The Skorpion Directive (15 page)

She was no longer looking at the picture, not so much as looking away from it as looking at Dalton, the only other place to look. After a time she said in a soft voice, “You do not wish to talk about Podujevo, Micah?”

Dalton swallowed with difficulty, wishing for water.

“Yes, Veronika. I do not wish to talk about Podujevo.”

More silence.

“Fine. Then we will not talk about Podujevo. Right now.”

“Thank you.”

“But what are we going to do about this Smoke person?”

“Find him. Find who’s running him. Kill them both.”

She looked at him as if from a distance.

“I thought you were not an assassin? If we find them, we should turn them over to the proper authorities.”

He met her look with as blank an expression as he could manage, thinking,
You just killed a man by sticking a curling iron in his brain and now you want to go through proper channels?

“Yes?” he said. “The proper authorities. Such as . . . ?”

She looked confused and then rallied.

“The UN has agencies. Interpol. The Criminal Court.”

Dalton let it go. She was young. She was Austrian. She’d been to a modern university. You had to make allowances.

“At any rate, he’s giving us a lot of help here.”

“This . . .
Höhlentroll
. This . . . cave thing. How?”

“He’s talking too much. He can’t help himself. Every time he prods us, he gives something away. The things he knows—your e-mail, how to get to Galan, breaking my BlackBerry encryption . . . this thing about Podujevo—only a few people know all of those things. We follow the information, find the sources, and sooner or later we find somebody who knows who Smoke really is. Maybe even where. Then we find Smoke. And we kill him. And his people. It all ends. You’re safe.”

They sat together in silence for a while longer, and then Veronika put the laptop away. Dalton leaned forward, popped the latch on the gun locker under the dashboard, pulled out her pistol, checked that it was loaded, and handed it to her along with her spare magazine.

“You still want to come along on this?”

“Yes. We’ve already talked about it too much.”

“Have you ever been in a real gunfight?”

“No. But every year we do two weeks of—what you Americans call CQB—close quarter?”

“Close quarter combat? You’re in a
surveillance
unit, for Pete’s sake!”

Mistake.

Dalton could almost hear her hackles rising.

“Sometimes, Micah, people object to being watched. Sometimes, like you, Micah, they are not so nice people. That’s why they gave us the weapons. Loaded. So we can actually fire them. If you are going to fire a weapon in Vienna, they would like for you not to kill too many tourists. So we train. Okay?”

Dalton figured he wouldn’t have to shave the Veronika side of his face for about a week. He nodded, took a breath.

“Okay. My apologies. You’ve got eight in the magazine,” he said in a careful, businesslike tone, “and one in the chamber. They’re Black Talon rounds, nine mil, just like I use in the SIG, so if you need some more I have them. The SIG has fifteen rounds in each mag. Black Talons will stay inside whatever they hit, and they hit
hard
. First rule of combat: Don’t shoot your partner.”

He managed a tight smile here as his equilibrium came slowly back. Podujevo had nothing to do with this woman, and they had a hard night ahead of them.

“You shoot me in the back, Veronika, I’m going to take it personally.”

She gave him a brave, if slightly off-center, smile.

“I won’t shoot you in the back. Unless you get in my way.”

“I’ll try not to do that. Keep cool. Remember. Keep cool. Don’t spray the area. I know, I know,” he said, seeing her expression, “but it happens, even to trained people. They get their blood up. They’ll empty a mag in seven seconds. You know how to do a fast magazine exchange in a firefight?”

She nodded.

“We’ve practiced it. Empty, slide locks back, drop magazine out, load the second magazine, slide forward, you’re ready to go.”

“Good. You have a second mag, also with eight rounds. That’s seventeen rounds in total.
Count your rounds
. Understand? Count your rounds. If things go bad and I’m not close, save one round. I mean that. If sixteen rounds out haven’t settled the matter, nothing will. So you save one round. You follow me, Veronika? Hear me. Save one round.”

She looked at him with a puzzled expression, and then her face set into harder lines.

“I understand. Save one round.”

