by David Stone
But Micah Dalton was already gone.
136 | david stone
wednesday, october 10 civic hospital in venice 10 a.m. local time
rancati, the Carabinieri cop, was waiting for him outside the hospital room, and of his former warmth and professional amiability there was no trace; his angular face was as stony as the walls of this ancient hospital overlooking the Arsenal, and his deep-brown eyes were flat and cold. He stood in the center of the long echoing hall and watched as Dalton raced down it, passing into and out of the pools of yellow light coming from the overhead lamps, Dalton’s footsteps reverberating along the corridor, the sound of his rapid breathing audible from twenty yards away.
A uniformed sergeant, short, broad as a steamer trunk, stood a little to the left and slightly behind Brancati, showing Dalton another stone face, his right hand resting on his holstered sidearm, his hard black eyes fixed on Dalton.
“Major Brancati,” said Dalton, coming up. “How is she?”
Brancati said nothing for a full minute, holding Dalton in a hot glare, his hand raised up, palm out. Dalton, wisely, said nothing. Seeming at last to master himself, Brancati let out a long ragged sigh.
“Cora Vasari has been assaulted, Mr. Dalton. Her injuries are not severe. She is in a nervous state, angry and afraid, yet still she calls for you. Not the police. Why is this so, Mr. Dalton?”
“I’d like to see her.”
“And I would like her not to have been attacked by animals. I think what you would like, Mr. Dalton, is not very important to me. No, right now you will say nothing. You will speak no lying words to me. Capisce?”
Dalton locked it down and waited, his throat tightening. Brancati saw this unwilling submission in Dalton’s face.
“Good. It was two men from Trieste. Does that interest you? I find it interesting. She was able to tell us this because she recognized their accents. Although it was difficult for her to speak. She is very brave. Anyway, she tells us they were Croats from Trieste. Young, well dressed. The one who called himself Radko was tall and slender, with a long face and skin that had been made leathery by too much sun, she tells us. His eyes were red from drugs or drinking and his voice was soft. They both had soft voices. The other one, who did not give a name, was short and extremely muscular and his head was shaved. He had broad, flat hands and a habit of biting his fingernails. He had the air of a dockhand but was also very well dressed. They came to her villa in the Dorsoduro. Radko, who did the talking, said they wished to see a room she had for rent. That she was known to rent rooms to good people. This room had lately become available, she tells us, and so she showed these two men, although they were Croatian and she does not in principle rent to Croatians or Serbs. Anyway, they seemed very polite. But once inside the room, it was of course quite different. During this time of threatening,
138 | david stone
Radko asked her only one question. Do you wish to know what that
question was?”
“Yes,” said Dalton, in a toneless voice. “I do.”
Brancati went some ways inward, closing his eyes as he did so in a distant, vaguely robotic way, an unnaturally slow movement, and Dalton could see that the man was trying very hard not to lose what little control he had left.
“Radko wished to know where a Mr. Micah Dalton was. These two soft-spoken Croatian men from Trieste. I find this Croatian motif most suggestive. Do you find this Croatian motif suggestive?”
“Of course I do. I’m not a fool. Why didn’t she tell them?”
“At first she was merely angry at their tone. Then, after they had begun to threaten her, she wished only to defy them. She is a proud woman. I admire her. Of course, this could not last long. Few people, few women as lovely as this fine lady, few men, can withstand the threat of permanent disfigurement.”
“Christ, Brancati—”
“You will say nothing right now. Capisce? Nothing.”
Brancati waited to see if his warning had been heard. It had been heard all the way down the long hall and it was still reverberating thunderously down a distant stairwell. Nurses, doctors, other patients in the corridor had frozen in place. White faces were turned toward them, eyes staring. Dalton, whose own reptilian anger was now fully awake, choked his resentment down, but his expression was now as flat and cold as Brancati’s. Brancati, if he noticed Dalton’s anger at all, did not show it.
