled her hand away from her face and pressed it against the side of her head, against the long blond hair that fell beneath the wide-brimmed hat.

  “Why did you do it, Mikhail?” she whispered softly to herself. “Why do you want to kill me?”

  6

  He opened his eyes, aware of the sickening stench of cheap whisky, feeling the dampness about his chest and throat—his shirt, jacket and trousers had been drenched. In front of him were gradations of darkness, shadows of gray and black interrupted by tiny, dancing specks of light that bobbed and weaved in the farthest darkness. There was dull pain everywhere, centered in his stomach, rising through his neck to his head, which felt swollen and numb. He had been beaten severely and dragged to the end of the pier—the far right end, beyond the warehouse, if his blurred orientation was anywhere near accurate—and left to regain consciousness, or, conceivably, to roll over the edge to a watery death.

  But he had not been killed; that told him something. Slowly he moved his right hand to his left wrist; his watch was there. He stretched his legs and reached into his pocket; his money, too, was intact. He had not been robbed; that told him something else.

  He had spoken with too many men, and too many others had seen him in those strange conversations. They had been his protection. Murder was murder, and regardless of what Il Tritone’s owner had said, a “quiet knife” on the waterfront was a subject for investigation, as was assault and robbery when the victim was a wealthy foreigner. No one wanted too many questions asked on the piers; cool heads had ordered him left as he was, which meant they had been paid to implement other orders, higher orders. Otherwise something would have been stolen—a watch, a few thousand lire; this was the waterfront.

  Nothing. An inquisitive, wealthy foreigner had gone berserk, attacking a blond whore on the pier, and men had protected her. No investigation was called for, as long as the ricco americano maledetto had his property intact, if not his senses.

  A setup. A professionally executed snare, the trappers exonerated once the trap had sprung shut. The whole night, the morning, had been a setup! He rolled over to his left; the southeast ocean was a line of fire beyond the horizon. Dawn had come, and the Cristóvão was one of a dozen small silhouettes on the water, obscure shapes diffusedly defined by the blinking lights, signals to other silhouettes.

  Slowly Havelock got to his knees, pressing them against the wet planks beneath him, pushing himself up painfully with his hands. Once on his feet he turned around, again slowly, testing his legs and ankles, moving his shoulders, arching his neck, then his back. There was nothing broken, but the machine was badly bruised; it would not respond to quick commands, and he hoped he would not have to issue any.

  The guard. Had the ego-stroked civil servant been part of the act? Had he been told to confront the foreigner with hostility at first, then turn to obsequiousness, thus pulling the mark in for the trap? It was effective strategy; he should have seen through it. Neither of the other two guards had been difficult, each perfectly willing to tell him whatever he wanted to know, the man at the gate of the Teresa’s pier even going so far as to inform him of the freighter’s delayed schedule.

  The owner of Il Tritone? The sailor from the Cristóvão in a narrow, dark alley? Were they, too, part of it? Had the coincidence of logical progression led him to those men on the waterfront who had been waiting for him? Yet, how could they have been waiting? Four hours ago Civitavecchia was a vaguely remembered name on a map; it had held no meaning for him. There had been no reason for him to come to Civitavecchia, no way for an unknown message to be telegraphed. Yet it had been; he had to accept that without knowing how or why. There was so much beyond his understanding, a maddening mosaic with too many pieces missing.

  Anything you can’t understand in this business is a risk, but I don’t have to tell you that. Rostov. Athens.

  A decoy—a blond, pockmarked whore—had been paraded through the predawn mist to pull him out and force him to act. But why? What had they expected him to do? He had made it plain what he intended to do. So what was learned, what clarified? What was the point? Was she trying to kill him? Was that what Costa Brava was all about?

  Jenna, why are you doing this? What happened to you? To us?

  He walked unsteadily, stopping to brace his legs as his balance went out of control. Reaching the edge of the warehouse, he propelled himself along the wall past darkened windows and the huge loading doors until he came to the corner of the building. Beyond was the deserted pier, the wash of intersecting floodlights swollen with pockets of rolling fog. He peered around the steel molding, squinting to focus on the glass cubicle that was the guard’s post. As before, the figure inside was barely visible, but he was there; Michael could see the stationary glow of a cigarette in the center of the middle pane.

