Ride a Pale Horse (16 page)

“Don’t mention it,” he had said, as if she had just excused herself. Or a double meaning? she wondered, retracing her steps down Via Veneto. The small card was still hidden in her hand as if the sudden shock had glued it to her palm. It can’t be, she kept saying, but it is. It is. I know those eyes: pale grey, intense. I know that voice—the deep-throated way Cornell was pronounced even in a whisper. It’s Josef Vasek. It can’t be—that priest is thinner, older. But it is.

At Doney’s, an elegant middle-aged blonde was gathering her purse and French poodle. Her escort, young and handsome, six feet of masculinity and as expensively clothed as his mistress, was on his feet to help her rise. The waiter was bowing and thanking
la Contessa
as he pulled back her chair. The minute it was freed from the Givenchy dress, Karen slipped onto it with a smile of thanks in general, of relief in particular, forestalling a most respectable German and his wife from taking possession.

She ordered an omelette, white wine, and coffee. Only then—once the waiter had left and the German couple had departed—did she risk slipping the small card into her handbag as she took out cigarettes and lighter. She had not dared to glance at it; reading would have to come later. She relaxed a little, lit a cigarette, ignored the admiring glance of a man at a neighbouring table, and seemed absorbed by the passing scene. She counted two more priests walking leisurely, three hurrying nuns, and—a study in contrasts—another prostitute. Also a Hollywood director, three TV stars from America, a French couturier, a rock-and-roll millionaire. Also a host of other people she couldn’t identify, all out to eye and be eyed—the favourite pastime on this section of Via Veneto. She thought of Josef Vasek, Mr. Farrago himself, and almost smiled. Prague had been nothing like this.

She finished lunch and reached into her bag, rummaging in its depths for her wallet. For a second, she tilted the hidden card so that she could read its message:
Capuchin Church, 4
P.M.
She dropped it back in place, found the wallet, and began calculating the tip she would leave. Dammit, I’m scared, she thought as her hands fumbled with the outsize Italian notes. She reasserted her will power and paid her bill, even calmly applied some lipstick as she waited for change to be made. Her watch said quarter past three. The Capuchin Church was somewhere down Via Veneto, below the American Embassy—not a far walk, but she’d take it at a saunter in the prevailing style. No one seemed to hurry in this city. As for her telephone call to Schleeman—postponed for an hour or so. If only she could somehow manage a discreet message to be passed on to Peter Bristow.

It was hot, the sun high in a cloudless heaven, with streets half-empty: the wise had long since disappeared into their bedrooms for a siesta behind closed shutters. Some tourists were braving the temperature with cameras and guide-books in hand. Karen slipped off her linen jacket, took out her own little guide to Rome from her handbag, stopped occasionally to consult it and look briefly around her. She could read snatches of information about the Church of the Capuchin Monks. Founded in 1624 as St. Mary of the Conception; now with friars around, conducting tours of the subterranean chapels with more than three centuries of their predecessors’ bones and skeletons on display. She blanched at the idea and pinned her hopes on the ground-floor church and chapels: they should be secluded enough for any private meeting.

She followed the curve of the street in its sweeping descent to the church and found she was twelve minutes early. Better to enter now than loiter around. She drew on her jacket to cover her arms and low neckline—Italian churches had their strict rules about exposed skin—and pulled a silk scarf from her bag to drape over her head once she was inside. Her legs were bare but deeply tanned; they might pass muster. She began walking the short distance from the street to the church steps and felt more reassured when a friar in his coarse brown gown roped around his waist, hoodless, bearded, bare feet (not especially clean, either) in leather sandals, his naked ankles clearly displayed under his sack-like habit, hurried past her with giant strides and never a glance of censure. A similar friar, bearded too, with black tonsured hair and of heavy build, descended the steps almost at a run. Hefty fellows and quite unlike any monks she had ever seen. Even if their bellies weren’t with rich capon lined, they were well filled with spaghetti.

She entered a place of deep shadows, made darker by contrast with the street’s glaring light. As her eyes became accustomed to the shade, she could count about twenty or so worshippers as well as a handful of wanderers being guided around the ground-floor chapels by a friar, whose booming voice echoed among the pillars as he recounted the story of St. Francis. She chose a wooden bench, far removed from the women kneeling before the altar, but tied her scarf around her head to follow their example and felt suffocated by the heat that had been trapped under a seventeenth-century roof. At least, the scarf hid the colour of her hair: one must suffer to avoid attention.

