The Skorpion Directive Part 2

"There is? Why?"

Cesar shrugged, turned his palms upward.

"This is an old hotel. In the time of Der Kalte Krieg Der Kalte Krieg-even before-in Wein there are always tunnels. In the old days, for lovers and thieves and Hungarians. Later, for the Bols.h.i.+es and the n.a.z.is and the black market. Wein is a raddled old wh.o.r.e, but she still keeps her secrets. Do you love your very expensive coat?"

Dalton turned around, looked down at his long blue overcoat.

"I have sincerely enjoyed having it."

"You will have to leave it."

"Done. I thank you. Is there anything I can do . . . ?"

Cesar stiffened, his cheeks darkening.

"Are you offering me money money ?" ?"

MIDNIGHT, and the tiny pink ears that were burning cherry bright did not belong to Veronika Miklas. Jagermeier had suffered through a very disagreeable confrontation with Veronika, who had set him down hard when, after making a couple of snide references to her previous relations.h.i.+p with "recreational chemistry"-a sore point-he started to criticize her and the tiny pink ears that were burning cherry bright did not belong to Veronika Miklas. Jagermeier had suffered through a very disagreeable confrontation with Veronika, who had set him down hard when, after making a couple of snide references to her previous relations.h.i.+p with "recreational chemistry"-a sore point-he started to criticize her professional professional skills, she finally reminding him, at the end of a short, sharp encounter conducted on her part with the kind of subzero ferocity that her cla.s.s had once used to put the peasantry in its place, that her great-grandfather, Wilhelm Miklas, had been the President Doctor of Austria, and had, on March 11, 1938, single-handedly faced down Seyss-Inquart and all his. .h.i.tlerite flunkies, thank you very much, you nasty little skills, she finally reminding him, at the end of a short, sharp encounter conducted on her part with the kind of subzero ferocity that her cla.s.s had once used to put the peasantry in its place, that her great-grandfather, Wilhelm Miklas, had been the President Doctor of Austria, and had, on March 11, 1938, single-handedly faced down Seyss-Inquart and all his. .h.i.tlerite flunkies, thank you very much, you nasty little Schneckengewinde Schneckengewinde.

The interview ended in his complete rout-she had called him a nasty little worm, and he had actually apologized to her-and now, perhaps as an indirect result, Jagermeier found that he really-no, really really-had to pee.

He decided to do a press check on the target, while he was at it, dragging his numb b.u.t.t and aching back out of the miasmic funk of his own methane-rich atmospherics. The Audi was also his personal service car, and he spent more time in it than he did at home in his lonely bed. Jagermeier hauled himself across the steps of the Votivkirche and into the lobby of the Regina, slouching, if not toward Bethlehem, then toward the men's washroom hidden behind a row of fake linden trees.

As he pa.s.sed the entrance to the bar, he glanced sideways just long enough to see that the target was still there-the lazy son of a b.i.t.c.h-sitting with his back to the door now, hunched over what Jagermeier presumed was that d.a.m.ned BlackBerry, his girly-man blond hair splayed out across the collar of his coat and glowing in the downlight. What a What a tanzender Junge tanzender Junge he is he is, thought Jagermeier, with a curl of his thick red lips. Krokodil! Hah! The only people who have to fear this Hah! The only people who have to fear this Krokodil Krokodil are in the Vienna Boys Choir. are in the Vienna Boys Choir.

SADLY for Rolf Jagermeir's career prospects, the for Rolf Jagermeir's career prospects, the tanzender Junge- tanzender Junge- the dancing boy-was actually slightly more than two miles north-northwest of the Regina Hotel, sitting on a bench in a small park at the intersection of Heiligenstadter Stra.s.se and Barawitzkag, watching the main entrance to a dreary, slab-sided concrete block of Bolshevik Bauhaus called, appropriately, the Wohnungen Arbeitnehmer Hafen-Workers' Haven Apartments. the dancing boy-was actually slightly more than two miles north-northwest of the Regina Hotel, sitting on a bench in a small park at the intersection of Heiligenstadter Stra.s.se and Barawitzkag, watching the main entrance to a dreary, slab-sided concrete block of Bolshevik Bauhaus called, appropriately, the Wohnungen Arbeitnehmer Hafen-Workers' Haven Apartments.

