The Pigeon Project (3 page)

“Left the country?” Kedrov echoed with disbelief.

“That’s right,” Shvernik said breathlessly. “According to this Leonid, the professor learned there was a special flight leaving Sukhumi Airport earlier this evening and that there was room for him on it. The professor found Leonid, pulled a gun on him, and forced him to drive to the airport. He was afraid to confess at once, afraid we would not believe he had been forced to do it. But under extreme interrogation—”

“Never mind,” said Major Kedrov harshly. “Where in the hell did he go? What was the destination of the flight?”

“Venice, Italy, sir.”

“Venice? We have no business in Venice.”

“The Italian Communist party—”

“—got their mayor elected,” Kedrov said. “I remember. Look, Shvernik, get on that phone and call Sukhumi Airport. I must be positive there was such a flight and that MacDonald was on it.”

The KGB man dashed to the phone, put through his call, identified himself, and spoke to the dispatcher. Was there a special flight to Venice this evening? Yes, there was—Flight SU-509, a Tupolev, to Italy. Was an Englishman or American, a Professor MacDonald, on the flight? Yes. His papers were in order, and he had boarded and was on the plane when it took off.

“Hold it a minute,” Major Kedrov called out, before Shvernik could hang up. “Ask him one more thing. Where is the plane right now—can it be recalled?”

Shvernik repeated the question into the telephone. He waited, listened, then said, “I see. Thank you.” He hung up. “I’m sorry, Major. The Tupolev is over northern Italy, in a landing pattern and getting ready for descent. It is too low on fuel to bring back. It cannot be recalled.”

Major Kedrov slapped the palm of his hand on the coffee table. “Damn!” He walked around the table, thinking hard. “The plane went to Venice because…” He looked up. “The Italian Communists are in control of the city. Well, now. That’s something.”

He strode purposefully to the telephone, lifted the receiver. “Operator. Major Boris Kedrov, KGB. Priority call. Give me long distance…”

* * *

Not until the three-engined Tupolev had touched down on the Marco Polo Air Terminal runway, bouncing and bumping, and the hydraulic retractable landing gear had jolted him against his seat belt, and the jet plane had gradually slowed and begun coasting toward the terminal—not until then did the tension begin oozing out of Professor Davis MacDonald’s body.

Even when they had approached the city from above, and he had looked down upon the garlands of gay lights far below on this cloudless night, he had not felt secure. He had still been in the capsule of a Russian plane, guided by two Soviet pilots and one Soviet engineer, his neighbors up ahead thirty-five drinking and noisy Russian bureaucrats. Because the plane’s capacity was 128 passengers and there had been little more than a fourth of the seats filled, he had been able to have three seats to himself in the back, somewhat isolated from the others. Still, all the while aloft, he had felt like a Russian captive and threatened.

But now, bringing up the rear in the crowded aisle of passengers going forward to leave the airliner, he was beginning to feel better. In minutes, he was at the exit. A stewardess wished him well and welcomed him to Venice. MacDonald thanked the stewardess, and wished her well, and then stepped onto the metal platform of the portable stairs. Holding the railing, he descended.

One more step, and his feet were on Italian soil.

His heart quickened. Safe, at last. Safe with the secret that would astound the entire world.

In front of him, a yellow bus waited at attention. Members of the Russian cultural delegation were climbing into it. MacDonald also entered the bus and gripped an overhead rail, ignoring the others. In seconds, the bus doors closed. The bus rumbled across the airstrip and, in a few minutes, halted before a brightly illuminated building.

MacDonald had moved toward the nearest door and was the first person on the ground. As the other passengers left the vehicle, MacDonald remained motionless, observing the air terminal with pleasure. It was a two-story blue-and-white building, the second story recessed. On top of the terminal was a large blue sign with one spotlighted word lettered in white. The word was VENEZIA.

Safety, he thought. Thank the Lord.

Just ahead of him he could see the members of the Russian delegation strung out, walking alongside the air terminal toward the rear entrance. Briefly, MacDonald held back again, so that a short distance separated him from the Russian travelers. Somehow, this apartness gave him an even greater sense of security and freedom.

