The Venetian Judgment

by David Stone

  Progress, she thought.

  “You are going to get some rest. Levka and I are going straight to the Ataköy Marina. It’s on the European side, down on the Marmara coast, a couple of miles from Atatürk Field. About fifteen miles by car. I want to get there before full light.”

  “And what am I doing?”

  “Sleep. Have a bath, get some breakfast. Then I need you to find a waterfront rental with a boathouse. A big one. Big enough for a fifty-foot cruiser. Close to the hotel. Ask the concierge. Tell them you want to rent a villa, a furnished one, but it has to have a boathouse. One that’s available today. It’s a tourist area, lots of waterfront homes all along the shore. It’s a very wealthy area. And it’s not the high season. We can pay top dollar, which never fails. Somebody will have something.”

  They had turned off Yaliboyu and were cruising along Kuleli now, through a neighborhood of large private waterfront homes, gated, heavy with palms, fig trees, and frangipani vines, the soft, warm light of money spilling from leaded-glass windows and intricately carved Moorish screens and vine-draped Juliet balconies. The street ran in a long, curving glide through tree-lined avenues, past an open park, a brand-new luxury development now coming up on their right, huge white-stone mansions in the Italian style, built along a cresting hillside, with red-tiled roofs and swimming pools, and now coming up on their left, the waterfront side, a long Frank Lloyd Wright façade in stone and steel and glass that ran for several hundred feet along the edge of the Bosphorus. A large glass-and-steel sign had been set into a limestone wall—SUMAHAN—their Turko-Goth driver rolling up to the glass doors and slamming on the brakes, still deep into his techno-house.

  They were promptly besieged by uniformed attendants. In a moment, Mandy and all their baggage had been swept into the hotel, leaving Dalton and Levka alone with the driver, who seemed to feel that his part in their little excursion had come to an end and that it was time for a hard-earned and life-altering gratuity.

  Levka leaned into him, plucking the earpod free with a sticky pop, said a few soft words in pidgin Turkish, close enough to the kid for him to feel the large pistol in Levka’s belt. The kid sat up straight, stared back at Levka, and nodded several times, his brown eyes open so wide Levka could see a ring of white around each iris.

  Levka patted his cheek, not gently, stuffed a fat wad of Turkish lira into the neck of the kid’s T-shirt, and in a Turkish trice they were back on the road again, this time heading south, with the lights of the suspension bridge on their right floating like a chain of fireflies in the hazy air, Istanbul glimmering on the far side of the strait. The driver had dumped the iPod and was now driving with great care, his thin body rigid.

  Dalton, from the back, leaned forward, tapped Levka.

  “What did you say to him?”

  Levka beamed at Dalton.

  “I motivate him, boss.”

  “Really? How?”

  “I explain him situation. I tell him you are big man in Swedish Mafia. If he don’t take iPod out of ear and drive like human, you will cut his balls off, cook them in lingonberry sauce, and eat them.”

  “Lingonberry sauce?”

  “You know, like Swedish meatballs?”

  Dalton nodded, sat back, thought it over.

  “The Swedish Mafia?”

  Levka shrugged, looked back at Dalton over his shoulder.

  “Look at you, boss. Long blond hair. Ice eyes. Look like killer Viking. What I gonna say? You dago don from Sicily?”

  There wasn’t much to say to that. The rest of the trip passed uneventfully, although the kid seemed to be having some trouble breathing. But he drove wonderfully well, gracefully negotiating the hectic four-lane traffic swarming across the Bosphorus Bridge, dealing gently with the packed causeway that ran along the Galata shoreline, and basically handling the Galata Bridge and the clogged arteries of Sultanhamet just like a limo driver in Vegas. As they rounded the causeway curve below the high hill of Sultanhamet, the minarets of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque silhouetted against the sky, a lemon yellow winter sun crested the low black hills far away to the east, and the first gleam of dawn struck the Sultan’s turret in a shaft of light, just as it said in the Rubáiyát.

  They reached the Ataköy Marina on Kennedy Caddesi a few minutes later, a former Holiday Inn—and it looked it—a row of stolid chevron-shaped buildings, looking a tad down-at-the-heels, nowhere as severely posh as the Sumahan, more of an airport hotel for business travelers such as you’d find near any huge national hub from Frankfurt to La Guardia.

