The Echelon Vendetta

by David Stone

  “Hot and hot, Mr. Dalton. In the cooler. There’s some doughnuts if you want them. And some crisps.”

  Dalton, who knew what vile threats the English intended by the word “doughnut,” settled for a tall cup of strong black coffee poured straight from the pot. He leaned back again and watched the late-night strollers walking along the shops and pubs of King’s Road. He observed them with a detached out-of-body feeling, as if what was going on out there beyond the glass of the Benz was a hand-tinted film of a time long gone, all the people in it dead and their old bones burned.

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  Cup listing perilously in his lap, he was asleep by the time Serena pulled the limousine to a halt in front of Porter Naumann’s London town house at 28 Wilton Place in Belgravia, a four-story neoclassical town house with a white stone lower façade, a black spear-tipped wrought-iron fence surrounding a garden with two very large urns holding tall spiked dracaena, a black lacquered door between stained-glass lights, a polished brass plaque and three bricked upper floors, and tall sash windows neatly ordered row upon row, and all around the white-stone façades floated the settled comfortable air of compound interest and dependable stocks.

  All the lights were on—on every floor—and the interior of the house seemed to glow with rose and the half-seen reflections of polished brass and antique silver. The heavy wooden door opened before Dalton could touch the gilt handle and one of the station heavies— a black man in civvies whose name he could never recall and who looked in silhouette like an industrial freezer—snapped out a Marine Corps salute, which Dalton returned so crisply that the neck wrench brought his headache right back.

  “They’re all upstairs, sir,” he whispered, as Dalton came into the center hall and stood under the glow of a Tiffany chandelier. He looked up at it and remembered all the fine times that he had been a part of in the years that the Naumann family had lived here. Porter had brought the Tiffany chandelier back for Joanne in the third year of their marriage. The interior of the town house was frigid, as if the air-conditioning had been turned on to Full and left that way for days.

  “Thanks, Barney,” said Dalton, the name coming to him from some recess of his brain where such things were imperfectly stored. He dropped his briefcase on the black-and-white marbled floor and threw his topcoat over the Duncan Phyfe chair that he had once tripped over while backing away from one of Naumann’s predatory

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  daughters during a New Year’s party. That seemed like a century ago. He went up the curving staircase into a breathing silence, aware of Barney’s placid equine stare on the back of his neck.

  Mandy Pownall, one of the Agency’s Vestal Virgins—one of those frighteningly efficient female staffers without whom there would be no Agency at all—was waiting for him outside the master bedroom. Mandy, a long-necked, fine-boned, and aristocratic-looking woman with a slim but nicely rounded shape, was wearing a gray pinstripe jacket-and-skirt affair, black ballet flats, and, intriguingly, charcoal-tinted 1940s-era silk stockings with seams.

  She glided forward to him as he walked down the hall and took him into her body, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his neck. He held her there for a moment, breathing her in, aware that she had been into the gin but not recklessly and that her perfume, though floral, was not cloying.

  Her unsteady breathing slowed in a while and she pushed him back, holding him by the upper arms as she gave him a look-over, her eyes a little black around the lower edges and her lipstick slightly smeared.

  “Jesus, Micah. Are you all right?”

  “No. Not in the slightest. How are you?”

  “Ghastly. What happened to Porter? Do we know?”

  “Not yet,” he said, glancing at the closed bedroom door. “They’re all in there?”

  Mandy shuddered—a whole-body tremble—and sighed.

  “All three of them. Joanna. The girls.”

  “Who’s seen them?”

  “Only our medics.”

  “What about the police?”

  “So far we’ve managed to paper it over. There were only eight messages on Joanne’s voice mail, three of them from Jack Stallworth’s assistant, Sally Fordyce. The last one is only six hours old.”

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  “What about the girls?”

  “No voice mail. We’ve gone over their computers. We broke their passwords and sent out a general e-mail to everyone listed in their books, saying that they were all going away for a while and hinting obliquely at a detox issue, which I’m sure all their friends would find totally convincing.”

