Free The Orpheus Deception by David Stone

nothing to do with her. You know this is true.”

    “Yes,” said Dalton, eyeing the pocket into which Brancati had shoved his Toscanos. “I do. I would like to tell her so myself.”

    Brancati nodded as he set his cigar burning with a heavy gold lighter and drew the smoke in deep, exhaling a blue swirling cloud.

    “We have not found her yet, you know.”

    “Found who? Cora?”

    “No. The girl who stabbed you.”

    “How do you know who to look for?”

    Brancati puffed out his cheeks and glared at Dalton.

    “But the description you gave—”

    “I gave a description? To whom? When?”

    “In the ambulance. To the medic. A young blond girl, short hair, a hard, red mouth, one of the marathoners. Number five-five-nine. You don’t remember this?”

    “No. Some of it. Not much.”

    “Well, there was video of the runners, taken by a news channel, as they came into the piazza. We were able to identify a girl wearing that number. Even a photograph. We have placed a watch on every ferry, all the ports, the airport, the Giudecca—everywhere.”

    He drew a small photo out of his breast pocket and handed it to Dalton. In the shot, a blowup of a camera capture, was the blurred and foreshortened image of a young woman, in a crowd of other runners, her top and shorts soaked, the number 559 plastered to her sexless, bony body, her white face harsh with strain, as she worked her way through a crowd on a wooden bridge across the Grand Canal. The girl had an underfed and somewhat-feral look, with the cheekbones and color of a Slav or a Swede.

    “It is her?” asked Brancati.

    “I think so. What about the marathon number? She must have given a name.”

    “No. No name. The number was made up; the shirt, a fake. She must have joined the runners at some point. There were six thousand of them, wandering all over Venice in the hours before the race began. She may already be out of Venice, but, as I say, we keep the watch very close. If she is here, we will find her. Of course, you, being an idiot, made it very easy for them to find you. Back at Mr. Naumann’s old rooms in the Savoia.”

    “The company had resources in Naumann’s suite. A Ruger, and cash, and some travel documents. I needed to get at them. The concierge is a friend. He let me in without registering. I had watched the hotel for hours before I surfaced. No one was on it. I figured, because it was so obvious, it would be the last place they’d expect me to show up.”

    “We are speaking of they as if we knew who they were. Do you know who is this they?”

    “In my case, Clandestine Services.”

    “Yes, Clandestine Services of the CIA . . . the Special Action men. When we met, a month ago, you were much caressed by the Agency, and now, I see, not so much. I wonder why this is so. But we will come to that. For now, for what immediately concerns me as an official of the Carabinieri, we have the attempted murder of an American visitor and the suspect an elusive blonde. So, now is the time to speak.”

    Dalton stared up at Brancati for a time, his mind working. In this brief, tense interlude, Sister Beatrice found it convenient to arrive with a broad silver tray piled high with cakes and biscotti and a china bowl full of soup —straciatella. There was even a pot of coffee, along with a series of colored pills that she insisted Signor Dalton take while she watched him.

    She also glared so ferociously at Major Brancati that, sighing theatrically, he went into the bathroom and flushed his cigar down the toilet. Then he emerged, appropriating three of Dalton’s biscotti, flopping himself down on Dalton’s bed and waiting with clear impatience until Sister Beatrice drifted back out of the room on her squeaking rubber shoes.

    She paused at the door to send an over-the-shoulder farewell glance at Dalton freighted with an earthly warmth that struck both men as rather more carnal than was quite right in a nursing sister, even an Italian one. Brancati