neglect. Still, it felt to Alex Hawke like a sacrilege, a desecration. He brushed away veils of drooping cobwebs and ducked into the musty coolness of the reception hall.
The staircase. That was the thing which helped him get beyond all the ugliness at his feet. It soared upwards to the very top of the house in two gently curving sets of stairs which intersected to form landings at every floor, then bowed out once again and ascended higher only to join once more. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing Hawke had ever seen. At once delicate and strong, it was the work of an artist commissioned by someone, this John Randolph apparently, who clearly wanted to make the most functional fixture in the house also the most beautiful.
The stairway reminded him of something, Alex thought, mounting the stairs and climbing upwards. Something in nature. What was it? Damn it, he couldn’t remember anything lately.
Alex reached the top floor, paused on the top step, and pulled the old postcard out of his jacket pocket. On the faded front was a Mississippi steamboat, white billows of steam floating from her big black stacks, coming round a wide bend in the river. On the other side was a little note from his mother. He’d read the thing a thousand times, but now, standing in her house, he found himself reading it aloud. Not whispering either. He pronounced each word in a loud, clear tone, as if he were addressing an invisible audience gathered below.
“My darling Alexander,” he began. “Mummy and Daddy have finally reached New Orleans and what fun we are having! Last night, Daddy took me to hear a famous trumpet player down in the French Quarter named Satchmo. Isn’t that a funny name? He toots like an angel, though, and I adored him! This morning we drove up the River Road looking for Mummy’s old house. I was amazed to see it still standing! It looks dreadful to be sure, falling down, but I took your father up to the very top floor and showed him my room when I was your age. It’s a very silly little room, but you would love it. It has a big round window that opens and you can sit and watch the river go by all day if you want to! Rivers go on forever just like my love for you. I miss you, my darling, and Daddy and I send you all our love and oodles of kisses, Mummy.”
The sound of his voice was still reverberating throughout the empty house as Alex returned the postcard to his pocket. He walked to the banister, which seemed solid enough, gripped it and leaned over, looking down through the intertwining stairs to the ground floor hall far below.
“Hello,” he cried, listening for the echo. “Anybody here? I’m home!”
He turned and walked along the hall until he came to the center door. It was slightly ajar and he pushed it open, surprised by the flood of sunlight still streaming in. It was coming through a large round opening in the opposite wall. The opening was in an alcove formed by the pitch of a gable. Going to it, he saw the window itself was long gone and all that remained was the empty hole. Shielding his eyes from the glare of the setting sun, he went to it and rested both hands in the curvature of the sill.
Her room was filled with light every evening. This is where she would have had her bed. She would have read her books here, listening to the sonata of a songbird, the sweet scent of magnolia floating up from the gardens. During the day, she could watch the boats out on the river, looking up from her book whenever she heard one hooting, coming around the wide bend. At night, pulling her covers up, she would lay her head down on the pillow and see the broad avenue of trees which led all the way out to the stars over the river and sometimes to the moon.
There was a rickety old straight-backed chair tilted against one wall, and Alex pulled it over to the window. He sat there, seeing the world through her eyes, until the sun had finally set behind the levee and all the stars he could see from his mother’s window had been born.
Finally, he stood up and turned to go. He was walking across the dusty floorboards when it came to him. What the lovely spiral staircases of Twelvetrees had reminded him of. That thing in nature they had so closely resembled.
“It’s DNA,” Alex said softly to himself and then he pulled his mother’s door shut behind him.
Chapter Four
Venice
FRANCESCA STOOD ALONE, DRINKING CHAMPAGNE AND LOOKING out at the hazy lights along the Grand Canal. A slightly swampy evening breeze off the water carried a fog and blew the blonde curls back from her forehead. She allowed herself a smile, standing there at the railing of the terrace balcony of the suite at the Gritti Palace. The last of the Italian detectives and American diplomatic security agents had all come and gone. Each group had visited the suite at least three times during the week following the bizarre death of the new American ambassador to Italy. They had, they claimed, all they wanted from her. A lie.
She’d allowed herself the smile at this lie because no man on earth had ever had all he wanted from her.
The three Italian detectives had left the hotel, each one clutching her glossy autographed eight by ten. The two handsome American agents from the State Department had, after their third visit, departed the Gritti with only one burning memory: three exquisite inches of pale white thigh and pink garter above the tops of her sheer black stockings visible as she rose from the deep cushioned chair to say good-bye.
One of them, Agent Sandy Davidson, had, she felt, a certain boyish charm.
“Sfumato!” she had exclaimed on his last visit, tears welling in those enormous brown eyes. “Si! Up in smoke! Poof! That’s what they tell me has happened to him, Sandy! Horrible, no? Ma Donna!”
The American DSS agent in charge thanked the world-famous movie star profusely for her time and apologized for asking so many delicate questions at such a horrendous time. He was sure they would soon catch the terrorist group behind the gruesome murder of Simon Clarkson Stanfield. Any threats? he asked, putting on his raincoat. There had been, she said, certain threats, si, as recently as the preceding week. Her lover had said he was tired of always looking over his shoulder. An American expression, no? What she didn’t tell them, what they certainly had not needed to know, was precisely why her lover had actually been looking over his shoulder that warm summer night one week earlier.
Two minutes after Stanfield had left her alone in the bed that night, Francesca had poured herself a glass of Pol Roger and walked naked out onto the very balcony where she now stood.
Her little silver bird had flown. The red bag hanging from her bare shoulder was much lighter now, without the slender missile. She drew a deep breath and composed herself. A few quiet moments to reflect before she opened the red leather bag again.
Certo, she’d made only one real mistake. She’d stupidly snapped at Luciano out on the dock when he tried to help her with her bag. Surely the target had been watching, seen that behavioral misstep. She couldn’t fly to Venezia; she’d had to take the train because of the contents of the bag. The long ride was tiresome and boring, what with all the begging for autographs. No excuse. She’d lost it down there on the dock, momentarily, and surely the target had seen her step out of character.
She was only lucky he hadn’t asked to see what was in her bag that was so important, no? Stupido! Only the stupid could allow themselves the luxury of luck!
She removed two items from the red leather bag. A Sony Watchman television with a tiny dish antenna affixed. And a very sophisticated satellite telephone to which she had attached a scrambling device of her own design.
First, she switched on the palm-sized television and adjusted the antenna. The image broadcast from the nose-mounted camera of the tiny missile was riveting.
The target was twenty feet ahead, bobbing and weaving and continually looking back over his shoulder. His face, so handsome in repose, was a mask of raw fear. He was just leaving the Alla Napoleonica and entering the central Piazza. Not taking her eyes off the screen she speed-dialed a number on the scrambled satphone. Snay bin Wazir, otherwise known as the Pasha, picked up on the second ring.
“Pasha?”
“My little Rose,” the soft male voice said in classical Arabic, but with a distinct English lilt to it.
“Si, Pasha.”
The Pasha had long ago decided to call all of the female hashishiyyun in his seraglio of death his ‘petites fleurs de mal’. His little flowers of evil. Each of his small army of seductive assassins was entitled to her own flower
