The Mazovia Legacy (26 page)

He has been in situations like this before,
Delaney thought.

“I think what I might do is wound you badly, so that you bleed all over this lovely leather in here but not so badly that you can't drive to your people and tell them the Canadian is very, very pissed off and wants to see the young lady. Or I could kill you.”

“Then you would never see her.”

“Oh, I will see her all right.”

“Signore Delaney, I am guessing that you are not professional enough at this to kill me. You are a journalist, an amateur. You should leave these matters to others.”

Delaney thought he could hear echoes of Hilferty in the phrasing. But he thought:
Not CSIS.

Vatican
.

“Which others?”

“Others with your best interests at heart. You would be smarter to do what you were doing this morning. Sometimes it is better to watch and wait. We were impressed by that.”

“How did you know about Natalia?”

“We are good watchers too. You watch them, we watch you.”

The driver reached for a package of cigarettes on the seat beside him and pushed in the lighter in the dashboard.

“Where is she?” Delaney asked.

“We don't know that.”

“And I'm supposed to believe this?”

“You have no real choice,
signore
. I either truly don't know or I won't tell you. I very much doubt that you would kill me for that.”

“I will kill you if I have to,” Delaney said.

“I doubt you would kill me here, now. But if you did you are no further ahead in this thing.”

Delaney wanted no part of logic today. He wanted action, results, maybe even revenge. Not logic.

“Well, here's the message,” he said. “You tell the people you are working for that the Canadian guy is now very, very pissed off and wants to see the girl. Today. You tell them that he has a lot to say about Quebec and Poland and the Catholic Church, but he won't say it until he sees the girl. You tell them that. And if they aren't the ones who have her, you tell them they'd better find out where she is and tell me as soon as they do. Because if she dies I have some information that will make everybody in this game very, very uncomfortable and I know exactly how to use it. You understand. I will see that girl today.”

“This is a big city to find one person, Signore Delaney.”

“I will see her today. Or tomorrow there are no more little secrets. You understand? Now take me back to the hotel and then you go pass this message on to whoever you're working for.”

The driver tossed his cigarette out the window and drove slowly back to Via Sistina. Delaney put the gun back in the bag, got out, and watched as the cab moved off. His hand was no longer shaking. He was past that now.

There was a message waiting for him this time when he went back into the lobby. On Vatican stationery; handwritten once again. The clerk told him it had arrived just minutes after he had gone off in the taxi. Delaney could not imagine that it was connected, so soon, to his excursion in the cab. It was from Fiorentino: “Greetings, Signor Delaney. Perhaps you might get in contact with me today to say what you have decided in the regard of our conversation yesterday. We would value your assistance in these matters and could possibly be as you know of assistance to you.”

Ambiguous. Delaney decided an equally ambiguous reply was in order.

At a small desk in the lobby he wrote, on hotel stationery: “Monsignor Fiorentino, I am sorry to say I will be unable to speak to you today about the matters you mention in your note to me this morning. Signora Janovski is indisposed. When all is well with her I would be happy to come in to see you, and may have some useful information for you at that time. But, of course, I could not do that until I am sure Signora Janovski is well.” The desk clerk seemed impressed when Delaney told him where the courier was to take the note.

Delaney went up to his room and rested on the bed for a while, the back of his right hand over his throbbing forehead, willing the telephone to ring, knowing it would ring eventually. Even so, he was badly startled when it did ring about an hour later. He was dozing in the warmth of the Roman afternoon. The voice at the other end was gruff. He could hear heavy traffic noise in the background. Screeching tires and clattering motorbikes.

“Delaney, you listen now,” the voice said in English. Polish accent or some other East European. “OK? You listen now.”

“All right.”

“We want to see you. About the girl. And about these other things you know about.”

“Is she all right?”

“You will see that.”

“When?”

“In one hour. You make sure to be alone, no one after you, OK? OK? You come to the Terminal Station, the big train station. You know where?”

“Yes.”

“Walk inside. Only you. Walk in, walk around, in an hour from now. Go into the crowds to the back, and then come out the front again. OK? Through a different door. At the front again. Watch for us there.”

“How will I know you?”

“Just watch for us there.”

The line went dead. Delaney looked at his watch. One hour. He now had a lot to do and not much time.

He quickly packed his bag and then Natalia's bag and placed them together in his room. He checked the gun again, sighted along its short barrel, hefted it, knowing he might need it soon. Placed it carefully back in his equipment bag. Zipped that shut.

He went down to the desk and told the clerk that he and Ms. Janovski would be checking out immediately and would be leaving their bags in the storage room for a few hours. He paid the bills and then went to the public telephone near the entrance. He dialled the number of another hotel he knew well, down the Spanish Steps, not far away, and reserved a room for that night, possibly for several nights. Then he had a quiet word with a bellboy in a foolish quasi-military uniform and pillbox hat with chinstrap. New York, circa 1929. The boy's English was good.

“I need a service from you today,” Delaney said, pulling out a thick bundle of lire. “But discreetly, discreetly. You understand?”

“
Si.
” The bellboy eyed the bundle of notes.

“I have checked out. My bill is paid,” Delaney said. He nodded over to the desk clerk, who grinned and waved at them. “I am leaving my bags here for a few hours. Here is what you can do for me. It is very important.”

He peeled off about fifty dollars' worth of lire. The bellboy's eyes shone.

