The Lizard's Bite

THE THIRTY-YEAR-OLD CESSNA 180 PERFORMED A TIGHT forty-degree right-hand turn low over the shining, mackerel-skin waters of the lagoon, an ungainly red and white bird with high wings and a couple of gigantic Edo amphibious floats jutting out where the undercarriage should have been. Andrea Correr, who owned a couple of hotels on the Lido, two restaurants in San Marco, and one of the biggest tour agencies in town, took the cigarette from his fingers, stuffed it in between his lips, then fought the wheel, trying to remember the water-landing lessons he’d had nine years before on an alligator-infested lake a few miles outside Orlando. Correr liked to think of himself as a good pilot, an amateur, but one who’d built up almost a thousand hours in a decade of flying from the little airfield hidden away at the tip of the Lido. When some young cop came out to the aircraft stand, waving his badge, demanding to be picked up on official business, and offering to pay for the gas too, Correr didn’t have too many hesitations. He didn’t own a professional licence. He’d have to take the money as a contribution towards costs, and wouldn’t, for a moment, dream of giving the cop a receipt in return, not that Correr had mentioned this small catch on the airfield pavement.

There was just one problem, and it was both the prize and the potential pitfall in the present proceedings. The young cop seemed to think that, if he found what he wanted, Correr would simply land his plane on the water, taxi into the shore, leave him there, and then zoom back home. Given those big Edo floats visible to all, it was an understandable mistake. But his Cessna had been flown with the internal carriage wheels extended for as long as Correr could remember. He’d been talked into buying the expensive old floatplane by a flying-club regular who’d omitted to mention one salient point: The law forbade him to land it anywhere in the lagoon. Only sea use was allowed, and the choppy waters of the Adriatic were deemed too difficult for all but the most experienced of pilots. The only aircraft Correr had ever landed on water was a Piper Cub at the school in Florida, and that was a small, ancient, two-seater tandem contraption of canvas and wood, one that was started by standing on the float and hand swinging the prop. It was more like a toy than a real aircraft, a plaything that flitted in and out of stretches of water rarely troubled by more than a passing breeze.

The 180 was a complex machine, with a variable-pitch prop, more controls than he could handle sometimes, even after a decade of ownership, and the awkward retractable undercarriage that would have to be wound up into the floats before the plane so much as touched a single wave. And the lagoon was no still patch of Everglades lake, more the sea in miniature, with a dappled surface that was unreadable from above, riddled with invisible currents, under constant barrage from random blasts of gusting chop rolling all the way down from the Dolomite Mountains. A part of him told Andrea Correr he’d be insane to do as the young cop insisted. A part of him said he’d never get this opportunity again in his life, and he could always blame the police if it all turned horribly wrong.

They’d been round and round most of the obscure islands of the lagoon, twice, all at the same barely legal height, all with the Cessna just hanging in the air, bumping above its stall speed, so that the young cop got the best view from the right-hand passenger seat in the turns. Correr had lost count of how many cigarettes he’d smoked, despatching the butts through the open side window. He knew a few of these places: San Francesco del Deserto, with its Franciscan monastery. Lazzaretto Nuovo, the former leper colony that now housed a scattering of disused military buildings. Santa Cristina, with its tiny brick church. Others just came from the cop’s tourist map, a litany of unknown names, La Salina, La Cura, Campana, Sant’ Ariano . . . just hunks of grassy rock deserted over the centuries, with, at best, a few derelict buildings to indicate people had once lived there.

The cop was starting to look desperate. Correr couldn’t work out whether to feel disappointed or relieved. The thought of putting the plane’s fat feet down on the lagoon still sent a tingle of anticipation and dread down his spine.

They were now over Mazzorbo, the long, barely inhabited island next to Burano, to which it was connected by a bridge. Correr hunted ducks hereabouts in winter, and liked to eat at the restaurant by the vaporetto stop where, in season, the local wildfowl regularly found their way onto the plate, and at prices that were a fraction of those in the city.

He glanced at the fuel gauge: good for another hour. Oil pressure and temperatures looked steady. The old Cessna was a reliable beast. Pretty soon, though, they’d run out of places to look. The lagoon wasn’t so large from the air. They’d been low enough to see into people’s gardens and swimming pools, low enough to get him a ticking off once he got back to the Lido. No one liked intrusive flying. It just brought in more complaints.