  They passed through the lobby, barely drawing the attention of the half-asleep attendant behind the counter, heading for the long dining room that fronted the marina and the pool deck. At the entrance to the dining hall, Dalton stopped by a newsstand, still shuttered, to look down at a wire-bound stack of papers called The New Anatolian, apparently published in English since the headline, in large screaming-scarlet letters, read:

  MIDAIR COLLISION OVER BANDIRMIA

  TWO CHOPPERS DOWN

  MASSIVE SEA SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS

  DEBRIS AND BODY PARTS LITTER SHORELINE

  Levka and Dalton exchanged a look but said nothing, and went out the waterside doors onto the pool deck, a large, open space looking south across the Sea of Marmara, now a vast plain of sparkling-blue water fluttering with wind-whipped whitecaps that looked like shark’s teeth and the strong, dank graveyard reek of old, deep water. The pool deck was lined with white wooden recliners laid out under fake-palm-frond palapas. Beyond the deck, out in the marina harbor, the masts and rigging of luxury sailboats stitched the pale sky down to the rugged shoreline.

  The marina itself was huge, sheltered by a man-made seawall that defined a D-shaped harbor about a quarter mile in length, inside which there were seven wooden docks each about four hundred feet long. Even in winter, the marina was reasonably full, holding at least three hundred craft of various sizes, from runabouts to sixty-foot trawlers, although most of the boats had been shrink-wrapped in blue plastic and sealed up for the winter.

  Dalton stood there for a moment, running his eyes over the array of pleasure craft, looking for the low sharklike cruiser he had last seen in Venice.

  Levka stood a little behind him, facing the hotel, looking for watchers and seeing no one, although any of the shuttered rooms that overlooked the marina could hide a man with a scope.

  Dalton made a short muffled sound, and Levka turned around.

  “You see it, boss?”

  Dalton nodded toward a long, sleek Riva motor yacht, a streamlined fifty-footer with a white cabin and upper deck, lots of brass and mahogany and teak, silver handrails, and a navy blue hull, with a thin line of red paint separating the blue and white a foot below the deck. She was tethered at the far end of the third inner dock, half covered with a plastic tarp that made her look like a swan tangled up in picnic trash.

  Levka followed Dalton’s look.

  “So, she still here.”

  “Yes. They’ll try to move her today. We got here too fast for them.”

  “Pretty boat. I not seeing guard at all. What we gonna do?”

  Dalton didn’t answer for a while, and then he turned and looked back at the hotel. In the dining room, a few waiters were beginning to pass among the tables, laying out dishes and silverware for the early breakfast crowd.

  He looked at Levka—still in his air-crew khakis, unshaven and rather shopworn. And then down at himself, wearing the pants to his navy blue pinstripe, a pair of black wingtips, and a reasonably clean white shirt, no tie. They both looked a little on the scruffy side but presentable enough for a second-rate Turkish hotel in the off-off-season.

  “You hungry?”

  Levka showed his teeth, not to his advantage.

  “Boss, I could eat horse.”

  “Let’s settle for bacon and eggs.”

  THREE MEN CAME in midafternoon, a trio of small but solidly built button men with a military cast, ranging in age from twenty to forty, with the oldest man,
who was also the shortest, a tough-faced thug with a Kosovo Marine cut and a trim black goatee. Dalton, watching him, thought he carried the unmistakable burden of noncom leadership. The Top Kick look.

  They were all wearing bug-eyed sunglasses, faded blue jeans, brown leather boat shoes, and heavy turtleneck sweaters that bulged around their waistlines, clearly hiding weapons.

  They passed through the dining room in single file, looking neither right nor left, staring straight ahead like Sagger missiles homing in on a target. They went right past Dalton’s table without giving either of them a sideways glance, banged out through the swinging doors, and headed at speed in the direction of the dock where the Subito was tied up.

  Dalton gave Levka a wry look, tossed some new Turkish lira on the table, and stood up. He didn’t look back, but he knew Levka was right behind him as he cleared the doors and walked out onto the pool deck. He was a little nervous about going into this with Levka at his back. This was very likely their first tactical contact with the crew being run by Levka’s Gray Man, and Levka’s loyalties might be under some strain.

