a young man I was lonely as only young people can be. I had temporarily-and rather thoughtlessly-severed my relationship with my parents, I was never a joiner, and so I was alone. This girl-I saw in her a way to make a connection, to come in out of the cold, as it were.' He laughed. 'Human beings are so stupid sometimes, they think that sexual intercourse will alleviate their essential loneliness. In fact, sex only reinforces reality-it's a vivid reminder of how truly alone they are.
'You see, Bravo, it's not a question of whether one is alone or not, it's a question of what one does with one's aloneness.' He cocked his head again. 'Does one give in to sullenness and despair, or does one begin to learn about oneself? Without that knowledge, how can one begin to make connections with anyone else?'
'Is this another lesson?' Bravo said boorishly. 'I'm not ten anymore.'
'No lesson intended or implied, Bravo. I was only trying to tell you… to do what you wanted me… to share.'
Bravo looked away, biting his lip.
'What I mean to say, Bravo, is that you and I… we're different from other people. We're… well, I guess you could call us outsiders-it's far more difficult for us to find ourselves. Sometimes I ask myself what I have to do in order to be saved.'
'Saved?' Bravo's head swung around to engage his father's eyes. 'Saved from what?'
'From evil,' Dexter said. 'Oh, I don't mean the kind of evil encountered in the Crusades, at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Hiroshima, in Angola and Bosnia, I don't mean the astonishing cruelty of mankind. This evil grips the mind and won't let go. It is a nausea of the soul, when you think nothing you possess can save you. 'What am I doing here?' you think. 'What is my purpose?''
He held his glass of beer between his powerful hands as if it were a stalk of wheat. 'You and I, Bravo, are not what we had assumed ourselves to be. It's natural, I suppose, to ask, Why? The answer is: because there is a power inside us. Are we supermen? No. But perhaps we are like artists; we are not hollow men, as Eliot so accurately termed them, though that may be our first reaction. Like all artists of every stripe, our desire, then, is to escape-escape the horror of the mundane, to become something better, to lead others along the same path-to, in a sense, save them from themselves.'
Bravo was held spellbound. He understood every word his father said, understood it with every fiber of his being, understood down to his very soul. The knowledge shook him to his core.
Dexter shrugged. 'If you don't get it now, I trust that one day you will.'
But I do get it, Bravo thought, and was about to tell his father as much, when Dexter glanced down at his watch.
Jesus, Dad, no. Don't do it…
'I'm sorry, Bravo, but I have to get to the airport. I'm afraid I'm off again.' Dexter pushed over two tickets along with a pass richly embossed with the presidential seal. 'You take your girl-the one you won't tell me about-to the Philharmonic. Trust me, she'll love sitting in the presidential box.'
Fuck the presidential box, don't leave me again…
Glimmers on the water seemed to follow them in the gray churning wake. Sky and sea were painted the same shades of purple and black. The low islands of the lagoon were strung out like a gigantic cipher. It seemed to Bravo now, standing beside his Uncle Tony, the motoscafo's engine thrumming through the soles of his shoes, moving through this dark and misty lagoon of antiquity, that Venice belonged to his father. Lights of unknown origin played over the water, refracted and reflected into shapes of cold flame that illuminated the shallow inky waves, smooth as glass.
Bravo took out the SIG Sauer. He tried not to think of Uncle Tony snatching it from him, firing at Zorzi point-blank. Perhaps in the Voire Dei it had been the right thing to do, he didn't know. 'I don't understand,' he said, wrenching his mind away from black thoughts. 'I checked it after Zorzi gave it back to me.'
Rule glanced over. 'Didn't fire it, though, did you? The trigger won't go all the way back. Zorzi sabotaged it before he gave it back to you.'
Bravo had been so sure that the gun was working properly, but then he heard the flat, shivery crack of the ice breaking and he shivered. The last thing he needed now was a flight of fancy or an echo from the past. Setting his mind on the job at hand, he sat on the gleaming varnished mahogany deck bench and carefully laid down each part of the weapon as he dismantled it. When he got to the trigger mechanism, he discovered something that had escaped his first cursory inspection-something was stuck there, jamming the mechanism.
'You see?' Rule said.
Bravo unfolded the object, examining it carefully. 'This isn't Zorzi's doing. My father left it for me to find. He taught me to break down a gun before you use it, that was rule one. I just never had the time.'
Rule peered at it. 'All I see is a ball of old cloth.'
'Not any cloth.' Bravo unraveled it. 'Linsey. It's a very low-quality linen and wool mixture which was said to be the material used for both Mary's head scarf and Lazarus's cloak.' He was remembering the cipher his father left for him in the steel beggar's purse: Remember where you were the day you were born. St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital.
Not Mary of Nazareth, he thought now. 'Isn't there an island in the lagoon that has a church named after Mary of Lazarus?'
Rule nodded. 'It was used as a way station for pilgrims on their journey to the Holy Land. The church is long gone now.' He thought for a moment. 'Lazzaretto Vecchio lies due south, just below the Lido.' He turned the boat in that direction. 'In the old Venetian dialect, Mary's name became nazaretum and eventually, in the way of all languages, further distorted into lazaretto. Over the centuries, the island has had many incarnations. In the fourteenth century, for instance, it was used to quarantine plague victims during the city's first great epidemic.' Moving out of the channel into the lagoon proper, he put on speed. 'It's still quite lovely, but nowadays, it's only a center for stray dogs.'
Remember the name of your third pet. Bark.
Bravo laughed out loud.
Jenny, in the company of Paolo Zorzi's emissary, arrived on San Francesco del Deserto to find her mentor with a bandaged head and in a foul mood. She was nervous and upset, but by far her overriding emotion was one of guilt.
They sat in the refectory, which she found oppressive and gloomy. Candles guttered all around her, and there was soot in the air. To her surprise, there were four other Guardians in the room. She waited for Zorzi to speak, but he did not acknowledge her presence in any way. Instead, he stared down at a message he had apparently just been given. Jenny would have given anything to know what was in it. As her gaze redirected itself to Zorzi, she noticed his red-rimmed eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in two or three days.
At length, he said, 'Father Mosto was murdered.'
'And Bravo disappeared,' she blurted in response, 'more than four hours ago, and you've kept me waiting all this time. How else will you punish me?'
Zorzi looked up, impaling her with his implacable eyes. 'Speaking of Braverman Shaw,' he said softly, 'you never delivered the message I ordered you to give him, did you?'
'That Anthony Rule is the traitor? No.'
'Why?'
She knew that velvet voice, and she winced thinking of the iron fist behind it. 'Because I don't believe it.'
'It's not for you to decide these matters!'
Already on edge, she started at the sharpness of his voice.
'I was right when I counseled Dexter Shaw not to assign you to guard his son.'
'And you were the one who trained me.' Jenny was unable any longer to hide her bitterness.
'Precisely my point.'
'You were harder on me than you were with your male pupils, you made damn sure of that.'
Zorzi ignored her outburst. 'I never should have listened to Dexter. Every instinct at my command told me he was making a mistake.'
He regarded her with a look he reserved for those who had disappointed him. She could feel that he had removed himself from her sphere, that whatever she might tell him-whatever excuses she might put forward- would now fall on deaf ears. He was done with her.
