The Venetian Judgment Read online

  Neither man looked very happy about this, but neither was saying much about it, Kissmyass because he was a snake-mean bastard and Numbnuts because he had a mouthful of bloody teeth.

  Dalton, sipping carefully at his cup of steaming black coffee, had gone through all the items Levka had taken from the men and had learned a few useful things, starting with the fact that Kissmyass was not actually Kissmyass’s real name, although he would forever be Kissmyass to Micah Dalton. His real name was Anatoly Viktor Bakunin, and, according to his international driver’s license, he was born in Krasnodar, Russia, in 1962. His profession was listed as “shipping facilitator.”

  He had a bank card issued by Credit Suisse, and a credit card from there, and five hundred odd in greasy euros. In his back pocket, Levka had found a wad of crumpled receipts from various bars and hotels in and around Aksaray, Istanbul’s red-light district, and one for a bar called the Double Eagle, in the Ukrainian port town of Kerch. The other man, the younger one, had an ID in the name of Vassily Kishmayev.

  Kerch, Dalton recalled, was where Dobri Levka and his late uncle Gavel Kuldic had first been approached by the Gray Man. Therefore, Dalton surmised, being a highly trained CIA officer, that this receipt was a clue. To exactly what, he wasn’t sure.

  He looked over at Kissmyass, who was watching Dalton go through his things with a level of adrenalized resentment so extreme that Dalton feared for the poor man’s endocrine system.

  “Hey, Kissmyass, says here you were at a bar in Kerch on the nineteenth of December. Place called the Double Eagle. What were you doing there? I mean, aside from getting utterly gored on vodka gimlets?”

  Kissmyass said something in Russian that cannot be accurately translated into English, Russian colloquialisms being a bountiful trove indeed for the dedicated cultural etymologist. Dalton, not being a dedicated cultural etymologist, stood up and dumped his entire cup of steaming hot coffee on Kissmyass’s genitalia, with gratifying results. Next to him, Numbnuts writhed away from the splatter, his brown eyes bugged out, and so much raw horror in his young face that Dalton actually felt a twinge of pity for him. Up in the pilothouse, Levka, wincing, turned the volume up another notch on his techno-arabesk.

  Dalton walked back over to the stove, refilled his cup, sat down again, and looked over at his captives with a thoughtful expression on his rough-cut face, his lips thinned, a pale witch light in his almost colorless eyes.

  “Know what I think, lads? I think I could spend all bloody day scalding your naughty bits and chopping off your extremities and all I’d get for my troubles would be a pair of perfectly good Allan Edmonds ruined and a galley covered in spit and spatter. You two are a pair of grunts, is what I think. I used to be a grunt, so I know whereof I speak. You’re muscle—not very good muscle—and taking you down was like me winning the hundred-yard dash at the Special Olympics. Not much of a challenge, is what I’m trying to say. Anyway, grunts you are and grunts you shall remain. Question is, what do I do with you? Do I dump you into the Bosphorus, wrapped in heavy chains, like your friend Vladimir? Or do I ask you, as officers and gentlemen, to hand over your sabers and retire from the field of honor, swearing sacred oaths to fight no more forever? It’s a quandary, isn’t it? Kissmyass, you following any of this?”

  Silence from Kissmyass.

  He and Numbnuts exchanged a look.

  Finally, Numbnuts spoke, apparently for both of them.

  “Fuck you, Yank. You do what you have to do.”

  “So that’s it? Death and glory, and let’s hear it for Mother Russia?”

  Both men shut their mouths, let their heads fall back against the cupboard, and closed their eyes. A little blood was running down Numbnuts’s cheek, and although Dalton had reset and bandaged Kissmyass’s fractured thumb, the fact remained that he was right now leaning back on it and it had to hurt like hell. They may not have been great contenders but they weren’t whiners, not by a long shot. Tough little buggers.

  Dalton was quiet for a while, considering the two men sitting on the floor. Dalton did not know it, since he had never seen it, but he was wearing his killing face. Most of those who had seen it were dead. Mandy Pownall had glimpsed it only once and had never forgotten it. The simple truth was that Dalton was bone tired of killing second-stringers and hapless grunts.

