Venice Black

by Gregory C. Randall

  “The Piazza San Marco is that way.” He pointed. “The Grand Canal is that way. You can see the boats at the end of the campo. It is also that way and that way. It almost surrounds us here. We are in the Campo Santo Stefano. The Palazzo Grassi is that way. Five minutes tops.”

  “Sure we are,” Alex said. Her phone buzzed. “Give me a minute.”

  She walked away, her phone to her ear.

  “No good deed goes unpunished,” she said to Javier after she hung up. “My captain wants me back in Cleveland as soon as possible. He is pissed. The state police are already setting up a press conference for later this morning—their time. He wants to know if it was a trap, if Ralph set me up.”

  “It sounds like it was,” Javier said.

  “Yes, probably was. I’m caught between the proverbial rock and a brick shithouse. They want a copy of Ralph’s e-mail. I need a few minutes to get it off my phone. Is there somewhere to get coffee around here?”

  “Follow me.”

  Alex finished her e-mail and the last drop of the cappuccino. “Okay, cowboy, which way do we go?”

  “This way.”

  “It is beautiful,” Alex said. “I think it’s the contrast to everything else I know that makes it so stunning. There is nothing like it.”

  Using an arched bridge, they crossed over a canal. The narrow waterway below was surprisingly full of gondolas, and the songs from a dozen voices filled the tight canyon of stucco and brick. Beyond, on a corner of a building, a sign read “Pal. Grassi” and had an arrow below it. Javier led on.

  They turned a corner. Standing against the façade of the church of San Samuele were Turner and Damico.

  “What the hell are they doing here?” Alex said as she walked toward them.

  “Leave them,” Javier said. “They are nothing. We need to get to the palazzo. It’s just down the passage. Forget them.”

  “If it isn’t Detective Cierzinski or Polonia or whatever the fuck you call yourself,” Turner said and turned to Damico. “I told you they would be here, didn’t I? When I saw the picture of that Marika woman on the TV this morning, I said, ‘Damn, she looks like our old partner Ralph’s ex, Alexandra Cierzinski.’ So, Bill here says, ‘Where one is, maybe the other will show up.’ And here you are, and you have brought your boyfriend. I wonder if old Ralphy knows.”

  “Maybe we should tell him,” Damico said with a laugh.

  “Good idea. So, after the other night, I figured out that your boyfriend is the one that’s been taking care of the money. That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

  As Alex walked up to Turner, she loosened the flap on her bag and placed her hand on the butt of the Glock, just in case. “You? Thinking? You are the two stupidest people I have ever met. The money is gone, and if I were you, I’d be careful. Ralph’s escaped from prison, killed some people, and is now in the wind. My guess, when things settle down, he’ll come looking for you two, and when he finds you, you’ll end up like his business partners.”

  “That asshole’s escaped?” Turner said, staring at Alex. “You are lying.”

  “Yeah, as in gone, flew the coop, big-time fugitive, and every cop in Ohio is looking for him. Get it, Turner? Can you get it through that thick skull? Javier, you are a United States federal officer. Is there a chance I can shoot them and claim self-defense? I’m so tired of this.”

  Javier smiled. “Well, they have attacked you—I’m a witness to that. They’ve threatened you with bodily harm. There’s that too. So, yes, I think you can shoot them and claim self-defense.”

  “You a Fed?” Damico said.

  “Worse, he’s a spook,” Alex said.

  She turned and saw a policeman standing at the corner of the church, facing the campo beyond. She heard the amplified voice of a woman who sounded like Marika.

  “I’ve got a better idea. Maybe he can help. I hope you have your passports with you.”

  She and Javier started walking toward the officer.

  CHAPTER 37

  As Alex and Javier walked toward the Palazzo Grassi, she heard Turner yell something. When she turned around, they were gone.

  “I don’t know what to do with those guys,” she said.

  “We’ll deal with them later,” Javier answered. “Now that Ralph is either dead or on the lam, they’ve got nothing, and they know it.”

  “Desperate people do desperate things.”

