Read The Orpheus Deception Online
Authors: David Stone
The Orpheus Deception (42 page)
Dalton glanced out the windshield, saw a crescent moon like a Saracen blade, glittering gold through great rents in the speeding clouds.
He nodded toward it.
“There you go, Ray,” he said. “We’re racing with the moon.”
Fyke stared at it for a while. It seemed to be the only thing in the sky moving as fast as they were. He shook his head in wonder, and smiled.
“By God, Mikey,” he said, “so we are.”
33
The National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland
Nikki Turrin found the AD of RA leaning on the railing that ran around the roof deck of the main building. The sun was going down and the lights of Crypto City were coming on. The sky was the color of a tropical drink, and just as cold. The AD of RA was staring out at the setting sun, and the dying light lay upon his seared and scalded skin, softening the rills and fissures and casting a golden aura around the man. His one good eye gleamed in the light. He was leaning with his hands folded, his forearms resting on the railing. A chilly wind was playing in the bare branches of the trees in the park, and dry leaves were making a skittering-insect sound, as they blew across the pavement far below. He was wearing a dark gray suit, an open shirt under that, and he had a scarf thrown around his neck, a gold-and-navy-blue-striped scarf that looked like cashmere and must have been given to him by a woman. He didn’t hear—or didn’t seem to hear—Nikki’s soft step as she came over the decking to stand beside him.
“Is this a bad time, sir? You told me to get in touch as soon as I had something for you?”
The AD of RA turned to look at her, seeming to come from a very unhappy, if not a desolate, place but warming as soon as he saw her face. The dying light was wonderful for her, giving her a satiny glow, and calling up a pale green fire deep in her brown eyes. She felt his look.
“Not at all, Nikki. Don’t tell me you have something already?”
“I do, sir. The villa is in Muggia, a small fishing port across the harbor from Trieste. The precise coordinates are”—she flipped a page on her clipboard and traced the row of figures—“45 degrees 36 minutes 12 seconds north longitude and 13 degrees 45 minutes 34 seconds east latitude. We have an aerial picture of it here—”
Nikki flipped a page and showed him an aerial image extracted from Google Earth.
“It’s the house with the blue patch right in the middle, sir. That’s the pool. The address is 2654 Salina Muggia Vecchia. Muggia is right on the Italian border with Slovenia. The house was registered in the name—”
Nikki realized the AD of RA was staring at her.
“Google Earth! Sixty gazillion dollars’ worth of top secret, state-of-the-art mainframes, and every conceivable database, and a whole city filled with the best data miners in the country, and you found this on
Google Earth?”
Google Earth?”
“No, sir. I found it on a vacation-homes-for-sale site for Friuli. Then I looked it up on Google Earth.”
“Vacation homes?”
“Yes, sir. I know you wanted me to do a detailed, computerized scan of all the NIMA maps, but I thought, at first, you know, seeing that everybody in the pool had died, it seemed to me that a house like that wouldn’t go empty for long—”
“They can still sell a house where nine people died
in the pool!”
in the pool!”
“Yes, sir. I know that. But in the part of the world we were lookingat, well, people die all the time, in every way you can think of, and it just seemed to me that I could save a lot of time by—”
“Nikki. I don’t suppose I could kiss you?”
“If you want to, sir, but, in the meantime—”
The AD of RA hugged her tight and kissed her hard on the left cheek, a chaste, fatherly smack. She blushed a little but found the experience interesting. His scarred cheek felt like alligator hide, and, God knows, he was terrible to look at, but he smelled of cigarettes and spicy cologne and green apple shampoo, and he was
wonderfully
strong. He released her, beaming.
wonderfully
strong. He released her, beaming.
“God. A
real estate
listing. Deep in the heart of Crypto City, and the kid looks it up on fucking Google. Your generation kills me.”
real estate
listing. Deep in the heart of Crypto City, and the kid looks it up on fucking Google. Your generation kills me.”
“Thank you, sir. The house was registered in the name of Zonia Sluja Korol, but we did a search of the utilities bills—”
“How did you do that?”
“Actually, I didn’t. I had the real estate agent who had the listing do it for me. I told her I was thinking of buying it—”
“Did you give your name?”
“Yes I did. She recognized it—”
“She recognized your name?”
