I Spy (3 page)

The hotel looked like a palace, with uniformed flunkies everywhere, and crystal glass candelabra, velvet curtains, fancy gold decorations, marble floors, walls, stairs
and
statues; it had
huge ornately framed mirrors and dark, impenetrable oil paintings on the walls, with acres of polished brass and wood as far as the eye could see. He was, Trey thought, staying in a museum with sea
views. Once again, not his personal idea of a holiday.

Their accommodation turned out to be a very large suite, which certainly had the kind of scenery you might admire, if you liked palms and seascapes, like his dad. There might be more interesting
places around and about, but how to get to check them out? The answer came moments later when a troupe of maids arrived to unpack their cases, which he had a good idea might well cause a major
distraction.

“Pops?” he asked as his father, who spoke no Italian, began trying to tell the maids where things were to go.

“Yes? What?”

“Can I go for a walk?”

“Sure, sure...” His father glanced over his shoulder, then returned to the job in hand. “No,
not
in there...”

At which point Trey made a hasty exit and set off to see what, if anything, there might be for him to do.

It was while he was wandering across a big terrace that he spotted something that looked worth investigating. A large group of people (as he got closer he saw that there seemed to be a lot of
women among them) was surrounding three men in uniform, and hanging on their every word. As they were speaking Italian, Trey had no idea why this was. Nevertheless he circled the group, as this was
by far the most interesting thing that was occurring, but it wasn’t until he’d got a bit closer, and got a better look at the three men, that he realized they were flyers.

One of the men made some comment and gestured rather grandly behind him, over the parapet and in the direction of the sea, and everyone clapped and cheered. Trey went over to have a look at what
the man had been pointing to and found himself staring at the most beautiful sight in the world – if you liked planes, that is – because, floating in the pale blue, mirror-flat water,
moored to a pier, was a bright red racing seaplane. And if Trey knew his planes (which he liked to think he did, having his own scrapbook of photos and stories clipped from newspapers and
magazines) he was sure that what he couldn’t drag his eyes away from was nothing less than a Macchi M.52 – just about the cat’s pyjamas when it came to aeroplanes!

“Oh boy...” he whispered. “What a beauty!”

“You like the planes?”

Trey spun round to find one of the flyers standing next to him. “
Like
them?” he sputtered. “I
love
them – I was lucky enough to see Mr. Charles
Lindbergh’s ticker-tape parade in New York, you know!”

“I think you are quite a lucky boy, then,” the man smiled. “Did you meet him?”

“Me? No sir, I was thirty-three floors up in a skyscraper.”

“Well right here, not even three
metres
away, is Major Mario de Bernardi, the man who won the Schneider Trophy race in your country last year – and I believe is going to win
it once again
this
year. Would you like to meet him?”

“Who, me?
Yes, sir!
”

As Trey lay in bed, stomach full to bursting after a blow-out of a meal (he had actually lost count of the number of courses he’d eaten), his head was reeling from the
sights and sounds of what had turned out to be possibly the very
best
day of his life. Not only had he met a record-breaking flyer – one of the fastest men on Earth – he’d
actually been allowed to sit in his plane! The very same streamlined machine that would be taking part in the Schneider Trophy speed contest, which he’d discovered was happening
right here
in Venice
in a few weeks’ time! Boy, would he love to be there!

But, Trey thought as he began to nod off, there was a fat chance of
that
ever happening. When your father was one of the MacIntyres of MacIntyre, MacIntyre & Moscowitz (“One of
the busiest engineering concerns in the whole of the continental US, son...right up there near the top of the heap!”), business always came first and always, if at all possible, ran to a
tight schedule. Which was why this sudden change of plan to take a trip on the Orient Express had made him wonder...what on earth could his father be up to? The schedule and plan had been strangely
abandoned.

T
he next day things really did
not
go according to plan. At least not to the plan that Trey had worked out in his head (but failed to
discuss with his father), which was a long list of all the terrific ways he could spend his time. These mainly boiled down to staying as close as he could to the Italian flyers, with the general
idea being that, while he knew there was no space for him actually in the single-seater Macchi racer, they might have
other
planes and he
might
get to go up in one of them. You just
never knew.

And as it turned out, Trey never did discover, because his father had other ideas entirely for what he and his son were going to do with their time. True to form, his father would not hear of
any
changes to the schedule he had planned. Especially, he explained, as he had lately been feeling a tad guilty about the amount of calls he’d had to deal with and cables he’d
had to reply to and send. He told Trey he’d put aside the entire day for them to “do” Venice together.

T. Drummond MacIntyre II, as was his way, had got it all meticulously worked out (something he had failed to discuss with his son), so Trey found himself being taken out to a
vaporetto
– a private one his father had hired for the day – which was going to take them on a tour of the Grand Canal, and more. As well as the boat, his father had also hired a guide for the
day, Signorina Aurelia Sanpietro, who had the disadvantage, from Trey’s point of view, of being neither young nor pretty (she was no picture, as he had no doubt his mother would have put it);
she also had a somewhat loud, not to say operatic voice and spoke English with such a heavy accent that Trey found what she said made no sense at all. The word “formidable” had
immediately sprung to his mind when he’d been introduced to her.

As the three of them left the hotel he saw the bright red Macchi M.52 bobbing at its mooring, and his heart sank. Mechanics were fussing about under the engine cowling and he could see someone
– it looked like Major de Bernardi – pulling on a flying cap and generally getting ready to go. It would be just his luck if it turned out he was flying off for good, or at least until
the race in September. The Italian flyers were the most exciting thing in this place.

