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

The season is ending. Most of our people get out of Venice in November. To stay would make them conspicuous. There is a Carabinieri major. His name is Brancati. He is pressing my business pretty hard right now and I need him to stop.”

    “Stop?” asked Groz, his eyes closing slightly.

    “I need him distracted. Killing him would only intensify the war he is making on us. He has this Jew—from the Mossad?”

    “Issadore Galan.”

    “Yes. This Jew. He is more dangerous than Brancati. His only loyalty is to Brancati. I want to have him distracted.”

    “Even here?”

    They looked out at the medieval fastness of Kotor.

    “Yes. Even here.”

    “Distracted, then. In what way?”

    “He has put it out officially that a man—an American tourist—was stabbed in the Piazza San Marco two weeks ago. They say he is dead. I need to know if this is true. I need the inquiry to be noticed by Galan.”

    Groz nodded.

    “The distraction. This dead man. We have heard this story too.”

    “Do you know if it’s true?”

    Groz studied Gospic’s face for a while in silence.

    “No. We do not.”

    “You have a source in the Carabinieri.” A statement.

    “Perhaps,” said Groz.

    Gospic raised an eyebrow. Groz got the message.

    “So you ask me to . . . reach out, Branco . . . to this possible source of ours and have this question asked. Asked in such a way that Galan is distracted.”

    “Yes,” said Gospic, his tone as lizard flat as the look in his eyes.

    “If such a source existed,” said Groz, slowly, “one would be reluctantto activate him for a reason such as this unless one knew the purpose.”

    “The purpose is that I am interested in the answer.”

    “A favor, then?”

    Gospic nodded, implying a reciprocal favor in the future.

    “So, this question of the dead American, then . . . And the money, of course?”

    “Yes. This question. And the money.”

    Groz closed his eyes. The muscles in his face went slack, and he ran a pale white tongue around his thin lips, considering the risks contained in saying yes and comparing them with the risk of saying no to Branco Gospic in his own town. Gospic looked out across the fjord at the setting sun, his blunt face rocky in the sidelong light, his eyes hidden. Something buzzed in his shirt pocket, and he pulled out a small BlackBerry handset.

    There was a terse message on the screen.

    ARRIVE PMI
Tarc

    Gospic’s face did not change. He flicked the screen off, returned the machine to his shirt pocket, and looked back out to the fjord again. Groz stirred and sighed. Gospic turned to him.

    “Yes,” said Groz, his thin voice carrying a slight quaver. “We will do this. The question.”

    “And the money?”

    “And the money.”

    Groz nodded, looked around vaguely at the pillared balcony and the sparkling fjord beyond it as if he had just awakened from a dream. He sighed, pushed himself to his feet. Gospic remained sitting, gesturing to a short, blunt man with ridiculous sideburns wearing a pale blue suit and no shirt who had been sitting a careful distance away. The man stood and waited. Groz nodded, pulled the little boy to his feet and shoved him at the man in the bad blue suit, turned back to nod once at Gospic, and the little group shuffled off the balcony and into a shaded hallway beyond.

    Gospic sat alone, holding the Sony camcorder in his hard hands. The remaining boys looked up at him and, one by one, padded away into the hallway, whispering to each other. Far above his head, a cloud of swifts wheeled in the dying light, their thin cries falling down through the chilly air. Beyond the breakwater, the tide was turning and the sea was moving, a vast, shapeless surging, as if something huge and ancient living beneath the surface was rolling in its long sleep. A wintry old man in worn corduroy pants, wearing a tattered olive-drab sweater and thin leather slippers, shuffled out from the shadowed hallway and stood beside Gospic, looking out at the