Even if there is, it’s none of my business.
Smith felt heat at the back of his neck. Casually, he shifted so that he could see the entire room in the reflection of the windows. Standing by the hostess’s station was a slightly overweight man of medium height, in his early forties. His head was completely shaved, the scalp shiny beneath the lights. Even from this distance, Smith could tell that the man was staring directly at him, his mouth open slightly.
I don’t know you, so why are you so interested in me?
“Dylan?”
Smith gestured in the direction of the hostess’s station. His motion made the watcher duck, unsuccessfully.
“Are you expecting someone?”
Reed glanced around. “Right. That’s Adam Treloar, the mission’s chief medical officer.” He waved. “Adam!”
Smith watched as Treloar approached reluctantly, like a child dragging his feet to the dinner table.
“Adam, meet Dr. Jon Smith, with USAMRIID,” Reed said.
“My pleasure,” Smith said.
“Yes, nice to meet you,” Treloar mumbled, betraying the remnants of a British accent.
“Have we met before?” Smith inquired pleasantly.
He wondered why the polite question would make Treloar’s eggshaped eyes bulge.
“Oh, I don’t think so. I would have remembered.” Hastily, Treloar turned to Reed. “We have to go over the crew’s last physical. And I must make that meeting with Stone.”
Reed shook his head. “Things get a little hectic as we approach launch date,” he apologized to Smith. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. Jon, it was great to see you. Let’s not leave it so long, okay?”
“Definitely.”
“Megan, I’ll see you at three o’clock in the biolab.”
Smith watched the two men take a booth at the far end of the room.
“Treloar’s a little strange,” he commented. Especially since he wanted to discuss physical exams but wasn’t carrying any medical files.
“Yes, he is,” Megan agreed. “As a doctor, Adam’s one of the best. Dylan stole him from Bauer-Zermatt. But he is eccentric.”
Smith shrugged. “Tell me about Dylan. What’s he like to work with? I remember that he was a by-the-numbers kind of guy.”
“If you mean he’s really focused, that’s true. But he always challenges me, makes me think harder, do better.”
“I’m glad you found someone like that to work with.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to get going.”
Megan rose with him. “Me, too.”
When they stepped out of the elevator on the main floor, she touched his arm. “It was good to see you again, Jon.”
“You, too, Megan. The next time you get to Washington, the drinks are on me.”
She grinned. “I’ll take you up on that.”
__________
“Don’t stare at them!”
Adam Treloar jerked his head, startled by the harshness of Reed’s command. He could not believe how Reed, with an easy smile on his face, could be so cold.
Using his peripheral vision, Treloar watched as Jon Smith and Megan Olson made their way to the elevator. He heard a soft ping when the car arrived and finally let out his breath. Reaching for a napkin, he dabbed his face and crown.
“Do you know who Smith is?” he demanded hoarsely.
“As a matter of fact I do,” Reed replied calmly. “I’ve known him for years.”
He pressed his back against the banquette, anything to get farther from the sour odor that seemed to follow Treloar wherever he went. Reed didn’t care that his gesture was so obviously rude; he had never made a secret of the contempt he felt for the shuttle mission’s chief medical officer.
“If you know who he is, then tell me what he’s doing here,” Treloar demanded. “He was the one with Danko in Venice!”
Reed’s hand shot out like a cobra, seizing Treloar’s left wrist, his powerful grip squeezing the delicate nerves. Treloar rolled his eyes and his mouth fell open as he gasped.
“What do you know about Venice?” Reed demanded softly.
“I… overheard you talking about it!” Treloar managed to say.
“Then forget that I ever did, do you understand?” he said in his silky voice. “Venice is not your concern. Neither is Smith.”
He released Treloar’s wrist and was pleased by the residual pain he saw in the medical officer’s eyes.
“It just seems too much of a coincidence that first, Smith was in Venice, now he’s here,” Treloar said.
“Believe me, Smith knows nothing. He has nothing. Danko was dealt with before he could say anything. And there’s a simple explanation as to why he was in Venice. Danko and Smith knew each other from international conferences. Obviously they were friends. When Danko decided to bolt, Smith was the man he decided he could trust. Nothing more complicated or sinister than that.”
