The Orpheus Deception (8 page)
Read The Orpheus Deception Online
Authors: David Stone
Through half-closed eyes, he watched as Father Jacopo plucked his hand out of the gaping wound he had made in Dalton’s belly. Gripped in his bloody fingers was a long, jagged sliver of bright green glass. Father Jacopo opened his eyes and turned the shard in the light from the window, his face flushed, his breathing short and rapid.
“You should have listened to Paolo, my son,” he said. “This is only one piece. We must be sure to get them all. Try not to move.”
Father Jacopo leaned forward with a look of renewed concentration, his bloody hand poised again above the gaping wound in Dalton’s belly, his eyes fixed and full of hard purpose. The ghost of Porter Naumann appeared on the other side of his bed. Father Jacopo looked up at Naumann’s ghost without changing his fixed expression.
“Cancrenato,”
he said, with dismissive contempt. “This is no place for you. You are expelled. Leave us.”
he said, with dismissive contempt. “This is no place for you. You are expelled. Leave us.”
Naumann ignored the priest’s command, looked down at Dalton.
“Micah,” he said, “now would be a good time to make some noise.”
DALTON TOOK PORTER
Naumann’s advice immediately to heart and, although he was only able to utter some strangled croaks, help did come running, in a black habit and sensible shoes, a nursing sister, with a stiff white cowl and an air of resigned irritation, who stiff-armedthe big oak door and squeaked a rubber-soled streak to his bedside, where she leaned over Dalton as he moaned and thrashed, trying hard in his nightmare state to activate his screaming gear. And then, quite suddenly, he was wide awake and fully present in a room without either Father Jacopo or the ghost of Porter Naumann. He blinked stupidly up at the nun as she pressed her hands against his chest to quiet him. She had soft pink cheeks and cold gray eyes and she smelled of soap and lemons—her scent was very familiar, although her name refused to come to him. She placed a cool, dry hand on his forehead and then ran it down the side of his cheek to press an icy fingertip against his right carotid artery.
Naumann’s advice immediately to heart and, although he was only able to utter some strangled croaks, help did come running, in a black habit and sensible shoes, a nursing sister, with a stiff white cowl and an air of resigned irritation, who stiff-armedthe big oak door and squeaked a rubber-soled streak to his bedside, where she leaned over Dalton as he moaned and thrashed, trying hard in his nightmare state to activate his screaming gear. And then, quite suddenly, he was wide awake and fully present in a room without either Father Jacopo or the ghost of Porter Naumann. He blinked stupidly up at the nun as she pressed her hands against his chest to quiet him. She had soft pink cheeks and cold gray eyes and she smelled of soap and lemons—her scent was very familiar, although her name refused to come to him. She placed a cool, dry hand on his forehead and then ran it down the side of his cheek to press an icy fingertip against his right carotid artery.
“You were dreaming, Signor Dalton—you are okay. You are safe. The morphine drip has come loose here . . . you must be still.”
Dalton made the mistake of trying to sit up again. The pain in his gut snapped him backward and he hit the pillow hard. As he did so, the fragments of his memory came together: the blond runner by the Bridge of Sighs, the ghost of Porter Naumann with the green glass hilt of a broken dagger in his hand, the pigeons going up like blowing leaves in the Piazza San Marco as Cora begged him to be still . . . the opal sky burning above.
“Jesus
Christ—
how long have I been out?”
Christ—
how long have I been out?”
The sister’s face closed, her seamed lips puckering.
“Do not blaspheme, Signor Dalton. Jesus protects you here.”
“Does He?” said Dalton, mainly to himself. “Well, He’s doing a really crappy job of it, then, isn’t He? Am I still in the Arsenal?”
“Yes. Good. You remember. You are in the clinic of the Arsenal.”
“So, I’m still in Venice?”
“Yes. With the grace of God, the Arsenal remains in Venice, so of course you also remain in Venice,” she said in a soothing voice, “and you must try to lie still. You will open your
. . . dei punti?
Your stitches.”
. . . dei punti?
Your stitches.”
Dalton, tensing, could feel them pulling in his lower right side, like fishhooks in the flesh. He arched reflexively, the pain spiking again.
“What day is it?”
“Today is
Sabato.
Saturday. You came here two weeks ago, on
Mercoledi.”
Sabato.
Saturday. You came here two weeks ago, on
Mercoledi.”
