The Orpheus Deception

by David Stone

  In a while, the black hulk of the Mingo Dubai slipped away into the storm, until her running lights blinked out and he was lost in blackness, unable to see his hand in front of him. Above the roaring of the sea he could still hear the pounding of the tanker’s prop and the volcanic throb of her diesels: after a time, the noise faded, and then died away entirely and all Fitch could hear was the mutter of the cigarette boat’s engines and the wild wind howling over the South China Sea.

  2

  SINGAPORE DESK: XR266GT—EYES/DIAL

  Singapore Coast Guard confirms that a 500-foot tanker (MINGO DUBAI) disappeared from radar (presumed sunk) 6 miles off the Kepulauan Lingga Lighthouse after clearing the Strait of Malacca and entering the South China Sea. The vessel, registered in Belize to a numbered corporation (298767 CR) based in Mexico City, was en route to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, with 30,000 tons of caustic soda aboard. The prevailing conditions were gale-force winds and extremely heavy seas, and indications are that the vessel experienced a rogue wave that raised the stern and bow sections, causing the ship to break in two. No emergency message was received by Singapore Maritime Patrol, and a subsequent helicopter overflight observed extensive caustic spill in the water with attendant fish kill and three corpses that could not be recovered. The ocean depth in this part of the South China Sea is 3,000 feet. A sonar scan is pending the subsidence of the storm and the availability of a ship properly equipped. No lifeboats were observed from the flyover, and it is not known whether the vessel’s EPIRB beacon was not activated or malfunctioned upon immersion.

  Out of a crew of 28, composed of Malays, Dyaks, and Serbian sailors, only 1 man was pulled from the water, a British national serving as first mate aboard the MINGO DUBAI and carrying ID as one BRENDAN MICHAEL FITCH. FITCH reported to his rescuers that the ship did not in fact sink and was instead hijacked by crew members aided by unknown assaulters who boarded from a high-speed craft during the storm. This allegation cannot be confirmed, and is contradicted by the presence of the caustic soda spill and debris sightings. FITCH claimed to have overcome the pilot of the assault craft and taken possession of it, but, when found, was adrift on a section of fiberglass hull of unknown origins. It is the preliminary conclusion of the Singapore investigators that the MINGO DUBAI was sunk through rogue wave action that may have been exacerbated by the fact that FITCH, the Officer of the Watch at the time, was drunk at his station in the wheelhouse. FITCH was examined by a Coast Guard medic in the chopper en route to Singapore and was found to have a blood-alcohol level equal to the level of complete intoxication, according to Singaporean authorities. A gash in his rib cage that FITCH contended was a bullet wound was found to be inconclusive, since no round was discovered in the wound. FITCH was held, pending a full maritime inquiry by the Singapore Police, and local sources say he is being interrogated by Singaporean officials at a secure facility in an unknown location. This incident was tagged and forwarded to Langley HQ for further action by our staff at Singapore Sub-Station HALO because an intake body scan conducted by Singapore SID revealed an Agency tracing implant registered to a contract employee (6064-988C) of the Agency at LONDON STATION (seconded from the SAS) (real name RAYMOND PAGET FYKE—operational code IBIS) and was at the time of his disappearance in November of 2002 under a DETAIN / SEQUESTER / DO NOT INTERROGATE order filed with INTERPOL and related agencies, which raises the issue that the debriefing of IBIS by Singaporean Intelligence officers may constitute a serious security risk for the USA. MESSAGE ENDS.

  CLASSIFIED UMBRA DNC

  CLANDESTINE SERVICES

  EXECUTE/ADDENDUM re xr266gt EYES/DIAL

  Preliminary Humlnt received from agents on site in Singapore has been evaluated by this office and it has been concluded that the unilateral and unrestricted interrogation of IBIS by Singaporean SID agents or their official proxies is an unacceptable risk to national security.

