Read The Orpheus Deception Online
Authors: David Stone
The Orpheus Deception (12 page)
“Mandy Pownall,” he said, looking up at Brancati.
“Who is
this
Mandy Pownall?” asked Cora, with a definite tone. Both men heard it and exchanged wary glances.
this
Mandy Pownall?” asked Cora, with a definite tone. Both men heard it and exchanged wary glances.
“She is a business associate,” said Dalton.
Cora made a face, her expression closing down.
“One of
them?”
them?”
“Mandy was Porter Naumann’s assistant at London Station.”
“She is with the CIA, then?”
“Yes,” cut in Brancati. “Galan has her on a list.”
Dalton, sensing something in Brancati’s tone, looked at the man.
“Are you arresting her?”
Brancati shook his head.
“For Milan? No. She’s not on
that
list. But she is CIA.”
that
list. But she is CIA.”
Cora watched the exchange, sensing what was not being spoken.
“She is from London? Why is she here?”
Dalton was looking at the picture. The last time he had seen her was in his Agency flat on Wilton Crescent in Belgravia. She was showing him a file, and in that file was the reason Porter Naumann had been killed, and Dalton’s response to what Mandy Pownall had shown him was why he was on the run in Venice right now.
“She’s trailing a wing,” he said, finally. Brancati grunted, his attention pulling away. He shaded his eyes, staring out at the lagoon.
“How long has that boat been out there?”
7
Piazza San Marco, Venice
A pale winter sun was just touching the roof of the Museo Civico on the western end of the square when Mandy Pownall looked up to see a short gnomelike figure standing in the last of the sunlight, a stunted, slope-shouldered shadow man, oddly bent, as if he had been injured and had healed badly. She set her wineglass down and looked up at him, waiting.
He bowed—a short, sharp bob—and spoke.
“Signorina Pownall?”
His accent was strange, a hoarse, croaking rasp that sounded like a cross between Italian and Hebrew. Mandy smiled brightly up at him.
“Mr. Galan. How delightful. I was hoping you’d come.
Do
sit.” Galan ducked his head, enfolded in an embarrassed air that did not affect his eyes, which were as hard and sharp as a crow’s. He took the chair opposite and folded his ruined hands in a clasp under the table, as if to spare Mandy the sight of them. She picked up the iced decanter and filled the second glass that had already been waiting there. Galan watched her fill it, thinking that she looked a little like Cora Vasari—the English version; chilly, composed, a fine, aristocratic face. She did not have Cora’s tropical fire. But she had
presence,
a strong, sensual air. There were delicate lines around her eyes and her lips; her neck was long, and, beneath the dry, crepey skin, there were blue veins showing. Mandy felt his oddly carnal appraisal, as she refilled her own glass. She sat back, raised hers in a toast.
Do
sit.” Galan ducked his head, enfolded in an embarrassed air that did not affect his eyes, which were as hard and sharp as a crow’s. He took the chair opposite and folded his ruined hands in a clasp under the table, as if to spare Mandy the sight of them. She picked up the iced decanter and filled the second glass that had already been waiting there. Galan watched her fill it, thinking that she looked a little like Cora Vasari—the English version; chilly, composed, a fine, aristocratic face. She did not have Cora’s tropical fire. But she had
presence,
a strong, sensual air. There were delicate lines around her eyes and her lips; her neck was long, and, beneath the dry, crepey skin, there were blue veins showing. Mandy felt his oddly carnal appraisal, as she refilled her own glass. She sat back, raised hers in a toast.
“To Venice,” she said, and they both drank.
Galan set his glass down with regret—he loved cold Chablis far too much, especially when in the company of an elegant woman. He leaned back in his chair, said nothing more, and seemed content to wait out the remainder of the afternoon with the same serene calm. Mandy smiled to herself. She had been
brought up to speed
on Issadore Galan’s formidable talents by Stennis Corso, their Italian specialist at London Station.
brought up to speed
on Issadore Galan’s formidable talents by Stennis Corso, their Italian specialist at London Station.
“Well, to business,” she said, setting her glass aside.
“Of course,” he said, smiling.
“We’d like to talk to Micah Dalton.”
“We . . . ?”
“I’m here for Deacon Cather.”
Galan closed his eyes slowly and opened them, a reptilian tic. He said nothing at all, but he seemed to gather into himself, as if coiling.
“Please convey to Mr. Cather my best regards. We met once, at Camp David. During President Reagan’s era. I found him most . . . professional.”
