The Echelon Vendetta

by David Stone

  “Bugger the Canadians,” said Dalton.

  “No. Tonight I will not bugger the Canadians, as so many of the best of them lie buried in little towns and villages all over Tuscany, killed fighting the Nazis in the last good war. But certainly tonight

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  we must bugger the Horn of Africa. And we must not overlook the

  officers. Particularly we must bugger all the officers.” “You’re a major yourself, aren’t you?” “Yes,” he said, nodding, his expression grave. “Bugger me first of

  all. You too are an officer?” “I was. I’m not in the Army anymore.” “No. You are a spy. Tonight we will bugger all the spies too.” “Well, technically, I’m not really a spy.” “You are evasive, Micah. I begin to think you do not wish to be

  buggered. No. I agree. In this you speak the simple truth. You are not a spy. You are too memorable. I have never met a memorable spy. Men who are memorable cannot become spies. Your true spy is always a half man. He is deformed in his aspect. He has bad skin. He is impotent. Stunted. Fat. Bald. Abito che non calza.”

  “Suit but no socks?” “Yes. They have no socks. It means they are... come si dice?” “Out of place? Misfits?” “Yes! Misfits. All spies are misfits. But not all misfits are spies. You

  are, although very handsome—such a bella figura—you are also a kind of misfit. I say this without offense, I hope. I too am a misfit. We do not fit our places. Our times. Our times are out of joint with us. Dante said that. Or perhaps it was Shakespeare, that black Irish thief. You are with the Central Intelligence Agency, but you are not a spy. What it is you do for them?”

  Dalton, deciding not to debate the nationality and criminal propensities of Shakespeare, settled for “I think you know.” Brancati grinned, a flash of intense white in the rosy gloom of the

  cubicle, his mustache bristling above this like a thicket of thorns. “Tu fai pulizie. You are a ripulitore. You clean up. You are a—” “A cleaner. Yes. That’s what I do.” “You will not take offense,” said Brancati, leaning forward, com

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  ing in close, breathing sambuca on Dalton’s cheek, “if I tell you that you are not so good at this cleaner job. With respect, you are something of a fornicator from upward.”

  Dalton could not work that out right away, so he said nothing.

  “Perhaps your heart is not in it. You have taken Mr. Naumann’s death very personally. It has deranged your judgment. Now you are exploded, a known spy, you are seen drinking with an officer of the Carabinieri, you have started a vendetta with the Croatians, and a magnificent Italian fanciulla rejects your suit of love. All this you have accomplished in only five days.”

  “Fornicator from upward? Do you mean I’m a fuck-up?” “Yes! A fuck-upper! I said it wrong?” Dalton raised a glass. “No. God, no,” he said, laughing a good,

  deep laugh that felt like his first in a hundred days. “Here’s to fornicators from upward everywhere.”

  “Salute! To you as well. And to me. We are all fornicator-ups in our own ways. Allora, I will help you, if I can, since I believe that you very much need my help. This Sweetwater man, you have a real name for him now?”

  “No. I haven’t had a chance to run him in the Agency data

  bases.” “Why not? You were in London.” “London was pretty hectic.” “How will you ‘run’ this search?” “I’ll start with the name.” “Sweetwater?” “Yes. See where it takes me.” “Good. A start. Cora—she has told me I may call her Cora—” “So I see.” “Yes. What a woman! Una ragazza magnifica. If I were not mar

  ried . . . but I am most powerfully married. Now, I have decided to

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  help you. In whatever way I can. This depends on much. I expect you to ...to share?”

  Stallworth won’t like that, Micah.

  “As much as they’ll let me, Tessio.”

  Brancati studied him for a time over the lip of his glass.

  “Okay. Allora. Now I have something to show you, my friend.”

  He slipped an envelope out of his shirt pocket and laid it down on the table with a certain air, a flourish, as if to say, “Voilà!”