  In a few seconds, the three men had reached the Subito, Top Kick stepping onto the rear deck while the other two started peeling back the plastic sheeting. They had the sheeting off, folded and stowed away inside the cruiser in a couple of minutes, while the older man moved around on the deck, checking the ship out. There was no doubt they were getting ready to take her out of the marina.

  “So, boss,” said Levka, “how you want to do this?”

  “Quietly, for starters. No gunfire. Still got your piece-of-shit pistol?”

  Levka made a face.

  “No offendings, boss, but is not a piece of shit, okeydokey?” Dalton smiled at that, keeping his eyes fixed on the deck of the Subito.

  “Okeydokey, Levka. You look like a guy who could be working on a boat. See that box over there?” he asked, indicating a cardboard box full of rags that sat by the pool filter. Levka nodded. “Okay, pick it up, slip your not-a-piece-of-shit pistol into the rags, start carrying it out to the dock there. I’ll follow at about twenty feet—”

  Which puts you in front of me when the action starts.

  “Don’t look at the men on the Subito. Take your time. Look busy. They won’t be taking the lines off for a couple of minutes. You follow?”

  Levka did. He picked up the box without another word, fumbled with something at his waist, and then started out along the jetty, ambling casually, looking to Dalton as if he were about to start whistling, which he did not actually do. Dalton picked up a copy of the New Anatolian that was fluttering on a nearby table, folded it in half, and eased his Beretta into the fold, pushing the paper under his left arm.

  Then he began to stroll slowly along the same dock, stopping to look at a runabout here, a gaff-rigged ketch over there that looked as if it belonged in Nantucket, a forty-foot matte-black Kevlar cigarette boat farther along the jetty, four huge Mercs on the stern, which fairly shrieked of smuggling . . . Up ahead, Levka had reached the berth beside the Subito, where a large sports fisher with a flying bridge, closed up tight, was rocking gently in the sea lift, her rigging clattering in the onshore breeze. He set the box down on the sports fisher’s fantail, extracted a rag, and began to scrub vigorously on the brass letters affixed to her transom: MEVLEVI. Dalton had the vague idea it meant “dancer” or “dervish.”

  One of the younger men on the rear deck of the Subito had come up from below and was now standing on the stern board, staring hard at Levka, his face like a knot and his unibrow beetled.

  Dalton was now about fifteen feet away, still wandering. The man stepped off the stern, came up to Levka, leaning over him now, his suspicions flaring up. He nudged Levka, saying,which Dalton, who recognized it as Russian, interpreted to mean something along the lines of “Hey, asshole, what are you doing?”

  Dalton ambled past just as Levka looked up with a Hello, fuck you grin and said, in pretty-good Russian,which needed no translation at all. The man’s face turned dark red, and he reached for Levka’s collar just as the barrel of Dalton’s Beretta slammed off the back of his head. He went down on the dock, hit hard, and looked like he’d be there for a while.

  Dalton left him with Levka, vaulting up onto the stern board of the Subito just as the second inside man, perhaps feeling the dip as Dalton hit the swim ladder, stepped out of the darkness of the pilot cabin, squinting into the sunlight, his eyes widening as he realized he was staring right into the muzzle of a large blue-black semiauto.

  He opened his mouth to warn the Top Kick, who was still inside, but Dalton managed to persuade him not to by shoving the pistol’s muzzle into the man’s open mouth and then, after a brief introductory grin, kneeing him in the nuts very hard. The impact lifted the man up a few inches, causing him to shatter a few front teeth into bloody stumps on the muzzle of the Beretta.

  He folded himself into the teak deck, holding onto his nuptials and making a thin hissing sound through his bloodied front teeth. Levka was on the stern board now, his pistol in hand, as Dalton stepped lightly through the open gangway into the pilot cabin.

  He found himself in a trim, beautifully appointed, and professionally laid-out cabin with a panoramic view that took in the entire marina. Leather chairs were arranged around a small teak-and-brass coffee table, a navigator station off to the left, and a large wood-and-leather pilot seat faced a control panel filled with every conceivable electronic option a wealthy young shooter could imagine.

  Unfortunately, Dalton was quite alone in this lovely space.

