The Venetian Judgment by David Stone Page A

“I really hate defectors. They’re either making stuff up to justify a huge payout and an estate in Maryland or they’re part of some Confusion Op.”

    “This guy seems legitimate. He had already given them some material on Russian negotiations with the Iranians about nuclear technology. Langley cross-checked it with other sources, and the data was solid. Could only have come from someone high up in the Kremlin.”

    “How do you know all this stuff?”

    “I’m a sneaky little minx. And it all goes through Pinky’s lockbox.”

    Pinky was Stennis Corso. He was called Pinky only behind his back. Tony Crane’s XO was a small, round seal-like man with slicked-back blond hair and tiny ears, very shy, definitely pink, who could not bear to be touched and who washed his soft, pudgy pink hands obsessively, perhaps with good reason.

    Corso contained in his formidable mind almost all of the secret histories of London Station going back to the Cold War. He was the station’s chief archivist and also its resident expert on the Balkans and any issues that touched on the Adriatic and the Aegean. This required the talents of a Princeton historian, which he had been, as well as an ability to calmly consider the tactics and strategies of the region’s worst people without anger or prejudice, seeing them in the clear—a priceless asset to a CIA station.

    He was therefore London Station’s most valuable analyst, so critical that his latent pedophilia, never acted upon once he had left Cambridge and apparent now only in the care he took to conceal it, was, if not overlooked, then at least tacitly tolerated. Still, the Minders kept an eye on him.

    “That’s a serious security weakness in London Station. What if you get taken up by the Reapers? They’d have the Agency by the—”

    “Now, that’s the odd part, come to think of it. We’ve been monitoring the Russians here, as always, and they’re not doing much of anything : no KGB thugs pretending to read the catalogues at the Tate Modern, no velvety Slavs cruising the fetish clubs looking to snap up another ambassador’s ADC, not even the usual god-awful Trade and Commerce bun-fights that they used to throw to try and cuddle up to embassy sources. I mean, when you think of it, that’s all pretty strange, isn’t it? Even the Reapers, who are usually active in London, they’ve all been woolly bah-lambs for months now.”

    “They’ve just shaken up the Kremlin,” said Dalton. “Putin’s nailing down his base. Once he’s got that done, they’ll be back out in force. He wants to rebuild the USSR. I’m afraid these are the early days of Cold War Two.”

    “Yes, so am I. I hope the new guy is up to it. If he’s another Jimmy Carter, Putin will have his googlies for cuff links. Anyway, we’re wandering. I figured you were Mariah Vale’s next victim, and from what I was hearing—”

    “Hearing? About me ? Hearing from whom?”

    “Issadore Galan. He was worried about you. He got in touch with me—”

    Dalton sat back, staring at her.

    “How? When?”

    “After Chicago, when Cather didn’t bring you to D.C. and you went back to Venice. He took one look and figured you were running off the rails. He contacted me—”

    “How?”

    “Sent me an invoice from Spink and Son, on Southampton Row. The gold coin people. I don’t owe Spink and Son anything. But the invoice amount looked like it could be a time marker. And he was there.”

    “Christ, Mandy, it could have been anyone. There could have been a Reaper crew in a white van ready to take you right off the curb.”

    “I know. But I told you, they haven’t been active lately—”

    “They’d have made an exception for you—”

    “Dear boy, you flatter me. Anyway, the invoice was for a set of Venetian florins, so I sort of made the connection. And I was right.”

    “How’d Galan get into London without Portcullis tagging him?”

    “I asked. The old dwarf just smiled. I think he has a