  Therefore London Station, as the last station of active service for IBIS, will take such immediate action as is necessary to remedy the situation and neutralize the vulnerability by any means available and without restriction. Results only will be recorded. Zulu time initiates immediately. Operational Protocols appended:

  DIAL/EYES—DG/CS—CATHER

  3

  Kotor, Montenegro

  Branco Gospic, a heavy-bodied, slope-shouldered bull of a man with cold gray eyes and a bald skull distorted into a chestnut shape by a near-miss mortar round, was sitting stiffly upright—his bullet-pocked belly would tolerate no other position—on an iron bench on the pillared balcony of his villa overlooking the Montenegrin coastal village of Kotor. The ancient fortress spread itself out below him, a stirring prospect if the man had cared to care—which it was not in his nature to do—a sweeping view of a fjordlike, craggy coast, the huge slab-sided mountain walls rising up to meet the parapet of the medieval fortress on the peak, built by the Venetians in the years of their naval power to stem the northward tide of the Ottoman Turks. The great triangular fort overlooked a blade-shaped deepwater inlet filled with pleasure boats and trawlers, and out to the far west the slate-gray sea churned with shards of glassy light as the pale winter sun slid down into Italy on the far shore of the Adriatic.

  Two hundred feet beneath his balcony, a broad, stone-paved seawallstuck out into the water like the prow of a battleship. Although fall was dying in the air and the first snowflakes of winter were feathering the stones of Venice, on the eastern side of the Adriatic the evening was still just warm enough for the people of the old town to be out walking the seawall; pretty girls in Parisian dresses, gliding along on shell pink clouds of self-esteem, watched by roving packs of sharply dressed young men, sporting huge mustachios in the latest Serbian manner; sagging old men, burned out by the eternal ethnic wars, staring out to sea with glazed, dead eyes; feral children, running wild on the stones, calling out with harsh voices, their green kites trailing in the salt wind.

  Gospic, a tactical, self-directed man with no eye, and less time, for beauty of any sort, noticed none of this: his ferocious attention was fixed on the Sony digital camcorder he held in his large callused hands. A few feet away from him, three small boys were kneeling in a cluster around a large, gray-muzzled gundog with a withered hind leg. The ancient dog was lying on his right side, stretched out, one blind eye ringed in white, panting heavily. The boys were prodding the feeble dog with a wooden spoon and laughing. Like the wolfish sounds of the children down below them on the seawall, their laughter was harsh, cruel, taunting—the piping yelps of little jackals.

  Gospic found their laughter an annoying distraction and he would have kicked them away, or had one of his women do it, if it were not for the fact that one of them was the current sexual amusement of the man sitting beside him on the bench; a stiletto of a man with an air of dissipated elegance, blue-lipped, of indeterminate age, wearing a beautifully tailored gray silk suit. This man, Stefan Groz, a senior capo in the Serbian mafia that controlled most of Montenegro, was also watching the little LCD screen on the Sony camcorder, where a video was playing.

  In the video was a view of a large, private swimming pool set out on a terrace overlooking a tree-filled valley with olive groves in the middle distance and what may have been a tall, wrought-iron gate down at the bottom of a long, curving drive paved in terra-cotta stones. The villa next to the pool was built and furnished in a style its owners mistakenly imagined to be Château French, opulent and deeply vulgar, and reeking of criminal money, the way these villas do, from Baghdad to Boulder. A party of some sort seemed to be in progress, several hard, hoggish, heavily tattooed men in far-too-tiny Speedo swimsuits, swilling some clear liquid from glass bottles—perhaps vodka or slivovitz—and many younger women, wearing little more than uneven tans and frightened smiles, were gathered around the pool.

  In the video, their voices could be heard, braying and drunk, but the sound was poor, and the film appeared to have been taken by a concealed camera. The men urged the women to drink from the same bottles, looked
resentful until they did. Everybody was getting loose and crazy. A woman was pushed into the water by one of the men, an immensely fat, towering, bald-headed hairy goon with a large tattoo entirely covering his pork-white chest—an American eagle with its wings outspread and pierced straight through the breast by a lance bearing the flag of the Kosovo Liberation Army—this man was then shoved by a drunken friend, and soon they were all in the water, laughing, splashing. The half-naked women were being roughly handled, but they endured it. A young woman in the deep end began to cough. She looked up, and a thin ribbon of mucus was running from her nostrils. A girlfriend moved to help her, but she became distracted by the sight of a man who was holding his hand over his eyes. This man—the bald-headed goon with the dying American Eagle tattoo— began to convulse and vomit. The camera never wavered; within six minutes, all the young women were floating lifeless in the water, and only two of the stronger men had managed to climb out of the pool. There they died, in apparent agony, on the white marble. The video ended, the screen glowing blue. Gospic leaned back against the bench and closed the screen with a snap.

