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Rossi, and his family’s name is inscribed in the Golden Book. He died while studying in Rome, but he will be buried as a Venetian.”
    “That’s nice,” I said. “But what do you plan to do with Karinovsky and me?”
    “I am going to transport you by funeral barge to the Cimitero; then I will load you onto a fishing boat bound for Seno di Tessera. Once on the mainland, the arrangements become easier.”
    “I suppose you’ll transport us there in the casket?”
    “So I planned,” Guesci said.
    “Won’t that be rather crowded for your cousin?”
    “Not at all,” Guesci said. “My cousin is in Rome, still very much alive and studying hard for his examinations. I took the family liberty of borrowing his death.”
    “Admirable,” I said.
    Guesci waved away the compliment. “It is an obvious little scheme,” he said, “but I think it just might suffice. Assuming, of course, that we get a chance to use it.”
    “Why wouldn’t we?”
    “Because it is much too simple and clear-cut,” Guesci said. “Plans like that would be a certainty in Torino; but they dissolve into nothingness in Venice.”
    “I think we should give it a try.”
    “We most certainly will,” Guesci said. He sat up and took on a businesslike air. “It is settled. Tomorrow you will meet Karinovsky and proceed with him to the Quartiere Grimani. There, in front of the Casino degli Spiriti, a gondola will await you, and will transport you to the funeral barge in the Sacca della Misericordia. Later I will explain how you find the Casino. Are you armed?”
    Colonel Baker had not brought up the question of guns, perhaps fearing that I would do more harm to myself than to an enemy. But I couldn’t say this to Guesci. Instead I shook my head, smiled faintly and glanced down at my hands—the merciless hands of Agent X.
    “I didn’t think you would be,” Guesci said. “It would have been foolish of you to carry a weapon through Customs. Therefore I took the liberty of providing for you.”
    He reached into his breast pocket and took out a huge, sinister-looking automatic. He patted it tenderly on the snout and handed it to me. Somewhat gingerly, I accepted it. Engraving along the barrel told me that it was a French .22 calibre Mab, known as “Le Chasseur.”
    “Your dossier mentions your preference for a light target pistol,” Guesci said. “This was the best I could do on such short notice. It has the 7½-inch barrel to which you are accustomed, but I was unable to find your favorite hollow-point ammunition.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” I said. Colonel Baker had really taken pains with Agent X. I wondered what my favorite brand of whiskey was, and whether I favored blondes or brunettes.
    “Personally, I would be useless with such a weapon,” Guesci said, with a self-deprecatory chuckle. “I use this.” He slipped another gun out of his waistband. It was a compact, snub-nosed, hammerless revolver.
    “This has the stopping power which an indifferent marksman like myself requires,” Guesci said. “Of course, its accuracy is no greater than one would expect from a two-inch barrel.”
    I nodded and tried to put the massive .22 into my jacket pocket. It wouldn’t fit. Finally I slid it under my belt and hoped it wouldn’t go off and shoot me in the leg. If it came to gunplay, I was going to be in trouble.
    “Where do I meet Karinovsky?” I asked.
    “In the building in the rear of the Palazzo Ducale. Karinovsky will meet you at five in the lower galleries, just past the dungeons and near the old charnel house.”
    I didn’t bother to point out that we could have met just as easily on the Wide Stairs, or in the Ca’ d’Oro. Such a meeting place would have been an insult to Guesci’s mordant genius. Those who intend to play leading roles in a funeral should very properly meet in a boneyard.
     
     

 
    8
     
     
    The next day, late in the afternoon, I left the Excelsior and proceeded to the Piazza San Marco. I duly admired that