  The glow moved to the right
; the guard had gotten off his stool and was sliding the door of the booth open. A second figure could be seen walking through the mist from the wide avenue fronting the row of piers. He was a medium-sized man in an overcoat, wearing a hat, the brim angled as a stroller’s might be on the Via Veneto. The clothes were not the clothes of the waterfront; they belonged in the city streets. The man approached the glass booth, stopped by the door, and spoke with the guard. Both then looked toward the end of the pier, at the warehouse; the guard gestured and Michael knew they were talking about him. The man nodded, turned and raised his hand; within seconds his summons was obeyed. Two other men came into view, both large, both wearing clothes more suited to the waterfront than those of the man who commanded them.

  Havelock leaned bis head against the edge of steel, a deep, despairing sense of futility mingling with his pain. Exhaustion overwhelmed him. He was no match for such men; he could barely raise his arms, nor his feet. Since he had no other weapons, it meant he had no weapons at all.

  Where was Jenna? Had she gone aboard the Cristóvão after the decoy had fulfilled its function? It was a logical—No, it wasn’t! The commotion would have centered too much attention on the freighter and would have roused unfriendly or unpaid officials too easily. The ship itself had been a decoy, the blond whore the lure. Jenna was boarding one of the other two!

  Michael turned away bom the wall and hobbled across the wet planks toward the edge of the pier. He wiped his eyes, staring through the heavy mist. Involuntarily he gasped, the pain in his stomach was so acute. The Elba was gone! He had been pulled to the wrong pier, duped into an uncontrollable situation while Jenna went on board the Elba. Was the captain of the Elba, like the skipper of the Cristóvão, a master navigator? Would he—could he—maneuver his awkward ship close enough to an unpatrolled shoreline so that a small boat might ferry his contraband to a beach?

  One man had the answer. A man in an overcoat and an angled hat, clothes worn on the waterfront by someone who did not haul and fork-lift but, instead, bought and sold. That man would know; he had negotiated Jenna’s passage.

  Havelock lurched back to the corner of the warehouse wall. He had to reach that man; he had to get by two others coming for him. If only he had a weapon, any kind of weapon. He looked around in the faintly lessening darkness. Nothing. Not even a loose board or a slat from a broken crate.

  The water. The drop was long, but he could manage it. If he could get to the far end of the pier before he was seen, it would be presumed he had plunged over while unconscious. How many seconds did he have? He inched his face to the edge and peered around the molding into the wash of the floodlights, prepared to push himself away and run.

  He did not run. The two men were no longer walking toward him. They had stopped, both standing motionless inside the fenced gate. Why? Why was he being left where he was without further interference?

  Suddenly, from out of the impenetrable mist several piers away came an ear-shattering screech of a ship’s klaxon. Then another, followed by a prolonged bass chord that vibrated throughout the harbor. It was the Santa Teresa! It was his answer! The two men had been summoned not to punish him further, but to restrict him to the first pier. There was no delayed schedule for the Teresa; that, too, was part of the setup. She was sailing on time, and Jenna was on board. As the ship’s clock ran down, there was only one thing left for the negotiator to do: keep the disabled hunter in place.

  Fiercely he told himself he had to get to that pier, stop her, stop the freighter from casting off, for once the giant lines were slipped off the pilings there was nothing he could do, no way to reach her. She would disappear into one of a dozen countries, a hundred cities—nothing left, not for him, not any longer. Without her he didn’t want to go on!

  He wished he knew what the blaring signals meant, how much time he had. He could only estimate. There had been two blasts from the Cristóvão; moments later the blond decoy had emerged from the shadows of the warehouse door. Seven minutes. Yet there had been no bass chord following the high-pitched whistles. Did its absence signify less time or more? He probed his memory, racing over scores of assignments that had taken him to waterfronts everywhere.

  He remembered; more accurately, he thought he remembered as a blurred recent memory struggled to surface. The high-pitched shrieks were for ships in the distance, the vibrating lower tones for those nearer by—a rule of thumb for the sea, and the docks. And while he was being beaten, the outer vibrations of a low, grinding chord had fused with his own screams of protest and fury. The bass-toned whistle had followed shortly after the shrieks—prelude to imminent departure. Seven minutes—less one, more likely two, perhaps three.

  He had only minutes. Six, five—four, no more than that. The Teresa’s pier was several hundred yards away; in his condition it would take at least two minutes to get there, and that would happen only if he could get past the two jacketed men who had been called to stop him. Four minutes at the outside, two minimum. Jesus! How? He looked around again, trying to control his panic, aware that every second reduced his chances.

