The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage Read Online Free PDF Page B

whether it be a woman or a city. And all fatalities can be traced to their casual beginnings in childhood.
    I had dreamed of canals as a child, nurtured in the green hills of New Jersey, far from Lake Hopatcong, farther still from the sea. In those days I was perhaps the most outstanding twelve-year-old civil engineer east of the Rockies. My first project was the beautification of my home town. My approach was simple and audacious: I flooded the damned place to a mean depth of ten feet.
    This eradicated the railroad station, Cooper’s Shoe-store, a Shell station, a Greek delicatessen, and several other prominent eyesores. The First Presbyterian Church, which lay in a slight declivity, vanished except for its spire. The junior high school was lost with all hands.
    After the deluge, we survivors lived quite happily in our submerged town. Many houses were still usable; you could paddle out of your sunken living room and into the watery street. Raising sail, you could proceed between straight rows of trees, their gaunt trunks vanished, looking like enormous flowers. …
    Years later, when I came to Venice, I saw my youthful dreams realized and transcended. The city was full of details that I had never imagined. Those endless stone lions, for example, were a notable improvement over our two Civil War cannons. I liked the great sagging palazzos more than our neo-Colonial houses; and those striped and slanting barber poles to which gondolas are moored were a huge improvement over our rows of parking meters. Furthermore, I realized in Venice that I had never really explored the enchanting possibilities of boats: fire-engine boats and milk barges, ambulance boats with sirens, garbage boats and vegetable boats, and black and gold funeral barges with mournful bearded angels standing in their sterns.…
    There was my fatality: a childhood dream of a watery transformation. And now, walking through the Salizzada di San Panteleone, I was elated. The canals of Venice surrounded me, the people of Venice jostled me, the churches of Venice watched over me. It seemed to me that Forster belonged to the ugly gray anonymity of Mestre; but Venice was surely mine.
    Therefore I ignored Guesci’s instructions and made my own way to the Cafe Paradiso. I took a table, ordered a glass of wine, and gradually began to sober up. My spurious childhood dribbled away through the gray flagstones. By the time Guesci arrived, I had returned fully to the present.
     
    Guesci ordered a Lachryma Christi, drank my health, and asked, “What in God’s name happened at the airport? Why did you let those men deceive you?”
    I didn’t like his tone or his presumption; a man of my reputation should not be condemned so readily. “What makes you think,” I asked coldly, “that I was deceived?”
    “What do you mean?” Guesci asked.
    I had no idea what I meant; but I was in danger of losing Guesci’s confidence, which could endanger the entire operation.
    “I mean,” I said, “that I knew who they were. It was obvious enough.”
    “Then why did you let them capture you?”
    “Because I wanted them to,” I said, my lips quirking into a subtle smile.
    “But why? ”
    Why indeed? I sipped my wine, and said; “I decided to make a personal estimate of Forster. The best way to do that was to go and see him.”
    “How absurd!” Guesci cried. “What made you think he would release you?”
    “It was in his best interests to let me go.”
    “What if Forster hadn’t agreed?”
    “In that case,” I murmured, “I would have been obliged—” Here I paused and lighted a cigarette, then looked up and smiled without mirth, “—yes, obliged to convince him, by one means or another.”
    It sounded almost plausible to me. I waited to see if Guesci would buy it. With a creased and thoughtful face, he did. He said, with a certain grudging respect, “The tales about you, Mr. Nye, are evidently true. Personally, I would not care to be in a room alone with