The Orpheus Deception

by David Stone

  “Right now, my people are being ridden by the Carabinieri. The season is ending. Most of our people get out of Venice in November. To stay would make them conspicuous. There is a Carabinieri major. His name is Brancati. He is pressing my business pretty hard right now and I need him to stop.”

  “Stop?” asked Groz, his eyes closing slightly.

  “I need him distracted. Killing him would only intensify the war he is making on us. He has this Jew—from the Mossad?”

  “Issadore Galan.”

  “Yes. This Jew. He is more dangerous than Brancati. His only loyalty is to Brancati. I want to have him distracted.”

  “Even here?”

  They looked out at the medieval fastness of Kotor.

  “Yes. Even here.”

  “Distracted, then. In what way?”

  “He has put it out officially that a man—an American tourist—was stabbed in the Piazza San Marco two weeks ago. They say he is dead. I need to know if this is true. I need the inquiry to be noticed by Galan.”

  Groz nodded.

  “The distraction. This dead man. We have heard this story too.”

  “Do you know if it’s true?”

  Groz studied Gospic’s face for a while in silence.

  “No. We do not.”

  “You have a source in the Carabinieri.” A statement.

  “Perhaps,” said Groz.

  Gospic raised an eyebrow. Groz got the message.

  “So you ask me to . . . reach out, Branco . . . to this possible source of ours and have this question asked. Asked in such a way that Galan is distracted.”

  “Yes,” said Gospic, his tone as lizard flat as the look in his eyes.

  “If such a source existed,” said Groz, slowly, “one would be reluctantto activate him for a reason such as this unless one knew the purpose.”

  “The purpose is that I am interested in the answer.”

  “A favor, then?”

  Gospic nodded, implying a reciprocal favor in the future.

  “So, this question of the dead American, then . . . And the money, of course?”

  “Yes. This question. And the money.”

  Groz closed his eyes. The muscles in his face went slack, and he ran a pale white tongue around his thin lips, considering the risks contained in saying yes and comparing them with the risk of saying no to Branco Gospic in his own town. Gospic looked out across the fjord at the setting sun, his blunt face rocky in the sidelong light, his eyes hidden. Something buzzed in his shirt pocket, and he pulled out a small BlackBerry handset.

  There was a terse message on the screen.

  ARRIVE PMI

  Tarc

  Gospic’s face did not change. He flicked the screen off, returned the machine to his shirt pocket, and looked back out to the fjord again. Groz stirred and sighed. Gospic turned to him.

  “Yes,” said Groz, his thin voice carrying a slight quaver. “We will do this. The question.”

  “And the money?”

  “And the money.”

  Groz nodded, looked around vaguely at the pillared balcony and the sparkling fjord beyond it as if he had just awakened from a dream. He sighed, pushed himself to his feet. Gospic remained sitting, gesturing to a short, blunt man with ridiculous sideburns wearing a pale blue suit and no shirt who had been sitting a careful distance away. The man stood and waited. Groz nodded, pulled the little boy to his feet and shoved him at the man in the bad blue suit, turned back to nod once at Gospic, and the little group shuffled off the balcony and into a shaded hallway beyond.

  Gospic sat alone, holding the Sony camcorder in his hard hands. The remaining boys looked up at him and, one by one, padded away into the hallway, whispering to each other. Far above his head, a cloud of swifts wheeled in the dying light, their thin cries falling down through the chilly air. Beyond the breakwater, the tide was turning and the sea was moving, a vast, shapeless surging, as if something huge and ancient living beneath the surface was rolling in its long sleep. A wintry old man in worn corduroy pants, wearing a tattered olive-drab sweater and thin leather slippers, shuffled out from the shadowed hallway and stood beside Gospic, looking out at the water. Finally, he spoke.

  “It was a mistake to ask for the help of a man like Groz. He will find something to his advantage in Venice and use it against the family.”

  Gospic nodded.

  “I agree, Father.”

  “Then why?”

  “Our man in the Carabinieri wishes to know who Groz has turned.”