“Chri— I mean, really? Two weeks? I’ve been out for two weeks?”
She straightened up and looked down at him. She was ageless, anywhere from thirty to sixty.
What life could you lead,
thought Dalton,
that would leave you so beatifically unmarked?
If the sister’s body was a temple of peace and tranquility, apparently his was an arena.
What life could you lead,
thought Dalton,
that would leave you so beatifically unmarked?
If the sister’s body was a temple of peace and tranquility, apparently his was an arena.
“Cora? Is she here?”
The sister’s face cleared, sunlight coming out from behind the clouded aspect of her eyes . . . She nodded, her ageless smile spreading.
“Sí. La Signorina Vasari.
She has been here
many
times.”
She has been here
many
times.”
“Many times?”
“Yes. Many times. You have been sedated, put into a sleep, so you would not tear at the incision. This morning at dawn we begin to bring you back to life. Your lips are dry. Would you like some water?”
Dalton nodded. She moved away, a dry rustle of her habit and her rubber shoes squeaking on the stone floor, and then she was back with a tall glass filled with ice water, an angled straw; she put a hand under his back and lifted him—she was quite strong. Dalton pulled at the water and felt its cooling rush down his throat. She lowered him gently back.
“There . . . you should go to sleep again, now.”
Sleep.
Sleep and dreams, and Father Jacopo with his surgical fingers.
“No. I’ve slept enough. Too much. I need to sit up.”
“You are sure?”
“I am.”
She gave the request her professional consideration for a time while Dalton lay there and tried to pull himself fully into the here and now. He knew the Arsenal, the big military citadel next to the old naval basin in the eastern end of Venice. It belonged to the Carabinieri, the military police. It was off-limits to civilians. It was also sometimes used as a secret prison for high-security detainees. Was he now one of them?
If he was in the hands of the Carabinieri, then it was likely that they would have already notified the Agency in Langley. Keepers would be here now, out in the hall, waiting for him to come out of the sedation. He was as good as in shackles, on his way back to Langley. Or he might never reach it. The sister’s expression changed as she saw a series of strong emotions run across his face. Her words indicated that she was more than just a nurse and that she knew at least something about his situation.
“You are under the protection of Major Brancati, Signor Dalton. You must not be afraid. I am Sister Beatrice, the Director of the clinic here. No guard is waiting in the hall. No one is coming for you today. Here. Let me help you to sit.”
She managed to get him more or less upright, stacking pillows behind him for support. The room rolled only a little as she did this, and the nausea stayed under control, but he was weak . . . boneless. He could barely hold the glass she handed to him. She stepped back again, folding her hands across her waist, her face in repose and considering.
“Are you hungry? Some soup, I think, would be possible now.”
“Yes,” said Dalton, feeling the emptiness in his belly.
“You are in pain. Would you like something for it?”
“Yes. No, no I would not. No morphine. But soup, yes, please.”
He could not afford to be drugged any longer. If the price of being awake and ready for what was coming was to be in pain, it was a reasonable exchange. He glanced around the room and saw a large leather chair, some sort of narrow wooden armoire, doors open, with nothing inside it but a blue terry-cloth bathrobe and a pair of thin cloth slippers. A half-open door in the end wall that probably led to a bathroom. There were no guards in the room. There could be guards in the hall, in spite of the sister’s assurances, but in here there was also a window.
So anything was possible, if he was awake and ready for his chance. Sister Beatrice saw the direction of his thoughts and gave him a conspirator’s smile, but all she said was, “Major Brancati is now here. He has been waiting for you to wake up. He has been called. Are you ready to see him?”
“Yes,” he said, pulling in a deep breath and riding out the consequences with as blank an expression as he could manage. “Of course.”
She nodded, leaned over to straighten his sheets, and to push his long blond hair back from his forehead, letting her fingers move through his hair with a less-than-virginal touch. Then she turned and glided out of the room.
As soon as the door closed, Dalton pulled back the sheets and tried to get out of the bed. He got his feet down onto the stone floor, feeling faint, braced himself, and pushed himself to his feet, swaying, seeing the room go pale as a mist rose up in his vision.
