The Venetian Judgment Read online

  “Sent it? What? Mailed it?”

  She tapped the onboard computer.

  “Welcome to the age of the Internet, Micah. The Subito has a satellite-linked wireless connection. I sent the MPEG to Hank Brocius’s private e-mail address hours ago while you were on your way to blow up Sariyer—”

  “Why not his office one?”

  Mandy gave him a look.

  “If we’re looking for a mole, we have to assume that everything is compromised. Including the NSA’s internal e-mail system. Brocius maintains a hardened and encrypted e-mail connection under his own code name—”

  Dalton found himself staring up at her, a little slack-jawed.

  “Which you have?”

  “Pinky had it in his lockbox—”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “Along with half the state secrets of the Western powers, it seems. We’re going to have to do something about Pinky’s lockbox.”

  “You go right ahead. I’m sure Pinky would love to have you fiddle around with his lockbox. I also sent Brocius the details about Beyoglu Trading and the Russian Inter-whatever Board thingy and their address at Dizayn Tower in Istanbul. And what happened at the warehouse in Sariyer. And the phone number too. I told him to run everything through his databases and, basically, to hold up his end.”

  Dalton gave her back her own patented raised-eyebrow look.

  “The Russian Inter-whatever thingy?”

  “You know what I mean. Don’t be such a wanker.”

  Dalton looked a little sheepish, and then his face hardened up.

  “Did you tell him about Kerch?”

  “No. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do about that. And I didn’t want him stepping all over our end of this investigation. He’s got what he needs.”

  “Listen, Mandy, did you send all this to Cather too?”

  Mandy’s face lost its teasing glow.

  “No . . . not yet.”

  “Because . . . you still have doubts?”

  “Yes, I do. I mean, I still don’t think Deacon Cather’s a KGB mole, but until we can prove it I’d like to keep this between us. It looks as if the Russians are going all out to have an intercepted decryption altered, but we don’t know why. We don’t know who they’re trying to protect.”

  “We do know that there’s something in the cable they really don’t want us to read. If Mariah Vale is right, it’s something that might lead to a KGB mole somewhere inside the CIA—”

  “Inside American intelligence, anyway,” said Mandy. “What we don’t know is—”

  “Who’s on Mariah Vale’s short list. Other than Deacon Cather.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which is why you haven’t sent anything to Cather. Just in case he actually is the mole. I have no problem with that. It was a good decision.”

  “But now what should we do? I mean, here, right now, on the boat. Do we keep going, go to Kerch, or wherever this takes us?”

  They were both quiet for a time, feeling the rhythm of the sea, the soothing rumble of the ship’s engines, the rush and ripple of the waves curling back from the cutwater, the heavy rise and fall of the ship.

  “I think we push on, Mandy. You’ve given Brocius enough to stop this game on his end. All he has to do is take a good look at all his Glass Cutters and see which one has Kiki Lujac under her bed. But we can still take these Russians apart from our end. We broke up whatever Keraklis was doing. We took the Subito—you found that film—we torched their operation back in Istanbul, and now the survivors are on the run back to Kerch. We can follow that trawler, find the Gray Man, find out what that room in the warehouse in Sariyer was used for, maybe even blow the whole network out of the water. Hand the goddamned KGB their heads on a pike for a change. God knows, they’ve got it coming. We’ve taken it this far, Mandy. Let’s finish it.”

  Mandy poured herself some more coffee from the thermos, offered Dalton a refill. Ursa Major, the Big Bear, was just visible above the northern horizon, and there was a violet glimmer along the curve of the earth that might have been the aurora borealis. Or perhaps the lights of Yalta bouncing off mist high in the stratosphere. Mandy put the cup down, stared out at the sea for a time, working it through.

  “Yes,” she said, finally, “let’s finish it.”

  For a long time, they said nothing, since everything that could be said was already understood and what couldn’t be said was better left that way.