The blond-haired person currently sitting at the long bar back at the Regina, wearing Dalton's Zegna topcoat, secretly enjoying Dalton's scent-a mix of Balkan Sobranie cigarettes and some sort of spicy lemon-scented cologne-and idly fingering the pockets, which were stuffed with euros, was the old Hussar's niece, Steffi, who had been dragooned into service in exchange for a pocketful of ready cash and the grim admiration of her terrifying grand-uncle Cesar.

Dalton had already done a series of routine checks to see if there was still any kind of surveillance on him. He was reasonably certain there was not, and that there was no security guard in the building.

He had only been there for little over an hour, and he was prepared to spend the night, but a few minutes later a familiar rat-brown Opel pulled up at the curb outside the entrance to the Workers' Haven. There was some sort of brief exchange of hugs with the driver, who, his face caught in a shaft of dim light, looked to be the round fat man with the umbrella he had last seen in Sigmund Freud Park.

In a moment the pa.s.senger door popped open, and the Girl With the Silver Lighter got out onto the sidewalk, looking weary and wrung out as she waved the Opel off, and then turned to trudge up the walkway to the entrance doors. Dalton, moving soundlessly across the lawn, reached her just as she put her hand on the chrome bar, saying, as softly and as nonthreateningly as he could, "Vorzuglich, Fraulein."

Her response was immediate-a lithe twist of her body, the leading edge of her left hand bladed and taut, a white blur striking at the front of Dalton's throat. Had she got this very professional strike home, it could have, very likely would have, crushed his larynx, and his short but memorable career would have ended with his slowly choking to death on the scruffy lawn of a workers' housing project in the suburbs of Vienna. However, she did not get it home. Dalton caught the blow in his left hand, turning the palm strike into a rolling armlock and pressing her up against the gla.s.s door, doing as little harm as he could manage, saying, in English, "Please, Miss Miklas, I'm not here to hurt you. Please."

She struggled a moment longer-in her mind, all she could hear was a single word repeating: Krokodil! Krokodil! Krokodil!- Krokodil! Krokodil! Krokodil!- but he was immensely strong, and she forced herself to be still. but he was immensely strong, and she forced herself to be still.

Her moment would come, now or later.

"But you are are hurting me, Mr. Dalton." hurting me, Mr. Dalton."

Dalton held her a moment, doing a quick and only mildly indecent weapons check and finding a pager, a cell phone-both of which he turned off-and a small Heckler & Koch P7 in a leather holster tucked into the small of her back.

He pulled it free and stepped back, holding the weapon muzzle down, trying-and failing-to look as harmless as possible. Veronika Miklas straightened her clothes, her face a little pink, pushed her hair back with both hands, and stood facing him. The fear was there, but so was the iron. She stared at him in silence for a moment.

"The b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.ned lighter, I suppose?"

Dalton nodded, his face creasing in a commiserating smile.

"Yes. I was surprised they really were your your initials." initials."

Miklas sighed, and a tremor ran through her body. When she reached up to touch the side of her cheek-she bruised easily-Dalton could see that her fingers were vibrating.

"A gift from my mother. Initials alone are not enough."

"No. It was a place to start. It narrowed the range. I have access to an Agency database that lists all the civil servants in Austria, along with their parent agencies, except for the OSE. I searched for those initials in the tax lists for civil employees. Your name stood out-"

"Because of my great-grandfather?"

"Yes. A famous name. There's a website, and your picture is there, as one of the authors of a paper about the Anschluss."

Her face lost some of its hardness.

"A brave man, a terrible time for Austria. And so, here you are. What the h.e.l.l do you want?"

Dalton looked around the street and then back at her.