  But there was no way he could just . . . release them.

  He stood up, looked down at the two men, and pulled out his Beretta. Hearing him move, they opened their eyes, went a little pale but said nothing.

  Dalton checked out the backstop behind their heads, not wanting to blow a round into a fuel line or out through the hull. He decided to put the round straight down through the tops of their heads, let the center mass take the freight. He moved over to Kissmyass, put the muzzle hard up against the dome of his skull.

  “Hold on there, buttercup—”

  He spun around on a heel and saw Porter Naumann lounging on the leather couch across from the galley counter looking quite pleased with himself. He was wearing blue jeans, deck shoes without socks, and a shell-pink crewneck cashmere sweater. At least, it looked like cashmere.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” said Dalton, ignoring the stares of the two men on the galley floor. This was understandable, since, from their perspective, he was talking to a couch.

  Naumann shrugged, offered a lopsided grin.

  “Didn’t I say I was going to run right along to the next time? Well, this is the next time. Got here just in time too.”

  “Porter, I’m always delighted to see you, you know that—”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not staying. I just wanted to chat for a bit.”

  “You can see I’m sort of busy?”

  Naumann leaned out and took a look at the men, shook his head.

  “I see that. You planning to shoot them, are you?”

  “I was toying with the idea.”

  “But you’re not happy about it, are you?”

  “All due respect, Porter, this is not the time for some of your half-baked postmortem psychoanalytical heebie-jeebies. How about we—”

  “I just don’t think you should cap a guy if your heart isn’t in it.”

  “You didn’t say that in Venice, and I’d just capped five guys.”

  “Three. Zorin, you ripped his head off. And Galan popped Belajic.”

  “Okay, three—”

  “Remember what Zorin said while you were doing it?”

  “No, I was a little distracted at the time, what with trying to not get killed and all.”

  “He said, ‘Aspetta, Krokodil . . . per Dio . . . Aspetta.’”

  “Okay, maybe he did.”

  “That means ‘Wait, Crocodile . . . for God’s sake . . . Wait.’ He was begging you not to kill him. Begging. That didn’t bother you? A teensy?”

  Dalton shook his head.

  “Not at the time. If I lost that fight, was he gonna give me a break?”

  Naumann shrugged, running a hand across the flat of his stomach, stroking the cashmere in an idle way.

  “Maybe it didn’t bug you then. Seems to be bugging you now. If you were okay with it, you’d have lit up these mooks ten minutes ago—”

  “These mooks a special case, are they? Massacre of the innocents? Calling for divine intervention?”

  Naumann looked over at the men again, considering.

  “Nah, I’ve read their files. They’re rotten rotters through and through. World is a better place, you cap them off. If they live through this, so I hear, they go on to perform pernicious prodigies of predaceous persiflage—”

  “What the hell is ‘persiflage’?”

  “Hey, I’m freewheeling here. Point is, instead of capping them off, you’re standing around blowing the gaff with a dead man. Think about it.”

  “For chrissakes, Porter—”

  Naumann lifted his hands, palms out, smiled gently at him.

  “All I’m saying, Micah . . . All I’m saying is, it’s your call. See you.”
r />   And he was gone. Dalton stood blinking at the couch for a while and then turned around and looked down at the prisoners, both of whom were staring up at him, their expressions a mixture of dread and puzzlement.

  “How about you two? Anything to add?”

  It seemed, from their continued silence, that they did not.

  Dalton stared at them for a while, then tucked the Beretta away and left the galley. He found Levka up in the pilot cabin, listening to very loud music and staring fixedly out at the Bosphorus. They were within a half mile of the Bosphorus Bridge and even at that distance the air was full of the roar and rumble and clang of the traffic streaming across it. Levka sat up straighter, offered Dalton one of his own Sobranies.

  Dalton took it, lit up, and stood for a moment watching the river traffic churning and chugging all around them, the tree-filled eastern shoreline gliding by on their starboard side, the little island with the Maiden’s Tower on it slipping sternward.