Movement beside a distant pillar caught her eye. The brown-robed friar (and how could they bear the touch of heavy rough wool in this heat—one must suffer to be holy?) was now gathering a few people around him. They were all talking, and in Italian. A priest was joining them, a black-skirted figure she hadn’t even noticed until he moved forward. His hat in his hand revealed his straggling white hair; his limp was definite.

So I follow, she thought, rising, walking down a side aisle to join the little group. The friar asked in a quick flow of words, so quick that it mesmerised Karen, “The lady understands Italian?” She stared at him. His deep bass voice rumbled on, “This tour is for those who speak the language. No translation available. The lady must wait for a later visit to the subterranean chapels. German at four thirty. French at five. English at—”

“If the lady speaks French,” the white-haired priest interrupted with an apologetic smile, “I could translate. Madame,” he inquired in French, “do you understand?”

Understand that he doesn’t want to be identified as knowing any English?
“Mais oui,”
Karen said and added her thanks in a few phrases, which might be criticised by those who had learned their French accent in Tours, but neither the two Italian teenage girls, nor the family speaking Portuguese to the children and Italian to the friar, nor the English couple with a
History of Rome
noticeably on view, showed anything but impatience to start the tour.

It was only logical that the obliging priest should walk beside Karen as they began a steep descent into the nether regions. Reasonable, too, that his limp made them the last in line, and even let them drop back a little from the friar’s brisk pace. Vasek
has
lost weight, Karen noted; no more spreading waistline.

They entered the first subterranean chapel and were silenced. It was dark, with a few weak bulbs to show them the path they must follow; and cool, almost cold; and still. At first glance, it seemed that rows of slender pillars, closely packed, touching one another, were built against the walls. Then, as Karen passed a bleak light, she saw them more clearly. Skeletons all, standing erect, their gaping mouths grinning from white skulls at those who still lived. She flinched. The silence was broken by gasps and screams. She looked at Vasek, who had neither flinched nor gasped. There was a suspicion of a smile around his lips. The friar, leading the way, was giving the details: more than four thousand holy men had been gathered here to rest in peace. Vasek’s smile broadened. And as the English couple—following the friar closely with questions about the extraordinary purity of the air—disappeared into the second chapel, Vasek seized the moment.

In English, his voice so quick and low that Karen had to slip the scarf away from her ears, he was asking, “You delivered the envelope?”

“Yes.”

“To Bristow?”

“Yes.”

“Has action been taken?”

“I think so. I’ve been told nothing. Security is tight.”

That relaxed Vasek slightly. “Can you send him a message?”

“No.”

“When will you see him?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you
must
meet him!” He eyed the straggling line ahead of them, buzzing with exclamations and smothered shrieks as still more details were noted—some skeletons white, others partly draped by fragile remnants of brown tattered wool. “Tell him I was delayed in leaving Italy—an accident—I twisted—” He stopped there, broke into French and a normal voice. The Portuguese mother had darted back to pull her twelve-year-old son away from touching a skeleton’s hand and hauled him into the second chapel.

Karen and Vasek followed. His limp seemed to have intensified. Their progress was slow. The friar was beginning to lead the way into the third chapel. “I was delayed,” Vasek said hurriedly. “No matter. I’ll arrive in Washington. In two weeks. Tell him that.”

“You’ll find American territory only a few minutes from here,” Karen reminded him. “Just walk right in and wait for Bristow to come and vouch for you.” If that, she added silently, is what you need. Ridiculous caution.

“And how do I leave your embassy? Take a flight back to Washington with Bristow?” he asked sarcastically.

They were entering the third chamber. Vasek, his face still tense, spoke a sentence in French as the friar looked back. “You must keep up, brother,” the friar called to him.

“Yes, yes. My leg—”

The friar nodded his understanding and began urging the group into the fourth chapel.

Vasek looked at Karen, his lips tight. “I intend to reach America alive.”

“You would be guarded on that flight. You’ll be safe.”

