The Venetian Judgment (28 page)

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Authors: David Stone

BOOK: The Venetian Judgment
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This was just . . .
punishment.
She could see the girl’s face—she was fierce and dark, and had a fan of wild fake blond hair spread out on the pillow under her head. Her black eyes were fixed, almost snakelike, on Morgan’s throat, which he was presenting to her in the way victims are said to offer themselves to vampires. It came to Briony that the girl was exactly that, some sort of snake, and the phrase
honey trap
came floating up from somewhere in her dormant professional self.
Before the final moment came, the scene jumped—a hard, jarring cut—and now the couple were lying side by side in the bed, sharing a small, twisted hand-rolled object that was probably what the younger generation was now calling a “spliff.”
She realized that the previous scene had been included by whoever had sent this chip only in a spirit of sadistic aggression. There had been no need to subject Briony to the sordid experience of watching her young son make bad love to a Greek tart.
It had been done to please the sender, and to force himself into a kind of sleazy partnership with her, the beginning of an extortionate seduction, as these things always are. Briony braced herself for what was now to come, and was not in any way disappointed.
This was the whole idea, after all.
There must have been a mike somewhere close to the bed. Under the bedside table. Shoved up that little bitch’s . . . Well, somewhere close, because the sound now dialed up, and Briony could hear their pillow talk—low, breathy, spaced out between long, luxuriating pulls on the twisted cigarette. Morgan was talking about his job at the base, his boyish voice dry and hoarse and a little drugged by whatever was in the cigarette.
“No, like, Crete’s boring as shit, actually . . . I mean, except for you . . . But if I stay in for five years, we can get stateside, maybe Walter Reed—”
“You wouldn’t never leave me, would you?”
This required a kiss, of course, and some muffled saccharine exchanges that Briony was thankful the mike could not pick up. The girl rolled away and plucked a glass from the floor beside the bed, drank some of the liquid, passed it over to Morgan, who drained it, making a face.
“Christ, Melina, what’s in that? It tastes like vinegar.”
“It’s raki, I think . . . But you get paid so bad in the Navy . . . What about your mother? Couldn’t she get you a job in the government somewhere?”
“Sure, she’s got all sorts of pull . . . if we’re married. She’d insist on that, Melina—”
“So would I, Morgan. I’m not whore—”
“I know . . . I think Mom would like you—”
“She work for a library?”
Morgan laughed, sucked on the joint again, held it for a full thirty seconds, blowing it out through pursed lips.
“Oh yeah, she’s a librarian. That’s what she tells people . . .” Melina made a pouty face, crossing her arms over her breasts.
“I don’t see how librarian could help me go to America—”
“You’re marrying an American! And she’s not just this librarian, anyway. She’s, like, this superspy—”
“Like Brangelina?”
“Who? No, not Brangelina. She’s more like this secret-code breaker—”
Melina pushed him almost out of the bed, apparently angry.
“You always tell me bullshit, Morgan. You are big bullshitter, like all Navy boys. I think I should throw you out and take another boy.”
“I’m not a bullshitter. It’s true. She works for this big spy agency—”
“Sure. With Matt Damon and James Bond.”
“No, it’s like the CIA, only more secret . . . Really, I’m not lying.”
“Bullshitter.”
“No, listen”—another long pull, passing it between them—“you ever hear of the”—Morgan made a comic show of looking around the room, even under the bed, and then, in a stage whisper, as Briony’s heart sank within her chest, said—“the NSA?”
“The
Ennessay
? What is this
Ennessay
?”
“Not
Ennessay
. NSA. In Maryland. She works there. Or used to, before they moved her up to West Point—”
The girl Melina reacted to that.
“West Point? West Point is where Army teaches soldiers, isn’t it? I saw a film once about this West Point. She truly is librarian there?”
