He raced out of the marble lobby of the hotel in Bernini Circle and rushed blindly up through the winding streets Until he reached the Via Veneto. The desk clerk at the hotel had not been able to help him but not for lack of trying; spurred by the thick folds of lire, he futilely punched the telephone bar and screamed numbers at the sleepy switchboard operator. The night clerk’s contacts were limited; he could not raise a rented car.
Havelock stopped for breath, studying the lights on the Veneto. The hour was too late for the full array, but several cafés and the Excelsior Hotel were illuminated. Someone had to help him—he had to get to Civitavecchia! He had to find her. He could not lose her. Not again, not ever again! He had to reach her and hold her and tell her that terrible things had been done to them, tell her over and over again until she saw the truth in his eyes and heard that truth in his voice; and saw the love he felt so deeply, and understood the unendurable guilt that never left him—for he bad killed that love.
He began running again, first into the Excelsior, where no amount of money interested an arrogant clerk.
“You’ve got to help me!”
“You are not even a guest, signore,” said the man, glancing to his left.
Slowly Michael angled his head. Across the lobby two policemen were watching the scene. They conferred; obviously, the night operation at the Excelsior was under open official scrutiny. Peddlers of capsules and pills, white powder and syringes, were working the world-famous boulevard. One of the uniformed men stepped forward. Havelock turned and walked rapidly to the entrance, once again running into the half-deserted street, toward the nearest profusion of light.
The tired maître d’ of the Café de Paris told him he was a capo zuccone. Who would have an automobile to rent to a stranger at this hour? The American manager of a third-rate version of a Third Avenue bar told him to “pound sand.”
Again the winding streets, again the sweat drenching his hairline, rolling down his cheeks. The Hassler—the Villa Medici! He had used the name of the elegant hotel in the luggage shop by the Ostia.…
The night concierge at the Hassler’s Villa Medici was accustomed to the vagaries of Rome’s wealthiest hotel guests. Arrangements were made for Michael to rent a Fiat, one of the Hassler’s staff vehicles. The price was exorbitant, but with it came a map of Rome and its environs, the most direct route to Civitavecchia marked in red.
He reached the port city at three-fifteen and by three-forty-five he had driven up and down the waterfront, studying it until he decided where to park the car and start his search for Jenna Karas.
It was a section common to most waterfronts where the floodlights washing the piers remained on all night and activity never stopped; where groupings of dockworkers and deckhands mingled like slow-moving automatons, crisscrossing each other—men and machinery meshed in volatile conflict—loading the cargo holds and preparing the massive boilers and outdated engines of the larger vessels soon to head out into deep water. Where cafés and coffeehouses lined the mist-laden alleys, punctuated by the diffused light of the streetlamps—places of refuge serving the harshest whisky and the most glutinous food.
To the north and south were the smaller piers, halyards and masts swaying in silhouette against the moonlight; filthy marinas for the fishing boats and the trawlers that ventured no more than forty kilometers out to those watery places that decades of experience and tradition told the captains were where the catches were most plentiful. These piers did not begin to stir until the early light was closer, faint sprays of yellowish white inching their way over the southwest horizon, pushing the night sky upward. Only then did groaning, dull-eyed men walk down the wooden planks toward oily gunwales and the interminable, blinding day ahead. Jenna Karas would not be in these places where the boats cast off at dawn only to return home when the sun went down. She would be somewhere in that complex of larger piers, where ships looked to the tides and the charts and sailed to other ports, other countries.
She was somewhere in this stretch of the waterfront where swirling pockets of mist rolled off the sea and across the docks, through intersecting pools of floodlights and the hammering tattoo of nocturnal labors. She would be hidden—not visible to those who should not see her: controllor! of the piers, paid by the state and the shipping companies to be on the lookout for material and human contraband. Keep her out of sight; the moment will come when she can be taken on board, after a capo operaio has inspected a hold and signed the papers that state the ship in question is free to depart, free from the taint of transgressing the laws of land and sea. Then she can walk swiftly out of the shadows and down a pier, controllor! and operai themselves out of sight, their duties finished.
Which pier? Which ship? Where are you, Jenna?
There were three freighters, all medium tonnage, berthed alongside each other at three of the four major cargo docks. The fourth housed two smaller vessels—barge class—with conveyor equipment and thick piping machinery transporting and pumping bulk cargo up into the open holds. She would be taken aboard one of the freighters; the immediate thing to learn was the departure time of each.
