The Echelon Vendetta (31 page)

“There you go again,” said Dalton. “And you say you’re not allowed to tamper with destiny. That’s a neat excuse you got there.”

Naumann shrugged that off, and then brightened. “Wait a minute, I did tell you something else you didn’t know. Back in Venice, after Cora got knocked around, you were having dinner at that caf e´ on Campo San Stefano. I told you that Domenico Zitti had died. Next thing Brancati’s cell phone rings.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake. You crossed yourself, that was all.” “I made the sign of the cross. Like you do when people die.” “Thin. Thin as watered whiskey.” “There’s no persuading an unwilling mind.” “Mind if I cut in here?” said Fremont. “With respect, you two

boys aren’t getting anywhere.” “Not at all,” said Dalton. “Feel free. I’ve made my point.” “Jump right in,” said Naumann, crossing to the bar and filling his

glass with a huge wallop of single malt, an activity that was not visible to Fremont, who was still staring at the place where Naumann wasn’t.

“Okay,” said Fremont, warming to his argument, “we need to get down to basic ghost psychology. Whether or not this Mr. Naumann is a real ghost or just a mental problem
you’re
having, nine times out of ten, when a guy’s haunted, or
thinks
he is, there’s something behind it.”

“Behind what?” “There’s a reason for you being haunted with this guy. Or
think
ing
you are. He ever tell you why he’s hanging around like this?” Dalton did not like the direction this conversation had taken. He

drank off half the scotch. It burned down inside him like molten gold. “Go to it, Willard,” said Naumann. “Now you’re on the scent.” “You don’t want to answer that question?” “Not really, Willard.” “None of my goddam business?”

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“In that territory, anyway.” “Too painful?” “Yeah,” said Dalton, staring at his glass. “Fine. I don’t need to know what it is. The point is,
you
already

know. That’s what counts here. This thing you don’t want to talk about, Porter—Mr. Naumann here—this is the thing that he wants you to do something about? Right?”

“Way to go,” said Naumann. “Buckle down, Winsocki.” “Yes,” said Dalton, after a long pause. “This something that he wants you to do, is it something that can

actually be done? It’s not something like crazy hot sex with identical lesbian triplets in a bathtub full of ranch dressing or simplifying the tax code. It’s a thing you could actually pull off if you wanted to?”

“Yes. Well, perhaps. I mean...” Fremont put his beer down, held his palms out. “So?” “So, what?” “So, whatever it is, go do it.” “Thank you!” said Naumann, smacking the redwood table hard

enough to make Dalton jump, which may have been what made Fremont jump at the same time, spilling his beer again. At this stage of the debate and in his mildly inebriated state, Dalton found it hard to tell.

“What’d he do?” asked Fremont. “He smacked the table and said thanks.” “So he agrees with
me
?” “Looks like it. And I’m so glad you two are really hitting it off.” “So? Are you? Gonna?” “I don’t know.” Fremont threw up his hands, got himself another beer, killed it in

three gulps while standing at the cabinet, dropped the frosted corpse into a box, got himself another, and came back to his couch, visibly

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frustrated. He took another long pull in a sustained silence while Dalton and Naumann watched him, and then turned to Naumann— turned in Naumann’s direction anyway.

“How about you throw something in the kitty here, Mr. Nau

mann?” “Me?” said Naumann, touching his chest. “He’s listening,” said Dalton. “Like what?” said Naumann. “He says, ‘Like what?’ ” “Like... like you promise to go away if Micah here promises to

do whatever it is he’s supposed to do as soon as you’re gone.”

Naumann looked confused. So did Dalton, but it sounded like a fair deal to him. Fremont sat there, staring at a curved and vaguely green-tinted space in the air that was becoming more visible the drunker he got.

“Is this a deal?” said Dalton, looking at Naumann. “You’ll go see Laura? If I disappear?” “Damn straight.” “You’ll make things right with her?” “I’ll do what I can.” “Your word?” “My word.” “How long do I have to disappear for?” Dalton turned to Fremont. “He wants to know how long he has

to disappear for.”

