The Orpheus Deception

by David Stone

“Cora is here, Micah.”

  Dalton shifted in his chair to look up at Brancati’s lined face: his dark eyes were filled with judgment, but his expression was warm, even sympathetic. Brancati had insisted, and Dalton had given his word, that there could be no more contact between Cora and Dalton. Dalton had nothing to offer and no future in which to offer it. Cora was leaving for Florence this evening, returning to the university. She was here to say good-bye.

  There had been little opportunity for the two of them to be together in the last week. Brancati had seen to that, and Dalton had no real inclination to fight the circumstances. It would have been pure selfishness, and dangerous for Cora. He had come to Venice to see her one last time and been duly stabbed for his troubles. So, it was done. Both understood that clearly. It was a condition of Brancati’s continuing protection. And Dalton had long ago made career choices that cut him off from the simple dreams of normal men.

  Dalton had told Cora nothing of Brancati’s covert campaign against Branco Gospic and Dalton’s role as bait. As far as Cora was concerned, Dalton was leaving Venice as soon as he was healed. They would very likely never see each other again. There was a light knock at the glass doors that led out onto the terrace, and Cora stepped out into the afternoon light.

  She was wearing the same knee-length black leather skirt and the emerald green cashmere twinset that she had been wearing when Dalton first saw her in the stairway of her family’s apartments in the Dorsoduro, and, over that, her long black leather trench coat. Tall, full-breasted, and long-legged, her blue-black hair shining, her handsome face sharp and slightly tanned, her hazel eyes troubled, she flashed a brilliant smile at them both, kissed Brancati on both cheeks, and then leaned over to kiss Dalton rather more warmly on the lips, her long hair falling over his face in a sensuous, aromatic tumble. Dalton, whose libido had recently awakened from a nine-year coma, found her nearness magnetic, an irresistible pull.

  She broke away—too quickly—and looked out at the canal, and the Adriatic beyond, spreading her arms expansively.

  “A lovely afternoon, Micah.”

  Brancati gave Dalton a warning look, and looked as if he were about to speak, when the phone on his office desk rang, a shrill beeping.

  “Okay, I leave you two for a moment. Micah . . .”

  Brancati withdrew, and Cora turned to look down at him, the wind off the water fluttering her hair around her cheekbones. Six hundred yards away, in the pilothouse of the idling white Riva, a deeply tanned, muscular young man, with long black hair and a rough-cut but striking face with wide-set Moroccan-green eyes, bared his teeth as he side-tapped the butt of a Hungarian-made Gepard M1 sniper rifle. The scope image shifted by a hairline, moving from a spot just below Cora’s right elbow to the center of Dalton’s forehead. The image rose and fell with the slow movement of the water, but, by lifting the butt in rhythm with the gentle motion of the hull and using the forward bipod as a pivot, the man was able to keep the sixty-inch-long weapon zeroed in on Dalton’s skull. It was a skill that could be learned, but it helped to have a gift. This young man had the gift.

  “Is it him?” asked his companion, a skeletal blond woman with Slavic features and a sour expression on her thin-lipped face. She was wearing a long indigo silk scarf, and nothing more. Kiki loved that scarf.

  “It is,” said Lujac. “Very alive. You fucked up, Saskia.”

  “No. Gospic did. The weapon was ridiculous. A toy.”

  “You tell him that,” said Lujac, keeping his eye to the scope.

  “You are going to shoot?”

  “No,” said Lujac.

  “Why not? What are you waiting for?”

  “I enjoy . . . watching.”

  Saskia looked upward, her shoulders rolling, as she steadied the ship against a sudden rising swell.

  “Everybody knows you like to watch. But there he is. Kill him.”

  “Perhaps,” said Lujac, centering the crosshairs on Dalton’s nose. He thought the man looked . . . interesting—like a Roman statue of some barbarian captive, the marble surface weathered by time and storms. Dalton had long blond hair and a lined face that looked battered but retained an aspect of wry humor and a mouth that looked willing to smile if given the right reason. He’s beautiful, thought Lujac, moving with the seas underneath him, keeping the image steady. It would make him sad to kill something that beautiful. Gospic had been vague about killing him, saying only that he needed to know if the man was still alive. He had left it up to Lujac to decide. Saskia, who was bitter at her own failure, wanted the man dead, so she could put an end to her discomfort. But Saskia had no eye for beauty.