He parked the Fiat on a side street that intersected the vials fronting the four piers. He walked across the wide avenue, dodging several vans and trucks, to the first pier on the left, to the gate manned by a uniformed guard, a civil servant of questionable civility. He was unpleasant, and the nuisance of having to piece together Havelock’s barely fluent Italian added to his hostility.
“What do you want to know for?” asked the guard, filling the doorway of the gatehouse. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m trying to find someone who may have booked passage,” said Michael, hoping the words he used were close enough to his meaning.
“Passaggio? Biglietto? Who buys a ticket on a Portuguese freighter?”
Havelock saw his opening; he leaned closer, glancing about as he spoke. “This is the ship, then. Forgive my poor use of your language, Signor Controllore. It’s unforgivable. Actually, I’m with the embassy of Portugal in Rome. In my way an—inspector, as you are. We were told there may be certain irregularities with this vessel. Any cooperation from you could be duly conveyed to your superiors.”
The human ego when tied to opportunity was not affected by the lowliness of a civil service rating. The hostile guard was abruptly pleasant, moving aside to admit the straniero importante.
“Scusatemi, signore! I did not understand. We who patrol those holes of corruption must cooperate with one another, no? And, in truth, a word to my superiors—in Rome, of course.”
“Of course. Not here.”
“Of course. Not here. They are brutes down here. Come in, come in. It must be chilly for you.”
The Miguel Cristóvão was scheduled to leave port at 5:00 A.M. Its captain was a man named Aliandro, who had been in the wheelhouse of the Cristóvão for the past twelve years, a skipper who knew every island, every shoal in the western Mediterranean, it was said.
The two other freighters were of Italian registry. The guards at the gates were wearily cooperative, perfectly willing to give whatever information the oddly spoken foreigner requested. What he wished to know he could read in any newspaper under Navi Informazione-Civitavecchia, the pages of which were usually torn out and tacked to the walls of the various cafés around the waterfront. They helped when crewmen got drunk and forgot their schedules.
The Isola d’Elba was leaving at five-thirty, the Santa Teresa twenty minutes later, at five-fifty.
Havelock started to walk away from the third gate. He looked at his watch; it was eight minutes past four. So little time.
Jenna! Where are you?
He heard the sound of a bell behind him. It was sudden, abrasive, echoing in its own vibrations, an outside bell meant to be heard above the shouts and machinery of the piers. Alarmed, he turned quickly. The guard had stepped inside the glass cubicle that was his gatehouse and was answering the telephone. The verbal flow of attentive Sìs emphasized the fact that whoever was on the other end of the line was issuing orders that were to be thoroughly understood.
Telephones and guards at checkpoints were sources of concern to Michael. For a moment he was not sure whether or not to run. The answer was given instantly. The guard hung up the phone and stuck his head out the door. “You! You want to know so much about this stinking tub, here’s something else! The Teresa stays put. She doesn’t sail until six godforsaken trucks get here from Torino, which could be eight hours from now. The unions will make those bastards pay, let me tell you! Then they’ll fine the crew for being drunk! They’re all bastards!”
The Teresa was out of the running, for a while at least. He could concentrate on the Elba and the Cristóvão. If Jenna was to be smuggled aboard the Teresa, he had hours, but not if it was one of the other two. If either was the case, he still had only minutes. He had to spend them wisely but swiftly, wasting as few as possible. There was no time for the subtleties of move and countermove, for circling the grounds of inquiry and selecting targets cautiously, being aware of whoever might be watching him. There was time only for money—if takers could be found. And force—if those same takers tripped themselves on lies that meant they knew the truth.
Havelock walked quickly back to the second gate, where the Isola d’Elba was berthed, altering his story only slightly for the weary guard. He wished to speak to a few of the vessel’s crew, those who might be on shore awaiting the ship’s call. Would the cooperative civil servant, having shaken a hand with several thousand lire folded in the palm, know which of the waterfront cafés were favored by the Elba’s crew?
They stick together, no, signore? When fights break out, seamen want their friends around, even those they hate on board. Try Il Pinguino. Or perhaps La Carrozza di Mare. The whisky’s cheaper at the first, but the food makes one vomit It’s better at La Carrozza.”
The once hostile, now obsequious guard at the gate of the Cristóvão was more than cooperative; he was effusively friendly.
“There is a café on the Via Maggio where, it is said, many things pass hands.”
“Would the Cristóvão’s men be there?”
