7 Steps to Midnight

  Even though he’d seen the square in movies and in photographs, he was still unprepared for the impact of it. The towering Campanile bell tower was made of brick, a gilded angel statue on its peak. There were the arches, architraves and crowning statues of the Renaissance-era library. The clock tower with its figures of two Moors on top, poised to strike the hours. The immense rectangular structure of the Doge’s Palace with its porticoes and loggia at the bottom, its massive walls above. Most impressive of all, the extraordinary St. Mark’s Basilica with its combination of Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic architecture—the great balcony of its main facade, the upper lunettes with their stunning mosaics. Looking at the church, Chris was struck by the fact that its overall form was that of a giant altar.

  He glanced at Alexsandra as she took him by the hand and led him toward the Doge’s Palace. He had to break the silence between them, with anything.

  “How did you get me into Italy without a passport?” he asked.

  “That wasn’t a problem,” she answered quietly. “We have people everywhere.”

  She sounded so disappointed that he simply had to know why. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Please. Tell me.”

  For several moments, it seemed as though she was about to tell him. He could see that she wanted to, that not telling him was painful to her.

  But then, with a tightening of her lips, she said nothing, and only drew him toward the entrance of the palace. Porta Delia Carta, he remembered it was called. Goddamn memory, he thought, disgusted by it. Once something was rooted in his head, it never left.

  They started up a staircase rising from the first-floor loggia. Scala d’Oro, he thought. The Golden Staircase. It was aptly named. The stairway shone with a golden redolence, the stucco-work, mosaics and bas-reliefs of its arched ceiling leafed with glowing gold.

  He lost track of the rooms they passed through. The Doge’s Apartment. The Square Drawing Room. The Room of the Four Doors. Alexsandra clearly had no interest in them, nor was she taking him to see them. She had something else in mind. Wondering what it was, Chris was in a state of nervous apprehension. He was thinking of the wager now. Their movement through the palace had an air of unreality about it. Somehow, he knew, some kind of answer was coming and he dreaded it.

  The Hall of the Collegium. The Hall of the Pregadi. The Hall of the Council of Ten. Sumptuous and immense. Richly decorated. Paintings on the walls and ceilings. Hall after hall after hall. Their footsteps ticking faintly on the hardwood floors. Her hand holding his; cold now.

  At last, she stopped. They were in the Hall of the Maggior Consiglio, more than one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide and fifty feet high, a completely open space with window apertures reaching high up the walls. Gray lights, filtering through the window glass, created a strange, funereal kind of illumination.

  Alexsandra was looking up at a painting on the wall. Chris raised his eyes to it.

  And felt himself turn to stone.

  The painting he had seen in her hotel room in London had only been a segment of this painting.

  A painting of ancient Rome.

  In its lower right corner stood Alexsandra in her pale white gown.

  “It is me, Robert,” she whispered.

  2

  He’d been unable to speak until now. He had little recollection of walking here. What she’d told him must have stunned him so intensely that he’d lost all track of time and place. They had to have gone back through those many halls, had to have descended the Golden Staircase and left the Doge’s Palace, crossed the square to this café and sat at a table underneath the roof.

  Yet only in the last few seconds had Chris been conscious of himself, realizing that he was clutching a glass of wine in his right hand. Heard her telling him to drink some more and seen her watching him with almost pitying sadness as he had drunk.

  Now, finally, he’d spoken one word.

  “How?”

  She spoke oddly, as though the revelation was of little import to her despite its incredible content. Her tone was monotonous, devoid of conviction, her face virtually without expression. It was as though the impact of her history had gouged away her insides, leaving her hollow and emotionless.

  “I don’t know who my real parents are,” she said. “I was raised by a couple from London. He was a history teacher, she an artist. They were living in Rome while he was on sabbatical. One day, they found me wandering on their property; I was seven.

  “They tried to find my parents but they couldn’t. Finally, unable to locate any relatives at all, they decided to adopt me, took me back to England and raised me as their child.”