  After a while, Dalton switched the controls to Auto-Helm, an onboard computer linked to the navigation panel. Now the Subito would steer itself on the course he had already set. The GPS system was still monitoring the Shark, holding steady at two miles ahead, on a bearing directly for Kerch, the same course as theirs. He leaned back, stretching. His body felt as if it weighed three hundred pounds. His eyes were dry and burning.

  “You should get some sleep,” said Mandy. “There’s a big, soft bed in the master stateroom. You’ve been up for almost thirty-six hours straight. Why don’t you go have a shower, lie down for a while?”

  Dalton rubbed his face with his hands, looked out at the sea. The night had come down, a black vault, and all the stars were out, a shimmering field of cold clear diamonds, behind them the pink haze of the Milky Way. The reflection of the stars scintillated on the calm water all around. On the northern horizon, the lights of a freighter floated in a void between sea and sky. Directly ahead, the running lights of the Shark seemed to hang motionless in the middle of their windshield. In the northeast, looming massively along the farther shore of the Black Sea, was the invisible threat—almost the magnetic pull—of Russia itself, a rising threat in the opening years of the new century, much too close for comfort and drawing nearer with every mile under the keel.

  He turned away from it, now very aware of Mandy, standing quite close. She smelled of spice and coffee and cigarettes. She was standing so close, he could feel the warmth of her body, hear her steady breathing. Mandy was looking out at the sea, her face calm and still, an amber glow on her from the navigation screen. She was extraordinarily beautiful—poised, elegant, sensual—and much too close.

  And where was Cora?

  At her father’s villa on Capri, a thousand miles away, a place as closed to him as the iron gates of a convent. Mandy felt his mood changing and turned to look at him, a surprised smile opening up, her gray eyes shining:

  “Why, Micah, dear boy, I believe you’re weakening.”

  part three

  ISTANBUL

  SARIYER

  Nikki stayed well back from what was left of the warehouse, letting Sofouli deal with the Turkish cops. She had already gotten some sharp lessons in what the Turks expect from women. Her short skirt was offensive, she gathered, as was her blouse and her uncovered hair, and, as far as she could make out, her very presence here on the sacred soil of the homeland. Nikki, always sensitive to cultural nuance and Islamic male pride, had her BlackBerry out and was looking up the Turkish phrase for “Go fuck yourself.”

  Sofouli was standing in a circle of tan uniforms, speaking in a forceful rush of Turkish patois, with some Greek thrown in, to a tall, bent, dark-skinned man with a full white mustache and very sad brown eyes, the deep lines of his weather-beaten face seeming to melt around the cheekbones and run in channels down the side of his long, mournful countenance.

  The cop’s name, she gathered, was Melik Gul, and he was presented to her as the senior officer in charge of the Polis Merkezi, a team of experienced men who had jurisdiction over something the Turks were calling “Severe Crimes,” which, she could see, included shooting the stuffing out of a warehouse by the side of the Bosphorus and then setting it on fire.

  The firefighters were gathering up their gear now, rolling up reels of thick hose and sloshing through puddles of sooty water, some of the men staring at Nikki, their eyes white against the ash that covered the upper parts of their faces.

  The warehouse smelled of hot steel and cracked earth, and something else: roasted flesh, a t
hroat-catching reek that hung in the still air like a miasma. According to the fire chief, they had found three bodies in the ruins, all of them burned into twisted logs, hardly recognizable as human. They had been zipped into body bags and stacked in a coroner’s wagon, taken away for a forensic examination in the morning. Nikki, watching the men loading up their trucks and wagons, tried to read Micah Dalton’s mind in all of this.

  Because she was reasonably sure that this had something to do with Dalton—leaving a trail of dead men and flaming wrecks seemed to be a Dalton trademark—and she’d listened in as a couple of young boys who had been fishing in a runabout just off the wharf described the Sarişin Şeytan—Melik Gul translated this for Nikki, with a mournful sigh, as “Blond Satan”—who had almost shot them dead as he fired a very big gun into the back of a fishing boat. No, they hadn’t got the name. Nikki thought the kids had looked a little evasive when asked for particulars, but they were quite eloquent on the physical details of the Blond Satan. If it wasn’t Micah Dalton, then it was his evil twin racing up the Bosphorus like Sherman through Atlanta, leaving fear, fire, and ruin in his wake.