“She was not disfigured. She defended herself with a weapon she had concealed in her borsa—her purse. A little pistoletta, a very illegal pistoletta. With this weapon she shoots Radko in the face. A man who lives in her villa. A man named Domenico Zitti. He heard the angry voices. The sound of a shot, coming from the room, and he comes upstairs to see what it is about. The door is shut. He pounds
the echelon vendetta | 139
on the door. He is a retired pescatore and very strong from hauling the nets for forty years. He pounds and shouts, the door is pulled open, and these two men from Trieste, one of them bleeding from a wound in his cheek, they try to push past him. He of course resents this. He is stabbed. His wound is grave. He falls. They step over him. He comes to his feet, sees Signorina Vasari. Her condition, the pistoletta. He runs to her and instead of asking for the Guardia Medica or the Carabinieri, she does not yet know that he has been stabbed, she asks instead for a Signor Micah Dalton of the American Consulate. Zitti is a gentleman of great courage. He makes the call at once. Then he calls the Guardia Medica. They call my friend Lucenzo, who is the captain of the Carabinieri for Venezia. He remembers the name Dalton from my report on the death of your Mr. Naumann. He calls me. I call your Consulate. They do not know you. Yet here you are. And I am here. Now you may speak.”
“Did you catch these men?”
“No. Not yet. The report is that they came by a fast boat. A cigarette boat. Such as the smugglers use. They came from beyond the Lido. None of the doctors in Venice have been approached by a man with a face wound. We assume they have taken the boat to sea. We have in the air our elicottero searching for them. That was your question. Now for mine. It was you who assaulted those men by the Palazzo Ducale, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. The simple truth, at last. I become less angry. You do not work for Burke and Single? This also is true?”
“I do work for Burke and Single.”
Brancati sighed, and said nothing for a moment. Then: “I see. You are equivoco. You play a word game. You do work for them but you do not work for them. You are not employed by them.”
This was not framed as a question. It was a statement. Brancati was a senior officer in the Carabinieri, and the Carabinieri ran the
140 | david stone
Italian government’s intelligence service. If Brancati tried hard enough he could find out who Dalton really worked for. Dalton assumed that he had. Time for clarity.
“No. I’m not.”
“You are an agent of the United States government.”
Again, not a question.
“I am employed by the United States government.”
“Good. We progress. Was it United States government business, this matter of the two men in the square? Milan Slatkovic and Gavro Princip?”
“No. It was self-defense.”
“A personal matter?”
“Yes. I was attacked. I defended myself.”
Brancati smiled again, his eyes a little less sleepy.
“I wish you had not defended yourself with such vigore. Perhaps Miss Vasari would not be here in the hospital tonight. Perhaps she would not be facing an atto d’accusa from the police for having in her purse an illegal weapon. So you are perhaps involved in a vendetta with a pair of Croatian sicari, hit men, and she also is involved. Now you will please tell me why she is involved?”
“I was looking for a man. I was told he was staying at her villa near the All Saints’ Cathedral. I went there to find this man.”
“I see. While you were there you showed her identification papers that gave her th
e strong impression that you worked for the local American Consulate. May I see these papers now?”
“I don’t have them with me.”
Brancati’s face did not register any form of surprise. Rather it seemed to confirm a private opinion already tagged and bagged.
“Of course. This accords with the fact that you are not registered with my government as a member of the American diplomatic service. And what was the name of this man for whom you were looking?”
“I was told his name was Pellerossa.”
the echelon vendetta | 141
“Pellerossa is not a name. It is a kind of people. Your American redskins. Miss Vasari would no doubt have explained this.”
“She did. She was under the impression that her tenant’s name was Sweetwater.”
“And did you locate this Sweetwater man?”
“No.”
“You have no idea who he is?”
“Not yet.”
“Why were you looking for him?”
“I thought this man might be able to tell me something about Naumann’s death.”
“And what gave you this impression?”
