by David Stone
the echelon
vendetta
the echelon
vendetta
david stone
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“Comment,” copyright 1926, © renewed 1954 by Dorothy Parker, from THE PORTABLE DOROTHY PARKER by Dorothy Parker, edited by Brendan Gill. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stone, David, date. The Echelon vendetta / David Stone.
p. cm.
ISBN: 1-4295-2405-7
1. Intelligence officers—Crimes against—Fiction. I. Title. PR9199.3.S833E35 2007 2006027013 813'.54—dc22
Book design by Paula Russell Szafranski
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the au-thor’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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for catherine
God created the world, But it is the Devil who keeps it going.
—TRISTAN BERNARD
the echelon
vendetta
friday, august 31 two moon trailer camp mountain home, idaho111:59 local time.
t six minutes after midnight everything changed: Runciman sensed it, even in his drunken sleep. He was not alone. There was a thing in the room with him, and an unfamiliar scent drifting on the stale air, mingling with the tang of cut pine and the rancid reek of grease from the Arby’s across the highway—a sharp biting scent almost but not quite like eucalyptus. Runciman, his heart pounding against his rib cage like a boxer working the heavy bag, snapped fully awake, lying on his back in the damp tangle of his sheets, staring up at the bars of blue light that rode upon the ceiling of his trailer, listening so hard to the breathing silence in his room that his skull began to ache.
He looked carefully to his right and saw a dim manlike figure, wrapped in a formless darkness. It appeared to be standing in the middle of the long narrow room. Runciman slid a hand under the pillow, got his fingers around the grip of an old blue-steel Smith & Wesson, and rolled off his bed into a crouch on the side away from
the shape, the revolver aimed out into the darkness.
The shape in the center of the room did not move.
“You want to die doing this,” Runciman said, his harsh voice oddly loud in the silence of the trailer, “you’ve come to the right place.” Out in the humid night an eighteen-wheeler chuffed its air brakes and ground its gears down the falling grade that led into Mountain Home. The shadow in the room did not react to him in any way—if it was a shape and not a trick of the light. It seemed to Runciman that whatever it was, its attention was elsewhere.
Keeping the muzzle on the center of the dark mass, Runciman fumbled for the bedside lamp and flicked it on. The warm yellow light spilled out into the room, picking out the shabby sofa, the yard-sale furniture, the card table littered with empty beer cans, and the remains of Runciman’s takeout Chinese. There was nothing there.
No shape. No shadow. No ...thing.
He lowered the gun and wiped his sweating face with a shaking hand, steadied himself on the cot, and stood upright, weaving slightly, old joints cracking, head pounding, lips and mouth dry.
He sighed, wiped a hand across his lips, and turned to stumble down the narrow hall into the tiny stainless-steel bathroom, where he set the Smith down on the toilet tank and ran the water into the rusted cistern until the cold made his fingers ache.
He scrubbed his face hard with a threadbare towel that smelled of mildew and spilt beer, braced his hands on the edge of the cistern, and stared into the mirror, seeing the remnants of a once-hard man whose features were now sagging into pouches and lines and seams, like a wax mask melting. He dried his hands on the curtain over the window, sighed, and stepped back out into the hall.
Where a big man stood very close. A tall shadowy shape, a skull with black pits for eyes. The skull-man lifted his open palm up to his lips and blew a cloud of fine pinkish powder into Runciman’s
| david stone
face. Runciman caught a fleeting scent of eucalyptus—not quite like eucalyptus—before his world cracked wide open.
A pale-green corpse-light poured up through the grates beneath his bare feet and the tin ceiling of his trailer peeled back to reveal a vast cobalt sky marbled with pale glowing mist. Runciman rose up and drifted through this limitless universe, disembodied, pierced through with starlight, his skin burned with the heat of violet suns. He watched, detached, as the thread that held his mind to his body stretched out into a thin golden wire that hummed like a plucked string.
AFTER A LONG, nameless time he came back to this world and was not surprised to find that he was naked and taped to a wooden chair under a bare bulb. In his heart he knew what was about to happen. He had seen this many times before. The only thing new to him was that this time he was the naked man taped to the chair, surrounded by darkness.
Just within the small circle of light containing him he saw the silver-tipped toe of a cowboy boot made of some sort of reptile hide, greenish-black, the frayed cuff of black jeans, a long leg rising to a patched knee, a crossed leg on the knee, a leathery hand holding a thin stiletto with a narrow tapering tip. A quicksilver light shimmered along the edge of the blade. A voice, a hoarse whisper, spoke to him from out of the dark:
“You know where you are?”
Runciman, sighing softly, considered the man’s question.
“Sure. It’s my karma. What goes around comes around.”
“And you know what happens next.”