“I will. About Mr. Dalton . . .”
Galan was shaking his head. It turned smoothly, as if on an oiled pivot, but his eyes stayed locked on Mandy’s pale pink face.
“Regretfully, it is my sad duty to inform you . . .”
Mandy was reaching into her purse. Galan’s voice trailed off, as he watched her retrieve a small silver Canon camera. She held it out to Galan, who accepted it with the fingertips of his left hand, as if he expected it to carry an electric charge.
“It’s a digital,” said Mandy. “Open the stored pictures section.”
He did, and found that he was looking at a photograph of a man’s face. He shaded the LCD screen from the sidelong sun, and set a pair of thin, gold-wire-framed glasses onto his nose, squinting at the screen.
“Yes. This is a photograph of Mr. Dalton.”
“Taken at your morgue, so we gather.”
“Yes. It is a picture of him that we used to identify his body.”
“So, he’s dead, then?”
“As I said . . . regretfully. We did all that could be—”
“Are you at all curious as to how we came by this picture?”
Galan shrugged his shoulders, lifted his clawlike hands skyward in a ghastly imitation of divine supplication. He smiled—showed his tiny yellow teeth, at any rate—although he did not return the camera.
“You are with Clandestine. The CIA. I suppose you have your ways.”
Mandy offered him some more Chablis—he accepted it—and shone upon him a smile he would remember for days afterward, in the silent rooms of his gloomy little backstreet villa near the Tempio Israelitico in the Ghetto.
“This picture was circulated internally. Within the Carabinieri. It was not shared with the municipal police. Or with any other of your agencies.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
“We had it analyzed by our forensic people in Maidenhill. It was compared with file photos of Micah Dalton, and they came to the intriguing conclusion that the subject of this photo was not quite reliably dead at the time the shot was taken.”
Galan smiled, inclined his head, and lifted his eyebrows.
“Fascinating. A marvel. And how did they determine that?”
“As it was explained to me, when a man dies, at the moment that his body begins to undergo the various processes, there are immediate changes in such things as muscle tissue, skin cells. Nothing that would be obvious to an untrained observer but present nevertheless.”
“For example?”
Mandy gently took the Canon back and slipped it into her purse before she replied. She lifted her glass, placed her red lips against it, looking at Galan over the rim, her eyes bright, her expression one of teasing enjoyment.
“You’re going to make me run through the whole silly thing, Mr. Galan. How boring.”
“Call me Issadore.”
“Issadore. You may call me Mandy.”
“Mandy, then. You were about to explain . . .”
“The muscles of the face begin to tighten. They lose flexion. Density. Cohesiveness. The expression changes. Life, as an animating force, an organizing principle, releases the tissues, drifts away, and the face assumes what we call the death mask, a certain rigidity. This is why morticians have such a difficult time making the dead look as if they were merely asleep. Our people did a graphic overlay—some computer thingy they have; bores me to tears—but somehow it showed them that Dalton’s face in this photograph is not the face of a Micah Dalton in real death. Actually, they feel he may have been heavily sedated, drugged. But he was not dead when this photo was taken.”
Galan said nothing. His hooded eyes studied the glass of Chablis before him with perfect stillness, as if he were a wizened Buddha contemplating a disappointing lotus. Mandy reached out and pinged the side of his glass with the lacquered nail of her index finger.
“Really, Issadore, love. We
know
he’s not dead. You might want to ask me why we think you’ll admit this eventually.”
know
he’s not dead. You might want to ask me why we think you’ll admit this eventually.”
Galan lifted his eyes and fixed her with a look. Mandy resisted the reflexive desire to sit back, to disengage from the force of that glare. Galan ran a dry, white-tipped tongue over his lower lip, took another sip of his Chablis. A flight of pigeons fluttered overhead, making a noise like flags snapping in a strong wind. The sun was now well below the roofline, and there was a damp chill rising from the old stones of the square. If the day had been mid-September, the evening was late November.
“It was resented, you know?” he said, after a silence.
“What was . . . resented?”
“The taking of Omar. In Milan. In 2003. It was arrogant. A slap in our faces. Collectively. We—I personally—resented it. As you would resent it if we came to”—here he searched for a place-name that would convey the American heartland—“to Topeka. Came to
Topeka,
and took a man off your street there? In front of your own people?”
Topeka,
and took a man off your street there? In front of your own people?”
Mandy held his look.
“We—London—had nothing to do with that. You know that.”