  “Our man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “This Brancati, he is running a search for moles within his Venice office. He is doing a very good job of this, and his security man, Galan, he is . . . subtle. Skilled. Our man inside wishes Brancati to find his mole.”

  “I see.”

  “If Groz uses his mole to find out about the American, and conveysit to us accurately, our contact thinks he will be able to identify Groz’s man. This mole can then be exposed to Brancati . . .”

  “How will our man do this?”

  “Apparently, there is some element in the data that would allow him to determine the source. So, the man working for Groz is exposed—”

  “Suspicion passes over. Groz loses a source. Our man remains.”

  “Galan is a professional, Poppa. He will remain vigilant.”

  “But not quite so acutely. Still, Brancati is a problem for us. He has done us some damage. I looked at Larissa’s books, and we have lost some income. This American? Do we already know about the dead American?”

  “Yes. He is alive. Our source says he is badly injured.”

  “Saskia failed?”

  “Yes. She failed.”

  “Is she back yet?”

  “I sent for her. She . . . lingers . . . in Venice.”

  “Hoping for a way to redeem herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you let her?”

  “I will let her think so.”

  “So we have Galan and Brancati and the American. Will you send Radko? Or Emil?”

  Gospic sent his father a look of concern. His father’s grip on the business was tight, but, in recent weeks, he had been forgetting things. It was troubling to Gospic, because, in the limited capacity he had for love, he loved his father and would dislike the bloody business of putting him aside.

  “No. Remember, Poppa? Last month? That Vasari woman shot Radko Borins in the face. And Emil’s in Indonesia. Remember?”

  Gospic watched, with a sudden, piercing sadness, as his father struggled for the memory. Then his father brightened, and smiled down on Gospic.

  “Indonesia! Of course. Then who . . . ?”

  “Kiki. He is in Venice now.”

  His father smiled, his shrunken face breaking into cracks and seams.

  “Kiki Lujac,” said his father. “You sent Kiki?”

  “I did.”

  “Well,” said Poppa, looking out across the fjord. “That will be interesting to watch.”

  4

  Venice

  For a while, the young priest, like the pain, kept a civil distance, as if unwilling to intrude on Dalton’s privacy. All in black, broad-shouldered but not tall, with a violet sash around his neck, the young man stood with his arms folded in front of him, his back to Dalton, staring out a thick casement window at a view that Dalton, from his position on the hospital bed, was unable to see. When Dalton tried to raise his head to look past the priest’s shoulder and see what he was looking at, the white plaster-walled room faded and his bed began to roll, slowly, sickeningly, to Dalton’s right.

  So Dalton did not do that again.

  He lay there for a time, breathing gently, staring up at the heavy wooden beams that supported the slate roof. The floor smelled of timeless age, old granite and limestone blocks, with an overtone of pine and polish. The narrow bed was hard, the pillow badly placed under his neck, but he was unwilling to move enough to make himselfmore comfortable because of the awful
rolling that would certainly follow.

  He was afraid he would vomit if the bed rolled again and he was unsure how he would then get himself clean, whether the silent priest would help him or if someone would come in through the heavy oak door. He wasn’t even sure there was anyone or anything beyond that oak door, any more than he was able to say where this room actually was, in what building, in what country, in what time of year.

  So, for the moment, he felt that the best course before him was to lie there quietly on his back and stare at the ceiling and breathe as slowly as he could because if he started to breathe too fast, then the pain—which was still keeping a polite distance—would come surging back.

  He found that he appreciated the discretion of the young priest, whose face he could not recall as he lay there trying not to let the pain come back. His memory of the last few days was uncertain and filled with blank spaces and fleeting impressions: Cora Vasari’s tear-stained cheeks, her dark eyes wide; Major Brancati’s reassuring presence in a darkened room, recognizable only by the deep, purring rumble of his voice as he spoke to a subordinate; a high, white light and the sound of steel instruments clattering on a tray. Of course, the pain was constant and clear, a chain unlike his memories, a chain unbroken. Always, the pain was there. He was reasonably certain that it was now just possible to maintain a degree of equilibrium, of perfect balance, between pain and unconsciousness. It was just a matter of controlling his breathing. If he did not breathe too deeply, or too shallowly, then the pain would stay at a discreet distance, like the young priest at the window whose face he could not quite recall and whose name had also, it seemed, slipped his mind, although the man was familiar, someone he had met not too long ago.

