The Bonaparte Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

to give in to his son’s whims, to tolerate behavior Gurt discouraged.
    Realizing the futility of the debate, Lang changed the subject. “You said something about a ride in the hotel’s boat?”
    The boat driver had made this suggestion when they first arrived. The price was well below that of a gondola and the trip far more inclusive. It had seemed a good idea at the time. Within minutes, Gurt had used her cell phone to call the hotel, and the small craft was on its way. From the tour, they would return to the hotel on the Lido, collect their bags and be ferried to the airport.
    Lang stood at the Molo San Marco, his back to the canal as he took in a last view of the Doge’s Palace and the facade of the basilica. A man loitering a few feet away between two columns drew his attention. Tall, definitely Asian. Lang had seen him . . . where?
    He nudged Gurt. “Without being obvious, take a look at the guy in the tan windbreaker over there by the columns. I’ve seen him somewhere before.”
    Gurt was more interested in a wedding party disembarking from a motoscafo, a smaller, sleeker and faster version of the water bus, no doubt headed for a service at the basilica. “He is perhaps Japanese. There are Japanese tourists everywhere.”
    “Can’t be. He doesn’t have a camera.”
    Gurt gave him another glance. The object of their attention was suddenly interested in something that required him to turn his face away. “He was shopping the windows near the place we returned our costumes.”
    Now Lang remembered. He had noted at the time the single, tall man with Asian features. Most Asians in Europe either were low-level employees, kitchen helpers and the like, students or tourists. The man was too old to be a student and not with a tour group, to which the Japanese clung like life preservers. If he had a job in someone’s kitchen, why was he standing around here when the lunch trade would be in full swing shortly? Stereotypes existed because they were correct more often than not. And this particular stereotype was an aberration from the norm like a junk car parked in a ritzy neighborhood or a street beggar with an expensive wristwatch.
    For the moment, Lang forgot him as the sleek little wooden speedboat from the hotel nudged its way between gondolas and other craft.
    Helping Gurt and Lang aboard, the driver began, “I understand you want a canal tour, yes?”
    They did.
    “We start here, the Rio del Palazzo, the Canal of the Palace, which, as you can see, runs along the back, or eastern side, of the Doge’s Palace. We take this canal, join some of the smaller ones and we come out on the Grand Canal to come back here.”
    Gurt’s elbow gave Lang a sharp nudge as she whispered, “Don’t look so bored! You might learn something on this tour of the canals of Venice.”
    The man spoke excellent English as he continued, pointing to an enclosed bridge. “This is the Bridge of Sighs. It connected the Doge’s Palace, which was where criminal court was held, with the prison. The bridge takes its name from the sighs of prisoners as they were led to trial. Now, if you look to your left . . .”
    Lang was more concerned about the motorboat that had entered the canal behind them, a fiberglass Italian-made Riva. The craft’s slow speed matched their own, bow level rather than raised as would be the case on open water. He could see two men on board, but the distance was too great to make out facial features.
    What made him think he knew what one of them looked like?
    The hotel’s boat turned left onto a canal not fifteen feet wide. Even at their slow speed, a sluggish wake washed over steps to doors less than a foot above the water. The houses themselves formed the banks of the canal. The height of the reddish ochre buildings, three to four stories, provided perpetual twilight. What Lang noticed most, though, was that this hundred-, hundred-and-a-half-yard stretch of canal was empty of any other craft.
    As though his mind had