“In an hour, perhaps two, when it's quiet here, I want you to go outside and put my bags in a taxi and get in with them and bring them to the Hotel de la Ville, just down at the bottom of the steps. You tell no one else but the people at that hotel whose bags they are and you leave them in the storeroom down there for me. You tell them I'm coming soon. You do it fast and get back here right away. You tell no one here what you've done. When I get to that hotel later today, if you've done it right, I'll give you the same amount again. I'll send it to you. But only if it has been done right.”

“I will do it right,” the boy said.

“I hope so,” Delaney said. “It's very important.

You see?”

“Yes, I can see,” the bellboy said, looking conspiratorially around the lobby. “Do you not like our hotel,
signore?
”

There was no sign outside of the agent who had been playing taxi driver that morning. He would have been replaced. Delaney loitered for a moment out front and then hurried over to the Spanish Steps and moved down as fast as his sore side would allow him. Cars could not follow on the stairs and anyone in an apartment or on a roof could not get down to the street and then down the stairs fast enough to follow him. At the bottom he hailed a cab and told the driver to hurry off.

“Vatican,” he said.

No one seemed to follow them. About halfway there, Delaney got the driver to stop, paid him, and got out on a busy street. He hailed another cab going in the opposite direction. “Terminal Station,” he said this time.

Still no one seemed to be with him. It seemed too easy.

Time was short and the traffic was heavy. Delaney arrived about five minutes late, and hurried into the mammoth, echoing train station, worried he had missed his contact. He rushed to the back, through the crowds, and out onto the street again. About ten minutes later than he had been expected.

Lines of taxis were ranged at the curb. Cars, trucks, and motorbikes roared this way and that. Travellers piled out of taxis with bags, baskets, boxes, pets. He recognized no one.

Then he saw the Suzuki van rolling up fast. It stopped directly in front of him.The cargo door was braced open.

“In. In. Get in,” the driver shouted.

He was one of the two who had taken Natalia, Delaney could see that immediately as he got in. The man was sweating, nervous. He roared off so fast that Delaney was sent flying to the back of the van, onto the floor. As the van careened through the traffic around the station, the driver shouted: “Close door, close door, close door.”

Delaney managed to slide the cargo door shut with difficulty. He sat on the wheel hump at the back. The tiny van moved with astonishing speed through the traffic with the driver looking out often into his side mirrors to see who might be with them. His driving would be a hard act to follow. Delaney had no doubt they would lose anyone who might be behind them, but he doubted very much anyone was there in any case.

Eventually, the driver slowed down. “Sit on floor,” he said, without looking back. This made it difficult to see where they were going. Delaney did as he was told.

After about fifteen minutes the van slowed and then pulled through what looked like an archway and into a courtyard of a decaying apartment block. The driver sat for a moment with the motor off.

“You have a gun?” he asked, looking in the rearview mirror at Delaney. “No,” Delaney said.

“We think you do. Give your gun now.”

“I don't have a gun.”

“My friend up there, he has your girl,” the driver said. “She says you have a gun. If he hears a problem now, he will kill her right away. You see? So you give your gun now.”

“I don't have a gun.”

Delaney could see the driver reaching into his leather jacket, so he pulled out the Browning fast and kneeled upright on the floor of the van.

“If you touch that pocket I'll kill you right now,” he said.

“If my friend hears a gun, your girl is dead,” the driver said.

“And you too. Do you want to die right now?” Delaney said.

“You are stupid, man. Your girl is up there with my friend.”

Delaney slid open the cargo door. “Out,” he said. “On the passenger side.” The driver climbed over the passenger seat and got out to stand in the shaft of sunlight that was burning down into the damp courtyard. He looked up but appeared to make no sign. Delaney was pointing the gun at him through the wide opening in the side of the van.

“What's your name?” Delaney asked.

“Feliks,” the driver said.

“How many up there?”

“One. And me.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Ourselves.”

“Come on. Who.”

“Poland.”

“Obviously. Who in Poland?”

“Ourselves.”

“Look, let's not fuck around,” Delaney said.

“Who in Poland do you work for? Walesa?” Feliks laughed.

“He works for himself too. In Poland, everyone works for himself now. Like America.”

“You UOP?”

“What if I said yes? What if I said no? What if I said Walesa? How do you then know what is right, what is not right? You people from the West make us laugh. I told you who we work for. Ourselves. Ourselves.”

Delaney realized that it didn't really matter anymore, that this young man before him was in fact correct. Everyone was working for themselves, when all was said and done.

“OK,” Delaney said, “we walk in together now, with no fuss. You understand? Then we go up. I take the girl out and it's all over. I have nothing more that's worth asking you. I won't be calling the police. It can be over today.”

The driver said nothing. He simply stood with his arms at the ready by his sides. He looked up again briefly to the windows above.

“Go in,” Delaney said, climbing out of the van through the cargo door.

They went in to the damp dark entrance way. “OK, Feliks, now the jacket comes off,” Delaney said.

Feliks took off the jacket and held it loosely. “On the ground,” Delaney said.

The jacket dropped with a heavy thud. Delaney kicked it and the gun in it under the stairwell.

“Up.”

They climbed slowly, with Delaney far enough back to avoid a kick or another sudden move. When they got to the fifth floor, Delaney made them wait. He caught his breath. He listened. He looked at the door opposite the one where Feliks had stopped. It had a small brass plate that said “Ravena Trading.” The door they would go through had nothing on it, not even a number.