The Echelon Vendetta (20 page)

He hesitated, shot Dalton a wary look, slightly ashamed.

“There is also some evidence that someone was in the room with you that night. Guests in the next suite heard voices—”

“Voices? More than one?”

“They could not say. Only that it seemed to them that a conversation was going on, the back and forth, pauses. More talking.”

“Maybe I had a woman in the room.”

Brancati smiled, tolerant, amused. Unbelieving.

“There was no . . . no sign of that. The maids always know. Also, in the wastebasket there were several ripped covers—for bandages— and the entire box of medical supplies was empty. When you paid for the room the desk clerk saw that your left wrist had a big bandage

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on it, and under the black glove there was a swelling, as if your hand was injured and you had wrapped it up. Yet I look at your hand here”—reaching out and touching his left hand with a fingertip— “and there is no injury at all. So here is the question—the impolite question. Your state of mind that night, it seems a little disordered. You imagine blood, but are not wounded. You converse, with no one in the room. You see a bloody bedcover where there is no blood. You clean where there is no stain. Is this because of the fight with Milan and Gavro?”

“Partly. The rest was fatigue. Too much to drink. Far too much.”

“You drank before you met with Milan and Gavro?”

“Yes. And much more afterward.”

“You were drunk, then, when you fought them?”

“I see where this is going. I wish I could go there with you. I can’t. I had no excuse. I would have done the same on black coffee.”

“Micah—I may call you Micah? Yes? Thank you. And you will call me Tessio, like my sons do. Micah, I do not know you very well. What I do know I begin to like. You do not seem to be un
uomo cat
tivo,
a man who enjoys hurting people. Do you not feel that what happened with Milan and Gavro—that maybe you should find something else to do for a while? I mean no offense. But I admit...”

“What I did offended you?”

“Not
offended,
no. How to say . . . it troubles me. Now that I know you a little better, I would say—with respect—it is not a natural thing for any man to sing Broadway songs and quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream while he kicks a man into a coma. If I told you this story about another man, what would you advise him to do?”

“Take a year off. Seek professional help.”

“Yes. This would be the advice of a true friend. And will you?”

Brancati’s tone was light; his question was dead serious. Dalton stared down at his glass, at the back of his left hand, resisting the urge to tell this man everything that had happened in the room, the

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emerald green spider, the bloody wound in his hand that was not

there, above all the terrible
persistence
of these hallucinations. Cora was right. He needed medical help. “Yes. I will. When this is over.” Brancati studied Dalton’s face, looking for evasion, for equivoca

tion, and decided after a time that Dalton was telling the truth, at least that he believed what he was saying to Brancati right now. Whether in the cold light of morning he maintained that resolve was an issue only Dalton himself could confront, and in the end what Dalton did about Dalton’s demons was none of Brancati’s business. He had his own, far too many, and would not care—in fact would savagely resent having them evoked, called up from the pit, by a stranger, even a benevolent one, even over fine white wine and a marvelous sambuca
.

“Good. Enough. I intrude. Forgive me. Well, so you really were a soldier,” he said, pouring some more sambuca into a glass, changing the subject without much tact but with charming determination. “I recognized this right away. I said so, did I not? And how, where, did you soldier?”

“Army. Special Forces, for a while. Then Intelligence.” “With your American Defense Intelligence Agency?” “Yes. Before that I was a G2.” Brancati’s polite expression showed no understanding of the

phrase. Dalton realized that Brancati was too polite to ask. “In our army, S2 mean an officer assigned to Intelligence. And

G2 means that same thing, only at the Brigade level.” “Brigade-level Intelligence? And you saw action?” “Yes. Some. Syria. The Philippines. And I was in the Horn.” Brancati took this in, his eyes widening slightly. “When?” Dalton picked up his glass, sipped at it, looking at the candles,

thinking about the Horn, about little fires in the black African night,

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stiffening corpses, knives in the moonlight, the feel of a man’s face in your left hand, his beard rasping against your palm, the steel in your right hand vibrating as the blade cuts so deep into the throat that it grates against the man’s spine. The gasping, the weakening convulsions, fresh blood on your forearm, warm as coffee.

