The Echelon Vendetta

by David Stone

  dogs.” “Dogs? Dogs chased him up here and killed him? Jesus Christ.

  What kind of dogs do you have in Cortona? Werewolves?” “All dogs are carnivores.” “His guts have been torn completely out. No poodle did that.” “No. But the town dogs—many are half-wild. They breed in the

  fortezza above the town. They would have smelled this in the wind.” “So the dogs killed him? Is that it?” “No. That is not possible. He was dead before the dogs

  found him.” “How do you know?” “The wounds. Men don’t bleed after death. If you look at the

  way he sits, his back against the doors, his ankles crossed so, his knees spread, this is not the position of a man fighting off dogs. And when dogs kill they do it at the throat, at the head, and at the tendons in the legs. The belly they open afterward. After he was dead. It is natural. The scent would bring them.”

  Dalton felt the acid rising again. His vision blurred and he swallowed it down again with difficulty. Brancati’s sympathetic look was unconvincing.

  “You wish to go now, Mr. Dalton?” “Is there anything else?” “Yes. There is. If you are all right?” “I am.” “You tell me Mr. Naumann was a banker, yes?”

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  “A lawyer, actually. His brief was international trade.”

  “Never a soldier?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’ve known him for eight years. Ever since I came to work at Burke and Single. He was one of my first trainers. He would have mentioned it.”

  “Trainers? Bankers have trainers?”

  “Instructors. A mentor.”

  “A mentor. I see.”

  Brancati pointed the flashlight to an irregular row of coin-shaped lesions across Naumann’s right hip. “Okay. These are bullet wounds. Not recent. But not that old either. Not many years. And this...” He indicated Naumann’s left shoulder. “This is a scar like one gets from a knife. A big knife. It is quite recent. No more than a year old. And he was a very active man. Very strong. See the musculature of the chest and the arms. Here on his left pectoral he once had a small tattoo. It has been partially removed with a laser, but you can see it was once in the shape of a helicopter with spread wings behind it. Do you know it?”

  Dalton shook his head and internally damned the Agency medics. Brancati waited for something more, realized that nothing was immediately forthcoming, shrugged, and continued.

  “Well, I may know this tattoo. We are military, we Carabinieri. Many years ago, when I was a young man, we took part in a military exercise with some American forces. The tattoo of a helicopter with wings signifies Air Assault training in the U.S. Army. Look at his hands. He has the kind of calluses on his hands that you also have. I have seen these before. I recognize them. They come from a long practice of the martial arts. So, very strange for a banker whose entry visa says he is fifty-two years old. Bullet holes. Tattoos. Knife

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  scars. Mr. Dalton, are your office parties so dangerous? Do the ambulances stand by?”

  Dalton didn’t laugh. “I can’t tell what those wounds are. They could be cigarette burns. I have no idea how he came by a knife scar. About the tattoo, many men come to regret the tattoos they get when they’re young and stupid.”

  “Like you? A banker only. Never a soldier?” Dalton shook his head. Brancati got to his feet, groaning with the effort. “I don’t think you will say yes if I ask you to take off your shirt?” “No. I won’t.” Brancati raised his hands, smiled again. “A joke. Otherwise it is

  all too dark, too sfumato.” “A joke. Great. But somebody killed him? Right?” Brancati’s face altered again, hardened. “Possibly. Possibly not.” “But you said he was running from someone.” “I said he was running. I did not say that he was being chased.” “For Christ’s sake, Brancati. Look at him.” “I have.” “What killed him? If not the dogs, then what?” “Look at his hands, Mr. Dalton.” Dalton leaned down. Brancati shone the narrow beam of the

  Streamlight onto Naumann’s lap, where his hands lay palms-up in the bubble-and-squeak of his opened belly. The tips of his fingers were shredded and pulpy.

  “Someone has pulled out his fingernails.” “No. They are just full of blood and flesh. Only two are gone. We

  found them. In the muscles of his face and in his throat.” It took Dalton a while to get the picture. “You’re saying he committed suicide by...” “Tearing at himself ?”

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  “Do you believe it?”

  “I do not wish to believe it. I am too fond of my sleep.”