  The sound of Marika’s voice echoed through the calle between the church and the palazzo. When Alex reached the campo, she looked out across the pavement. A blue carpet, decorated with EU stars, ran diagonally across the stones from the edge of the canal to the palazzo’s entry. To the left, in front of the palazzo, a heavy wooden lectern had been placed so that arriving officials could, if they desired, address the press and answer questions. Marika now stood at this lectern and looked out at the twenty journalists gathered to hear what she had to say. Alex caught her eye as Marika waited to continue; a surprised look appeared on her face. From the canal, a succession of motor launches briefly docked and delivered EU representatives and their staffs to the conference. These bureaucrats hurriedly walked the carpet, past the reporters, through the campo, and into the palazzo. None slowed or stopped. One looked at the microphone like it were an instrument of torture.

  “Thank you for coming,” Marika said. The crowd turned toward her. “Today is both a day of triumph and sadness. As you all know, I have supported this herculean effort on the part of my country to become a fully vested member of the European Union, and this means integrating the euro into our monetary system. This will not happen in the next year or even the next two, but it will happen, I know in my heart it will.”

  Alex scanned the crowd. She assumed that Marika—knowing the United States had punted on her request—had promised these reporters more than a supportive remark on the euro. They wanted brimstone and red meat. “But during the last twenty years of peace, since the Dayton Accords and the imposition of a treaty among the various nations of Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, a bloody stain remains—the stain of prejudice and injustice. How can we Croats move forward without bringing to justice those that murdered helpless Bosnians in our names? One of those murderers is now seeking the highest office in our country, and he has promised that he will return us to those days of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

  Across the campo, in the far corner, a figure dressed in black stepped out of the passage and hid behind a large sign for the conference. Alex nudged Javier.

  “Was that Ehsan?”

  “Where?”

  “Behind that sign with the blue EU logo.”

  “I don’t see him, can’t make out who it is.”

  A horn from an approaching boat turned their attention toward the Grand Canal and a mahogany launch easing itself against the quay. A young man in a striped T-shirt jumped from the boat and swung a line around one of the mooring posts. When the line was secured, a hefty man in uniform jumped to the quay. He then reached over the gunnel of the boat and helped a woman off. Behind the woman, an older, pudgy man in an ill-fitting suit climbed out. Another man, also in a military uniform, followed.

  “And the most evil of these vile murderers is General Attila Kozak,” Marika said, pointing to the launch. “That is the killer. That’s him.”

  Alex recognized the man Marika pointed to. He was the man behind the slaps, the thick face, the man on the floor who received Marika’s kick to the ribs.

  Kozak waved to the gathering. One of Kozak’s bodyguards turned toward the loudspeakers at the podium. Behind them, a vaporetto, full of tourists and Venetians, slowed and began to drift toward the San Samuele barge.

  “That man, General Kozak, is personally responsible for the executions of hundreds of men, women, and children,” Marika continued. “He was one of the leaders of the militias that bombed and murdered the citizens of Zenica and other villages in Bosnia. Look at that evil man—the man that wants the presidency of Croatia. He should be spending the rest of hi
s life in prison.”

  Kozak, obviously hearing what Marika said, glared and started to move toward her. Colonel Vuković and one bodyguard grabbed Kozak’s arm to steer him away. Kozak pushed them aside and continued toward her.

  “Murderer!” Marika shrieked. “Killer, butcher, executioner!” She again pointed her finger at Kozak and braced herself for his charge. Shocked by what was happening, Alex turned back to the reporters and saw Ehsan pushing his way through the crowd.

  “Why is he here?” Alex said to Javier.

  “That son of a bitch? Nothing good.”

  When Ehsan cleared the crowd of reporters, Alex saw the pistol in his hand. He turned to Alex and Javier and smiled, then continued directly to the motor launch.

  “He’s going for Kozak.”

  Kozak was still trying to wrench his arm free from Vuković and the bodyguard. As Alex pulled her Glock from her backpack she looked back at Ehsan and then at Kozak and shouted, “Bomb! Bomba!”

  The crowd, for a moment stunned at the words, began screaming and running toward the passageways.

