“An old woman who worked at Carovita. I didn’t get her name.”
“Carovita is closed. We looked for the owners. They have gone back to their winter home in Split, where we do not enjoy a formal relationship with the local authorities. Do you know where this is, this Split? It is in Croatia, on the Dalmatian coast. Does this Croatian motif now come to have some greater significance in your mind?”
Dalton absorbed this in stunned silence. This collision with Milan and Gavro? Was it more than it had seemed at the time?
For a thousand years, Venice had been the city of assassins. There was even a street in the San Marco region called Assassini. Was his encounter with Milan and Gavro far more than a vicious but random combat in the edgy Venetian night?
If it was more serious, what was the outcome supposed to be? Was it intended, by parties unknown, that he should die there, in what looked to be a random mugging?
“I don’t know. I’d have to—”
“You have only to answer my questions. After that, you are to be escorted to Marco Polo Airport, where you will take your jet back to London or Langley or wherever you wish to go. You will not come back to Italy.”
“What about Mr. Naumann’s body? His… his effects?”
“Mr. Naumann’s death is a matter for our security service now. In due course your government will be notified of our progress. His body will be more thoroughly examined by our best medical people. I no longer accept that his death was a simple colpo apoplettico. I wish to have a complete toxicological report done by our own people. When this is done, we will know what to do.”
Drugs.
Brancati was suspecting a Croatian drug ring.
The Trieste connection had put this in Brancati’s mind, and whether or not it was a valid lead, he’d play it out to the conclusion. Did he know about the trap that Sweetwater had set for him in Cora’s apartment? What had Cora said while the adrenaline was still running through her veins? As if reading his thoughts, Brancati broke into them at the perfect moment with precisely the right observation.
“Miss Vasari has told us what happened to you, Mr. Dalton. I would like to hear your tale of this incident.”
Vague.
And dangerously so.
Clearly a trap. But was it set with truth, with genuine knowledge, at its center? What had Cora told him?
“Tell him the truth, kid,” said Naumann’s ghost, stepping into the light from a dark corner of the hospital corridor.
“I think I was drugged, Major Brancati,” he said, managing, with a violent effort, not to stare over Brancati’s shoulder at the shimmering, vaguely luminous shape of Porter Naumann hovering behind him.
Stress could be the trigger, he decided. Perhaps he could control it by staying calm.
“Drugged?” said Brancati, without visible surprise. “How?”
If Dalton had any chance of staying in Italy longer than another two hours, he had to treat this Carabinieri officer with real respect. Anything less and he’d turn a man who was at the moment merely hostile into a settled enemy.
“That’s right,” said Naumann’s ghost. “We need this guy.”
We need this guy? thought Dalton.
Ignoring, with great difficulty, Naumann’s presence, Dalton kept his eyes fixed on Brancati’s face while he laid out in basic terms what had taken place in Cora’s villa, withholding no detail but leaving out the exact nature of his own private journey back to Boston in those terrible seconds before Cora’s Narcan injection had pulled him back to the living world. Brancati listened to his story without emotion and without interruption. When Dalton was finished, Brancati’s heated aura seemed to be a degree cooler. “Yes,” he said, for the first time with some sympathy in his tone, “this is what Cora Vasari also told us. You are recovered?”
Apparently not, Dalton said to himself, looking at Naumann’s ghost. “I think so.”
“Miss Vasari does not agree. She thinks you must go to the hospital. That the drug could have permanently damaged you. She tells me that in her apartment you admitted to her that you were seeing the ghost of your dead friend. This Mr. Naumann. Is this true?”
“Keep me out it,” said Naumann.
“No, it’s not. I was, but not anymore. I’m fine. No ill effects.”
“I hope you are right. You do not look healthy. You look pale, you are staring at nothing as if you really had seen un fantasma. I suppose you have taken this cilindro back with you to London?”
“Yes. I sent it on to our people to be analyzed.”
Brancati did not ask Dalton who his people were because he knew damn well who his people were.
“And the drug as well?”
“Yes.”
“Have they determined what it was?”
“Not yet. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“When you receive their report, I will insist on being told. I will insist on seeing it. This is a matter of concern to the Italian government. Anything less than full and frank cooperation will result in a formal protest to your Department of State. This would be out of my hands.”
“When I know, you’ll know.”
“I have your word on this?” He smiled thinly. “As a spy?”
“No. Not as a spy. I give you my word as a soldier.”
“Good. As a soldier. I hold you to it. We must talk further,” said Brancati, “but not now. Do you wish to see Signorina Vasari?”
“I do. Very much.”
“I see,” he said, with a half smile. “You admire her. So do I.”
He turned to the carabiniere by the closed door.
“Let this man through.”
He looked back at Dalton.
“I give you ten minutes only. Are you hungry?”
“I am.”
Brancati smiled, a full open smile, the first one Dalton had seen on the man since he first met him, no guarded quality to it.
“Good. I know a little place, not far from here. You will join me.”
This was not a question either.
“I’d be happy to.”
Brancati stepped aside and the guard knocked gently on the door before opening it onto a small, dimly lit and well-appointed private room in which a single pink lamp glowed softly on a bedside table.
“I’ll stay out here,” said Naumann. “You two probably need a moment alone.”
In the rose-colored half-light Dalton could see that Cora was lying on top of a huge intricately carved wooden bed, her head on a single pillow, her hair a black tumble of silk around her white face, her eyes closed, still fully dressed — black slacks and a crisp white shirt-blouse, shoeless — her delicate hands folded across her gently rounded belly, her breasts rising and falling slowly as she breathed. Dalton crossed the soft carpet — reds and blues and golds — and sat down in a stiff-backed wooden chair, which creaked as it took his weight. She had been struck — struck hard — on the right cheek, just below the eye. A dark purple-and-green bruise had spread out across her cheek and into the shadow of her jawline just below her ear. One side of her mouth was swollen, the red lips puffy and distended at the corners. The sight of this pierced him straight through the heart, a cold iron bolt of self-hatred. Cora’s eyes opened and she looked at him without delight. She closed her eyes again.
“So. Here is the International Man of Mystery.”
Dalton reached out and placed his hand on top of her folded hands. She pulled them away, a flicker of distaste flashing across her fine handsome face before she composed it into a detached, expressionless mask.
“I hate a liar, Micah. Are you a liar?”
“Yes.”
“If I ask you questions now, will you lie to me?”
“No.”
“This is a lie.”