The Skorpion Directive (20 page)

“If he had, what would you have done?”

“I would have given him an escort, or even put him in the Arsenale, if the threat was serious.”

“Either way, he wouldn’t have been able to go to Vienna and talk to me.”

Brancati’s lined face looked suddenly much older.

“True. And he would also be alive.
Basta
. It is done. What will you do now?”

“Finish what Galan started. Find Irina Kuldic.”

“How?” asked Veronika.

“I know the cop quoted in the article, Bogdan Davit. We’ll start with him, see where it goes.”

“But he’s in
Kerch
, isn’t he?”

Dalton caught the hesitation in her tone, saw the uncertainty in her expression, and was not at all surprised.

“You want to tell me something, Veronika.”

She looked back and forth from Brancati to Dalton, her eyes filling. Then she looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting together so hard her knuckles were whitening.

Without looking up at either man, she said, “I don’t want to just . . . desert you . . . I just . . . If you go to Kerch, isn’t that what they—Kirikoff, these horrible Skorpions—will expect you to do? Won’t they be waiting for you? For us?”

“Unlikely. They have no way of knowing what Galan left behind. The proof of that is that he carved it into his own flesh in the last minutes of his life, the one secret he managed to take with him. I’m certain they won’t be expecting us in Kerch.”

“But that’s how we got into trouble in Vienna,” she said with some heat. “You were
predictable
. Can’t you just . . . let
somebody else
do this? For once? For
me
? Somebody from your government. This is
their
problem too, isn’t it? They are always talking about fighting the big terror. Let them go fight this one without us! Why can’t we just stay here, you and I? In Venice. Maybe Major Brancati can give us some protection while we figure out a safer way to . . . Micah, I
cannot
go to Kerch.”

Dalton was not surprised. She was a brave young woman, but there was a limit to anyone’s nerve.

“I understand. It’s not like in the movies, is it? But if you don’t go with me, Veronika, you’ll have to stay with Brancati. Stay close. Until it’s over. I can’t operate if I’m worried about you all the time. You understand? Allessio, you can do this?”

“Yes,” said Brancati with a formal bow. “The last time, with Cora Vasari, she insisted to move about the world and was therefore shot in the courtyard of the Uffizi. This I will not allow to happen again. You, Miss Miklas, may not move about in the world. On this, there can be no discussion. I have a guest suite in the Arsenale. Micah has stayed there himself. It is very secure. A fortress. With a pretty view across the lagoon to the Isola di San Michele. No one can reach you there. On this, I give my word. You remember these rooms, Micah?”

“I do,” he said. “You’ll be safe there, Veronika, if you do what Allessio asks. Will you promise to do that?”

Veronika was quiet for a while longer. She looked up at him, put out a hand, and he took it. It was cold as ice.

“Please, Micah . . . stay. Here. With me.”

Dalton shook his head, a softer look in his eyes.

“I wish I could, Veronika. I wish that very much. I’m not sure you wish it as much as you think you do.”

Podujevo,
she was thinking.
All those children, burned alive, the women dying in torment, their hair streaming flames, the flesh blackening, cooking off the bones . . .

Dalton watched her face for a time, seeing what was there and hating the burned man for showing it to her, even as he felt a strange combination of shame and burning resentment, some of it directed at Veronika. Judgment was easy. War was not.

“But if you stay, Veronika, there is something important you can do. Can you contact your friend Jürgen Stodt? See if he can find out anything about that name on the work file? Would you do that?”

“Yes, I will. Micah, I can help, even from here. I can contact Jürgen, and Nenia. Maybe I can find out what
Verwandtschaft
means. I’m so sorry, Micah. I wish I were more like you. But I’m not. It’s all just too . . . ugly.”

“I know,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “I know.”

A blood-warm, coal-black ocean, sounding like rolling thunder under the starless sky, was crashing into the sand beaches that ran for hundreds of miles along Florida’s Gulf Coast, every curving mile of beach-front lit up like a string of glowing pearls.