  “What about the neighbors?”

  “This is Belgravia. The last thing the people of Belgravia do is show the slightest interest in anything. It’s terribly non-U.”

  “You talked to Stallworth?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No. I have listened to Stallworth. I didn’t get the chance to talk.”

  “Who’s getting this detail?”

  “Stallworth says you are.”

  “What about Rowland? He’s the station chief here.”

  “Our sector was always independent. Stallworth wants to keep it that way. Anyway, Rowland doesn’t want it. I don’t blame him.”

  “What resources do we have?”

  “Removals. All the cleaning staff you need.”

  “Where do you fit in?”

  “Whatever I can do.”

  “I guess Forensics has already been in?”

  “Yes. Not that they found much. It was as if no one had ever lived here. The place had been thoroughly scrubbed. No prints. No fibers. No fluids. Forensics did say that a fire had been lit in one of the wastebaskets. It looked like—”

  “A fire? Where?”

  She inclined her head toward the bedroom door. “In there. Where they are.”

  “Didn’t the fire alarm go off ?”

  “The internal system logged it. But then someone in the house pressed the cancel button—”

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  “They’d have to know the PIN number.”

  “They did. Otherwise the fire brigade would have come around to check it out. The security company saw the cancel order and called them off.”

  “What about the perimeter alarms?” “They weren’t activated.” “Porter had internal cameras everywhere. What do they show?” “That’s hard to describe.” “Try.” “Well, the hard disk can only store about a week’s worth, and the

  program dumps the data every Sunday, so all we had was from Monday, the first of October. The film looks normal, Joanne moving around the house, the girls coming and going; the cleaning lady came in on Tuesday. The usual domestic activity, until...”

  “Time marker?” “Fourteen hundred thirty-nine hours on Thursday. October four.” “Okay. What happened then?” “That’s the thing, Micah. The images all went dark.” “You mean one of the cameras failed?” “No. They all failed.” “They just ...flicked off ?” “No. It started at the one covering the front door. You can see

  the street, see people going up and down Wilton, crossing the coverage area. Everything normal, and then the picture seems to fog up. No, more like cloud over.”

  “Cloud over?”

  “Smoke, it looked like. Or a dark fog. Anyway, first that camera goes. Then, in the downstairs hallway camera, you see Joanne going to the door, and she opens it—and everything goes dark on that camera as well. The rest go one by one. Same thing happens to all of them.”

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  Dalton let that sink in for a time.

  “Have they been checked?”

  “Yes. All of them. They’re . . . fried, I guess is the word. They’re all digital, and the receptor has been . . . corrupted somehow. Almost like some sort of magnetic pulse.”

  “What about the remote disk?”

  “Well, it would only show what it was receiving, wouldn’t it?”

  “Jesus, what could cause that? Do we have anything like that?�
�

  “I wouldn’t know. You’d be more likely to get that sort of gadget. The Langley boffins don’t share well, especially with the foreign stations.”

  “I’ll ask Jack about it. Pull the remote disk. I’ll take it with me. You said there was a fire?”

  “In the wastebasket. Someone burned something.”

  “Burned what?”

  “It was odd. String. A section of string. That brown cord that they use to tie up packages. It had a bunch of little knots in it.”

  A section of raffia cord, with a burned end.

  In Sweetwater’s apartment in Venice.

  “Knots? What do you mean?”

  “Knots. Every few inches, a little knot had been tied in the string. Then it had been set on fire and dropped into the basket, along with some broken pottery. Like a flowerpot, sort of. We have it all here, if you want it.”

  He was looking through the closed wooden door but his mind was back in Cortona, in Naumann’s rented room at the Strega hostel, and Brancati’s description of what his men had found there.

  “Mr. Naumann bought a bottle of Chianti and some cigarillos. He smoked the cigarillos and drank the Chianti and slept on top of the bed. At one point he smashed an old pot filled with morning glories, and then he made a small fire in the wastepaper basket—”

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  “He started a fire?”

