The Bellini Card (37 page)

The corridor was pitch-dark. Yashim felt his way along the wall. He reached a door and passed it. The next door he opened: slatted moonlight filtered through the louvered shutters onto the four-poster bed, hung with dark drapery; the room felt huge and empty.

He was about to shut the door when a low growl made the hair stand up on the nape of his neck.

He took a step into the room, wishing he had a candle.

And a white shape launched itself through the air and slammed him back against the wall.

He felt soft hair whip across his face and hard nails dragging across his chest.

She bit him like a wild animal, on the neck, on the cheek, clawing at his chest and shoulders.

He got a hand beneath her chin and flung her back. He could taste blood on his lip.

Carla staggered back and then flung herself forward again, sobbing and biting.

Yashim grabbed her arms and tried to force them down. She whirled around from side to side, trying to break his grip, dragging him back toward the bed.

Then he was on top of her, pinning back her hands above her head. Her hips writhed under him.

She spat into his face.

Yashim shook his head. Furious, he dragged a cord from the post and doubled it around her wrists. She twisted under his grip, almost threw him off, so he shifted his weight farther up her body. Her legs thrashed the bed.

With a heave he shifted her shoulders across the bed, bringing her wrists to the bedpost. As he leaned over her to tie them back, she jerked her head, snapping at him.

She made a furious lunge at the cord with her arms, trying to move it.

With a spring Yashim was off the bed, standing close, panting.

The cord held.

Carla gasped, reaching for breath. Between gasps, she began to laugh.

Yashim closed his eyes; his chest heaved.

She thought she had won.

He felt a rush of anger: if she
had
won, then he had lost.

Let it be, he told himself. Let it be.

His breathing eased.

And something cold, and very fine, slid up beneath Yashim’s ear as a voice whispered in it softly, “Thank you.”

S
ECONDS
passed.

Yashim supposed that Carla had laughed again.

He was very still now. He felt the blade below his ear.

But just one thought ran through his mind, like a drumbeat.

Te
ekkür ederim
meant “thank you” in Turkish.

Yashim tensed his stomach. His shoulders bunched.

And he jackknifed. He took a step forward, his shoulders dropped, and he doubled at the waist.

He sensed, rather than felt, the blade slicing through the soft skin behind his ear.

He kicked back abruptly with one leg.

His hope was that the Tatar had lost form: killing Venetians was like liming a tree for birds.

His foot connected, but not hard: the next moment, the Tatar had a grip of his ankle. Left hand—Yashim wrenched himself forward and took a mouthful of the bed.

With both hands on the mattress he launched himself backward.

The Tatar sidestepped easily, but now Yashim was at his back. As the Tatar whipped around, Yashim flung out one fist, and then the other. The raised knuckle of his middle finger sank into the Tatar’s cheek.

The Tatar had him by the scruff of his neck; Yashim felt himself choke and flailed blindly. Then the Tatar seized his waistband and with a grunt sent him crashing through the air—Yashim raised his hands and the shutters burst apart like rotten twigs.

But Yashim was already twisting as he flew: his knees doubled against
the windowsill and for a second he saw the dark bulk of buildings swing upward. His head cracked against the wall—in a moment the Tatar would flip his feet through the window, and he would be gone.

Instinctively, Yashim tensed his legs. With a final effort he jerked himself upright: the Tatar was at the window.

Yashim grabbed him with both hands—but the momentum was too feeble to carry him into the room. As he fell back again he kicked out, spinning them both into space, precipitating the Tatar over and over into the air.

Only in Venice would anyone survive a two-story drop.

The Tatar smacked into the water first. Yashim seemed to pummel in on top of him and was thrashing and coughing as he came up for air.

He kicked out, in panic: the Tatar was still beneath the water.

Yashim scudded back, toward the security of the palazzo wall, and there, in the faint glow of lamplight on the water, he saw the Tatar break the surface ten yards away.