Tonight, in Panama City Beach, part of a two-hundred-mile-long coastal strip called the Redneck Riviera, the Spring Break crowd was out in full cry, supercharged on dope, meth, ecstasy, vodka coolers, beer, and raging hormones. Thousands and thousands of college kids were cruising back and forth along a meandering oceanside town full of run-down beach bars with names like Coyote Ugly and Dirty Dick’s, neon-trimmed nightclubs called The Big Easy, Shalimar, Pineapple Willy’s, bleached-out, wind-beaten fifties-era motels like Sea Haven, Malibu Shores, and The Flamingo, along with fifty or so tattoo parlors, T-shirt and bong shops, and, lately, rows and rows of brand-new pastel-colored condo towers.

The steamy, salt-scented air throbbed like a beaten drum with bass-heavy hip-hop, and, under that, the guttural snarl of Harleys, the muttering rumble of Escalades and Navigators and Cayennes, all of them stuffed to their moon roofs with red-faced yet pale-skinned tubular college boys with eyebrow piercings, trick facial hair, and shaved skulls, leaning out the windows of their SUVs and bellowing like hungry hogs at the ferret-faced little pop tarts who were stumbling along the sidewalks in stiletto heels and sprayed-on acid-colored sheath dresses. All the frat boys were getting for their efforts, as far as Nikki Turrin could make out, was a series of needle-tipped middle fingers. But, then, the night was still young.

In her rented Town Car, a gleaming black, turtle-shaped battering ram, Nikki was making approximately two miles an hour along Front Beach Road, trying to snake her way through the milling crowds and the migraine-inducing noise, her hands gripped tight on the padded steering wheel, nervously watching the neon lights playing like gasoline flames across the polished hood, the soundproof interior of the car vibrating to the massive bass beat coming from a black Jetta running alongside.

Nikki was also trying to avoid making eye contact with three beer-gutted and very drunk frat boys in baggy T-shirts on the other side of her tinted side window. They were close enough to the window that Nikki could only see the printing on two of their tees: DOES THIS SHIRT MAKE MY DICK LOOK TOO BIG? and I’M SORRY, YOU’LL HAVE TO BUY ME ANOTHER BEER BECAUSE YOU’RE STILL BUTT UGLY.

 

The boys were trying to get her to roll down the glass and relate and had started thumping on the roof with their fists, the better to emphasize their unique personal charms. Since she had flown into Panama City Airport as Beatrice Gandolfo and was therefore without her company-issued SIG and her NSA badge, she was about to resort to a needle-tipped middle finger of her own when the interior of her car lit up with blue-and-red flickering lights, and she heard the
whoop-whoop
of a police siren.

She stopped in the middle of the road and watched as three uniformed patrol cops—two hard-bodied black guys shaped like artillery shells and a tall, rangy blond woman in a flak vest—bulled into the hog-boy contingent, herding them off the road and out onto the beach dunes, jerking the beer cans out of their hands while backing them up against a hurricane fence.

The blond cop—by her bars, a captain—turned to Nikki, the cop’s face a blend of controlled fury and concern. She came over and leaned down to knock on Nikki’s driver’s-side window.

As Nikki got the window down, the heat, the noise, and the smell of Panama City Beach—old sweat, fresh urine, sea salt, marijuana, and spilled beer—came rolling in like a wave, along with the cop’s personal scent, a pleasant mixture of cigarette smoke and some sort of citrus-based cologne. The cop had wide-spaced light brown eyes, a turned-up nose, and the ruddy complexion of a surfer. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the din. Her accent was soft and had a lilting cadence, something in it of the Old Dominion.

“Sorry about that, miss. Piss-drunk little peckerwoods. My men will sort ’em out. You okay in there?”

“I am now,” said Nikki, smiling. “Thank you, Captain.”

The cop patted the window’s sill a moment, seeing Nikki’s luggage in the backseat, her laptop case beside it, and then giving Nikki a long, appraising look. “You don’t look one little bit like these pestilential Spring Breakers, miss.”

“No. Stupid of me. I should have phoned ahead.”

“You didn’t know about Spring Break?”

“No, believe it or not. Actually, I’m here on business. I’m looking for place called the Bali Hai Motel. I think it’s on Front Beach Road?”

The cop’s face changed, her smile slipping sideways.

“The ‘Bali Hai’? You sure about the name?”

“Yes,” said Nikki, shuffling through her purse for the note. She found it, tugged it out. “One-six-three-oh-one Front Beach Road. Panama City Beach.”

