Although
the echelon vendetta | 43
most of the Agency’s field work was little more than skilled forensic accounting in the service of the War on Terror, some of the people doing it cracked in truly spectacular ways.
It was in the nature of their game.
But the curiosity remained, undimmed by the wine. Dalton was still possessed by an intense desire to know what exactly had happened to his friend in the last hours of his life, what unknown forces drove him to his terrible death in the courtyard of San Nicolò. At midnight an immense bronze bell sounded once, its deep vibrating tone echoing from the walls and rooftops all around the piazza. The violins ceased, the people stopped moving, and all the pale white faces turned toward the campanile like a field of flowers bending in a wind. The huge bronze bell began to ring the twelve tones of midnight, as it had for over six hundred years. The waiters started to pick up the chairs and collect their bills. The people in the square began to melt away into the alleyways and shadows as the great bell tolled and the echoes rang and reverberated across the rooftops of Venice. Soon the square was almost empty. The soft lights inside Florian’s flicked off one by one. Dalton got to his feet, gathered up his cigarillos, left a generous stack of euros, drained his glass, stretched, and walked, a little unsteadily, through the piazzetta, in and out of the shadows that lay all around the old Ducal Palace.
He opened the old man’s pack of Toscanos, gently turned the slender brown tube with the gold tip between the thumb and index finger of his right hand for a few seconds. What the hell, he decided, lighting it up with his Zippo. He drew the smoke in deep, let it out in a luxurious cloud, snapped the lid shut, and shoved the pack it into the pocket of his trench coat.
Wrapped in a blissful cloud of wine and smoke, Chopin playing sweetly in his memory, Dalton strolled idly along the covered cloister that ran down the Florian side of the piazza. The cigarillo was a perfect coda to an evening of such sublime beauty. He stopped for a
44 | david stone
time, one shoulder up against a pillar, and looked out at the plaza, admiring the way the moonlight bathed the farther wall and how it played with the stonework and the shadows. He found himself seeing it as he had never seen it before. Above the three-tiered windowed wall the night sky pulsed with light and he felt himself drawn upward into it, as if he were suddenly weightless.
He finished the cigarillo, stubbed the butt out on the pillar, and put it in his pocket. He turned, with regret, away from the perfection of the plaza at night, crossed over to the covered archways of the Palazzo Ducale, and walked in a strangely swelling sensory daze through its dark cloistered walkway, heading, perhaps a bit vaguely, in the general direction of his hotel.
As he reached the turning of the cloister, he became aware of two large figures standing in the shadows. They stepped forward as he approached, blocking his path, two black shapes silhouetted against the amber lights on the churning water of Saint Mark’s Basin.
“ Scusi, marigold,” said one. “You have smokes?”
The man’s accent was mainly gutter Croatian with a touch of Trieste in it. His partner, who was moving to block Dalton’s path to the open courtyard, said nothing, but he said it in a way that implied he was fully on board with the evening’s program. He had something long and sharp-looking in his right hand, which he was holding slightly away from his body. The bitter stink of strong Moroccan dope came off the men like heat from a radiator. Mugged, thought Dalton, suddenly earthbound and sobering fast.
How embarrassing.
Mugged like Patsy from Peoria, Stallworth would say.
Dalton looked at the two men, both now moving to block him in, and deep inside his brain a scaled green thing turned over in the primeval muck of his subconscious and opened one slitted yellow eye. He
the echelon vendetta | 43
most of the Agency’s field work was little more than skilled forensic accounting in the service of the War on Terror, some of the people doing it cracked in truly spectacular ways.
It was in the nature of their game.
But the curiosity remained, undimmed by the wine. Dalton was still possessed by an intense desire to know what exactly had happened to his friend in the last hours of his life, what unknown forces drove him to his terrible death in the courtyard of San Nicolò. At midnight an immense bronze bell sounded once, its deep vibrating tone echoing from the walls and rooftops all around the piazza. The violins ceased, the people stopped moving, and all the pale white faces turned toward the campanile like a field of flowers bending in a wind. The huge bronze bell began to ring the twelve tones of midnight, as it had for over six hundred years. The waiters started to pick up the chairs and collect their bills. The people in the square began to melt away into the alleyways and shadows as the great bell tolled and the echoes rang and reverberated across the rooftops of Venice. Soon the square was almost empty. The soft lights inside Florian’s flicked off one by one. Dalton got to his feet, gathered up his cigarillos, left a generous stack of euros, drained his glass, stretched, and walked, a little unsteadily, through the piazzetta, in and out of the shadows that lay all around the old Ducal Palace.
He opened the old man’s pack of Toscanos, gently turned the slender brown tube with the gold tip between the thumb and index finger of his right hand for a few seconds. What the hell, he decided, lighting it up with his Zippo. He drew the smoke in deep, let it out in a luxurious cloud, snapped the lid shut, and shoved the pack it into the pocket of his trench coat.
Wrapped in a blissful cloud of wine and smoke, Chopin playing sweetly in his memory, Dalton strolled idly along the covered cloister that ran down the Florian side of the piazza. The cigarillo was a perfect coda to an evening of such sublime beauty. He stopped for a
44 | david stone
time, one shoulder up against a pillar, and looked out at the plaza, admiring the way the moonlight bathed the farther wall and how it played with the stonework and the shadows. He found himself seeing it as he had never seen it before. Above the three-tiered windowed wall the night sky pulsed with light and he felt himself drawn upward into it, as if he were suddenly weightless.
He finished the cigarillo, stubbed the butt out on the pillar, and put it in his pocket. He turned, with regret, away from the perfection of the plaza at night, crossed over to the covered archways of the Palazzo Ducale, and walked in a strangely swelling sensory daze through its dark cloistered walkway, heading, perhaps a bit vaguely, in the general direction of his hotel.
As he reached the turning of the cloister, he became aware of two large figures standing in the shadows. They stepped forward as he approached, blocking his path, two black shapes silhouetted against the amber lights on the churning water of Saint Mark’s Basin.
“ Scusi, marigold,” said one. “You have smokes?”
The man’s accent was mainly gutter Croatian with a touch of Trieste in it. His partner, who was moving to block Dalton’s path to the open courtyard, said nothing, but he said it in a way that implied he was fully on board with the evening’s program. He had something long and sharp-looking in his right hand, which he was holding slightly away from his body. The bitter stink of strong Moroccan dope came off the men like heat from a radiator. Mugged, thought Dalton, suddenly earthbound and sobering fast.
How embarrassing.
Mugged like Patsy from Peoria, Stallworth would say.
Dalton looked at the two men, both now moving to block him in, and deep inside his brain a scaled green thing turned over in the primeval muck of his subconscious and opened one slitted yellow eye. He
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