Read Killing Pilgrim for Free Online

could read the notes through the bottom edge of his glasses.
    “I’m researching the development of the Glagolitic alphabet,” she said, turning to the son.
    “So you study Slavonic languages, like my father,” della Torre said, struggling to regain his composure.
    “I’m no specialist. I’m beginning to research the subject.”
    “Oh, are you an academic?” he asked.
    “Sort of,” she said, not elaborating.
    “Where?”
    “At George Mason,” she said, that smile never leaving her lips.
    He shook his head. “Where is it?”
    “In Virginia,” she said. “Ever been there?”
    “Never,” he said, trying to refresh his memory of American geography from primary school. Once upon a time he could name every state and its capital. Now he had only a rough idea of where Virginia was. Somewhere to the east and south.
    “It’s very nice,” she said. “Rolling hills, beaches, and the Blue Ridge Mountains. You should come sometime. I’ll show you around.”
    “That’s a kind offer,” he said. “So are you doing a doctorate or post-doctoral work?”
    “Your notes here give you away,” the older man said to Rebecca, interrupting the conversation. “They show that you come at your analysis from the Russian. You’ve been deceived by some false friends, words from different languages that sound the same but have different meanings. Very naughty to start with the presumption of Russian when approaching middle European Slavic languages. It’s like the mistake people often make in thinking the word histrionic is related to the word hysteria . Hysteria comes from the Latin for womb . But histrionic is from Histria , which the Romans called Istria. The most famous actors were from Histria, and so histrionic refers to an ability to act, and not to womb or women.”
    Della Torre couldn’t resist a little indulgent smile at his father. Piero loved explaining the etymology of histrionic because it often came as a surprise, even to linguists.
    Rebecca smiled. “I said they were very rough,” she said by way of apology.
    “Oh, never mind. You’re not a specialist. But I think a little more reading is in order before you start to build a thesis of any sort. And work on your Slovak. Very important for this. Not to mention Serbo-Croat.”
    “You speak Serbo-Croat?” della Torre asked. His father had long argued that it was spurious to claim that Serbian and Croatian were separate languages; they were no more separate than American and British English, albeit with different alphabets. The differences were trivial, a matter of accent and a handful of words and a deep-seated enmity of two peoples. His father’s views may have been correct for a philologist, but they didn’t win him many friends among nationalists on either side.
    “Not really. My background is in Russian, but I’ve taken an interest in western Slavic languages. That’s why I’m here. I invited myself a while ago, and your father’s just too kind to turn down a stranger.”
    The memory precipitated from a fog in a distant corner of his mind. His father had mentioned an American research student some time ago, but della Torre had been too preoccupied to give it much thought. He had been on the run. From hired killers, from the Zagreb cops, from the UDBA . He’d driven through Istria on his way to London, via Venice, moving as quickly and secretly as he could. But he’d felt a pang on his way past his father’s house, not knowing when he’d ever see his father or the house again. So he’d taken an enormous risk in calling the old man. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Maybe some deep, longed-for . . . what? Whatever he’d been hoping for, he hadn’t gotten it. Instead, he’d spent worried moments listening to gossip, conversational filler — and, he now remembered, something about an American researcher.
    “I’ll find some references for you,” Piero said. “You’ll be able to look them up when you get back to Washington. But