The Venetian Judgment by David Stone Page B

crush on me, by the way, although from what I hear he’s no threat. Anyway, we set up a two-way system, which I’ll explain later, and he kept me informed about you and how you were swooning around Venice, pining for that Florentine ninny-hammer—”

    “I’m aware of your feelings about Cora, okay? The point, please.”

    “The point is, when I realized you were probably going to get picked up by Mariah Vale’s evil minions, I sent the cigarette case to Galan.”

    “You couldn’t just pick up the phone? Or get Galan to say something?”

    “I wasn’t going to mention the Glass Cutters to Galan, was I? And I wanted it to be something only you could figure out. Without employing any method that Vale could intercept. I don’t think she’s corrupted FedEx . . . yet.”

    “Galan put your cigarette case on Brancati’s desk.”

    “Did he? Why not just give it to you? I guess he just likes being Byzantine. Or he doesn’t like to do anything behind Brancati’s back. The point is, you’re here, and now we have to do something—”

    “ We? What do we have to do? Why us?”

    “Micah, dear boy, do you really think Cather’s some sort of mole?”

    “Look, Mandy, whatever Cather is—and, no, I don’t think he’s a mole—this is not our problem. You’re an officer at London Station, a long way from Langley, and I’m as good as off the roster entirely. And, not to be too petty, I don’t owe Deacon Cather a damn thing.”

    “It’s not about Cather, you manky git. This audit has derailed Clandestine. Until the DD gets cleared, our whole operational arm is crippled. With men and women in the field. In wartime. Don’t you care about that?”

    “Yes, of course I do. But, like I said, I’m on the outside looking in.”

    “We’ll see about that. Do you have any money?”

    “Yes, pretty much the whole budget from the Chicago thing.”

    “Zowie! So, we are in funds, my sweet?”

    “ We? What happened to all your money. Isn’t your family—”

    Mandy’s mood changed a bit, a look of sadness flitting across her face like the shadow of a swift flying overhead.

    “Not anymore, my lad, I’m cut off. Poppy’s gone off us Yanks since that bun-fight in Iraq. Gave me a bloody ultimatum, he did, the old teapot. Quit the Company or be thrust into the outer darkness to wither and die.”

    “What did you say?”

    Mandy made a show of looking about the booth, under the table.

    “I’m here, am I not? In the sinfully silky flesh?”

    “But penniless?”

    “For the nonce. I have the Agency pittance, sufficient to sustain a kind of grinding penury—rather like a monk but with silks and garters. Anyway, yes, I do mean we . So, Micah, my darling lad, hero of the hour, last hope of the West, will you do it? Will you help me? For the motherland—”

    “The motherland ? You were born in Knightsbridge, Mandy. You’re only an American citizen because your mother was from Santa Fe.”

    “Yes, so in my heart I’m really a Girl of the Golden West. Come on, Micah, please don’t make me beg. Pleading’s bad for my complexion.”

    Here she rolled out one of her famous up-from-under looks. Dalton always felt that look of hers in his lower belly. Many lesser men, when exposed to it without a welder’s mask on, had simply burst into flames.

    Nevertheless, Dalton wanted very much to say no.

    It looked as if the Agency was once again ripping itself apart over internal security issues, as it had in roughly five-year cycles from the fifties to long after 9/11. Everybody at Clandestine knew the horror stories: the Jewels cipher machines being compromised by U.S. Marines at the Moscow embassy; Jimmy Carter and Stansfield Turner firing eight hundred and fifty experienced intelligence officers in the Far East and Asia in 1978, in the process deliberately wrecking Clandestine Services; Iran-Contra and the disastrous long-term effects of the Church Commission; the fallout at the NSA and the CIA from the FBI’s