  A stocky black object was silhouetted between two pilings ten yards away; he had not noticed it before because it was a stationary part of the dock. He studied it now. It was a barrel, an ordinary barrel, undoubtedly punctured during loading or unloading procedures, and now used as a receptacle for coffee cups, trash, predawn fires; they were on piers everywhere. He ran to it, gripped it, rocked it. It swung free; he lowered it to its side and rolled it back toward the wall. Time elapsed: thirty, perhaps forty seconds. Time remaining: between one and a half and three-plus minutes. The tactic that came into focus was a desperate one, but it was the only one that was possible. He could not get past those men unless they came to him, unless the fog and the translucent, brightening darkness worked for him and against them. There was no time to think about the guard and the man in the overcoat.

  He crouched in the shadows, against the wall, both hands on the sides of the filthy barrel. He took a deep breath and screamed as loud as he could, knowing the scream would echo throughout the deserted pier.

  “Aiuto! Presto! Sanguino! Muoio!”

  He stopped, listening. In the distance he heard the shouts; they were questions, then commands. He screamed again: “Aiuto!”

  Silence.

  Then racing footsteps. Nearer … drawing nearer.

  Now! He shoved the barrel with all the strength he could muster. It clanked as it rolled laterally over the planks, through the fog, toward the edge of the pier.

  The two men rounded the corner of the warehouse in the misty light; the barrel reached the edge of the dock. It struck one of the pilings. Oh, Christ! Then it spun and plunged over. The sound of the splash below was loud; the two men shouted at each other and raced to the edge.

  Now!

  Havelock rose to his feet and ran out of the shadows, his hands extended, shoulders and arms battering rams. He forced his unsteady legs to respond, each racing step painful but calculated, sure. He made contact. First the man on the right, pummeling him with both outstretched hands; then the Italian on his left, crashing his shoulder into the small of the man’s back.

  A deafening blast from the Teresa’s funnels covered the screams of the two men as they plummeted into the water below. Michael swung to his left and hobbled back toward the comer of the warehouse; he would go out onto the deserted pier and face the once obsequious guard and the elegantly dressed man. Time elapsed: another minute. Less than three remained at most.

  He ran unsteadily out onto the vast expanse of the pier with its fog-laden pools of floodlights and immobile machinery. Pitching his voice at the edge of hysteria, he shouted in broken Italian: “Help me! Help them! It’s crazy! I’m hurt. Two men came to help me. As they drew near there were gunshots! Three gunshots! From the next pier. I could hardly hear them because of the freighter, but I did hear them! Gunshots! Quickly! They’re wounded. One dead, I think! Oh, Christ, hurry!”

  The exchange between the two
men was verbal chaos. As Havelock staggered erratically toward the gate he could see that the guard’s automatic was drawn, but it was not the same guard; he was shorter, stockier, older. The guard’s broad face was full of resentment, in contrast to that of the civilian—in his mid-thirties, tanned, suave—which was cold and without expression. The man in the overcoat was ordering the guard to investigate; the guard was shouting that he would not leave his post, not for 20,000 lire! The capo regime could look into his own garbage: he was no frightened bambino of the docks. The capo could buy a few hours of his time, his disappearance, but not more!

  A setup. From the beginning, a charade,

  “Andate voi stessi!” yelled the guard.

  Swearing, the civilian started toward the warehouse and broke into a run, the abruptly slowing his pace he cautiously approached the corner of the building.

  The guard was now in front of the glass booth, his gun leveled at Michael. “You! Walk to the fence,” he shouted in Italian. “Raise your hands above you and grab the wire as high as you can! Do not turn around! I’ll fire into your head if you do!”

  Barely two minutes left; if it was going to work, it would happen now.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Havelock screamed as he gripped his chest and fell.

  The guard rushed forward; Michael remained motionless in a fetal position, dead weight on the damp, hard surface. “Get up!” commanded the uniformed man. “Get to your feet!”

  The guard reached down and grabbed Havelock’s shoulder. It was the movement Michael had been waiting for. He spun off the ground, clasping the weapon above his head, and gripped the wrist at his shoulder, wrenching it clockwise as he rose and hammering his knee into the falling guard’s throat. The gun barrel was in his hand; he swung it down, crashing it into the base of the Italian’s skull. The man collapsed. Havelock dragged him into the shadows of the booth, then raced out of the open gate, jamming the weapon into his jacket pocket.