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that money transfer just happen to occur while he was already in Venice?
    The answer to that question had not become overly important until the shooting started. Now the cash was ashes and all of the participants to the payoff dead. So he’d like to know.
    His mind searched for everything he knew about his current location.
    Isola di San Michele was once two islands, but a canal between them had been filled long ago. Napoleon created the cemetery in 1807, when he ordered Venetians to stop burying their dead within the town. A Renaissance church and a former monastery remained from that time. A high brick wall guarded its shores, the dark outline of tall cypresses rising above it. He recalled one other anomaly. The burials were squeezed tight, the dead guaranteed only a few years’ rest. After a decade the remains were exhumed and stored in ossuaries, making room for more bodies. One of the notice boards that listed the timetable for exhumations stood to his right.
    He popped the magazine from his Beretta and replaced it with a spare from his pocket. Then he started walking toward the church, making no pretense of silence. A series of gardens studded with cypress trees and more monuments lined the stone-paved walkways. Some of the graves were gaudy with domes and sculptures and wrought iron. Some were stacked in terraces like filing cabinets. Amazing how audacious people could be with death.
    The kink in his leg began to work itself out. He was too damn old to be dropping from helicopters. He was supposed to be retired—after a career in the navy, law school, then a dozen years at the Justice Department working for Stephanie Nelle’s Magellan Billet. He quit three years ago and now owned an old-book shop in Copenhagen. But that hadn’t stopped trouble from finding him. This time, though, he’d found it, as he’d willingly accepted Stephanie’s offer to freelance. The past few weeks had been anything but pleasant. He’d heard not a word from Cassiopeia Vitt. They’d dated for the past year, but parted ways a month ago when trouble had once again found them both in Utah. He’d thought maybe after she cooled down they could work it through. He’d even called her once, but she did not answer. He did receive an email, though. Short and sweet.
    Leave me alone.
    Obviously, her bitterness still retained fire.
    So he did as she asked, and a chance to roam the Adriatic and Mediterranean for ten days on the U.S. government’s dime had seemed like a good respite. All he had to do was keep an eye on a former Treasury official, Paul Larks, who might lead him to a man named Anan Wayne Howell, an American fugitive. The Justice Department wanted Howell. So he’d stayed close. Larks was pushing seventy, walked with a slight stoop that reminded him of his old friend Henrik Thorvaldsen, and had kept to himself during the cruise, which had made him think that whatever was supposed to happen would happen in Venice. Then the dispatch from Stephanie, sending him to the Italian mainland, arrived.
    And disaster followed.
    He approached the lighted church, its white marble façade overlooking the lagoon. Everything was closed up tight. He rounded one side and spotted a boathouse. A dim light burned inside, illuminating one of the sleek, low-riding runabouts that had made Venice famous.
    “Stop right there,” a male voice said in Italian.
    He turned to see a heavyset man in uniform bobble up in the dark. He still held his Beretta, which he quickly shielded behind his thigh.
    “Are you stationed here?” he asked the man in Italian.
    Languages were easy for him, the advantage of both living in Europe and having an eidetic memory. He was fluent in several.
    “Were you in that crash?”
    “ Si. And I have to leave the island.”
    The man came close. “Are you hurt?”
    He nodded and lied, “I need a doctor.”
    “My boat is there. Can you make it to the dock?”
    He’d heard enough and revealed the gun, aiming it straight at the