Dieter had come back, followed by a waiter bearing a telephone. While the instrument was being plugged in the Dutch boy whispered in Yosper’s ear. “Uh-huh,” said Yosper, looking satisfied. “Well, let’s drop this argument, as it’s making our friend uncomfortable. I think that wine’s breathed about long enough now, let’s get the waiter to pour it”
Hake shook his head unbelievingly. But what was the use? His chicken Marsala was arriving; he waited impatiently for the waiter to finish boning it before his eyes, and then ate swiftly. “I don’t want any dessert,” he said, finished while the others were still savoring the best parts of their meals. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
“Sure,” said Yosper hospitably. “You’ve had a rough day. Let’s get straight about tomorrow, though. You’re on an eight a.m. flight to Leonardo da Vinci. When you get there, go in to the depot in Rome, the place where you got your clothes on the way down here. They’ll fix you up with the right documents and tickets; i think it’s a two p.m. flight to New York—you’ll sleep tomorrow night in your own bed—but they’ll straighten all that out for you. Leave a call for six. Mario’ll pick you up at six-thirty and take you to the airport.”
“I will have a coffee sent up to you before we leave,” Mario said agreeably. “If you wish something more before your flight, we can get it after you check in at Capodichino.”
Hake stood listening. And fidgeting. His instincts wanted to say something his mouth was reluctant to speak. Finally he managed to say, “Anyway, thank you. All of you. I guess you did get me out of a tight place.”
“No more than was coming to you, dear boy. You were a great help to us. Your nut-lady and the wogs were a considerable annoyance, and now they’re taken care of.”
“But they got away!”
“The wogs did, yes. But that’s not all bad, Hake. They are an unpleasant pair, and catching them is like catching rattlesnakes in a net. Besides, dear boy, it’s nothing personal with them. I didn’t want to punish them. You don’t punish a bomb, you just make sure it doesn’t blow you up.”
They were all smiling at him, Yosper still eating, the boys leaning back and holding hands. Hake waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t. He said tightly, “The girl got away too.”
“Not far, boy,” said Yosper pleasantly.
“What are you talking about?”
Yosper sighed. “Well, let’s see if we can find out,” he said, and picked up the phone. He spoke for a few seconds in a language Hake did not know and then put it down, beaming. “She’s in Regina Coeli right now, Hake. She’ll be out of circulation for a while.”
“Jail? For what? She didn’t break any law here!”
Yosper shook his head, chuckling. “She broke the most basic law of the land. You see, her little bunch of amateurs pulls the same trick we do, only they’re not as good at it. She was operating on forged identity and credit. But once we tracked her down to the Pescatore and dear Mario turned her room—why, we knew what she was using. The rest of it was easy. We blew her credit. She got as far as Rome, and they picked her up for using phony cards. She’s a bankrupt, Hake. They’ll auction her off in the Rome slave market to pay her bills. It’ll be a good long time before she bothers us again.”
Twenty-one hours later Hake jumped out of a taxi on the Trastevere side of the Ponte Sant’Angelo. He had not wasted his time in Rome. The training Under the Wire, and the on-the-job skills he had acquired in the last few days, had all found a use. From the Team’s safe depot in Rome he had secured his new passport and his return ticket to America, along with a few items of standard equipment he had requisitioned on the spot—one of them being the inks and papers to change his ticket, and the cards to finance a few extracurricular activities. The rest of the day had been spent finding out what he needed to know. He set his walking stick and “satchel” on the sidewalk under the looming layer-cake of Hadrian’s Tomb and paid the driver carefully, adding coins according to volume and pitch. When the words dwindled away and the tone dropped back down to tenor he turned away, picked up his gear and crossed to the parapet near the bridge. The Tiber River at that point was a gently meandering stream, between grassy banks, here widening into a pool, there narrow and swift. It did not look artificial. It looked as if it had been there forever.
“Siete pescatore?” Hake had not noticed the approach of the Roman policeman. “Pesce,” the man repeated, demonstrating a rod and line with his electric baton. “Feesh? You feesh? Have license?”
“Oh,” said Hake, enlightened. “No, I’m not going to fish. No fish. Just look. Voyeur.”
“Ah, paura” said the patrolman in sympathy, touching Hake’s shoulder before moving on. Hake leaned idly on the balustrade, giving the policeman time to get out of sight. It was true, what he had been talking about. There were anglers on the Ponte Sant’Angelo, dangling hooks into the stream as it flowed under the bridge, even at this hour. And in the stream itself, elderly women in hip-length waders were whipping the shallows with fly rods. Hake could not see whether they were catching anything. But he wished them luck, for it took their attention off him.
He walked quickly twenty yards out onto the bridge and there, just as the map from the depot had said, was an iron disk set in the sidewalk. Using the walking stick as a crowbar he levered the cover off and peered in. It was totally dark, and it stank. That was as expected, too, if not very attractive. He dropped the knapsack in and heard it hit a cement landing a few yards down; he followed, climbing down a slippery metal ladder and lowering the cover back into place above him.
As soon as it was closed the stench became abominable, and the absence of light was total.
He was in Rome’s greatest and oldest sewer. Was the Tiber polluted? Va bene! Roof it over. Let it fulfill its function! And now the river was in fact a sewer. It rolled under a grassed and gardened parkland strip with a new, and artificial, stream running its length to justify the maps and the bridges. Waste disposal was benefited. Esthetic appeal was maintained. And la cloaca maxima nuova flowed untroubled to the sea.
Untroubled? Yes, perhaps, but not untroubling. The stink was at least of an order of magnitude worse than anything Hake had previously experienced in his life. Hastily he fumbled around on the slimy cement to find the knapsack, located the ripcord and popped it open. It made a sharp rush of sound, like a tire abruptly going flat, and unfolded itself. In ten seconds it had sprouted prow and stern, stretching itself into the form of a kayak. He fumbled around to orient himself and found what he was looking for. Inside the well for the paddler was a plastic pouch which, opened, produced flashlight, folded paddle and a breathing mask.
When Hake had the mask on, he took the first full breath he had allowed himself since entering the manhole. It was bearable. Barely bearable. It was like being downwind of an ill-kept abattoir, where before it had been like being one of the beeves.
He thumbed the light on and looked about him. The Tiber water did not look bad. Things were floating in it, and the stench was undeniable, but it looked, actually, merely cool and wet—until he held the light at arm’s length out away from the cement landing, and saw the oily iridescence shining up. The roof was steelwork with a courtesy patching of plaster, most of which had peeled away. Under it the river moved more briskly than it appeared. When Hake was in the kayak he found that paddling was hard work.