“Actually, you don’t know crap.”

She sat immobile. Beyond the garden, dusk was beginning to take hold. “I know enough.”

“Cassiopeia, you’re leaping to conclusions. I agree, the fire is suspect, but if she did it, you need to know why.”

“When Gary was threatened, what did you do?”

“I got him back. Unharmed.”

He saw she knew he was right. First rule of a mission. Never lose sight of the goal.

“I don’t need your advice.”

“What you need to do is stop and think.”

“Cotton, there’s more happening here than you realize.”

“That’s a shocker.”

“Go home. Let me be.”

“Can’t do that.”

A vibration in his trouser pocket startled him. He removed the cell phone, noticed the number, and said to her, “It’s Henrik.” He answered.

“Cotton, President Daniels just called.”

“I’m sure that was interesting.”

“Stephanie is in Venice. She was sent there to see a man named Enrico Vincenti. The president is concerned. They’ve lost contact.”

“Why call you?”

“He was looking for you, though I sensed he knew you were already here.”

“Not a hard thing to check, what with passport scans made at the airport. Provided you know what country to check.”

“Apparently he knew the right one.”

“Why was Stephanie sent here?”

“He said this Vincenti is connected to Irina Zovastina. I know of Vincenti. He’s a problem. Daniels also told me that another agent has been missing now for over a day and is presumed dead. He said you knew her. A woman named Naomi Johns.”

He shut his eyes. They had joined the Magellan Billet together and worked as a team several times. A good agent. A better friend. That was the problem with his fomer profession-rarely was someone fired. You either quit, retired, or died. He’d attended many memorials.

“Vincenti implicated in that?” he asked.

“Daniels thought so.”

“Tell me about Stephanie.”

“She’s staying at the Montecarlo, a block north and behind the basilica in San Marco, on the Calle degli Specchieri.”

“Why not use one of their own people?”

“He said Naomi Johns was their person on the scene. No one else in position. He was hoping I could contact you and ask if you’d check on Stephanie. Is it possible?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“How are things there?”

He stared across the table at Cassiopeia. “Not good.”

“Tell Cassiopeia the package she ordered will be there shortly.”

He clicked off and asked her, “You called Henrik?”

She nodded. “Three hours ago. After we spotted our thieves.”

They’d split up and reconned the two museums separately.

“Stephanie’s in Venice and may be in trouble,” he said. “I have to go see about her.”

“I can handle things here.”

He doubted that.

“They’ll wait till it’s dark before returning,” she said. “I asked. This island is deserted at night, except for people who come over for dinner here. Closing time is nine P.M. The last water bus leaves at ten. By then, everyone is gone.”

A waiter delivered a silver box, wrapped in a red ribbon, along with a long cloth bag, maybe three feet, it, too, tied with a decorative bow. He explained that a water taxi had delivered both a few moments ago. Malone tipped him two euros.

Cassiopeia unwrapped the box, peeked, then passed it to him. Inside lay two automatic pistols with spare magazines.

He motioned at the bag. “And that?”

“A surprise for our thieves.”

He didn’t like the implications.

“You check on Stephanie,” she said. “Time for Viktor to see a ghost.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

9:40 P.M.

MALONE FOUND THE HOTEL MONTECARLO EXACTLY WHERE Thorvaldsen had directed, hidden along a hallwaylike street lined with shops and busy cafés a hundred feet north of the basilica. He wove his way through a dense evening crowd to the glass-fronted entrance and entered a lobby where a Middle Eastern man sporting a white shirt, tie, and black pants waited behind a counter.

“Prego,” Malone said. “English?”

The man smiled. “Of course.”

“I’m looking for Stephanie Nelle. American. She’s staying here.”

Recognition instantly came to the other man’s face, so he asked, “Which room?”

The man searched the key rack behind him. “Two-ten.”

Malone stepped toward a marble stairway.

“But she’s not there.”

He turned back.

“She went out in the square a few minutes ago. For a gelato. Just dropped her key.” The attendant held up a heavy chunk of brass with 210 etched on the side.

How different it was in Europe learning things. That would have cost him at least a hundred dollars at home. Still, nothing about this seemed right. Thorvaldsen said Washington had lost contact with Stephanie. But clearly she’d been in the hotel and, like all Magellan Billet agents, carried a world phone.

And yet she’d just casually left her hotel in search of an ice cream?

“Any idea where?”

“I directed her to the arcade. In front of the basilica. Good treats there.”

He liked the stuff, too. So why not?

They’d both have one.

CASSIOPEIA ASSUMED A POSITION NEAR WHERE THE MUDDY CANAL drained into the lagoon, not far from Torcello’s public transportation terminal. If her instincts proved correct, Viktor and his cohort would return here sometime in the next couple of hours.

Darkness cloaked the island.

Only the restaurant where she and Malone had eaten remained open, but she knew it would close in another half hour. She’d also checked the two churches and the museum. Both were locked down, all the employees departing on the water bus that left an hour ago.

Through a thickening mist shrouding the lagoon she spotted boats crisscrossing in all directions, confined, she knew, to marked channels that acted like highways on the shallow water. What she was about to do would cross a moral line-one she’d never breached before. She’d killed, but only when forced. This was different. Her blood ran cold, which frightened her.

But she owed Ely.

She thought of him every day.

Especially about their time in the mountains.

She stared out over the mass of rock sloping into steeply falling hills, ravines, gorges, and precipices. She’d learned that the Pamirs were a place of violent storms and earthquakes, of constant mists and soaring eagles. Desolate and lonely. Only a wild barking tore through the silence.

“You like this, don’t you?” Ely asked.

“I like you.”

He smiled. He was in his late thirties, broad-shouldered, with a bright, round face and mischievous eyes. He was one of the few men she’d encountered who made her feel mentally inadequate, and she loved that feeling. He’d taught her so much.

“Coming here is one of the great perks of my job,” Ely said.

He’d told her about his retreat in the mountains, east of Samarkand, close to the Chinese border, but this was her first visit. The three-room cabin was built with stout timber, nestled in the woods off the main highway, about two thousand meters above sea level. A short walk through the trees brought them to this perch and the spectacular mountain view.

“You own the cabin?” she asked.

He shook his head. “The widow of a shopkeeper in the village owns it. She offered it to me last year, when I came here for a visit. The money I pay in rent helps her live, and I get to enjoy all this.”

She loved his quiet manner. Never raised his voice or uttered a profanity. Just a simple man who loved the past. “Have you found what you wanted?”

He motioned to the rocky ground and the magenta earth. “Here?”