Baffled, Ranklin regrouped himself on a known point. “But any dropping of leaflets is off, too. Have you seen the things?”
“No, and they’ll be in Italian, anyways.”
“Well, I bet they’re urging more than a shipyard strike. They’ve picked a day when the main garrison’s changing over, the best time for a real riot. Nobody seems to think that’ll actually happen, but we don’t want to be involved in either a riot or a fiasco.”
O’Gilroy said nothing. In the sudden glow of his cigarette, Ranklin saw the lean face looking puzzled, undecided.
“Tell me this, then,” he said quietly, “has Major Dagner been in touch, has he ordered you to be part of this?”
“No-o. I’m thinking he doesn’t know ’bout me doing the flying at all.”
“Then I’m ordering you not to.”
He could almost hear the snap as O’Gilroy came to a decision. “Fine. Mind, I’d’ve liked the flight, but . . . whatever ye say. What are we doing now, then?”
Get out of it all, was Ranklin’s thought. “You say you’re expected over there at first light? Say six o’clock . . .” By then, they could be at Venice station instead, maybe leaving the Oriole disabled – but also leaving Corinna behind. The Falcones could hardly do her any harm, but for all that . . . “Can we telephone the house from anywhere here?”
“Surely. In the office yonder, I’ve got a key. I called to say the aeroplane was fixed and all jest a while back.”
O’Gilroy had the number and what to say to the operator written out in careful phonetics, but Ranklin took over. He decided to be somebody from Sherring’s wanting to talk to Corinna.
The telephone was answered remarkably quickly for a household that should have been asleep. A man’s voice said simply: “Si?”
“Do you speak English?”
Then, from the background, a woman’s voice yelling: “Giancarlo! Ne-” The telephone was cut off.
Ranklin looked at O’Gilroy; he had heard the yell. “Mrs Falcone, most like. Something funny, d’ye think?”
Ranklin called the operator to get the number again, waited, then put the instrument down. “He says the telephone’s disconnected. Broken.”
O’Gilroy took it very calmly. “Sounds bad.”
Novak’s second assassin.
“Someone could be waiting for Falcone himself, holding the women as hostages – how quickly can we get there?”
O’Gilroy shrugged and glanced out at the sky. “Twenty minutes. If ye don’t mind a broken neck.”
32
The takeoff, as O’Gilroy had promised, was only normally terrifying. The engine pulled well in the cool night air and they climbed in a wide circle over the sea and headed for the mouth of the Brenta. Perhaps awakened officials below were thumbing their law-books, but Ranklin was feeling the aeronaut’s heady and dangerous detachment from earthly regulation.
“Will you know the house?” he called.
“Mebbe. But ’tis the field that matters.”
Ranklin looked around at the landscape and it wasn’t frightening, just totally unfamiliar. The dark shape of Venice was sparked with lights like diamonds on a dung-heap, then inland a spatter of sparks that must be Mestre, but beyond it lay nothing. For the first time he thought of night as something tangible, a black flood that had settled on the land.
But at least he could see the coastline and river banks as the water dutifully reflected even the thin starlight. Just follow the river and they should wind up close to the house. Fairly close anyway.
On his side of the cockpit, O’Gilroy was sweating. He’d managed to sound confident about flying at night, and the takeoff had fooled him into thinking he might be right. But the step from two dimensions into the freedom of three was never tricky. Now the glib conviction that he’d be able to see enough was dimmed; darkness made everything not only dark but fuzzy, like a thick coating of soot. The instruments didn’t matter; he could feel the speed and hear the engine revs. But he had to see the faint line of the horizon, and occasionally he lost it behind the wing and the aeroplane wavered as he fought a dreadful dizziness. If you couldn’t see which way up you were, you died. That was the law, as simple as gravity.
And when it came to landing, to shedding that extra dimension . . . He’d made Ranklin carry a length of rag, soaked in both oil and petrol and wrapped around a stone, to light and throw out as a landing flare. And the man had trustingly accepted that that made everything all right, that now O’Gilroy could cope. Officers could be so gullible.
Only now O’Gilroy had to cope . . . Officers could be so crafty.
Quite unaware of all this, Ranklin called: “Have you got a pistol with you?”
“No. Mrs Finn said ’twas a jailing matter in Italy. Have ye one yeself?”
“No. A marvellous pair of secret agents we are.” He thought about the possibilities. “Did Corinna leave hers behind?”
“Not her.” No, Corinna believed laws applied only to others. It was infuriating how often she was right.
“It should be in her room, then. She may be asleep there . . . Can we sneak in?”
“Not so easy. And we’re not there yet . . .”
The villas were strung along the north bank of the Brenta, and O’Gilroy was keeping well to the south so that he could see the river to the right without leaning over. At that range, only a line of occasional lights – wondrously sharp and unsooty – showed there were any houses at all. But the distance meant, he hoped, that nobody at the villa would hear the engine, particularly if they were in the central hall, where the telephone was.
Trying to recognise the outlines of the landing-stages on the river was no help: they all had landing-stages. But now the white villas themselves showed as taint blurs of not-quite-darkness contrasting with the extra-darkness of tall trees around them. The Falcone villa had no tall trees.
Ranklin was also staring. He turned to ask: “D’you think we’re there yet?”
“Hope we’ve passed it.” O’Gilroy curved right, edging across the Brenta and then the line of villas, to reverse his course out on the tar side of them. Now he looked for the pasture where he should land, but without losing sight of the villa that might be the one-
Ranklin said: “If they’re expecting Falcone back, there should be outside lights on.”
Bless the man. Only two villas showed such lights. Which meant that that must be Falcone’s, and that the landing-field ahead. Now that he was heading east, the horizon was more distinct with just the slightest paleness of the new day. But real light was half an hour away, and twilight a treacherous time when you imagined more than you saw. This landing was going to be real, not imagined.
“Right, Captain: light the flare.”
He felt, more than saw, Ranklin lean down to strike a match. He himself kept his head turned away to save his eyesight, but turning the aeroplane to lean Ranklin towards the ground. He heard a curse as one match failed, then the cockpit exploded with light and he shut his eyes.
Ranklin said: “Christ!” Then: “It’s gone.”
O’Gilroy reversed the turn and saw the fluttering spark getting smaller against the dark pasture. Then stop, almost vanish, and flare up again.
“Right.” He snapped off the ignition and tilted the aeroplane down, keeping the speed – the tune from the wires – high, and weaving gently, like a man moving his head to judge the distance, watching the angle between the flame and the horizon close and close . . . Back on the stick, and the wires hummed lower, too much, stick forward again, and back, forward-
“Brace yeself,” he warned. “May not be me best-”
They hit.
The wrought-iron gates of the villa had been left open, and they slipped through, past a small old car that O’Gilroy didn’t recognise, and through shrubs and dwarf cypresses around to the back of the house, away from the lights. By then, Ranklin appreciated the problem: Palladio had believed in high, airy ground-floor rooms, so the bedrooms were a long way up. And up plain stucco’d walls with no foot- and hand-holds, except the drainpipes added in later years. These were tucked within the corners where the portico joined the main wall, and from the portico roof you could reach small windows on either side.