  But he felt no sense of urgency to remember the man’s name. The important task here was the management of pain.

  Managing the pain required concentration, as he had been taught at the Farm, and the fact that he was now becoming dimly aware of faint noises at the outer edges of his mind was interfering with this effort. He felt a surge of anger run through him. He wished the noises in the hallway would stop. He began to hope that the silent young priest at the window would do something about the noises in the outer hall: women’s voices, perhaps, and the sounds of carts or trolleys being trundled about, the clatter and clang of plates coming through the heavy planks of the door.

  Now that he was actively listening to the sounds in the outer hallway, he had lost the necessary concentration, the balance, and soon the pain was no longer at a polite distance. It had come closer. He could see it quite clearly, standing now at the side of his bed, the pain, staring down at him with a look of compassion.

  No. It wasn’t the pain, Dalton realized, that was standing by his bed; it was this nameless, silent priest. The priest was looking down at him, his rough-cut, dark-skinned face and black eyes sharp, a thin-lipped mouth with a black mustache and a duelist’s goatee. Dalton tried to understand how he had come to confuse the priest with the pain, but, then, he was aware that his mind was not working quite right, so he closed his eyes for a time . . .

  When he opened them again, the young priest was still there, his face closed and his expression unreadable.

  “Do you remember me, Signor Dalton?”

  Dalton, flat on his back, unable to move, swallowed twice, silently wished for water, and finally found both his memory and his voice.

  “You’re Father Jacopo. You were in Cortona. At the chapel.”

  The young priest showed his teeth then, strikingly white and even against his deeply tanned skin, his narrow black mustache.

  “Yes I was. With old Paolo, the verger. Only, a while ago. So much has happened. Remember, he found your friend’s body, huddled in the doorway of our little church? A terrible thing. So much blood and ruin. Such . . . savagery. Poor Mr. Naumann.”

  Dalton had nothing to say to that. He blinked and swallowed. The priest must have known he was thirsty, but he did not offer any water. He had the air of a man who had come to Dalton’s hospital room to say one important thing and was now about to say it.

  “Do you remember what Paolo had to say? About the dead man, who was calling your name? By the Via Santa Margherita?”

  Dalton nodded, opened his mouth to speak, feeling his dry lips cracking. No words came, but he began to feel a little afraid of this young priest. The man seemed to sense this. He reached out a long-fingered hand and laid it on the crisp white sheet over Dalton’s belly. The gesture may have been intended as a comfort. It was not a comfort. Dalton’s belly muscles tensed, and now the pain, which had been gradually increasing, spiked and sharpened. The priest showed no sign that he was aware of this.

  “Paolo said you should not answer that man, that you should not go with him for a walk along the Via Margherita. That he was a ghost who had been standing by the parapet along the Via Margherita for almost a year, calling your name. The ghost of your murdered friend Mr. Naumann. But you did not listen to Paolo, did you?”

  Dalton shook his head.

  “No, you did not. And now here you are, in this place. With this . . . thing . . . inside you. Right under my hand. Can you feel it? I can.”

  Dalton watched as the priest closed his dark eyes as if about to begin the Eucharist, raised his hand slightly, extending a strong, thin index finger, making a spike of it, which he drove sharply down through the white sheet, ripping through that and through the skin and the muscles beneath and inward, deep, deep into Dalton’s belly. Purple blood flowed upward in a gout around his muscular hand and blue-red fountains of it sprayed out across the rest of the sheet. Daltonwatched in paralyzed horror as Father Jacopo dug his hand in deeper, brutally searching Dalton’s belly.

  “Yes, here it is,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I have it.”

  Dalton felt the man’s probing fingers in his entrails, felt something hard being moved around by the priest’s finger. Father Jacopo curled his fingers around whatever it was and started to pull. Pain flowed out from Dalton’s belly and ran through him like a spreading fire.