  Lujac steadied the butt and pulled in a long slow breath, let it out slowly. Becoming still. His finger tightened on the trigger. Maybe he would kill him, anyway. Killing was a little like sex, after all, although with the killing there were no uncomfortable mornings with strangers. The woman moved in front of Dalton, hiding him from Lujac. Lujac lifted his eye from the scope and sighed. Fate. Destiny. Cora stood looking down at Dalton, her back to the sea, her face in shadow.

  “You look well, Micah. Are you well?”

  Dalton stood and walked over to lean beside her on the railing, his motion abrupt, forcing Lujac to shift his position. He reacquired Dalton in a moment and settled in again, watching, considering. At the wheel, Saskia sighed theatrically. Lujac ignored her, centering the crosshairs on Dalton’s right cheekbone. Like a kiss, he thought. Dalton stood close to Cora, close enough to smell her perfume, a spicy, Eastern aroma.

  “Yes, Cora. I’m fine.”

  She studied the lines in his face, the parchment skin.

  “Liar. You should not have come to Venice.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Look at what has happened to you.”

  “I’m standing on a balcony in Venice with a beautiful woman.”

  She frowned at him, but there was a smile flickering around her lips.

  “You are ridiculous. You got yourself stabbed. For what?”

  “I did what I wanted with what I had left.”

  “And now . . . ?”

  “And now here we are.”

  “And that’s enough?”

  “Not in the slightest. But it’s all I’m going to get.”

  Her expression grew solemn.

  “E’vero. Alessio has protected you.”

  “And you. When do you leave?”

  “Soon. An hour. Alessio has insisted on a driver, so I will have a young carabiniere to keep me company all the way to Florence. And you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. When do you leave? Where do you go?”

  Dalton looked at her face, seeing the emotions there.

  “I don’t know. Brancati thinks I should try to reconnect with the Agency. To come in from the cold.”

  Cora’s face hardened a little, her full lips thinning.

  “That was in a book. This is life. They have already tried to kill you once. You cannot go back. It was very bad for you. The lying. The violence. You were poisoned. Drugged. You saw ghosts. Hallucinations. That terrible man. Pinto? What happened to him?”

  “He changed his ways.”

  “You killed him, I suppose.”

  “Not at all. We reached an understanding.”

  Cora didn’t smile.

  “A liar still. And a killer. And now a hunted killer. No. Enough. Your life in that world? It is over. Look what that life has already done to you. You have done enough for America. America does not deserve you.”

  Dalton smiled at her.

  “I have limited talents, Cora—”

  She waved that away.

  “My family has connections. My uncle owns the Capri Palace Hotel in Anacapri. A wonderful man. You could be his security . . .”

  Her voice trailed away into a whisper as Dalton placed both hands gently on her shoulders and drew her toward him. He kissed her, gently at first, and then more strongly as she stirred and moved into him. Her arms moved up the small of his back
and she pulled his hips into her, and then they were moving together and the heat was rising up between them.

  Out in the Riva, Lujac watched, his mouth half open. Saskia could only see two tiny figures on a distant balcony, but there was something in their posture that made her smile down at Lujac.

  “Not on your team, Kiki.”

  “I don’t have a team,” said Lujac, his throat slightly constricted as he watched the couple embrace. “I am . . . adaptable.”

  Saskia smiled again, because this was very true, and Kiki had proved it quite definitively only a few hours ago. Dalton and Cora broke apart, Dalton breathing hard, his belly hurting and heat racing all along his chest and shoulders. Cora’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes unfocused, inward, her lips wet and open. Although she had stepped away from him, her dark eyes on him, a little stunned by the sudden visceral rush of it, Dalton could still feel the pressure of her hips, her thighs, her belly, her breasts, the scent and the warmth of her skin and the steady pulse of her carotid at the side of her neck. Heat. Brancati stepped through the curtains, his face hard.

  “What is it?” asked Dalton, seeing his expression.

  “There’s a woman. In the piazza. Sitting at Florian’s.”

