SEVEN

 

 

   THE nurse—large, clean, and handsome—bustled in carrying a tray and exuding a take-charge aura as welcome and natural in Sigonella Naval Hospital as it would have been in Kansas City General.

"Well, how’s my favorite patient? Were we taking a little nap? Wake up, sleepyhead. Lunchtime!"

"I can hardly wait," said Gideon, but he was glad to see her. "What color straw do I get today? Can I have yellow again? The kind that bends?"

"No straws today. Doctor says you’re on solids now. What do you think of that?" She put the bed tray down in front of him. There was a bowl of dark gray porridge, a cup of light gray pudding, and a glass of milk.

"These are solids?"

"Well, they’re not liquids. Would you believe mushies?"

"I’ll take ‘em. I’m hungry. Which feels very nice." He raised himself to a sitting position.

"We have to be careful with the spoon, now. Try to keep it away from the left side. Your cheek’s going to be a teeny bit tender yet. Oh, you have a visitor. He’ll be in after you eat."

"Who is it, Sue?"

"Name’s John Lau. Nice guy. Says he’s an old friend."

"Old friend" was stretching things a little, but only a little, under the circumstances. "Can’t you send him in now? I mean, of course, if the rules permit."

"They don’t, but I’ll make an exception, seeing as how you’re going to be such a good boy and eat up all the nice glop."

A few seconds after she left the room, the big policeman walked in with a twinkling smile that was good for Gideon’s soul.

"What’s up, Doc?"

"I don’t believe it," Gideon said. "What are you doing in Sicily? Or am I back in Germany?"

"No such luck; you’re in sunny Italy." As always, John’s babylike laugh made Gideon laugh too. Then he winced; the stitches had come out just that morning.

"Hey, I’m sorry, Doc. You want the nurse again?"

"No. It only hurts when I laugh." He held up his hand quickly. "Also when you laugh."

John smiled, which was better. "Don’t let me stop you from eating. It looks wonderful."

"I’ll tell you, it’s the closest thing to real food I’ve had since the shore patrol deposited me here Friday. Five days. Have a seat." He dug into the porridge and gingerly put the spoon in his mouth. Sue was right; it was still pretty raw in there.

John made a face. "What is that stuff?"

"I don’t know. Gruel, probably."

"Nah, gruel’s thinner." John watched in good-humored silence as Gideon worked his way through the porridge, which tasted wonderful. With hot food in him and a friendly face nearby, he was starting to feel nearly human again.

"Boy," John said happily, "you sure look like hell."

Gideon put down his spoon. He hadn’t seen himself since the bandages had come off. "I sure feel like hell. I may as well see the worst. How about handing me the mirror on the bureau there?"

John gave it to him. "You’ll be sorry."

"Holy mackerel," said Gideon, "look at that." It had taken twenty stitches to pull together the jagged tear at the junction of his upper and lower lips, and six to close a cut at the side of his left eye, probably from when he’d banged his head on the bridge support. There were another four stitches over his right eye (Marco’s flashlight?) and several nasty contusions that had left most of his face brown, black, and purple. Add to this a patchy five-day beard, and Gideon was surprised that he was feeling as well as he was, which wasn’t all that good.

John replaced the mirror. "How about the ankle?" he asked.

"Looks worse than it is," Gideon said, indicating the protuberance at the end of the bed formed by a metal framework that kept the covers off his foot. "Sprained a couple of ligaments. I’m supposed to be up tomorrow, but I’ll have to use a cane for a while."

"Well, Doc, you sure get involved in some pretty strange situations for a nice, mild-mannered professor-type."

"Amazingly enough, the same thought has been occurring to me. The Curse of the Visiting Fellow, no doubt."

"The curse of the who?"

"You don’t know? It’s an honorary curse; goes along with my position. The last fellow, two semesters ago, got killed in a car accident, and the one before that disappeared. Or maybe I have them backwards."

John took his notebook from the flap pocket of his shirt and wrote in it. "Go ahead," he said.

"That’s all. Dr. Rufus told me about it… the chancellor. He was sort of embarrassed to have me even know about it; he didn’t exactly gush with information."

John nodded. Gideon saw him print "Rufus" in the notebook. "Okay, Doc. Look, if this keeps up, you’re gonna get killed—or kill someone else, more likely. Let’s try to find out what the hell is going on. Now, I’ve seen the police reports and the transcripts of your statements, and I still have some big questions—"

"Wait a minute, John. I’ve got some pretty big questions myself. I’d like to ask them first, if that’s okay."

"Shoot." He flipped the notebook closed and dropped it into his pocket.