“Some, perhaps. The Portuguese do not mix well, of course. No one trusts them—Not you, signore! I refer only to the garbage of the sea. The same everywhere. Not you, may God forgive me!”
“The name, please?”
“Il Tritone.”
It took less than twelve minutes to disqualify Il Tritone. Michael walked through the heavy doors, beneath the crude bas-relief of a naked creature half man and half fish, into the raucous squalor of the waterfront bar. The smoke was thick, the stench of stale whisky thicker. Men shouted between the tables; others lurched, and not a few had collapsed, their heads resting on folded arms, small pools of alcohol surrounding hands and nostrils and bearded cheeks.
Havelock chose the oldest-looking man behind the bar and approached him first “Are there any here from the Cristóvão?”
“Portoghese?”
“Sì.”
“A few—over there, I think.”
Michael looked through the smoke and the weaving bodies to a table across the room. There were four men. “What about the Isola d’Elba?” he asked, turning back to the bar tender.
“Porci!” replied the man. “Pigs! They come in here, I throw them out! Scum!”
“They must be something,” said Havelock, scanning the Tritone’s clientele, his throat trembling at the thought of Jenna among such men.
“You want crew from the Elba, go to Il Pinguino. Over there, they don’t care.”
Michael took out a 10,000-lire note, and placed it in front of the bartender. “Do you speak Portuguese? Enough to be understood?”
“Down here, if one cares to make a living one must be understood in half a dozen tongues.” The man slipped the money into his apron pocket, adding, “They no doubt speak Italian, probably better than you, signore. So let us speak in English. What do you wish me to do?”
“There’s an empty table back there,” said Havelock, relieved, changing languages, and gesturing with his head toward the left rear corner of the café. “I’m going over and sit down. You go to those men and tell them I want to see them—one at a time. If you think they won’t understand me, come over with each and be my interpreter.”
“Interprete?”
“Sì.”
“Bene.”
One by one the four Portuguese sailors came to the table, each bewildered, two proficient in Italian, one in English, one needing the services of the interprete. To each, Michael said the same words:
“I’m looking for a woman. It’s a minor matter, nothing to be concerned about; call it an affair of the heart. She’s an impetuous woman; we’ve all known them, haven’t we? But now she may have gone too far for her own good. I’m told she has a friend on the Cristóvão. She may have been around the pier, asking questions, looking for transport. She’s an attractive woman, average height, blond hair, probably wearing a raincoat and a wide-brimmed hat. Have you seen anyone like that? If you have, there could be a lot more money in your pocket than there is now.”
And with each man he gave an explanation for his summons that the sailor could take back to his companions, along with 5,000 lire: “Whatever you tell me remains between us. For my good more than yours. When you go back to your table, you can say the same thing I’m telling everyone. I want rough sex with someone leaving Civitavecchia, but I’m not going to take it from any son of a bitch who won’t leave his papers down at a hotel desk. Released by me. Got it?”
Only with the third man did the bartender, who insisted on being present at each interview, caution Havelock firmly. “This one will leave his papers at a desk,” he said.
“Then he’s not my type.”
“Bene!”
“Grazie.”
Nothing. No such woman had been seen or heard of on the Cristóvão pier. The four Portuguese crewmen resumed their drinking.
Havelock thanked the perplexed older man beside him, and pressed another bill into his apron pocket. “Which way to Il Pinguino?” he asked.
“The Elba crew?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the bartender, removing his apron and the money in its pocket.
“Why?”
“You sound like a decent man. Also stupid. You walk into Il Pinguino asking questions, your money’s for everyone. All it takes is one sailor with a quiet knife.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“You are not only stupid, you are very stupid. I own Il Tritone; they respect me at Il Pinguino. You’ll be safer with me. You pass money too quickly.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Presto! Let’s get on with it. It’s a bad morning here. Not like the old days when men knew that half a chestful was enough. You taste it in your throat, you know. These assholes mix up comfort with wanting no memory, Vieni!”
The café five blocks away brought back memories, remembrances of a life he had thought was over—he had been in too many such places in that other life. If Il Tritone catered to the garbage of humanity, Il Pinguino took the dregs and considered it clientela scelta. The smoke was thicker, the shouting louder; men did not lurch, they lunged at nothing and everything, intent only on the violence in their minds. These were men who found amusement in the sudden exposure of another’s weakness or a semblance of weakness—which they construed as an absence of manhood—and then attacked.
They had nothing else. They challenged the shadows of their own deepest fears.
