The Bellini Card

52

Alfredo was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

“I’m here, as you see,” Palewski said drily. “But explain to me, clearly and simply, why tonight?”

Alfredo took his arm. “Come,” he said. “I will tell you as we go.”

A gondola was waiting on the water stairs. Both men climbed in, and the gondolier pushed off.

“You see, Signor Brett, it is something you must understand about the people we deal with-the old nobility of Venice. In former times, when Venice was a great power, these people were very careful to do what was good for the state. Only the youngest son was allowed to marry, for a start. His brothers, they fought in wars or put their energies into trade. So the inheritance was undivided, to the advantage of the state.”

“I’ve read about that.”

“Of course, signore. But today, in these times, it is a little different.”

“So?”

“So maybe the older brother, he decides to have a share. He says-I have no wars, no trade, and the Republic is finished. Please, brother, share with me!”

Palewski nodded. “I understand. The youngest son, in practice, took the lot-but legally, he wasn’t entitled to it. Very shrewd.”

Alfredo gave a relieved smile and patted Palewski’s hand. “There-I am very glad you understand, Signor Brett. I like you. I think America is a good country. We have no problems together.”

Palewski was vaguely aware that Alfredo hadn’t really answered his question, but the air of bonhomie was hard to break. Alfredo looked happy and relieved.

“The owner has arranged a special viewing,” Alfredo was saying. “But I should say, he asks us to be very discreet. The palazzo is in very many hands.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “In former times, just the family-but today, when things are hard for these people, they must divide and divide. But you understand how it is for them,” he added, with an encouraging smile.

“We don’t want to disturb the neighbors, you mean?”

“If you like, signore. Because of-the friends.”

Gli amici: the epithet was universal, and wholly ironic.

“I imagine that the friends do not approve of our undertaking?”

Alfredo gave his wince again in half agreement. “You never quite know with friends,” he said.

Palewski chuckled. If this thing came off, it wouldn’t be just Poland exalted. It would be the Austrians discomfited, too. He found himself half looking forward to the sultan’s ball, just for a sight of the imperial ambassador swelling up in impotent fury, like a nervous frog.

Lamps on the canal were being lit by barefoot men with long tapers, and a few windows shone feebly overhead. By day, when large swathes of the buildings were shuttered up, perhaps half abandoned, the canal had a forlorn and forgotten look, like a silted creek. By night, in spite of the lamps, it was almost sepulchral, and the shutters showed like dark caves in some ancient cliffside necropolis.

“En avant, legionnaires,” Palewski muttered, and at the same moment the gondolier made a pass with the oar and brought the elegant dark prow swooping around in a tight quarter turn that made the water hiss against the frail hull. With another twist of the oar the gondola shot forward into a cavernous boathouse.

Palewski had seen these canalside openings, and heard about them, before, but he had never actually been into one, with the gondola sweeping beneath the low arch, the gondolier bowing, and shadows racing in the sudden gloom. It was more like the entrance to a prison than a palace, Palewski thought, as the gondolier unhitched his lamp and raised it overhead. Above, he saw only the curve of the damp stone vault. To one side of the ancient water gate was a narrow pavement, which led to a wooden door banded in iron. The pavement was slimy with algae, and the base of the door, also tinged with green, was ragged and in need of repair.

Alfredo was the first out, onto the ledge. He put out a hand.

“Be careful, Signor Brett. The floor is wet and we don’t want you to fall in.”

Palewski accepted the hand and stepped up onto the pavement. In spite of the warning he almost skidded: only Alfredo’s surprisingly strong arm prevented him from falling backward.

“Thank you, my friend.” He smiled.

“The palazzo is divided, as I said.” Alfredo’s voice was little more than a whisper. “I do not think anyone uses this entrance so much.”

“So how do we get in?” Palewski, too, was whispering. It’s like a bloody dungeon, he thought: the Rescue of Mehmet the Conqueror!

Even as he spoke he saw a flickering light growing beneath the ratholes of the moldy door, and in a moment someone was drawing back bolts and the ancient hinges were creaking on their rusty pins.

“This is Mario,” Alfredo whispered. “He works for my patron also. We can go quietly, I think.”

They stepped through the door and into a narrow passageway faced with well-dressed stone. Mario nodded at Palewski. He was a sturdy man with very short-cropped hair and wide, Slavic cheekbones, and he held a candelabra with three candles that guttered in the draft.

“Signor Brett very kindly agreed to come tonight,” Alfredo explained. “So, we are expected?”

Later, it was this curiously stilted introduction that Palewski would remember, the moment when he should have wondered who, exactly, was in charge.

Mario now leaned forward and spoke to Alfredo, but either he spoke in a thick dialect or he had something wrong with his speech, because Palewski could not understand him.

“I see. But he has left us to go in?”

Mario nodded.

“It is nothing.” Alfredo turned to Palewski and put a hand lightly on his arm. “The owner wanted to be here to meet you, but in fact he has been called away. We can go on. You see how he trusts us,” he added.