"First of all, what are you doing here, really?"

John’s injured surprise was clearly genuine. "Hey, look, you’ve been assaulted with intent to kill. That’s a crime, you know, even here, and I’m a cop."

"I know, I know, but why you? This is over a thousand miles from Heidelberg. Aren’t there any other cops? And why is this a NATO security matter at all? Why not the local MPs?"

John tipped his chair back against the wall. "Let me put it this way: USOC is my beat. The agreement they have with the army calls for protection for the faculty wherever they send you guys. And since the only places they send you are NATO bases, it’s natural that NSD has the responsibility. Traveling is no problem for us. We just hop a MAC flight."

"Why do we need protection at all? And why can’t the local military police handle it?" Gideon asked again.

"Believe me, it’s a lot simpler than negotiating with the local security people every time you go some place, and explaining who and what you are, which isn’t always so easy. You’re not military, you’re not civil service, you’re not tech reps—and you go to some pretty weird places."

Gideon hiked himself into a sitting position so that his eyes were level with John’s. It took more effort than he expected. "Look, let me level with you, and maybe you’ll do the same with me. I’m in way over my head with this spy business I’ve gotten myself into. What I’m wondering is, are you really a cop, or are you a spy or an agent or whatever they call it?" John began to answer, but Gideon cut him off. "And am I some kind of a pawn? I don’t like being used, especially when it nearly gets me killed."

John frowned, arranging his words. He tipped his chair forward onto all four legs again. "My branch is Safety," he said slowly, with careful emphasis on each word. "Protection of life and property. We’re just like the MPs, only we get assignments that cut across their lines. As of this year, I’m assigned to USOC. Before that I was doing the same thing for USAREUR, before that at AFCENT in Holland. And before that I was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill cop in San Diego and Honolulu. I couldn’t be more ordinary and run-of-the-mill if I tried. Until you started making my life complicated, that is." It was a long speech for John. He blew out his breath as if he’d been chopping down trees.

Gideon nodded slowly. "I believe you," he said. "Tell me this, John. Do you think there’s any connection between what Marks and Delvaux asked me to do and these things that have been happening to me?"

"I don’t know what they asked you to do, but I’ve been wondering the same thing." He gestured at the pudding. "Hey, go ahead and eat your whatever-it-is."

Gideon made a small gesture of impatience. "Is that really true? That you don’t know? It’s hard to believe an organization could function that way, the right hand not knowing what the left is doing."

"Doc, we have to operate that way. We work on a need-toknow basis. The fewer people who know the dirty stuff, the better. Intelligence doesn’t have any trouble finding out what we’re doing, because we’re not into nasty tricks and sensitive information. But they don’t tell us what they’re doing, and we don’t ask." He paused. "We’re not supposed to, anyway."

It was the hint Gideon had been waiting for. "Well, I’d like to tell you anyway. All this craziness has to be connected. It’s stupid to treat it as a bunch of unrelated incidents." He waited for an invitation to go on, but John just looked at him with a faint smile. "Besides," Gideon continued, "I don’t trust Marks. I do trust you."

"Oh, you can trust him," said John, "he’s just, well…"

"A nerd. John, would I be compromising you by telling you about it?"

"Yes," said John in a small, stern voice. Then he smiled, and then the smile became the laughter of schoolboys sharing secrets.

Gideon told him about the interview in Heidelberg, the theft of the socks, and the subsequent interview in the base laundry. John listened, walking about the room, neither taking notes nor asking questions. "Huh," he said finally. "How about that?"

"Come on, John, don’t be inscrutable with me. It all has to be related, doesn’t it?"

The policeman came back to the chair and sat down. "Here’s what I would like: I would like it if you would eat your dessert, and if I could please be the cop, and I ask questions, and you answer them. Okay?"

Gideon laughed and winced once more. "Okay."

He spooned up a lump of the gray pudding and pushed it around his mouth with his tongue. "My God, what is this stuff? It’s insoluble."

"What, the pudding or the case?"

Gideon remembered to catch himself before laughing. "Why, John, that’s funny."

Lau accepted the compliment with a slight nod. "Let’s go over a few things. I’m assuming that none of these guys were the same as the ones that jumped you in Heidelberg."

"Right. These were Italians."

"You mean they spoke Italian."

"No, they were Italian. I don’t understand the language, but a native speaker—"

Lau held up his hand. "Okay, I forgot. We’ve been through this before. Speech rhythms and so forth."

"Right."

Lau bowed his head in mock defeat. "All right. What about the one that showed up at the end, the one who apparently saved you? You told the shore patrol he looked familiar. Was he one of them?"