  She hesitated, staring sightlessly, then drew in a long, slow breath and continued:

  “When I’d been living with them for a year or so, they said that I began to tell them that my name was Alexsandra—I’d never given them a name before. They’d called me Celia after my father’s mother. I insisted that my name was Alexsandra though, and they agreed to call me that.

  “I began to show a fascination with ancient Rome. I read everything I could about it and begged them to take me to museums where I could see artifacts from ancient Rome.”

  She stopped again and Chris wondered if she was finished. Then she went on.

  “When I was twelve, they took me back to Rome. They said that I became extremely agitated. I insisted that they take me to certain areas of the city. When they did, I wept and told them that it all looked different to me. I became so distraught that they had to take me back to the hotel and call for a doctor to see me.

  “That night I had a fever of one hundred and four and kept insisting that I had to go to the catacombs of S. Callisto. I tried to get out of bed to go there myself. Then I fainted.

  “They brought me back to England and it took six months for me to recover.

  “I never forgot that trip to Rome but I managed to live a more or less normal life. Even when that man gave me the painting and the ring—”

  “I thought you said the ring was a reproduction,” he interrupted.

  “Did I?” she said offhandedly. “No. He gave it to me.” She swallowed. “And brought it all back.” She put her left hand across her eyes. “It’s been with me ever since.”

  “Have you… gone back to Rome?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid to,” she answered.

  “But if you went to those catacombs—” he started.

  “God forbid,” she said. “I could never go there. I’d be terrified of what I’d find.”

  “What could you find?” he asked.

  She shuddered. “Myself,” she whispered.

  Chris stared at her blankly. It had all come back to him now too, sitting here in the grayness, the rain misting down outside, the buildings in the square spectral-looking in the fading light, listening to her story—it had brought back everything in an icy rush of memories.

  Veering’s wager. The couple in his house. His panicked flight. Leaving Nelson in the desert. Fleeing to Los Angeles. The flight to London, the discovery of Gene’s death followed by Basy’s disappearance.

  7 steps to midnight.

  The Blue Swan and the agent’s collapse. Modi and the threatening teenagers. The theater and Alexsandra, the breath-stopping car chase. His first exposure to the painting and the ring. Alexsandra’s disappearance and the car pursuit. The Hovercraft ride and the man (Had it been Veering?) slapping him and telling him about reality slippage.

  6 steps to midnight.

  Then Paris. The agent’s death on Montmartre and Chris’s escape from the agent’s killers. His reunion with Alexsandra and their dinner on the Bateau-Mouche. The two men waiting in her car. His walk in that small French town and what had seemed to be Alexsandra in the white dress. The old building with the rotted dress inside.

  5 steps to midnight.

  Lucerne and the two men chasing him; the microfilm. The trip up Mount Pilatus, Modi reappearing. Another agent dying, Modi rescuing him. Alexs
andra again.

  All ending here with her strangely chilling account. Never had he felt so close to unreality in his life. If Veering were to sit down at the table at this moment and ask him what he thought about the wager now, he wouldn’t hesitate a moment before telling Veering that he knew he’d lost it. There was no way in the world that he could find an explanation for the things that had occurred to him in the past week. He could only accept them at face value now.

  A face of utter bafflement.

  She lowered her hand and looked at him somberly.

  “We have to go,” she said.

  “Why did you say that you and I are almost finished now?” he asked.

  “Because we are,” she answered. “Once you’re out of Venice, we’ll never see each other again.”

  “No.” He felt a sense of anger, not at her but at whatever made her speak those words. “Why? Why shouldn’t we see each other again?”

  “Because my assignment ends here,” she said. “It was supposed to end in Paris but you kept it going by insisting I be brought to Lucerne.”

  “Oh, God.” He looked around as though for some escape from all this lunacy. “I don’t understand what’s going on.” He looked at her tensely. “I’m totally confused and lost and maddened, Alexsandra. All I can hold on to—other than my work—is you. You can’t just leave me like this.”

