The Skorpion Directive Part 25

"Honor as soldier?"

"I don't give my honor to people who run."

"I do not run! Is for mission!"

"I still need you to give me something."

"Okay. Piotr Kirikoff. He is in Athens."

DALTON called in three hard-looking sailors and told them that Vukov needed to go to the toilet. called in three hard-looking sailors and told them that Vukov needed to go to the toilet.

"Don't take the shackles off. Just enough for him to get his business done. And you stay stay with him, follow? He is never alone." with him, follow? He is never alone."

The oldest man there, a petty officer with lean, grizzled cheeks and tobacco-stained teeth, grinned at Dalton.

"Uri here can wipe his a.s.s. Right, Uri?"

Uri shuffled his feet, his face reddening.

They gathered around Vukov while the petty officer keyed the lock holding the chain to the ringbolt. Dalton cleared the door as the chain gang shuffled down the narrow corridor toward the heads. He went back into the little storeroom, sat down on the bench, put his feet on Vukov's chair, and lit another Sobranie, feeling reasonably pleased with himself. Military pride was a tender thing, even with a man like Vukov. Three minutes pa.s.sed in this pleasant way. After five minutes, Dalton, suddenly feeling uneasy, got up and walked down the hallway to the head, where he opened the door and found three dead men. They searched the entire s.h.i.+p, from truck to kelson. They were sixteen klicks out of Kerch Harbor, in the middle of a night as dark as a dragon's colon, the hull slicing through muddy chop, two white wings curling away from the cut.w.a.ter, and Aleksandr Vukov had gone over the side. Dalton leaned on the taffrail for thirty minutes as Davit's men played searchlights on the surging waves. Mandy stood nearby, intending to comfort but knowing there was none to be had. Finally he pushed himself upright and walked back into the cabin with Mandy, no longer feeling quite so pleased with himself.

Athens FLISVOS MARINA, PORT OF ATHENS, NOON LOCAL TIME.

If spring had come late to Prague, it was long gone in Athens. The sprawling white city, terra-cotta-roofed, spread itself out across the huge valley, from the mountains to the sea, in a crazy maze of circular streets, hexagonal blocks, squares, grids, arches, highways, byways, alleys, dead ends, all piled up around the limestone Acropolis and Parthenon, with fluttering palms along the coast and cypress spikes marching down the hillsides. Today, Athens was baking and s.h.i.+mmering under a noonday sun that blazed down from a sky so light it looked like gla.s.s. A single contrail moved slowly across the blue, the jet itself a diamond sparkle at the tip, trailing a line of snow-white lace, like the blade of a gla.s.s cutter moving over a crystal bowl, catching the sun and glowing like pale fire even as it spread slowly out and faded away into wisps of cloud.

Nikki, shading her eyes from the knife-edged glitter off the sea, watched the contrail as it cut its path slowly into the west. She thought briefly of her home in Seven Oaks, her cats and her plants, and-this thought, uncalled, unwelcome, breaking through her defenses-of Hank Brocius, in the early winter of last year, on a roof deck overlooking the parking lot at Crypto City, the winter light s.h.i.+ning on the unscarred side of his face, his gentle eyes on her as she wrapped a gold-and-blue scarf around his neck and kissed him on the lips for the first time.

The memory stung, bit deep, brought down all her defenses, and the Flisvos Marina in Athens dissolved at once into a blur of white and blue and yellow limestone. Her throat closing up, her chest tight, she looked down at her hands, a watery blur, folded around the stem of a gla.s.s of chilled white wine. She picked up a pink linen napkin, lifted her sungla.s.ses, and dabbed at her eyes. There was someone at her shoulder, a soft male voice, warm, caring. "Miss Gandolfo, are you okay?"

She set her sungla.s.ses back in place, adjusted them, and only then turned to smile brightly up at the lean brown boy in the crisp white mess jacket and creased black slacks who was hovering over her, his handsome face full of concern.

"I am fine, Tomas," she said, "just the glare off the water."

"Let me fix the umbrella," he said, leaning in to move the shaft, swinging the heavy shade around to s.h.i.+eld her from the reflections in the harbor. As he did so, he cut her off from the long window of the Serenitas Restaurant. There, alone at a table for four, Piotr Kirikoff sat, all in baggy, shapeless white, with a large bib spread over his spinnaker belly. He was leaning forward and ripping a large lobster apart with his bare hands, stuffing gobbets and bits into his mouth, his greasy purple lips working, juices dripping from his sausage fingers, oblivious to the nauseated stares of a tourist party across the aisle.

Nikki thanked Tomas and, when he was gone, s.h.i.+fted her chair to the left to regain her view. It had taken a while for Kirikoff to surface, and her station here at the Serenitas, after a full day, an evening, and the morning of the second day, was becoming obvious, if only to Tomas, who was sure this stunning Italian girl was falling madly for . . . him. But of course. How could she not?

But Kirikoff had finally made an appearance, less than an hour ago, arriving on a long gleaming-white motor yacht that proceeded into Flisvos Marina like a swan. It glided regally past rows and rows of other equally magnificent yachts, many of them larger, all of them just as sleek, finally making a ponderous swing into a berth halfway up the mole. The yacht, the Dansante Dansante, would have been a sensation in Bar Harbor or Newport. Here among the riches of Athens it was, if not ordinary, then at least unremarkable.

