Top Hook (2 page)

Efremov was dead.

Anna had awakened to feel his body cooling in their bed, the bed she had shared with him for five years.

She had checked for a pulse, respiration, but they were last acts of friendship, quite separate from hope. He was dead. She had left Tehran the same day.

Now, his death would be known throughout his world. As he had prepared her for so many things, so he had prepared her for this, with suggestions and instructions, a locked box, passports—and computer disks. She had begun the contacts with his former agents even as she had fled Iran.

She had found safety and anonymity in a youth hostel in Istanbul. She was twenty-six and beautiful, but she looked a mature twenty, and she had bought a passport and a student card from Israel to have a twenty-year-old's identity. In Istanbul, she had used the cyber-cafés around Hagia Sophia to contact a man who was only a name on a secret file, George Shreed. Shreed had hired the Serbs to kill her in Venice.

Now, one of them was standing under an arch outside her window. They had found her.

She was sharing a room, a very expensive room, with a stewardess from Lufthansa. Greta was on vacation and avoiding airlines, and they had met at the Hermés shop near the Doge's Palace, not entirely by accident—Anna had been looking for cover. Greta wanted adventure, a little romance, a man to last a few days. Anna made herself the ideal companion, which included listening to Greta's complaints about the man she had picked up.

“American?”

“Australian,
ma chérie
. Rude and a little unwashed. Too rude, in the end.”

“Mine never made the assignation.”

“Cowards, all of them.”

Greta emerged from the shower wearing nothing but a towel on her head. Anna admired her candidly; Greta
lacked Anna's legs and hips, but she was striking, and her breasts were enviable. Greta seemed unaware of Anna's gaze and collapsed theatrically on her bed.

“Shopping will cure it. And I want to go to the Rialto.”

“Is the Gap in Venice any different from the one in London?” Anna had never been to London, but her passport said she had.

Greta laughed, a silly girl's laugh. “I know where to shop, here.”

“You'll get me in trouble.”

“Probably.” They both laughed. Greta was very easy to like, Anna thought. She had confidence and enthusiasm that went deeper than the automatic smile of the airline employee. Anna pulled on a top, glanced out the window, half pulled the heavy green drape, and moved from her own bed to the room's desk with her laptop. Greta began rifling her purse, throwing her passport and wallet on the bed. They caught Anna's eye, like a signal. She glanced out the window again.

“Do you have a laptop? Mine keeps freezing on the keyboard.” Actually, it was working quite well. Anna just didn't want to be tracked.

“Of course,
ma chérie
. It is there, by the television. But it is probably the phone lines. They are antique, like everything else in Venice.”

Anna found the case, slipped down behind the chair next to the television, and connected to the net. The machine was very different from the succession of IBM laptops Efremov had always acquired for them. It had a fashion edge to it. The case was an after-market replacement, a deep, velvet blue.

“The case is wonderful!”

“It is, isn't it? A boy gave it to me.” Greta's voice
suggested a deep satisfaction with the case, or the boy. Perhaps both.

Online connection. All the directions in German, but her German was up to the task. Greta spoke a movie-star English, but Anna's stilted German had started the hasty friendship and established her bona fides as the child of Austrian Jews.

Search Engine. The second name from her list.
Alan Craik.
Several hits. A Navy locator address. Anna flicked her eyes over the street outside; the watcher had a cellphone out. She read two short bios of the man Craik—service, medals, marriage. Naval War College.

She searched again on some ship names: Alan Craik was going next to an aviation detachment, that much was clear. She tried “Ombudsman” and “USS
Thomas Jefferson
.” Seven hits. The Americans continued to pretend that their naval movements were classified, even as their wives posted lists of ports of call on the Internet. She used the unfamiliar finger pad to scroll through the seven hits.

Exactly. Liberty ports.

Movement on the street outside. A second man, a lit cigarette. Anna scooped Greta's documents off the end of the bed and put them in her bag without hesitation. Then she took her own expensive forgeries and dropped them on the telephone table, never taking her eyes off the street. Greta prattled on, and Anna made noises—
yes, no, interesting—
to suit Greta's noises. Greta knew nothing of the men outside the window or of the sudden loss of her identity.

One last bit of information from the laptop: Alan Craik would be in Trieste, Italy, in two days.

Anna closed the laptop and returned it to its case, running her fingers over the blue. Anna loved the best
things, and so did Greta. On that ground, they truly met. Greta was applying her makeup, and their eyes met in the mirror.

“I have to run out, Greta.” Anna waved her handbag. “I'll be back in a few moments.”

Greta nodded in the mirror. Anna bit her lips in regret. Greta did not deserve what was to come, but no one did. Anna headed for the elevator.

The antique elevator was the only way she knew of getting to a lower floor. Even in Iran, there would have been fire stairs, but not in Venice. She thumbed the button. She had no gun and she feared what would emerge from that elevator.

Abruptly, while she was still trying to devise a plan to meet a rush of armed men, the door opened. One elderly woman emerged. Anna had the elevator to herself. She took two deep breaths before she thumbed the button for the first floor.

The Serbs would be in the main lobby by now.

The elevator crept down three floors, her heart hammering in time to the gentle sway of the old car within its track, and stopped with arthritic slowness. The door attempted to compensate with a harsh crash that could be heard throughout the building. They would hear that, know that someone had used the elevator to the first floor above the lobby. Anna fought down panic. They could not know it was she. Not yet. Not until they found Greta. If they could tell the difference between Greta and Anna, she was dead. She hoped they only had a description. In her experience, all desirable women looked alike to most men.

