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grotesque square, renewed my acquaintance with the pigeons, and went on to the Palazzo Ducale. I was not burdened by the huge automatic. Before leaving the hotel, I had told Guesci that the rear sight was badly misaligned. He took my word for it without hesitation, and now his handy little revolver rested in my jacket pocket.
    Within the Palazzo I joined a small party of tourists from Göteborg. They were all of a piece; heavy, slow men with cameras, their wives in flowering print dresses and sturdy shoes, with washed-out amiable faces devoid of makeup. They looked at the exhibits weightily, as if to make sure they received full esthetic value. No One would cheat these people of the spiritual goods they had paid for. Beside them, I felt weary, cynical and effete, as though these barbarians were crassly invading my ancient and defenseless homeland. I recognized this as one of the illusions that Venice casts over the visitor.
    This cunning city fostered an endless capacity for self-deception. Labyrinthine, it encouraged convoluted thinking. It was the spell of Venice that lured Guesci into expanding the maximum of guile for the minimum of effect. This would have been fatal if Forster had not shared the same weakness. Like Guesci, he mistook complication for profundity. Eternally romantic, he sought dubious modern equivalents for cloak, half-mask and stiletto, and chose a painted-backdrop city upon which to stage the gaiety and terror of his Carnival.
    Our guide led us through narrow arched passageways, across shuttered hallways and down winding stone staircases. We passed through endless high galleries. The walls were crowded with pictures, and the guide explained them all.
    The mellow afternoon light began to fail; we marched on aching feet into the past of Venice. At one point I smelled orange peels and stagnant water, and knew that the Rio di Canonica di Palazzo was flowing beneath us, and that we were crossing into the old prison. We went down rough-hewn flagstones, and the air was filled with the odor of mold and decaying mortar. My fellow tourists sniffed it with grave pleasure; it was an authentic Renaissance stench. The guide talked about Casanova and the Council of Ten.
    We came to the dungeons, and peered into them through tiny barred windows. They were illumined by naked light bulbs and we could see heavy chains stapled into the brick walls. The ossuary was at the end of the corridor, but there was still no sign of Karinovsky. I was getting nervous.
    We passed the boneyard and came to the entrance of the Torture Chamber of the Doges, a big new attraction uncovered only last year. We reached it down a narrow winding staircase and past two iron-studded doors. It was a low-ceilinged, oppressive little room, lighted with a single electric bulb. Inside, I recognized the rack and the garrote. In a corner stood the Iron Maiden, her eyes downcast. Various king-sized finger-crushers and pincers hung along the stone walls, and there was a fine collection of chains.
    Our guide explained some of the finer points of Renaissance torture. He was reaching some sort of a high point in his dissertation when the light went out.
    We were plunged into a thick and incontinent darkness. The ladies screamed and the gentlemen swore, and the guide asked everyone to remain calm and accompany him back to the corridor. I started to move forward with the others, and felt a thick arm slide around my throat. At the same time, something bit into my side at about the location of the kidneys.
    “Remain silent,” my mugger said. “Do not struggle.”
    At moments like this, the all-purpose secret agent is supposed to flip his assailant over his shoulder, or kick him where it counts, or make some other positive move that catches the aggressor off-balance and disables him before he can drive in his knife. That is the theory. But I didn’t quite see how to bring it off. I was off-balance, gasping for breath, and I had half an inch of knife in my side.