“Ten years ago.”

“During the Janjaweed Rising?”

“Unofficially, yes.” A short answer, and as such a palpable hint, which Brancati deliberately ignored, his expression hardening.

“We were there too. My brigade. With the UN. An armored brigade of the Centauro Division. Under that Canadian general. We lost fourteen men. Taken as prisoners, abandoned by—by that Canadian—then butchered like veal calves.”

“In Kismayo?”

Brancati had a blind look, his mind in the past.

“I was in that sector,” said Dalton. “Your relief column got turned away.”

“Sent back,” said Brancati. “By that . . . clerk.”

“You were supposed to have a safe passage. That unit, I mean.”

“Ha! Guaranteed by that Canadian. His ‘guarantee’ was as empty as his huge square head. No matter. No consequences for him. He wrote a book and became a big man at the United Nations. He goes on television to weep about how difficult it all was for him, how much he suffers from the nightmares, from the guilt, although he insists that he himself did all that courage could do. No. His guilt is at one remove, he is only
remotely
guilty. For this the Canadian government calls him a great hero of their people. He sits in their government even now, smoking cigars, granting interviews.”

“Bugger the Canadians,” said Dalton.

“No. Tonight I will not bugger the Canadians, as so many of the best of them lie buried in little towns and villages all over Tuscany, killed fighting the Nazis in the last good war. But certainly tonight

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we must bugger the Horn of Africa. And we must not overlook the

officers. Particularly we must bugger all the officers.” “You’re a major yourself, aren’t you?” “Yes,” he said, nodding, his expression grave. “Bugger me first of

all. You too are an officer?” “I was. I’m not in the Army anymore.” “No. You are a spy. Tonight we will bugger all the spies too.” “Well, technically, I’m not really a spy.” “You are evasive, Micah. I begin to think you do not wish to be

buggered. No. I agree. In this you speak the simple truth. You are not a spy. You are too memorable. I have never met a memorable spy. Men who are memorable cannot become spies. Your true spy is always a half man. He is deformed in his aspect. He has bad skin. He is impotent. Stunted. Fat. Bald.
Abito che non calza.
”

“Suit but no socks?” “Yes. They have no socks. It means they are...
come si dice
?” “Out of place? Misfits?” “Yes! Misfits. All spies are misfits. But not all misfits are spies. You

are, although very handsome—such a
bella figura
—you are also a kind of misfit. I say this without offense, I hope. I too am a misfit. We do not fit our places. Our times. Our times are out of joint with us. Dante said that. Or perhaps it was Shakespeare, that black Irish thief. You are with the Central Intelligence Agency, but you are not a spy. What it is you do for them?”

Dalton, deciding not to debate the nationality and criminal propensities of Shakespeare, settled for “I think you know.” Brancati grinned, a flash of intense white in the rosy gloom of the

cubicle, his mustache bristling above this like a thicket of thorns. “
Tu fai pulizie.
You are a
ripulitore.
You clean up. You are a—” “A cleaner. Yes. That’s what I do.” “You will not take offense,” said Brancati, leaning forward, com

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ing in close, breathing sambuca on Dalton’s cheek, “if I tell you that you are not so good at this cleaner job. With respect, you are something of a fornicator from upward.”

Dalton could not work that out right away, so he said nothing.

“Perhaps your heart is not in it. You have taken Mr. Naumann’s death very personally. It has deranged your judgment. Now you are exploded, a known spy, you are seen drinking with an officer of the Carabinieri, you have started a vendetta with the Croatians, and a magnificent Italian
fanciulla
rejects your suit of love. All this you have accomplished in only five days.”

“Fornicator from upward? Do you mean I’m a fuck-up?” “Yes! A fuck-upper! I said it wrong?” Dalton raised a glass. “No. God, no,” he said, laughing a good,

deep laugh that felt like his first in a hundred days. “Here’s to fornicators from upward everywhere.”

