The Pigeon Project Read Online Free PDF Page A

relax. We come to Venezia soon.”
    MacDonald bent low, went inside the lighted, well-appointed cabin, and settled himself on a leather couch. He observed with interest as the burly boatman stood behind the pilot wheel, with his partner on his feet beside him. The engine erupted with a cough, and the motor launch backed up through the water, stopped, lurched into a half circle, and plunged forward smoothly.
    MacDonald felt eager to get to his Venice hotel, arrange his flight reservation for tomorrow, get Dr. Edwards on the telephone in Paris, and burst out with his tremendous tidings. At last, the undulating rhythm of the boat, the monotonous beat of its engine calmed him, and he settled back. He felt inside his jacket for a cigar. There were three. He extracted one, peeled its wrapper, bit off the tip, and found his silver-plated lighter.
    Smoking, he squinted out the boat window, its blue curtains drawn back. Through the thin spray, very near, were neatly spaced groups of wooden pilings, each group of three pilings banded together by metal—all of them moss-covered, reassuring, like guideposts to Venice—and each with yellow lights from lamps showing the way to Venice. Behind the pilings were retaining walls, and soon mudbanks and green marshes of grass and weeds.
    After a while—five minutes, perhaps ten—MacDonald swiveled around in his seat, ducked his head, and peered through the opposite window. There were many more lights illuminating buildings: residences, warehouses, an apartment house with squares of brightness. The outskirts of Venice, he was certain.
    Ahead, the canal had widened considerably and entered a broad lagoon. To the left a tiny island, to the right a shoreline filled with more residences—brick buildings, plaster buildings—some hidden in the shadows of night.
    Now into one more canal, then sliding under an iron bridge which bore a sign that read, PONTE VIVARINI.
    Emerging from this canal, they were in open water once more. Suddenly, past the curving landscape, far off to the right, there was a dazzling array of lights, a mammoth sparkling bouquet of lights, and he reasoned that this must be the historic center of Venice itself—the heart of the city, his destination—and he waited expectantly for the launch to turn in toward it. Instead, to his mild surprise, the motor launch spurted straight ahead, picking up speed, prow rising from the water as it drove between the columns of wooden pilings on either side. He looked off to his right, past the two standing boatmen behind the prow, and he saw that they were proceeding with certainty toward the center of a vast lagoon, with strings of light forming narrow lanes through the water.
    MacDonald hadn’t the faintest idea where he was, but he was sure his pilot knew the way to Venice, and that they would be circling inward toward the city’s concentration of lights any moment. Waiting for the happy landfall, he sat back and smoked with contentment.
    In minutes, the motorboat was slowing, rocking to a stop, quietly gliding, and finally, it banged against something wooden, shuddered, halted. His watch told him the trip had taken thirty-two minutes. The passport woman at the airport had said it would be twenty minutes. Well, he thought, nothing is ever on time in Italy, or so he had read.
    Now he heard voices, the boatmen calling up to someone above them.
    MacDonald squinted through the window again. There were steps leading up to a pier, and just beyond, the outlines of a large old two-story building with several windows here and there showing yellow lights.
    “Signore,” he heard someone summon. It was the short boatman, holding the cabin door open.
    Stooping, MacDonald left the cabin. Once he was in the open part of the boat the burly boatman reached for his arm and propelled him up the craft’s steps to a landing. Here there were six or seven steps to the top of the pier. At the top stood two men, one in a business suit, one in a uniform, and