  The Subito’s long, sleek bow rose and fell gracefully on the crosscutting chop. Sunlight sparkled on the blue water. Gulls and terns and herons and pelicans wheeled and shrieked in the chilly air. The stench and burn of diesel fuel thickened as they got closer to the smoky haze drifting down from the bridge deck.

  “You hear from Mandy yet?” he asked.

  “Yes, boss. She have house all ready. Maybe half mile up from Sumahan Hotel. Big white house with pillars all along the dock, she says. Red-tiled roof. Green awnings. She say we can’t miss it.”

  “Got a boathouse big enough for this barge?”

  “Boss, is no barge, is like swan. Best boat in whole world!”

  “I apologize. Big enough, anyway?”

  “Yes, sir, sixty feet. Has big electric door comes down.”

  Dalton nodded, thinking about the two men down in the galley.

  Levka seemed to follow his thoughts.

  “So, what to do with Kissmyass and Numbnuts, yes?”

  Dalton said nothing, looking out at the hills on the western shore, at a pale blue glimmer of glass far to the north.

  “Look,” said Levka, a bit nervously, “no offense, I can . . . take care of this . . . for you.”

  Dalton looked at him and came to a decision.

  “This Dizayn Tower, it’s right by that Diamond up there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “There’s a wharf just ahead here, on the port side. See it?”

  Levka shaded his eyes from the glare off the water, squinted.

  “Yes, by Dolmabahçe Palace.”

  “Put me ashore there.”

  Levka looked uneasy.

  “You gonna go to Dizayn Tower all by yourself?”

  “Yes. I want you to take the boat up to wherever Mandy is, get it out of sight for a while, and go over this boat, see if you can find anything on it that connects to the night this Lujac was supposed to have died. I don’t know what it might be, but Mandy’s done that kind of thing before.”

  “We wait there for you?”

  “No. I don’t know what I’m gonna find at this building. Maybe nothing. But Kissmyass had a bar bill on him from the Double Eagle. You know it?”

  “Yes. Is wharf bar in Kerch. Uncle Gavel and me, we drink there.”

  “And Kerch is where you ran into the Gray Man.”

  “So we going to Kerch?”

  “Yes, but not by chopper. It’s not safe to go back there. The Turks will have found it by now—”

  “Is true, boss. On radio just now, they saying no chopper found off Bandirma. Big search now for UN Blackhawk stolen from Santorini.”

  “Yeah? Well, that settles it. We’ll take the boat.”

  “Boss, is five hundred miles across Black Sea to Kerch! Also icy cold as trout nipples. Lots of open water too. No place to hide.”

  “No help for it. Have the boat stocked and fueled and ready to go by midafternoon. I’ll call you and tell you where to pick me up.”

  “And if no call?”

  “Then Miss Pownall’s in charge. You’re working for her. Do whatever she tells you. And you keep her safe, Levka. Keep her safe. You follow?”

  Levka met his eyes, held his look without wavering.

  “I follow. I keep her safe no matter what. Word of soldier. How about those guys down there?”

  Dalton turned and squared up with him.

  “You see that little island back there?” he asked, pointing at the Maiden’s Tower, its lights beginning to glow against the twilit coast behind it. Levka nodded, looking puzzled.

  “Sure. Nothing there but old tower. Nobody goes there in winter. All shut down.”

  “After you drop me off, take them back down there, uncuff them and drop them off. As they are, butt naked. No papers, no ID, no cash. Turks aren’t going to like a couple of naked Russians flitting about one of their tourist sites. It’ll take them a week to sort it all out. By then, we’ll be long gone.”

  Levka shook his head, looked uneasy.

  “This will be problem, boss. If they talk good, be back in business pretty quick. Know all about us. Should do the smart thing.”

  “I didn’t shoot you. Was that a smart thing?”

  Levka took that in.

  “No. You not shoot Levka. Maybe we gonna hire these guys too?”

  Dalton shook his head.

  “No. But I’m not gonna kill them either.”

  Levka said nothing and had an odd look in his eyes.

  “Know what, Levka?”

  “Yes, boss,” he said, not making eye contact.