  Dalton opened the envelope and tipped its contents out onto the table; six grainy color photos, each one showing a barred gate and a short section of hallway. In the first shot, the doorway, the gate barred, nothing showing. In the second, a shadow on the outside steps, as if from a streetlight. In the third, a black figure, shapeless, apparently surrounded by a black cloud. In the fourth, a black cloud filling the picture almost to the edges, and bars of white static, as if from an electrical interference on the power line. In the fifth, the cloud still, and the static fuzz, but both receding, shrinking, and the short section of the hallway reappearing around the edges. In the sixth, the black cloud is gone, the hallway is empty, but the barred gate stands wide open.

  “Where was this taken?” asked Dalton, staring at the succession of images with a ripple of superstitious dread playing around the edges of his mind. The pictures seemed to show a shapeless form, almost a ghost, filling the frame, gliding through the frames, fading away.

  “I listened to you, back in Cortona. I spoke with the desk clerk at the Strega, on Via Janelli, talked to him myself. He finally admitted that he had fallen asleep for a while. It came on very suddenly. He grew sleepy, put his head down. He may have been drugged somehow. This was at ten in the evening. At five minutes after ten, this dark figure appears at the door. The black cloud grows, and the static, the white noise as it were, and then it passes, and when it is

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  gone, the gate is open. The gate is on a spring and very gradually it closes again. A while later the blatta girls in the next room hear two voices coming from Mr. Naumann’s room. Not really voices. More like one voice and another sound, rather like bees droning. Then a crash and a fire alarm goes off and then... niente. Silence. An hour later, Mr. Naumann leaves the hostel—”

  “Did the camera show that?” “The clerk saw nothing. The camera stopped working. The rest

  of the night it showed only black. As if the eye had been burned out.” “What kind of camera was it? Digital or magnetic tape?” “Magnetic. A VHS tape. You know something about this?” “I’ve heard...rumors. At MIT they were working on a cloaking

  device. It puts out a jamming signal capable of doing this kind of thing to a video camera. It overloads the sensors with cross-spectrum broadband waves. It effects thermal imaging, infrared and ultraviolet sensors. The sensors react to this cloaking device almost as if it were a solar flare. It works on certain types of digital cameras as well. All you would see in the screen is a black formless cloud, and sometimes bars of electrical interference. People tend to think there’s something wrong, some malfunction in the camera.”

  “Such a masking device, this would not be available to everyone? You could not buy it at your friendly Barracca della Radio in Boston?” “No. This is very high level. State-of-the-art countersurveillance. Strictly covert operations at the federal level.” Brancati scooped up the photos and slipped them back into the

  envelope, his face closed, inward. “Would this Sweetwater person have access to such a device?” “I can’t see how. But then I don’t know who he really is.” “From whom would he get such a device?” “I don’t know. This is all just speculation.” “Perhaps from your own Agency?” “This technology—if we have it, so could others.”

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  “You think some other agency may be working this man?” “I have no idea. Do you have access to the EU passport logs?” “Yes. Of course. For all the good that does. Now that we have all

  this open-border European Union nonsense, an intruder can slip

  into some lawless piratical country like—” “Like Croatia?” “Yes. Like Croatia, and then simply walk across into Italy at

  Trieste. Or come ashore on a boat. A fast boat.”

  He st
opped, considering, turning over the Croatian element in his mind. Dalton was ahead of him, but not at all of the same view. Naumann’s death, the murder of his family, terrible though they were, had no obvious connection to Croatian drug cartels.

  No obvious connection. “What about the Croatian end of this. I don’t want these guys...

  what were their names?” “One was called Radko. The other one she did not hear.” “I don’t want these guys going after Cora again. Is there any

  thing you can do?” “Have you ever tried to put a cat in a hatbox, Micah?” “No. I haven’t.” “I know the Vasari family. They are not the people who go into

  the hatboxes. Her grandfather was an airman. Very brave. He was murdered by a Fascist assassin during Il Duce’s little adventure in Abyssinia. Cora will insist on being left alone. However, I will place some watchers on her.”

