The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone

with her while you’re still alive. Which, by the way, means you’ve got maybe three weeks. Max.”
    “Three weeks! I’m going to die in three weeks?” “Don’t whine, Micah. It makes your face go all pouty. Everybody
    dies. Even whiskey-soaked little fruitcakes like you.” “I’m going to die? How am I going to die?” Naumann took another long pull at the cognac flask and then
    stared off into the middle distance. Dalton found the wait quite trying. Finally, Naumann leaned forward, handed the flask back to Dalton.
    “I’m not really sure. It’s kind of a Magic Eight Ball thing. Reply hazy—ask again later. I’m getting the idea I’m not allowed to affect outcomes. We’re not licensed to do fate. How about you just consider me ...Man, what’s the word?”
    “An omen?” “Yes! An omen. I’m an omen!” “An omen? Of what?” “I’m an omen of you needing to change your fucked-up life be
    fore some massive cosmic doom gets all biblical on your ass.” “The details, Porter. The details!” “There you go. The devil is in the details. Who said that?” “Goethe. And I think it was God who was in the details. We were
    talking about how I’m going to die in three weeks.” “That’s beside the point.” “Very few people would consider their impending doom beside
    the point, Porter.” “It’s not all about you, kid. Laura’s in a bad place. Go see her.”
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    “Forgive me, my friend, but she’s in a very nice place, as a matter of fact. Maintained at great personal expense, by the way. And unlike you, I am not richer than Agamemnon’s broker. Anyway, I would think being newly dead would take up a lot of your attention, Porter. Why this obsession with somebody else’s wife?”
    Naumann stood up and walked toward the doors that led out to the balcony. Dalton could see the streetlight shining through Naumann’s body. Naumann turned at the doors and looked back over his shoulder at Dalton. He looked like an image painted on fog.
    “To get the answer, you must survive the question.”
    “Oh, Christ, Porter. To-get-the-answer-you-must-survive-the-question. Don’t go all Yoda on me now. What answer? What question?”
    Naumann shook his head slowly, fading away as he did.
    “Wait, Porter. Wait. What do we tell Joanne? Your kids?”
    “Thanks, kid, but no one can help my family now.”
    Then there was nothing but the wind off the sea flowing through the curtains and in the distance the soft tolling of a cathedral bell ringing in the new day. Micah cradled his arm and put his head back on the pillow and...
    ...A LEMON-COLORED LIGHT glaring through his closed lids woke him up several hours, possibly years, later. He raised himself onto an elbow, his head pounding dully, his throat parched. He looked blearily around, trying to piece himself back together after what he dimly recalled was, even by his own exacting standards, a truly Olympian binge. He was relieved to find that he was lying, fully clothed, heart dutifully beating, lungs right on the job, still very much alive, on his bed in Naumann’s old suite at the Savoia & Jolanda.
    The sun, a pale wintry one, was shining in through the billowing
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    curtains next to the open balcony doors. He raised his hands to shade his eyes from the glare and stopped as the memories of the night before came back in force, and along with them a very pressing question: Where was that emerald-green spider?
    He rolled quickly off the bed and got to his feet, staggered into the center of the room, and stared wildly around, his flesh crawling. Where was it? Under the dresser? In the bed?
    Sweet Jesus, not in the bed.
    He reached down to tear off the coverlet and stopped, gaping at his left hand. It was a mass of dried blood and crisscross wounds. There was a large gaping wound on the back of his hand, crusted with blood. He looked down at the bed where he had been lying. Blood was smeared all over the Italian linen. His