The owner of Il Tritone was greeted by his counterpart within seconds of ushering Havelock through the door. The Pinguino’s proprietario matched his establishment, having few teeth and arms that hung like huge, hairy cheeses. He was not as large as Michael’s newfound friend, but there was a sense of violence about him that made one think of a boar that could be quickly stirred to anger.
The greetings between the two men were spoken rapidly, perfunctorily. But there was respect, as Il Tritone’s owner had said there would be, and the arrangements were made swiftly, with a minimum of explanation.
“The American looks for a woman. It is a malinteso, and not our business,” said the owner of Il Tritone. “She may be sailing with the Elba, and one of these thieves may have seen her. He’s willing to pay.”
“He’d better hurry,” replied the sullen boar. “The oilers left an hour ago; they’re sweating piss-green by now. The second mate will be here any minute to gather up the rest of the deck.”
“How many are there?”
“Eight, ten, who knows? I count lire, not faces.”
“Have one of your people go around and ask quietly, find them, and tell me who they are. Clear a table for my companion. I’ll bring each one to him.”
“You give orders as though the Pinguino were the Tritone.”
“Because I would accord you the same courtesy, even as my tongue thickened as yours does now. One never knows. You could need my help tomorrow.… Each pig from the Elba is worth ten thousand lire to you.”
“Bene.” The Pinguino’s owner walked away toward the bar.
“Do not give these men any excuse for talking to you as you did the Portoghese,” said Michael’s companion. “For them it was good thinking, but not for these. There’s no time, and in their drunkenness they could find the wrong meaning. Bottles are broken easily in here.”
“Then what am I going to say? I’ve got to separate them, give each a reason for talking to me alone. I can’t go up to all of them at once. One may know something, but he’s not going to tell me in front of the others.”
“Agreed. So tell each you trust only him. The others—you were told—are not to be trusted. You spoke with them only for appearance, because your business concerns the Elba. It will be enough.”
“I’m a stranger. Who would tell me something like that?”
“A man who knows his clientele—the one you paid. The owner of Il Pinguino.” The owner of Il Tritone grinned. “By the time they reach port again, he’ll be covered with stink. He’ll need the carabinieri every night.”
Separately, warily, in varying phases of stupor, the remaining crew of the Elba sat down and listened to Havelock’s increasingly fluent Italian as he repeated the same question. And with each he studied the man’s face, the eyes, looking for a reaction, a glint of recognition, a brief straying of a glance that covered a lie. With the sixth man he thought he found it; it was in the lips—a sudden stretching unrelated to the sagging muscle tone induced by whisky, and in the clouded eyes, dulled further by an instinctive desire not to listen. The man knew something.
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” said Michael, losing control, speaking in English.
“Ascolta,” interrupted the owner of Il Tritone. “In italiano, signore.”
“Sorry.” Havelock repeated the question, which was more an accusation, in Italian.
The sailor responded with a shrug, shifted his position, and started to get up. Michael reached over quickly and clamped his hand on the seaman’s arm. The response was now ugly; the sailor squinted his rheumy, red-veined eyes, his mouth like that of an angry dog, lips parted, stained yellow teeth showing. In seconds he would lunge—drunkenly, to be sure, but nevertheless, attack was imminent.
“Lascialo,” ordered the owner of Il Tritone, then spoke rapidly under his breath in English. “Show him money. Quickly! This pig will grab your throat, and they’ll be all over us and you will learn nothing. You are right. He’s seen her.”
Havelock released the man’s arm, reached into his pocket and took out the thick pack of awkwardly small lire notes. He separated two bills and placed them in front of the sailor; they totaled 40,000 lire, a day’s pay on board ship.
“As you can see,” he said in Italian, “there’s more here. You can’t take it from me, but I can give it to you. On the other hand, you can walk away and not tell me anything.” Michael paused, leaned back in the chair, staring at the man, his expression hostile. “But I can make trouble for you. And I will.”
“In che modo?” The crewman was as angry as he was bewildered, his eyes darting between Havelock’s face, the money, and the owner of Il Tritone, who sat impassively, his rigid posture showing that he was aware of the danger in Michael’s tactic.
“How?” Havelock leaned forward, his fingers pulling the lire toward him, as though retrieving two vital cards in a game of baccarat. “I’ll go over to the Elba and find your captain. Whatever I say to him about you he’s not going to like.”