“Not my name personally, sir. The family. My people are from Friuli—there are lots of Turrins around the Friuli region—so it helped that she knew my name, because she was very willing to go the extra mile to sell it to someone from the area, which really paid off. I wanted to know what the utilities and taxes were. She faxed me all the most recent bills—”
“I don’t
fucking
believe this—”
fucking
believe this—”
“With respect, sir, maybe now that I’ve let you kiss me on the cheek you could stop saying
fucking
all the time. It undermines your authority—”
fucking
all the time. It undermines your authority—”
“I certainly will. And I apologize. Nikki, you
are
quite a package—”
are
quite a package—”
“Thank you, sir. And the bills were all in her name—Zonia Korol— but there was one bill for an appraisal of the property in the spring of last year, and the appraiser’s bill was paid by a check from the personal account of Dzilbar Kerk—I have a facsimile of it, and it shows a signature that matches the handwriting we had on file of Dzilbar Kerk—the house was appraised at one-point-nine million euros at that time, and it is now listed for one-point-one million—”
“Dropped a bit. The deaths?”
“I would think so. I asked her that—her name is Antonia Baretto—and she was pretty straightforward about it. She said there had been some kind of party at the villa, and the caterer had apparently served some oysters that had been contaminated by a bacteria called vibrio. It causes terrible lesions on the skin—similar to necrotizing fasciitis, the flesh-eating disease. At any rate, everybody died—something like nine people. Antonia said the corpses were all cremated to kill the bacteria. And the Carabinieri charged the caterer, who was conveniently a Slovenian—everybody around Trieste hates the Slovenians, unless they marry them. Anyway, they charged him with criminal negligence causing death, and, before they could bring him to trial, the caterer, claiming he was innocent, ran away, back to his home in Slovenia, where he couldn’t be extradited. So then everybody
knew
he was guilty, because everybody knows only the guilty run. That was pretty much the end of it.”
knew
he was guilty, because everybody knows only the guilty run. That was pretty much the end of it.”
“Nobody mourned the dead girls?”
“The people who lived there were pretty much hated by the people of Muggia and San Rocco. It’s just a small fishing village, maybe five thousand families, kind of sleepy, and these people were loud, vulgar boors, throwing money around and coming on to the daughters and having skanky hookers fly in from Slovenia and generally being utterly and completely obnoxious. So, with God’s help, they all died, and everybody was quite okay with that.”
“Cold.”
“Italians can be quite pragmatic. So now the villa is up for sale—”
“For sale by whom?”
“A corporation registered in Budva, sir. Called ZYKLON.”
“Any idea who controls the corporation?”
“No, sir. The company seems to be based in Budva, but all we have are numbers. East of the Adriatic, the records of corporate ownership are pretty sketchy. I guess they like it that way. Sorry I couldn’t get more info—”
“She told you quite a bit, for a real estate agent.”
“She wants to make the sale. And she doesn’t like Montenegrins any better than she likes Slovenians. She wants an Italian to buy it. Even better, I’m Friuliani. So, she’s really doing the full-court press.”
“Budva? I don’t know it.”
“Budva is a coastal port not far from Sveti Stefan, which is a sort of luxury resort island connected to the mainland by this narrow causeway. It used to be big in the sixties and then it went into a decline. It’s being rebuilt, turned into a hyperluxury resort by this same ZYKLON real estate outfit.”
“And now ZYKLON has the villa up for sale too?”
“Yes, sir.”
The AD of RA fell silent, staring out at the lights coming on all over Crypto City. The wind was rising, and there was a biting edge to it now. He realized that Nikki was shivering. He whipped off his cashmere scarf and draped it around her shoulders, in spite of her protests. It smelled of his cologne and was warm from his body. She pulled it in tight and smiled at him in a way that was not completely chaste, but his mind was in Italy.
“This agent . . . sounds like you made a personal connection with her.”
“She’s a professional, and I liked her.”
“When you called her, did you use one of our own lines?”
Nikki gave him a look.
“No, sir. And I didn’t use my cell either. I drove to a Starbucks in Annapolis Junction. My friend runs it. She let me use her office phone. She’s also taking messages for me if Antonia calls back.”
“We do have masked lines.”
“I know. But Miss Chandler said you were really busy, so I would have had to ask Mr. Oakland to set one up, and he’s not too happy with me right now. And he would have wanted to know why I needed one.”
“Good. Of course. Nice work, Nikki. How’s your Italian?”