"One of the ones from Heidelberg?" For a moment Gideon wasn’t sure. Could he have been the ferret-faced man? The man on the bridge had seemed to move in the same spare, powerful, dangerous way. No, Ferret-face had been more compact, more coiled.

"I don’t think so," he said. "No, definitely not. In fact, I assumed he was with the shore patrol, but they told me no."

"But he spoke like an American?"

"Yes, he did—I think. This time I’m not completely sure. I wasn’t concentrating too well at the time."

"Doc, if you could try to remember where you’d seen him, it could make a big difference."

"You’re telling me. I’ve thought about it so much, I’m not sure anymore that he was familiar. John, go back a minute; why would you think that one of those bastards from Heidelberg would be saving my life now?"

"Well, are we really sure he was trying to help you? You were pretty groggy at the time, and you didn’t see how it ended."

Gideon absent-mindedly tongued another nodule of pudding. "Still, it wouldn’t make sense…"

"No, I don’t think so either. I’m just trying to find the connection between the two incidents."

"Then you think there is one?"

"Sure, no doubt in my mind. These kinds of things don’t happen to people in real life. Once is strange enough, but twice—uh-uh, something’s going on."

"God, I’m glad to hear you say that. I was starting to think I was getting paranoid."

The nurse came in to take Gideon’s tray. "Mes compliments au chef," he said. "Formidable.

"Don’t be smart. Doctor’s going to be very disappointed when I tell him you didn’t eat up all your gunk."

"Do you suppose I could get some hot tea, Sue? I need something to dissolve that stuff."

"Sure." She turned to John. "Coffee?"

"That’d be great. Thanks."

"John," Gideon said, as the door swung closed, "am I suspected of anything? Some kind of involvement in… all this? Dope or something?"

"Look, Doc, I don’t know what’s going on myself, so I’m not ruling anything out. But I don’t think anyone seriously suspects you of anything. Least of all me."

"Thank you. I appreciate your saying that."

The tea and coffee were wordlessly brought by a shy, pretty candy-striper who left quickly, and the two men sipped in silence for a few minutes. Gideon was feeling very relaxed, and the tea was soothing. He drank and watched the dust motes floating in the shafts of strong Sicilian sunshine that filled the hospital room.

With a start, he realized he was dozing and looked up to see the policeman smiling at him, his coffee finished.

"I know I’m not the world’s greatest interrogator," John said, "but I don’t usually put ‘em to sleep."

"I’m sorry—"

"No, you look like you can use it. If you’re up to it tomorrow, there are some pictures I’d like you to look at in the Security Office. I’ll come by about eleven."

"Pictures…?" Before he could complete the thought, Gideon was asleep again. He was awakened for a dinner of stewed chicken and vegetables, ate hungrily, and slept soundly until morning.

"NOTHING, huh?"

"Not a thing." Gideon pushed himself away from the table, rubbed the nape of his neck, and leaned back in his chair. He had been leafing through photographs for an hour. "Where did you get all these characters?"

"Local bad guys," John said. "Mafia, gangsters, a few others. Anybody I thought might be a good bet."

"But you didn’t really think they’d turn up."

"No."

They sat, quiet and a little depressed, John’s fingers gently tapping the table. A clerk came to the doorway and motioned at him. "Telephone."

When he came back, he said, "They’ve got the car."

"Who? What car?"

"The guys who ambushed you. They found their car on the road to Taormina, near Mangano."

"How do they know it’s the right car? I couldn’t describe it to the shore patrol."

"No, but they analyzed some paint they found on the bumper where you rammed it; it matches the paint on your car. There isn’t any question about it."

"Great. What else?"

"Not much. Apparently it was doing about a hundred, ran off the road, exploded, and burned so badly you could hardly tell it was a car. They pieced together enough to identify it as a Lancia that was stolen from a garage in Catania on Thursday, but that’s about it. Somebody was still in it, but burnt to a crisp. The carabinieri flew out an expert, a forensic pathologist from Rome. All he could say was that it was definitely human. He couldn’t even tell for sure if it was a man or a woman. There’s nothing but a few bones."

"Bones?" Gideon was suddenly excited. "Damn it, John, I don’t care what shape they’re in I could tell more than that from them. I’ve got to see them."

"Believe me, you couldn’t—"

"John, you seem utterly determined to forget that I am a physical anthropologist by profession." In response to John’s tolerant smile, he went on. "And a damned good one."

"Relax, Doc, relax. I’ve seen the stuff. A few finger bones and stuff, all cracked and burned. You could put them all in a coffee cup and still have room for a cup of coffee."

