left. He fired twice; the killer fen forward, tumbling down the steps.
The gunshots accelerated the chaos; screams of terror filled the elegant terraces of the Villa d'Este. Bray reached Antonia; she was crouching by the wall.
"Are you all right?" "I'm alive.
"Come ont" They found a break in the wall where a trough carried a rushing stream of water to a pool below. They stepped through and ran down the side of the manniade rivulet to the first path, an alleyway, bordered on both sides by what appeared to be hundreds of stone statues spewing arcs of water in unison. The floodlights filtered through the trees; the scene was eerily peaceful, juxtaposed to but not affected by the stampeding chaos from the terraces above.
"Straight throughl" said Scofield. "At the end theres a waterfall and another staircase. Itll get us back up there." They started running through the tunnel of foliage, mist from the arcs of water joining the sweat on their faces.
"Dannazionel" Antonia fell, the long black cape torn from her shoulders by a branch of sapling. Bray stopped and pulled her up.
"Ecco lal" "La donnar' Shouts came from behind them; gunshots followed. Two men came running through the water-filied alleyway; they were targets, silhouetted by the light from the fountain beyond. Scofield fired three rounds. One man fell, holding his thigh; the second grabbed his shoulder, his gun flying out of his hand as he dove for the protection of the nearest statue.
Bray and Antonia reached the staircase at the end of the path. An entrance of the villa. They ran up, taking the steps two at a time, until they joined the panicked crowds rushing out through the enclosed courtyard into the huge parking lot.
Chauffeurs were everywhere, standing by elegant automobiles, protecting them, waiting for sight of their employers-and as with all chauffeurs in Italy in these times, their guns were drawn; protection was everything.
They had been schooled; they were prepared.
One, however, was not prepared enough. Bray approached him. "Is this Count Scozzi's car?" he asked breathlessly.
"No, it is not, signorel Stand backl" "Sorry." Scofield took a step away from the man, sufficiently to allay his fears, then lunged forward, hammering the barrel of his automatic into the side of the chauffeur's skull. The man collapsed. "Get in!" he yelled to Antonia. "Lock the doors and stay on the floor until we're out of here." It took them nearly a quarter of an hour before they reached the highway out of Tivoli. They sped down the road for six miles, then took an offshoot to the right that was free of traffic. Bray pulled over to the side of the road, stopped, and for several minutes let his head fall back against the seat and closed his eyes. The pounding lessened; he sat up, reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, and offered one to Antonia.
"Normally, I do not," she said. "But right now I will. What happenedr, He lighted both their cigarettes and told her, ending with the murder of Gufflamo Scozzi, the enigmatic words he had heard on the staircase, and the identity of the man who spoke them. Paravacini. The specifics were clear, the conclusions less so. He could only speculate.
"They thought I was Taleniekov; they'd been warned about him. But they knew nothing about me, my name was never mentioned. It doesn't make sense; Scozzi described an American. They should have known." $Vhy?" "Because Washington and Moscow both knew Talenlekov was coming after me.
They tried to trap us; they failed, and so they had to presume we made contact...." Or did they? wondered Scofleld. The only one who actually knew he and the Russian had made contact was Robert Winthrop, and if he was alive, his silence could be counted upon. The rest of the intelligence community had only hearsay evidence to go on; no one had actually seen them together. Still, the presumption had to be made, unless "They think Im dead," he said out loud, staring through the cigarette smoke to the windshield. "It's the only explanation. Someone told them I was dead. That's what 'impossible' meant." "Why would anyone do that?" "I wish I knew. If it were purely an intelligence maneuver, it could be for a reason as basic as buying time, throwing the opposition off, your own trap to follow. But this isn't that kind of thing, it couldn't be.
The Matarese has lines into Soviet and U.S. operations,-I don't doubt it for a minute---but not the other way around. I