  His face was flushed and his breathing a little fast. Groz closed his hooded eyes and wiped his wet lips with a lace handkerchief. Both men sat and stared, unseeing, out at the narrow fjord beneath the balcony.

  Nothing was said for a few moments. The boys had the dog pinned against the stone pillars now, and it was baring its old brown teeth at them, a humming vibrato deep in its barrel chest.

  “Well, well,” said Groz. “That was Dzilbar Kerk, wasn’t it? DoDo?”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “I thought I recognized him. Of course, that ridiculous tattoo.”

  “I was with him when he had it done. In Trieste. It took eleven hours. He drank five bottles of Stolichnaya, one after the other.”

  “He was always a drinker. The other big one, that had to be JoJo. It was always the two of them, DoDo and JoJo.”

  “Yes. Josef Perchak.”

  “I know I shouldn’t ask, but why them? Of all people?”

  “Two birds. I wanted to show you what could be done. And it was necessary for Kerk and Perchak to be retired from the project.”

  “But they were good men. Hard to replace. And the villa . . . it cost a lot of money. I’ve been there myself. What will you do with it?”

  “Nothing. It’s yours, if you want it. Larissa will send you the papers. Why them? Because they were embarrassing. The way they were living there—the people of the town hated them—they were behaving like drunken clowns, throwing euros around, making scenes in the cafés. Sooner or later, the police would start wondering about them. It was better to be safe, and, as I said, I needed a demonstration.”

  “Well, it’s very impressive, Branco. But . . . too fast . . .”

  “It was in an undiluted form. Contained. In the—”

  “This . . . substance . . . once it is released, how is it to be contained? It will multiply, will it not? Exponentially?”

  “No. It is neutralized by salt water.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Korshunov was. And Langford confirmed it.”

  “Both are dead,” said the man in gray silk, his tone mildly accusing.

  “All are dead,” grunted Gospic, dismissing the point. “Benito Que, in Miami. Then Wiley, Pasechnik, Schwartz, Set Van Nguyen, in Australia.”

  “His wife . . .”

  “She was reached in November of that year. As you know.”

  “The papers said she was killed by anthrax. On the subway.”

  “Yes,” said Gospic. “That’s what they said.”

  “Then, in Moscow, Glebov and Brushlinski?”

  “And Victor Korshunov, also in Moscow. And Langford, in England. And, of course, the plane from Tel Aviv, with Berkman, Eldor, and Matzner.”

  “Impressive. I am amazed. All this by Kerk’s own people?”

  “Not all. The Australian end was done by freelancers from Jemaya Ismail. They had no idea why. Just did it. And the American work was done by our associates in Matamoros. Also freelancers. JoJo had the Tel Aviv job done by the Chechyns.”

  “You trusted the Chechyns?”

  “I trusted them to do the job and make it look like the Ukrainians, who are famously incompetent, did it by accident. I did not trust them with why.”

  Groz shook his head, his expression solemn.

  “DoDo and JoJo were our old comrades-in-arms, Branco.”

  “Yes. As I said, it was necessary for the integrity of the project.”

  Groz showed his long yellow teeth again, his face creasing in a smile.

  “I suppose so. Such a long . . . time frame, in this matter.”

  “We were not in at the beginning. We came in after the breakup of Yugoslavia. There was an opportunity, after the Soviets dropped the Biopreparat project.”

  “You picked it up.”

  “I picked up some of the people. They were scattering everywhere. Looking for work. Iraq. Iran. North Korea. Some went to America. Some came to us.”

  “You saw a use?”

  “Poppa felt that the discoveries would be useful. Someday.”

  “The long view,” said Groz.