“So what exactly are you looking for?” Correr yelled over the noise of the engine.

The pair of them wore noise-cancelling David Clark headsets, but they still fought to keep out the racket from the hefty Lycoming engine up front.

“A man and a woman,” the cop barked back. “Hiding.” Which didn’t seem of much help.

“If I wanted to hide,” Correr suggested, “I’d do it there.”

He popped the cigarette in his mouth once more and pointed to the island city on the horizon. From this height it seemed modest, a forest of brick spires rising from a tightly packed community of houses.

“They can’t be there. People would recognise them.”

“Then maybe they’re gone.”

The cop shook his head vigorously. “Doesn’t add up. They don’t have the money. Besides, they’ve got ties. Strong ties. I just don’t see them running.”

“So why are we looking in the lagoon?”

The little cop was gazing in the direction of Murano at that moment, towards the trio of weird, decrepit buildings Correr had been reading about in the papers. One day soon there could be a hotel there, and a new gallery, thanks to the rich Englishman who was closer to men of influence in Venice than a middle-class man like Andrea Correr could ever hope for. Still, these developments were worth remembering. The travel agent in him knew there could be money to be had soon.

The cop squirmed in the passenger seat then turned and looked at him. “If I’m right, they had some help. From a farmer on Sant’ Erasmo. Someone who knows this lagoon like the back of his hand. If he wanted to hide them somewhere, I thought . . .”

He went quiet.

Correr wished he’d mentioned this idea before they took off.

“You’re not local, are you? Most of the little islands are uninhabited. You couldn’t just hide someone there. You’d need a roof over your head. Besides, those little ones get looked after by the conservationists and the archaeological people. They’d be screaming the roof down if they found so much as an empty Coke can. I don’t think . . .”

“I know, I know.”

It was a stupid quest and Correr saw he didn’t have to point that out.

“So where would you hide someone?” the cop asked.

Correr laughed. It was obvious. “If I was a farmer on Sant’ Erasmo? In my back garden. Or somewhere nearby. That place is bigger than Venice. No one goes there except the locals. I don’t think they even have police.”

“They don’t.”

“Then there you go. Search the island. You can’t do it from the air. You’re going to need a lot of men too because the matti wouldn’t piss on you if flames were coming out of your ears.”

“Take me back there,” the man ordered.

“Sure . . .” Correr wheeled the big tin bird round and set the nose on the low silhouette of Sant’ Erasmo, black against the bright horizon. “Anywhere in particular?”

“Southern tip. Away from the vaporetto stop. Away from everyone. You have a maritime map of the lagoon by any chance?”

“Four. They’re known as charts, by the way.”

Correr reached into the glove compartment, scrabbled behind several half-spent packets of cigarettes, and found the set he wanted. The cop stared at them, surprised.

“This is a floatplane,” Correr explained. “Besides, I sail too. And I happen to like charts.”

“They show buildings? Individual houses?”

“You’d be amazed what you can find on charts. Of course, on Sant’ Erasmo you’d need to double-check everything.”

“Why?”

People from terra firma. They just didn’t get it.

“Because the matti do what the hell they like. Throw up a little baracca for granmama, just so’s she doesn’t have to annoy the hell out of you living in the same house. No one’s going to tell the authorities. It happens all the time. And why not? Out here, who cares?”

It took less than three minutes. Then they went into another forty-degree roll, Correr feeding some extra throttle in and kicking the rudder hard so enough g-force came in to squeeze them into their seats a little. His passenger hadn’t looked a good flyer when he came on board. Now Correr was changing his opinion. Just to check, he pumped in some more throttle and took the aircraft over to sixty degrees, nailing it into as steep a turn as he dared at that kind of altitude, one that forced both of them hard into their seats and pitched the nose of the Cessna round in a vicious circle, as if it were tethered to a wire. At that angle even he could see down below: fields and shacks and mess. Just the usual.

