The Color of Night

CHAPTER 18

They threw some clothes into a few suitcases and left Sallustiano in a cab that took them to Piazza Esquilino, where Strand rented a car using one of the forged passports. Since the car was leased on the spur of the moment, it would be clean of any electronic surveillance. As for human surveillance, Strand had not stopped watching for it for a second from the moment they stepped out of Mara’s villa.

They drove west out of the city and then headed north along the coastal autostrada, driving mostly in silence, their preoccupation with their own closely held thoughts diverted now and then by occasional glimpses of the breathtaking views of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

After a while the autostrada turned inland for a while and then fell back to the coast. The angle of the sun, which was now well on its downward way to the horizon, had caused the color of the water to deepen, the bright blue now tempered with tones of brooding gray.

Strand was the first to break the silence.

“I know this is a shock to you…”

“A shock,” she said, her elbow propped on the windowsill, her hand holding her forehead as she stared straight ahead. “It’s goddamned grotesque, Harry.” Her voice cracked with anger and alarm.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You might’ve said something.” She turned and looked hard at him. Her voice seethed. “I mean, you were a spy, for God’s sake! Would it have made a difference to me? I don’t know. But I could have had a choice, couldn’t I, Harry? Only you never gave me a choice. Now I’m involved in this… this mess, and it’s scary. It’s frightening. I can’t even… really, I can’t even get my mind around this, it’s so… so incredibly unreal.”

She turned away from him and rested her head in her hand again, once more turning her attention to the autostrada. She started to say something else and then checked herself.

“I’m not going to make excuses, Mara. Not going to try to justify any of it, but I need to tell you that I didn’t deliberately deceive you, if that makes any sense. It had been behind me for nearly five years. It wasn’t deception, it was silence. We’ve talked about our pasts. Haven’t there been things about your life you haven’t told me? Is it because you’re not ready to share it with me yet, or is it because you want to deceive me? There’s a difference, and it’s not that subtle. I didn’t keep this from you. I keep it from everyone. In time it probably would have come out.”

Mara did not respond. Strand glanced at her several times, but she remained silent. He thought he detected a change in her, a disturbance of another kind, but it was such a nebulous thing that he couldn’t define it.

“Look,” he said after a while. “We’ve got to talk this through at some point.”

“Jesus,” she snapped, “I’ve just got to think some more. That’s all. I just need to think…”

They drove on in silence again.

By dusk, as the sea changed colors and the lights along the coast threw down their glitter against the darkening water, they reached Genoa. They ate a quick, tasteless dinner at a gasoline-and-quick-food stop on the autostrada and then continued north, turning inland.

In another hour they were skirting Milan, still headed north, and in another half hour they were in Como. By the time they started up the torturous eastern shoreline of the western leg of Lake Como, it was well after dark. Even in the blue night the famed beauty of the lake and its shores was plainly evident as the dark, forested shoulders of the hills rose steeply from the cobalt water, bespangled with the tiny lights of villas and villages.

Bellagio was a small village on a lake that had many villages more chic than this where the haute monde preferred to amuse themselves in one another’s company. The little town was out of the way, which was the reason Strand had often retreated here, vanishing deliberately, his whereabouts unknown to anyone, whenever he had craved isolation from time to time over the years.

Perched on a heavily wooded promontory where the western and eastern legs of the lake met like the two branches of an inverted Y, Bellagio had stunning views of both sections of the lake, a visual perspective that rivaled any that Strand had ever seen for sheer beauty.

They checked into a suite of large rooms that Strand had reserved earlier-using yet another passport-at the old Hotel Villa Cosima.

In uncomfortable silence they put away their clothes and then took turns freshening up in the bathroom. When Strand came out, his hair slightly wet from throwing cold water on his aching neck, the suite was dark, but the doors were open to the balcony.

He stepped out and found Mara leaning on the balustrade, looking out over the lake. The cool blue darkness was still and silent except for the soft washing of the lake against the shore below, a movement like the shallow breathing of sleep. All of Bellagio was unconscious. He looked at the lights across the water, their sparkle blurred by the mist that was beginning to rise from the lake. It was an unreal beauty and a fitting sight for his state of mind. A water bird of some kind called from far along the shoreline, a solitary warbling, then ceased.

He went over and stood beside her. Neither of them spoke for a long time. And then she said:

“God help me, Harry, I believe you about all of this.” She paused. “The thing is,” she went on, “over these past three months, in my mind I’d gradually shifted from thinking of us as ‘me and Harry Strand’ to thinking of us as ‘we.’ That’s a big shift. I didn’t realize how big until… all of this.”

“Now you can’t do that anymore?”

She didn’t answer immediately. “No, I still think of us as ‘we,’ Harry. But fear changes things.”

“I know that,” he said. He was feeling his way, as if the darkness had gotten into his mind. “I’m sorry that you’ve got caught up in this. I honestly thought all of it was behind me and that it would stay behind me. I’d done everything in my power to make sure that it would.”

The quiet all around them seemed to absorb their voices. The lake sounds lingered in the darkness, cushioned on the dampness rising from the water.

“Do you remember in Rome, when I was telling you about all this,” Strand reminded her, “and I said you were going to have to make some decisions. This is what I meant.”

Their arms were touching as they leaned on the railing. He felt her move, shifting her weight on her long legs.

“I know,” she said. “I know it is.” She paused, and he thought that she swallowed. “It’s hard for me, Harry. It’s very hard.” She laced her arm through his and took his hand. “It’s just that I’ve reached that moment when you’re on the precipice and you’re looking down at the water and you’re very still. You know you’re going to dive. There’s no question of that. Still, you take a moment to gather yourself together. You concentrate. You resolve.”

Again he thought she swallowed.

“That’s where I am, Harry.”

The next morning he told her he had to take a brief trip and that he would have to be away for a day and a night. When he returned, he promised, he would tell her as much as he could. They would take all the time she wanted, and he would answer anything she asked. But first, he had to make this one trip. He would tell her where he had gone when he returned.

He reminded her that Bellagio had always been his personal sanctuary, that he had kept his retreats here a secret from everyone. He was sure that no one knew they were here. But to be doubly cautious, he felt it would be best if she remained within the hotel grounds and environs until he returned.