“I do. The way you took me, you’re no hack. You’re a pro. You’re street. I figure you’re maybe from the Agency, but you might be off the reservation. Maybe not. Somebody’s nervous back East, or some-
the echelon vendetta | 3
body wants to know something you think I know, or wants to find out if I don’t know something I should know, or maybe you’re just a freelancer come to make me pay for some evil-ass shit you think I did to you or somebody you love
d and you’re gonna fuck me up so bad I’ll be happy to die.”
Here Runciman paused, squinting into the glare.
“And you know what, pal? You know what the bulletin is? I really don’t give a shit. This night’s been coming all my life. I’ve got spots on my lungs the size of silver dollars, my liver’s as hard as a stone crab, and I piss nine times nightly. So I really don’t give a rusty fuck about your whiny little beef with me, your sorry-ass problems, whatever they are, however long you been packing them around in your hip pocket like they added up to something real. I got enough of my own. So fuck you. Now, tell me, what was that fine shit you blew in my face? That shit was deeply righteous.”
“You are in the presence of Goyathlay.” “Goy-at-lay? Who the hell is he? And who the fuck are you, pal?
I know you? I think maybe I know you.” “You know me.” Runciman blinked into the light. “You do sound sorta familiar. I can’t quite place the voice.” “You know my name. You know who I used to be.” “Jolly. We’re old pals. Hugs all ’round. What can I do for you?” “Who was the man in the long blue coat?” “What the fuck does that mean?” “Who was the man in the long blue coat?” “No idea. Your turn. Where are the snows of yesteryear?” “Who was the man in the long blue coat?” “Pal, I really don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” “Who was the man in the long blue coat?” “You’re boring me here, man. You gotta narrow it down.” “Trinidad. Nineteen ninety-seven.”
| david stone
“Last year at Marienbad. Next year in Jerusalem.”
“Who was the man in the long blue coat?”
“The man in the long blue coat ...Is that you, Milo? It’s not Milo. Man, is that you?”
“Yes. It’s Milo.”
“Is it? You don’t sound like Milo. Tell me something only Milo would know?”
“Huey Longbourne sends his best.”
“Huey Longbourne?”
“Talk to me about Trinidad.”
“If you’re really Milo, you don’t need me to tell you about Trinidad. Milo was there. Is it really you, Milo? We all thought you were dead. Dead in that freaking storm. We looked for you, man. We all did. If this is about that, then fucking undo me man, this is all a joke. Where you been all this time? Were you in Tularosa? Willard always said you’d be holed up in Tularosa. Milo, is it you? Is it really?
“Who was the man in the long blue coat?”
“Ah Jeez. Hey. Fuck you. You’re not really Milo. How you know about Huey Longbourne I have no idea. I guess you hadda cut it outta Milo before you got to me. If you were really Milo, then you’d know. There’s nothing I could tell Milo about Trinidad that Milo didn’t already know. None of us knew who the man in the long blue coat was. Not Willard. Not Pete or Crucio. Not even Moot. Maybe Bob Cole knew.”
“Bob Cole called him Cicero.”
“Cicero. That’s what we called him. His name was Cicero.”
“Bob Cole called him Cicero. What was his real name?”
“We were never told. And Bob Cole’s dead. We all called him Cicero. Remember? That’s how it works. That’s fieldcraft. Nobody knows the cleaner’s name on a thing like Trinidad. Everybody has a legend, other names—we all did, you skanky freak. That’s the way it’s always done. Know what, man? I’m through talking to you. You
the echelon vendetta | 5
wanna know what happened at Trinidad, go ask somebody else. Ask Barbra Goldhawk, why don’t you? See what you get outta that old bucket of grits. I don’t like you, pal—I don’t like how you do business, I don’t like your fancy-ass Hollywood boots with the little silver toe tips like you’re some kind of pansy fucking homo-on-the-range fairy, and I’m not telling you shit. So it’s howdy-go-bye-bye time, Hop along. Let’s get her done. Either unass my AO or start in cutting.”
“Who was the man in the long blue coat?”
“Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell a Jody like you. Lock and load.”
The man stood and stepped into the light. Runciman looked at him, at the man’s face, at what was in it, and he knew that he had come to the final hours of his life. The first cuts were not the deepest.
| david stone
sunday, october 7 via berrettini, cortona, tuscany 7:30 a.m. local time
uring the night a heavy fog had gathered around the ruined Medici fortress on the crest of Cortona and spread itself down through the ancient city. By early morning the squares and towers and narrow medieval streets were shrouded in mist, and a cold slanting rain was beating against the shuttered houses along the Via Berrettini. Beyond the shoulder of the young policeman in front of him Dalton could just make out the image of another man in a trench coat, looking down the narrow lane at them as they made their way up the hill. The man, his face partially hidden under a wide-brimmed black fedora, was standing by the iron gate that led into the stone-walled courtyard of the ancient Roman chapel of San Nicolò. Dalton got the impression of an angular jaw, a large gray mustache like an inverted crescent, lined and haggard cheeks. A cigarillo drooped from the corner of his mouth and his hands were shoved into the pockets of his coat, his collar turned up against the rain and the wind.
