Assignment The Girl in the Gondola Page 2

  "But you are sure," Durell insisted.

  "He, or one of his pupils, is here. Silent and invisible.

  I think it is the master himself. And why should old

  Pollini, living in his faded Doge's palace, be so important

  as to merit Dinov's attention? This is why we sent for you."

  "I begin to understand," Durell said.

  In the K Section files, behind the facade at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington, was a file on known assassins, slim and inconspicuous in a blue folder. The data sheet had long been memorized by Durrell.

  DINOV, Helmuth J., 47G-225, ref. B-77 (Ostend, E. Berlin). German Ukrainian, Colonel, KGB, ex-MVD Major (ref. Vienna 10/5/52). Age 49, b. Kiev. WW2 guerilla activity Nazi occupation Ukraine. Two years imprisonment after Red Army return. Released post-death Stalin. No specified charges. Camp 573, Uztent-Bezh. Reported killed in Budapest during Hungarian uprising, in revenge for mass executions of rebels. But suspected of having been in Congo, Havana, Manila. No physical description. Education, M.D. Believed present head of Blue Squad Four. Durell's mind ticked off the dossier as he met Zuccamel-la's bland stare. The Italian cop spread dimpled hands. "So it must be important, eh—even critical. There is always danger in political murder. Assassination is a knife with two edges. The risk must have seemed justified to them." "And the motive?" Durell asked.

  "We do not know. Harry Harris will contact you. Nothing is stolen from Pollini's files. It is not a question of our defense plans or weaponry. Pollini's affairs are all in order. His young French wife was entertaining in another part of his palazzo at the time of his murder. She heard nothing, and found him much later in his bedroom, dead. You will wish to see the widow; she is quite calm about it. Nothing of this may be important, except for the Albanian, Gregori Shkoeder, who is known to have visited the General three times last week, and was in the palazzo that evening."

  Durell was patient, knowing Zuccamella's flair for the dramatic. He went briefly out onto his balcony. No one was on the terrace below. A gondola slid into the narrow canal, carrying two wide-eyed tourists in the dim evening light. The sky to the south was a fading lime green over the Adriatic.

  'The Albanian, Shkoeder, arrived by fishing boat two weeks ago with his son. He claimed political asylum, but he was a colonel in military security in the Debrec region over there."

  Durell said: "We don't know much about Albania these days."

  "True. Shkoeder made contact with our lamented Defense Minister and saw him several times. Pollini again granted him an interview for that fatal evening. Then he telephoned Harris here in Venice. His conversation, Harris says, was wild and incoherent. Pollini did not stipulate what Shkoeder may have told him. And only the Albanian can tell us about it now."

  "And where is this Shkoeder?"

  "He has disappeared. Harris is looking for him. But if Shkoeder did not kill Pollini, he needs us, since he is a defector. He will come to us. Those mountains of his homeland are known for long and bloody feuds, eh? Perhaps his former comrades are hunting him."

  "Was Pollini a man who might have panicked easily?"

  "No, he had no imagination at all, which made him a poor military tactician, but which qualified him admirably for administrative routine. Harris says he was excited, even terrified, on the telephone. He insisted action had to be taken in five days—or else."

  "Or else what?"

  Zuccamella shrugged heavily. "In our present world, we try to hold the pieces together every moment, to keep it from blowing apart. It can happen at any time. You know this, my friend. The days of crisis are marked on your face."

  "It never seems to end," Durell said. ...

  The girl, Ursula, roused him from his thoughts of Zuccamella. She said: "You are very silent, dear Sam. Have I shocked you?"

  "With what?"

  "By admitting that I am falling in love with you."

  He looked at her golden eyes. She had the skin and profile of the northern Italians, and her features might have been taken from an old Roman coin. He noted again her proud breasts, long, strong thighs, and tapered waist in her stretch pants and man's shirt. She seemed frustrated by her indifferent work on the canvas and she frowned, pulling down on the corners of her full, soft mouth. Ursula had not gone out with any man while he had been in the Penzione these three days. She was on her balcony early each day, and she took her meals in her room. He had checked her address on the passport register downstairs; the data for a small lake village near Milan as her home seemed valid. Zuccamella had not been able to uncover anything about her.

