Free The Orpheus Deception by David Stone Page A

managed to allow Dalton to eat almost half of his soup, and they both took long sips of what turned out to be caffè corretto— coffee with Sambuca—before Brancati, sitting up on the side of the bed and leaning forward, returned with his usual force to the lines of inquiry before them.

    “So . . . aspetto . . . talk to me! Explain.”

    Dalton, sighing, said, “What do you want to know?”

    “You have been stabbed. The weapon was a medieval Venetian assassin’s blade. We have examined the fragments taken from your body. The knife was an antique, over three hundred years old, obtained by theft from a museum of Murano glass in the Ghetto. It was valued by its owner at over six thousand euros. Quite a price to pay for an object that is to be stuck with great force and no reasonable hope of recovery into a man’s vitals. This act from beginning to end was . . . cinematic. Implausible. So unlikely that it suggests someone wishing to appear Venetian, which raises the possibility that the killers are not, as you say in America, from around here.”

    “Have you thought about the Serbs?”

    “Yes,” said Brancati. “Your little dancing lesson on the Quay of Slavs. This has occurred to me, I admit.”

    This was reference to a late-night collision near the Palazzo Ducale between Dalton and two Serbian thugs from Trieste—Milan and Gavro—an attempted mugging that Dalton, feeling the effects of at least two bottles of Bollinger, had resented so extremely that he had kicked Milan into a state of quadriplegia and pounded the hapless Gavro into a permanent coma.

    This had happened over a month ago, during the early days of Dalton’s pursuit of Porter Naumann’s killer; an unrelated off-ramp in the investigation that had nevertheless resulted in the arrival in Venice a while later of two Serbian enforcers in the employ of one Branco Gospic, a Serbian warlord based in Split, and, as it happened, a close relative to the now-comatose Gavro. The enforcers, Radko No Last Name Given and an unidentified male accomplice, had traced Dalton’s movements to Cora Vasari’s town house in the Dorsoduro district of Venice, where they had broken in by force and terrified the woman for a few moments before she was able to produce a pistol—her grandfather’s, a famous flier assassinated by one of Mussolini’sagents during Il Duce’s adventure in Abyssinia. Cora shot Radko in the face, which ended the ugly interview at her villa but not, quite likely, the grudge between Dalton and Gavro’s Serbian godfather, Branco Gospic.

    “You think Gospic sent the girl?”

    “It’s a theory. I would be more in love with it if Mr. Gospic and his associates were the only people expressing an interest in your location.”

    “What does that mean?” said Dalton, knowing damn well.

    “Now we come to it, my friend. The Agency. Your fall from grace. What happened in America? You found Mr. Naumann’s killer; this we have been told?”

    “Yes.”

    “And did it end there? In Colorado?”

    “There were complications.”

    This obviously came as no shock to Brancati, as his wry smile indicated.

    “Complications,” he said, savoring the word. “I begin to see that complications follow in your wake as seabirds follow the fishing fleet. Do you wish to enlarge on these complications?”

    Dalton lifted his hands, winced, and shook his head, his face hardening.

    “Alessio, I can’t. I can’t tell you a damn thing.”

    Brancati shook his head sadly.

    “If you wish my cooperation, Micah, you have no choice.”

    “I can tell you that the Company wants to find me. I can tell you that they have a good reason to find me. I know that sounds . . .”

    “Cinematic?”

    Dalton laughed in spite of his pain.

    “Yes. Cinematic. But it’s true.”

    Brancati’s face became a little stonier, showing Dalton the hard man he had seen before, the soldier-spy under the courtly façade.

    “These are difficult times, Micah. This terror war, the