  “Yes. It set off the smoke alarm. The clerk went up. Mr. Naumann did not open the door. He said it was only a cigarette. He was very apologetic. The clerk went away.”

  “He broke a flowerpot?”

  “Yes. It was full of morning glories. Moonflowers. They were in one of those tall round things, like you would put white wine bottles into. To keep them cool.”

  “Did any of you touch the pottery?” “Touch it?” “Make skin contact with it. Breathe it. Any kind of close contact?” “No. Our people always use masks. That’s standard.” “Were there any flowers in the pot?” “Flowers?” “Yes. Flowers?” “Yes. I think so. White ones. Large.” “Morning glories?” “I suppose so, Micah. I don’t do shrubbery.” “Where are they now?” “The flowers?” “Yes, Mandy,” he said, sighing a bit. “The flowers.” “It’s all in a sealed box by the door. Everything. Stallworth told

  Forensics to leave it all for you. They didn’t like it much, but Stall-worth made it clear to everyone that you were lead on this one. I had to sign off for it, but it’s all there. The security tapes, digital shots of everything. The alarm company log. Photos of . . . of them.”

  “In my briefcase. The tan one by the hallway chair. I have a paper sack sealed inside an evidence bag. Inside the sack there are some pieces of broken pottery, a pack of Toscanos cigarillos, and a little leather bag with some kind of powder. Take everything you found here, and crate it up with the rest. Including the morning glories. All

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  of it has to go to Stallworth at Langley in a diplomatic pouch. Mark the shipment with a Hazmat tag and send it triple-sealed in a vacuum canister.”

  “Why the flowers, Micah?” “If you get a knock on the door and you see it’s a man delivering

  flowers, do you open the door?” “Depends on the flowers. Or the man. But probably yes.” “And if the flowers are morning glories?” “I’m not following.” “Morning glories, at least the kind called moonflowers, are noc

  turnal. They only open their petals at night. In the daytime, the flow

  ers are curled up tight. But at night, they open.” “And?” “What if you put some sort of fine powder into the petals and

  let them close naturally. When they opened, in the middle of the night, the powder would be released into the air. If the house is air-conditioned, the currents would carry the powder everywhere. You follow?”

  “God. Is that what happened here?” “I think it’s . . . possible.” “God. What was the drug? Pixie dust?” “More like angel dust. Make sure nobody has any unprotected

  physical contact with it. Tell Stallworth it’s all got to go straight to

  our Hazmat labs. If he asks, tell him I think it’s what killed Porter.” “Was Porter killed? Stallworth says it was a heart attack.” “Maybe it was. But I want to know what caused the heart attack.” “Micah, do you think Porter might have committed suicide?” He took a while to answer. Her eyes never left his face. “No,” he said, finally. “No. I don’t.” “If it wasn’t suicide, what was it? An accident?” “No. It was no accident.”

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  “Then it was murder? Do you have a target?”

  Dalton didn’t want to open up the issue of Mr. Sweetwater with Mandy—or with anyone else at London Station. And Stallworth had made it brutally plain: whatever he got, it all went straight to Jack, and no written reports. Verbal only, face to face in Langley.

  “Maybe.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me who it is?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “That’s okay. I can live with ...I can accept it. I’m just...”

  Mandy’s face showed relief and pain in equal parts. She had carried a torch (Dalton had always assumed an unrequited torch) for Naumann for years. Naumann’s marriage had not been a happy one in its later years, and the girls had poisoned whatever peripheral joys might have been possible. Although Naumann had never admitted it, he held Joanne responsible for what the girls had become. Mandy had been afraid that Naumann had simply run wildly off the rails: perhaps he had killed his family in the middle of some kind of annihilating domestic rage, and then gone to Venice to commit suicide.

  And it was true that Naumann had been completely off the grid for days. That was why Dalton had been sent out to find him.

  But if he’d been murdered, then everything changed.

  Murder, though terrible, absolved him.