  “Maybe we better drop these guys off first and then you put me on shore, okay?”

  Levka looked hurt.

  “You do not trust Levka?”

  “I do not trust Levka not to tip these boys over the side as soon as I’m off the boat.”

  Levka looked over at Dalton, gave him a sudden smile.

  “Okeydokey, boss. No offense taken.”

  SANTORINI, THE AEGEAN SEA

  SANTORINI FIELD

  Until he actually met her, Captain Sofouli had not been very happy about having an American official, especially a female American official, dropped smack into the middle of the worst professional embarrassment he’d had since Costa-Gavras had based a character in Z on him. But when Nikki Turrin had climbed down the ladder of the Hellenic Air Force Super Puma that had brought her from Athens to Santorini and he had gotten a look at her in the cold light of the winter sun, he had a change of heart.

  He had been expecting an angular and bloodless young careerist such as he had seen on American newsreels, striding purposefully down the corridors of power in D.C. in pencil skirts and blouses, firing along on sensible heels, their faces as sharp as Chippewa hatchets. This was not at all what stepped out of the hatchway of the Super Puma.

  Sofouli watched with profound masculine appreciation as a supple and shapely young auburn-haired woman wearing a long tan trench coat over a navy skirt, a crisp white blouse, and outrageous blue high heels, emerged from the chopper, assisted by two very attentive young flyers, who escorted her down the steps and walked on either side of her across the windswept tarmac, reluctantly surrendering Miss Nikki Turrin, of the American NSA, to the care of Captain Sofouli, Prefect of Tourist Police, Santorini Division, with crisp salutes.

  Nikki, shaking Sofouli’s hand, liked what she saw: a large, weather-beaten older man, trim in a black police uniform, with deep creases around his eyes and mouth, intelligent black eyes with a blue spark deep inside them, and salt-and-pepper mustache setting off strong white teeth, as he smiled down at her and offered his hand, which was strong yet gentle.

  “I am Captain Sofouli. Welcome to Santorini, Miss Turrin.”

  “Thank you,” said Nikki, pausing to take in the shimmering plain of the Aegean stretched out below the cliffs, dazzling in the setting sun, and the jagged rocks of the islands across the lagoon.

  Sofouli turned and indicated the jumble of white buildings scattered across the clifftops to the west, pointing to
a low, white Art Deco hotel a few miles distant.

  “That is the Porto Fira Suites. We found the body on the rocks below it. Would you like to see the room they stayed in?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  She ended up in Sofouli’s black Benz, the middle car in a convoy that followed the switchback highway as it climbed up toward the western edge of the caldera wall. As they bounced over the rocky terrain, Sofouli, sitting beside Nikki and enjoying her scent immensely, managed to stay professional, filling her in on what had taken place so far.

  “It seems that one of my men, a Sergeant Keraklis, was corrupt. I make no excuse for myself. I made the mistake of thinking myself in an easy posting, and I have paid for my lack of attention. The man in the water—you may see the body if you wish, although I do not recommend it—was a man named Gavel Kuldic. He was identified by Interpol as a Croatian criminal, born in Legrad, near the Hungarian border. There was another man with him, named Dobri Levka, also from Legrad. They were what you could call ‘soldiers of fortune, ’ I guess, taking whatever work they could find. For reasons I do not yet know, my sergeant—”

  “Keraklis?”

  “Yes, Zeno Keraklis. For some reason, he brought these men to my island, telling me they were cousins. To my shame, I did not check this. The night in question, after my interview with the two Americans . . . I am right that they were with your Central Intelligence Agency?”

  “I can’t confirm that at all, Captain Sofouli. Our two agencies are not on good terms with each other lately—”

  “Yet here you are, from the National Security Agency yourself. You will admit that there is a connection at least with American intelligence. I was a part of that world myself, Miss Turrin, many years ago. I know how these things work. I know you would not be here at all if this did not touch upon American interests at the highest level. Please do not . . . condescend.”

  Nikki considered the man for a while, thinking this through.

  “Okay, I won’t condescend. Personally, I think these two individuals, whose names I cannot confirm—”