Free Century #4: Dragon of Seas by Pierdomenico Baccalario Page B

him.
    “Quiet!” the little official orders them both. He hangs up the phone and waits.
    Another ten minutes later, the door opens. The official snaps to his feet, his face pale.
    The newcomer is a lean Chinese man dressed entirely in black. His shaven head reveals a glimpse of a circular bull’s-eyetattoo. He has four fingers on his left hand and wears strange cork rings on the others.
    Ignoring both Harvey and the steward, the man with the bull’s-eye tattoo points at the man behind the desk and utters a few incomprehensible words powerful enough to persuade both the little man and the burly steward to leave the room.
    Harvey smiles, relieved.
    “Do you feel better, Mr. Miller?” the Chinese man asks.
    “Yeah, actually. Would you let me make a phone call?”
    “Please.”
    Harvey dials his home number. He’s surprised to hear a man answer.
    “Heh, heh, heh! Young Mr. Miller!” Egon Nose exclaims from the phone in New York. “What a pleasant surprise! You have a nice home, I must say! What a shame there’s nobody here. Nobody at all! Care to tell me where you’ve all gone?”
    “Nose!” Harvey shouts. “What are you doing in my house? Get out, now! I’m calling the police!”
    “Oh, really? You want to call the police? In Shanghai?”
    The Chinese man puts his finger down on the telephone’s cradle, ending the conversation.
    “I think that is enough,” he says, his voice monotone. “We are going.”
    “Going where?” Harvey says, waving his arms and trying to make another call. “You don’t understand! There’s a man in my house!”
    The Chinese man whips out a sharp knife and presses it against the young American’s rib cage. “I think you are the one who does not understand, Mr. Miller.”
    Harvey is left breathless.
    The pressure from the knife eases.
    “Let’s go,” the man hisses, pushing him toward the door.
    “Where to?”
    “Home.”

FIRST STASIMON
    “Irene? Hello, Irene? Can you hear me?”
    “Vladimir? Is that you?”
    “Yes, it’s me. I have great news: our master is still alive! She’s here in Siberia. She’s very old and very frail … but she’s alive. She even sent a man to Paris.”
    “Now I see who did it.”
    “Who did what?”
    “The kids met him. He had the heart top with him.”
    “Your top?”
    “Yes, my top.”
    “Is it the connection, Irene … or are you crying?”
    “Yes, Vladimir, I’m crying. Elettra discovered the room. I had to … make her fall asleep. And have Fernando take her away.”
    “What did she see?”
    “The photographs. And my notes.”
    “She would’ve found out sooner or later. Better this way than hearing about it from Mistral.”
    “I know, but looking in her eyes and seeing that she didn’t trust me anymore … that she was afraid of me … it wasterrible. And now that she’s gone, I feel so alone. And so full of doubt.”
    “We’re all alone and full of doubt, Irene.”
    “Take care of yourself, Vladimir. And take care of my sister.”
    “Your sister?”
    “She’s on her way there.”

“O H, NO, PLEASE DON ’ T BOTHER, ” L INDA M ELODIA SAYS IN I TALIAN , smiling. She’s in the third-class car of the train from Moscow that’s going—or should be going—to Omsk, not far from the Kazakhstani border. “There’s no need for you to get up.”
    Naturally, the woman beside her doesn’t understand and simply smiles, slipping off her skirt to put on a pair of light blue flannel pajama pants. Linda tries to avoid looking at her, but deep down she’s shocked by how casually the woman is changing her clothes in front of everyone. She doesn’t say a word, partly because she wouldn’t know what language to say it in. The woman’s husband, who is already in pajamas and has a mustache that looks like a pair of sabers, has tried to speak to Linda in Italian, but as it turns out, all he knows are the names of a few soccer players, which he’s repeated to her at least twenty times. The two are in the seats