“One last thing. I get killed, you don’t hang around. If we actually do get into a firefight, the
polizia
will come running. You reach them, ask for a Carabinieri major in town, his name is Allessio Brancati. He has an apartment in the Arsenale—that’s along the Riva degli Schiavoni—a few bridges east of the Piazza San Marco. Get the
polizia
to take you to Brancati, tell him everything you know. He’ll take care of you.”

“Allessio Brancati. In the Arsenale. Okay.”

“Okay. One last thing.”

She sighed.

“I thought the
last
thing was the one last thing?”

Dalton grinned at her, a wolfish expression, his eyes pale in the lamplight, his lips thinned over white teeth.

“If we’re dealing with Smoke and his people, I take one, a bad one, before you light out—”

“Don’t leave you wounded? Put one in your head?”

“Yeah. Two, if you can spare them.”

“Christ, Micah.”

“I’d do it for you.”

She smiled back at him, her breathing unsteady, leaned forward suddenly, and kissed him, open-mouthed, searching, hungry, pulling him into her, and then she broke away.

“Yes. You would. But you’re a much nicer person than I am. So my advice to you . . . ?”

“Don’t get shot?”

“Don’t get shot.”

 

 

 

THE
sweeping northern arc of the Grand Canal, wide and smooth and empty as it curved around the southern edge of Cannaregio, was relatively easy to navigate, even in the fog that had settled in over the city, reducing visibility to less than twenty feet. At this hour the Grand Canal was deserted, the villas and shops along its banks closed down and lightless. Now and then, as they slipped quietly by a villa or a shop, a sliver of amber light showed through closed shutters or a few tinny notes of music would come drifting out of the mist. There were street-lamps and doorway torches all along the canal, but they were only luminous globes floating in the mist and shed no light on the canal, serving only to mark the outer limits of a cold gray water world.

The only warmth in that shapeless world was the blood-red glow of the Riva’s instrument panels as it lit up the underside of Dalton’s face, giving him a slightly satanic air.

Veronika, wrapped in a blanket, sat huddled in the stern, watching the shadowland of Venice pass by as if in a dream.

For the first time in many weeks, a single word was rising in the back of her troubled mind:
Kokain
. She pushed it down again with a shiver of apprehension, coming back reluctantly to the here and now. The launch was moving through the muddy water like a sea snake, its engines hardly a murmur, a bass-toned vibrato under the floorboards. Water lapped and rippled along her polished sides and curled whitely in her wake. Now and then a larger shape would loom up out of the fog—a tethered barge draped in canvas, a covered launch tugging at its moorings—but, in the main, there was only the slow unveiling of the middle distance beyond Dalton’s tall shape, outlined in a red aura, and the field of gray water all around her, parting with a reptilian hiss as the launch’s sharp-edged bow cut through it.

They had been running quietly for a half hour by Dalton’s watch when he sensed rather than saw a flat space opening up on the northern bank, marked by two large boathouses jutting out into the water and an open park lit by a row of torches: the Campo San Marcuola. He slowed the launch and brought it in closer to the shore, barely making headway, looking for the blacker shadow that would be the opening of the Rio San Marcuola, the narrow canal running north for three hundred yards through the crowded, overhanging villas and stone-walled cloisters of Cannaregio until reaching a much larger canal, the Fondamenta degli Ormesini.

A left turn there, and Galan’s villa was another three hundred yards farther along on their starboard side. Dalton eased the launch into the narrow opening, dead slow now, the gray shapes of boats and barges pressing in on both sides, the roofs looming above them in the fog, the eaves almost touching across the canal.

They drifted past an open door. Yellow light poured from it, tinting the fog around it golden. Soft music also came from the open door. Looking in, they saw a flight of polished wooden stairs leading up into the dark, and they heard cheerful talk flowing back down. They passed on in grim silence, a ghostly pair, a shadow disappearing into the fog. In a few minutes the golden glow was lost in a bend of the canal. A sharp pain in Dalton’s right hand, a muscle cramp, made him realize that he was gripping the wheel of the Riva so tightly that he had cut off the flow of blood.

