Century #4: Dragon of Seas by Pierdomenico Baccalario Read Free Book Online

down a few portions of raw fish. Then, noticing that Sheng is looking around nervously, he asks, “Hey, everything okay?”
    “I can’t sleep,” Sheng admits. “Too stressed.”
    The engineer slaps him on the back. “You’ll get over it. The others will be here tomorrow.”
    “Harvey texted me. He should be getting in tonight. But first he’s going to see his dad, who’s still at the port, on the oceanographic ship. There seem to be some anomalies.”
    “What’s Harvey got to do with that?”
    Sheng shrugs. “He’s taking some documents to his dad, who doesn’t trust anybody.”
    “Hmm … interesting,” Ermete says under his breath, digging into Sheng’s rice noodles. “You weren’t going to eat these anyway, right?”
    “No.”
    The engineer starts to slip the first noodles into his mouth, which makes it hard for him to speak. “It’ll all … go great … you’ll see.”
    Sheng shakes his head. “I don’t think so. We don’t have a chance, this time.…”
    “You’re forgetting the ace up our sleeve.”
    At the end of track 13, a white train enters the station.
    “Right on time.”
    Ermete tosses a handful of yuan onto the counter and gets up from the stool.
    “Are we sure we know what we’re doing?” Sheng asks, following him.
    “You tell me,” Ermete replies.
    The train stops, its brakes squealing, and the doors open, letting the first passengers out. Standing out against the gray sky, they’re like dark shadows of different heights. They whoosh pastErmete and Sheng and let themselves be swallowed up by the city.
    “My father always used to say,” the Roman engineer says softly as he braces himself against the oncoming flow of commuters, “that there are only two kinds of people who keep their cool when their house collapses.”
    Sheng looks up at his friend. “Being …?”
    “Stupid people and people who know why the house is collapsing.”
    “And which one do you think we are?”
    “The second, I hope,” Ermete admits.
    A shadow that’s come out of the train stops right in front of them. He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t even exist. He has very short gray hair beneath his baseball cap, a dark, murky green-gray raincoat and black leather boots whose heels make no noise. Tucked under the shadow’s arm is a case containing a violin that was custom-made by a luthier in Cremona. Its strings and bow are razor-sharp. He breathes in the air, satisfied, and says, “Home at last.”
    He wears leather gloves. He doesn’t hold out his hand.
    “Is it just us?” Jacob Mahler finally asks, seeing that neither Sheng nor Ermete is brave enough to speak.
    Cecile and Mistral Blanchard come out of the Line 5 metro stop in Place Jacques Bonsergent. There really is a newsstand: it’s just to the left of the exit, with an ad for
Le Monde
above it.
    After Mistral told Cecile what she found stored on her MP3 player, the mother and daughter split up the earphones. They lefttheir apartment without even changing clothes: Mistral in the flowered sweat suit, her mother in cargo pants and a long-sleeved sweatshirt. They brought along an oversized shoulder bag with the Veil of Isis and Mistral’s notebooks in it.
    “Hit play,” Cecile tells her daughter. “Let’s hear what he says next.”
    Mistral presses the center button on the MP3 player and listens to the New York antiques dealer’s recorded voice.
    “The woman at the newsstand is called Jenne. Go up to her and tell her you’re Professor Van Der Berger’s niece. Ask her for his spare house keys. Don’t worry, it’s nothing unusual. Alfred had the habit of trusting newsagents. If she asks about him, say he’s fine but out of town. Don’t mention New York. Rome, if you like …”
    Mistral looks at the newsstand and sees that no women are working there. There’s a young man with a beard.
    “Give it a try,” her mother says.
    Mistral asks anyway and, just like what happened in Piazza Argentina in Rome, a moment later