"A few minutes of your time. Some answers."

She s.h.i.+vered again but rode it down.

"Listen, Blondie. I am not going anywhere anywhere with you. And with you. And you you are not coming inside with me. You may use my pistol if you wish, but here I stay. So just shoot me, and that is the end of it." are not coming inside with me. You may use my pistol if you wish, but here I stay. So just shoot me, and that is the end of it."

"I understand that. And you're right. Never let anybody move you or get you into a car or box you up in a flat. I wouldn't either. The thing is, I have no intention of harming you in any way. Look, Miss Miklas, it's not a bad night. It's stopped raining. There's a little park across the street, a little bench. Have a cigarette with me."

She hesitated, and Dalton thought she might break and run, but she did not. Instead, she gave him a sardonic sideways smile.

"One of your Regenbogen Zigaretten Regenbogen Zigaretten?"

Dalton smiled back, fighting his strong desire to fall down where he stood and sleep for two days.

"Yes. My rainbow cigarettes. As many as you want."

She gave it some thought.

Finally, the curiosity of the confident young woman won out over professional caution. On the other hand, if Dalton had been a squat toadlike homunculus, she'd have given him the back of her hand, thirty seconds of the Full Jagermeier, and, if the opening was offered, a quick knee to the nuptials.

"Okay. Sure. Why not?"

They walked across the deserted street, she some distance away and with her hands at her sides, he reflexively scanning the roofs and darkened windows, the overarching trees and the parked cars that lined the street.

They reached a wrought-iron bench, sheltered by a stand of oaks and lindens. She sat at one end and he as far away from her as he could manage at the other. In the uneasy silence he offered her a choice from his Sobranie c.o.c.ktails. She took a blue one. She lit it with the heavy silver lighter. And then, after staring down at it for a while and going inside herself, she leaned over to light his cigarette, studying his face in the glow of the flame.

"You have a scar on your right cheekbone. It looks like a dueling scar. It is recent. How did you get it?"

Dalton reached up, touched it briefly, seeing the muzzle flash in the shadow of the boat, hearing the sound of it bouncing off the old stone walls that loomed over the icy little ca.n.a.l in Venice.

"Shaving accident."

She smiled then, retracting her claws a bit.

"Liar. Such a liar. They are calling you Krokodil- Krokodil-the crocodile-at the office. How can you smoke such silly little cigarettes if you are this terrible Krokodil Krokodil ?" ?"

Dalton inhaled, leaning back into the bench, crossing one leg over the other. He was cold and missed his Zegna. He hoped Cesar's niece was enjoying it, which of course she was.

"A good friend of mine used to smoke them. His name was Porter Naumann. He would have liked you. He admired steel.

"Would have liked me? He is dead?" have liked me? He is dead?"

"Yes. He was killed in Cortona, almost a year ago."

"A shaving accident?" she said, teasing him a little.

Dalton smiled, shook his head, said nothing, took another pull at his cigarette. So did she. And they sat there for a while in what was turning into a strangely companionable moment of calm and stillness.

The clouds had pa.s.sed over hours ago. The Viennese night was calm and clear, the glow of the city touching the tops of the higher trees and the steeple of a little church a block north. Where they were was cool, quiet, sheltered.

"You are odd kind of spy," she said finally, exhaling a cloud of smoke and watching it turning in a tiny shaft from the streetlamp, cutting through the leaves.

"I'm not really a spy," he said, smiling into the dark. "At the Agency, they call people like us Cleaners. Basically, I'm a fixer. I don't run any agents, don't recruit. Let's just say that when things go wrong on the operational side, I come in and try to fix them."

She laughed at that-a short sharp bark and a puff of smoke.

"In your files they say that last year, in Montenegro, you 'fixed' a Serbian Mafia boss named Branco Gospic, after you also 'fixed' two Serbs who tried to mug you in Venice. Then last winter, again in Venice, you 'fixed' another Serbian mafioso named Mirko Belajic, along with four of his men, one of whom you are said to have killed by snapping his neck with your bare hands. I know these gangster Serbs. They are the most dangerous men in Eastern Europe. And then in Istanbul, not so long ago, you 'fixed' several KGB officers, and chased the rest of them all the way across the Black Sea to Kerch. That's a lot of 'fixing' for one man."