“Nothing. A hunch.”
“Come si dice? ‘Nozione’? This means a ‘hunch’? You are equivocal again. Fine. I have consulted with our dipartimento di spionaggio. Also with my friends in your embassy. You are a spy. Spies must equivocate, as gulls must eat carrion, as dogs must lick themselves. I set this aside. In what way did Miss Vasari and this man come to be connected in your mind?”
“I first saw the man at Carovita. He stood out. His manner was strange, as was his clothing. He looked like an American Indian. I became interested in him. The next afternoon, I went back to Carovita and made some inquiries. I was told that this man was living in the Dorsoduro—”
“Who told you this?”
“An old woman who worked at Carovita. I didn’t get her name.”
“Carovita is closed. We looked for the owners. They have gone back to their winter home in Split, where we do not enjoy a formal relationship with the local authorities. Do you know where this is, this Split? It is in Croatia, on the Dalmatian coast. Does this Croatian motif now come to have some greater significance in your mind?”
142 | david stone
Dalton absorbed this in stunned silence. This collision with Milan and Gavro? Was it more than it had seemed at the time?
For a thousand years, Venice had been the city of assassins. There was even a street in the San Marco region called Assassini. Was his encounter with Milan and Gavro far more than a vicious but random combat in the edgy Venetian night?
If it was more serious, what was the outcome supposed to be? Was it intended, by parties unknown, that he should die there, in what looked to be a random mugging?
“I don’t know. I’d have to—”
“You have only to answer my questions. After that, you are to be escorted to Marco Polo Airport, where you will take your jet back to London or Langley or wherever you wish to go. You will not come back to Italy.”
“What about Mr. Naumann’s body? His ...his effects?”
“Mr. Naumann’s death is a matter for our security service now. In due course your government will be notified of our progress. His body will be more thoroughly examined by our best medical people. I no longer accept that his death was a simple colpo apoplettico. I wish to have a complete toxicological report done by our own people. When this is done, we will know what to do.”
Drugs.
Brancati was suspecting a Croatian drug ring.
The Trieste connection had put this in Brancati’s mind, and whether or not it was a valid lead, he’d play it out to the conclusion. Did he know about the trap that Sweetwater had set for him in Cora’s apartment? What had Cora said while the adrenaline was still running through her veins? As if reading his thoughts, Brancati broke into them at the perfect moment with precisely the right observation.
“Miss Vasari has told us what happened to you, Mr. Dalton. I would like to hear your tale of this incident.”
the echelon vendetta | 143
Vague.
And dangerously so.
Clearly a trap. But was it set with truth, with genuine knowledge, at its center? What had Cora told him?
“Tell him the truth, kid,” said Naumann’s ghost, stepping into the light from a dark corner of the hospital corridor.
“I think I was drugged, Major Brancati,” he said, managing, with a violent effort, not to stare over Brancati’s shoulder at the shimmering, vaguely luminous shape of Porter Naumann hovering behind him.
Stress could be the trigger, he decided. Perhaps he could control it by staying calm.
“Drugged?” said Brancati, without visible surprise. “How?”
If Dalton had any chance of staying in Italy longer than another two hours, he had to treat this Carabinieri officer with real respect. Anything less and he’d turn a man who was at the moment merely hostile into a settled enemy.
“That’s right,” said Naumann’s ghost. “We need this guy.”
We need this guy? thought Dalton.
Ignoring, with great difficulty, Naumann’s presence, Dalton kept his eyes fixed on Brancati’s face while he laid out in basic terms what had taken place in Cora’s villa, withholding no detail but leaving out the exact nature of his own private journey back to Boston in those terrible seconds before Cora’s Narcan injection had pulled him back to the living world. Brancati listened to his story without emotion and without interruption. When Dalton was finished, Brancati’s heated aura seemed to be a degree cooler. “Yes,” he said, for the first time with some sympathy in his tone, “this is what Cora Vasari also told us. You are recovered?”
