The Mazovia Legacy (25 page)

“Yes.”

“No you do not, I think.”

“It's clear to me,” Natalia said.

“No. I think it is not. Because you are one of those people who has never had to do very much that you did not want to do. Have you?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, I have never had to do very much that I didn't want to do. You're right.”

Moustache looked over at Feliks and said: “I am right.”

Then, with a large open right hand, he slapped Natalia with great force on the side of her face. His blow came from shoulder height and smashed diagonally down across her cheek. It swung her face to one side with more force than she had ever had applied to her body. It shook her neck vertebrae, made her ears ring, her skin burn. Her body started to shake with fear and pain.

Then Moustache slapped her again, from the other direction, with the back of the same hand. Shoulder height again, with great force. He made a small indescribable sound in his throat as he hit her. His knuckles and ring grazed her left check, and her neck was badly jarred again.

She began to cry immediately. She held her hands up over both of her eyes, sobbing, and dripping tears and mucus and blood from her eyes and nose and mouth. Her heart raced in her chest, and her stomach muscles were in spasm. She hoped they wouldn't do this very long. She hoped they wouldn't rape her. Now she was truly afraid. As required.

Through the ringing in her ears, amidst the other alarms of her body now, she heard Feliks say something in Polish. Then she could hear Moustache as if from a great distance: “Do you understand now what I was trying to say, dear woman? How this will work tonight?”

“Yes,” she said through her hands, looking down. She felt the texture of her eyebrows against her fingertips. This, inexplicably, was a small comfort.

“I understand,” she said.

D
elaney had somehow managed to contain his intense anxiety about Natalia, to put it away somewhere deep inside himself. He had decided that he owed her this calm because direct and well-considered action in the world was urgently required. The best plan now, he had decided, was to make himself as conspicuous as possible. And to search, with all the skills he had acquired over the years, for the inconspicuous.

He had not slept again after waking at 2:30 a.m. He spent the remainder of the night examining the situation from every possible angle — over and over again. And in his insomnia, against his will, he also examined in minute detail his whole life to date and all the various mistakes and missteps he had made. Mistakes professional, social, and personal. Mistakes with colleagues, lovers, and wives. But he was determined that from this moment onward he would make no more mistakes. By sunrise, he knew what he must do.

He showered as best he could with his stiff side and cleaned up his scraped face. He applied creams and ointments to the most noticeable of the wounds. He put on jeans, a loose-fitting polo shirt, and some sturdy shoes. He checked the pistol in his equipment bag and then placed his aging Nikon F camera beside it, with a long lens attached. Notebook and pen. Passport and press pass. Rosary. Tools of the trade. For now, he would simply be on assignment. He had no choice.

In the lobby he told various desk clerks and the concierge and just about anyone else who would listen that he would be around the hotel that day, doing some work and waiting for delivery of an important message or package. Could they all please see to it that he was informed as soon as anyone asked for him, as soon as anything arrived?

It was still early, before 8 a.m. He paraded himself through the lobby several times and through the small dining room. He stood for a long time on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, allowing anyone watching to have a clear view of the Canadian journalist staying there. He sat for almost an hour at a sidewalk table of the café next to the hotel, drinking several cups of coffee and standing occasionally to stretch his legs and allow hotel watchers to have an unimpeded view.
Here I am.

The watchers, if they were there at all, did not come forward. Delaney expected word from Hilferty at any moment, and became more and more concerned when it did not come. Was it possible, he wondered, that CSIS was so slow off the mark, so poorly connected, so badly informed that they would not now know what was going on? Or were they simply content to hang back and watch him watching for others?

By midmorning, Delaney was back in the lobby, explaining to patient desk clerks that he would have to go off for perhaps two hours, that he would be back at lunchtime, that messages or letters or packages were to be expected and were to be treated with care. He would be back.
Si, Signore Delaney, si.

Now he would be the one to watch for a time, rather than allowing himself to be watched. He went outside to hail a taxi and told the driver to move off in the direction of the Colosseum. He sat half turned around to see if any cars pulled out behind him in the narrow street. None appeared to do so.
If they want me, they know where to find me already,
he thought.