"You're pretty well informed on the subject."

"Yes. We have good relations with the British. You are known to them, especially in London. So you are just hired killer, then?"

Dalton stubbed out the cigarette on the arm of the bench and put the gold-tipped b.u.t.t in the pocket of his trousers. He took out another-blue and gold. Veronika lit it for him, watching the glow of the flame reflected in his eyes, seeing the haggard look on his rough-cut face.

"No. I do what is needed. The OSE does the same."

There was nothing to say to that.

This was Vienna, after all, and there was no city in Europe with a murkier history in the covert world.

"I know you want to get some rest, Miss Miklas-"

"You've had your hands all over me. I think you can call me Veronika. I will call you Micah."

"Thank you, Veronika. I'm hoping you can help me with something."

She turned and looked directly at him for a while, considering his gaunt face and his obvious exhaustion, feeling a conflict in her heart between official reserve and what she had to admit was a strong sensual pull. With his long blond hair, his pale blue eyes, his scarred and weathered Viking face, he appealed to the Old Norse in her blood. He radiated a blend of latent menace, weary intelligence, even a very dry sense of humor, but underneath that . . . sadness.

Perhaps even a deep grief.

She found that she wanted to know how he came to be the way he was. In spite of the apparent glamour of her work with the uberwachungs-Dienst uberwachungs-Dienst, the pay was poor, her boss, as has been noted, was a nasty little Schneckengewinde Schneckengewinde, and the work itself was-she smiled to herself as she thought this-literally pedestrian. pedestrian.

Dalton, on the other hand . . . interested interested her. her.

"I think I know why you're here. You want to know why we Austrians are putting the uberwachungs-Dienst uberwachungs-Dienst on you." on you."

"Yes. That's right."

"When we look at your file, do you not think any country you visit would be crazy not not to put surveillance on you?" to put surveillance on you?"

"Excellent point. Let's debate that later."

"No. We will debate it now, Micah, if you wish for my help."

Dalton said nothing, which Veronika rightly took for a.s.sent.

"My question is, why do you care?" question is, why do you care?"

"Why do I care? I'm under surveillance by a unit of a government that's supposed to be strongly aligned with the U.S. Austria's in NATO. We have reciprocal intelligence agreements-"

Veronika laughed and waved that away in a cloud of smoke.

"Hah. So go through channels. Register an official complaint. Write a strong note of protest to The New York Times The New York Times. Instead, you come right at us, like a shark in shallow water. You are worried about something more than a protocol breach. What is it?"

Dalton pulled on his cigarette, exhaled in a sigh, let the question hang in the shaft of light along with the smoke. Veronika, who seemed to know something about Chinese silence, did not feel compelled to yield the game. Instead, she waited him out.

"Okay," he said, resigning himself to it. "A friend-a professional-got in touch with me about a week ago. He said it was vital we meet. That he needed to talk face-to-face. This guy's a pro. He doesn't get the vapors. He doesn't spook. If he needs a personal contact, he has to have a d.a.m.ned solid reason."

"Okay. I guess you're not going to tell me what you think the reason might be?"

"No. Not because I won't. Because I haven't a b.l.o.o.d.y clue."

"Fine. That's fair. But you a.s.sume his reasons are . . . serious?"

"With this guy, a better word would be grave. grave."

She worked that through.

"I see. So when you come up out of the subway and you find you are being watched-"

"In this business, paranoids tend to have a higher survival rate. If I were just here for a walkabout and a schnitzel, I'd have said okay, it's a routine exercise. A CIA officer arrives in Vienna, he's undeclared, he's got a reputation for trouble, so the locals want to show the flag, teach him some manners. That's fine. Every agency does that."