Standing there, he recalled for the first time that he had been here once before—not at this airport, but in Venice, in what now seemed another age. Unbelievably, it had been over fifty years ago. It was during his last year in medical school, the summer vacation, and he had been confused about his future. He had accompanied his widowed mother—it was chic that year to travel with one’s mother, especially when she was a renowned physicist and was received in the best homes—from London to Paris by boat train via the Dover-to-Calais crossing. They had spent an exciting week in Paris and then had taken the overnight train from Paris for a three-day stay in Venice, before continuing on to Florence and Rome. One memory of Venice had never left him: emerging from the railroad depot into the hot, bright sunlight. He had stood at the-head of the stairs agape at the shimmering broad canal filled with gondolas and motorboats, and been awed by the expanse of indigo water stretching as far as the eye could see in either direction. It had been magical, a liquid fairyland.

Another memory: His mother had become unwell their second day in Venice. Nevertheless, they had gone on down to Florence. There she had become dreadfully ill. The remainder of the trip had been canceled. He had taken her back to London. Two weeks later, she had died of cancer. Two months after that, he had decided that when he finished medical school he would specialize in gerontology, challenged by the idea of extending the human lifespan.

His mind had gone back to Venice. Besides a rembrance of his first view of the place from the railroad-depot staircase, what other fragments remained? The Piazza San Marco with its pigeons and vendors and cafés. The Campanile di San Marco, or bell tower, rising to the sky in the Piazza. The curious but delicately harmonious Palazzo Ducale, or Doges’ Palace, with its Byzantine and Arabian (overlaid with Gothic and Renaissance) architecture, the structure Ruskin had called the central building of the world. Where had they stayed in Venice? It had been a hotel with a familiar name. It came to him. The Grand Hotel. Again he thought of his mother. If he had discovered C-98 before that long-ago visit to Venice, his mother might be meeting him there tonight, alive and healthy at the age of 101 or so. Well, he could do nothing about the past. But for all the tomorrows facing humanity, he had a gift. Most mothers on the earth would live on and on to 150, enjoying the pleasures of their great-great-great-great grandchildren.

He realized that he had been walking again and had arrived at the Marco Polo Air Terminal. He went through the doorway into a wide corridor, where the last of the Russian travelers were being cleared by a sturdy Italian official wearing an open-collared sport shirt, perched on a stool behind a counter. As the last Russians continued on, turning left and passing out of sight, MacDonald approached the official.

“Passport, please, and
carta de sbarco
,” the official requested.

MacDonald remembered that he had filled out the disembarkation card on the plane. He found it in a pocket with his passport, and handed both over. The official kept the disembarkation card, then opened MacDonald’s passport, held on his photograph, glanced at him, and returned the passport. “Show it to the young lady in the door before you leave the terminal,” he said in English.

“Thank you.”

MacDonald moved on, and turned left into a large hall that was divided by a railing, beyond which was a rotating luggage turntable. The Russians were all clustering about it. MacDonald started toward the opening in the railing, meaning to join them, and then realized that he had no luggage. Straight ahead of him, two sloppily uniformed Italians were standing beside a low-slung table beneath a sign reading, DOGANA DOUANE/ZOLL CUSTOM. MacDonald deduced that these were certainly the customs inspectors. Just past them was another raised counter manned by a young, plumpish blond Italian lady in a light blue blouse. Above her was a sign reading, INFORMAZIONI.

Before proceeding, MacDonald tried to organize his next actions. At the passport counter, he would inquire if there were any planes scheduled to depart for Paris tonight. Small chance at this hour, he knew, but he would inquire. If he was too late for any plane, he would go into Venice and try to locate the Grand Hotel—or any good hotel—and take a room until i morning. He would make a reservation on the earliest flight to Paris. Then he would telephone the Plaza Athénée hotel in Paris, where Dr. Edwards, his associate, was staying, and he would announce the incredible news of his discovery. After that, he would ring room service for a light supper, and then he would lie down for a much-needed sleep. This momentous day—the excitement of the discovery, the celebration with champagne, the fearful escape from the Russians, the air trip)—had been a terrible strain, and his entire being ached with exhaustion. He would need as much rest as he could get tonight and in the week to come, when he would be writing his paper, for once he appeared before the assembled Gerontology Congress, in six or seven days—he could no longer be certain of the time—and read his paper to the delegates and the world, he would never know quiet or rest or solitude or peace again.

