Deceptions (3 page)

Gianni swung around.

Lindstrom had dropped the billy and was struggling to free his revolver from his shoulder holster, but it had hooked into
the lining of his tuxedo. His acne-scarred face was suddenly terrified. Gianni saw it and was terrified, too. Then he swallowed,
tasted his own blood, and fired twice.

Lindstrom went over backward. Two crimson buds flowered on his white dress shirt. When he hit the floor, he never moved.

Gianni Garetsky lay there.

He breathed the acrid smell of cordite and let the anger drain out of him.

The nausea, the illness, remained.

T
HE ARTIST ROSE
slowly. His head, neck, and back were a single blob of pain, he saw floating spots, and he stank from an assortment of his
own bodily discharges.

Why had they done this to him?

What had Vittorio Battaglia done to
them]

Gianni expected no answers. What the questions did was make it easier for him to look at the two men.

The agents lay as they had fallen. They were on their backs, eyes staring up through a skylight as fixedly as if they were
counting stars. And they were dead. There was no question about that. They were certainly dead.

Gianni fought an urge to go into his bedroom, lie down, and fall asleep in the mad hope that when he awoke the two bodies
would be gone and everything in his life would be the way it had been.

Still, he was calm. It was a fragile calm, but he could feel it growing stronger. And he knew that whatever had to be done,
he would finally do.

In the meantime he poured himself a generous shot of brandy, walked to the wall of windows at the north end of the studio,
and stared down at the street ten stories below.

Nothing was moving. But some cars were parked at the curb, and Gianni was able to pick out the dark sedan that Jackson and
Lindstrom had arrived in. The artist had lived and worked on this street for more than ten years. He knew it well. Yet he
suddenly felt himself lost in an alien land.

He glanced at his watch. It was not quite two o’clock. He had arrived home less than an hour ago. The wonder was that it had
all taken so little time.

Gianni carried his drink back to where it had happened. Everything was in place. No furniture, lamps, or pictures had been
damaged or disturbed. Other than for the two bodies, it was a peaceful-enough scene, a quiet setting where a brief encounter
had taken place.

Other than for the two bodies.

Gianni breathed deeply and felt the pain filter through him. Then he tossed off his brandy and tried to see if he could learn
anything.

He went through the men’s wallets and FBI identification, and everything tied together as authentic. Credit and insurance
cards, driver’s licenses, assorted other plastic, all confirmed their stated identities. If any glitch existed, Gianni failed
to pick it out. Which suddenly added to his confusion. Were they real or not?

Jackson’s attache case held its own items of interest… among them, a vicious-looking electrical shock device that would have
been applied to his more sensitive body parts if their other efforts failed to produce the desired answers.

In an envelope was a faded snapshot of Vittorio Battaglia
and himself as a couple of grinning teenagers at the beach, caught and held in a moment of summer sun.

Another photograph showed Vittorio standing beside a beautiful Asian girl who was staring solemnly at the camera with luminous
almond eyes. A name and address on the back of the photograph identified her as Mary Yung of Soundview Drive, Greenwich, Connecticut.

Garetsky wondered if the two alleged agents had been to question the girl before they came to him. If they had, was she now
lying dead or crippled somewhere? He hoped not. He very much wanted Mary Yung to be alive and communicating.

The attache case also contained two computer printouts. One had to do with Mary Yung. The other dealt with him. He read the
girl’s first.

MARY CHAN YUNG (one of several names for MOPEI LINLEY FOO). Born in Hong Kong, U.K., and brought to U.S. as child by parents,
now deceased. Current age, 34. Yung works on and off as a sometime actress, singer, photographer’s model, fashion reporter.
Apparent independent means as parents’ sole heir of record. Unmarried. Yung is known to have had close and lengthy relationship
with Vittorio Battaglia just prior to Battaglia’s disappearance approximately ten years ago. Yung is known to have worked
and traveled throughout Europe and the Far East.