Trey hung back, watching the last-minute preparations, imagining what it would be like if
he
was over there lending a hand...imagining that he
was
there and that he’d spotted
something, like a leaking fuel line – which, if he
hadn’t
been there, would have gone unnoticed and led to a fatal crash! He saw himself being congratulated for foiling the
sabotage plot (with the honour of nations at stake in this race, it just
had
to be sabotage) and given his own leather flying helmet and goggles in appreciation...

“Trey! Trey, will you stop daydreaming – the boat’s here and we’re ready to go!”

His father’s voice dragged Trey unwillingly back to reality just as he was about to accept a celebratory glass of champagne and the scenario disappeared like a burst bubble.

“Coming...” he mumbled, with one last glance over his shoulder at the plane, then traipsed off towards the pier where his father was standing, hands on hips, waiting for him.

Once they were on their way his father explained to Trey exactly what the day held in store for them. And, entirely no surprises, it turned out they were on their way to see a long list of
churches (which it would, apparently, be a crime not to see), galleries that
must
be visited, piazzas it’d be a shame not to sit in and bridges that had to be sailed under and walked
over. Oh joy. An
entire
day of Culture, with one very big capital “C”.

Trey had done his best. He really had. He hadn’t huffed and puffed too much, in his opinion, and while he hadn’t actually said a lot he hadn’t complained
either, but by mid-afternoon he was truly beginning to lose the will to live. He just knew that if he saw another
Palazzo
,
Campo
,
Piazza
or
Ponte
he was going to get a
twitch in one of his eyes and start to gibber quietly to himself, but then things took an interesting turn: he got lost.

And there was no way round it, the situation was entirely his fault. One moment he’d been following his father, who was following Signorina Aurelia Sanpietro (an endlessly enthusiastic
mine of information about her beloved city), and the next he was on his own in the middle of some enormous open space.

Well, not
actually
on his own as wherever he now found himself was jam-packed with visitors...hundreds and hundreds of them. Quite possibly
thousands
, Trey thought as he stopped
and stared around, vainly trying to spot his father and their jabbering guide.

The buildings flanking the sides of the huge square were colonnaded and intricately decorated, bedecked in flags and covered in all kinds of coloured marble. The one he was facing, which he
could see towering over the heads of the crowds surrounding him, looked like something out of an Arabian Nights tale; with its cupolas-on-top-of-other-cupolas roof and the statues and mosaics all
over the front, it was, Trey thought, more like an enthusiastically over-decorated cake than a building.

Pushing his way through the crush of people he searched with an increasing desperation for his father (what
had
he been wearing this morning? He hadn’t really been paying
attention...), with one ear cocked for the sound of his name being called (surely, by now, his disappearance had been noticed...hadn’t it?) and the other listening for Signorina
Aurelia’s telltale bellow.

But there was no sign of his father, and if anyone was calling for him it was lost, as was Aurelia’s voice, in the rising babble and chatter from all the other tourists. Trey looked back
the way he’d come, then realized that he couldn’t work out which way that might actually have been, and even if he did know it wouldn’t do him any good because he didn’t
know where he was.

It slowly dawned on him that not only did he not know his present location, where he’d been, or how to get back to where the boat had docked, he also hadn’t the
slightest
idea
where they were going to visit next. And to top it all, although he’d heard any number of people speaking English wherever they’d been so far, right now he didn’t understand
any
of the languages he could hear all around him.

This sense of being alone, abandoned and cast adrift made him feel really strange. In fact, Trey suddenly realized, if he didn’t get a good grip on himself he might possibly... No! That
was
not
going to happen – T. Drummond MacIntyre III was
not
going to panic! He was going to find his own way back to the hotel, which might be a bit of a problem because that
would entail a boat ride and he had no money. But as his grandfather, the original T. Drummond, had always said, where there was a will there was a way. And if Gramps said it, it had to be
true.

Trey knew beyond a doubt that he had the will (he was a go-getter, everyone said so) it was just that he was more than a little unsure of what the way was. Venice, as he knew from the map back
at the hotel, was a random maze, completely unlike Chicago and New York, which had been built on downright sensible grid systems. Weaving through the milling crowds he might, for all he could tell,
be going round and round in circles; as that thought came to him, he himself came to a circular break in the crowd, at the centre of which stood a lady who was either being attacked by hordes of
pigeons or was in some way orchestrating them.

Rooted to the spot, Trey watched the seething pool of speckled grey birds, the woman carelessly waving her arms and laughing as the birds flew up and around her in a fluttering, feathered cloud.
He was so transfixed by the sight that he forgot, for a moment, that he was lost and alone...then the hopelessness of his situation returned, and like a wave crashing onto a beach it washed away
his moment of happiness, leaving him feeling desolate.

Straightening himself up, Trey took a deep breath: this was
not
the way a private eye would act! Doing something – anything, really – would be far better than moping around
and doing nothing. He was sure he could find some boat to take him back to the Excelsior (the place was full of them), so all he had to do was work out how to pay for his ride. It was as he was
wondering how he could successfully mime “I have money back at my hotel!” that he got the distinct impression, like at the train station in Paris, that he was being watched.

The boy, older than him, was wearing a threadbare, faded red shirt, baggy sailcloth trousers and leather sandals; he was sallow-skinned, with a dark, wispy smudge on his upper lip and badly
pockmarked skin, and he was staring right at him through narrowed eyes. This time, unlike in Paris, Trey knew in his gut that he hadn’t got the wrong end of the stick, especially when the boy
didn’t look away the moment he’d been noticed, instead making it obvious he didn’t care that he’d been caught out. A half smile, half sneer curled the boy’s lip as he
glanced to his left and nodded to someone else. A signal, Trey realized, that it was time for the someone else to make their move.