The Orpheus Deception by David Stone Read Free Book Online Page A

forward, sinking its blunt yellow teeth into the boy’s calf. The child began to shriek, and Groz, rising, tried to intervene, dancing around the pair, fluttering his hands uselessly. Gospic set the camcorder down carefully on the bench and, in two long-legged strides, was on the bitten child, the dog now shaking the boy’s leg, blood bubbling up around its teeth.

    Gospic took a fistful of the dog’s neck skin, jerked it high in the air, holding the big dog aloft, the animal rigid now; the old hound rolled a yellow eye filled with glassy defiance at him, its gray tongue hanging, the vibrato in its chest growing into a kind of purring snarl.

    The dog, who knew his man well enough, didn’t bother to struggle.

    Gospic twisted his muscular body and hurled the dog over the edge of the balcony. It fell, turning in the twilight, yelping, a splay-legged, pinwheeling starfish shape clear against the shimmering water, seeming to fall forever, and then smashing with sudden force onto the seawall below, breaking apart, a brown heap of guts, a broken pile of flesh and hide, running blood.

    Down on the quay, people begin to scream in tiny voices, ant figures scurrying, and a young girl in a blue sundress pointed up to the balcony. Gospic glared at the little cluster of pale boys in front of him, who stared back at him with their wet red mouths gaping, tiny, round teeth showing, the green light of sadism fading from their flat-brown eyes. Gospic, breathing heavily, shrugged once and turned away. Stefan Groz sat back down on the bench, sighing, his face as gray as his well-cut suit, his small black eyes bright with glittering attention, a thin, hard smile playing on his blue lips.

    “Well?” said Gospic, looking at the man.

    Groz lifted his hands, palms up, spreading them apart in a gesture of acceptance, showing Gospic his too-white, too-large, too-even teeth.

    “You have the . . . means to deliver this?”

    “We are in the process of acquiring it.”

    The question hung in the air, but Groz knew better than to ask it. Gospic’s methods were none of his business. It was better not to know. He lifted his hands again, let them fall limply into his lap. The bitten boy, silent until now, began to grizzle, a reedy, whining snuffle, his stubby nose running with snot. Groz made a pinched, disapprovingface and handed the boy his lace handkerchief, putting a deceptively soothing palm up against the child’s cheek. Then he looked back at Gospic.

    “We will need to know the timing. To the day.”

    “Of course,” said Gospic, letting his impatience show. The timing was the only thing that mattered. Everything depended on the timing, and they both knew it. The question was irrelevant; Groz was stalling.

    “And the people? You have people who can do this? People who are . . . capable? Reliable people?”

    Gospic didn’t answer that. His face, without any visible change, altered indefinably, hardening, becoming stonelike, and his eyes emptied of expression. Groz, no fool, took the point. He indicated the Sony with a withered finger.

    “What will you do with the video?”

    “It needs to be seen. We will post it on the Internet.”

    “People will know where it came from.”

    “No. There are ways to strip it. The video will be posted, and reposted, until no one will ever know where it came from. Many will think it a hoax.”

    “What about the Americans?”

    Gospic showed his teeth.

    “That’s the point.”

    Groz considered that for a time and then nodded.

    “Okay. Yes. I see. What will you need from us?”

    “The money.”

    Groz inclined his head, smiling; there would be something else. With Gospic, it was never just the money. Besides, he was pleased to have been given Dzilbar Kerk’s expensive villa, so he was in a mind to cooperate with Gospic. He waited.

    “And I need to know something from Venice.”

    “But you have your own people there.”

    “Right now, my people are being ridden by the Carabinieri.