outside. Someone shouted. Van Doren half turned, shouting in reply. ‘I’m in here! I’ve got Canavan, but the priest is armed. Be careful.’
There was a crash as someone kicked the door open. Two men in green anoraks burst into the room carrying automatic rifles. Makonnen did not flinch or even turn his head. He held the gun in both hands now: his grip was growing steadier by the second.
The newcomers hesitated. They levelled their rifles at the priest, but knew the risk of opening fire.
‘Put the gun down, Father,’ said Van Doren. He continued to hold Patrick in a painful arm-lock.
‘I will fire,’ said Makonnen. ‘Tell your friends to lower their rifles.’
‘Be reasonable, Father. If you kill me, my men here will gun down both of you half a second later. What will that accomplish? You will simply die with my blood on your hands.’
Makonnen wavered. Van Doren gazed straight at him, as though daring him to shoot. He dropped the pistol to the floor.
One of the newcomers stepped up to Makonnen and grabbed him roughly by the arm.
‘Take him out to the helicopter,’ ordered Van Doren. ‘I’ll take Canavan. We’ll take them both to Migliau. He has some questions he wants answered.’ He turned to the second of the gunmen. ‘You’ll have to stay here with Mark until I can send someone back for you: there won’t be enough room in the ‘copter for six. Go and tell John to start the engine. We’ll be straight out.’
The man turned and went outside. A moment later, they heard the whine of the helicopter engine being restarted. Patrick was jerked round and pushed towards the door. Makonnen followed with the other gunman.
As they walked towards the helicopter, Van Doren slipped the gun back into his pocket. Patrick stumbled on the gravel, but the older man kept his grip. They bent down, ducking under the rotors. At the door, Van Doren let go of Patrick’s arm to enable him to climb into the machine.
Patrick had been waiting. The instant his arm was free, he spun, grabbing Van Doren around the waist. Before the other could do a thing, Patrick lifted with all his strength. There was a sickening crunch as the rotor blades whisked Van Doren’s head to cream, followed the next second by a high-pitched whine as the rotor mechanism became unbalanced. Blood sprayed everywhere. Van Doren’s body jerked twice and went limp. Patrick dropped it and ran out from beneath the crippled rotors, straight for Makonnen and the man holding him.
The gunman had frozen in horror. Before he could recover, Patrick had knocked both him and the priest to the ground. There was a shot as the other rifleman opened fire over their heads. Patrick whirled, snatching the automatic from the ground, and raised it, pulling on the trigger. The gunman staggered and fell back.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here!’ He bent down and pulled Makonnen to his feet. The man he had knocked down made a grab for his leg, but Patrick side-stepped and kicked him hard in the teeth.
Ruth’s Mercedes was standing where she had parked it, just in front of the cottage. The key would be in the ignition, where she always left it. Patrick ran towards it, half pulling, half pushing Makonnen with him. He bundled the priest into the passenger seat. There was a burst of automatic fire from behind them. Patrick turned and fired back wildly, then ran on round the car, into the driver’s seat.
‘Take this!’ he yelled, thrusting the rifle into Makonnen’s hands. ‘Use it if you have to, to keep them back.’
The priest sat trembling, his lips moving in repeated prayer. He was sick and numb. Patrick tossed the rifle into his lap and turned the key. The engine started first time. Another burst of fire just missed them as Patrick let in the clutch and roared off in first. He only remembered to put the lights on after they had turned onto the road and driven half-way to Laragh.
The Dead
Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead.
TWENTY-FOUR
Venice
No sound. A great and bitter silence over everything. Blackness punctuated by small yellow lights like corpse-candles on a stretch of lonely marsh. He was in the darkness moving, and the silence all about him, insistent and faintly menacing. As he moved, his eyes began to clear, and he was able to make out something of his surroundings.
He was being rowed in a small boat of some sort. It lay low in the water, gliding soundlessly across a patterned solitude of light and dark. He felt it rock softly from side to side as it moved through the water in a straight line, creasing the surface gently with its prow. With a start he recognized the prow’s distinctive shape: the bladed ferro of a Venetian gondola.
He cast a quick glance backwards. At the stern, a tall gondolier, dressed all in black, angled himself across his long oar, twisting it in that curious Venetian fashion through its wooden rowlock. Somehow he knew the rowlock was called aforcola, but he could not remember having learned the word. A light hung from the pointed stern, leaving a trail of broken gold on the water behind. But the gondolier’s face remained hidden in shadow, beneath a soft, wide-brimmed hat. He turned his head, facing in the direction of travel once more.
His seat was a high-backed chair, delicately moulded and decorated with gilded dolphins and brass sea- horses. His hand brushed against the cushion on which he sat: it was thick velvet, soft to the touch. He leaned back, expecting to hear the plash of water or the turning of the oar against the forcola, but there was nothing. He must be in Venice, but where exactly? And who was rowing him? And why? He tried to form the questions, but his mouth would not open.
At that moment, the moon slipped out accommodatingly from behind heavy clouds, throwing a bland, whitish light across the trembling water. He was on the Grand Canal, gliding down the very centre of the great channel, flanked by tall houses and gilded palazzi. Everywhere he saw pointed windows, many of them covered with awnings and aglow with candlelight. There were torches on poles where the fondamente and rive straggled down to the edge of the Canal. Outside the palaces, massive lamps hung at the landing stages, casting strange flickering light on the mooring poles and the little craft tied up at them.
There was something terribly wrong. He could not at first tell what it was, only that something was false, that there had been a change of sorts. But whether the physical world had undergone a transformation, or there had merely been a shift in his own consciousness, he could not say.
Other craft bobbed or darted past them - slim sandoli rowed with cross oars, and long, black-painted gondolas, many complete with felze, the curved black cabins that kept the passengers’ identity secure from prying eyes. Light traghetti ferried people from bank to bank, weaving their way skilfully through the other traffic.
He recognized the fagades of palazzi on either side. Francesca had taught him well, pointing them out to him on their many trips up and down the Canal. In art and architecture, as in love, she had been his guide. He noticed that they were travelling from north to south, away from the terrqferma towards San Marco and the Lagoon. On his right, he could make out the Fondaco dei Turchi, a crumbling ruin that had once housed the headquarters of Venice’s Turkish merchants. Almost facing it, on his left, stood the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, where Wagner had died, mad and alone.
The names of the palaces and the families who had inhabited them passed through his head like grey ghosts: Bastaggia, Errizo, Priuli, Barbarigo, Pesaro, Fontana, Morisini - a litany of the dead, their great houses rising like tombstones out of the moon-touched water. He knew something was amiss. But what?
They reached the Ca’ d’Oro, with its gilded reliefs and bright capitals twinkling in the light of a hundred torches, each of its tall windows bright with a thousand candles. Between the gold, panels of red and blue, cinnabar and aquamarine, shimmered in the moonlight.
The boat passed on, down to the Ca’ da Mosto, marking the beginning of the bend where the Canal turns down to the Ponte di Rialto. Slowly, they rounded the broad corner. The bridge came into sight like a great ship, lights burning in the windows of the shops that formed its central section. Suddenly, in the distance, west of the bridge, the sky was filled with flashing lights. Fireworks exploded soundlessly above the Campo San Polo. Rockets turned the night red and gold. Fireballs burst, scattering showers of rainbow-coloured sparks across the sky. Fire cascaded like rain, illuminating rooftops and pinnacles and the tops of high towers.
In the light of the fireworks, he caught clear sight of the facade approaching on his left. He recognized the building as the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a sixteenth-century complex that had contained the lodgings, offices, and
