When I had made about twenty metres I stood, looked back, saw nothing threatening, and began to walk.
And tripped.
I crashed to the ground, making a racket like a thrashing elephant, and dropped the GPS into the leaves. I scrambled to my knees as a shout rang out behind me. Another shout followed. Boots pounded as bodies crashed through trees. I felt around in the leaves for the GPS. Someone hollered, closer this time. My fingers hit plastic, and I snatched up the unit and got to my feet and began to run.
If “run” is the right word for zigzagging though dense forest, eyes on the GPS, eyes ahead, then back to the little glass screen showing me the right way, heartbeats thudding in my ears.
Shouts, snapping branches, and the thump of boots on the forest floor told me the men in camo were closing in. I burst out of the trees, jammed the GPS into my pocket, pulled on my helmet, fumbled out my key, swung my leg over the saddle. “Don’t drop it, don’t drop it,” I chanted, my hand shaking as I jammed the key into the ignition and turned it. Shapes approached through the trees. I pushed the bike off the stand, made a painfully slow three-point turn-why hadn’t I parked the Hawk facing away from the forest?-hit the Start button, kicked the gear shift into first, and roared away, eyes on the rear-view mirror, just as three or four men in military gear broke out of the bush and skidded to a halt in the cloud of dust I had left behind me.
VI
ALONG BURNSIDE DRIVE I looked down at the speedometer to find I was fifty over the limit. I cut back on the throttle and tried to do the same to the flow of adrenaline racing through my veins.
I rode into Couchiching Park, where I bought an ice cream at French’s and took it to a bench by the boardwalk. I watched powerboats come and go from the marina under a blue sky where seagulls scribed lazy circles. People strolled by, kids shrieked and complained on the playground equipment. All was normal.
Sugar wasn’t supposed to calm people down, but licking chocolate ice cream helped me coax my heart rate back to normal. I had a bad feeling about those guys in the bush. Their appearance and their air of purpose didn’t suggest sport, even though they seemed to enjoy chasing me. They hadn’t seemed like a bunch of good old boys out for a bit of fun shooting paintballs at one another and pouring down cold beer between pretend battles. They were organized and disciplined. And that leader was anything but one of the boys.
I remembered that during the thunderstorm at the Corbizzi mansion last night, I thought I heard a motorboat out on the water-a strange place to be when the lake was crazy with wind and wave, when lightning flashed every couple of seconds. This morning I had found the GPS. Which had led me to the cabin. A coincidence? I doubted it. The GPS held waypoints stretching from Morrison Landing to Lake Couchiching. I got to my feet, wiped the sticky remnants of ice cream from my fingers with a tissue, tossed the paper into a bin, and walked back to the parking lot where I’d left the Hawk.
The GPS had probably been lost by one of the camo-boys. Simple.
Just as simple was the fact that I felt no obligation now to return it. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain to any of those guys, let alone the leader, how I came to possess it. On my way back to the Hawk, I removed the two good batteries and tossed the GPS into a garbage bin. Then I mounted up and rode home.
The cellphone in my saddlebag had completely slipped my mind.
RAPHAELLA LAUGHED.
I called her that night and related my unintentional visit to paintball heaven.
“I guess it does have its funny side,” I said, aware that my voice was a little chilly. She wasn’t taking the paintballers as seriously as I was. Maybe she was right.
“Sorry,” she apologized. Then she giggled. “I can just picture you charging through the trees, chased by the Testosterone Kids with their blotchy green-and-brown clothes.”
“Hardly kids.”
“All this because you were too conscientious about trying to return someone’s lost property.”
“Yeah, well, I misplaced that sense of duty in the bush somewhere,” I replied. “The GPS is in the trash down at the park, and the cell is still in the Hawk’s saddlebag.”
“You’re not going to try and return it, I hope.”
“No. It can stay where it is for the time being. I’ll probably end up tossing it, too.”
“Good idea,” she said, suddenly serious. “They sound like people worth staying away from.”
We talked a bit more and then signed off for the night. I watched a bit of TV and went to bed. Before I fell asleep, my imagination replayed images of the camo-boys flitting through the trees, converging on me.
PART TWO
The Lord has brought me here, and has said to me,
“I have put you here as a watchman in the centre of Italy
that you may hear my words and announce them to the people.”
– Girolamo Savonarola
One
I
THE MORNING AFTER my unplanned visit to the paintball camp I returned to the mansion and went immediately to the library. I sat down at the escritoire, thinking. I hadn’t abandoned the possibility that Professor Corbizzi already had a catalogue of his collection, and I was determined to search the library thoroughly before I started an inventory from scratch. There was no use asking Mrs. Stoppini-she avoided the room. Besides, she had asked me to do the inventory in the first place.
The absence of a computer or one of those old-style multi-drawer file-card systems like they used to have in public libraries was not encouraging. The filing cabinet yielded nothing but old household bills, tax statements, and other papers, and in the escritoire I found only an old pipe tobacco tin containing a broken pocket knife and a rosary with glass beads and a black wooden cross.
One of the bottom drawers of the escritoire jammed when I tried to close it. Wiggling as I pulled, I removed it and set it on the desk. On my hands and knees, I took a close look at the track. It was worn but seemed true. I checked the drawer’s corner joints. Sure enough, they were loose, a common problem with old furniture. It would take only a few minutes to fix.
I emptied the contents-a few loose papers and a package of envelopes-onto the desk beside the typewriter and turned the drawer upside down to examine it more closely. Something rattled, then two small brass keys plopped onto the escritoire. I set the drawer down, intending to repair it later, then looked around, my mind back to the quest for a catalogue. I could see nowhere such a thing might be kept-unless among the books themselves. Finding it would mean taking the books off the shelves and examining them-which Raphaella and I would be doing anyway as we worked on the inventory.
Then I remembered the alcove on the other side of the room, and the cupboard built into the bookshelves.
Quickly, I crossed the floor, the little brass keys in my hand. The volumes flung onto the floor by the professor during his last seconds on earth were now stacked on the table in the alcove. I stepped between the table and the shelves on the north wall. The closely fitted cupboard door had a round wooden pull-and below the pull, a brass cabinet lock.
One of the keys opened the lock. I found a stack of small leather-bound books that would have made my father exclaim “Aha!” as he waggled his eyebrows. He loved old books, and sometimes added them to his collection rather than put them up for sale. I transferred the pile onto the table behind me and opened one book at random. It was a Greek-Latin dictionary, published in London in 1763. Assuming the rest were as valuable-or the professor wouldn’t have kept them under lock and key-I made a mental note to tell Mrs. Stoppini she would need the services of a rare books expert at some point.