Apparently not, Dalton said to himself, looking at Naumann’s ghost. “I think so.”
“Miss Vasari does not agree. She thinks you must go to the hos
144 | david stone
pital. That the drug could have permanently damaged you. She tells me that in her apartment you admitted to her that you were seeing the ghost of your dead friend. This Mr. Naumann. Is this true?”
“Keep me out it,” said Naumann. “No, it’s not. I was, but not anymore. I’m fine. No ill effects.” “I hope you are right. You do not look healthy. You look pale,
you are staring at nothing as if you really had seen un fantasma. I
suppose you have taken this cilindro back with you to London?” “Yes. I sent it on to our people to be analyzed.” Brancati did not ask Dalton who his people were because he knew
damn well who his people were. “And the drug as well?” “Yes.” “Have they determined what it was?” “Not yet. Perhaps tomorrow.” “When you receive their report, I will insist on being told. I will
insist on seeing it. This is a matter of concern to the Italian government. Anything less than full and frank cooperation will result in a formal protest to your Department of State. This would be out of my hands.”
“When I know, you’ll know.” “I have your word on this?” He smiled thinly. “As a spy?” “No. Not as a spy. I give you my word as a soldier.” “Good. As a soldier. I hold you to it. We must talk further,” said
Brancati, “but not now. Do you wish to see Signorina Vasari?” “I do. Very much.” “I see,” he said, with a half smile. “You admire her. So do I.” He turned to the carabiniere by the closed door. “Let this man through.” He looked back at Dalton. “I give you ten minutes only. Are you hungry?” “I am.”
the echelon vendetta | 145
Brancati smiled, a full open smile, the first one Dalton had seen on the man since he first met him, no guarded quality to it.
“Good. I know a little place, not far from here. You will join me.”
This was not a question either.
“I’d be happy to.”
Brancati stepped aside and the guard knocked gently on the door before opening it onto a small, dimly lit and well-appointed private room in which a single pink lamp glowed softly on a bedside
table.
“I’ll stay out here,” said Naumann. “You two probably need a moment alone.”
IN THE ROSE-COLORED HALF-LIGHT Dalton could see that Cora was lying on top of a huge intricately carved wooden bed, her head on a single pillow, her hair a black tumble of silk around her white face, her eyes closed, still fully dressed—black slacks and a crisp white shirt-blouse, shoeless—her delicate hands folded across her gently rounded belly, her breasts rising and falling slowly as she breathed. Dalton crossed the soft carpet—reds and blues and golds—and sat down in a stiff-backed wooden chair, which creaked as it took his weight. She had been struck—struck hard—on the right cheek, just below the eye. A dark purple-and-green bruise had spread out across her cheek and into the shadow of her jawline just below her ear. One side of her mouth was swollen, the red lips puffy and distended at the corners. The sight of this pierced him straight through the heart, a cold iron bolt of self-hatred. Cora’s eyes opened and she looked at him without delight. She closed her eyes again.
“So. Here is the International Man of Mystery.”
Dalton reached out and placed his hand on top of her folded hands. She pulled them away, a flicker of distaste flashing across her fine handsome face before she composed it into a detached, expressionless mask.
146 | david stone
“I hate a liar, Micah. Are you a liar?”
“Yes.”
“If I ask you questions now, will you lie to me?”
“No.”
“This is a lie.”
“Brancati told me what happened to you. I won’t lie to you.”
Something crossed her pale white face then, a dark memory, a flash of pain, and when it was gone there was a sadness in the shape of her mouth and in the creases around her eyes.
For a long moment she looked old, tired, wounded. She opened her eyes and looked directly at him for a space of time that Dalton found hard to measure. He was aware of being considered. Judged. Not kindly. But there was no decision yet.
“I read, in the papers, about an attack upon two men by the Palazzo Ducale. Two nights ago. This man who did this, was it you?”