  “Thank you. “What will you do? Now?” “About the Croatians?” “No. That is my business. I must insist on that. The Croatians

  you will leave to me. In Split there is a man named Branco Gospic— you remember him?”

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  “Yes. You told me about him. He runs a crime syndicate. Gavro’s family, the Princips, they’re connected to this Gospic character?”

  “Yes. By blood. And by guilt. By debts. So Branco Gospic is the doorway to this. I will go after him. I give you my word that everything will be done to protect her. I ask about this Sweetwater fellow. You think he is connected to these Gospic people?”

  “I have no reason to think it. But I can’t rule it out.”

  “You have been back to London. Was it to look for him?”

  “No. I think he had already been there.”

  Brancati sensed the meaning, raising an eyebrow. “No. More killing?”

  Dalton told him everything, the complete report, not the edited version he had told Cora. Brancati asked one or two technical questions, but in the main he just sat there quietly and absorbed the data, entirely a cop at this moment. When Dalton had finished, Brancati was silent for a while.

  “Such viciousness . . . it makes me wonder. Do you believe this butchery was done before the death—perhaps the murder—of your friend Mr. Naumann?”

  “Yes. Forensics indicated that the time of death was around the fourth of October. Porter was in Venice at the time.”

  “So your friend died three days later?”

  “Yes.”

  “And, as we saw, in a great state of emotion. Of horror.”

  “Yes.”

  “Such a state of horror that might be caused by images of the brutal torture and murder of your entire family.”

  “Porter wasn’t a man to collapse under that kind of challenge.”

  “Not in his right mind, of course not. But suppose he was under the influence of some terrible drug—a drug that magnified all of his fears, his horror—would that not drive him to such an end?”

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  “Yes,” said Dalton, thinking about icicles. “Yes. Quite easily.”

  “So we may be justified in thinking that whoever killed Mr. Nau-mann’s family did so partly to have such terrible images to present to the husband, the father, at a time and place of this man’s choosing.”

  “Such as a hostel in Cortona?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “This kind of planning, this sustained malevolence, this can only be for one of two things, Micah. For the joy of inflicting pain. Or for vengeance.”

  “I think it’s both. So do you. It’s a vendetta.”

  “Yes. Like the Croatians have against you. But you do not think this man has any connection to Gavro and Milan, to the Croatians?”

  “I didn’t. Now I’m not sure. I’m also worried about this connection with Carovita. I went there on Saturday night and I saw this Indian having a meal there, alone, at a table in the back. And I spoke to an old woman the next day, who told me where to find him. The fact that the people who ran the—”

  “My information may not have been correct. I will check it further. I am not aware that Branco Gospic has any connection to this restaurant. Many Croatians run restaurants. They are not all criminals. Most. But not all. You have told me that Mr. Naumann had no connection to illegal drugs. I believe you are telling me what you yourself believe, although we see that at least one very powerful drug has been used against you. Nor have we been able to discover any in our own investigations. A man like that—with such connections; Burke and Single is known to us—if he had been involved in drugs, he would have appeared on our . . . on our radar screens, as it were. “Now, this does not mean that a clever man could not fool us, make us the dupes. You and I, we begin to think that Mr. Naumann and his family, they were killed for vendetta. The way they died, the cruelty—this speaks of vendetta. Here is what I offer you: I will follow the Croatians. The Serbians. This Branco Gospic and

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  his friends. I do this for myself as well. They have assaulted two citizens of Italy. This is my duty. But I will also do it to see if there is any connection between Branco Gospic and Mr. Naumann and this Sweetwater man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. There is a contraccambio—two ways. You reciprocate for me. In the end, I wish to know all about the drug that this Sweetwater man has used in Venice. Nothing held back by your ‘people’ in Washington. The whole story. From you, sitting in the front of me. I expect this.”

  He tapped his chest with his fingertips, and his face was hard.

  “You’ll get it.”