  Through half-closed eyes, he watched as Father Jacopo plucked his hand out of the gaping wound he had made in Dalton’s belly. Gripped in his bloody fingers was a long, jagged sliver of bright green glass. Father Jacopo opened his eyes and turned the shard in the light from the window, his face flushed, his breathing short and rapid.

  “You should have listened to Paolo, my son,” he said. “This is only one piece. We must be sure to get them all. Try not to move.”

  Father Jacopo leaned forward with a look of renewed concentration, his bloody hand poised again above the gaping wound in Dalton’s belly, his eyes fixed and full of hard purpose. The ghost of Porter Naumann appeared on the other side of his bed. Father Jacopo looked up at Naumann’s ghost without changing his fixed expression.

  “Cancrenato,” he said, with dismissive contempt. “This is no place for you. You are expelled. Leave us.”

  Naumann ignored the priest’s command, looked down at Dalton.

  “Micah,” he said, “now would be a good time to make some noise.”

  DALTON TOOK PORTER Naumann’s advice immediately to heart and, although he was only able to utter some strangled croaks, help did come running, in a black habit and sensible shoes, a nursing sister, with a stiff white cowl and an air of resigned irritation, who stiff-armedthe big oak door and squeaked a rubber-soled streak to his bedside, where she leaned over Dalton as he moaned and thrashed, trying hard in his nightmare state to activate his screaming gear. And then, quite suddenly, he was wide awake and fully present in a room without either Father Jacopo or the ghost of Porter Naumann. He blinked stupidly up at the nun as she pressed her hands against his chest to quiet him. She had soft pink cheeks and cold gray eyes and she smelled of soap and lemons—her scent was very familiar, although her name refused to come to him. She placed a cool, dry hand on his forehead and then ran it down the side of his cheek to press an icy fingertip against his right carotid artery.

  “You we
re dreaming, Signor Dalton—you are okay. You are safe. The morphine drip has come loose here . . . you must be still.”

  Dalton made the mistake of trying to sit up again. The pain in his gut snapped him backward and he hit the pillow hard. As he did so, the fragments of his memory came together: the blond runner by the Bridge of Sighs, the ghost of Porter Naumann with the green glass hilt of a broken dagger in his hand, the pigeons going up like blowing leaves in the Piazza San Marco as Cora begged him to be still . . . the opal sky burning above.

  “Jesus Christ—how long have I been out?”

  The sister’s face closed, her seamed lips puckering.

  “Do not blaspheme, Signor Dalton. Jesus protects you here.”

  “Does He?” said Dalton, mainly to himself. “Well, He’s doing a really crappy job of it, then, isn’t He? Am I still in the Arsenal?”

  “Yes. Good. You remember. You are in the clinic of the Arsenal.”

  “So, I’m still in Venice?”

  “Yes. With the grace of God, the Arsenal remains in Venice, so of course you also remain in Venice,” she said in a soothing voice, “and you must try to lie still. You will open your . . . dei punti? Your stitches.”

  Dalton, tensing, could feel them pulling in his lower right side, like fishhooks in the flesh. He arched reflexively, the pain spiking again.

  “What day is it?”

  “Today is Sabato. Saturday. You came here two weeks ago, on Mercoledi.”

  “Chri— I mean, really? Two weeks? I’ve been out for two weeks?”

  She straightened up and looked down at him. She was ageless, anywhere from thirty to sixty. What life could you lead, thought Dalton, that would leave you so beatifically unmarked? If the sister’s body was a temple of peace and tranquility, apparently his was an arena.

  “Cora? Is she here?”

  The sister’s face cleared, sunlight coming out from behind the clouded aspect of her eyes . . . She nodded, her ageless smile spreading.

  “Sí. La Signorina Vasari. She has been here many times.”

  “Many times?”

  “Yes. Many times. You have been sedated, put into a sleep, so you would not tear at the incision. This morning at dawn we begin to bring you back to life. Your lips are dry. Would you like some water?”