The column of men escorting Dalton up the hill passed an open laneway, and glancing to his right, Dalton saw through a curtain of dripping laundry the stone parapet that ran beside Via Santa Margherita: beyond the parapet he could see the faint outline of Lake Trasimeno. A memory came to him of a summer afternoon and the sunlit terrace off the Piazza Garibaldi, where he and Laura had once sat watching the cloud shadows drift across the olive groves far below them, the lake in the distance glimmering in a pure southern light. They had talked of Hannibal and Rome and the Etruscans while they shared a bottle of chilled pinot grigio, well pleased with the day, with Tuscany, with each other.
The memory had only half-formed when he shut his mind against it, concentrating instead on the rain beading up on the navy blue tunic of the carabiniere in front of him, on the rounded old stones beneath his shoes, on the graveyard reek of the running gutters, the damp-wool smell of the rain itself. In a few more minutes they reached the chapel gates. The senior carabiniere—a dark-skinned man with craggy Sicilian features whose difficult name Dalton had heard but not retained—snapped out a tight salute, to which the trench-coated man returned an ironic bow.
“Ecco ’inglese, Commendatore. Il Signor Dalton.”
“Sì. Mr. Micah Dalton,” said the man in the trench coat, stepping toward Dalton, his right hand out. He shook Dalton’s hand once, twice, a firm dry grip, strong lean fingers. His regard was direct, penetrating, but not unfriendly. He had the air of a man who was willing to be favorably impressed. His smile was wide and revealed strong yellowish teeth. He had a gap between his upper middle incisors, and deep brown eyes with a clear light in them. Dalton, whose trade required him to make rapid assessments of everyone he
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met, put him down as smart, professional, experienced, and therefore dangerous. The man’s voice was a baritone purr, and he had a cold.
“I am Major Alessio Brancati. I am the chief of the Carabinieri criminal division for Cortona. We thank you for coming.”
“Good morning, Major Brancati,” said Dalton, trying not to look beyond the major’s left shoulder, where he could see that a black nylon crime scene tent had been set up against the doors of the chapel.
Brancati’s lined and weathered face broke into a wry smile.
“This morning is not so good. Rain, and this wet wind from the north. It sinks into your lungs. This fog. A terrible morning. I offer you a cigar?”
He held out a crumpled packet of Toscanos. Dalton saw there were only two left. The major pulled his shoulders up in a very Italian way and grinned fiercely at him. “Take! You will help me to quit.”
Dalton took one and the major held out a very worn and apparently solid-gold lighter with the crest of the Carabinieri engraved on its face. Dalton drew the smoke in deep. The major seemed to approve of his obvious pleasure i
n this. Dalton looked past the man at the crime-scene tent. Rain drops beaded on the slick surface and pooled in the sagging folds. Two glum-looking boys in sodden police uniforms stood on either side of the tent, which had been zippered shut against the rain. A blue-and-red police tape with the words Polizia non passar—Polizia non passare had been stretched across the heavy wooden doors of the chapel. On a bench by the chapel gates an old man in an ill-cut tweed jacket and brown corduroy slacks sat limply, staring into nowhere, fingering a green-glass rosary, his eyes as dull as quartz. A tall athletic-looking young man in a black suit and a clerical collar stood next to him, staring at Dalton with a fixed intensity. The priest, if that was what he was, had a sharp-featured, almost brutal face.
the echelon vendetta | 9
“May I ask,” said Dalton, looking away from the priest’s disconcerting glare and exhaling a blue cloud of smoke, “who that man is? The priest.”
“That is Father Jacopo. He is the pastor of this chapel.”
“He looks like an assassin. What’s his problem with me?”
Brancati shrugged and pulled the edges of his mouth into an exaggerated downward curve, making him look briefly like a Venetian mask.
“He has some belief about you. It is of no importance. Superstition may be found even among the educated. I thank you for coming all the way to Cortona.”
“I was grateful for the call. I do wonder why the identification could not be done at the hospital.”
Brancati lit his last cigarillo and dismissed the Sicilian carabiniere with a nod while he considered Dalton’s question. The other men drifted away and began to talk in low tones, their voices lost in the sighing of the wind.
“This is true. Normally we do not let civilians into the crime scene, but the formal identity must be made soon and Father Jacopo”— here he inclined his head in the direction of the tall man in the black suit, who returned his look without warmth—“wishes the body not to be moved until he can give a kind of blessing. Il vecchio with him, that is Paolo. The verger. He is the one who found the body. You are Catholic?”