  “La propria parola? Your oath, as a soldier? Di soldato? ”

  “Parola di soldato. I wonder if you can look at something for me, while we’re on this subject. Perhaps it would mean something to you?”

  “D’accordo. Show me.”

  Dalton flicked through the images on the digital camera until he found the one he was looking for. He held up the screen.

  Brancati stared at this through his reading glasses, pursed his lips, making his mustache bristle up. He shook his head.

  “Sorry. It means nothing to me.”

  “You have never seen it before? A gang sign. A graffito?”

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  “Never. Where is it from?”

  “It was scrawled across the mirror in the bathroom where Por-ter’s family was killed.”

  Brancati looked more closely. “Print it out for me somewhere?”

  “I will. The hotel has a printer. I’ll—”

  A shrill beeping cut through the smoky atmosphere. As if summoned by the sound, Naumann’s ghost materialized behind Bran-cati’s shoulder as Brancati fumbled for his cell phone.

  Dalton stared at Naumann’s ghost, wondering when, if ever, he was going to fade away. Wondering, as well, why Naumann’s ghost never once asked him about London, now never even mentioned London, never seemed to be bothered by the brutal murders of his wife and daughters, or for that matter, by his own violent, horrific death, but seemed rather to be quite happily immersed in the same kind of jaunty insouciance that had been so much a part of Porter Naumann when he was in the living world.

  No immediate insight occurred, and since any question posed to a hallucination must of necessity be purely rhetorical in nature, he simply watched with a kind of detached puzzlement as Naumann slowly made the sign of the cross, his face solemn, grave, composed, an effect of dignity and close military order only slightly undermined by the fact that he was now coming on to six days dead and wearing a pair of emerald green pajamas.

  Brancati, quite oblivious to the presence of Naumann’s ghost in their little cubicle, punched Risponda, said his name, and listened for a time to the tinny little crackle in his ear. His face altered, sagging. He aged in front of Dalton’s eyes. Setting the phone down, his face grave, remote, he rapped on the table.

  The fat waiter billowed grandly through the curtains; Brancati asked for il conto, per favore, and turned to Dalton.

&nb
sp; “Domenico Zitti. He died on the table. An hour ago.”

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  friday, october 12 cia hq, langley, virginia 5:30 p.m. local time

  egonias! Brothel-creeping Jesus,” said Stallworth to himself.

  “The pustulating sodomites are planting begonias.”

  Jack Stallworth was standing at the window of his inside corner office, muttering curses into the green-tinted glass. His was the only office in the entire CIA complex to more closely resemble a greenhouse than a branch of the Intelligence arms: a greenhouse stuffed to its moldy ceiling tiles with every kind of growing thing and generally maintained at a drenchingly humid eighty degrees, an office that smelled of black earth and frangipani and lilies. Immediately to Stallworth’s left as he stood at his long window was a towering sago palm, and on his right a monumental glass-and-bronze terrarium in which floated pale clouds of mist drifting through a miniature jungle of orchids. Stallworth himself was a squat, blunt man shaped like an artillery round. His sinewy arms were folded across his broad muscular chest, his battered red face closed as a fist, daylight gleaming on his polished pink dome, his thick white brows pulled down in a ferocious frown as he glared out through the blinds at the workers digging up the flower beds by the atrium: the fucking catamounts were planting begonias, a plant he considered little better than a tuber, and a foul-smelling one at that. He was still contemplating this atrocity when Dalton, carrying a large ungainly package wrapped in flower-print paper, flanked by two guards and trailed by Stallworth’s 2IC, a stunning and libidinous ex-sergeant of Marines named Sally Holyrood Fordyce, got himself frog-marched into the room.

  Stallworth turned his head. The glare was unchanged, if anything intensified, the sunlight streaming in through the blinds and the window full of potted plants giving his forbidding face a distinctly tigerish look. He pursed his thin lips and emitted a half grunt, half snarl that could only be interpreted as a friendly greeting by a Barbary ape.

  Dalton gave it a shot anyway.