He straightened, took a breath, and turned to look at Veronika. Her face was an oval in the mist, her body covered in a blanket.

“Are you okay?” he said in a low whisper.

“I am,” she said, “but I’m freezing. And Venice stinks.”

Dalton smiled, took another breath. She was right.

Here in the smaller canals, the massive ebb and flow of the Adriatic was considerably restrained. As a result, Cannaregio tended to wallow in her own juices until the winds came up and the tides, such as they were, turned. The dank air was full of the scent of dead fish, wet stone, and raw sewage—not quite the romantic vision of Venice you got in the movies, he thought.

He saw a cluster of lights running across his course about twenty feet ahead. It was the opening to the Ormesini Canal.

He slowed to a crawl, made the turn left, swinging a little wide to clear a boat ramp. He quickly reached down and killed the engine, leaving the boat to drift slowly forward into the fogbank, water rippling softly along her bow and gurgling under the wooden keel. Veronika came forward and stood beside him, peering into the fog.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, leaning close.

Dalton took his SIG out.

“That bridge. Up ahead. I thought I saw . . .”

Veronika stared into the fog, straining to make out details.

“There’s . . . There is
something
,” she said in a whisper now so faint it was little more than a breath. “I can’t quite make it out.”

The launch moved forward on its own momentum, the darkened houses passing slowly by. A low stone bridge materialized out of the fog, arching over the canal. A few feet closer, and they could see a form, man-shaped, leaning on the railing of the bridge.

Dalton zeroed his pistol sights—all three green tritium dots in a row—on the center of the shape, his finger lightly resting on the trigger of the SIG. The shape stirred as their launch came out of the mist. It was a man. He leaned forward, calling down to them in a hoarse whisper:
“Micah, non fuoco. Sono Allessio.”

“Brancati?”

“Yes. Stop under the bridge.”

Dalton lowered his weapon.

Veronika stepped back from the wheel. Dalton could see that she had her pistol out, holding it down at her side.

“No. It’s the Carabinieri major I told you about. Brancati.”

Veronika slid the weapon back into her belt holster, but her face was closed and wary. Dalton let the boat’s momentum carry it slowly under the bridge, holding on to the stonework to keep the drift under control. The man dropped down from the bridge, landing in a crouch on the bow. Dalton reached out, the man took his hand and came awkwardly over the windshield and down into the cockpit, breathing heavily from the effort.

He took Dalton’s shoulders in an
abbraccio
, pulled him in and smacked him on the back a couple of times and then pulled away, holding him at arm’s length, grinning fiercely. He was a deeply tanned man with a strong, lined face, Dalton’s height, solidly built, running a little to fat around the middle, with hooded Sicilian eyes and a large mustache shaped like a scimitar. He was in gray slacks, boat shoes, a light-colored shirt under a brown leather jacket that was open enough for Veronika to see the Beretta in a leather holster under his left arm. As he looked into Dalton’s face, his grin—a white flash in the half-light—disappeared, and his expression changed.

Dalton’s face was a rock wall, his voice harsh and choked.

Brancati held him a moment longer, his eyes shining. Dalton could feel the tremor in Brancati’s powerful fingers.

He released Dalton with a sigh, stepped away, turning to face Veronika.

“Allora,”
he said in a soft baritone rumble, disarmingly gallant for a man who had literally dropped out of the fog.
“Questa è la signorina Veronika Miklas? Di cui sentiamo così tanto? Mi presento, con permiso? Sono Allessio Brancati, capo dei Carabinieri della Toscana.”

He bowed slightly as he spoke and offered his hand, his eyes careful, his expression polite but distant.

Veronika took it and smiled back.

“I am sorry—
mi dispiace
, Major Brancati—I have no Italian.” Brancati’s grin broke through his caution. Veronika was a stunner, and Brancati, although well married and the father of grown girls, was an aficionado of stunners.

“And I have no German,
mi dispiace
. But I have some English. You are okay, miss? This brute has not taken advantage of you?
No lei molestate?
”