  "Well, have I?" she insisted. Her brows arched expectantly. "Is it so surprising that in Venice, in the spring, when I live next to a handsome man, I think of falling in love?"

  "You know nothing about me," he said.

  She laughed. "Ah, you puritan Americans!" She looked at him for a long time, and when his dark blue eyes remained steady on hers, she flushed faintly and turned away and began to fold her easel. "It is late. It is much too dark to see."

  "Stay another moment, Ursula."

  "No, you make me feel ridiculous. A woman should not speak as I do. You laugh at me."

  "On the contrary," he began. Then he gave up words and stepped across the balcony rail to join her. She stood up swiftly, like a startled bird, but her eyes were unnaturally bright, dancing, expectant, and a little smile was carved on her lips. When he kissed her, she responded avidly, her arms going around him, her body quick and inviting.

  "Caro Sam "

  Then the telephone rang in his room.

  He let her go at once. For a moment she clung, and he reached up and unclasped her hands behind his neck.

  "I'm sorry, Ursula."

  "Let it ring!" she whispered fiercely,

  "I must answer it."

  "For three days you are alone. You get no calls. You see no one. And when I at last decide what to do with you—"

  "It might be important. I am truly sorry."

  "Sorry?" She stepped back, eyes ablaze with tawny anger. "Oh, you are a fool! Go! Go answer the stupid telephone! And never speak to me again!"

  Durell wanted to swear, but she turned away and angrily gathered up her paints and equipment. With a shrug, he returned to his shadowed room and moved unerringly through the darkness to the desk and the ringing telephone.

  It was Harry Harris.

  "Cajun?"

  "Here."

  "What took you so long?"

  "I was on the balcony."

  "In the rain?"

  "I hadn't noticed." Durell was short. "What is it?"

  "I've got a line on friend Shkoeder. We made an appointment—he called me, as we'd hoped. It might be a trap, though. We have to move fast."

  Durell was silent.

  "Are you listening, Sam?"

  "I'm ready."

  "I thought you'd be happy to break out of that joint you're holed up in. Must be boring as hell for you, waiting."

  Durell listened to the angry thumps and clatterings through the wall from Ursula's room. He could picture the girl hurling her easel and canvas about in a temper. A slow grin touched his iron mouth.

  "Not as boring as all that. Where do we meet?"

  Harris told him, and thirty seconds later, Durell left the Penzione Murelli and walked toward the place.

  Chapter Three

  Although Harris sounded urgent, Durell took time to make sure he was not followed. He boarded a motoscafo to the Ponte di Rialto that spanned the Grand Canal and got out to walk among the little shops and open market stalls. He had the feeling he was being watched. He went down the Merceria, the busiest shopping quarter, and looked at the Murano glass, the cheap heavy stuff for souvenirs and the occasional gem of extreme, thin fragility. He was captivated

  by the minglings of the past—the Byzantine and the Lombard-Romanesque architecture and the Venetian Gothic. But not so fascinated that he ignored the feeling he was followed. Yet he could not identify his shadow.

  He took a
water taxi back under the hump-backed bridges to the Piazza of San Marco. Harry Harris would be worried, but there was no help for it. The rain did not dampen the activity in the big square, and the restaurants were crowded. He had an irrational hunger for the gran seole venezine, the local crab dish—a hangover, perhaps, from his Cajun boyhood. But he could delay no longer. He crossed in front of the basilica, with its five oriental domes, its rare marbles, and glittering gold background. The daylight was done. In there was the Vault of Paradise, with Titian's "Last Judgment", but the blue and gold enameled clock on the tower opposite the campanile was striking the hour as the two huge, bronze Moors hammered the mechanical bells. He went by the four bronze Greek horses on the outer terrace as the bells clamored. Passers-by in the big Piazza went along without a second glance for him. Whoever was on his tail was clever. The instinct that eyes were upon him troubled him, but there was no help for it now.