“Hunted men have been killed whenever they were known to be in transit. Their guards along with them. A bomb in a car, a bomb in a plane. The only safe journey is anonymous, unknown to anyone. No whispers, no rumours, no reported movements, no discoveries.
That
is safe.”

They entered the last chapel: a major display of bones arranged into careful patterns. “Be careful with Aliotto. A good man. But under difficulties.”

“Was it he who told you I was in Rome? At the Imperial?”

Vasek judged it wise to speak some French, even if the rest of the group were all lost in fascination of the bones. But he was still speaking of Aliotto. “Yes. I ’phoned him. Last Tuesday.”

“I think,” she said very quietly, “that a lot has happened to him since Tuesday.”

“What?” Vasek asked sharply.

“He never met me, hasn’t called me. Others do that—in his name, they say.”

“Be
very
careful with him,” Vasek said, his face sombre. “Your warning was unnecessary, but I thank you.”

“Do you think I will be meeting him?” She had her doubts. Another fiasco, she was thinking, another assignment from Schleeman that never took place.

“Yes. If it is useful to them, he will meet you.”

“Useful to whom?” she asked in alarm. “And why—”

“Blackmail. He’s vulnerable.”

They joined the rest of the group. The teenagers had graduated from little shrieks and tears to silence. The Portuguese were subdued. The Englishwoman was talkative. “Interesting, isn’t it?” she asked Karen.

A quick glance from Vasek reminded Karen. “In-tristing?” she echoed slowly. “
Intéressant? Oui, madame. C’est bien intéressant. Incroyable.”
She turned to Vasek to thank him for his excellent translation. The others began to dip into purses and pockets for donations as the friar seated himself outside the chapel’s door at a table with a slotted box on its top. All contributions welcomed.

Quietly, Karen asked Vasek, “Were you waiting for me near the hotel today? Or did you have a doorman ’phone you as I was about to leave? A hefty tip and a tall story can always work wonders.” She began searching in her wallet. “Was I the runaway wife of your dear brother?”

He actually laughed. At her, not with her.

“You should wear coloured lenses,” she couldn’t resist telling him. And one up for me, she thought.

“I do. But today, how would you have known me so quickly?” He bowed and said goodbye. The friar refused his offering and hoped the French lady had understood everything. “Everything,” Vasek assured him. He stood aside to let the others start climbing a long flight of stone steps to the outer world. Karen was already on her way, keeping close to the pretty young Italians, who, as daylight drew nearer, were now in a state of giggles.

Vasek reached Via Veneto, turned downhill to Via del Tritone, a crowded street at all hours of the day. A bus from the Corso near by would take him close to the depot, where a large tourist bus would leave this evening, packed with one-day trippers. His seat there had been booked six weeks ago on his last visit to Rome. A battered suitcase—with change of clothes, hair, make-up, new papers and passport—was waiting for him in one of the depot’s lockers. Aliotto’s arrangements for passage on a freighter out of Genoa had been a useful subterfuge. Now they would think he was stranded temporarily, and the search in Italy would intensify. But, luck holding, he would be in Switzerland by tomorrow morning. Luck? No. Preparations, thorough and far-sighted, made your luck.

His limp lessened, but he’d keep it until he was joining a pack of tourists out for a cheap jaunt to Zurich. Two weeks, he had told Cornell—a pity to practise a little deception on her. She could be trapped, though, like Aliotto; and that was a risk he would not take. Her risk? A pity, he thought again, but necessary.

The city bus was packed, but he welcomed the jam of people. The more, the safer. A motherly woman offered the limping priest her seat. He took it with thanks and a blessing.

Karen awoke in her new room with streams of sunshine slanting in through the windows. Last night, she had been so tired, bewildered, too, that she had forgotten to close the shutters. The maid, of course, had latched them securely when she had turned down the sheets of a most comfortable bed, but Karen had opened them again to let her see the lights in the street below as company for supper in her room. She hadn’t been able or willing to visit the restaurant downstairs, far less explore Via Veneto again. There were three little bruises on her left hip where she had been quietly nipped as she walked back from the Capuchin Church. Apart from that (indignity or compliment?), she had suddenly felt swamped by loneliness after her brief call to Schleeman was over.