  Tears started down her cheeks. “Oh, Chris,” she said; she sounded desolate. “I don’t want to leave you. All I want to do is get you out of all this. But I can’t.”

  “Why?!” he demanded, conscious of how loud his voice had become, that people at nearby tables were looking at him. “You’re not making sense! Why do you have to leave me?!”

  She seemed on the verge of telling him, leaning across the table, her expression tight. Her lips began to move as though words were formed though they remained soundless.

  Then, with a convulsive groan, she shoved back her chair and stood.

  “We have to go,” she told him, almost angrily.

  He slumped back, glaring at her. “You go,” he said. “Just leave me here. I’ll manage to—”

  “Chris, please,” she begged, leaning over close to him. “How many times do I have to tell you? Your life is in danger. If Cabal locates you, you’re a dead man. Now, for God’s sake, get up and let’s go!”

  Instantly, resistance drained from him. He was afraid again; he simply couldn’t doubt that she was telling him the truth. Standing shakily, he moved beside her as she started walking, tightly holding on to his right arm. The rain had stopped, he noticed, though it was still overcast, close to darkness.

  They were almost to the Vaporetto dock when Alexsandra suddenly steered him from it. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I have to speak to you,” she said.

  He looked at her intent expression. Was she finally going to tell him what had been going on—at least since London? He walked beside her anxiously. She was heading toward a group of gondolas.

  As they neared the pier, he could hear water slapping against it, the gondolas shifting from side to side in the current. One of the oarsmen jumped to the pier. “Down the Grand Canal, past Marco Polo’s house and under the Bridge of Sighs. Fifty thousand lire,” he blurted in heavily accented English.

  “All right,” Alexsandra muttered.

  “Fifty thousand?” Chris whispered as she drew him toward the long black gondola.

  “Forty dollars,” she murmured. He grimaced. Of course, he thought. He knew that.

  The oarsman helped Alexsandra into the pitching gondola and Chris stepped in behind her, almost losing his balance. Why were they doing this? he wondered as he clumsily dropped onto the plastic cushion beside her. The water seemed terribly rough to be riding in a gondola.

  The oarsman quickly moved to the stern of the gondola and, picking up his long pole, stepped up onto his platform and slid the pole into the water, backing the gondola away from the pier. Chris winced at its heavy rocking. He wasn’t in the mood for a swim in the Grand Canal; he remembered once reading how badly Katherine Hepburn’s eyes had become infected when she’d fallen into this water while filming a scene.

  Bracing his feet and tightly holding on to the gunwale with one hand, he nervously looked back at St. Mark’s Square. Now that the rain had stopped, there were a few more tourists evident, strolling around, examining bookstalls under an awning.

  He felt himself go rigid as his eyes locked onto the shadowy figure of a man standing in a doorway, apparently looking toward the water. For several moments, he felt positive that it was Veering—the man was the same size, dressed similarly, with what looked to Chris like a baseball cap on his head.

  He twitched sharply as Alexsandra asked him, “What are you looking at?”

  For a number of seconds, Chris had the impression that his lungs had no air in them, that they’d collapsed and he was just about to suffocate.

  “Chris?”

  He made a wheezing noise as he felt himself sucking in air. Dear God, he thought. He had never felt so removed from reality as he did at this moment, sitting in this black, rocking gondola in Venice, eyes fixed on the receding figure of the man who had to be—

  He fought it off; he had to or he would completely lose control. How could it possibly be Veering? It hadn’t been him on the Hovercraft and it wasn’t him now. Veering was a deranged hitchhiker in Arizona, nothing more. He had to rid himself of this insane brooding about the wager. The wager was nonsense, utter nonsense. He had to believe that.

  “Chris, what is it?”

  He swallowed, tearing his gaze from the distant figure of the man. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m just…” He shook his head. “All those things coming at me one after the other. I’m getting paranoiac, or I’m there already.”