  He was to meet Harris in the Palazzo Ducale, the Palace of the Doges, beyond the delicate, columned loggia reflected in the quiet lagoon. The pink and white marble still expressed the splendor of the time when Venice was the "Most Serene Republic." Some people still lingered on the Scala dei Giganti, the Stairway of the Giants. And then Harris appeared, walking quickly, and touched his arm.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I have that old feeling," Durell said. "There's a shadow pinned on me, and I'm the donkey."

  "Spotted him?"

  "No."

  "Then let's have some coffee and look around. I think we can spare the time."

  Harris was a bit withdrawn and careful with Durell. There was some rivalry between his service and K Section, but they had common goals and Durell never found it difficult to work with NATO people. Harris was quick, competent, and worried—a tall, muscular young man with a clipped brush of red hair that he exposed when he took off his shapeless, velvet Borsalino hat and slapped it down on the cafe table. Although he wore an English topcoat and Italian shoes, his square, open face was as American as apple pie. Still, Durell knew, behind that face was a mind and manner as ruthless, cruel, and savage as that of any jungle animal.

  "It may be nothing," Harris said. 'Tempest in a teapot. But we really don't know what's happening in Albania since the Chinese moved in. One tends to ignore the place. But Albania outflanks us, strategically. And it's important enough to bring in Helmuth Dinov or one of his expert knives to silence poor Pollini after the Albanian defector, Shkoeder, told him something or other. I only wish I could've made it out."

  "On the other hand, since Russia and China no loneer see eye to eye, we may be expected to cooperate with Dinov."

  Harris grimaced. "Buddies against a common enemy?"

  "Maybe. Friendly enemies. A hell of a thought."

  "Would you?"

  "Cooperate with Dinov?" Durell shrugged. "I doubt it."

  He ordered a Campari, since his taste in coffee ran to the Louisiana chicory blends rather than espresso. The people in the cafe and the rain-swept piazza did not look dangerous.

  "This Gregori Shkoeder is a tricky little bastard," Harris went on. "I don't like working with renegades. How can you trust them? He'll want lots of money if he has any real information to sell, and our budget is a bit tight."

  "I can get some cash from San Angelo 3565," Durell said, giving the American Consulate address.

  "Fine. Then let's have a talk with our Albanian."

  The rain splashed gloomily in the canal and dripped from lead gutters to run crookedly across the old stone paving, then dribbled down from the arched bridges spanning the water. Durell turned up his collar and reflected that sometimes Venice in the spring was equal to the ecstasies promised by the travel posters.

  There was a small trattoria where this canal intersected another. Lights shone on the narrow flagged sidewalk and poked dubious fingers into the things that floated in the water. A battered gondola was tied up at the landing, empty. From the restaurant came sounds of quarreling voices and a screeching radio, although the singer's voice was good. The liquid Italian seemed disembodied in the dark rain, echoing from the ancient tenements that had once been the pride of Venetian merchants and Adriatic princes. Durell and Harris turned left and the ballad lingered after them, sad and melting in the night, until it was cut off by an intervening building.

  This was not the Venice usually exhibited to tourists. Here were the noisome back alleys and tiny canals and squares and apartments like rabbit warrens—poorly lighted, odorous, teeming with a life detached from that of San Marco's Piazza and the ancient grandeurs of the Queen of the Adriatic.

  Harris paused on a bridge and leaned on an old stone armorial bearing. He flicked a hand casually.

  "Supposed to meet Shkoeder here. But this is too obvious." He indicated the canal and the huddled tenements whose ruined, palatial facades reflected light on the narrow sidewalk, "But Shkoeder gave us an alternative. We'll go there."

  Harris turned left from the bridge and walked across a small square where dim lights showed a scurrying cat, two stout old women arguing in a recessed doorway whose panelling had once been magnificent, and a streetwalker who looked up in quick hope as Durell and the redheaded man walked by. She cast a whispered obscenity after them when she was ignored. Harris knew where he was going. Their heels made no sound on the uneven paving. The wind had veered, and the rain blew directly into their faces, cold and salty from the Adriatic. Harris turned abruptly into a dripping, vaulted archway and then passed before they debouched into a wide courtyard. There was a small central fountain, and in the dim light that shone from the surrounding apartment windows, they could see a man standing in the rain beside the fountain. Assorted noises greeted them: radios, television, a baby wailing, a woman's rich, sexual laughter. The buildings were drab, centuries old, leaning one upon the other. Iron balconies and rickety fire escapes made black patterns against the ocher paint peeling on their facades.

