The Skorpion Directive

by David Stone

  “See this? This is sort of our work order for your surveillance. It’s in German. But these numbers here, in the upper left corner . . . ?”

  Dalton looked, saw a series of letters and numbers:UDamt4-OSE-fall: auswärtig: 53W87923>KS:NF:VERWANDTSCHAFT

  “Most of this is pretty simple. The first letters stand for us, Überwachungs-Dienst. I belong to ‘amt’ 4, office number 4. You know what OSE stands for, and ‘fall’ means ‘case.’ Now, this part is something you hardly ever see. ‘Auswärtig’ means ‘foreign.’ I have no idea why that’s in here. The numbers and letters refer to the region we’ll be working in. ‘Fifty-three W’ means central Wein, Vienna—specifically, the Ring District—and then the file is ‘87923.’ That’s how we bill it to whoever it is we’re contracted out to. We work more or less on assignment, sometimes for the national police, sometimes the Army, even for the tax people. The OSE rents us out, in a way, so we don’t always know why we’re following the target, you see. Now, this part . . . The little arrowhead, means a cooperating agency that helped us locate you. ‘KS’ means the ‘Cousins.’ That’s Interpol. ‘NF’ stands for ‘Nenia Faschi,’ my über-boss. She runs amt 4, and her initials indicate that she is the supervising officer for this file. This is the part I don’t get. ‘Verwandtschaft.’ It means ‘related.’ Like a family.”

  “You’ve never seen it before?”

  “No. I was going to run a search on it in the Abteilung— the OSE department-code registry, but I’m afraid if I do that—”

  “Your bosses will know, and you’ll have to explain why you were doing it in the middle of the night. So don’t do it. Can you print this page out?”

  “Yes,” she said, punching a button on the keyboard. A printer on a chair beside her began to zip out a single-spaced sheet. When it was done, she handed it to Dalton, and he considered the word:VERWANDTSCHAFT

  “The family? You’ve never seen this reference before? Could it mean something like a related agency? Don’t you call Interpol the Cousins?”

  Veronika shook her head, watching his face.

  “That’s an in-house term. We’d never use that in an official record. We always use the Agency’s official designation—mainly to protect ourselves if whoever they are decide they want to deny using us.”

  Dalton shook his head, trying to clear it. His mind was clouded, and he was having trouble seeing the screen.

  She sat back in the chair, reached out and closed the lid down on the laptop.

  “Micah, look at you. You can hardly sit up.”

  He looked up at her. With the laptop closed, her face was lit only by the amber glow from the lamp.

  “I can’t seem to think straight. Maybe some more coffee.”

  “Then you will be wide awake and stupid. Then what?”

  He sat up straighter, looked around the room as if were surprised to find himself here.

  “Look, I really have to go. Your boss finds out I was here—”

  He stood up, looked down at her, weaving slightly.

  “And where will you go?”

  “Remember? I left a car at the Westbahnhof train station.”

  “The trolleys are shut down. You will walk five kilometers?”

  “Okay. I’ll find a local pensione.”

  She stood up, faced him.

  “No. You will sleep here,” she said, her tone final.

  He looked over, a little longingly, at the big brocaded couch under the row of black-and-white nudes.

  “Just a couple of hours? If you have a blanket.”

  She reached up and touched the bullet scar on his right cheekbone with her fingertip, traced a line down to the corner of his mouth, ran her hand around his neck and pulled him close enough to breathe him in, to smell her own shampoo in his damp hair.

  “Are you scarred everywhere, Micah?” she asked softly.

  “Yes,” he said, with a slight smile. “I’ve been told I look like a battle map of Antietam.”

  “You are horrible to look at, then, if you are naked?”

  “Yes. Hideous.”

  She kissed him very lightly on the corner of his mouth.

  “Then we will turn off the lights.”

  DALTON, waking abruptly, stared up into the blackness above him, his heart pounding in his chest. Beside him Veronika was deep in sleep, one arm on his chest, her hand resting on his pectoral muscle, her cheek on his shoulder, her body pressed up against him, her left leg lying across his belly. In the east, on the far side of the Danube, the sky was showing a faint milky light, but in the city it was fully dark. Vienna was—here in the northern suburbs anyway—as black and silent as a crypt.