  “But do you?”

  “I believe that he has been hurt by his own hands. Whether or not this means he committed suicide is another question. He may have been under the influence of some delusion. Temporary insanity. Perhaps a drug.”

  “Porter didn’t do drugs.”

  Brancati performed an ironic bow, his face impassive. “Maybe. Maybe not. We will do the blood work. Perhaps he was in the grip of a psychotic event. What they sometimes call a ‘fugue.’ Or there is some lesion of the brain. Such facial disfigurement is not unknown. Several years ago a young girl of Cortona who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia used poultry scissors to slice off her nose, her cheeks, her ears...”

  “A man would have to be insane to do something like that.”

  “And was Mr. Naumann insane? Did he have psychological problems? Was he seeing a therapist, or on any kind of medication?”

  “No. At least ...No. If he had a problem, someone at the bank would have known about it.”

  “What kind of man was he, Mr. Dalton?”

  “Competent. Skilled. A professional. He had a hell of a sense of humor. He liked to eat and drink. Liked the women. He was a gentleman. He danced. Badly, but with joy. Played the trumpet. Played it well. As good as Harry James, when he had enough scotch in him. He used to do ‘Cherry Pink and’—”

  Looking at Brancati’s slightly alarmed expression, Dalton realized he was getting a little emotional. He had liked Porter Naumann very much in a professional sort of way, and the manner of his dying was going to sink in deep and stay there for a long time. Brancati sensed the strong emotion in Dalton and said nothing. There was tight silence in the tent. In a moment, Dalton spoke again.

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  “So your theory is that he killed himself with his own hands?”

  Brancati shook his head slowly, looking doubtful. “He tore at himself, yes. But his heart killed him.”

  “Loss of blood? Shock? Catastrophic pressure drop?”

  Brancati shrugged.

  “Shock perhaps. He still has much of his blood inside him. The work of his hands may have only taken a few seconds. No damage was done to the carotids, the heart, the lungs. The belly, I cannot say. But even if the dogs came before he was dead ...Men die from being disemboweled, but it takes a very long time. That is why it was so popular with the Inquisition. Many men have survived even such wounds. It can take hours for a man with wounds such as these to die. But Mr. Naumann died almost at once. I am no specialist, but I believe something stopped his heart.”

  “Like what?”

  Brancati shrugged. “For a man to tear at himself this way, and for his heart to stop . . . It seems possible that he was in a state of great fear. Perhaps a hallucination. That is the only answer I can think of. Some kind of drug. A powerful psychotropic drug. In rare cases, this is the kind of thing you see when things go very bad. A terrible hallucination could make a man tear at himself, and some people have been known to die from fear. Not often. But it is known.”

  “I’ve told you. Porter Naumann didn’t take drugs. Nor was he insane.”

  “As far as you know. There may be much about Mr. Naumann that you do not know. For instance, whether or not he had been a soldier.”

  “You’re saying this was a suicide? Is that it?”

  “Technically, no. I do not believe it was suicide. Under our laws,
for it to be self-murder, the man must have been in his right mind. Clearly Mr. Naumann was not. When one dies as a result of a drug overdose—”

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  “He didn’t—”

  “—do drugs. As you keep reminding me. But if, and I say only if, drugs played a part here, or even a passing madness, then there is no intent. No culpability. It is a death by misadventure. By accident. You understand? Was Mr. Naumann a Christian man?”

  “Christian? Yes, he was. At least, he was an Episcopalian. That may not be the same thing as being a Christian.”

  “And what is this ‘Episcopalian’ faith?”

  “Like an Anglican. High Anglican. Church of England.”

  Brancati smiled, savoring the new word. “An Episcopalian. Still, a Christian. So here is the important point. If we can say he was not a suicide, then it is still possible for Mr. Naumann to be buried in consecrated ground. To go to his Episcopalian heaven. Otherwise...”

  Brancati made a vee of his joined hands and pointed to the ground.

  To hell.

  “Is that where this case is going?”

  Brancati made a broad gesture, taking in the ruined corpse, the wooden gates with the bloody palm smears, the wind-rippled tent walls.