  Sofouli hadn’t missed the similarities either, and had taken Nikki aside after the boys had gone off to make a written statement, speaking softly to her but with some force, not unkindly, yet unwilling to be “handled” by the NSA.

  “This Blond Satan the boys speak of, this is your man, yes?”

  Nikki could hardly be evasive here, even if she wanted to, and Sofouli was her only friend in the vicinity. She had admitted that it was. For a few minutes, Sofouli pushed her hard on the man’s real identity, but she held firm on that point, saying only that, whoever he was, she and the NSA would dearly love to find him and have “a frank exchange of views,” as she put it.

  Sofouli had given her a wry smile and gone back to Melik Gul to work out some sort of investigative compromise. In the meantime, Nikki got on her BlackBerry, dialing up Hank Brocius in Crypto City. It was after midnight local time, which would make it around six in the afternoon in Maryland. The line buzzed a few times and then a woman’s voice answered: Alice Chandler’s, some tension in it, obvious even to Nikki.

  “Nikki, is that you?”

  “Yes, Alice. Is he there?”

  “No, he’s gone up to New York City. Took the shuttle to La Guardia. Is everything okay? Where are you?”

  “In Istanbul, Alice—”

  “Istanbul? I thought you were going to Greece?”

  “Yes, and now I’m in Istanbul. Should I try his cell?”

  “I already have, dear. There’s a huge storm in central New York State now. All the way from the Adirondacks down to Philadelphia. We’re starting to get some of it here. I think it’s done something to the cell service. Is there anything I can do?”

  Nikki thought it over.

  “Yes, there is. Can you do a corporate search for me?”

  “Of course. What do you need.”

  Nikki looked at the notes she had taken, what little she had been able to gather from the rapid cross talk among Sofouli, Melik Gul, and the fire marshal in charge of the site.

  “Okay, I’m at a place in Istanbul called Sariyer. It’s a fishing village on the Bosphorus, close to the Black Sea. There’s been a fire here, at a warehouse. The warehouse is leased to a company called Beyoglu Trading Consortium.” She spelled out Beyoglu, emphasizing the g since it was silent in Turkish. “The address is Suite 5500, Dizayn Tower.” She read out the rest of the address in military radio code. “In Istanbul. Got that?”

  Alice repeated it, calm now, all business.

  “I have. What do you need?”

  “Anything you can get. As soon as you can get it. And while you’re at it, do you have a way of seeing if any of our sister agencies made an inquiry about Beyoglu Trading?”

  “Yes, we share the same databases. There’d be a ‘Request Agency Source’ number. They keep track of subscribers pretty well, partly for the budget. What sort of time frame?”

  “Anytime in the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay, dear. I’ll get right on it. Are you going to call the AD of RA?”

  Nikki saw that the group was breaking up, Sofouli and Melik Gull now walking toward her talking softly.

  “No. But when you get the information, can you text it to me?”

  “I can. Look for it in a few minutes.”

  Nikki turned the BlackBerry to vibrate and put it back in her shoulder bag, straightening as the two men reached her, pulling her coat tight around her, partly because it was getting very cold and partly to cover her “infidel whore” wardrobe. She held the collar tight at her neck, the wind whipping her long auburn hair, her brown eyes wary in the light of the streetlamps. Mr. Gul, as he preferred to be called, spoke first, in fairly clear English.

  “Some questions I have for you, Miss Turrin. What interest has your agency in this matter?”

  “My interest falls under the protocols of international cooperation in criminal matters that your government agreed to in Alexandria last year.”

  Mr. Gul didn’t like the answer, his face drooping even more.

  “This is unresponsive. If you have information about what has taken place here—there are three people dead—then, in any interpretation of international law, I have a right to your information. I wait on it now.”

  Sofouli gave her a warning look but said nothing.

  Nikki knew she’d have to give him something if she didn’t want to be in a cop car and on her way to Atatürk Airport and the first plane back to the USA in about five minutes.

