The Berkut (71 page)

"No!"

She slapped him hard and he tried to retaliate, missing her at first, but following up immediately, punching and slapping wildly at her. His assault caught her off-balance and she fell backward to the floor under his weight, her mouth filling with blood from a lip split by his fist. Through instinct and training, she drove her foot stiffly upward, the long heel catching him solidly in the groin and spinning him away clutching at himself. By the time he'd recovered, her revolver was pointed at his head. He froze; the pistol had a silencer.

Her voice was hard. "You'll get the registries or I'll go down to the street and get help." She stepped back so that he could have a full view. "Who wouldn't believe there'd been an attempted rape? It's one thing to seduce a woman, but rape?"

Bettini hung his head and sobbed quietly. Picking up her clothes, she led him to an outer office and dressed while he made a call. She felt sick.

111 – April 18, 1946, 11:00 P.M.

By nature Pogrebenoi was a cautious woman. Bettini seemed to be a broken man, but she reminded herself of the danger from a wounded animal. He had made the call to an official in the Maritime Authority, and within an hour a messenger arri
ved and was admitted while T
alia stayed out of sight. When the man left she took from Bettini the envelope that had been delivered and tapped him gently on the cheek with it.

"You've got what you want; now get away from me, whore," he said, not looking at her.

She smiled. "Yes, you did pay for it, didn't you?" Opening the envelope, she read the information, which proved to be well organized and complete. It was a small comfort to know that someplace in Genoa there was at least one Italian bureaucrat who was competent.

"What about the photographs?" Bettini asked sulkily.

"I'll retain them as insurance," she said as she brushed by him into the sticky night air. Her first concern was security. She doubted that Bettini himself would be a threat; with Italian males, personal retribution was seldom the problem. He might try to call in outside help, but as long as he thought the photos might be published, she was certain he'd leave her alone. Still, she decided to take no chances.

It was before midnight when she got back to her room, and the first order of business was a bath. The bruises on her thighs were already turning purple, her muscles ached and she felt dirty and violated. What would Ezdovo think if he knew what she'd done? Men could be funny about such things. What they took for granted in themselves, they rejected as weakness or, worse yet, depravity in women.

After the bath she packed her clothes, dropped a summer dress over her head and slipped into sandals with paper-thin soles and low heels. Before Giacomo went off to the north, he had given her directions to another hotel near the Piazza Dante, which he described as "safe and sturdy." He would meet her there as soon as he could. "Once you've checked in," he cautioned, "stay put."

It was after midnight when she left her hotel. A night fog was eddying in the narrow streets, causing the streetlamps to dim to an eerie yellow. She carried her purse over her right shoulder and her suitcase in her left hand. A small pistol in a hard leather holster was strapped to the inside of her left thigh, the grip facing forward; if necessary, she could smoothly cross her right hand over, snatch the pistol from her left leg and drop to shoot. She had practiced the maneuver in her room.

Because of the fog she considered hailing a cab, but none were about and she was in no mood to wait around; a stationary target was too vulnerable. Besides, she told herself as she began to walk, the fog and the absence of a moon would give her more freedom. After so long in the field, she was still unaccustomed to being closeted in rooms or vehicles. She was used to being alone at night; her unit had engaged in far more night actions than in the light of day. At first she had been troubled by the darkness, but in time she had come to welcome it as an ally, and now she wore it like a warm coat.

She had walked several blocks before she realized that she was being followed. The city felt unfamiliar, and for a moment she almost let herself be pushed ahead by fear before she checked herself and considered the situation. Pursuers seldom were the actual threat. An old Cossack proverb said, "Fear not the enemy you see."

Talia walked on at a steady pace, leading her tail into a dark side street, an alley with many potholes. As she neared its end, an intersection with another thoroughfare, she saw her opportunity and edged toward the middle of the alley so that the lights ahead would give her pursuer a clear silhouette. Just before she reached the end, she dropped to her side and rolled like a parachutist, jolting herself against the wall, releasing her bags and drawing her pistol. If she had executed the move correctly, the follower would think that she had made a run for it at the end of the lane; in bad light, sudden movements in place often look like extended motion. She also knew from experience that the human eye was inadequate in the dark. One could not look directly at an object; the eye had to keep moving in order to have any vision. She hoped her follower was careless.

Seconds went by before she heard the sound of feet running down the alley. Her follower had taken the bait and was hurrying to catch up. Pogrebenoi raised herself to a squat and braced to attack. As the figure drew abreast, she stood and aimed a kick at his heels. He fell hard on his shoulder and she was on him immediately, one hand grabbing a shock of greasy hair, the other jamming the pistol barrel firmly against his temple. He reeked of garlic and sour body odor.

"Don't shoot!" he cried. "Mistake."

"If so, the mistake is yours. You were following me. Now that you have me, what is it you want?"

"Not following you," he whimpered. "On my way home. I have a wife and children."

She jerked his head back almost to his spine and pushed the gun harder into his flesh. He began to gag. "Your wife is soon to be a widow," she told him.

"They said to rough you up," the man cried through pain. "That's all
.
"

"Who?" she asked, tightening the pressure.

"You're breaking my neck," he squealed. "I don't know. It's God's truth." As she tightened her grip even more she heard him gurgle. If she pushed any further, his neck would snap. She reduced the pressure to give him the wind to speak.

"It's business. A job, you understand? Not personal." "
You would beat me for
money?"