  She grasped both of his hands with hers; he was startled by how strong she was. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “So sorry, love, for what they’re doing to you.”

  He swallowed again, with greater difficulty now. “It ain’t been easy,” he admitted.

  “Chris.” She pressed against him suddenly, arms around him, clinging to him. He put his arms around her and held her as tightly as he could. It’s the only constant left, he thought, my love for her and—he prayed that it was genuine—her love for me.

  He looked out at St. Mark’s Basin as the gondola turned. There was a liner anchored there, its cabins lit. All the way across the channel he could see the looming spires and tower of the church on St. George Island. Once more, in spite of the fear that ate at him, he experienced a twinge of regret that he was unable to enjoy this fabled city as a simple tourist. But, of course, that was impossible.

  The gondola was being propelled along the shore now, St. Mark’s Square to their right. He saw a restaurant ahead, some of the more brave diners already eating outside by candlelight. He watched them as the oarsman guided the gondola toward a side canal.

  The moment it entered the canal, sound and light fell away in an instant and the surface of the water became almost completely smooth. He heard the water lapping at the gondola’s sides, the only sound he could hear. Abruptly, he felt uneasy, his imagination needled by the heavy silence and darkness between the buildings on each side. A perfect place for murder; his brain distressed him with the image. A blow to the head with the pole, his body dumped into the foul-smelling water, not to rise until—

  He fought it off, angrily grimacing at himself. For Christ’s sake, Barton, aren’t things bad enough as they are? He exhaled in relief as he saw another gondola approaching theirs. Small candles were burning on its prow; their own gondola was dark. He saw the approaching gondola glide beneath a dark footbridge, along the side of a dark building directly on the canal. As it passed them, he saw a young couple in the middle seat, embracing and kissing passionately.

  “I wish to God we had nothing else on our minds but that,” he murmured.

  “Oh…” She drew back, looking at him intently. As the gondola moved past a small
café, he saw, in its dim light, a glistening of tears in her eyes.

  “Oh…” He said it in the same way, pained, despairing.

  Then their lips were pressing together, and he could taste the sweetness of her breath in his mouth.

  “I love you, Chris. I love you so,” she whispered.

  “I love you too,” he said. “It’s the one thing I’m holding on to right now.”

  They kissed again. Again. Again. Dear God, how he wanted her, he thought.

  Then, breathless, she was quietly holding on to him.

  The silence was oppressive; Chris swallowed, broke it willfully. “Why are all the buildings dark?” he asked the oarsman, feeling idiotic even as he spoke, sure that the man had only one phrase in his vocabulary, the one he’d used to sell his services.

  “People on vacation,” said the oarsman.

  Chris drew in a deep, faltering breath. The smell was so awful, he thought. He’d take long vacations if he lived here.

  Had Alexsandra fallen asleep? She was so quiet. The silence disturbed Chris again.

  “How deep is the water?” he asked, saying the first thing that came to mind.

  “Five, six feet,” the oarsman answered. “Deeper in winter. Piazza St. Marco sometimes knee-deep. Build wooden walks for people.”

  Chris made a polite, impressed sound. That was more information than he’d thought to ask for.

  Another gondola passed them now, a larger one with eight passengers in it. There was barely enough room for the two gondolas to pass each other. The oarsman was singing “La Paloma” and the passengers were chatting, laughing.

  The other gondola moved away and the heavy silence fell again. The canal was dark and felt airless to him, humid. That terrible smell of rot in the air. Shadows of people walking in dark alleys. Chris clung to Alexsandra, the sense of unreality returning. He was riding through the darkness in a black gondola with a woman obsessed by ancient Rome; he felt at once frightened and enamored of her. How much longer could his mind cope with these dark contradictions?

  The only sound now was the faint slapping of the water against the gondola. Chris had to hear her voice again; her silence was beginning to unnerve him.