  A few paces from Kozak and his entourage, Ehsan raised the pistol and shot once at the bodyguard; the man twisted away and fell to the pavement. Turning to Kozak, he fired three times into the man’s chest.

  Directly behind Ehsan, the thunderous blast of an explosion lifted the vaporetto dock high above the canal and rolled it onto its side. The pressure wave from the bomb slammed into the side of the arriving vaporetto, instantly rolling the boat over, throwing passengers into the canal. Water from under the barge exploded upward higher than the campanile and deluged the campo and everyone in it. Alex and Javier were knocked to the paving stones along with most of those in the campo. The massive downpour of canal water rained over the prone bodies. A tidal wave of water raced across the canal, tipping gondolas and other small watercraft.

  Alex was first to her feet. Her eyes went directly to Ehsan. He was trying to stand, the pistol still in his hand. He stumbled among the bodies sprawled across the pavement.

  Alex looked out into the canal at the overturned hull of the vaporetto, dozens of people grasping at its side and struggling desperately to keep their heads above the frigid waters. She looked back across the campo and the carnage caused by the explosion and then to Ehsan. He was standing over the body of Kozak. He raised the weapon and fired again into the man’s body, and then turned and pointed the weapon at Kozak’s second-in-command, Vuković. He fired once into the struggling man, hitting him in the upper chest.

  “Everyone down!” Alex yelled from halfway across the campo. She raised her pistol and fired.

  Hit, Ehsan grabbed his shoulder with his free hand; he still held the pistol in the other. His hand came away bloody.

  Alex braced herself to take another shot. Ehsan swung his pistol toward her; she fired again. The bullet hit the mahogany of the boat, just missing the man. Ehsan smiled and aimed his weapon at Alex. He pulled the trigger and fired. The slide slid back—the weapon was empty. The bullet missed. She calmly raised the Glock and steadied herself to fire.

  From the canal, staccato bursts from an automatic weapon sounded over the screams of the victims of the explosion and the gunfire in the campo. Alex looked to the canal. A man in the back of a boat heading for the landing was holding an AK-47 and firing wildly above the heads of the people in the campo. Bullets impacted the stucco walls of the Palazzo Grassi. Everyone still in the campo threw themselves back onto the wet paving. Ehsan sprinted past the overturned San Samuele dock and toward the approaching boat. As Alex continued to fire, he jumped and tumbled into its stern. It accelerated and disappeared up the canal and away from the chaos. The screams for help from the campo and the canal were lost to the roar of the boat’s engine.

  CHAPTER 38

  Alex and Javier stood in the center of the chaotic campo, stunned by what they had just witnessed. All across the piazza, dazed people were screaming and trying to stand. The only ones not moving were three figures lying on the end of a blue carpet near the edge of the canal. The blast had lifted Kozak’s mahogany water taxi out of the canal and thrown it against the façade of the Palazzo Malipiero. Its stern hung precariously over the edge of the quay, its propeller still spinning, its engine vibrating the hull against the paving stones. The boat’s driver stood, found his balance, then leaned toward the console and shut off the motor. Water still dripped from building façades and the bare branches of the trees in the campo.

  In the Grand Canal, the overturned vaporetto, its black hull exposed, drifted away from the campo, people clinging to its sides, yelling for help. Others ran to the edge of the campo to assist those in the water onto dry land. The San Samuele dock, still secured to the quayside by twisted cables, sat half in and half out of the canal. Two women, hanging on to one of the ladders, screamed and waved.

  Police officers knocked down by the blast now rose and helped where they could. Other officers began to appear from every alley entering the campo, guns drawn. Klaxons and sirens filled the canal. Some of the reporters, soaked and confused, sat against the surrounding walls of the palazzi, administered to by colleagues. Others sat on park benches, their heads between their legs.

  “If we had walked faster, we would have been in the middle of all this,” Alex said to Javier.

  “If it weren’t for your DEA friends, we would have been standing next to Marika.”

  “They are not my friends.”