“That’s her cover . . . Well, look, the thing is, she has
lots
of pull, and—”
Briony watched as what she was expecting to happen happened. From the camera angle, it was hard to see where the men came from, but there was a loud bang as the door to the room was kicked open and the room filled with big, fast-moving armed men in cheap suits, screaming at Morgan and Melina in English, with Southern accents, loud cop voices braying at them—“Military Police. Do not fuckin’ move. Military Police”—while Morgan and the girl lay in frozen shock on top of their tangled sheets.
Another jump cut.
Morgan, now dressed, limp, haggard, exhausted, pale, sitting in a bare wooden chair in a bare, windowless room, with a U.S. flag on its staff in the corner and a picture of the President on the wall beside it, a table littered with coffee cups, an ashtray filled with butts, smoke hanging blue in the air. Two large men in shirtsleeves, military brush cuts, their backs to the camera, one standing and one sitting in a wooden chair and tilting it backward, his size-twelve shoes on the table, his beefy arms folded behind his neck, speaking softly to Morgan in a lazy Texas bass.
“Thing is, kid, you’re on the tape—that’s the whole problem here—”
The standing man broke in, angry, aggressive.
“Mike, I don’t know why we’re playing hide the floppy with this fucking mutt. He’s a traitor. We’re in a goddamned war. He sold out his mother for a cheap piece of Turkish skank. He’s going to Leavenworth for the rest of his fucking life—”
The man in the chair held up his left hand, made a calming gesture.
“Brad, leave the kid alone, will you? Go take a piss or something. You’re scaring the crap outta him, okay? Get a fucking cruller or something.”
Brad stood with his huge furry arms crossed for a few seconds longer, glaring down at Morgan, looming over him like an avalanche.
“Hey, fuck it. You wanna play nice with this asshole, be my guest.”
He left the room, there was a brief silence, and then Mike sat forward, placing his forearms on the table and leaning in close to Morgan.
“Look, Morgan, forget Brad. Okay, you talked loose around a Turk broad. Yeah, she’s got a background. Yeah, she was a whore for a while—”
Morgan rallied a bit at that.
“She’s not a whore.”
“That’s never
all
they are, kid. But the part that’s a whore is how you got into this fix. She’s been seeing the wrong guys, why we had her room wired, guys with connections to drug dealers, guys who’ve been selling dope to our people—stand-up patriotic kids just like you—and I’m a military cop, and it’s my number one job to take care of dumb young gullible pukes like you. So when I’m sitting there watching you start to shoot your mouth off about your mother and the NSA and all that shit, I figured enough’s enough, and in we go. You were digging yourself a hole, and I wanted to give you a chance to shut the fuck up. Do you a favor.”
“Favor?” said Morgan, his skin wet, and his eyes hunted-looking in the shaft of light from the ceiling fixture. “I’m going to Leavenworth.”
“Maybe . . . maybe not,” said Mike.
A silence, during which Morgan’s expression altered, showed a glimmer of hope coming like a thaw to the red-rimmed eyes.
“Maybe not?”
“Don’t have to go that way, kid. Could go another way.”
“It could?”
Mike lit a cigarette, took a pull, blew out a dense cloud that roiled in the still air, and leaned forward into Morgan’s space, his tone cold and grating, like someone scraping ice off a windshield in a Minnesota winter.
“Look, I’m gonna let you in on something, you ever shoot your mouth off about it to anyone—I mean
anyone
—I will flake your case so huge that the admiral himself will personally shoot your ass into the heaviest block in Leavenworth. You’ll get punked out before your heels hit the ground, spend the next fifteen years getting passed around behind the blanket wall like a rubber chicken, and if you ever get out you’ll be wearing Depends the rest of your sorry fucking days. And Melina will get sent back to Istanbul so loaded down with contraband that the Turks will bury her deep in Arkasoy Pits, and not even the roaches will be able to find her then. She’ll be fucking gone forever. My word on that, Morgan, as a United States Marine. Am I making myself totally fucking clear?”
Morgan could only nod, his bony chest working. Briony, watching in mute horror as this fatal farce unfolded, was torn between wishing him safe home and wishing him dead.