“Pretty good, sir,” she said, her heart blipping.
“Nikki, I know this is a leap. Would you consider going to Muggia? See the property? If you can, bag some residue samples around the pool? FedEx them back for Forensics? The HazMat people will show you how to do it safely. If we could get a sample of this substance, then we’d have the muscle to make things happen. Force State and the CIA to take preemptive action.”
“Sir, I’m completely ready to go, but I’m a Monitor. Not a—”
“I know. Not a Field Agent. Here’s the thing, Nikki. I’ve officially stopped trusting the CIA. Normally, I’d hand what you’ve developed over to them and let them find sixteen different ways to . . . screw it up. But nine people died horrible deaths in that pool, and one of them connects to the deaths of all those Biopreparat people, and the villa is owned by a corporation with the same name as Zyklon B, which was the nerve gas the Nazis used to kill fifteen million people in their concentration camps. Something’s in the wind. I can smell it. If I trusted the CIA not to fuck—not to mess it up, I’d hand it to them. But I don’t. But if the NSA or the DIA does it
officially,
we’ll need all kinds of formal liaison with the Italians, and that means more risk of blowing the security. You worked for the DA’s office back in Pittsburgh. You know what evidence is. You’re in and you’re out in less than a week. Would you be ready to do that? Come in quiet, just a potential buyer? If anything looks weird, if anybody gets curious, you split. Would you be ready to do that? And stop calling me
sir,
will you?”
officially,
we’ll need all kinds of formal liaison with the Italians, and that means more risk of blowing the security. You worked for the DA’s office back in Pittsburgh. You know what evidence is. You’re in and you’re out in less than a week. Would you be ready to do that? Come in quiet, just a potential buyer? If anything looks weird, if anybody gets curious, you split. Would you be ready to do that? And stop calling me
sir,
will you?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll try. But will the Director let me do this?”
“Good question. Let’s go find out.”
“Us? Me? Now?”
“Yeah. Us. You. Now.”
34
The Indian Ocean, fifteen miles off the coast of Somalia
Their world was a giant brass bowl overturned on a copper plate that stretched away in every direction, merging with a purely theoretical sky in a band of dirty yellow haze. The sun hung low and burned smoky red behind a veil of ochre cloud. And inside this brass-and-copper chamber lived the
heat,
a blast furnace of heat that scorched their lungs when they inhaled it and seared their lips when they breathed it back out. The thick air was dense with diesel fumes and the salty stink of sea rot, and what little breeze there was flapped in from the west, carrying on its scaly back the fetid reek of some squalid coastal village just below the horizon line. At the wheel, Vigo Majiic watched the compass and the empty ocean all around and felt himself a condemned man doomed to spend the rest of eternity trying to reach a mythical green shore that was always receding into a burning and inconceivable immensity. Emil Tarc, a self-contained man not overly troubled by a hostile universe or febrile intimations of mortality, was out on the flying bridge, staring through a pair of binoculars at two, low sharklike boats that a few minutes ago had been only twin brown smudges out on the western horizon but had now approached close enough for him to make out the faces of the men in the boats and the weapons that they carried.
heat,
a blast furnace of heat that scorched their lungs when they inhaled it and seared their lips when they breathed it back out. The thick air was dense with diesel fumes and the salty stink of sea rot, and what little breeze there was flapped in from the west, carrying on its scaly back the fetid reek of some squalid coastal village just below the horizon line. At the wheel, Vigo Majiic watched the compass and the empty ocean all around and felt himself a condemned man doomed to spend the rest of eternity trying to reach a mythical green shore that was always receding into a burning and inconceivable immensity. Emil Tarc, a self-contained man not overly troubled by a hostile universe or febrile intimations of mortality, was out on the flying bridge, staring through a pair of binoculars at two, low sharklike boats that a few minutes ago had been only twin brown smudges out on the western horizon but had now approached close enough for him to make out the faces of the men in the boats and the weapons that they carried.
“I don’t believe this,” he said, more to himself than anyone else, but Majiic heard him through the headset communications gear they were wearing. He stared through the windshield at the incoming boats.
“What are they?” he asked over the radio.
“Two fast-attack boats, both got twin Mercs the size of cart horses, doing maybe forty knots. Damn. Look at the spray flying around their cutwaters—”
“Customs? Military?”
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