The Skorpion Directive (13 page)

Nikki took in the implications, which were considerable.

“Okay. How about this? You say Dalton killed a man named Yusef Akhmediar at Veronika Miklas’s flat?”

“A man named Yusef Akhmediar was found dead nearby. It does not automatically follow that Dalton killed him.”

“And you also say that Dalton had thrown off the OSE surveillance unit?”

“Yes.”

“Dalton’s not an easy man to follow, is he?”

“
Res ipsa loquitur
. His record speaks for itself.”

“How did Yusef Akhmediar know where Dalton was?”

Cather fell into what seemed to Nikki to be a satisfied and admiring silence, judging from the benevolence of his regard. He showed his teeth again and touched her hand with his fingertips.

“An excellent question . . . exactly the right question . . . As are all your other questions . . . And I will leave them with you.”

“But you
can’t
leave it there, sir. It looks as if Dalton found a bomb in the Saab and instead of simply running away he got inside the car and drove it clear of the crowds. He ought to get a medal—”

“Sadly, Miss Vale and the President, who has been strongly influenced by her arguments, have taken the view that Dalton killed Issadore Galan, wired his Saab to explode, and intended to drive it into Vienna and set the bomb off—”

“Why? For God’s sake, what utter horse—”

“Miss Vale concedes that his motives do not speak as loudly as his actions. In her view, the arming mechanism failed him, and he narrowly escaped being blown up himself—”

“Sir, nothing in what you’ve told me supports that conclusion. And what about his cell-phone call records, his GPS data—all of it has
disappeared
? Disappeared because of whom? And why? And who disabled the main security camera? There should be video of the Saab arriving. The time? Who was driving it? It should on video
somewhere
. All of this is—”

“As I have said, all of this is very intriguing, and you are asking precisely the questions I would encourage you to ask. Do so repeatedly. Doggedly. Perhaps you may get your answers. Now, my dear, I really must let you go.”

He raised his left hand, made a gesture toward the crew cuts, and stood up, weaving a little, his knees cracking audibly. Nikki started to get up, but he placed a leathery spotted claw on her shoulder, retrieving a long, thick navy blue envelope from an inside pocket of his suit jacket with his other hand. His escort stopped a few yards away and turned to look outward at what others would see as a playground park but to them was simply a perimeter. Cather handed the envelope to Nikki.

“I am about to place a great burden upon your lovely shoulders, Miss Turrin. There is a task I wish you to accomplish. You are of course at liberty to decline . . .”

“Am I, sir?”

Cather’s smile did not alter very much, but now the effect was far less avuncular.

“Of course . . . Although I did refer to consequences if you continued to listen . . . Since you have done so, steps would have to be taken to ensure that what you have already heard here remains secure until the matter is resolved. You would go on a sort of holiday, someplace luxurious—palm trees, ocean breezes, complicated fruit drinks with paper umbrellas . . . However, I feel certain you will not refuse. I anticipate your steel, Miss Turrin. Your patriotism. This is why I am here. The envelope in your hand contains a valid passport in the name of Beatrice Gandolfo—”

“Beatrice Gandolfo? The wife of Amedeo Guillet? The Italian cavalry officer who fought the British in Abyssinia?”

Cather grinned, a broad, conspiratorial grimace, his face creasing and cracking into leathery deltas.

“I
knew
you would know these families. I thought Beatrice Gandolfo suited your style. She looked a little like you too.”

“That is not surprising, sir; my family is connected to the Gandolfo family. We are all from the Savoy, from the Piedmont.”

Cather smiled indulgently.

Cather studied her face closely as if following her thoughts and then he sighed, perhaps with regret but probably not, and went on, adopting a more businesslike tone.

“Also in the envelope you will find a black American Express card in that name, along with other peripheral identifications—a Virginia driver’s license, an ATM connected to an account in your name at First Dominion in Charlottesville, a Social Security card. The American Express card carries a credit line of something in the region of two hundred thousand dollars. Of course, references and phone numbers have been established and reliable people are standing by in case someone wishes to verify your credentials. From this moment forward, you are to speak of this assignment to no one other than personnel I myself may designate. Any breach of this order will have very unpleasant consequences, Miss Turrin, but I’m sure I don’t need to make vulgar threats to a patriot such as yourself. You will also find my personal card in the envelope—my private cell phone is listed—you should not call unless your need is . . . pressing—”

“But, Mr. Cather, exactly what is it you want me to do?”

Cather’s face hardened again.

“In Miss Vale’s report, as you have correctly observed, she seems quite happy to conclude that Dalton murdered Issadore Galan for reasons of his own and has, in her lurid political terminology, ‘gone dark.’ Galan was ex-Mossad. The Mossad are an unforgiving organization. In her report, she mentions that the Mossad has offered their assistance in locating Micah Dalton. Given Dalton’s aggressive nature, and his skills, any attempt on the part of the Mossad to detain and question him would effectively be a death sentence for everyone concerned. A violent confrontation between the Mossad and a CIA officer, however disavowed, would have a very destructive effect on our relations with our most critical ally in the Middle East at a time when Iran and her Russian proxies present a clear and present danger to both Israel and America. Dalton will need some help if he is to avoid a collision with their people. I have made arrangements with Clark Holden—”

“The Deputy Director? Of the NSA?”

“Yes. Clark’s a good friend. He shares—privately—some of my concerns about the new administration. He has agreed to your being seconded to my . . . group . . . for a temporary research assignment.”

“Your ‘group’? Clandestine Services?”

