creature.
This unpalatable mix of astonishing self-importance and craven insecurity was almost too much for Adam to stomach, but he still managed to joke that when he next returned to Italy he expected to find Gaetano married and master of his very own Villa Docci above Pisa.
Gaetano didn't react immediately. When he did, it was only to excuse himself for a moment. He needed to relieve himself.
Adam only realized his mistake as Gaetano stepped away from the table. Earlier in their conversation Gaetano had talked at some length about Villa Docci, but he had never mentioned it by name.
Or had he? Maybe he had. Maybe Adam was just being paranoid. A quick glance confirmed that he wasn't.
It wasn't exactly a nod, just the merest tilt of the head, but something about it suggested the uncontrollable reflex when the eyes have just made an urgent gesture all of their own. Adam couldn't see Gaetano's eyes, but he
Adam fumbled some notes onto the table in settlement of the drinks bill and, cursing himself for the precious moments his manners had cost him, hurried for the main doors. The front terrace was all but deserted, so was the boardwalk across the way. Sunday night was not the night for losing yourself in a crowd.
He turned right, picking up the pace as La Capannina fell behind his shoulder. He turned right again into the first street, heading away from the sea. His mind was racing. It was telling him he should have turned into the second street. The first street was so bloody predictable. He started to run, casting a wild look behind him. His ankle, stiff and sore, had not fully recovered from the fall in the garden. Walking was fine, a sprint something quite different. Fortunately, the safety of the park and its dark pine woods lay no more than a hundred and fifty yards off. He slowed to a walk as he neared the end of the street, checking over his shoulder. All clear behind still. He was safe.
He glanced left and right before crossing the broad street to the park. He was checking for traffic. What he saw was two men in short-sleeved shirts career from the mouth of the adjacent street. They spotted him immediately.
He sprinted across the road and was swallowed up by the shadows.
The ground beneath the trees was uneven, sandy, treacherous, and the broad canopies of the umbrella pines allowed almost no moonlight to filter through to it. He stumbled and fell twice in quick succession. The second time, he pitched forward into a dry ditch, winding himself. He heard his pursuers closing from behind, communicating in urgent tones. They had the advantage over him—this was their home turf.
He changed tack, cutting left, staying low, one hand in his pocket to stop the coins jangling, the other clutching the book on Renaissance sculpture. He thought about abandoning it but decided it might come in handy as a weapon, a last resort, something to hurl at them.
He had always prided himself on never having spent a minute more on a playing field than had been absolutely required by the various schools he'd attended. Staggering around a frozen rugby pitch or having small and very hard balls hurled at you had never been his idea of fun. He had spent much of his youth faking injuries or a staggering ignorance of the rules—anything that might see him ejected from the field of play. Play? That wasn't play. It was mortification of the flesh. He didn't mind tennis, especially doubles, when he could take up a position at the net and swat at anything that came his way. Nothing that involved overexertion or, God forbid, stamina.
All the disparaging comments about sporty types came back to haunt him now. His lungs sucked greedily at the warm night air, blood beat a wild tattoo in his ears, and his legs felt strangely distant. Only the fear drove him on. It was a new kind of fear, one he had never experienced before, except in nightmares. It was the kind that prickled the skin of your thighs and your shoulders. Run or stand and fight, your body seemed to be saying to you: a stark and alarming choice.
At a certain point he had to stop, he could go no farther. He dropped into some shrubs, pressing his face into the sandy soil, his fingers groping in the darkness for a better weapon to wield than a learned tome on Renaissance sculpture. He felt stripped bare, every action base and primitive, inborn. The same body that had let him down now came to his aid, helping him to control his labored breathing, sharpening his hearing.
All he could pick up was the muted drone of distant vehicles. That was good, because the ground was spongy with pine needles and fallen twigs, impossible to move across without generating some kind of noise. He must have given them the slip. He waited five minutes, waited another five for good measure, then he crept from his lair.
Stealth suited his style. It also blunted the blind, headlong panic of before. He moved cautiously, sticking to thick vegetation, stopping every so often to listen for telltale sounds, avoiding any areas where the moonlight cleaved the darkness. When obliged to cross a path, he would halt, wait, checking first that the coast was clear.
He traveled a fair distance like this before reaching the clearing. It was large and ovoid, and through the dense belt of trees just beyond it he could make out the lights of the buildings on the north side of the park. He thought about skirting the open space. If he had, he would have walked straight into the arms of the enemy. Because it was from the tree line off to his left that the man exploded the moment he began padding across the clearing in a low crouch.
'I've got him, he's here, I've got him!'
Adam surprised himself with the burst of speed he put on, the pain in his ankle forgotten. He might even have made it to safety if he hadn't collided with a tree.
He reeled backward, stunned. He was aware of the book falling from his hand, and of the fact that it had cost him four shillings from a dusty shop just off the Charing Cross Road. Then something hurtled into him from behind, driving the air from his lungs and sending him sprawling.
The man wasn't big. He didn't need to be. He was brutal. He kept Adam subdued with a few well-placed kicks until his companion arrived. Together, they hauled him to his feet.
'Who the fuck are you?'
'What?' he said groggily, in English.
He was jerked, spun around and hurled against a tree. He cracked the back of his skull against the trunk, staggered but didn't fall. This meant that they didn't have to pick him up before seizing him by the arms and running
