It was Piombo who had brought in Gino Della Robbia. Carmody needed a man in Venice who knew the city, knew people both reliable and close-mouthed, and Piombo said Della Robbia was that man. The recommendation was good enough for Carmody, but he still hadn’t entrusted Della Robbia with Lucarelli’s name, the location of the San Spirito house, or any except essential details. No one other than Piombo had that information. The fewer people who knew, the less chance there was of something screwing up.
Della Robbia had proved capable, and now all the details were set. They would take Vickers’ boat straight down the Adriatic and into the Mediterranean, then swing around Sicily and go up to the southern coast of Sardinia to the port of Cagliari. Lucarelli wanted to live in an Italian speaking area, and the rich man’s playground of Sardinia was a good place to get lost if you had enough money, a new name, and a new background that would stand up to any but the sharpest scrutiny. Carmody had made arrangements for a villa outside Cagliari and a set of forged papers that included a marriage license and new passports. After they reached Sicily, what happened to Lucarelli and his mistress was up to them.
Lucarelli drank from his fresh glass of wine, worked his upper lip over, looked at the map again. “What time do we leave tonight?” he asked.
“I’ll meet the launch at ten,” Carmody told him. “It shouldn’t take more than half an hour to get here, so we’ll figure on ten-thirty as the pick-up time. Another half-hour to get to the Piraeus. We’ll be on our way out of the Lagoon not much after eleven.”
“We wear dark clothing?”
“That’s right. But keep it simple — and not all black. We don’t want to look like a commando team.”
“Just as you say, signor.”
Carmody got to his feet, refolded the map, put it away inside his jacket. “If anything comes up that you should know about, I’ll notify you. Otherwise be ready at ten thirty.”
Lucarelli nodded.
From the chair across the room, Rita spoke for the first time. “I cannot stay in this house another night. This waiting... it makes me crazy.”
“Tonight, dulce mia,” Lucarelli said to her. “The plans will not change. Tonight we leave, Saturday we are on Sardinia. Yes, Signor Carmody?”
“That’s how it shapes up,” Carmody said. “Just hang loose. And remember what I said about the wine. If you’re even half-drunk when I get here, we don’t go.”
In his room at the Saviola, a renovated sixteenth-century palace that was one of the more comfortable hotels along the Grand Canal, Carmody called Della Robbia. “It’s tonight,” he said. “Get in touch with Vickers, tell him to be three hundred yards off the Quartieri Vergini, opposite the clock tower, at least twenty minutes before eleven.”
“Si, Signor Carmody.”
“And tell your launch driver to pick me up at ten sharp, just where you told him. Make sure he understands ten sharp.”
“It will be done.”
“Call me if there are any problems.”
“There will be no problems.”
“I hope not. As soon as I’m paid in full, I’ll wire your money to you care of Piombo.”
“Bene,” Della Robbia said.
Carmody lay back on the bed with one of his cigars and waited for it to be time to move out.
In the shadows at the foot of Via Giordano, Carmody stood looking for the launch. The night was dark, moonless, hushed except for the faint pulsing sounds of water traffic on the Grand Canal. An occasional black gondola glided past on the Rio di Fontego a few feet away, but the area was as deserted as he’d estimated it would be. It was just ten o’clock.
He wore dark trousers, a dark shirt, his Beretta in its half-holster under his jacket. His bag rested at his feet; he had checked out of the Saviola two hours ago. Supper had killed an hour and a quarter, and he’d spent the rest of the time in a water taxi and on foot from the Rialto Bridge.
He looked at his watch again — 10:01 — and when he lowered his arm he heard the muffled throb of a boat engine. Seconds later the launch, small and radio-equipped like the water taxis, came along the rio and drifted over to the seawall. The man behind the wheel starboard called softly, “Signor?”
Carmody looked back along Via Giordano, saw nothing to worry him, and came out of the shadows. He descended the three steps cut into the seawall, boarded the launch, stowed his bag under the front seat. The driver — bearded, wearing a beret and a black turtleneck — kept his eyes on the canal, waiting for instructions.
Carmody said, “Rio San Spirito. Number fifty-two. Can you find it?”
“San Spirito? Yes, I know it.”
“Let’s go then.”
The darkness was thick in the narrow canals through which they maneuvered; half the time the red-and-green running lights on the launch was the only illumination. Most of the ancient, decaying buildings along the rio were dark. Even the occupied ones had shutters drawn across their oblong windows that allowed little light to escape. Carmody watched astern, but the only other crafts were an occasional taxi or a wraithlike gondola gliding into or out of one of the maze of waterways. The silence, broken only by the throb of the launch’s inboard, was as heavy as the odor of garbage and salt water.
It was not quite ten-thirty when the driver brought them into the black mouth of another canal and said, “San Spirito, signor.”
Carmody looked for familiar landmarks, found one. “Fifty-two is the first building on the near side of that bridge ahead.”
The driver cut power, eased the launch in close to the unbroken line of brick-and-cement walls on the right. When they neared the small arched bridge Carmody pointed out the landing platform beyond number fifty-two. The launch drifted up to it. Carmody waited until the driver held steady, then jumped onto the platform.
“Wait here,” he said to the driver. “And keep the engine running.”
The canal door to Lucarelli’s building was at the near end of the seawall, set into the right-angled corner between the rio and a high garden wall made of brick. Carmody went there, used a corroded brass knocker.
“Carmody. Open up.”
There was the sound of a bolt being shot, then a key turning in the old-fashioned latch. The door edged inward. Carmody went inside, and Lucarelli was standing three feet away with a pistol in his hand. The muzzle dipped when Carmody stopped and stared at him. He said nervously, “All is well, Signor Carmody?”
Carmody took a close look at him. Lucarelli’s breath smelled of wine but he was sober enough. Barely.
He said, “Put that gun away,” and moved down the hallway into the room where they had talked that afternoon. Three large leather suitcases sat on the floor next to the table. Carmody thought that the biggest of them would contain Lucarelli’s run-out money, from which he’d be paid when they reached Sardinia.
The woman, Rita, stood next to the suitcases. She said, “We are leaving now?” in her thickly accented English. She was even twitchier than she had been earlier; she couldn’t seem to keep her hands still.