  Dalton lay there in the night, his eyes open, feeling her slow, steady breathing and the frantic hammering of his heart in his chest. He looked at the window, where heavy silk drapes kept the room in darkness. A warm yellow light, almost too faint to register on his retinas, was showing around the edges of the drapes, the glow from the streetlamp just outside her window, which was why she had such heavy drapes in the first place. The interior of the flat was black and utterly still. In a moment, he realized what had awakened him.

  The refrigerator in her kitchen was old and tired. The compressor wheezed and rattled and rumbled and groaned when it wasn’t clicking off and on. But all that had stopped. He looked to his left, and saw that the moon-faced clock on the night table was dark. The power was out.

  If the power had gone out, why was the streetlamp still on?

  Of course. A separate system.

  If the power had gone out, would her security box have switched over to battery power?

  And, if it had, wouldn’t it be beeping?

  He had a similar system in his hotel room in Venice, and it always beeped when the power was off. Another kind of system? A different setting on the same system?

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  Get up and see.

  He gently eased Veronika’s arm off his chest. She stirred, said something in German he could not understand, rolled over and burrowed into her pillow, went right back to sleep. He slipped out of the bed and stood in the room, his heart rate slowing as he forced himself to be still, to listen.

  The skin on his neck and along his shoulders was cold and crawling. The blackness seemed to press against his eyes. In his throat, an artery was throbbing. His personal sidearm, a SIG-Sauer P226, was in a locked compartment in the trunk of his Mercedes, and the Mercedes was in the Auto-Park at the Westbahnhof.

  Veronika’s H&K pistol.

  Where the hell had she put it?

  He had no idea. An unforgivable lapse of tradecraft, and being dead-bone tired was no excuse. Maybe it was in her night table.

  He pulled on his slacks, came around the end of the bed, keeping his left hand on the bedroom wall, his eyes slowly adjusting. The door to her bedroom was wide open, a blacker rectangle in the dark.

  He was reaching for the night table when he heard a faint noise. It came from the living room and sounded like someone swallowing, someone with a dry throat. There was someone in the outer room.

  He got the drawer open. No pistol.

  He waited a moment, letting his eyes adjust, and then stepped soundlessly out into the dining area. Here, the light from the streetlamp cast a glow through the curtains.

  There was a shape standing in the entrance hall, a large man in a sweater, jeans, gloved hands, with no face at all, just two narrow slits where his eyes should have been and two ovals where his nostrils gaped open, like the snout of a pig, and a slash of a mouth. A mask?

  The man closed in, blindingly fast, a ripple of blurred motion as he rushed at Dalton, and he went into the air—literally—and aimed a vicious kick-boxing strike at Dalton’s head.

  Dalton blocked the blow, staggering under the force of it, and caught the man’s leg by the ankle, shifting his weight to deliver a blade kick to the man’s exposed groin. And once again the man seemed to turn to smoke and water, literally spinning in midair, a blurring mo
tion in the half-light. There was a blur to Dalton’s left, and something rock hard struck the side of Dalton’s head. He reeled back, half stunned, his vision blurring. But instead of closing in for the kill, the man dropped into a crouch and backed farther away into the living area, his eye slits fixed on Dalton’s face.

  There he set himself in a defensive stance, clearly waiting for Dalton to reengage as if this were some sort of formal martial-arts contest. Dalton took a breath, shook his head and shoulders, and began to move toward the man. At that moment, Dalton sensed a quick movement behind him. Turning his head, he saw a small gray shape running toward the bedroom. A second man, going for Veronika. Dalton took two steps after him, a very bad idea. Somehow the man—Dalton had tagged him “Smoke”—covered the distance between them in a blur and delivered three rapid knuckle strikes, two to Dalton’s right kidney and one to the back of his skull. Dalton’s head nearly came off his neck, and a red fog clouded his vision. Fighting a wave of nausea and vertigo, he went down on one knee, rolled onto his left hip, and did an ankle-level leg sweep that knocked the big man’s feet out from under him.

