The Echelon Vendetta Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.”