them. As it had been before, it was all about timing.
'Uncle Tony,' Bravo shouted, 'they're drawing guns!'
Rule veered abruptly to starboard, seemingly into the heart of the shoals. Bravo shouted again, this time in apprehension.
But instead of grounding, the motoscafo shot forward as Rule now put on speed.
'There's a deepwater channel here,' Rule said. 'It's unmarked because of how narrow it is. Also, it all but vanishes during the low tides.'
Bravo, listening, had turned his body perpendicular to Rule's so that he could look ahead and behind with equal ease. The police launch, having had too short a time to adjust its course fully, had grazed the edge of the sandbar and was now heading in the wrong direction. However, at Zorzi's shouted order, the launch swung around in a tight arc, headed into the channel. It put on all speed as they went through the channel into the open water after the motoscafo.
The police launch must have had a more a powerful engine, because it closed the distance between them with appalling speed.
'They're right on top of us!' Bravo shouted, as the first warning shots were fired across their bow.
The moment Zorzi's motoscafo had first put on speed, Jenny had drawn her legs up through the rushing water-no easy task in and of itself-curling her body into a ball as she tucked her feet into the webbing of the draped line that held the bumper against the side of the boat.
She might have thought it a minor miracle that she hadn't been discovered, except that everyone aboard Zorzi's motoscafo-Zorzi included-was so intent on finding their prey they had no eyes for anything else.
She heard their voices over the engine noise. Occasionally, she could even make out a sentence or two, though she struggled to make sense of what she picked up. Zorzi kept referring to Anthony Rule as 'the Traitor,' which though wrongheaded was, she supposed, consistent with what he believed. It was the Guardians' responses to him that she found puzzling. They spoke to him as if he and he alone were the head of the Gnostic Observatines.
Rule held fast to his northwest course, even with the launch gaining on them. More shots were fired, and then Bravo had drawn his SIG Sauer and was returning the fire.
'Forget that,' Rule shouted, 'and hold on.'
An instant later, he had turned the wheel hard to starboard. At the same time he shoved the throttle all the way forward, asking for and getting every ounce of speed the engine was able to generate. The bow, and then the entire front end of the motoscafo, lifted free of the water.
Bravo tossed this way and that, could see that they were headed directly at the first of the two barene. The clammers, having caught sight of the chase, now stood, staring transfixed as the boats roared toward them. No one-Bravo included-believed that Rule would allow the motoscafo to ground itself. Surely, they reasoned, he'd break off, as he had when he'd made the run at the police launch, feinting at the last possible instant.
But that moment came and went-Bravo could feel it, and he braced himself against the polished wood. Three seconds later, the keel of the boat grazed the rise of the sandbar. Instead of grounding on the barene, Rule used it as a launchpad for the boat. The motoscafo took off into the air, rising in a graceful arc that took them over both sandbars.
'Yahoo!' Rule shouted as they struck the lagoon beyond both sandbars. The double screws bit into the water, and with a massive blast the boat took off, heading straight for Venice.
Bravo, looking behind them, saw Zorzi's launch had broken off and was bobbing at idle beyond the barene.
Rule fumbled in his clothes. 'Where's that damn pack of cigarettes when I need it?' He laughed, half-giddy with their spectacular success.
'Guess I can't bum one off you, can I? ' There was a slight pause. 'So where shall I head this thing? You must know by now where we need to go.'
Camille, on a sleek black and white motoscafo on the Grand Canal, held the cell phone to her ear and waited, her blood humming in her ear. She was aware of a slight sensation of anxiety, which she put down to anticipation. The call from Anthony Rule had come in just as he promised, everything was falling nicely into place.
'Castello,' Bravo's voice said in her ear. 'The Church of San Giorgio dei Greci.'
'All right.' Rule's voice now. 'We'll make our way from the lagoon side via canals to the Fondamenta della Pieta`. We'll be there, I estimate, in fifteen minutes. That suit you?'
Camille, having heard enough, put her cell phone away and gave orders to the captain to take her with all due speed to Fondamenta della Pieta` in Castello. Then she moved away to where Damon Cornadoro stood, a deep scowl on his handsome face.
'My dear Damon, you look positively sullen,' she said brightly. 'Please don't tell me you've succumbed to jealousy.'
'Can you blame me? Rule was your lover.'
Camille took out a cigarette and lit it. 'What of it?'
'The affair went on for years. It has occurred to me more than once that you still have feelings for him.'
'If I do, it's none of your business.'
'But your son-'
'What about my son?' she said sharply.
'I always wondered…' He let her hang there suspended for a moment, her eyes riveted on him, her breath stilled, a small victory, to be sure, but a victory nonetheless. 'I always wondered whether Rule was Jordan's father.'
She turned away, her eyes dark, unfathomable.
The topic of her son's father was taboo, he knew that, so he came after her, almost as a supplicant. 'I'm your lover now, Camille. Do you think I would share you?'
Camille blew smoke out through her half-open lips as she contemplated the magnificent palazzi passing by on either side of the Grand Canal.
'Camille?'
She wouldn't think of Jordan's father, she wouldn't. So, to calm herself, she turned her mind to other matters. It both fascinated and depressed her that men thought only in terms of possession. I don't have that, I want it. Now that I have it, I will never let it go. Of course, what made them predictable made them susceptible to her. So. What should she tell this lover of hers? Certainly not why she had taken Rule as her lover, certainly not that she still loved him in the manner she loved any object precious to her. In truth, Camille was never so lonely as when she was with a man. They were so easily satisfied, so quickly sated, and then what happened? Their quick- shift attention turned elsewhere, you could tell them to go fuck themselves and they never even heard it.
Inevitably, however, there were men who presented her with something of a challenge. Anthony Rule, for one. Turning him away from the Order of Gnostic Observatines had been a long, slow, arduous and often perilous path. It had been a deeply considered and meticulously planned military campaign. For all those reasons-and, of course, others-it was without question a crowning achievement in her life, and a stunning success coming on the heels of such a devastating disappointment. Over the years, the intelligence he had provided had been invaluable to her and to Jordan. And the most satisfying aspect was that it was he who had passed her this ultrasensitive intelligence.
'You have nothing to worry about, my love,' she said now. 'Anthony Rule is my past. You are my present.'
Even over the noise of the engine she could hear Cornadoro's released breath. She almost laughed at how immediately he responded to the stroking. It was, by this time, something of a Pavlovian response. He wanted-no, needed-to believe her. Men, obsessed with proving to each other how strong they were, were essentially weak. She had proved this maxim time and again even with the hard cases like Rule and Cornadoro. Then there was Dexter Shaw-but there was bound to be one, she told herself in a quick gloss of the past. What was he but the exception that proved the rule? She consoled herself with the thought that men had such a narrow definition of coercion. What did men-who after all were most comfortable with a cudgel in their hand-know of coercion? The velvet glove was anathema to them. Though they responded to it beautifully, even, she might say, movingly, they