“Then it’s safe for me to travel?”
“Very safe,” Reed assured him. “In fact, why don’t we have another drink and go over the arrangements.”
__________
Peter Howell let several hours go by before he left the Danieli Hotel and threaded his way to the Rio del San Moise, where the assassins had gone to their fiery deaths. As he anticipated, there was only a handful of carabinieri patrolling the perimeter to ensure that no tourists wandered into the roped-off crime scene.
The man he expected to see there was examining the charred remains of the assassins’ gondola. Behind him, divers continued to scour the canal for more evidence.
A carabinieri blocked Howell’s path.
“I wish to speak with Inspector Dionetti,” the Englishman said in fluent Italian.
Howell waited as the policeman walked up to the short, trim man, thoughtfully stroking his goatee while he examined a piece of blackened wood.
Marco Dionetti, an inspector in the Polizia Statale, looked up and blinked when he recognized Howell. He stripped off his rubber gloves, brushed imaginary lint off the lapels of his hand-tailored suit, then came to Howell and embraced in the Italian fashion.
“Pietro! A pleasure to see you again.” Dionetti looked Howell up and down. “At least I hope it will be pleasant.”
“It’s good to see you too, Marco.”
During the golden age of terrorism in the mid-1980s, Peter Howell, on loan from the SAS, had worked with high-level Italian policemen on kidnappings involving British citizens. One of the men he had come to admire and respect was a soft-spoken but tough-as-nails aristocrat by the name of Marco Dionetti, then a rising star in the Statale. Over the years, he and Howell had kept in touch. Howell had a standing invitation to stay at Dionetti’s ancestral palazzo whenever he was in Venice.
“So here you are in the Serenissima but you have not called on me, much less allowed me to be your host,” Dionetti chided him. “Where are you staying? I Danieli, I’ll wager.”
“My apologies, Marco,” Howell replied. “I just arrived yesterday and things have been a little hectic.”
Dionetti looked behind him at the wreckage strewn on the embankment. “Hectic? Of course, the classic British understatement. May I be so bold as to ask whether you know anything about this outrage?”
“You may. And I’ll be happy to tell you. But not here.”
Dionetti let out a sharp whistle. Almost instantly a blue-and-white police launch purred up to the steps leading from the embankment to the water.
“We can talk on the way,” Dionetti said.
“On the way to where?”
“Really, Pietro! We are going to the Questura. It would be bad manners for me to expect you to answer my questions if I do not answer yours.”
Howell followed the inspector to the stern of the craft. Both men waited until the boat had cleared the Rio del San Moise and throttled out into the Grand Canal.
“Tell me, Pietro,” the inspector said over the rumble of the diesels. “What do you know of that little horror that erupted in our fair city?”
“I’m not running an operation,” Howell assured him. “But the incident involved a friend of mine.”
“And did your friend happen to be the mysterious gentleman at the Piazza San Marco?” Dionetti asked. “The one seen with the shooting victim? The one who chased after the killers, then disappeared?”
“The same.”
Dionetti sighed theatrically. “Tell me this has nothing to do with terrorism, Pietro.”
“It doesn’t.”
“We found a Ukrainian passport on the victim, but little else. He looked like he had had a hard journey. Should Italy be concerned as to why he came here?”
“Italy needn’t be concerned. He was only passing through.”
Dionetti stared at the traffic on the river, the water taxis and water buses, the garbage scows and the elegant gondolas bobbing in the wakes of the larger vessels. The Grand Canal was the main artery of his beloved Venezia, and he felt its pulse keenly.
“I do not want trouble, Pietro,” he said.
“Then help me,” Howell replied. “I’ll see to it that trouble leaves.” He paused. “Did you find enough to identify the killers and how they were murdered?”
“A bomb,” Dionetti said flatly. “More powerful than need be. Someone wanted to obliterate them. However, if that was their intention, they failed. We found enough for identification— assuming those two were in our records. We shall see shortly.”