The artist moved on to his own printout.

GIANNI SEBASTIANO GARETSKY. Born N.Y., N.Y. Current age, 38. Single known alias, JOHN CARPELLA. Parents, Maria and David Garetsky,
both deceased. Murdered in internecine syndicate crime war of early eighties.

GARETSKY avenged parents’ murder by killing Ralph Curcio, fleeing to Italy, and living there as John Carpella. Vittorio Battaglia’s
closest friend and confidant since early childhood.

FBI EVALUATION: There is no hard evidence but it
is assumed that the two men have maintained covert contact for most of the past twenty years. Although GARET-SKY’s father
was a lifelong soldier in the Donatti crime family, there is no evidence that GIANNI GARETSKY himself, once past the age of
seventeen, was ever involved in any kind of syndicate business. He is currently recognized as one of America’s foremost artists.

Gianni slowly put down the two printouts. So much for any hope of this not being a genuine FBI operation. And who would believe
his having had to shoot them in self-defense to save his own life?

He stood listening to himself breathe.

There really was nothing more to think about. Whatever came next, he first had to clean himself and take care of the bodies.

He stood naked in front of a bathroom mirror and looked at what they had done to him. A strange bloody creature quivered in
its own violet light. Beneath the blood, his flesh was swollen, formless, purple. His eyes peered dimly through a velvet mist.

“Why?” he said aloud to the thing in the mirror.

When Gianni came out of the bathroom, he put on a fresh shirt and jeans and set about scrubbing the floor clean of blood.

With that done, he wrapped the bodies, using bedsheets as shrouds and tying them with strong nylon cord. He worked methodically
and with full concentration, doing his best to keep his mind empty of all else.

But after a while a cold rage broke through that made him hate the two agents even in death. They had robbed him of his future,
fouled all that might have been good in his life. Insanely, he wished he could do them additional damage.

Still, all he finally did was what needed doing. He went downstairs, drove their car several blocks away and left it parked
at a curb. Then he moved his own car, a jeep wagon, to the just-vacated space in front of his building, loaded the two bodies
into it in a panic of sweat and strength, and shortly after 3:00
A.M.
drove out of lower Manhattan and
headed west to the Hudson River, then north toward the upper reaches of Putnam County.

He drove carefully, staying well within the posted speed limits. What was his rush? Regardless of how fast he drove, two government
agents alleged or otherwise would still be dead in the back of his wagon, and he would still be in the worst trouble of his
life.

Vittorio Battaglia!

The name alone was impossible. Imagine a helpless little kid being launched into life as
Victory Battle.
It was a joke. Unless, like Vittorio, he started right off taking the name seriously.

Vittorio himself, apparently, was still alive. Gianni had spoken the truth when he told Jackson and Lindstrom he had not seen
Vittorio in twenty years. His friend had already disappeared by the time Gianni returned from his flight to Italy. He could
not even remember the last time he saw him.

What Gianni
did
remember was the first time he saw him… when they were both eight years old and attending Mulberry Street Art School. Vittorio
had instantly determined to live up to his name by trying to beat Gianni to death with his bony little fists. Almost everyone
at the school was Italian, and Gianni considered his own half-Jewish blood a near-fatal handicap. How could a measly half-Italian
compete artistically with a full-blooded line that had produced the likes of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Raphael?

Vittorio, being pure, 100 percent Italian, suffered no such problem. And it showed in his work from day one. He had a flair
and brilliance that Gianni admired and felt he could never achieve.

Parts of Gianni still felt that way. And it was not just foolish modesty. He knew exactly how much he had accomplished. Yet
when he envisioned the absolute best he could do, and imagined it alongside something by Vittorio, it was like seeing a good
rhinestone next to a perfect diamond. The rhinestone was created out of knowledge, discipline, and hard work. The diamond
was a gift of nature, a flash of the purest light that had nothing to do with anything but God.