“Che cosa? What?… What can you say to him in riguardo a me that he would credere?” The sailor’s sudden use of English words was unexpected. He turned to the owner of Il Tritone. “Perhaps this pig will grab your throat, old man. I need no help from others. For you or this ricco americano.” The man unzipped his coarse wool jacket; the handle of a knife protruded from a scabbard strapped to his belt; his head swayed from the effects of the whisky. A very thin line was about to be crossed.
Abruptly, Michael settled back in his chair and laughed quietly. It was a genuine laugh, in no way hostile or challenging, further confusing the seaman. “Bene!” said Michael, suddenly leaning forward again, removing two more 5,000-lire notes from the loose packet of bills. “I wanted to find out if you had balls, and you told me. Good! A man without balls doesn’t know what he sees. He makes things up because he’s afraid, or because he sees money.” Havelock gripped the man’s hand at the wrist, forcing the palm open. It was a strong if friendly grip, indicating a strength the sailor had to acknowledge. “Here! Fifty thousand lire. There’s no quarrel between us. Where did you see her?”
The abrupt changes of mood were beyond the man’s comprehension. He was reluctant to forgo the challenge, but the combination of the money, the grip and the infectious laugh made him retreat. “Are you … go to my captain?” he asked in English, eyes swimming.
“What for? You just told me. It has nothing to do with him. Why bring that farabutto into it? Let him earn his own money. Where did you see her?”
“On the street Ragazza bionda. Bella. Cappello a large tesa.” “Blond, attractive … wide hat! Where? Who was she with? A mate, a ship’s officer? Un ufficiale?”
“Not the Elba. The next ship. Nave mercantile.”
“There are only two. The Cristóvão and the Teresa. Which one?”
The man glanced around, head bobbing, eyes only half focused. “She was talking to two men … one a capitano.”
“Which one?”
“A destra,” whispered the sailor, pulling the back of his hand across his wet lips.
“On the right?” “asked Michael quickly. The Santa Teresa?”
The seaman now rubbed his chin and blinked; he was afraid, his eyes suddenly focused to the left of the table. He shrugged, crushing the money in his right hand, as he pushed back his chair. “Non so niente. Una puttana del capitano.”
“Mercantile italiano?” pressed Havelock. The Italian freighter? “The Santa Teresa?”
The sailor stood up, his face white. “Sì … No! Destra … sinistra!” The man’s eyes were now riveted somewhere across the room; Michael angled his head unobtrusively. Three men at a table against the wall were watching the crewman from the Elba, “Il capitano. Un marinaio superiors! Il migliore!” cried the seaman hoarsely. “I know nothing else, signore!” He lurched away, shouldering a path through the bodies gathered at the bar toward the alley door.
“You play dangerously,” commented the owner of Il Tritone. “It could have gone either way.”
“With a mule—drunk or otherwise—nothing’s ever replaced the carrot and the whip,” said Havelock, his head still turned slightly, his concentration still on the three men at the table across the room.
“You could have had blood on your stomach and have learned nothing at all.”
“But I did learn something.”
“Not a great deal. A freighter on the right, on the left. Which?”
“He said on the right first.”
“Coming off the pier, or going on to it?”
“From his immediate point of view. Going on. Destra. The Santa Teresa. She’ll be put on board the Teresa, which means I have time to find her before she’s given the signal. She’s somewhere within sight of the dock.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Il Tritone’s owner, shaking his head “Our mule was specific. The captain was un marinaio superiore. Migliore. The best, a great seaman. The captain of the Teresa is a tired merchantman. He never sails past Marseilles.”
“Who are those men at the table over there?” asked Michael, his question barely audible through the din. “Don’t turn your head, just shift your eyes. Who are they?”
“I do not know them by name.”
“What does that mean?”
“Italiano,” said the owner of Il Tritone, his voice flat.
“The Santa Teresa,” said Havelock, removing a number of bills and putting the rest of the money back into his pocket. “You’ve been a great help,” he said. “I owe the proprietario. The rest is for you.”
“Grazie.”
“Prego.”
“I will see you down the alley to the waterfront. I still do not like it. We don’t know those men are from the Teresa. Something is not in equilibrio.”
“The percentages say otherwise. It’s the Teresa. Let’s go.”
Outside the noisy café the narrow thoroughfare was comparatively silent; naked light bulbs shone weakly, enveloped in mist above intermittent doorways, and centuries-old smooth cobblestones muffled the sound of footsteps. At the end of the alley the wide avenue that fronted the piers could be seen in the glow of the streetlamps; until one reached it the alley itself was a gauntlet of shadows. One walked cautiously, alert to the spaces of black silence.