Clutching his passport, MacDonald started toward the customs officers. They watched him with interest—perhaps because he had no bags—and then one of them unsmilingly gestured him past. He came to the counter, confronting the young blond Italian lady.

She smiled at him. “Your passport, Signore?”

MacDonald handed her his passport. She opened it, examined it, fixed on his photograph, looked up to match it to his face. “You are Davis MacDonald?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. You can go now.”

Pocketing his passport, he hesitated. “Can you tell me, Miss, are there any flights to Paris tonight?”

“No, no. There are no departures at this hour. Everything is closed down. You can get a flight in the morning.”

“Thank you. How do I get to Venice from the airport? Are there taxis outside?”

“Water taxis,” she said. “
Motoscafi
. The motorboats. It is twenty minutes on the canal.” She gestured off to her left. “Any of those men outside there—they have public transportation—they will take you to Venice.”

As he went through the terminal exit into another roomy hall, two youngish men flanking the doorway—one short, in a rumpled tan suit, the other burly, wearing cap, white shirt, gray slacks—accosted him.

“You go to Venezia, Signore?” the short one asked.

“Yes.”

“We have the water taxi. You come with us. You have luggage?”

“None.”

MacDonald followed them out of the building to an asphalt court in the middle of which was a semicircle of grass bright with marigolds and snapdragons. The two boatmen led MacDonald to an abbreviated wooden pier.

“I’d like to go to the Grand Hotel,” said MacDonald. “Is there still such a hotel?”

“Si, si. Near the Grand Canal,” said the short boatman. “Via Ventidue Marzo. Very, very fine hotel.”

“I have no reservation,” said MacDonald. “Well, well see.”

Nestled against the pier, a rakish brown motor launch, mahogany and chrome, tied by a rope to a piling, bobbed gently in the water.

The short boatman went quickly down into the craft, then reached up to help his passenger. MacDonald stepped gingerly on the edge of the boat, made his descent down two wooden steps. Over his shoulder, he saw the burly one untie the craft and step aboard.

“You go inside there,” the short boatman was saying to MacDonald. He indicated a spacious cabin. “You relax. We come to Venezia soon.”

MacDonald bent low, went inside the lighted, well-appointed cabin, and settled himself on a leather couch. He observed with interest as the burly boatman stood behind the pilot wheel, with his partner on his feet beside him. The engine erupted with a cough, and the motor launch backed up through the water, stopped, lurched into a half circle, and plunged forward smoothly.

MacDonald felt eager to get to his Venice hotel, arrange his flight reservation for tomorrow, get Dr. Edwards on the telephone in Paris, and burst out with his tremendous tidings. At last, the undulating rhythm of the boat, the monotonous beat of its engine calmed him, and he settled back. He felt inside his jacket for a cigar. There were three. He extracted one, peeled its wrapper, bit off the tip, and found his silver-plated lighter.

Smoking, he squinted out the boat window, its blue curtains drawn back. Through the thin spray, very near, were neatly spaced groups of wooden pilings, each group of three pilings banded together by metal—all of them moss-covered, reassuring, like guideposts to Venice—and each with yellow lights from lamps showing the way to Venice. Behind the pilings were retaining walls, and soon mudbanks and green marshes of grass and weeds.

After a while—five minutes, perhaps ten—MacDonald swiveled around in his seat, ducked his head, and peered through the opposite window. There were many more lights illuminating buildings: residences, warehouses, an apartment house with squares of brightness. The outskirts of Venice, he was certain.

Ahead, the canal had widened considerably and entered a broad lagoon. To the left a tiny island, to the right a shoreline filled with more residences—brick buildings, plaster buildings—some hidden in the shadows of night.

Now into one more canal, then sliding under an iron bridge which bore a sign that read, PONTE VIVARINI.

Emerging from this canal, they were in open water once more. Suddenly, past the curving landscape, far off to the right, there was a dazzling array of lights, a mammoth sparkling bouquet of lights, and he reasoned that this must be the historic center of Venice itself—the heart of the city, his destination—and he waited expectantly for the launch to turn in toward it. Instead, to his mild surprise, the motor launch spurted straight ahead, picking up speed, prow rising from the water as it drove between the columns of wooden pilings on either side. He looked off to his right, past the two standing boatmen behind the prow, and he saw that they were proceeding with certainty toward the center of a vast lagoon, with strings of light forming narrow lanes through the water.