"I told you, I have children to feed. It's not easy. I'm a veteran with no pension. They said I could find you at your hotel. You have some photographs and papers. 'Teach the whore a lesson,' they said."

She thrust his head against the stones to stun him, then quickly frisked him. He had a knife in his coat pocket and a large revolver in his belt, which she threw into the darkness. Bettini, she thought. She had been right to be cautious. The bastard had no balls to do it himself; he had to pay for it.

Her assailant was recovering. "Where are your confederates?" she demanded.

"Cosa?
I don't understand," he said weakly.

She knew he was lying. "I know you have help ahead." She applied more pressure and thrust the barrel of the pistol between his legs. He jumped when the weapon touched him. "Feel that? There's a silencer. Tell me where your confederates are or you will be a poorer excuse for a man than you are now."

"My brothers," he sobbed. "We didn't expect you to leave the street. They've gone around to get ahead of you." She looked up the alley. There was no sign of them yet, but they must be getting close; time was running out. She leaned close to his ear. "Tell your employer that Monica sends this to him." She rolled the man over on his back, stood and drove her foot down hard between his legs. A scream ripped through the fog as he doubled up and groped frantically at his groin.

Pogrebenoi moved to the wall and waited while the man's long shrieks continued to pierce the night. In a few seconds two figures arrived at the head of the alley and moved toward him. "The whore crushed my balls," he cried as his legs kicked reflexively.

"Jesus, you let a miserable whore do this to you?" one of them chided angrily as they lifted him and helped him into the street. Pogrebenoi followed almost in their footsteps, using the moans of the injured man to mask her movement. When they reached the sidewalk, they turned left and she ducked right, throwing herself into the doorway of a building. When she was sure they were gone, she took a few moments to breathe deeply. If Bettini was true to form, he'd bolt when the news got back to him. It was amusing to think of him trying to dream up some excuse to leave Genoa. She was relieved; this should take him out of her hair and let her get on with her work.

The hotel was just as Giacomo had described it: old but sturdy, with a small lobby and only one entrance. The exit door on her floor was boarded shut.

By the time she opened the envelope again in her room she realized what bad shape she was in; the day had taken its toll. She needed sleep, but first she had to go through the information carefully. Switching on the small lamp by the brass bed, she read slowly. Petrov's words echoed in her mind. "When you find what you're looking for, you'll know it."

He was right. She smiled and lay back on the thin pillow. The ship was called Ii
Pesce Bianco.
It would arrive in six days, and it was unmistakably what they were looking for. Folding the paper, she tucked it into the waistband of her underwear and fell asleep with the pistol in her hand, the safety off.

112 – April 18, 1946, Midnight

Farraro sat in a century-old wrought-iron chair. Like the Church, the strength in the metal had not been sapped by time. With a slight shift in weight, he rocked in the chair, the motion drawing him deeper into himself. When something was well constructed, it could endure; that was the lesson to remember.

Nefiore was dead, as expected. One made decisions-some good, some bad, most without consequence. Church, government, family: a few in each institution decided the fate of others. It was the way, and it was not for weaklings.

The old priest stood up and adjusted his cassock. These were momentous times. God's work needed doing. He was glad to be at the center and proud to have the responsibility on his shoulders.

There was much to do. On the twenty-fourth of April a ship would dock in Genoa to pick up European "missionaries." Farraro did not know who they were or who they had been, and he did not want to know. It was irrelevant. It was his decision alone as to who they would be and where they would go. He had the power. The halls of Vatican City were filled with intelligent and ambitious men; he would rise above them all, he told himself.

For the moment, however, the problem was not so grand. Through a series of circumstances he did not yet fully understand, the records of the ship had passed today into the hands of a harlot. Undoubtedly she had no comprehension of the importance of the information she held, but that did not matter. Farraro sighed. It would have been easier if she had kept to her customer's wallets and carnal needs. But greed, he knew, had no limits in some people. She had stumbled into something over her head, a possession she would soon lose. She had to be removed immediately. He had already issued the order.

113 – April 19, 1946, 5:10 A.M.

As a soldier Pogrebenoi knew firsthand the value of sleep
. In
the field one took it when and where one could. She had slept in small caves scooped from snowdrifts, in swamps filled with mosquito swarms, on the side of steep ravines with her arms hooked around saplings to prevent her sliding, in trees while German infantry camped below her, in barns among livestock, and in rainstorms so heavy that she'd almost drowned. Sometimes sleep lasted a few moments, sometimes two or three hours. You took it when it came, and soldiered on when it was no longer possible.

Now sleep came almost instantly, but it was the tense kind that left her muscles in tight knots. It served the body rather than the mind, giving her only the physical strength to endure and to think, but no more. Soldiers did not dream; always it was a matter of preparing for the next ordeal, and always there was another one ahead, often worse than what they had imagined.

To the men and women in her command, their major's ability to sleep for a few minutes and appear refreshed and in control when she awoke was remarkable
. In
her army, company-level officers were not appointed from above but from below, by their comrades in the ranks, and it was her stoicism and reliability that had brought her an officer's rank so early. At first she feared the responsibility, later she warmed to it, and by the end she was dulled by it; behind her was a trail of bodies that her orders had killed. When peace came, there were visits from generals, even a famous field marshal, an official state hero. She was in line for promotion and a career; her war record would serve her well. She barely listened to them and had no interest in their propositions. She would serve her country-of that she was certain
but no more in charge of other lives. She would work in her own way, depending almost entirely upon herself, and Petrov had delivered this to her.