  The force of the explosion had thrown the lectern against the wall of the Palazzo Malipiero. Pinned underneath was a struggling Marika, trying to push the heavy piece of furniture off her body. It wouldn’t move. Javier ran to her side, grabbed the end, and lifted the lectern. Alex pulled Marika out.

  “It was Ehsan,” Alex said to Javier as he kneeled down to see how badly injured Marika was. “He shot Kozak and then turned the gun on Vuković. It had to be Fazlić and Radić in the launch. God, what just happened?”

  In the canal, debris drifted slowly from the source of the explosion. She looked for Turner and Damico, but they were gone.

  “I know, I saw Ehsan, I think you hit him.” He pointed to the Glock she still had in her hand. “Hide it, now.”

  She jammed it back in the backpack that still hung loosely on her left arm.

  “The explosion, it had to come from under the vaporetto stop,” Alex said. “Nothing could have flipped that thing but a bomb.”

  Marika was now sitting against the lectern. She was clearly in shock. A thin stream of blood dripped from the corner of her mouth.

  “It looks like a concussion,” Javier said. “We need to get her to a hospital, fast. The lectern may have also caused serious internal damage.”

  Two yellow-and-orange ambulance boats pulled up to the quay, and emergency personnel began to triage the injured. One of the EMTs took charge of Marika and immediately began to check her vital signs.

  All was chaos in the Grand Canal. Boats rescued people thrown from the vaporetto and other overturned craft. More than a dozen police and emergency boats drifted in the canal, scanning for survivors. One of the police boats secured a line to the overturned vaporetto hull to keep it from drifting farther down the canal.

  A police officer grabbed Javier. “You were here yesterday. I remember the two of you. What the hell happened?”

  “A bomb,” Alex said. “It exploded under the barge. My guess is it was a diversion for the real reason.”

  “What was that?”

  “The assassination of that man on the ground, Attila Kozak.”

  The officer turned toward the bodies in the campo and reached for his handset radio. Additional police soon arrived, and within minutes they outnumbered all the journalists and tourists that had been in the campo when the bomb exploded.

  Alex saw a woman seated on the steps and leaning against the dark wooden doors of the Palazzo Malipiero. She was soaked and beginning to shiver from both the cold and shock. Lying on the ground next to her was Kozak.

  “Maja Stank
ić?” Alex asked. “Are you Maja Stankić?”

  The woman looked up at Alex, no recognition in her eyes. “Što?”

  “Are you Maja Stankić?” Alex demanded again, this time loudly.

  This time, the woman nodded. “Yes, I’m Stankić,” she said in halting English. “Did you see they killed Attila? Murdered him.” She glared at Alex. “You are that woman, Marika Jurić. It was you that killed my Attila.”

  “No, I’m the other woman you kidnapped two days ago. I should throw you in the canal. But unlike you, I don’t kill innocent people.”

  “I never killed anyone, not like that man who shot the colonel and Attila”—she ran her hand through the dead man’s hair—“and caused all this.”

  “You would have killed me if we hadn’t been rescued!” Alex yelled.

  “You are that American agent? We know all about you.” Maja waved a thin finger at Alex. “My Attila would have become president. He would have changed everything; all of Croatia would have been better off. But no, you Americans had to stick your noses into the middle of all this. Now he’s dead, murdered by those Bosniaks. Go away. I want nothing to do with you.”

  As Alex walked back to Javier, a medical attendant kneeled next to Stankić and started to ask questions.

  “You okay?” Javier asked Alex.

  “Yes, I’m fine. We were a day early,” Alex answered. “This could have been stopped.”

  “You were right: something was hinky about all this,” Javier said. “I don’t think Marika knew about any of it. Her son used her to get revenge for his family. He wouldn’t have put her in the middle of this.”

  “But he did,” Alex said. “She’s collateral damage and lucky to still be alive. Just like those poor souls on the boats. Damn, what a cold trio of bastards they are.”

  As they raced across the lagoon, Ehsan winced from the pain. Radić took off his undershirt and ripped it in two. He placed it as a compress on Ehsan’s shoulder. The wound was high on the right shoulder, just missing the bone.