“No. Not practical. I have been given some busywork to do, an operational history of covert operations conducted during the Cold War, to be used as a teaching document. Rather a convenient cover, actually. Silly of them to hand it to me. Your contribution would be to conduct field interviews with retired members of the intelligence community. Naturally, we both agreed that you should not be required to travel as a declared officer of the NSA or the CIA—too visible—so now you are a young political historian named Beatrice Gandolfo, working for a researcher named Kaelin Adair, connected with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

“But who am I supposed to interview?”

“You will begin with one man. I think you may know of him. He’s a retired SAS soldier who worked with Dalton in Kosovo a few years ago and again last year in Indonesia and Singapore. You will of course recall his participation in the Chicago interdiction.”

Nikki stared up at Cather, her eyes widening.

“You can’t mean Ray Fyke?
THAT
Ray Fyke? Sir, with all due respect, Ray Fyke is . . . crazy. A killer. A drunk and a killer. There’s an ICC warrant out for him. He’s suspected in the beating death of a Singapore government official named Chong Kew Sak—”

“Yes, he is all those things. And, right now, he’s exactly what Micah Dalton needs. And I have no one else. All of my Cleaners are being monitored. Our freelancers have deserted us. As I have remarked, my resources are limited.”

“Have you found the airline tickets yet, my dear?”

Nikki upturned the envelope and slid out a first-class ticket on United Airlines. She looked at the departure time.

“Tomorrow?
Tomorrow?
What about my job? My plants? My cats?”

“All necessary arrangements have been made.”

“Look, sir, why don’t you just go yourself ? Find this Fyke person and . . . recruit him . . . yourself ?”

“Mr. Fyke is a very cautious man. Our relations in the past have not been cordial. And I have little freedom of movement. It is an unlikely scenario. I would not be . . . allowed . . . to go. Such a meeting would inevitably draw the attention of Miss Vale and her acolytes. I think, knowing what I know of the man, that you will have far more success
recruiting
him than I.”

She looked at the destination and then back at Cather.

“With due respect, sir, where the
hell
is Panama City?”

Cather had already turned away, signaling for his car. He came back, looked down at her, attempting to appear comforting and failing spectacularly. He looked like a vulture with a migraine.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said, his goal achieved, his little trap sprung, his reptile mind already moving on to new concerns. But then he paused and came back to her, putting a fatherly smile in place the way a doctor puts on a surgical mask.

“Oh yes, there was one last thing . . . I almost forgot. I have been advised to warn you about the alligator. Apparently, there’s an alligator somewhere in the picture. So you
will
keep an eye out, won’t you, my child? For the alligator?”

Dalton stopped the Benz in a pullout at the eastern end of the long narrow bridge that connected the islands of Venice with the mainland port of Mestre, killed the headlights. Veronika, in the shock-induced fatigue state that always follows a shattering event, was deep in sleep.

He took his SIG out of the lockdown under the dash, did a press check, shoved it into a shoulder holster, pulled a soft black wind-breaker out of the backseat, along with a pair of black leather gloves, locked the doors, and walked forward into the looming fog-shrouded shadows of the Piazzale Roma.

The Piazzale Roma was the entry point for train and vehicle traffic into Venice, but no cars or trucks got any farther than the Auto-Park building on the south side of the plaza. After that, it was all water taxis, vaporettos, tugs, barges, and delivery boats.

Dalton moved slowly through the terminal area, trying to see through the floating sea mists. The entire city was wrapped in the blanket of nighttime fog that often drifted in from the Adriatic at this time of the year. He walked the whole area soundlessly, gliding through the gray clouds, every sense alive, trying to pick up a tremor of surveillance.

But there was nothing.

He stood for a while in the shadow of a doorway, opening his mind and stilling his ego, listening to the sounds of the night with his whole being.

Nothing. Not even a tremor.

He reached the boathouse beside the autobus station, unlocked the latch, pulled up the grating. Naumann’s launch, a twenty-four-foot Riva, was riding gently on the rising tide. It was an elegant, handmade mahogany cruiser, lean as a lance, with a sharp destroyer bow. In the dim glow from the lights that lined the Rio Nuovo quay, she rocked gently on her spring lines, covered with a fitted shroud.

There was a thin coating of salt rime and stone dust on the shroud. He was reasonably confident that no one had touched the boat since he had tied it up here two weeks ago. He had hidden the key to the launch behind a loose stone in the supporting wall of the boathouse. It was still there.

He intended to use the launch to go north to the curve of the Grand Canal and follow it past the Canale di Cannaregio and on around until he reached the Campo San Marcuola. There was a small canal there, on the left bank, the Rio San Marcuola, that threaded north through the eastern edge of the Ghetto until it connected with a larger canal called the Rio della Misericordia.

Galan’s villa was right on the embankment called the Fondamenta degli Ormesini, near Calle Turlona. Although the Ghetto was little more than a kilometer from the boathouse, taking the canals was better than trying to walk through the streets of the darkened city. The Ghetto was the most tangled and run-down quarter in Venice. Even residents sometimes got lost in its medieval alleys, dank passages, cloisters with iron gates and overhanging stone walls.

The canals were much simpler, much more direct. He pocketed the launch’s keys and walked back through the parking lot to the Benz. Veronika was still asleep.

He slipped in beside her and sat quietly for a while in the dark thinking about tactics. Dalton had timed their arrival for the middle of the night. Even during high season, which was still several weeks away, Venice closed down shortly after midnight, after the ringing of the great bell in the Campanile. By two in the morning, the city would be sound asleep, wrapped in her ancient dreams. As she was tonight.