 |
|
| |
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
housecoat had a deep pocket on each hip and a smaller pocket on the chest.
Long and warm and greasy, what could be better on a cold winter day? Nubar went through the pockets
to see what might turn up.
A large brownish rag, stiff with what looked like dried blood. Nubar closed his eyes and sniffed.
Raw horsemeat, there was no mistaking the smell. Raw horsemeat had been wrapped in this rag.
Probably it had been carried under the saddle of a Tartar horseman as he came wildly galloping out of
the steppes of central Asia, the heavy sweat of the animal and the weight of the rider tending to cure the
raw meat so the horseman could rip off a digestible hunk at the end of the day for his meal. Barbarians.
Disgusting.
A nearly full packet of Macedonian Extras with a box of matches.
A tube of lipstick and a tin of rouge.
A single earring made for a pierced ear, with a dangling spherical stone of fake lapis lazuli.
Three one-lira pieces.
A medallion stamped with Mussolini's face on one side and the Blessed Virgin Mary's on the other.
Barbarians. Savage plunder. Nubar put everything back into the pockets of the housecoat except the stiff
bloodied rag, which he sniffed again. He blew his nose on the rag and dropped it into his rucksack for
easy access. Then he put on the housecoat and found it truly magnificent, a stately garment that swept out
behind him and trailed along the floor in the manner of a bride's gown, or even a queen's at her
coronation.
Nubar giggled. He made several formal turns around the kitchen, smiling haughtily down at his admiring,
imaginary subjects. At the door he stopped and uncorked his canteen, taking a long drink of the fiery raki
that immediately infused him with strength. His eyes narrowed slyly as he peered into the foggy darkness
of the corridor off the kitchen.
A descent into the underworld? Had the time come for the whole truth?
Yes it had, and Nubar was ready. Civilization was going to survive despite the worst efforts of the
barbarians.
The idea had come to him while he was putting on his huge brown brassiere, precisely at the moment he
had pulled the cup down over his head and made a thinking cap out of it. A brilliant plan for reversing the
failures of the last months, those abject and futile efforts to peddle The Boy, at night and alone, to
sneering strangers in the rain and the fog in the piazza, in front of San Marco's.
For nearly a year now the reports of the Uranist Intelligence Agency had been accumulating in the
subcellar of his palazzo, sent regularly from the Middle East and "stored according to his standing
instructions. Nubar had been too busy trying to peddle The Boy to visit the subcellar in the last year, but
he knew that in those reports there would be a complete account of the poker game in Jerusalem over
the last year.
And more important, there would be detailed descriptions of the activities of those three master criminal
degenerates, Martyr and Szondi and O'Sullivan Beare, who were trying to gain control of Jerusalem in
order to keep him from the inheritance that was rightfully his, the original Sinai Bible discovered by his
grandfather a century ago and buried by him in Jerusalem, the philosopher's stone that would guarantee
Nubar immortality when it came into his possession.
What evil new designs, what fiendish plots had those three sinister figures been using against him?
Nubar intended to find out. And then he would issue the order that would end their diabolical
twelve-year game and eliminate the three of them for all time.
Order at last, unwavering discipline and correct toilet training, absolute authority. The final solution.
No longer to be obsessed by Gronk dreams and memories, by desperate attempts to have someone,
anyone, take The Boy seriously. All of that was behind him now. By an act of will he would do what had
to be done in the winter fog of Venice. He would do what was necessary to end the Great Jerusalem
Poker Swindle. He would bring them total war and then the fools would see what disobedience led to
and learn the meaning of the whole truth, his rule that would last a thousand years.
Nubar's smile twisted into a smirk. He raised his torch in front of a mirror in the kitchen and squinted at
himself approvingly.
Corset and brassiere and bloomers and stockings, a greasy warm housecoat, all oversized and
substantial. A massive study in brown gently overlaid with faded purple.
Still smirking crookedly, the journals of The Boy tucked under his arm, he floated forward and drifted
silently down the corridor to the door that led to the cellar.
Twenty steps to the cellar. Nubar opened the door at the bottom of the stairs that led to the subcellar and
descended the thirty steep steps to the landing halfway down. A faint light rose from the depths. He
changed direction, watching carefully, and started down the last steep stretch of forty steps.
He was almost at the bottom before he could make out the figure. A man in livery was digging with a
pickax and shovel, one of his footmen muttering in a maritime Genovese accent about the secret treasures
rich foreigners always buried in their deepest cellars.
Peasant swine, thought Nubar. The barbarian had no idea that the treasures here weren't to be found in
the ground but in the reports of the Uranist Intelligence Agency.
The footman had removed a section of the cobblestones that paved the subcellar floor and had dug a
hole about four feet square. He was now standing in the hole up to his waist, vigorously hacking away at
the clay with his pickax. Beside the hole lay the footman's blue satin swallowtail coat. A candle that stood
in the clay was dripping wax on the gold braid of the coat, and Nubar was immediately infuriated to see
gold braid being treated with so little respect. He stamped his feet and shouted defiantly, his anger
directed toward the defilers of civilization everywhere, his voice weirdly distorted by the confines of the
subcellar.
Out, peasant swine. Out, you evil creature.
The footman whirled. He stared. Nubar was moving slowly up and down inside his huge stationary
galoshes, his long greasy housecoat shaking in rage, the brassiere encasing his head quivering with
indignation.
The footman screamed and leapt from the hole in horror. He bolted up the stairs to the kitchen where he
threw himself through a casement window and went crashing down into the dark water beside the
palazzo, there to be entangled in a sluggish flow of sewerage that was moving out into the Grand Canal
under the impenetrable cover of fog.
Nubar, meanwhile, paused by the bottom of the stairs to get his bearings, and what he saw astonished
him. The entire subcellar was packed with stacks and stacks of neatly piled papers, dossiers and card
files and loose-leaf folders, the unread reports of the Uranist Intelligence Agency over the last seven
months.
Extraordinary, thought Nubar as he gazed out over the thousands and thousands of reports, the towering
collections of amassed data, realizing for the first time just how productive his intelligence agency really
was.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plcs-sysunia.htw.pl
|
| |
|
|
|
| Podobne |
| |
|
| |
|