The Bellini Card (39 page)

It was a cat or, as it seemed momentarily to Yashim, the ghost of a cat, that saved his life, for as it materialized dimly and inexplicably in the doorway, Yashim finally remembered what the contessa had said.

What looked in the half-light like a closed door at the top of the stairs was only a curtain hanging in the doorway.

Yashim dropped to the floor, rolled once, and sprawled against the stairs just as the doorway erupted with a bright flash. Then he was squirming on his elbows headfirst down the stairs.

Behind him he heard the sound of a pistol being cocked.

When he twisted around the Tatar was already there, silhouetted against the breaking light, coolly looking down into the dark with the pistol in his hand.

Yashim’s hand closed on something small and hard that was lying beside him on the step. It was a glass jar, big enough to hold a candle.

He threw it, and it tinkled to pieces at the Tatar’s feet. Yashim pressed himself against the stairs.

The Tatar jumped back and fired again, blindly.

Two barrels, both shot.

Yashim said, “It’s over now. The killing stops.”

He took his knife by the point of the blade, protected by the darkness at his back, and began inching farther upright.

The Tatar cocked his head. “Resid told you that?”

“It’s only the truth, my friend.”

The Tatar considered this in silence.

“I was told, one more,” he said at length. “I do not need to make it two.”

Still the Tatar did not move. “Let me tell you something, efendi. In the old days, when my people made war, we rode west, for days and weeks, behind our chief. We rode fast, touching nothing, stopping for nothing. Seeing everything.”

“I know how the Tatars fought,” Yashim said, moving slowly. “I know your khan.” He was almost ready.

The Tatar turned his head and spat. “Before,” he said, “we had a khan. When we had ridden a long, long way, but only at the time he chose, we turned our horses east, toward home.”

Yes, Yashim thought, and then the pillage began. The looted, burning villages, the piles of dead, the roped convoys of slaves.

“We were moderate,” the Tatar said. “We had seen what we wanted, we took it, and we rode for home. Nothing more.”

He was backing away now, moving out of the light.

“So you see, efendi,” the Tatar said. “I was sent to Venice, and soon I, too, am going home.”

The Tatar had gone.

Yashim sprang for the stairs. It would take the Tatar only a few moments to reload.

At the top he whipped back the curtain.

It was a huge room, empty except for a small square table and a broken chair leaning drunkenly against the back wall. It was lit by a colonnade running the whole width of the building—almost. At the farther end was an empty doorway set into a wall of planks and bulging plaster: perhaps the assassin had ducked in there. Perhaps he was already loaded, cocked, and waiting for Yashim to step inside.

As he hesitated, Yashim heard something scrape at the window, or beyond it. He glanced up. Already the first barges were making their way down the canal. Flinging himself forward, he scrambled feetfirst through the nearest window and dropped into the loggia.

Under the balcony was a lean-to, covered in broken tiles.

Beyond it was the canal.

Yashim craned forward, searching the surface of the water. A few hundred yards away, where the canal curved, he recognized the outline of the Ca’ d’Aspi.

Ten minutes away. Ten minutes, running through the maze of the Venetian streets.

But for a powerful swimmer less, far less. Three hundred yards, in a direct line.

And the Tatar had a head start.

He swung himself over the balustrade, holding onto a slender column.

Beneath him was a barge stacked with firewood. It was rowed by two men, with another at the tiller, and it was moving fast.

As Yashim dropped down onto the mass of broken tiles, they began to slide.

H
E
fell awkwardly, wrenching his leg as he rolled across the cords of wood.

The tillerman gave a shout of surprise.

Yashim snatched himself upright and turned to the man who was staring at him, dumbfounded.

“It’s me!” Yashim cried. “The pasha!”

A look of consternation swept across the tillerman’s face.

“Tell them to keep rowing!”

The tillerman glanced at the men forward. “Row on! Row on!” he barked. “You, you don’t look like the pasha,” he objected simply.

Yashim scrambled to the front of the barge. His eyes swept the water. It was flat, oily, gleaming in the half dawn.

He had the advantage now, surely? The barge was moving faster than a man could swim, and it was three hundred yards to the Palazzo d’Aspi.

He peered at the shoreline, where the buildings dropped into the water.
The buildings were clear, but there were freestanding mooring posts, too. Was the Tatar hiding somewhere among them?

If he were hiding, then he must have seen Yashim jump.

But he’d been swimming. He couldn’t have seen.

Yashim glanced ahead, and that was when he saw a slight movement to his right. It was out of the corner of one eye, and when he looked again, there was nothing.

Only the mouth of the empty canal and the low crenellations of the caisson he’d climbed an hour or so before.

But the Tatar had slipped over it again. He’d seen him go.

Or had he?

Was it a faster way back to the Palazzo d’Aspi?

Had the Tatar seen him coming?

And if he jumped—and was wrong—would the contessa die?

Yashim scuttled back to the man at the tiller. His foot throbbed.