Deep in a patch of woods off Interstate 95, Gianni buried the last mortal remains of Special Agents Jackson and Lind
strom and felt the first piercing chill of a tracked animal. He felt nothing for the men themselves, not even his earlier
rage. They had, after all, just been following orders. Now there was only the chill.

A
T THE EDGE
of a forest twenty miles north of Zagreb, Yugoslavia, the gunman sat near the edge of a forest and waited for the dawn that
was still an hour away.

A rifle lay across his lap, and he fingered its stock, trigger guard, and barrel in ritual order.
My rosary,
he thought. Except that he had no prayers to recite, only the vague wish that everything would go well, quickly and without
surprises.

He was close to the top of a hill that rose steeply above a cluster of houses a short distance below. Closer to where he sat,
another house stood apart from the rest. There were lights in several rooms, but they had been on all night and did not mean
anything.

He could see clearly through the lighted windows with his field glasses, and from time to time he had watched the guards talking
and moving about. There were five of them, and they tended to huddle together for company instead of patrolling their posts
in and around the house. Croats. Whatever their good points, disciplined soldiering was not one of them. Had they done their
work right, he could never have moved in this close. As it was, he would have a clear shot, from good cover, at an effective
range.

The sky slowly lightened. He loved this time just before the rising of the sun, with shadows fading to the soft grays of Whistler.
These days, all anybody seemed to remember Whistler for was that uptight portrait of his mother, but it was his misty watercolors
of London that were the best. You just had to look at them to breathe the Thames. He had al
ways envied Whistler those paintings. There was such purity of purpose there, so clear a knowledge of what was right, that
it made him wonder if the artist had ever been unsure of
anything.

Beginning to grow stiff, he shifted to a prone position, careful to keep the rifle muzzle off the ground. The few trees below
were clear now. He could see a table and chairs on the second-floor veranda of the solitary house. The veranda was open to
the sky, and in the distance behind it, the more modern part of Zagreb’s skyline rose above medieval walls.

Farther west, the first of the early morning flights took off from the city’s airport, and he watched the plane’s lights until
they disappeared. If all went well, he would be up there himself in a few hours, heading home. And if it didn’t go well? Then
he might be delayed. Like forever.

For a while he just lay there quietly as the sky lightened further and the day came, a shining spring morning without clouds,
and the colors running to soft pinks and purples. To distract himself and help pass the time, he imagined how he would paint
it. You had to be careful about the softness because that was the thing in this… not so much the color, but the mood, which
was of an absolute serenity.

You paint a great picture in your mind,
he told himself.
We’ll see if you can paint it as great when you’re home with a brush in your hand, instead of out here holding a rifle.

The gunman wished he were home right now. This whole assignment was confusing. Until he had gotten his orders, he had thought
Stefan Milokov was high on the State Department’s most favored list in the Balkans: a strong Croatian leader with democratic
leanings and a genuine interest in a united Yugoslavia. Evidently he had been wrong. But these days there were so many changes
in political alignment, so much switching about of friends into enemies and enemies into friends, that you needed a new briefing
each morning.

The sun came up and shone on the house he was watching. He glanced at his watch. Soon, Colonel Milokov, a man of unswervingly
regular habits, would be out on the veranda having his usual breakfast of croissants and coffee.

It was time to get ready.

First, he moved a small rock into position for support.
Then he stretched flat-out on the ground, rested the rifle barrel on the rock, and squinted through the telescopic sights.
The chair in which the colonel would soon be sitting showed sharply behind the crosshairs. The gunman inserted a clip of special
explosive rounds into the magazine, worked the bolt action that sent a round into the firing chamber, released the safety,
and waited.

One of the guards came out first. He stretched, scratched himself, and leaned lazily against a wall of the veranda. A heavy-set
woman brought out a full tray and prepared the table with a single place setting, a pot of coffee, a basket of croissants,
and a folded newspaper. Then she went back inside.

Moments later, Milokov appeared. He spoke briefly to the guard, who laughed and went into the house.