“
Salute!
To you as well. And to me. We are all fornicator-ups in our own ways.
Allora,
I will help you, if I can, since I believe that you very much need my help. This Sweetwater man, you have a real name for him now?”

“No. I haven’t had a chance to run him in the Agency data

bases.” “Why not? You were in London.” “London was pretty hectic.” “How will you ‘run’ this search?” “I’ll start with the name.” “Sweetwater?” “Yes. See where it takes me.” “Good. A start. Cora—she has told me I may call her Cora—” “So I see.” “Yes. What a woman!
Una ragazza magnifica.
If I were not mar

ried . . . but I am most powerfully married. Now, I have decided to

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help you. In whatever way I can. This depends on much. I expect you to ...to share?”

Stallworth won’t like that, Micah.

“As much as they’ll let me, Tessio.”

Brancati studied him for a time over the lip of his glass.

“Okay.
Allora.
Now I have something to show you, my friend.”

He slipped an envelope out of his shirt pocket and laid it down on the table with a certain air, a flourish, as if to say, “Voilà!”

Dalton opened the envelope and tipped its contents out onto the table; six grainy color photos, each one showing a barred gate and a short section of hallway. In the first shot, the doorway, the gate barred, nothing showing. In the second, a shadow on the outside steps, as if from a streetlight. In the third, a black figure, shapeless, apparently surrounded by a black cloud. In the fourth, a black cloud filling the picture almost to the edges, and bars of white static, as if from an electrical interference on the power line. In the fifth, the cloud still, and the static fuzz, but both receding, shrinking, and the short section of the hallway reappearing around the edges. In the sixth, the black cloud is gone, the hallway is empty, but the barred gate stands wide open.

“Where was this taken?” asked Dalton, staring at the succession of images with a ripple of superstitious dread playing around the edges of his mind. The pictures seemed to show a shapeless form, almost a ghost, filling the frame, gliding through the frames, fading away.

“I listened to you, back in Cortona. I spoke with the desk clerk at the Strega, on Via Janelli, talked to him myself. He finally admitted that he had fallen asleep for a while. It came on very suddenly. He grew sleepy, put his head down. He may have been drugged somehow. This was at ten in the evening. At five minutes after ten, this dark figure appears at the door. The black cloud grows, and the static, the white noise as it were, and then it passes, and when it is

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gone, the gate is open. The gate is on a spring and very gradually it closes again. A while later the
blatta
girls in the next room hear two voices coming from Mr. Naumann’s room. Not really voices. More like one voice and another sound, rather like bees droning. Then a crash and a fire alarm goes off and then...
niente.
Silence. An hour later, Mr. Naumann leaves the hostel—”

“Did the camera show that?” “The clerk saw nothing. The camera stopped working. The rest

of the night it showed only black. As if the eye had been burned out.” “What kind of camera was it? Digital or magnetic tape?” “Magnetic. A VHS tape. You know something about this?” “I’ve heard...rumors. At MIT they were working on a cloaking

device. It puts out a jamming signal capable of doing this kind of thing to a video camera. It overloads the sensors with cross-spectrum broadband waves. It effects thermal imaging, infrared and ultraviolet sensors. The sensors react to this cloaking device almost as if it were a solar flare. It works on certain types of digital cameras as well. All you would see in the screen is a black formless cloud, and sometimes bars of electrical interference. People tend to think there’s something wrong, some malfunction in the camera.”

“Such a masking device, this would not be available to everyone? You could not buy it at your friendly Barracca della Radio in Boston?” “No. This is very high level. State-of-the-art countersurveillance. Strictly covert operations at the federal level.” Brancati scooped up the photos and slipped them back into the

envelope, his face closed, inward. “Would this Sweetwater person have access to such a device?” “I can’t see how. But then I don’t know who he really is.” “From whom would he get such a device?” “I don’t know. This is all just speculation.” “Perhaps from your own Agency?” “This technology—if we have it, so could others.”