He was wearing some sort of striped pajama bottom and nothing else. A broad surcingle of pale blue gauze was wrapped tightly around his lower torso. He touched his belly with caution, feeling for the stitches underneath, and found a row of them, perhaps eight inches long, running from his hip almost to the middle of his belly. He stood upright with an effort and tried to walk, found that it was just possible to attempt a few uncertain steps in a kind of old man’s shuffle. The door to the bathroom was half open, a tin shower stall visible beyond it. It cost him a great deal to cover the eight feet between the bed and the bathroom, but he managed it, closing the door and leaning his hands against the broad ceramic sink, with its rust-stained drain, while he gathered himself. He looked at his reflection in the stainless steel mirror; dark rings under his pale, colorless eyes, his cheeks sunken, long hair in limp, greasy strands.
He badly needed a shower and a shave, and he was very aware of the fact that a light breeze could knock him down, but he was still alive, and if the Company was trying to get to him, they hadn’t done it yet.
He shuffled carefully to the barred window and looked out at a long canal that ran northward between low stone walls, the Canale delle Galeazze, the surface of its placid gray waters pebbled with a light rain that made it look like a sheet of hammered tin. Shreds of mist drifted across the canal. The wind off the Adriatic carried the smell of fish, a hint of garlic, and the graveyard reek of Venice in the fall. Just visible out in the sea mist was the low tomb-filled cemetery island called Isola di San Michele. The bars of the little window were thick and set deep into the stone casement.
The distance from the bathroom window to the roof of the buildings below looked to be about forty feet, with nothing but sheer stone wall between the casement and the roof. He reached up and tugged at one of the bars; he might as well have been trying to pull the sword from the stone. He heard the sound of amused laughter and turned to see Alessio Brancati, a major of the Carabinieri, wearing his formal navy blues, boots gleaming black, his leather harness shining, a holstered Beretta at his hip, leaning against the doorway, his dark, craggy face wearing a sardonic grin, his piratical leer set off by a black mustache, his strong yellow teeth showing.
“Awake for only a minute and already you are plotting, Micah.”
Dalton could not help but return the smile, although his satisfaction at seeing Brancati again was, under the circumstances, rather muted.
“Alessio . . .” Dalton swayed a little, and Brancati’s expression changed to grim concern. He stepped forward and took Dalton’s right arm in an iron grip. He smelled strongly of the same Toscano cigars that he had been smoking when they first met in the little courtyard of the church of San Niccolò in Cortona, where an old verger named Paolo had found the bloody remnants of Dalton’s friend Porter Naumann huddled by the gates. Brancati was the officer in charge of the murder investigation, and, although his part in it had remained in Italy, he had been an unlikely ally in the pursuit of Naumann’s killer during the following days, a chase that had taken Dalton from Venice to London, to Washington, D.C., and finally to a violent collision in a stand of cottonwood trees by the Little Apishapa River, in southeastern Colorado.
Brancati led Dalton gently across to the wooden chair and helped him down into it, making odd little soothing sounds as if he were leading a lame horse. When Dalton was safely settled, Brancati went across to the wooden armoire, retrieved the threadbare blue robe, and arranged it with rough but careful hands across Dalton’s shoulders. Then he stepped back and looked down at him with an expression on his strong Tuscan face that was a curious amalgam of sympathy, strong official disapproval, and residual affection.
“Cretino!”
he said, not unkindly. “You came back.
Perché?”
he said, not unkindly. “You came back.
Perché?”
Dalton opened his mouth to answer, but Brancati raised his hand, palm out, shaking his head. “No need. You came back for
her.
And now look at you. Stuck like a
bistecca,
and all the Americans in an uproar. This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous. And you have placed her in danger too. You are a professional, a trained man. And yet you do this?”
her.
And now look at you. Stuck like a
bistecca,
and all the Americans in an uproar. This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous. And you have placed her in danger too. You are a professional, a trained man. And yet you do this?”
“I just wanted to . . .”
Dalton’s voice trailed off, bitterly aware that there was nothing to be said in his defense. Brancati nodded once, as if satisfied that on this point at least—on Dalton’s state of sentimental idiocy—there was to be no argument.
“Yes. No defense. At least you still have your honor. She has been here many times. Not ten hours ago, she sat in that chair, love struck, with a face as white as Palladio’s paint box.”
“Cora?”
Brancati shrugged and made a hard face, his hands upraised.
“There is no reason in it. I tried to reason. No chance. She is down below now, waiting. Sister Beatrice, who is a romantic, called her at the Museo Civico. At least she has accepted having a guard, so there is that to be grateful for. It is not much, but I will take it. Now, I have to ask you, what are your intentions?”
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