“Are you
staying
there, miss?”

“No. I’m supposed to meet someone there. Business.”

“Business? At the Bali Hai? During Spring Break?”

That was an excellent question, and one Nikki was having a hard time working out herself. In the end, she had simply wanted to get this meeting over with, so she had pushed ahead, never thinking about the lurid saturnalia she was going to step into down here.

“Yes. I guess I didn’t think that through, did I?”

The cop looked at Nikki’s clothes: a gauzy cotton sundress, light green, with a delicate pattern of interlaced golden flowers. A thin gold chain around her neck, complete with a tiny gold crucifix. Gold earrings with jade stones. Her olive skin was already deeply tanned, her long auburn hair pulled back in a shining wave behind her ears. The cop’s smile went away entirely.

“Miss . . . Look, can you pull over for a second? There’s a parking lot up there beside The Purple Haze. Please.”

The
please
sounded a little imperious to Nikki’s ear, but she did what the cop asked. The captain went back to her cruiser, killed the light bar, and followed Nikki’s Town Car into a sandy parking lot behind a shuttered tiki bar with a CLOSED DUE TO LIQUOR VIOLATIONS sign on the doors. The cop parked the black-and-white, got out, locked it, and came around to the passenger side, opened it, and leaned into the car.

“Mind if I sit in with you for a second, miss? My AC’s shot, and I’m about to boil.”

Nikki, puzzled but unwilling to argue, nodded. The cop got inside with a leathery creak from her equipment belt, sighing as she got herself arranged. She took off her uniform cap and set it on her knee, staring out at the crowds moving past them. Nikki had the air-conditioning up on FULL, and the cop, her face moist and her hair a little damp, leaned into the flow of cool air for a moment, her eyes closed. Then she sat back and looked across at Nikki.

“Have I done something wrong, Captain?”

The cop shook her head.

“Nope. This is a rental, right? From the airport? You just flew in, am I right?”

“Yes, but—”

“You don’t know Panama City Beach at all, do you?”

“I’ve never been here before, ma’am.”

“ ’Ma’am’? You an Army brat? In the service yourself ?”

“No—”

“Don’t mean to pry, but could I see some ID, miss?”

Nikki didn’t bother asking why. She just handed it over. The cop flipped through the license, the rental policy, seemed satisfied, handed it back.

“Okay. I guess I should let you know, Miss Gandolfo, you are not the type of woman who should be meeting
anyone
at the Bali Hai. What that place is, miss, is pretty much an outlaw-biker criminal enterprise retailing STDs and fitted out with the skankiest skanks who ever snorted up a line of coke. It’s simply the very worst damned rat’s-ass, running-sore, piss-tank maggot ranch between here and Pensacola, and that’s saying quite a bit. We keep a cruiser outside there twenty-four/seven. I can’t imagine—”

Her radio erupted in a burst of cross talk. She reached up, said something into her shoulder mike in a low tone, and turned the radio down. She stuck out her hand, and Nikki shook it.

“My name’s Marcy Cannon, by the way, Miss Gandolfo. Pleased ta meetcha. So, what I’m saying is, I can’t imagine why you would want to be going to the Bali Hai Motel for
any
reason. Not even business. You mind saying what sorta
business
brings you down here, ’specially during Hell Week?”

“With respect, Captain, is it important that I tell you?”

The cop shook her head, her Sam Browne creaking with the motion. She gave Nikki a broad, gleaming smile.

“Nope. None of my damned business, Miss Gandolfo. I’m a big old nosey parker, for sure. But I’m also the top kick in these parts. This is my beach, and I run it like an old-time marshal. Think of me as Wyatt Earp. So, I’m just askin’ politely, now, because if you really gotta go to the Bali Hai I’m gonna send one of my guys along to see you get out of there okay, and I’d like him to know if the trip is worth his bitter salt tears.”

Nikki said nothing for a time.

The cop, completely at ease with silence, said the same.

“Okay,” said Nikki, “I’m on a research project for a professor at the University of Virginia—”

“No way! That’s
my
old school. What’s your cadre?”

Nikki was ready for that.

“The Purple Shadows.”

The cop shook her head, going back into the memory.

“I was with the Tilkas. Lots of fun. You take a degree?”