Where We're At: Part 4.10: Against the Day

Reef; Yashmeen

• Reef drifts around Nice and randomly runs into Flaco. Flaco ran into Frank in Mexico, where he's selling guns and ammo; Frank sends word that he "got one of them". Flaco tells Reef that Mexico is ready to explode and Reef should come with him back there. Reef's at loose ends in Venice; since he split from Ruperta, he's got no information on Scarsdale Vibe--and his heart hasn't been in it "since [his] chilly parting with Kit".
• Reef's defending his newfound like for nice cafes to Flaco when a bomb hits. They tend to the wounded until the police arrive; they're both injured.
• Reef takes Flaco to Professor Pivoine, "sort of a neighborhood couturier of flesh wounds." After being patched up Reef sees Kit--he tries to apologize and Kit says it's alright, nothing he himself wouldn't have done. "What the fuck are you talking about? he struggled to say, I did everything wrong. I ran away from my baby son and the woman I loved."
• Reef's kind of avenging Andrea Tacredi's death as well.
• Meanwhile, Vlado had given Yashmeen a "greens schoolboy's copybook" with field notes that she was to bring with her to Venice; they travel to Venice together.
• Reef returns to Venice, and runs into Pino and Rocco. Their manned torpedo has grown in size and been converted into a small submarine which they've named Il Squalaccio.
• At an underground (resistance?) bar, Reef, who's out with Pino and Rocco, randomly runs into Yashmeen. Austrians are following either Pino and Rocco or Vlado and Yashmeen. There's a shoot-out; Vlado is hit and captured. Pino and Rocco tow Yashmeen and Reef, in Yashmeen and Vlado's boat, to safety. Yashmeen explains that Theign is after her/them--even though in theory Austria and Britain are on different sides--it's not official. Pino and Rocco exit.
• Yashmeen and Vlado had been staying in Trieste; that's not safe now, so Reef shelters Yashmeen in a room in Venice. While Yashmeen cleans up, Reef heads out and hears gossip that the shootout was some outlaw hero down from a mountain stronghold; Vlado is being held in the Arsenale. He comes home to find her half-naked; she seduces him.
• Yashmeen has her hair cut and bleached to hide from the Austrians.
• When the Campanile collapsed, power in Venice migrated to the campanile of San Francisco dellaVigna, near the Arsenale. Vlado's being held in the Arsenale; Theign has an office there. Theign offers to trade Yashmeen for information.
• Yashmeen hears about a shootout at the Arsenale; she explains to Reef the Law of Deterministic Insufficiency. Yashmeen begins to read and figure out the copybook Vlado left with her. She still misses Vlado.

(p. 863)