At the end of the passage, at the foot of the broad marble stairs, Mario produced a key and inserted it into the lock of a side door, which presently swung open.

They entered, Mario leading the procession with his candles, rather like a chaplain with his acolytes, Palewski reckoned, or a tomb robber.

It was an enormous, low-ceilinged room, bare of furnishings. Two long windows, shuttered on the outside, gave onto what Palewski presumed would be the alley at the front. He supposed that another door at the back of the room opened into a storeroom on the canal side of the building.

And at the far end of the room, lit by Mario with his candelabra, stood a table draped in green velvet. Against the folds, like an egg in its nest, lay a small painting.

“Signor Brett.” Alfredo’s face was serious. “The Conqueror, by Gentile Bellini.” He made a motion with his hand. “Please.”

Palewski stepped slowly, almost reverently, across the room toward the little painting, his hands involuntarily clasped behind his back.

And there it was. It was unframed-no one would expect to buy a painting without having it first removed from its frame. It was very dark, and the glaze was crackled with age. Even in the uncertain light of Mario’s candelabra, the form and composition were unmistakable.

Stanislaw Palewski, who knew what a sultan looked like, found himself looking at one now.

Coolly returning his gaze, instantly bridging the gap between the fifteenth century and the nineteenth, was Mehmet the Conqueror himself, the young genius upon whose shoulders centuries of Ottoman dominion, and Ottoman civilization, had been built.

Then there was a commotion at the farther door, and Palewski’s gaze was arrested, instead, by the figure of a man without a coat who burst through, glaring, with a long-nosed pistol in his hand.

Everybody froze.

The man raked the pistol around the room, taking them in. He was a tall, well-built young man with a shock of yellow hair and sideburns, but his face was suffused with blood and from the way he moved Palewski could tell that he’d been drinking. For a few seconds his mouth worked in silent fury, and then his eye fell on the Bellini.

“I knew it! By the Mother of God! What’s this-you pack of thieves, creeping into my house like snakes? Where is my brother?”

He made a rush at the table and with his free hand he snatched up a corner of the velvet and tossed it furiously over the painting. Mario backed away, lowering the candelabra, and the stranger’s shadow leaped to the ceiling.

“Mother of God! He would sell it-of course, under my nose, beneath my own feet!” Spittle flew from his lips. “That bastard! I could kill him now.”

“Signore-” Palewski began.

“You? What are you-a thief?” He wheeled and went down on one leg in a half crouch, pointing the pistol with both hands at Palewski’s face. “You signore me, do you!” He was snarling now. “You signore me? In my house, in front of my Bellini? Yes, I’ll give you signore!”

There was a click as he drew the safety catch.

“You think I’m crazy, hah? The crazy little brother? Crazy, pazzo inde-moniato, when my brother steals from me and hasn’t the nerve to tell me to my face? Maybe, yes-maybe I am a little bit crazy.” He drew himself upright and cocked his head first to one side, then the other, like a marionette. His eyes were wild. “Does it frighten you, signore? Are you afraid now, you and your thieves, to meet a man who is half crazy because his brother wants to steal from him? Are you afraid, hah?”

Palewski stood perfectly still, his face an expressionless mask. “Put the gun down,” he said quietly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mario inching forward.

“Put the gun down,” the drunken brother mimicked in a nasty, childish voice. “Run away and play! We’ve only come to steal your wealth! So-fuck you for the bastard of a leper!”

Mario sprang. The last thing Palewski saw before the candles spun away and went out, plunging the room into darkness, was the crazy brother swinging around with his pistol in the air.

The two men went down with a crash; Palewski dropped to a crouch, arms in front of his face. There was nothing he could do. The man still held a loaded pistol and the smaller a target he could make of himself, the better. He could hear them grunting and scuffling on the flagstones, and then someone cannoned into him and sent him sprawling backward.

A furious grunt, a crack as if someone had struck his head on the stone, and then a thunderclap as the pistol fired and a man screamed.

“Mario!” It was Alfredo, calling out from the doorway.

The scream descended to a bubbling groan. Palewski heard someone drag himself across the flags, panting.

“Here.” It was Mario’s voice.

A groan from the dark.

Palewski’s hair stood on end. “Lights, quick!” he commanded.

“Don’t be a fool!” Alfredo’s voice spat out in the dark. “Let’s go, now!”

“And leave this man?” Palewski asked.

Alfredo must have found him by his voice, because a hand fell on his arm and a voice hissed, “Don’t be stupid. If he dies, he dies. But if he lives-he’ll say that you shot him.”

“Why me?”

“He was drunk. You’re the one he’ll remember. Come on.” He pulled Palewski toward the door: he was surprisingly strong. “The police will come-a shot, like that! Mario, get the door.”

The door swung open and its faint outline appeared in the darkness. Alfredo rushed Palewski toward it, and they passed through into the hall.

“We can’t leave by the street-it’s too dangerous,” Alfredo said.

Palewski allowed himself to be led along the corridor, but when they had wrenched open the moldy door at the end, Mario swore.

“Madre! The gondola-it’s gone!”