  The man went down hard, slamming onto his back. Dalton was on him, three rapid strikes, twice to the throat and vicious knuckles into the man’s left eye. Smoke grunted in pain, his breath chuffing out. From the bedroom came an agonized shriek, cut suddenly short. Smoke arched his body violently—he was unbelievably strong—smashed a knee into the side of Dalton’s head, broke free, rolled away, was up on one knee and starting to rise. Dalton stepped in fast and kicked him in the face, giving it everything he had. Smoke’s head snapped back, and blood flew from his open mouth. He rocked backward under the force of the kick, turned it into a shoulder roll, and vaulted to his feet again, as lithe as a panther, his feet wide apart, his body half turned, poised, rooted, ready. In the light Dalton could see the man’s misshapen mouth open, revealing strong white teeth, covered in blood. The man was trying to smile.

  The . . . thing . . . The fucking Orc . . . was actually smiling at Dalton, his scarred lips twisting into a grimace.

  “Come on, Slick,” he said, in English, a Slavic accent, the words slurring, his voice strained and hoarse. “You fight like fucking girl.”

  The only thing on Dalton’s mind was Veronika. This man had to go down now. Smoke did a head fake to Dalton’s right, a rippling blur as he pivoted into another kick strike at Dalton’s head. It literally brushed Dalton’s left ear as he dodged backward. The man landed on the balls of his feet, feinted right, cut left, and abruptly broke off the fight.

  He turned his back, raced to the balcony, butted the door open, vaulted the rail, and dropped soundlessly into the night.

  Dalton spun around and headed for the bedroom, his heart a cold stone in his chest. The room was black, but he heard rapid breathing coming from the bathroom. And something else too. A high-pitched, whistling sound.

  “Veronika?”

  Her voice, coming from the bathroom:

  “Micah. In here.”

  Dalton jumped over the bed, got to the bathroom door. A match flared, and he saw Veronika in its glow lighting a candle on the edge of the bath. She was naked, her breasts and belly, her right hand and forearm all sheeted in blood. On the floor in front of her lay the second man, a razor-edged leaf-bladed punching knife on the bath mat beside him. The man was on his back, writhing and making a barely audible keening sound, like a teakettle whistling. His legs were kicking convulsively, and a wet stain was spreading over the crotch of his jeans.

  He had both of his hands up to his face. They were gripping the plastic handle of something that had been shoved very deep into the socket of his left eye. The handle had a long coiled electric cord attached to it. It took Dalton a moment or two to realize what it was. A curling iron.

  Dalton stepped around the man on the floor, went to Veronika, knelt, looked at her hands, her body, afraid of what he would find.

  “Did he cut you?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s all his blood. I heard something thumping. I thought it was dream. I couldn’t feel you. Then I knew it wasn’t a dream. I keep the pistol in the bathroom, like a panic room. I am thinking I would lock the door, get the pistol. He was too fast, right on my back. He kicked the door open. I reached for whatever, caught that, and went at him. I could not see him, but I could smell him. It punched into his eye. I hope I kill him.”

  Dalton looked at the man, writhing and gasping on the mat.

  “I think you have. It just hasn’t gotten through to him yet. They cut your power off. Do you know where the switch is?”

  “There’s a panel in the janitor’s closet, at the top of the stairs.”

  “Where’s the pistol?”

  She reached into the cabinet, pulled it out from under the towels.

  “Can you handle him?” he said.

  She nodded, doing an automatic press check to see if there was a round in the chamber. Then she leveled it at the man on the floor. Her hand wasn’t shaking at all, and the look on her face was a killing look.

  “I’ll be back.”

  A minute passed.

  Veronika watched the ugly little man suffering in utter horror, the reality of what she had done sinking in.

  Then her bedroom light came on, and Dalton was back at the door, with her bathrobe in his hands.

  He switched on the bathroom light, covered her, held her for a moment. They stood and watched the man’s agony. The keening sound he had been making slowed, finally stopped, and now there was just the thump and rustle of his boots on the floor and his ragged breathing, shallow, gurgling and rasping in his throat.