“Ecco!” whispered the Italian, his eyes up ahead. “Someone’s in that doorway. On the left. Do you have a weapon?”
“No. I haven’t had time—”
“Then quickly!” The owner of Il Tritone suddenly broke into a run, passing the doorway as a figure lurched out—a stocky man with arms raised, hands poised for interception. But there was no gun in those hands, no weapon but the thick hands themselves.
Havelock took several rapid strides toward the prowler, then spun into the shadows on the opposite side of the alley. The man lunged; Michael spun around again and, grabbing his assailant’s coat, hammered his right foot up into the man’s midsection. He pivoted a third time, now yanking the man off the ground, and hurled him into the wall. As the man fell, Havelock sprang downward, his left knee sinking into the man’s stomach, his right hand gripping the face and clawing at the eyes.
“Basta! Por favor! Se Deus quiser!” choked the prowler, holding his groin, saliva dribbling from his mouth. The language was Portuguese, the man one of the crew of the Cristóvão. Michael yanked him up against the wall, into the dim light; he was the seaman who had spoken a few words of English at the table in Il Tritone.
“If you’re going into theft with assault and battery, you’re not doing it very well!”
“No, senhor! I wish only to talk, but I cannot be seen! You pay me, I’ll tell you things, but not where I can be seen with you!”
“Go on.”
“You pay!”
Havelock clamped the sailor’s neck against the brick with his forearm, reached into his pocket and took out his money. Shoving his knee into the man’s chest and freeing his hand, he removed two bills. “Twenty thousand lire,” he said. “Talk!”
“It’s worth mora. Much more, senhor! You will see.”
“I can take it back if it’s not.… Thirty thousand, that’s it. Go on!”
“The woman goes aboard the Cristóvão … sete … seven minutos before we sail. It is arranged. She comes out the east warehouse door. She is guarded now; you cannot reach her. But she must walk forty meters to the cargo boarding plank.”
Michael released him and added another note to the three in the seaman’s hand. “Get out of here,” he said. “I never saw you.”
“You must swear to it, senhor!” cried the man, scrambling to his feet.
“Sworn. Now get out.”
Suddenly voices were heard at the end of the alley; two men came running out of the light.
“Americano! Americano!” It was the owner of Il Tritone; he had returned with help. As the Portuguese started to race away they grabbed him.
“Let him go!” yelled Havelock. “It’s all right! Let him go!”
Sixty seconds later Michael explained to the owner of Il Tritone. “It’s not the Teresa. It’s the Cristóvão.”
“It’s what was missing!” cried the Italian. “The knowledgeable capitano, the great seaman. It was there and I did not see it. Aliandro. João Aliandro! The finest captain in the Mediterranean. He could work his ship into any dangerous coastline, dropping off cargo wherever he wished, wherever the rocks and shoals called for no observers on shore. You have found your woman, signore.”
He crouched in the shadows of a stationary crane, the open spaces of the machinery allowing him unobstructed sight lines. The freighter’s cargo had been loaded; the teams of stevedores dispersed, swearing as they went their various ways across the wide avenue and down the narrow alleys into cafés. Except for the four-man cast-off crew the pier was deserted, and even those men were barely visible, standing motionless by the huge pilings, two men to a line, fore and aft.
A hundred yards behind him was the entrance gate, the obsequious guard inside his glass booth, his figure a gray silhouette in the rolling early-morning fog. Diagonally to the left in front of the crane some eighty-odd feet away was the ribbed, weather-beaten gangplank that went up to the Cristóvão’s forward deck. It was the last physical connection to the ship to be hauled on board before the giant hawsers were slipped off the pilings, freeing the behemoth for the open water.
On the right, no more than sixty feet from the crane, was the door to the pier’s warehouse office; it was locked, and all lights were off inside. And beyond that door was Jenna Karas, a fugitive from her own and others’ betrayal—his love, who had turned on that love for reasons only she could tell him.… In moments now, the door would open and she would have to walk from that door to the gangplank, then up the cracked wooden causeway to the deck. Once on board, she would be free; giant lines would be thrown over the pier, whistles would blow, and the gangplank would be whipped in the air, sucked up on deck and stowed. But until then she was not free; she was human contraband in open transit, crossing territory where no one would dare protect her. Inside the warehouse office she could be protected; an intruder breaking in could be shot for the act itself. But not in the open; men would not risk being caught smuggling human flesh on board ships. The prison sentences were long; a few thousand lire was not worth that risk.
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?”