The Echelon Vendetta (18 page)

“Nothing. When Porter goes dark he doesn’t screw around.”

“Micah, you know Porter didn’t do ...this. Don’t waste your time. Go find out who did. Find out who did, and then you kill him and anyone who helped, okay?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

There was a strained silence. After a while Mandy looked at the bodies hanging from the shower railing.

“What do you want to do with...” She made a half-formed gesture in the direction of the bodies, the blood, the entire scene.

“This can’t get out, Mandy.”

“I’ve been giving it some thought. May I make a suggestion?”

“Please.”

“We close up the house and put it about that Joanne and the girls are traveling.”

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“Won’t their friends wonder? What about all this wireless stuff ? Text messaging? Cell phones? E-mails? Chat rooms? If the girls just drop off the grid, won’t their friends start to worry about them?”

Mandy gave him a look, raised her eyebrow. “Do ticks miss the dog? No. They move on and find another host. Mila and Brooke didn’t have ‘friends.’ They had minions. Unindicted coconspirators. And Joanne’s London crowd was always on the move. It would be
months
before any of them started to wonder where Joanne had gone off to. Then only in an idle, feckless way.”

“What about her relatives?” “Micah, all we can do is
delay
this. It’ll have to come out eventu

ally. How much time do you think you’ll need?” “God. How much can you give me?” “Three weeks, maybe four. I still think this is the way to go.” She was right. “Okay. It’s a good idea. Try to make it four, if you possibly can.

And Porter died ‘in the line of,’ so there wouldn’t be a ceremony

anyway. Another nameless star on the wall. We’ll do it your way.” There was a soft call from the stairwell, Barney’s voice. “Sir, Removals is here.” “Are you up to this, Mandy?” “Aren’t you going to stay?” “Yes. Of course. I wouldn’t ask you to do this alone.” “Thank you.” Mandy was silent then, but Dalton knew what she was thinking.

Dalton reached out to take her almost skeletal hand. Her face went

through several emotions, her eyes welling up. “I thought for a while that Porter might have gone mad.” “Did you have any reason to think so?” Mandy went inward for a time, thinking about Dalton’s question. “No. There was nothing ...but...I mean, look at the mirror.” They both turned to look at the mirror, at the ugly scrawl there,

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done in some sort of thick black crayon, a vicious obscenity that had been scraped over the glass by a strong, angry hand.

“You actually thought
Porter
did this?”

“No. Perhaps. I don’t know. I was . . . afraid,” said Mandy. “For his mind.”

They looked at the drawing for a time in silence. Something about the drawing resonated in Dalton’s memory. He struggled for it, but it was too elusive, a trace only, now a fading wisp.

“Have you ever seen anything like this in Porter’s papers?”

“No. Never.”

“Have you looked?”

She hesitated. “Well . . . not thoroughly. I’d need clearance from Jack. I wasn’t cleared for everything Porter was doing. Were you?”

“No. Jack says he was monitoring investment and trading patterns, looking for terror money on the move.”

“Yes. That’s what he was doing. I was his collector.”

“I want you to go through his papers, Mandy—no, I want you

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to
ransack
his papers. Turn his entire life upside down and dump it out on the desk. I want every e-mail, every coded file, personal papers, Agency stuff. I want to know who he saw and when he saw him, who he called and who called back, from where, when—the whole package. And I need it done by you, and you
alone.
Can you do that?”

“Do I need clearance?”

“You have clearance. I’m the cleaner here, and I’m giving you clearance, okay? Can you do it?”

“Should I talk to Jack?”

“I’ll talk to Jack. You talk to nobody but me, here on in.”

She nodded her head and said nothing. Dalton pulled in a ragged breath and immediately regretted it. He looked around the bathroom, half-hoping for Naumann’s ghost to materialize in the room.

Where are you, Porter? Why aren’t you here?

You were everywhere. Now you’re the absentee.

Silence, then, as they stood there, looking uneasily at themselves in the mirror—both of them burning with the mortal shame of the survivor—and at the angry scrawl across the glass. The room smelled of toothpaste and lemons and perfume, as well as dried blood and spoiled meat.

“Do you want this . . . scrawl . . . left?” asked Mandy, after a time, and in a whisper, as if they were in the presence of something unholy.

“Forensics got a digital shot?”

“Yes. I was here when they took it. The camera’s in the case by the door, along with everything else.”

“Erase everything. Make it look as if this had never happened.”

“But it did, Micah, didn’t it?”

“Yes, sweetheart. It did.”

His cell phone rang then, making them both jump.

“Dalton here.”

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“Micah, it’s Sally Fordyce. I’m at Langley.”

“Jesus, Sally. What time is it in D.C.?”

“Early, Micah. I came in to head off a tragedy.”

“Tragedy? What kind of tragedy”

“The tragedy of Jack ripping your privates off with his bare hands, you utter dork. Were you using a Consular ID in Venice?”

“Venice?”

“Oh no! Don’t you go all vague and loopy on me, Micah. Some-body’s been trying to reach you through the Venice Consulate. The caller says you’re attached to the CID branch there. The Venice station chief fielded the call and handed it right off to Langley. Duty desk at Langley tried to find Jack but he’s off the grid right now—”

“Where is he?”

“Micah, Jack
runs
the Cleaners. He’s always flying off somewhere lately, and he doesn’t give me an itinerary, does he? And you’re damn lucky he
was
out of touch, because I was next on the call list. So tell me. Did you use a Consular cover or not?”

Dalton stared at the wall, thinking fast. He
had
used a Venice jacket with Cora Vasari.

Christ, was
she
trying to reach him?

“Micah!”

“Yes, I did, Sally. Who was—”

“You’re a complete and utter mutt, you know that?”

“Who was trying to reach me? Was it a woman?”

“Woman! My God, Micah. Have you been using Consular ID’s to pick up
chicks
? What are you using for—”

“I know. We both know I’m pond scum. Who was calling, Sally? Was it a woman named Cora Vasari?”

“Vasari? Cora Vasari? No. It was . . . let’s see . . . Zitti. Domenico. A guy. He was very upset. Probably her poor bloody husband, right? Said it was an emergency, something about an ambulance—”

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“Ambulance? Where?”

“In some place called the Dorsoduro. There were people shouting in the background. Micah? Micah, hello? Hello? Micah Dalton, you
rat
bag
scum
sack
son
of a—”

But Micah Dalton was already gone.

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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,

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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?”