"You’ve seen them? And you didn’t tell me? I thought they just found it!"

"No, they found it Friday, the day after the ambush."

"Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me before?"

"Will you calm down? I didn’t know for sure it was the right car till just now."

"Yes, but—"

"And you didn’t look that terrific yesterday. It didn’t seem like such a great idea to mention it."

"Sure, but—"

"Hey, Doc!" John’s tone had changed. He was getting angry. Gideon closed his mouth in mid-sentence and sank back against his chair, exasperated.

John glowered and stabbed a forefinger at him. "You don’t have to be told everything, you know. I’m the cop. All you are is the lousy victim." Then his frown dissolved into merry creases as he burst into his sudden child’s laugh.

"All right," Gideon said, "but I’d still like to see those bones, Mr. Cop, sir."

"That’s better. They’re at police headquarters in Catania. I’ll drive you over later, if you want. Hey, how about some lunch? I’m starving."

 

 

   JOHN had wanted to go to the base cafeteria for hamburgers, but Gideon, trading on his weakened condition, talked him into going to a clean, modest little trattoria a few miles down the road. There John ordered a full meal; Gideon had soup and pasta with fresh sardines and a little butter.

"You know," John said—and then had to stop while he chewed the last chunk of a thin, tough steak pizzaiola, which he had ordered contrary to Gideon’s advice and was consuming with evident relish—"you know—" a gulp of red wine sent the mouthful down—"you know, I’m not so sure that the two attacks are related after all."

"Come on, John," said Gideon, "you said yourself it would be a pretty wild coincidence for two things like that to just happen."

"Right, but wild coincidences do happen. The situations are too different. In Heidelberg you were assaulted and searched by two guys who knew exactly what they were looking for. Here in Sicily they were trying to kill you outright—no more, no less."

"How can you know that for sure? How do we know they weren’t looking for it, too—whatever it is—and that killing me wasn’t just the easy way to get it?"

"Because they put a car in your way across a fast road on a dark night. The chances were damn good they’d blow you and your car to shreds. So what were they going to search? Uh uh, they wanted you dead."

Gideon poked morosely at his last sardine and pushed the plate away. "I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense either way."

When the waiter brought the fruit and cheese, Gideon took only a little Bel Paese; his mouth didn’t feel up to dealing with apples or pears. John reached for the largest, reddest apple and bit into it with powerful incisors.

Suddenly an image came back to Gideon. "Hey! The guy on the bridge. I remember him! I saw him in a restaurant, in Aci Trezza! He was watching me! He was eating an apple!"

"What did he look like?" John was excited.

"I don’t remember. Tough-looking. He was with another guy. But he was eating an apple—with his mouth."

"What apple?" shouted John. "What do you mean, with his mouth? Who gives a shit about an apple?" He had half-risen from his chair.

"The way he was eating it—it means he was an American."

"Oh God," John said, falling back into his chair, his enthusiasm gone. "Another anthropology theory." He bit into the apple again with a resounding crunch.

"No, John, now listen. "You just took a bite of it, right? Europeans don’t do that, you know that—especially Italians. They peel it with a knife, and they cut it into little pieces, and they eat them with a fork."

"Oh, come on, Doc."

Gideon glanced around the crowded little restaurant. "Look over there, for example." Two tables away, a solemn, bespectacled man in a black suit was surgically incising the skin of a banana, preparing to remove its contents with his fork. "See?"

"I know, I know; Europeans mostly eat fruit that way, Americans mostly don’t. Doc, mostly isn’t always. It’s not exactly proof."

Gideon was a little piqued. It had been a first-rate deduction, he thought. "At this point we don’t need proof; we need some clues. Don’t forget I thought he sounded like an American when he yelled at them to drop their guns."

"All right, let’s say you’re right. What does that tell us that we didn’t know before?"

"Hell, I don’t know. You’re the cop; I’m just the lousy victim. Aren’t you supposed to put it all together?"

"Oh oh, now I’ve made him mad. All I meant was, I thought you had some theory about it."

Gideon’s energy seemed suddenly exhausted. His ankle had begun to throb. It would be good to lie down and get his foot raised. Maybe three hours out were enough for the first day.

"No theory, John," he said, "I don’t know what it proves. I think you’re right; it’s probably not important."

There was silence for a while. Gideon rolled a little cheese into a ball between his thumb and forefinger. "I think maybe I ought to get back to the hospital."

"All right, you want to let the bones go till tomorrow? Or just forget about them?"

The bones. He’d forgotten. His ankle stopped aching, and his energy came back with a rush.