  “Yes. That is what Poppa is good at.”

  The gray man nodded, pursing his lips like a Mother Superior; he opened his mouth to say something more when a burst of shrieking laughter erupted from the three little boys. They scattered across the balcony as the old gundog writhed to its feet, baring its blunt teeth, its red-rimmed eyes wide with fright. It began to bark, its hackles bunching up in folds.

  One of the boys struck out at it with the handle of the spoon. The old dog seized the handle and wrenched it away, snapping the spoon in two. Another boy, the one belonging to Stefan Groz, kicked out at the dog.

  The old gundog dodged away from the kick and then charged suddenly forward, sinking its blunt yellow teeth into the boy’s calf. The child began to shriek, and Groz, rising, tried to intervene, dancing around the pair, fluttering his hands uselessly. Gospic set the camcorder down carefully on the bench and, in two long-legged strides, was on the bitten child, the dog now shaking the boy’s leg, blood bubbling up around its teeth.

  Gospic took a fistful of the dog’s neck skin, jerked it high in the air, holding the big dog aloft, the animal rigid now; the old hound rolled a yellow eye filled with glassy defiance at him, its gray tongue hanging, the vibrato in its chest growing into a kind of purring snarl.

  The dog, who knew his man well enough, didn’t bother to struggle.

  Gospic twisted his muscular body and hurled the dog over the edge of the balcony. It fell, turning in the twilight, yelping, a splay-legged, pinwheeling starfish shape clear against the shimmering water, seeming to fall forever, and then smashing with sudden force onto the seawall below, breaking apart, a brown heap of guts, a broken pile of flesh and hide, running blood.

  Down on the quay, people begin to scream in tiny voices, ant figures scurrying, and a young girl in a blue sundress pointed up to the balcony. Gospic glared at the little cluster of pale boys in front of him, who stared back at him with their wet red mouths gaping, tiny, round teeth showing, the green light of sadism fading from their flat-brown eyes. Gospic, breathing heavily, shrugged once and turned away. Stefan Groz sat back down on the bench, sighing, his face as gray as his well-cut suit, his small black eyes bright with glittering attention, a thin, hard smile playing on his blue lips.

  “Well?” said Gospic, looking at the man.

  Groz lifted his hands, palms up, spreading them apart in a gesture of acceptance, showing Gospic his too-white, too-large, too-even teeth.

  “You have the . . . means to deliver this?”

  “We are in the process of acquiring it.”

  The question hung in the air, but Groz knew better than to ask it. Gospic’s methods were none of his business. It was better not to know. He lifted his hands again, let them fall limply into his lap. The bitten boy, silent until now, began to grizzle, a re
edy, whining snuffle, his stubby nose running with snot. Groz made a pinched, disapprovingface and handed the boy his lace handkerchief, putting a deceptively soothing palm up against the child’s cheek. Then he looked back at Gospic.

  “We will need to know the timing. To the day.”

  “Of course,” said Gospic, letting his impatience show. The timing was the only thing that mattered. Everything depended on the timing, and they both knew it. The question was irrelevant; Groz was stalling.

  “And the people? You have people who can do this? People who are . . . capable? Reliable people?”

  Gospic didn’t answer that. His face, without any visible change, altered indefinably, hardening, becoming stonelike, and his eyes emptied of expression. Groz, no fool, took the point. He indicated the Sony with a withered finger.

  “What will you do with the video?”

  “It needs to be seen. We will post it on the Internet.”

  “People will know where it came from.”

  “No. There are ways to strip it. The video will be posted, and reposted, until no one will ever know where it came from. Many will think it a hoax.”

  “What about the Americans?”

  Gospic showed his teeth.

  “That’s the point.”

  Groz considered that for a time and then nodded.

  “Okay. Yes. I see. What will you need from us?”

  “The money.”

  Groz inclined his head, smiling; there would be something else. With Gospic, it was never just the money. Besides, he was pleased to have been given Dzilbar Kerk’s expensive villa, so he was in a mind to cooperate with Gospic. He waited.

  “And I need to know something from Venice.”

  “But you have your own people there.”