If he jumped, could he swim?

The mouth of the canal was only fifteen yards ahead.

Yashim stood up. He put both hands to his mouth and shouted,
“Get down on deck!”

The tillerman looked up, mouth agape.

Yashim grabbed the tiller and swept it out of the man’s hands.

Loaded with cords of beechwood from the foothills of the Dolomites, the barge heeled and swung right, driven by its own massive momentum. The portside rower staggered and vanished with a shout into the canal; his companion sprawled across the logs.

For a moment it looked as if Yashim had made the turn too soon. As the bows swung around toward the edge of the palazzo, it seemed inevitable that they would crash into the masonry wall.

But even as it tilted to the left, brushing its gunwales against the surface, the heavy barge was still making its way downstream.

Over the still and silent waters of the Grand Canal, its solid keel cracked against the caisson like a rifle shot.

The broad prow lifted out of the water, scraping up on the irregular jutting timbers, and Yashim and the tillerman were thrown forward.

For a moment the barge seemed to hang at an unnatural angle. The
impact had driven the stern so low that as it slewed to port it seemed to be pressing upon a scoop of water that would at any second rush back and overwhelm it.

Clinging to the edge of the hold, Yashim glanced back. The water was like oil again—slow, gurgling, wreathing itself in coils and bubbles.

Something cracked like a rifle bolt, and the barge lurched.

The waters at the stern rushed in. They swept in beneath the rudder, picked up the barge and lifted it, and as the boat began to rise, a shudder swept its length.

The central plank of the barrier snapped in two. The weight of the barge dropped suddenly a few inches. The crossbeam beneath curved, then popped from its rabbets, and as the prow of the barge dropped through the barrier, Yashim raised his head.

He saw the Tatar, standing in the trench up to his knees, his hands in the water.

He saw him staring upward, blankly, as water began to billow across the shattered caisson.

The water jetted out on either side of the barge’s keel, like two green wings, scouring the walls and then curling inward, dragging with it shattered timber that smacked against the walls like weightless wickerwork and then swirled inward, smashing down onto the trench in a thundering plume of foam and mud.

The boiling deluge rolled down to the far end of the canal, crashed against the caisson, and jetted up into the air.

Yashim gripped the edge of his plank and held on for dear life.

Very slowly, like a fat woman nudging herself into a bath, the barge creaked forward. As the backwash returned, it met a new wave of water and then, as if someone had lightly smacked its rump, the barge glided abruptly and harmlessly into the canal.

The man at the prow stood up shakily.

Yashim removed his fingers from the plank. When he looked around he saw the other rower in the water of the Grand Canal, clinging to his oar.

The tillerman looked back and then at Yashim. He was white as a sheet.

“Paolo,” he said, with an exasperated jerk of his head. “Always, he misses everything.”

Y
ASHIM
found the contessa sleeping, still braided to her bed.

He slipped the cords easily and she rolled over, still sleeping, gathering her hands to her chest. He lifted the sheets and laid them over her.

Back in his room Yashim looked at himself in a mirror. The tillerman was right: he did not look like the pasha. He looked barely human. He had lost his turban and his hair was stiff with the mud that caked his face, his neck, and his clothes. His shirt was ripped to the waist. Blood had dried down one cheek, and his eyes looked unnaturally white.

He stripped off his wet things and washed his face and hands in the bowl, turning the water a muddy gray. He wiped himself over with a damp towel, shivering, wishing that the Venetians among all their thefts and adoptions from Istanbul had chosen the hammam. He felt as though the rotting ooze of the canals had seeped into the pores of his skin, and cold, too. What he needed now was unlimited hot water and a man to knead him like fresh dough. He put on some fresh linen and dry clothes, and felt somewhat refreshed.

Back in the salon he stood for a long time at the window, watching the traffic thicken on the canal, listening to the sound of bells and thinking about the man he had killed.

T
HE
bells of San Sebastiano were ringing when Signora Contarini sallied forth in her best bonnet. Her husband had willingly ceded his position on her arm to Stanislaw Palewski, who walked solemnly at her side. Behind them came Maria, holding the speechless young man by one hand and a small sister by the other. Her brother followed with two children.

The Contarinis were going to Mass.

“The mad boy should come,” the signora had decided. “Why not? He’s a Christian, isn’t he?”

“How can you tell, signora?” Palewski replied. “He might be a Moor, like Yashim.”

She shook her head vigorously. “Believe me, signore, he’s a Christian. As I hope you are, signore.”

The man remained quiet until they reached the church, when he began to utter small cries, patting the doorway with his hands and nodding amiably. Some of the parishioners stared, but Signora Contarini kept her chin level and swept her entourage grandly inside, where they had some difficulty in pressing the man into a pew. He seemed to want to go around and around the walls, touching everything. Only when Father Andrea entered did the man grow still, his stubbly head cocked in wonder at the motions of the priest.