  “Okay,” said Mandy, coming back. “The evidence bag overnight to Langley. Anything else?”

  “Did they fix the time of death?”

  “Tentatively. Stallworth wanted the bodies left in place for you to see, so Forensic couldn’t do anything with stomach contents. But the degree of decomposition, lividity, internal temperature. They placed it on or about three or four days ago. Which fits with the time marker for the camera failure.”

  “Jesus. Four days. Are they still in one piece?”

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  “Yes. Feel how cold the house is? The air-conditioning has been left on Full for days. The master bedroom has condensation on the inside of the windows. The bathroom feels like a meat lock—like an icebox.”

  “So it was done on purpose? To preserve the bodies?”

  “One would assume. It’s summer. The scent of corruption would have gotten out pretty fast. This way, discovery is delayed.”

  “Any sign of forced entry?”

  “No. The front door was dead-bolted from the inside. And we saw Joanne go to the door to open it. That’s the last image. But the whole place had been wiped clean. Along with the door latch. There were no prints at all. Kitchen. Bathroom. Bedside tables. Nothing. Not even Joanne’s. As I said, whoever wiped the place down was a professional. Flowers. You said she would have opened the door to accept flowers. Once the flowers were in the house, and the drug in the air, then the man could have come back later and gotten in, knowing that the people inside were ...Would they be unconscious?”

  “Possibly. All right. Good work. Thank you, Mandy.”

  “You’re welcome.” She sighed, turned to the door, her back stiffening and her face growing even more pale. “Okay, then. We might as well go in.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “I owe it to her. Besides, I’m the one who found them.”

  “Please, Mandy. Stay here.”

  She wavered, her porcelain skin growing paler. She had a fan of delicate wrinkles at the outer edges of each eye, and her upper lip was incised with vertical creases that deepened as she tightened her mouth.

  “Micah. I will not be s
heltered.”

  Dalton let it go, stepping reluctantly aside as she opened the door to a large well-lit room with an elegant coffered ceiling done in tones of taupe and gray with wide crown moldings. A half-open

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  door on the far side of the room led to a large master bath. The lights were on in that bathroom, and what looked like a large red towel was lying crumpled up in the half-open door. In the center of the great room, in front of a row of tall sash windows, was a large sleigh bed heaped with satin pillows. Dalton, who had braced himself for the room, stopped abruptly.

  “Not here,” said Mandy, close behind him. “They’re in the bathroom.”

  They crossed the hand-knotted Persian rug on little cat feet, their shoes whispering, and stopped before the half-open door. The crumpled bath towel that lay just inside the door was holding back a red tide of blood. Pin lights from the halogen fixtures on the ceiling glittered like diamonds on the congealed surface of a lake of blood. He leaned over this clotted mess of fabric and fluid, pushed the door open, and stepped into the room...

  . . . AND GRADUALLY BECAME AWARE of the fact that Mandy Pownall was holding on to his upper arm, her fingers digging in, her breathing ragged. He wanted her out of here, for her sake, and because she was a distraction.

  “What can I do?”

  “First of all, do not throw up. Go call Removals.”

  “Okay,” she said, relief in her voice. “Don’t forget the mirror.”

  She was gone, leaving Dalton alone with the bodies.

  He stepped carefully around the matted bloody towels and moved in close to the knotted cords that had cut so deeply into Joanne’s ankles that her feet had swelled into eggplant-colored balloons. He looked carefully at the knots themselves.

  All three bodies had been strung up in the same way, an open-eye loop with the free end run in and pulled out to make a lariat, then around the ankles, then a running loop over the shower railing, and

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  then . . . and then he did not care to complete the rest of this mental image. But it was range work.

  Dalton had seen enough of this kind of casually efficient hand slaughter when he was a kid back in Tucumcari. It was cowboy work, done the way a man who was used to cleaning game would do it. Even the throat and abdominal cuts were practiced and efficient, a single vertical slice along the left carotid, and in the belly a low punching start with a deep circular rising sweep and a quick step back to avoid the avalanche.