  “What brings a sane man to this terrible end? There is no sign of any other party involved—”

  “What about the second voice? The droning voice like a bear? The girls in the hostel heard two voices. Someone was with him.”

  Brancati shook his head slowly, his expression sympathetic. “The clerk at the Strega is certain no one came in. And I have told you already that he is a reliable man, and known to us. The hostel has many pretty young college girls, tourists, travelers. The management intends that nothing bad shall happen to these silly children while they are staying at the Strega. You have to buzz at the barred gate to get in. Also there is a camera, which we are told showed nothing unusual. The testimony of the clerk is clear. Other than a nursing sister

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  who went to see one of the girls, nobody went in or out. Mr. Nau

  mann had no visitors. He was alone in his room.”

  “This clerk, he never left his post? Not once?”

  “There is a small privy off the reception area. He of course made use of this from time to time. He admits this. But he insists that he saw no stranger arrive, no one he did not recognize. He is a reliable man.”

  “Someone who was already inside the hostel, then.”

  “We’ve discussed that. In these matters, I am sorry to say, it is often true that the most simple explanation is also the correct one. I believe Mr. Naumann died in the middle of some kind of psychotic episode. Perhaps triggered by a powerful drug. How else could a man come to this?”

  Dalton could think of no other answer. A sudden blast of wind rattled the tent walls and rain pattered against the roof. Brancati pulled his collar up around his neck.

  “Enough, Mr. Dalton. We will interrogate the hostel clerk, as you suggest. We will interview the residents again. We will be vigorous. Allegro vigoroso. On Mr. Naumann, blood tests will be done. Eventually we will get our answers and we will both have to live with them. Let us come away. We will get the blood off our shoes and the stink of this place out of our noses. And maybe we will sit in a nice warm café and talk a little more about Porter Naumann.”

  “I would like to come along. Observe.”

  “I thought your policy was to let the officials conduct the investigations? Now you want to . . . observe?”

  “I put it badly. I’m asking permission to come along and do whatever I can to help in the investigation. I’d like to see his room at the hostel. I know this is irregular—”

  “It is ridiculous. And you tell me you are only a banker.”

  “But if you come across something anomalous—”

  “Come? Non capisco.”

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  “Something that doesn’t fit with Porter’s life. I’ll know it.” Brancati’s face showed a stony kind of amusement. “Anomalous? Perhaps. But when you know it, will you tell me? ” “You have my word on it.” “The word of a banker is not the word of a soldier.” Brancati’s hard eyes were on him, but Dalton had nothing to say.

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  monday, october 8 riva degli schiavoni, venice 11:00 a.m. local time

  alton was sitting at the sunlit café outside the Savoia & Jolanda, his coat pulled tight against a biting wind off the Adriatic, a glass of vino bianco at his left hand and a Toscano cigarillo in his right, watching a long-legged, tight-skirted, black-haired young tour guide striding briskly east along the stone quay of the Riva. The girl was holding aloft a large plastic daisy taped to the end of a pool cue. She had a gaggle of elderly Hindu tourists waddling along behind her and absolutely mystical thighs. Dalton, who hadn’t had sex in years, watched her passing with cool clinical detachment. No doubt they were headed for the Piazza San Marco, where they would pose with verminous pigeons on their heads and more verminous pigeons on their outstretched arms. Beyond the shuffling column of tourists the great basin of Saint Mark was busy with droning work boats and burbling mahogany cruisers. A lemon-yellow sun glittered on the churning surface of the green water, filling the basin with a clean, pure light. Across the basin the Palladian façade of San Giorgio Maggiore glowed with the pale pastel tints of fall in Venice. Rain was gathering in the east. Winter was coming in low out of the rising sun; he could feel its breath on the side of his neck. The tour guide was using a bullhorn to bellow something brightly misinformative about the Bridge of Sighs when the cell phone on the linen-covered tabletop shrilled at him.

  “Micah Dalton.” “Micah. Stallworth. What did you get?” Jack Stallworth, the section chief of Dalton’s Cleaners Unit out

  of Langley. Stallworth was a great intelligence tactician, but he was also a short, sharp, bullet-headed hard-nosed razorback hog with all the languid charm of a quick knee to the jaw.