After about ten minutes he had the driver circle back to the bottom of the Spanish Steps and let him off there. Still no one seemed to be behind him. To the left of the steps there was an elegant tall apartment block with entrances both at the lower level and at the top of the steps where they met the Via Sistina, the street where his hotel was. He wanted to spend some time on the roof of that apartment, watching the Via Sistina below and the entrance to his hotel.

The building's concierge, he discovered, was a Mr. Viviano, a very dark, very wiry little Sicilian who was apparently surprised by nothing in this life. His English was New York or Detroit style.

“I am a journalist and a photographer, Mr. Viviano,” Delaney said, showing his red International Federation of Journalists passbook.

Viviano peered at it with interest through halfframe glasses. At midmorning he was well dressed in flannel trousers, a quality shirt in wide blue-andwhite stripes, and soft leather loafers, perhaps Gucci. “I want to possibly take some pictures from the roof of this lovely building if that is no trouble to you.”

Viviano peered up at Delaney over the top of his half-frames.

“Hey, but of course,” he said.

Delaney marvelled at how different the Italians were from the French, or at least the Romans from the Parisians. In Paris, none of this would be possible. Everything would be impossibly complicated and viewed with suspicion, if not outright disdain.

Viviano led him to an ornate elevator door and pressed the button for him.

“Top floor. You will see the door marked so clearly with ‘Exit' you do not need me to come,” Viviano said. “I am busy feeding my birds, and they are hungry this morning. You come to me when you are all finished up. No problem.”

“Thank-you,” Delaney said as the steel-mesh door slid noisily shut.

Viviano peered at him through the mesh as he glided up and out of sight.
He will be up to check things out in a while,
Delaney thought.

The roof gave a splendid view of Rome on a brilliant late-winter morning. Delaney did not allow himself to think for very long how much Natalia would enjoy this view. He positioned himself at the corner of the roof, Nikon at the ready, but more for Viviano's benefit than to use the long lens for viewing. Then he simply watched as intently as he knew how. He was a reporter on the job. What was there to report?

The café where he had spent an hour that morning was quiet. Only a few tourists sat at the outside tables. Most of the locals were now at work. A hotel employee was sweeping the sidewalk out front, stopping whenever necessary to watch Italian women sidle by. A couple of Fiat cabs sat at the curb. The two drivers sat together in the first car, smoking and exchanging views. Another cab sat behind the first two. Its driver was not in the mood for talk, apparently.

Across the street, some upmarket clothing shops were opening. A stunning brunette in a red-andwhite pantsuit that would have cost her several months' salary, if she owned it at all, was unfurling a canvas awning over the entrance and fixing the doors wide open for the very few customers who would likely come through that day. The balconies in the several buildings facing the hotel were empty, except for a Burmese cat that was stretching out on one. Above the hotel entrance, curtains billowed out of windows and a chambermaid shook a pillow in the brightness.

All appeared perfectly normal. It was a normal midmorning on Via Sistina. But Delaney had watched streets before and knew that the unusual did not always make itself known right away. Patterns take some time to be established, or disrupted.

It took almost an hour. There had been little action of any sort in front of the hotel. But then the first taxi in the line of three parked there got a fare: two men in dark business suits, carrying mobile phones and canvas laptop-computer bags. Delaney thought he remembered them from the breakfast room that morning. The second driver ended his conversation with the first man, got out of the car, and moved his own car up into position when the first car left.

The driver of what had been the third car in line did not move up. He continued to read his paper. Then another taxi pulled up. It was the one Delaney himself had taken that morning. The driver honked at Number Three to move up so he could take his place in the line. But Number Three motioned for him to park in front, which the new arrival managed to do with only some difficulty in the narrow street.

Not very concerned about a fare
.

But then Number Three, still third in line after so generously letting his colleague in, got out of the car and leaned over the driver's side of the car now in front of him, suddenly craving conversation. Cigarettes were lit. The new arrival got out to lean against his car and chat to the Good Samaritan. Delaney was now sure the new arrival was the young man who had driven him around to the bottom of the Spanish Steps.

