The rezident nodded, accepting the sudden turn in their positions reluctantly.
“Who will you use on the woman,” Gorodin asked, purposely maintaining the reversal.
“Marco.”
“The schpick?”
“He’s the best student on my roster,” Zeitzev said. “And he’s already in position.”
Gorodin let out a weary breath, and shrugged.
Chapter Twenty-six
After filling out the official requisition forms, Melanie Winslow followed the supervisor through a thick wooden door that led to the rooms directly below the university’s Records Building. They went down an old staircase that twisted back on itself. Bare light bulbs threw angled shadows across the walls. Cobwebs hung like drapery from darkened corners. The eerie descent brought them into a damp stone room, where they walked between rows of wooden tables that held cloth-bound ledgers.
Melanie was thinking of the reclusive men who had spent lifetimes in such places, painstakingly inscribing each entry by candlelight, when the supervisor stopped walking and gestured to a table beneath a bare bulb.
“You can work there,” she said.
Melanie’s head was filled with musty air, her skin was crawling with the dampness, and she was having second thoughts about her suggestion.
“Have any idea where I should start?” she asked. The anxiety had dried her throat, and her voice cracked when she spoke.
“Well, it doesn’t look like whoever brought all of this material down here was big on alphabetizing,” the supervisor replied. “But those might be what you’re after.”
She pointed to an alcove where boxes and file folders and ledgers were piled on wooden tables. The stacks tottered and leaned threatening to fall, the floor littered with those that already had.
“Good luck,” she said.
“Thanks, I’ll need it.”
“You’ll be fine,” the supervisor said with a smile. “By the way, I’m Lena, Lena Catania.”
Melanie grasped the hand she offered, and shook it lightly, feeling a little more relaxed. “Where’d you learn your English?”
“California. I think I was four when we moved there. My father was working for a wine exporter at the time. Well, see you later.” Lena turned to the staircase, paused, and turned back. “We leave at five, and the door is locked. Make sure you’re out by then.”
“Thanks,” Melanie replied as she sat at the wooden table, like the monks she had imagined. She didn’t know exactly when Aleksei Deschin had attended the university, so she began with the first class of the modern era, a thick folder dated 1935. It gave off the dank odor of mildew, and the turn of each page filled the air with particles of dust that made her throat scratchy. The folder contained not only academic qualifications and evaluations but also personal histories and family backgrounds, the kind of information she sought, which heartened her.
She had been at it for several hours when she heard a creaking sound above, and cocked her head curiously. “Lena?” she called out. “That you?”
There was no response.
Melanie shifted in her chair uneasily, and looked at her watch. It was almost four thirty. A few pages remained in the folder she was examining. She decided to leave now, and take it with her. That’s when she heard footsteps on the stairs. First one, then another, like someone carefully placing each foot, to make as little noise as possible. She got up from the table and crossed to the staircase.
“Lena?” she called out again.
Again no response.
She started up the stairs. Cautiously, at first, craning to see around each turn as she approached it. Then, anxiety building, she started climbing faster.
Suddenly, there was a loud click and the lights went out, plunging the space into absolute blackness.
Melanie froze on the staircase.
“Excuse me?” she called out. “There’s someone down here! Please wait!”
Now the footsteps ascended — quickly, noisily.
She grasped the railing, and started running up the stairs in the darkness. Her shins smacked into the treads. She groped and stumbled and fell. The door hinge creaked above. She got to her feet and resumed climbing. Faster and faster, through one turn in the twisting staircase, then another. It couldn’t be much further now. It couldn’t. Oh God, it could! She shuddered at the memory of demons chasing her up a staircase that had no end; night after night as a child, she had climbed it in sweat-soaked terror until her father would hear the thrashing and hold her in his arms until she was sleeping peacefully again. She came through still another turn. The door lay dead ahead. A shaft of light came from between the frame and the thick wooden edge. It was still open! She dashed up the last few steps, and lunged for it.
On the opposite side, Marco Profetta listened as the onrushing footsteps came closer and closer. He waited until the very last moment, and then he slammed the massive door shut, and threw the deadbolt home.
Melanie’s palms slapped against the wood just as it closed with a heavy thud, and clang of the bolt.
“There’s someone in here!” she shouted. “Open the door, please! Lena! Marco! Anybody?”
Marco stepped back from the door, and snickered. A short time ago when Zeitzev called, Marco assured him he’d find a way to deal with the pushy American woman. And he derived a perverse pleasure from the method he’d chosen. He turned, and sauntered back to the rows of gray steel cabinets, and resumed filing.
Though the time was barely 4:40 P.M., no one else was there to hear Melanie’s pleas for help. A short time earlier, Lena and the others had been quite pleased that Marco had volunteered to stay until five and cover for them. In Rome, the chance to get a headstart on rush hour traffic, especially on Friday, is not taken lightly.
Melanie stopped shouting and leaned against the door. The thought of being locked in the dank obsidian basement for the entire weekend made her shiver.
The scent of perfume no longer permeated Suite 610 in the Hassler. After removing the page with the astonishing message from the typewriter, Andrew put a match to one corner, tossed it into the waste-basket, then flushed the ashes down the toilet. Traces of the acrid fumes still hung in the air.
Andrew had fallen onto the huge bed to nap; but he was restless and anxious, and every five minutes, or so it seemed, he checked his watch to see if it was time to leave — time to meet the Russian woman whom he assumed had typed it; then called, alerting him to it.
He returned phone calls to pass the time. Most clients just wanted to be assured that he’d still be attending the auctions in the Soviet Union despite his father’s death. He’d returned Borsa’s call first. But Italy’s Defense Minister was working the weekend, and left the number of his office in the Quiranale, the Seat of Federal Government. The line had been busy for hours, and Andrew tried it a half dozen times before he finally got through.
“Minister Borsa? — Andrew Churcher.”
“Andrew,” Borsa said in a solemn voice, “I am stunned about your father. My sincere condolences.”
“Thank you, sir. I know how close you both were, and how much he respected your leadership in the equestrian community. Your help will be invaluable.”
“I’d been planning to assist you, Andrew. And, under the circumstances, I feel doubly bound to do so; but I’m afraid my time at the show will be greatly diminished this year. That’s why I called.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir. What’s the problem?”
“Always the same — Americans and Russians.”
An ironic smile broke across Andrew’s face.