Fremont, who by some sort of cosmic triangulation of ectoplasmic vectors had become the sitting magistrate in this case, considered for a while, blinking slowly.

“Seven days,” he pronounced, after due deliberation. Naumann looked dubious. “You’ll really do it, Micah. Go see her? Make it right?”

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“I’ll go see her. Making it right is more your department.” “When?” “On the morning of the eighth day.” Fremont savored the poetry in that. It was...epic. Biblical. Naumann looked wary, studying Dalton’s face as if he were look

ing for some intent to deceive, to play the coyote.

“He’s given you his solemn word, Mr. Naumann,” said Fremont, staring at this curved space in the air that was centered more or less around the third couch. There was no doubt in his mind now. It was definitely taking on a man-shaped outline. Apparently there was more to Lone Star beer than met the eye. Could it be that beer was actually a cosmic portal, a door into the spirit world? It occurred to him that this was why the wise old ancients in their wise old ancient wisdom had called alcohol a spirit since the very dawning of time.

He maintained his fixed regard on this curved green-tinted space even while managing to crack open another beer and take a very long pull. Dalton kept his eyes on Naumann as well.

Naumann, after a long and presumably introspective silence, took a pull of his scotch, set the glass down hard, wiped his dead lips, and stood up, brushing off his green pajamas. “Okay. Fair deal. See you on the eighth day.”

“The eighth day.” “Carmel Highlands?” “Carmel Highlands.” “Dr. Cassel?” “Dr. Cassel.” “Word of honor?” “Word of honor.” “Because if you—” “I know. I know. Bed knobs and broomsticks.” “Damn straight. The fire and the fury. All right, then. I could use

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the break. Manifesting yourself all over the damned globe is harder

than it looks. Willard, I tell you frankly, you’re a clever guy.”

“He’s talking to
you
now. Frankly. He says you’re a clever guy.”

“Yeah,” said Willard, rising to his feet, his rough-hewn face composed into a bleary solemnity. “Thank you, sir.”

“Willard, you’re a gem. Not many guys can broker a deal between a vapid cretin and the walking dead. You should have been a literary agent. Micah, as they say in the song, I’ll be seeing you.”

“You take care, Porter. And get those PJs dry-cleaned.”

Naumann smiled, snapped to attention, sliced off a military salute, and abruptly flicked out of existence.

Dalton blinked at the empty space for a while.

The fire had burned down low and red sparks were snapping and hissing in the ruins. The ice in his glass popped and turned slowly over, like an iceberg rolling in the deep southern oceans. The long silence ran out, a hymn with neither words nor music nor rhyme nor melody, a symphony of nothingness, of the void, of serene emptiness.

“I take it he’s gone,” said Fremont, after an indefinite period.

“Yes,” said Dalton, with deep relief. “He’s gone.”

“There you go,” said Fremont. “What’s for supper?”

THE ALARM BEEPER
on his bedside table woke Dalton up out of a deep dream of peace: Cora had been sitting at a table in that large light-filled room in the Dorsoduro, nude, writing in a book of gold.

The remote, set on Vibrate, was buzzing around on the night table like a rattlesnake’s tail. By the clock on the dresser across the room it was a little past four in the morning. In one smooth motion he rolled out of the bed, plucking his big Colt off the table, and silencing the remote. He glanced at the bulletproof window.

Total darkness beyond it. The night pressed up against the window like the hide of a black bear. In jeans, shirtless and shoeless, he

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padded down the hall past the closed and locked door behind which Willard Fremont was having another one of the nightmares that had lately made his life a grinding misery that he heard nothing as Dalton passed swiftly down the hall and out into the living room.

His laptop was still open, sitting on the pine cabinet. The room smelled of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and the steaks Fremont had grilled, expertly and efficiently, in spite of his advanced state of drunkenness, at the end of the long, long evening.

The image in the laptop screen showed the house; there were two red man-shapes, one of them Fremont, moving restlessly in his bed, and the other of Dalton, here in the living room.

But there was another large formless shape, crossing the river, approaching the house. Dalton switched the screen over to the night-shot lens.