But, a third of the way through the turn, he spotted something on his passenger’s face. Correr went through three sixty, levelled off, same height, same place on the horizon he’d entered the turn, gave himself ten out of ten for flying, then pointed the Cessna’s nose out to sea. The cop stopped looking out the window and stared at him instead.

“There’s a little shack down there. It’s not on the map. I didn’t notice it before.”

“Like I said. It’s called a chart. There’s a reason you didn’t see it. You weren’t looking. That’s one thing you learn in a little plane. How to look.”

The man nodded. “When you made all that noise a woman came out and started staring up at us.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Couldn’t see.”

“Maybe we should go back and take another look. A little lower this time.” He eyed the cop, expectant. “You are going to get me out of all the shit if it hits the fan, right?”

“Guaranteed,” he said promptly, then strained backwards, looking towards the green tip of Sant’ Erasmo.

Correr did the same. There was a tiny beach not far from the end. He had an idea what was coming next.

“I want you to put me down there,” the cop said, glancing at his watch. “Now.”

“And then?”

“Then you go back to the airfield. I won’t need you anymore.”

He sounded uncertain about that last point. Correr wondered whether to object.

“I can carry four people in this thing, you know. It’s no problem. Really.”

The cop smiled, for the first time since they’d met, and, for no particular reason, Andrea Correr decided he liked this little man, in spite of the badge.

“Thanks, but no thanks. You’ve done enough. Just get us down, please.”

Correr glanced back at the island. Someone was burning charcoal or something. The smoke was drawing straight off towards the open Adriatic, not too quickly, all in a straight line.

Land into a good, reliable wind. Taxi round and take off in the same direction.

His mouth was dry, in the way it used to be when he was first learning to fly on the Lido all those years ago, in a tiny fixed-gear Cessna 150 that was a baby brother to this more complex bigger beast. He could still remember those lessons in Florida. They made it sound so easy after a while. In a way, making it easy was part of the secret.

He laughed to himself, took the half-smoked cigarette from his lips and flicked it out the window. Then he worked the wirepull to withdraw the wheels back into the floats. The plane had been through its annual certificate of airworthiness only two months before. Everything—flaps, ailerons, throttle, gear—worked smoothly.

He pulled the 180 round into the wind, facing the island, and set up for a long, flat descent, nose up, holding the bulky Edos off the water, at just the right angle, until he’d killed enough speed to make it safe to put them down on the waves. Hit it badly and you’d soon discover how hard an object water really is. Someone had written off a Cub while he was there, and that was on a lake that looked like perfect glass, not the dappled, random rippled mesh of wavelets that stood between them and the island.

The man in the next seat was bracing himself nervously. Correr knew why. He’d done the same the first time he’d landed on water. You never appreciated how much the surface would brake the aircraft. Water wasn’t like grass or asphalt. With a good landing the plane came in at around 60 knots, placed its feet onto the surface, then got dragged to a halt in less than a hundred metres.

Which meant they looked perilously close to hard, stony land as they approached, too close, he guessed, and mentally began the countdown for a go-round if things got too close to the margin.

Some story for the flying club, Correr thought, then cut the power altogether, held up the nose, let the speed die, felt the yoke go weak and shaky in his hands as the wings began to lose their grip on the air . . . and, with a loud bang of wave against metal, landed the aircraft plum in front of the beach, coming to a rest no more than ten metres from the sand.

He undid his belt, opened the door and leaned out to look down over the side. He could see the bottom beneath the sea already, rocks and pebbles and tiny fish.

“I can’t go much further,” he said. “Get down and walk out to the front of the float. You can take me in until you see the sand getting so shallow I might hit it. These things don’t do reverse.”

The cop was taking out his wallet, removing a wad of notes.

“Thanks,” he said, extending the money.

“No,” Correr replied with a smile, then grabbing the cash. “Thank you.”

The cop had to wade through about a metre’s depth of water to get on shore. Then Correr turned his plane around, taxied out into the open lagoon, turned once more and performed a takeoff so perfect he wished the surly old instructor at the school in Florida could have seen him.

Wished, too, for the moment he could tell this tale in the flying-club bar. None of them had landed in the lagoon before. Chances were he’d never do it again.

The 180 roared over Sant’ Erasmo. Andrea Correr leaned out the window to wave goodbye. But there was no one to be seen.