  “Captain Sofouli has told you about the two Americans who came to Santorini asking about a Montenegrin national named Kirik Lujac?”

  Gul nodded, his face becoming a little less morose.

  “He has,” said Gul. “We have looked into what is known about this man. He was reported dead a while back, according to Captain Sofouli, but now there is some basis for believing that this is not so. Am I correct?”

  “Yes. Both Captain Sofouli and I think that he may be alive.”

  “And your interest, miss, in Kirik Lujac’s health?”

  “We have some reason to believe he may have killed a woman in London.”

  “An American national?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would this not then be a matter for your Federal Bureau of Investigation? I do not recall the NSA as being a police agency?”

  “The woman killed was a retired employee of our agency. I have been asked by my superiors to assist in an internal investigation into her death.”

  Melik Gul was following her fast enough to get to the end of her thoughts before she did.

  “An investigation the results of which you are not yet ready to share with your brother agencies, am I right?”

  Nikki kept her balance.

  “Of course. Nor would you, Mr. Gul, until your work was complete. If my visit here can confirm that Kirik Lujac is dead, then I can go back to the States and leave you to your work.”

  Gul was silent for a time. Seabirds whirled above them, attracted by the reek of death, and the crowds gathered across the road, some of whom had brought their children out and were making a picnic out of the event.

  “A boat was stolen this afternoon,” said Gul, “out of a marina in the south. The Ataköy Marina. The boat was registered to the same firm that owns this warehouse. Beyoglu Trading. My people looked into the ownership and discovered that the boat had recently been bought from another entity. The entity was Kirik Lujac. The date of sale, according to information provided by Captain Sofouli, was a few days after Mr. Lujac’s body was found in the Aegean. I think it is reasonable to conclude that a man interested in the fate of Kirik Lujac—I speak of our Blond Satan—known to Captain Sofouli as Mr. Pearson and to you as . . . as a man I suspect you will not name. Setting that aside, I think it is safe to . . . imply?”

  “Infer.”

  “Yes, thank you. It is safe to infer that the boat was stolen by the mysterious
Blond Satan you will not name. I am so far okay with you?”

  “You are constructing a theory. So far, that’s all it is.”

  Gul bowed, an amused expression tugging briefly at his cheeks like someone behind a stage curtain pulling at the drapery. Nikki began to understand that she was running a real risk playing games with this man.

  “You will be interested to hear that this evening one of our patrol boats found two men hiding on monument island down at the far end of the strait, an island we call ‘Kiz Kulesi’ but the Europeans call the ‘Maiden’s Tower.’ The men had been stripped naked, all their belongings taken, and had been tortured as well. From their speech they were obviously Russians. We ran their photographs through our Intourist Visa program. They were identified as an Anatoly Viktor Bakunin, born in Krasnodar, Russia, and a Vassily Kishmayev, born in Smolensk. Each man had listed ‘shipping facilitator’ as his profession. Would you care to guess who their employer was? No? Well, I think it will not shock the observer if I tell you they were employed by Beyoglu Trading Consortium, the same firm that owns—used to own—this warehouse behind us.”

  “Did these two have any explanation for their situation?” asked Nikki genuinely puzzled. “Naked, tortured, and stranded on Maiden’s Island?”

  “They have said not one word to my people. Right now, they are in a military hospital being treated for hypothermia, burns to sensitive areas, and some dental injuries. When they are better, we will conduct a more vigorous interrogation. Now, as an investigator, I would like to ask you what you think should be our next line of inquiry?”

  Gul put a stress on investigator that wrapped it in suspicion and gathering hostility. Sofouli, unwilling to see Nikki harassed—he felt an affection for her that was almost but not quite fatherly—sent Nikki a warning glance, and turned to Gul.

  “Miss Turrin is here as an observer attached to my staff and as such falls under the protection of my service. She is, in effect, a Greek official here, with as much standing as I have. So I will answer your question for both of us. We should go immediately to the headquarters of this company and see what is to be—”