Tomas, watching it arrive, informed Nikki in a careful aside that the yacht was owned by some large corporation. Many of the yachts at Flisvos were corporate. But as they watched the mountainous figure of Piotr Kirikoff waddle along the quay toward them, Tomas's expression altered into one of guarded hostility, and he pulled back into his more formal pose as the solicitous waiter. Kirikoff rumbled past the table, his small hooded eyes fixed on the gla.s.s doors, his thighs shaking under the thin linen of his pleated slacks, his leather flip-flops shuffling across the tiles, his great dimpled a.s.s visibly vibrating with every step.

"Peter Christian," said Tomas in an over-the-shoulder whisper as he stepped briskly over to open the door for Kirikoff, "he is part owner of this place." Kirikoff sailed past Tomas without so much as a sideways glance and disappeared into the cool shadows behind the tinted gla.s.s, only to emerge a few seconds later and take his place at the table where he now sat, dismembering a crustacean with the fixed attention of a seasoned glutton.

Nikki went back to her lunch, a wonderful tomato-and-olive salad that had suddenly become dust and ashes. She pushed the plate away, calmed herself, and dialed a number on her cell phone. The line rang three times, and then Fyke picked up.

"He's there?"

"About an hour," she said, speaking softly, very aware of the tourists that were gradually filling up the tables all around her, all talking cheerfully in several different languages-Greek, German, Italian, Swiss-their voices combining into one goose-and-gander barnyard gabble, getting louder by the second.

"You see a car?"

"No. he came in a boat. Eighty-foot at least. Called Dansante Dansante. He's going by the name of Peter Christian."

"What's he look like?"

"Moby-d.i.c.k in a leisure suit."

"You're sure it's him?"

"It's him. Micah Dalton found a video of him on the Subito Subito. There can't be two of him in the world. The planet would tip over. Where are you?"

"I'm over in Piraeus. The harbor-"

As if to validate this, Nikki heard a huge, blaring blast from Fyke's end of the line, one of the cruise s.h.i.+ps casting off. A moment later, the sound of it came across the water and echoed off the hills to the south.

"As you can hear," said Fyke after the deep ba.s.s tones had died away, "I'm at the harbor. I'm supposed to be interested in renting a warehouse. I've got a list of businesses operating down here. There's no Cobalt Hydraulic Systems listed anywhere in Athens-anywhere in Greece, for that matter-but there is a warehouse on Kondyli, right across from the main wharf, leased to a company called Northstar Container Logistics, which is a subsidiary of Arc Light Engineering. They own a fleet of cargo tankers, a worldwide outfit. Own something like forty hulls, tankers, containers.h.i.+ps, even a couple of yacht transporters-"

"What's a yacht transporter?"

"It's special hull that can sink below the waterline. They have a big gate at the rear. The owners just drive their yachts through the gate, like entering a lock, then the transporter rises up again under the yacht, and off they go. They used a huge one on the USS Cole Cole. Anyway, something interesting in the records here. Guess what investment bank has a stake in both Northstar Logistics and Cobalt Hydraulic Systems?"

"Ray. Please."

"Okay. Hold on to your garters, my child. Burke and Single."

"Burke and Single? That's . . ."

"A CIA front, started up by Porter Naumann ten years ago. Still in operation, run out of London. Mikey used to work directly for them, along with Mandy Pownall. Mandy Pownall and Porter Naumann used to be an item."

"I . . . I don't think I understand any of this. Is Kirikoff a double? Is he working for both sides? It makes no sense."

"Not yet. But it will. I'm standing down the street from their warehouse right now, and there's a large tanker truck parked outside with the name Cobalt Hydraulic Systems on the side. So I'd say we're in the right neighborhood anyway."

Nikki looked up as Kirikoff pushed his plate away and lifted a large pink flipper that he waved at someone out of sight.

"I think our man has company-"

"Is it Vukov?"

"No . . . I can't see . . . Wait a minute . . ."

She watched as a tall, tanned well-groomed man walked into the dining area. He was gray-haired with a trimmed gray beard, slender, dressed in a lightweight tan suit. He extended a hand and allowed it to be enveloped in Kirikoff 's greasy flipper with a s.h.i.+ver of distaste.

"Someone I don't know. Looks Middle Eastern. They're ordering . . . coffee. How do you want to handle this?"

"Has Kirikoff ever seen you?"

"Not that I know of."

"Can you get any closer?"

"I can. There are tables inside. But I've already had lunch. I'm going to stand out, won't I?"

"I don't want you to sit anywhere near them, but if you can get a cell-phone shot of them together maybe we can figure out who the guy is. Could be totally unrelated, but it's worth it. But, Nikki, please don't get caught."

"I just love it when you're stunningly obvious, Ray."