  “A woman?”

  “Yes. She came in on one of the Minoan cruise ships this morning. From Trieste, Galan thinks.”

  “Issadore?” said Cora.

  “Issadore Galan,” said Brancati. “My security man.”

  “Your Israeli?”

  “Yes,” said Brancati, shifting his glare to Cora, and then softening it as he realized that he had put Issadore Galan in charge of Cora’s protection detail after Radko and No Name had attacked her in the Dorsoduro.

  Galan was a short, crumpled man with a large round skull and too many features crowded into the center of his face to make for much in the way of looks. The fingers of his hands had been broken many times during the course of his captivity with the Jordanians in the late eighties. Broken with hammers. They had healed badly. Other atrocities had been performed, taking away any hope he may have had of ever being given or returning physical love. Perhaps as a result, Issadore Galan’s spiritual force was ferocious. It flared out at life through small dark eyes wreathed in spidery pain lines. His feral smile was sudden and brilliant. Passionate and cold. He adored Cora, and had said so several times to Brancati.

  Of course Cora would remember him.

  “Who is she?” asked Dalton, although he felt he knew the answer. Brancati held out a color photo, taken from a short distance away, a flight of pigeons blurring in the foreground, the woman luminous in a long pale linen dress, a wide-brimmed black straw hat with a pink fabric gardenia shading her face, her age indeterminate but not young, her lean and graceful body conveying an air of contained languor as she sat at a small round table near the bandstand, looking down at a copy of the Herald Tribune that lay on the table in front of her. She was holding a turquoise cigarette with a gold tip between the middle and index finger of her right hand. Dalton looked at the shot for a time while he contemplated his answer, deciding finally on the truth, if only for the novelty of the choice.

  “Mandy Pownall,” he said, looking up at Brancati.

  “Who is this Mandy Pownall?” asked Cora, with a definite tone. Both men heard it and exchanged wary glances.

  “She is a business associate,” said Dalton.

  Cora made a face, her expression closing down.

  “One of them?”

  “Mandy was Porter Naumann’s assistant at London Station.”

  “She is with the CIA, then?”

  “Yes,” cut in Brancati. “Galan has her on a list.”

  Dalton, sensing something in Brancati’s tone, looked at the man.

  “Are you arresting her?”

  Brancati shook his head.

  “For Milan? No. She’s not on that list. But she is CIA.”

  Cora watched the exchange, sensing what was not being spoken.

  “She is from London? Why is she here?”

  Dalton was looking at the picture. The last time he had seen her was in his Agency flat on Wilton Crescent in Belgravia. She was showing him a file, and in that file was the reason Porter Naumann had been killed, and Dalton’s response to what Mandy Pownall had shown him was why he was on the run in Venice right now.

  “She’s trailing a wing,” he said, finally. Brancati grunted, his attention pulling away. He shaded his eyes, staring out at the lagoon.

  “How long has that boat been out there?”

  7

  Piazza San Marco, Venice

  A pale winter sun was just touching the roof of the Museo Civico on the western end of the square when Mandy Pownall looked up to see a short gnomelike figure standing in the last of the sunlight, a stunted, slope-shouldered shadow man, oddly bent, as if he had been injured and had healed badly. She set her wineglass down and looked up at him, waiting.

  He bowed—a short, sharp bob—and spoke.

  “Signorina Pownall?”

  His accent was strange, a hoarse, croaking rasp that sounded like a cross between Italian and Hebrew. Mandy smiled brightly up at him.

  “Mr. Galan. How delightful. I was hoping you’d come. Do sit.” Galan ducked his head, enfolded in an embarrassed air that did not affect his eyes, which were as hard and sharp as a crow’s. He took the chair opposite and folded his ruined hands in a clasp under the table, as if to spare Mandy the sight of them. She picked up the iced decanter and filled the second glass that had already been waiting there. Galan watched her fill it, thinking that she looked a little like Cora Vasari—the English version; chilly, composed, a fine, aristocratic face. She did not have Cora’s tropical fire. But she had presence, a strong, sensual air. There were delicate lines around her eyes and her lips; her neck was long, and, beneath the dry, crepey skin, there were blue veins showing. Mandy felt his oddly carnal appraisal, as she refilled her own glass. She sat back, raised hers in a toast.

