Lea watched the commotion on the south bank of the island as the man clambered out of water and ran for help.
“Something tells me he’s going to want his boat back, Brad.”
“You think?”
“I know — look!”
Brad turned to see the carabinieri — the Italian police — speed out into the canal in a police motorboat, lights flashing. An enormous arc of sea-spray flew out behind it. “Oh joy,” he said. “I was kind hoping that might happen.”
“Just get after the map and forget about the cops!”
Karlsson took the advice and powered the Aquariva after Kodiak in the speedboat ahead of them. Behind, the police were slowly closing the distance, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. Up ahead, he saw the Russian was now steering the boat off to the right in an attempt to lose them.
“Is he crazy?” Karlsson shouted.
“What?”
“He’s getting off the Grand Canal and heading into the city!”
“Then yes,” Lea replied. “He is crazy! Those canals are too narrow for a decent boat chase… what the hell’s the matter with these people?”
Lea watched Kodiak’s boat speed out of sight into a smaller canal ahead on the right, and a few seconds later they were making the same sharp turn. They threw out another colossal arc of canal spray into the air, only this time it came crashing down on the deck of a boat full of Japanese tourists and soaked them to the skin.
“Sorry!” she shouted, cheerily waving at them. “Why are they screaming?” she asked, frowning. “Some people! I was only trying to say sorry.”
Karlsson glanced back and shook his head. “Next time maybe put the semi-automatic pistol down before you wave your apologies, yeah?”
Lea looked at the gun. “Ah… gotcha.”
Now they were entering the Rio de San Moise, a narrow canal less than thirty feet wide, lined either side with towering eighteenth century hotels. The tremendous noise of the speedboats’ engines reverberated in the enclosed space and caused several people to lean out of their windows to see what was happening.
“Can’t you speed this thing up?” Lea said.
“Not in these little canals, I can’t,” Karlsson said. “Why do you think they brought us into this damn labyrinth?”
Behind them, they heard the sound of gunshots, and Lea turned to see the police firing warning shots into the air.
“They’re getting closer!” Lea said.
Brad turned and saw the carabinieri closing in. He sighed and returned his attention to Kodiak and the boat in front. “And I bet they know this place like the back of their hands…”
Lea casually pulled her gun out. “Want me to sink ’em?”
“The police? Are you crazy?”
A second round of gunshots rang out, only this time they weren’t going into the air. Karlsson glanced behind and saw a police marksman on the front deck of the police boat. He was aiming a rifle right at the Aquariva. Less than fifty yards were between them and the carabinieri now, and they were still hemmed in either side by the towering walls of some of the city’s grandest hotels. Ahead of them, Kodiak was racing his boat beneath a low stone bridge, the Ponte San Moise. He fired a few shots at them over his shoulder while trying to navigate the speeding boat through the canals. Mazzarro was cowering in the back, covering his head with his arms and trying to dodge the flying lead.
The police shouted a string of commands in Italian through a megaphone, and then a second later fired at the Aquariva. The bullet hit the ridge of the maple inlay stretching around the stern of the boat and sent a shower of splinters flying into the air.
Karlsson took one look at the damage and saw the police marksman aiming for a second shot. “Yeah… on reflection, Lea, I want you to sink them!”
They raced toward the Ponte San Moise, ducking instinctively to avoid hitting their heads on the low stonework of the bridge. As they passed under the bridge the police’s second shot struck the carved face on the bridge’s beam and blasted it into shards of masonry falling into their wake in the canal behind them.
“All right, I’ve had enough of this!” Lea said, and crawled to the back of the boat. She raised the gun and rested her arms on the back seats as she lined the police boat up in her sights. A woman hanging some washing out screamed obscenities at them as they flashed past her and sprayed her with canal water.
Lea ducked to avoid a third bullet which hit the chrome edge of the windshield and pinged off to the left where it lodged into the soft plaster wall of an adjacent hotel.
“Holy shit!” Karlsson said. “That nearly put a hole right through me!”
Lea raised her gun a second time, and aimed for the police boat. “Sorry guys!”
She fired three shots at the bow and all of them hit home, blasting three holes in the fiber glass hull on the portside bow.
The carabinieri responded with more shots from the rifle, but their boat was losing speed. Lea planted another six shots in the port bow. The resulting hole was now so large that they began taking on water and moments later the police boat slowed and its nose sank slowly into the brown canal. What was once a threat was now an amusing scene of flashing blue lights and angry carabinieri trying to avoid a soaking in the water.
Lea spun the gun around her finger like a cowboy from a Western and pretended to blow smoke from the muzzle.
The marksman took one final shot but Karlsson steered the Aquariva around a shallow bend to the left, pausing only to give the police a big fat bird, and then return his attention to Kodiak and the rescue of Dr Dario Mazzarro.
“Wow, that was childish,” Lea said. “They were only doing their job.”
“That was childish, but you pretending to be the Bandit Queen was cool?”
“The who?”
“You don’t know who the Bandit Queen was?” Karlsson shook his head in despair.
Lea smiled. “I know Calamity Jane. Was the Bandit Queen anything like Calamity Jane?”
Karlsson sighed and fixed his attention back on Kodiak who was now speeding as fast as he could through the narrow canals in the older quarters of the city.
“Forget about it, honey. We have work to do.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Sir Richard Eden handed him Dario Mazzaro’s notebooks, Ryan Bale smiled fully for the first time since Tokyo Bay. What had looked like nothing but illegible scrawl to Hawke looked like the answer to life, the universe and everything to Ryan and he wasted no time in getting stuck into them.
Since they had arrived in Venice and got their hands on Lexi’s picture of the map, they had struggled to translate the glyphs even with the work Alex had already done back in New York, but with the notes they were certain they could make much faster and more accurate progress. Now he and Alex shared a glance which was neither optimistic nor fearful, but said: this is our chance to beat that bastard to the greatest secret on earth.
And the last chance.
Alex once again opened up the digital image of the map that Lexi had taken back in Berlin while Ryan pored over the notes, absent-mindedly tapping his fingers on the wooden desk.
Eden passed a nervous hand over his face as he watched Ryan. “You think you can work out Mazzarro’s work, Mr Bale?”
“I bloody hope so,” Ryan mumbled, without taking his eyes off the pages. “We’ve only translated a couple of glyphs without them, so let’s have some peace and quiet and maybe I might get somewhere.”
Eden raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Everyone was more than a little keen for Ryan to work his magic, and with Alex working alongside him the expectations were higher than ever.