A cluster of what looked like American tourists suddenly poured out of the hotel, perhaps nine or ten in all. There were some negotiations with the two first drivers and then with the third. That one shook his head repeatedly. More negotiations. Then, most of the tourists got into the first two cars, and the final small group hailed a cab passing by on the street. Driver Three got back into his car and resumed reading his newspapers. Another car arrived and its driver, too, was waved ahead to take the better spot.

That new arrival got a fare and moved off. Still Driver Three did not start his engine or move forward. When he refused yet another fare, Delaney knew he had his man. Or one of them. Which side he was playing cab driver for, Delaney could not say.

As he was turning to go, he saw Mr. Viviano standing at the exit to the roof, watching him quietly. He had a look of grave disappointment on his face.

“No photos today,
signore?
” Viviano said.

“No. Just looking at the view.”

“It is a lovely one, no?”

“It is.”

“Something of particular interest for you today, maybe.”

“Yes.” Delaney sensed Viviano had been around. He did not struggle for explanations.

“Perhaps you have had long enough on this lovely roof of mine,
signore
.”

“I think so. Yes. Thank-you.”

“I think so too.” Viviano silently escorted him down in the elevator, and saw him right out to the sidewalk. He then ostentatiously unhooked the white security door that had been opened for the air and sunshine, and shut it firmly.

“I will not see you again will I,
signore?
Not here, OK?” Viviano said evenly through the iron grille.

“No. I am finished here now.”

“
Bene.
”

There were no messages, no letters, and no packages when Delaney got back. He had climbed the Spanish Steps and walked back to the main entrance of the hotel along Via Sistina. His side and his head ached. The reluctant taxi driver was still there, reading the news, and missing out on fares. He looked up as Delaney walked by, and then down again at his paper.

Delaney came back onto the street after checking with the clerks at the front desk. He sat down at one of the sidewalk tables at the café next to the hotel. He sat facing the cabstand, daring Driver Three to make eye contact, watching the driver's now all-too-obvious failure to do any work that morning. After about thirty minutes, the driver was alone in the rank with his engine still off. Delaney paid for his coffee and walked quickly over, climbing in to the back seat.

“Can you take a fare?” Delaney asked in English. The driver looked coolly at him back over the seat, not at all perturbed.
A professional,
Delaney thought.

“No,” the driver said in accented English.“Not at this moment.”

“Why not?”

There was slight menace in the driver's eyes now. “Not at this moment,
signore
. There will be another taxi along soon.”

Delaney had the Browning out of his equipment bag now, and he held it low in his lap. The driver looked calmly down at it and then out at the passersby and the doorman on the sidewalk.

“That is not so smart I think now, Signore Delaney,” the driver said. “Go,” Delaney said.

The driver started the engine and drove slowly down Via Sistina. The street ended not far past the upper entrance of the apartment where Delaney had kept watch that morning. The driver made a difficult U-turn and began driving slowly the other way. The doorman at the hotel did not look up as they passed.

“We are going where?” the driver said.

“You tell me,” Delaney said. “Where do you think I might be wanting to go this morning?”

“I don't know.”

“I think you do.”

Delaney resisted the impulse to stick the gun up against the driver's head. A rage was building as he thought that this might be one of those responsible for taking Natalia. It was a dangerous deep-seated rage and could bubble over at any time. He was no stranger to rages of various sorts in his life but they were a long time coming. Few and blessedly far between. He generally had been able to save his rage for the right targets, but not always. He thought he might have such a target now.

“I don't know what you mean,” the driver said.

“Pull over here. Now.”

Delaney's hand was beginning to shake ever so slightly. It was not fear. The adrenalin was interfering. He would have to watch that. For the rest of this assignment.

The driver pulled over. They were on another of Rome's million narrow cobblestone streets. Tall balconied apartments lined it. Few people passed.

“Take me to her,” Delaney said.

“To who?”

“I am not going to waste time with you, friend.”

“What will you do?” the driver said, very cool. He was about thirty; stocky, with badly pockmarked skin. He wore the most fashionable of pale tortoiseshell sunglasses.