  “To Venice,” she said, and they both drank.

  Galan set his glass down with regret—he loved cold Chablis far too much, especially when in the company of an elegant woman. He leaned back in his chair, said nothing more, and seemed content to wait out the remainder of the afternoon with the same serene calm. Mandy smiled to herself. She had been brought up to speed on Issadore Galan’s formidable talents by Stennis Corso, their Italian specialist at London Station.

  “Well, to business,” she said, setting her glass aside.

  “Of course,” he said, smiling.

  “We’d like to talk to Micah Dalton.”

  “We . . . ?”

  “I’m here for Deacon Cather.”

  Galan closed his eyes slowly and opened them, a reptilian tic. He said nothing at all, but he seemed to gather into himself, as if coiling.

  “Please convey to Mr. Cather my best regards. We met once, at Camp David. During President Reagan’s era. I found him most . . . professional.”

  “I will. About Mr. Dalton . . .”

  Galan was shaking his head. It turned smoothly, as if on an oiled pivot, but his eyes stayed locked on Mandy’s pale pink face.

  “Regretfully, it is my sad duty to inform you . . .”

  Mandy was reaching into her purse. Galan’s voice trailed off, as he watched her retrieve a small silver Canon camera. She held it out to Galan, who accepted it with the fingertips of his left hand, as if he expected it to carry an electric charge.

  “It’s a digital,” said Mandy. “Open the stored pictures section.”

  He did, and found that he was looking at a photograph of a man’s face. He shaded the LCD screen from the sidelong sun, and set a pair of thin, gold-wire-framed glasses onto his nose, squinting at the screen.

  “Yes. This is a photograph of Mr. Dalton.”

  “Taken at your morgue, so we gather.”

  “Yes. It is a picture of him that we used to identify his body.”

  “So, he’s dead, then?”

  “As I sa
id . . . regretfully. We did all that could be—”

  “Are you at all curious as to how we came by this picture?”

  Galan shrugged his shoulders, lifted his clawlike hands skyward in a ghastly imitation of divine supplication. He smiled—showed his tiny yellow teeth, at any rate—although he did not return the camera.

  “You are with Clandestine. The CIA. I suppose you have your ways.”

  Mandy offered him some more Chablis—he accepted it—and shone upon him a smile he would remember for days afterward, in the silent rooms of his gloomy little backstreet villa near the Tempio Israelitico in the Ghetto.

  “This picture was circulated internally. Within the Carabinieri. It was not shared with the municipal police. Or with any other of your agencies.”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “We had it analyzed by our forensic people in Maidenhill. It was compared with file photos of Micah Dalton, and they came to the intriguing conclusion that the subject of this photo was not quite reliably dead at the time the shot was taken.”

  Galan smiled, inclined his head, and lifted his eyebrows.

  “Fascinating. A marvel. And how did they determine that?”

  “As it was explained to me, when a man dies, at the moment that his body begins to undergo the various processes, there are immediate changes in such things as muscle tissue, skin cells. Nothing that would be obvious to an untrained observer but present nevertheless.”

  “For example?”

  Mandy gently took the Canon back and slipped it into her purse before she replied. She lifted her glass, placed her red lips against it, looking at Galan over the rim, her eyes bright, her expression one of teasing enjoyment.

  “You’re going to make me run through the whole silly thing, Mr. Galan. How boring.”

  “Call me Issadore.”

  “Issadore. You may call me Mandy.”

  “Mandy, then. You were about to explain . . .”

  “The muscles of the face begin to tighten. They lose flexion. Density. Cohesiveness. The expression changes. Life, as an animating force, an organizing principle, releases the tissues, drifts away, and the face assumes what we call the death mask, a certain rigidity. This is why morticians have such a difficult time making the dead look as if they were merely asleep. Our people did a graphic overlay—some computer thingy they have; bores me to tears—but somehow it showed them that Dalton’s face in this photograph is not the face of a Micah Dalton in real death. Actually, they feel he may have been heavily sedated, drugged. But he was not dead when this photo was taken.”