  Dalton knelt down, pulled the man’s bloody hands off the butt of the curling iron. White skin, a black growth of beard, in his gasping mouth a row of tiny yellow teeth. His body, although badly formed, with signs of chronic malnutrition, was bony and hard as a tree root. His one open eye was a shiny black pebble. His lips were turning blue, and his mouth was filling up with blood. Sensing Dalton nearby, he reached out and grabbed him by the hand, his bony fingers sinking into Dalton’s skin. His lips moved, but only a whisper came out “Haldokló?”

  “He asks if he is dying,” said Veronika. “Is he dying?”

  “Yes,” said Dalton. “What language is it?”

  “I think it’s Hungarian.”

  “Can you ask him who sent him?”

  “Ki küldött?”

  The man jerked at the sound of her question and then became still. Only the slow throbbing of a vein in his forehead indicated that he was still alive. Dalton touched the end of the plastic handle, held it for a time, feeling the pulse of the man’s brain in the handle.

  “Mi a neved?” said Veronika. “I ask him what his name is.”

  The bloody mouth opened.

  “Kurva. Tisztatalan.”

  “He says I am whore. And unclean. I think he is Muslim.”

  Dalton picked up one end of the electric cord, handed it to Veronika.

  “Plug it in.”

  Veronika, realizing what Dalton was proposing, shook her head, her eyes widening. Dalton got up and did it for her. After a few moments, a wisp of smoke began to curl up around the handle of the rod protruding from the man’s bloody eye socket.

  The smoke was acrid and reeked of scorching flesh, burning brains, human fat cooking off. His chest began to shudder, and his mouth opened in a rictus of pain, but no sound came out other than a dry croak. Dalton leaned down and spoke into the man’s ear, words that Veronika could not hear, a silky whisper. The man began to shake uncontrollably. Dalton sat back on his heels and watched the man for a time, his face set and cold.

  “What’s your name?” he barked at the man. “Tell me, and it stops.”

  The man found his voice.

  “Yusef. Akhmediar, Yusef.”

  Dalton looked at Veronika, pointed to the cable. Veronika unplugged it, her face paper white, her expression full of horror.

  “Who sent you?”

  Yusef shook hi
s head, his jaw tightening.

  Dalton reached for the plug again. Yusef must have sensed the motion because he tried to speak.

  “Ut . . . a . . . zók. Uta . . . zók.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “I don’t know. The Wanderer? The Traveler? The Tramp?”

  Yusef’s chest shuddered twice, and then he stopped breathing. Dalton reached out and touched the handle. The man was dead.

  Dalton stood up, his legs shaking a little. A row of bullet wounds that looked like cigarette burns rode up the left side of his chest. He had a surgical scar on the lower part of his abdomen, about sixteen inches long, and still a little red-looking. Veronika looked at Dalton, taking him in. He was, in a way, terrible to look at, just as he had said, his flesh was like a cave pictograph telling of ancient battles.

  “You said something I couldn’t hear. And then he starts to talk. What did you say?”

  “I said that that he was Muslim, that he was dying, and that if he did not speak I’d soak his corpse in pig’s blood and bury him with a dead dog to keep him company. It would mean he’d be defiled and could not enter Paradise.”

  “God. Such people, the Muslims. Are you all right?”

  “There were two. That’s why I couldn’t help you.”

  “I know. I could hear.”

  He didn’t say what was in growing his mind, that the point of the attack was to kill her. Yusef had waited until the bigger man, the fighter, had drawn Dalton out of the bedroom. The fighter had held back, even when Dalton was dazed and vulnerable. It was a fight Dalton could easily have lost. The man was good, maybe better than Dalton. But he suspected that Veronika was the real target.

  “Where is the other one? Is he dead?”

  “No. He jumped. From your balcony.”

  “I’m on the fifth floor. Maybe he died.”

  Dalton doubted it. Fighting him had been like getting caught in a printing press. The guy was six feet at least, much heavier than Dalton, and one hell of a lot stronger. Frighteningly fit. At the end of the fight, Smoke hadn’t even been breathing hard.