Mike, having said his piece and gotten the response he wanted, leaned back out of Morgan’s space, tossed a pack of Camels across the table, waited while Morgan, his hands shaking, took one out and put it in his mouth. Mike threw him the lighter, a pink plastic Bic, waited with massive stillness while Morgan lit it up and exhaled a shaky plume.
“Okay,” said Mike, “here’s what I can tell you. You know NAS Souda is a fucking backwater, right? Not even run by major brass. Just fucking noncoms and swabbies like you. Only claim to glory is it’s overrun with stray cats. It’s the asshole of Crete, nothing to do but smoke and drink and chase pussy and go fucking bats with boredom. War going on anywhere but here, guts and glory for everybody but you.”
Morgan drew on the cigarette, his attention focused on Mike’s face.
“But what else has NAS Souda got? I’ll tell you. Souda is two hundred and sixty miles south-southeast of Izmir, in Turkey, and Izmir is the fucking Emerald City of fucking drugs. That shit you were puffing with little Melina? Laced with hash oil straight from Izmir. How does it come from Izmir to Melina’s cockroach cottage in Souda? Go on, ask me.”
“How does it come—”
Mike slammed the tabletop so hard the cups flew into the air, and Morgan jumped a yard.
“Your fucking Chief Strahan, that’s how.”
That rocked Morgan. The cigarette, halfway to his lips, froze in midair. He started to shake his head slowly back and forth.
“Chief Strahan? Chief Strahan is running drugs?”
Mike nodded heavily, his face turning into a scowl.
“Damn well told us he is. He’s running your medical supply unit, ordering up gear, meds, has them brought in by Sea King from the Persian Task Force Support Group, right? Also by supply hulls out of the mainland.”
“Yes, but—”
“Kid, we got this asshole locked down. Case file is longer than my dick. Not a lot of shit, just enough to make him rich. Moroccan hash oil by way of Izmir, meth from an ethanol distillery in Kerch, shit from all over the eastern Med, and a lot of it’s running right through Strahan’s AO—”
“No. Chief Buck’s stand-up. He wouldn’t do—”
“Chief Buck Strahan is a puke, is what he is, Corpsman, and we only need one thing to take him down for good.”
Another silence while Mike let the message percolate through Morgan’s panicky haze.
“What . . . What do you need?”
Mike leaned forward, setting the hook in tight.
“We need to know where the fucking money is.”
“But can’t you—”
“Shut up and listen. Brad gets back here, he has the push to jerk you onto a C-130 going stateside this evening, he gets pissed enough. I don’t have time for a back and forth on this. We’ve got his whole system, but if we can’t lay the money on the table in front of the JAG-offs, he’ll get a tap and go, and I want serious time for this puke. Here’s where you come in. You got one shot and one shot only. You either take it or you’re gone this afternoon, and your mommy will never see you again, except maybe through a piece of chicken-wired bulletproof glass. And she won’t like what she sees. You with me?”
“I am. Christ, I am. What do you want me to do?”
Hooked . . . Hooked and gaffed,
thought Briony.
Mike took a USB flash drive out of his pocket, laid it on the table between them, used the tip of his index finger to nudge it closer to Morgan.
“You have access to Chief Strahan’s personal laptop, right?”
“His
personal
one? No, I don’t. He keeps it in his briefcase, locked up. Has it with him all the time. I mean, it’s his own machine. He uses it mainly to MSN with his family back in Shreveport. Nobody gets near it.”
“Yeah. Ever wonder why?”
“No . . . No, I guess not.”
Mike sat back, leaving the flash drive on the table, his face closing up. “You guess not? You guess not? Well, start fucking guessing. You either find a way to get this flash drive into Chief Strahan’s personal laptop for fifteen seconds or you go to Leavenworth. We been all over the guy’s hooch, his office, his office desktop, his pay books, and can’t find the money trail. Laptop’s gotta be it. Nowhere else. Fifteen seconds is all we need.”

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