Galan was gracious enough not to pull the lie apart, there and then. Perhaps, he thought, Anthony Crane, the calculating Oxford aristocrat who was the current chief of London Station, had not told Mandy Pownall about their involvement in the operation. If he had not, there may be other things she did not know. For example, that many of the CIA’s Clandestine operators involved in the rendition had actually used their own personal credit cards to book hotel rooms in Milan. Why? To get the air miles. And that two of these people had come directly from the London office. This was an extraordinary breach of tradecraft, but the CIA had been a shadow of its former self ever since Clinton had ordered a thirty percent reduction in its overseas staff. Clinton had effectively gutted the CIA, just in time for September 11. Now Galan had respect only for a few members of the Clandestine Services, and most of them were ex-Special Forces. Like Dalton.
“As you say,” he said, simply, letting the entire complicated issue pass, “I am curious as to why you think we would
admit
that your Mr. Dalton is not dead.”
admit
that your Mr. Dalton is not dead.”
“The camera I gave you is a digital camera.”
“So I observed.”
“Why would I bring the camera when I could simply have brought a printout of the photograph?”
“I’m sure you will enlighten me.”
“The photo is a digital photo. It contains an encrypted text file. Like a digital watermark. We call it steganographic encoding. The boffins at Maidenhill decrypted it and found a random-number identifier. In effect, the file hidden in the digital matrix of this shot could be only one of two things.”
Galan lifted his glass, turning it in the dying light. Mandy took the glass from him, refilled it, continued talking.
“It could be a message. Or it could be a marker. Maidenhill ran some clever little program on it and determined that there was no message. So, a marker, then, something that made the shot unique.”
“Not at all,” said Galan, smiling. “We sent many copies of the shot—”
“You sent many
versions
of the shot. To all of your departments. In the expectation that one of the versions would be leaked.”
versions
of the shot. To all of your departments. In the expectation that one of the versions would be leaked.”
“Leaked?”
“Issadore, dear man. You have a mole.”
Galan said nothing.
Mandy snorted, pulled out a gold cigarette case and a heavy, well-worn Cartier lighter. She snapped the cigarette case open and held it out to Galan, a small golden tray full of long, slender cigarettes in deep turquoise, with dull-gold filters. They were ridiculous, and Galan was delighted to accept one. Mandy leaned forward and lit it for him, and then took one for herself, leaning back into the chair and regarding him with a grimly amused expression. She turned her head to one side, showing Galan the side of her neck and one delicate pink ear, and blew out a cloud of blue smoke. It coiled in the last of the light. The sound of a cello being tuned floated out onto the square from somewhere inside the dark-wooded cloisters of Florian’s.
“We will give you your mole, Issadore.”
“And in return?”
“Micah Dalton.”
Galan inhaled the cigarette, savoring it, took it from his mouth and held it on the tabletop between two crooked fingers heavily stained with nicotine. He shook his head, as if he were feeling genuine regret.
“Even if this . . . speculation . . . were founded on anything but the fertile imagination of your Mr. Crane at London Station, my chief will never agree to such a bargain. Even for a dead man.”
“We are prepared to show you an expression of our good faith.”
“In what form?”
“You know a man named Stefan Groz?”
“Of course. A Serbian businessman.”
“This digital shot was e-mailed to him through a local server. At just after midnight last night. We monitored the transmission—”
“One message in a
million?
A very lucky break?”
million?
A very lucky break?”
Galan was fully aware of the Agency’s latest program, targeting Internet cafés all over Europe. Agency personnel would simply circulate through hundreds of different Internet cafés and in each one they’d download an e-mail-monitoring program called Digital Network Intelligence. The Americans were probably monitoring Internet cafés all over Europe and the Middle East. Again, Galan had no reasonto betray this knowledge to Mandy Pownall. So he let that pass as well.
Other books
The Wind City by Summer Wigmore
Something Suspicious in Sask by Dayle Gaetz
Brooklyn Sinners 3 -A Sinner Born by Avril Ashton
Anything for Profit 2: Nothing to Lose by Floyd, Justin Amen
Chasing The Moon by Loribelle Hunt
The Fifth Civilization: A Novel by Peter Bingham-Pankratz
Veiled Threat by Alice Loweecey
Encore Worthy: a Mountains & Men prequel novella by R.C. Martin
Live and Let Die by Bianca Sloane
Her Tattooed Savior (New Adult Wrestling Erotic Romance) by Storm, Selena