FYKE flipped the cell phone shut, stepped out of the crowded side lane where he had been standing, and walked across the large concourse toward the wharf area. The entire harbor, the third-largest port in Europe, was lined with freighters and tankers and containers.h.i.+ps, all either taking on or off-loading cargo, derricks whining in the diesel haze. The tarmac under his feet was soft and sticky. Push-carts and trolleys and forklifts hummed around the s.h.i.+ps. Thousands of people-some tourists but mainly locals with jobs at the port-milled around, some with purpose, some without, no one showing any interest in the large sunburned man with long black hair and green eyes who was moving through the crowded docklands. flipped the cell phone shut, stepped out of the crowded side lane where he had been standing, and walked across the large concourse toward the wharf area. The entire harbor, the third-largest port in Europe, was lined with freighters and tankers and containers.h.i.+ps, all either taking on or off-loading cargo, derricks whining in the diesel haze. The tarmac under his feet was soft and sticky. Push-carts and trolleys and forklifts hummed around the s.h.i.+ps. Thousands of people-some tourists but mainly locals with jobs at the port-milled around, some with purpose, some without, no one showing any interest in the large sunburned man with long black hair and green eyes who was moving through the crowded docklands.

He took a position across the deck from the entrance to Northstar Container Logistics, where he could see the door and keep an eye on the tanker truck. It was a large stainless-steel tube, glittering and brand-new, with COBALT HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS on the side. He stepped back into the shadows again and lit up a cigarette. Five minutes later, his cell phone buzzed in his s.h.i.+rt pocket.

UNKNOWN NUMBER"Nikki . . . ?""Ray?""Joko?"

"Yeah. Joko. Where the f.u.c.k are you?"

"Well, I'm not in Tel Aviv."

"Good f.u.c.king thing. You break my ear bone with f.u.c.king champagne bottle. Still can't hear right. The boys send you kiss."

"They out of the hospital?"

"Jona is but can't walk yet because his b.a.l.l.s all swollen up like cantaloupes. Levi still has to get pins put in, and his collarbone is not so good. Daniel is okay, but he wants his tooth back."

"Found it stuck in my knuckle, Joko. Dropped it on the beach somewhere. To what do I owe-"

"Parcel service drops a box off at Mossad HQ downtown this morning. Inside is this videotape. Not fun to watch."

"Jesus. Not Mikey?"

"No. Galan. Is long tape, my friend. They cut out some bits. Not so much fun, dull stuff. Just Galan dying. But most is here."

"You see any faces?"

"Yeah. Four of them. Two guys, sort of young-looking, wearing black uniforms. They looking pale, and one is sick in corner. Big laugh. Another guy with a Mohawk, older, also in black uniform. But one guy, very bad burns all over his upper body, no face left, only slits, he has his s.h.i.+rt off-big, strong guy-he is doing something to Galan I do not want to talk about. On wall behind him is black flag with green scorpion on it."

"Serbs."

"Yes."

"So it wasn't Mikey, then?"

A long pause.

"Doesn't look like it. Tape was faked, we think,"

"You guys aren't usually so gullible."

"Us guys aren't usually getting f.u.c.ked over by old comrades either. CIA all of a sudden is cold to us. U.S. is cold. Sucks up to Arabs, bleeds for Palestine, sign statement endorsing Goldstone Report that we commit war crimes in Gaza. Even join f.u.c.king Human Rights panel at UN. We feel the cold, we resent this. Makes us cranky. But about Micah, yes, I am sorry. I was wrong. I should have known better."

"Okay. Penance. A Rosary and the Stations of the Cross."

"I am a Jew, Ray."

"So was Jesus. Roll with it. Any idea who sent the video?"

"Yeah. Come from a Captain Bogdan Davit. I think is a policeman, in Kerch, on the Crimean across from Russia. Had a note with the package. I read it to you?"

The cell beeped in his hand.

He looked down at the screen.

CALL WAITING.

"Yeah. Please."

" 'Dear Mr. Dagan . . . I have the duty to present you with very disturbing evidence of the murder of one of your countrymen. I vouch for integrity of these difficult images and I express my deepest condolences that such barbarity took place in my country. Three of the men you see in this picture were found dead in a truck a few kilometers from a town called Staryi Krim. The third man, the scarred one, his name is Aleksandr Vukov, a Serbian national and a leader of a paramilitary group known as the Skorpions. His whereabouts not known. He may be drowned off Kerch. I am under the news that your organization has suspected an American CIA agent of this atrocity. I warrant to you that he is innocent of this thing. I offer my services in any capacity to help you in your investigation of the murder of your Mr. Issadore Galan . . .' He goes on, gives his phone and e-mail numbers. Meir Dagan has already called him-"

"Any mention of . . ."

CALL WAITING.

". . . Micah Dalton?"

"No. But we know who he is talking about."

"Does Meir Dagan buy it?"

Another pause.

"Yes. We all do. Pretty hard to argue with."

"So Mikey's off the hook?"

"With us, yes. With the Russkies, no. Dagan did some digging and found out that Dalton made a midnight run on a Russian coastal town called Anapa. Girl was killed. Somebody else kidnapped. He might have had the help of the Ukrainians. Big international incident, if that comes out . . ."

CALL WAITING.

"Look, Joko, I got a caller . . ."