  “Jack. Lovely to hear from you. How are you?” “Forget that butterscotch bullshit, Micah. How bad is it?” “I went through his rooms before they got there.” “I know that. And ...?” “And we’re okay. I sent you a memo.” “I got the memo. I need reassurances. No company stuff ? No

  records, papers—nothing that caught your attention?” “You have something specific in mind, Jack?” “No. Specific? Hell no. Specific! Why ask me that?” “No reason. You sound worried. Anything I should know?” “No. Not a thing. But you’re sure he’s clean. You didn’t miss

  anything? You went through it all and nothing stood out?” “Naumann was a pro, Jack.” “Yeah. He was. And you went in low? If they figure out you went

  through his room before his body was found? That’s heat, Micah.

  Heavy heat.” “You mean serious. Or major. Not heavy.” “Serious what? Major what?”

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  “You can’t have heavy heat.” “Don’t jerk me around, Micah, I’m not in the mood.” “If I’d been made, Brancati wouldn’t have let me leave Cortona.” “What about this hostel Naumann stayed in? In Cortona? The

  Strega?” “I tried to get a look at it again last night. They’ve got two cops

  on the entrance. I can’t get anywhere near it until they release it.” “And when will that be?” “Tomorrow, I think.” “You in Venice now?” “Yes.” “Why not wait in Cortona?” “Brancati. The cop. He wanted me to go. I went.” “Why did he want you to get out of Cortona?” “I made the mistake of asking him if I could help out.” There was plenty of dead air in his earpiece now, so he managed

  a quick pull at his wineglass. He even had time to light another cig

  arette. “You did what ?” “Yeah. I know. Thing is, he’s going to lay this down as a drug-

  related accidental death. I think partly so Naumann can get into

  Heaven.” “You’re kidding.” “No. He asked me if Naumann was a Christian.” “He was an Episcopalian. They don’t b
elieve in God. If it wasn’t

  a suicide, then what are they calling it?” “Death by misadventure. An accidental overdose or some sort of psychotic episode. They’re going to look for a brain lesion too.”

  “They’re doing an autopsy, they’re gonna see those old bullet holes in Naumann. And I hear he got marked up pretty good last year in Syria.”

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  “Brancati’s already seen that stuff. Naumann was pretty much naked at the scene. Brancati was military too. He even made Nau-mann’s Air Assault tattoo. So all in all we’re lucky he’s playing it for a simple OD.”

  “Okay. No murder. Drug overdose. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Naumann didn’t do drugs,” said Dalton with a resigned sigh.

  “As far as you know. Anyway, what do you care? Your job is to clean up after our field guys. Not figure out what the hell happened to make them go out on the high side. We lose field guys to drugs or suicide all the time, and when we do, we send in a cleaner. We’ve already looked into the backstory and nobody here thinks that anybody in our game had a reason to kill him. Turn him, maybe. Or pay him off. But taking him out in the way you saw? No, it wasn’t company business. You stick to cleaning, Micah. That’s what you do. Field operators lead complicated lives. Now and then they lose it and take themselves out. Naumann’s domestic life was a swamp. I’ve heard all about his zombie-bitch daughters. And you knew he had prostate surgery two years ago?”

  “Prostate surgery! The guy was fifty-two!”

  “Didn’t tell you that, did he? Welcome to my world. It was real invasive. You know what that means. Guy like Naumann, no sex. He’d hate living like that.”

  “I thought it was some kind of kidney thing.”

  “Well it wasn’t. Only way I knew was Personnel sent me his medical claim for a signature. It’s not the kind of thing guys bring up over a beer. So he’s maybe looking at wearing a diaper for the rest of his life and his dick might as well be a sock full of sand for all the good it’s gonna do him. Plus his marriage was in the tank. I’d say he had some reasons for taking himself out. You know, Micah, sometimes a thing can be true even if I think it. I have the tiniest feeling one of my people died from enemy action, I’ll send in the metal-meets-the-meat boys. That’s why you’re a cleaner. That’s your job.”