  He froze, checked his six, saw no one. In the forward section of the pilothouse, a gangway led down to the cruiser’s main salon. Presumably, there’d be a master stateroom up in the bow and a smaller sleeping cabin off the main salon. A couple of heads, a galley.

  A lot of places to hide and wait.

  Dalton stepped to one side, his pistol up and ready, ducked warily down and gave the main salon a quick once-over. Again, no one.

  He was pretty confident that Levka, who was still on the deck dealing with the other two men, would have seen Top Kick if he had scrambled out of the forward hatch and jumped to the mole. For that matter, Top Kick didn’t look like a guy who would cut and run.

  Which meant he was somewhere in the cruiser, armed, waiting. This was a tactical situation that called for some delicacy.

  He felt a step behind him, pivoted, and saw Levka standing there staring back at him, an odd expression on his face, his Croat pistol in his hand. Levka lifted his left hand up, touched his index finger to his lips, and then pointed straight down at the deck in front of him, his eyes widening.

  Dalton looked down, saw a silver ring set into the teak boards, and realized they were standing over the engine-room hatch cover. It was a little off-seam, as if it had been pulled shut but not locked.

  A nice move, he thought.

  Wait for the searchers to move on down into the main body of the cruiser, pop up behind them, and kill them both. Levka followed his look and then grinned at Dalton. He bent down and reached for the silver ring, but Dalton put out his hand and signaled for him to stop.

  He motioned for Levka to stand back and cover the hatchway, and then he stepped over to the cabin wall beside the navigator’s station. There was a red fire panel there, with a series of breakers and gauges. There was also a yellow-and-black checkered lever with a plate above it that read:

  ENGINE ROOM FIRE SUPPRESSION

  CAUTION: CARBON DIOXIDE

  RISK OF ASPHYXIATION

  Levka saw the sign, nodded vigorously, braced himself. Dalton tripped the lever, a klaxon alarm began to blare, and there was a distinct hissing sound from under the floorboards as the fire-suppression system released a cloud of carbon dioxide vapor into the engine room under the pilot deck.

  Two minutes later, the hatch cover flew open and Top Kick popped up like a jack-in-the-box, gasping, his face blue, his eyes running, waving a large blue-steel Colt .45.

  Dalton stepped in
, took the muzzle in an iron grip, jerked it viciously upward and back, trapping the man’s index finger inside the trigger guard and breaking it, a muffled but audible snap as the Colt came loose.

  Levka stepped forward, stuck the muzzle of his HS hard up against Top Kick’s cheek, and grinned fiercely down at him.

  Well, that settles the issue of Levka’s loyalty.

  “What about the other two?” Dalton said, not taking his eyes off Top Kick, who was holding his right hand in his left, pain in his weathered face, as he dealt with a badly broken trigger finger, so badly broken that a bloody stump of jagged pink bone had ripped its way through the flesh and was now sticking out sideways about a half inch.

  Levka was breathing a little hard, but he got his answer out anyway.

  “In the stern. Found cable ties in fishing box. They trussed up good. One you knee in nuts, he not a very happy boy. Other one still out. Maybe for good. You hit pretty real hard, boss.”

  Dalton recalled Levka’s jaunty offer while waiting to be shot in the head—“With handy service of Dobri Levka, you don’t have to bust big fat dead men around place all by self, ruin good suits like you got.”

  “Anybody on the pool deck see any of this?”

  “No, boss. Don’t think so.”

  “Go make sure.”

  Levka was back in two minutes.

  “All quiet. What about this one?”

  So far, Top Kick had uttered not one word.

  “Get him out of that hole.”

  Levka reached down and lifted Top Kick out of the engine compartment by the collar of his sweater, set him down in front of Dalton. The man stood there, swaying a little, sweat on his face, a five-by-five granite block of obstinate hate, his black eyes cutting from one to the other as he waited for the inevitable bullet he had learned to expect in his trade.

  Dalton glanced at Levka, who took a cable tie out of his pocket, jerked the man’s thick arms around, crossed his wrists behind his back, wrapped the tie around them, and tugged tight. It must have hurt like hairy hell, but Top Kick didn’t make a sound. He just went on glaring sudden death at Dalton. Dalton gave him a big, cheerful grin, reached out, and patted his cheek affectionately.