The image showed starlight flickering on the surface of the Clark, starlight shimmering on the leaves of the cottonwoods along the banks, a lightless void under them, and the same indistinct shape moving slowly up the nearer bank of the river, an oval shape, the surface of which seemed to shimmer with moving light, with a darker and much more solid shape contained inside it.

Not obviously a man.

But manlike enough to trigger the alarm. Dalton stared at the image, at the way it was moving, puzzled. The object was alive, that much was clear, and something in the way it covered the ground suggested stealth, deliberate predatory stealth, but it had no discernible details at all, as if it were a wisp of fog or a marsh light. Dalton dialed up the resolution to maximum.

The stones of the riverbank leaped into vivid detail, each boulder sharp-cut, the surface of running river scintillating with pinpricks of starlight, the branches of the cottonwoods spidery and black under their moving cloak of silvery leaves.

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While Dalton watched, the object moved away from the riverbank, crossed the broad sand shoals, floated over the boulders, and as it touched the deeper blackness under the cottonwoods, merged seamlessly with the shadows, as a separate drop of water will melt into a pool.
Cloaked,
thought Dalton, recalling the black fog that had drifted into the hallway of the Strega hostel in Cortona.

This was actually someone who was using an infrared cloaking device, a device capable of masking the outlines of an infrared or thermal image. Whoever this guy was, he had to be working for the

U.S. government. No one else would have access to this kind of technology. And no one else would know that this was a safe house belonging to the CIA. This guy was here to take out Willard Fremont.

Which meant that someone back in Langley had betrayed them both. But the only guy who knew where they were was Jack Stall-worth, and Stallworth was no traitor. There was a sound, movement in the hall. Fremont, awake, dressed, rounded the corner and froze in place, staring into the muzzle of Dalton’s Colt.

He blinked at Dalton, his mouth working. “What is it? What’s up?”

“There was something on the screen,” said Dalton, his face lit from beneath, glowing with blue light from the laptop screen.

“A man?” said Fremont, staring into the picture, seeing only the ripple of light on the bending river, the tops of the cottonwoods waving with silver light over the impenetrable shadows below.

“Yes. I think so. He’s gone now. Into the dark under the trees.” “How far away is he?” “Two, three hundred yards out. Near the cottonwoods.” “Have you got any remote mikes in that area?” “Yes,” said Dalton, touching an icon on the screen. The speakers flared up with the sound of rushing water, leaves

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rustling in the wind. He turned the volume up to full. The room filled with the hissing and rattling of the woodland, the sighing of the wind, the bubbling of water racing over stones.

And another sound, far deeper, a sound that Dalton knew, a sound that chilled his heart and tightened his belly. A sound at the lowest edge of hearing, more a sensation than a sound, a deep rising and falling sound, a low, ponderous vibrato, but with a living, breathing rhythm.

“What’s that?” asked Fremont, staring at the screen.

“No idea,” said Dalton, but his mind was back in the Dorsoduro. He was standing in that light-filled room watching the cylinder spin, the cylinder that growled and hummed and buzzed all at once, with exactly this same rising and falling note, like a big cat purring.

“Stay here,” he said. He padded back down the hall. When he came back he was wearing a black jacket, jeans, and soft-soled shoes. Fremont saw the big Colt in his hand and his face hardened.

“What is it, anyway? What did you see?” “I think it’s a man using a cloaking device.” “What? Like an EMP?” “No. It’s new. But I think I’ve seen it used before. In Italy.” “He’s here for me?” “I’d say so.” “How would anyone know we’re here?” “Great question. I have another one.” “Sure.” “This guy out there, he’s a pro.” “Obviously.” “Why is so much time and effort going into killing
you
?” “I been asking myself that for weeks. I wish I knew.” “This goes beyond Echelon. Echelon is a major NSA operation,

known to a lot of the general public. No matter how sensitive some of your Echelon work was, this kind of sustained high-tech stalking,

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using a killer of this caliber, on American soil, this is simply not something that the NSA does. There’s got to be something else going on here. Can’t you think of any other reason?”

“You think this guy’s one of ours? An American?”