  "Hold it, Cajun."

  Durell had already paused in the shadowed tunnel of the arcade entrance. Looking back through the dark passage to the canal, he saw no one. The rainy courtyard was empty except for the nervously pacing man by the fountain. He wore a wide-brimmed felt hat turned all the way down from the crown; he looked thin and defenseless, ducking his head to suck at a cigarette in his cupped hand. In the brief glow of the coal, Durell saw a thin young face, a flash of white, nervous eyes.

  "Who is it?" he asked Harris.

  'The boy. Shkoeder's son."

  "I don't like it. Let's take him."

  Durell had been in the business long enough to smell out the shape and design of any trap. This place was unhealthy. Nor was he accustomed to Harris' mannerisms or habits of thought, and it was vital to know your partner's capacities and weaknesses. Still, he knew Harris was competent and tough, which was how you usually became after surviving in the profession for any time.

  "Let's go," he said.

  The man at the fountain had no chance at all. Durell and Harris came out of the arcade doorway like dark streaks of hunting animals striking for their prey. The man never suspected them until Durell caught him with a forearm across the throat and bent him back against the stone lip of the fountain. His target moaned—he was only a boy, no more than twenty—and his cigarette fell, hissing, to the wet pavement. As he stood helpless in Durell's grip, Harris slapped him hard, and Durell rapped: "Take it easy, Harry. I've got him."

  "You're Peter Shkoeder?" Harris rasped in Italian.

  The boy nodded, his eyes rolling white in a narrow face filled with terror. He was strangling, and Durell eased his grip a little.

  "We haven't much time. Let's not waste it working him over," Durell said.

  Harris breathed angrily. "I don't trust him. This kid and his old man have been playing footsie with me for over two weeks. Any minute, the roof can fall in. There's no time for courtesy."

  The boy gasped and tried to speak and fell across the stone fountain. His cheap suit was soggy from the rain, and his lank, black
hair was looped across a foxlike face. He had a pale scar across one cheek. He wore a ratty knitted muffler around his throat, tucked into the dirty collar of his shirt.

  "Signor Harris, please "

  "Why weren't you at the bridge?" Harris asked

  "Poppa was afraid."

  "Damn straight he was afraid. If he plays games with me, he'll regret he was ever born."

  "But someone followed Poppa and me!" the boy protested.

  "Who was it?" Durell asked quietly.

  The boy's Italian was clumsy. His eyes swiveled back and forth. "You are Signor Sam Durell, eh?" He sighed. "Poppa will be happy to speak with you."

  "Where is he?"

  "Upstairs, waiting. Room 442." The boy gestured vaguely to the surrounding tenements. A radio blared in the wet, dark courtyard. A woman cried. The lighted windows made wavering yellow patterns on the stone flagging. "Poppa is afraid of his own shadow now. He told me to wait here for you."

  "Who was following you?"

  "I do not know. Ask Poppa."

  "Don't worry, we will," Harris said angrily. "Show us the way, you turd."

  "But Poppa told me to wait here and watch."

  Durell nodded and agreed. They left the boy at the fountain and went into the tenement. The stairs creaked, and it was impossible to ascend in silence. Harris whistled softly between his square white teeth as they climbed to the third floor. From a window at the end of the tiled corridor they could look down at the rain puddles in the courtyard. The Albanian boy stood near the fountain. He had lit another cigarette, and his thin shoulders were hunched against the dampness. Durell led Harris to room 442.

  The air was filled with the smells of cooking and long human habitation. The tiled corridor was stained, and the building was a maze of halls, balconies, and terraces, all built on different levels through the generations of Venetian history. In this labyrinth, anyone might be waiting for them.

  Durell took his gun from his coat and held it ready. Harris knocked lightly on the door, and Durell stood a little to one side to cover him. The radio in the next apartment seemed louder than before. The cooking smells were heavier. There was only a single electric bulb high in the vaulted ceiling, about twenty feet away. At the other end of the corridor was a stairway angling to a half level in an adjoining building.