He was swimming away, up the canal.

Yashim wished he could let him go.

He wiped his mouth with his fingers and tasted blood.

With his other hand he found the knife. The knife that Malakian had given him for an asper: the cook’s knife.

A knife that a hunter might carry, too, for slipping off a pelt.

The knife that was made of damascene.

Yashim kicked off from the wall and began to hunt.

“W
ONDERFUL
, wonderful,” Palewski murmured. He had his boots before the fire and a sheaf of drawings on his lap.

“Very good!” he said enthusiastically, holding a drawing of the cottage up before his eyes. He nodded vigorously, and his new friend chuckled and bobbed about.

Rather like having a child of one’s own, Palewski thought.

“Wonderful,” he said again, picking a new sketch out of the heap. “Maria, have you seen what our friend has done?”

Maria came over and leaned against his chair. Palewski felt the roundness of her breast against his cheek.

“This,” he said. “And this.”

Maria heaved a sigh. “Incredible! Like an angel!”

“Perhaps you’d like to sit here and look through them, Maria?”

“Yes, signore—but mamma wants the room swept and clean.”

“I could sweep.”

Maria laughed. A warm, happy laugh: it was the first time she’d laughed since she came home. “I think he really likes it when
you
look at his drawings.”

Palewski gave her an exasperated look. “I don’t think he’s all that fussy, Maria.”

But Maria had taken her broom and was banging it about under the table.

Palewski sighed. “But this is beautiful!” he said, to make Maria laugh again.

The odd young man nodded and gobbled and grinned.

Palewski felt a twinge of remorse. The fellow’s drawings were sublime: it was only that he produced them in such volume! His tongue always at the corner of his mouth, his eyes sparkling, his hand moving freely across the page. Time after time the young man had summed up whole scenes in a few lines: the tilt of a woman’s head, the atmosphere of a crowded room, the curve of a child’s cheek. Several times Palewski had recognized himself, down to the outstretched legs and the fashionable width of his lapel.

Sometimes the young man drew from memory—rapid sketches of the piazza filled with people, with the Austrian bandsmen just about to play; or the view from a high window, of rooftops and the lagoon and the distant Dolomites.

“Hello!” Palewski said, sliding another picture from the sheaf. “Here’s Barbieri!”

T
HE
Tatar was moving away from him through the dark water. Yashim guessed that he’d been hurt in the plunge—winded, certainly.

Perhaps, too, the Tatar had lost his knife.

Perhaps the advantage had shifted to him.

The water was not especially cold, and Yashim was lightly dressed: the Tatar had several yards’ start on him.

Yashim watched him swim across the mouth of a small canal; on the other side he began to move faster against the canal wall, scrabbling like a bat, using the brick foundations of the next palazzo as handholds.

Yashim plunged across the canal and followed suit. Now he could hear the man’s breath and the splashes as he lunged through the water. In the moonlight he was a dark shape against the wall.

At the next corner the Tatar swiveled left and disappeared.

Yashim kicked off warily from the wall and circled the corner.

The Tatar was nowhere to be seen. The canal was a dark chasm, but as Yashim bobbed in the water a distant light flicked on and off.

Yashim was puzzled, until the moonlight picked out the faintest outline of a low crenellated barrier across the mouth of the canal. Now and then, he remembered, the authorities would close a canal for dredging.

He swam cautiously to the far side of the barrier, the knife in his hand. When he touched the rough wood he held his breath, pressing his back against the masonry wall.

Had the Tatar climbed the barrier already? Or was he on Yashim’s side, waiting in the dark?

Yashim groped for the top of the thick plank. It was about eighteen inches above the surface. He slid the knife back into its pocket and in one smooth motion he hauled himself up.

The canal beyond was dredged and empty. The canal bed glinted at his feet, about ten feet below. The Tatar was nowhere to be seen.

Yashim swung his legs over the barrier and dropped down into the soft mud.