“Yes?”
“I’m probably going to have to be back in Florence sometime in the next week. I could go and pick it up then. If you gave me the details over the phone now—”
“Okay. If you tell me when, I can call the office. Apparently, if you don’t have the ticket you have to give them a name and a time of collection.” She paused. “You know Italian bureaucracy.”
“Er . . . How about Thursday morning?”
“So soon?” she said, because anyone would have been surprised in the circumstances.
“Yeah, I know . . . er . . . I have to be in Rome for a meeting later but I could stop off en route.” The pay phone beeped again; only two more coins left. Couldn’t stop now. “Anna, Anna, you there?” he barked, definitely a little panicky this time.
She let him sweat for a few seconds, then read the details down the phone. He repeated each digit back to her. No room for a mistake here. A small silence followed. “So,” she said, “I hope things work out for you, Samuel. Sounds like you’re going to have a lot on your plate for a while.”
“Yeah, it seems so. But listen, I’ll send on the suitcase to you next week sometime. I’ve got your address, haven’t I?”
“Probably,” she said gaily. “If not I’m in the directory.”
There was a pause. “Is that under Revell or Franklin?”
She took in a sharp breath. Well, it was only fitting that she shouldn’t have it all her own way. She laughed. “Now, how did you know that?”
“I saw your passport in the bedroom. Why, is it important?”
“No. No, not at all.”
“Okay. Anyway—listen, I . . . er . . . I’ll call you when things calm down, yes?”
“No, you won’t,” she said softly. “But it’s just as well, really, because I wouldn’t answer it anyway.”
Disappointed in love, disappointed in business. It was going to be a bad week for Samuel Taylor, or whoever he was. Down the other end of the phone he laughed uncomfortably. “Okay. If that’s how you feel. I don’t know quite what to say.”
“How about ‘I’m going to miss you’?”
“Yeah, well, you know, that might even be—”
The phone beeped again, then a long beep, like the siren wail of a cardiac machine when the patient is declared dead.
“The truth?” she said as she put the receiver down. “Somehow I doubt that. Bye, Tony.”
But he was already gone. She looked up at the board. The 5:47 to Ligorno via Pisa Central was leaving in five minutes. On her way to the train she added the word “Thursday” to the letter and dropped it into the postbox on the main concourse. The church custodian would get it tomorrow morning. She would have liked to see his face as he read the words that told him where, when, and in whose hands his precious Bottoni could be found.
Transit—Monday A.M.
SEVEN-TEN A.M. Pisa Airport. The concourse building starts where the railway track ends, but, alas, there are no direct trains this early, and passengers from Florence have to go to Pisa Central and take a taxi from there to the outskirts of the town. Seven-forty-five is a crazy hour for a flight to London anyway, but this way the aircraft can make the most of a commercial day, zipping to and fro and getting back into Pisa in time for late evening and a cheaper night stopover than Gatwick would ever allow.
The terminal doesn’t exactly rise to the occasion. The one duty-free shop is elegant enough, but closed, the café open but ordinary. Most people don’t have time for it, anyway. Th