“In Warsaw?”
He shrugged. “This would never have happened before. Not in the old days. People then had too much respect. Too much fear.”
There were so many questions, and none of them would form themselves into a sensible sentence in Felicia’s mind. “I must go home,” she said finally.
The man was silent for a moment, thinking, a different expression in his eyes, one she couldn’t work out.
“You can’t afford to go home,” he observed, frowning. “What’s there for you anyway? It was never your country. Not really.”
The narrow street was empty. A cloud had skittered across the bright summer sun casting the entire area into sudden gloom.
“I can afford a bus ride,” she answered, suddenly cross.
“No you can’t,” he replied, and took her by both arms. He was strong. His blue eyes now burned, insistent, demanding. “What did your uncle give you? To come here?”
She tried to shake herself free. It was impossible. His grip was too firm.
“Some money… Two thousand euros. It was all he had.”
“Not money,” the man barked at her, his voice rising in volume. “I’m not talking money.”
He turned his elbow so that his forearm fell beneath her throat and pinned her against the wall as he snatched her fiddle case with his free hand. Then he quickly bent down, flipped up the single latch with his teeth and scrabbled open the lid.
“This is a pauper’s instrument,” he grumbled, and flinging the fiddle to the ground. Crumpled sheets of music followed, fluttering to the cobblestones like leaves in autumn. “What did he give you?”
“Nothing. Nothing… ”
She stopped. He had discarded the bow and her last piece of rosin, and now had her one remaining spare string, a Thomastik-Infeld Dominant A, in his fingers. He took away his elbow. Before she could run off, he jerked her back and punched her hard in the stomach. The breath disappeared from her lungs. Tears of pain and rage and fear rose in her eyes.
As she began to recover, she saw he had turned the fiddle string into a noose and felt it slip over her head, pushing it down until it rested on her neck. He pulled it, not so tight, only so much that she could feel the familiar wound metal become a cold ligature around her throat.
“Poor little lost girl,” he whispered, his breath rank and hot in her ear. “No home. No friends. No future. One last time… What did he give you?”
“Nothing… Nothing… ”
The Thomastik-Infeld Dominant A started to tighten. She was aware of her own breathing, the short, repetitive muscular motion one always took for granted. His face grew huge in her vision. He was smiling. This was, she now realized, the result he wished all along.
Then the smile faded. A low, animal grunt issued from his mouth. His body fell forward, crushing hers against the wall, and a crimson spurt of blood began to gush from between his clenched teeth. She turned her head to avoid the red stream now flowing down his chin, and clawed at the noose on her throat, loosening it, forcing the deadly loop over her hair until it was free and she could manage to drag it over her head.
Something thrust the gray-suited man aside. The tramp was there. A long stiletto knife sat in his right fist, its entire length red with gore.
He dropped the weapon and held out his hand.
“Come with me now,” he said. “There are three of them in a car round the corner. They won’t wait long.”
“Who are you?” she mumbled, her head reeling, breath still short.
A car was starting to turn into the narrow street, finding it too difficult to make the corner in one go. The cloud worked free of the sun. Bright, blinding light filled the area around them, enough to make their presence known. She heard Polish voices and other accents, ones she didn’t recognize. They sounded angry.
“If you stay here you will die,” the tramp insisted. “Like your uncle. Like your mother and your father. Come with me… ”
She bent down and picked up her fiddle and bow, roughly pushing them into the case, along with the scrappy sheets of music.
And then they ran.
He had a scooter round the corner. A brand new purple Vespa with a rental sticker on the rear mudguard. She climbed on the back automatically, hanging tight, the fiddle case still in her grip, as he roared through the narrow lanes trying to lose the vehicle behind.
It wasn’t easy. She turned her head and saw the car bouncing off the ancient stone walls of the quarter, following them down narrow alleys the wrong way. She knew this area. It was one of her favorites for its unexpected sights and the way the buildings ranged across the centuries, sometimes as far back as the age of Caesar.
He was going the wrong way and she knew it but they were there before she could tell him. The Vespa screamed to a halt in a dead-end alley sealed off by freshly painted black iron railings, a view point over the tangled ruins around the Pescaria, the imperial fish market that led to the vast circular stump of the Theatre of Marcellus, like some smaller Colosseum cut short by a giant’s knife. There was no road, only a narrow pathway down into the mess of columns and shattered walls.
They ran and stumbled across threadbare grass through the low petrified forest of dusty granite and marble. She could hear shouts behind and anguished cries in Polish. Then she heard a shot. The tramp’s strong hand grasped her as she tripped over a fluted portion of shattered column. Panting for breath, she found herself in the angry mass of traffic beneath the looming theatre. He dragged her into the mob of vehicles. Halfway across the road there was a young man on a scooter, long black hair falling out from beneath his helmet.
The tramp kicked him out of the seat, then screamed at her to get onto the pillion.
She didn’t need to think any more. She didn’t want to. They wound a sinuous route through the snarled-up vehicles, found the sidewalk on the river side of the road, roared over the cobbles, out to the Lungotevere. The traffic was just as bad there.
She dared to turn. Over the road, fighting through the cars, were three men, guns in their hands.
She swore. She prayed. And then they were through, on the Tiber side of the road, rattling down the steps that led down to the water and the long broad concrete of the flood defenses.
Two days before she’d walked here, wondering, thinking, trying to work out where she belonged. Not yet 20, born in a country that had forgotten her, without parents. And now, she reflected, without her uncle who had come to her rescue when she found herself orphaned. She clung on, tears in her eyes, determined they’d be spent before this man who had both rescued and kidnapped her would look into her face again.
After half a mile, they raced up a long walkway and returned to the road, riding steadily through San Giovanni, past the street where she lived. In her head she said good-bye to the few belongings she had there: a Bible little read; some photos; a few cheap clothes; a music case with some much-loved pieces.
They found the autovia and she saw the sign to the airport. A few miles short of Fiumicino he turned the Vespa into the drive of a low, modern hotel, found a hidden space in the car park at the rear, stopped and turned off the engine.
She got off the scooter without being asked.
“You did well,” the man said simply, staring at her.
“Did I have a choice?”
“If you want to live, no, you don’t. Have you already forgotten you are in grave danger?”
She glanced at the scooter. “Is that what you are? A thief?”
He nodded, and she wondered if there was the slightest of smiles behind the matted, grubby beard. “A thief. That’s correct, Felicia. We must go inside now.”
He waved the key as they rushed past reception, and went to the first floor where he opened the door and ushered her into his room. It was a suite, elegant and expensive, the kind she had only seen in movies. There were two large suitcases already packed on the floor. The pillows of the bed were covered with scattered chocolates. He picked up a couple and gave them to her. She ate greedily. It was good chocolate, the best. The