She walked to the room that corresponded to her own on the fifth floor. She had no reason for this choice, only a certain blind superstition. She breathed and knocked.

A middle-aged man in a dressing-gown opened the door. Anna smiled, her body swaying with relief. “May I come in?” she asked. The man, a North American, appeared flabbergasted. His mouth moved, but no words emerged. Anna heard the elevator going up—and up, past this floor. Up to her room on the fifth?

She slipped past him into his room. Same layout as her room above, two beds, even someone in the bath. She walked to the window, moved the blinds. Empty. She pushed the window open. The man was saying something, and the sharp retort of a gunshot came from above them. She ignored both, letting the surge of adrenaline carry her out the window. She hung from the sill and dropped. One of her stupid heels broke, but her ankle held and she stumbled away. She pulled her shoes off, threw them in the canal, ran to the corner, began planning her movements off the island of Venice and up the coast to Trieste.

Planning it in her head as she ran barefoot—
Trieste…Alan Craik…

Alan joined his new command, an airborne detachment testing a new imaging system called MARI, while it was moving from Pax River via NAS Norfolk and Aviano, Italy, to join the USS
Thomas Jefferson
at Trieste. At first, it was like flying with strangers in a commercial jet; he was CO in name only, the movement already organized by the acting CO, a lieutenant-commander named Stevens. He was still in a rage over the change of orders, so his mood was not charitable, and he found himself making harsh judgments about the unit. Movement planning seemed to him substandard, the preparations made to work only because the junior enlisted worked their
butts off and the senior enlisted were pros. The officers remained an unknown quantity—faces and handshakes at Pax River, and little else—and most of them had flown off with the det's two aircraft and would be waiting on the
Jefferson
.

By the time they had reached Aviano, he had at least gotten control of the anger, and he knew many of the faces, if not the names. He had made common cause with the senior chief, and they had agreed on how to improve the last leg to the ship. Then he saw to it that he was the last man to leave Aviano; that way, he knew that everything was in train, and the senior chief would get everything to the
Jefferson
on schedule.

He showered for the first time in two days, changed into civilian clothes at the NATO bachelor officers' quarters, and rented a car, which he drove a little too fast into Trieste before walking down to fleet landing. The
Jefferson
was anchored out beyond the main harbor entrance, washed by hazy sun and a faint Mediterranean mist that gave the port a friendly look and gilded the harshness of the modern waterfront.

Now almost resigned to the change of orders and buoyed by seeing a ship he knew and felt great affection for, his mood was raised further by seeing a familiar face: Chris Donitz, an F-14 jock who had been the senior LSO on his last tour.

“Hey, Doughnuts!”

He smiled because it was obvious that Donitz was glad to see him. In an instant, shipboard camaraderie embraced him, and he listened with a smile as Donitz told him that he was heading shoreward for two days of liberty and a meeting with his wife. Donitz was just beginning to rhapsodize about meeting her in Venice when Alan heard a voice at his shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt, sir—are you Lieutenant-Commander Craik? Message at the SP shack, sir.”

He thought,
Oh, shit, trouble with the det.
He shook Donitz's hand. “Better catch your train. Give my regards to Regina.”

“You bet. But Al, listen, uh—”

Alan waited, literally balanced on one foot to walk away.

“Uh, watch your step, okay?”

That got Alan's attention, and he swung back. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Donitz flicked a glance at his watch and shuffled his feet. “Just some scuttlebutt about why you're here.”

“An intel guy commanding a bunch of aviators? I can deal with it.”

“Uh—sure. Hey, take care of yourself.”

If Alan had been in less of a hurry, he would have known that Donitz had more to say. As it was, Donitz gave a quick hand gesture, part salute, part wave, and hurried through the shore-patrol sentries and down the pier toward the railway station.

Alan strolled over to the shore-patrol office. A well-turned-out jg stood inside, his creased whites gleaming. He was from the ship's company and didn't recognize Alan in his civilian clothes, but as soon as Alan introduced himself, the man snapped to attention.

“Sir, the previous DO left a message that your wife came by about an hour ago and said she'd wait for you in, uh, Lettieri.” He had trouble with it, and the name came out as Letty-air-yury.

“My
wife?”
Rose was supposed to be in Newport, getting ready to graduate.

“That's what the message says, sir. ‘Mrs Craik waiting for her husband at the Letty-air-iery.'”

“Lettieri?” Alan asked. Rose had never mentioned coming out. Of course, she wasn't above surprising him—maybe even skipping her own graduation because he had to miss his, and they'd spend it together? Pick up a quickie flight from some friend in Transport—The thought of seeing her made him grin.

“Lieutenant, can you call the boat?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get CVIC on the line and tell them that LCDR Craik is going to miss the 1700 brief, okay? Ask my Det NCOIC to see that my stuff gets to my stateroom.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Now, where is the Lettieri?” He realized that he wanted to see his wife a lot more than he wanted to see his new command.

Alan's eagerness to see Rose saved his life.

He followed the first part of the directions from fleet landing to the Riva Del Mandrachio, which ran along the waterfront, but the next turning eluded him. The landmark for this turn had been hotly debated by two sailors of the shore patrol, one arguing for a small church, the other for a bar, both making marks on the back of an advertising flier for a rock club. Alan saw several bars, but no church. He turned southeast, away from the waterfront, and headed into town, following the crude map and asking his way in his Neapolitan Italian, to the amusement of the Triestini.

The first local he asked pointed silently up the hill and waved Alan on. The second, as if to make up for the reticence of the first, offered to take him to a much better café, with a beautiful waitress, where the man himself was headed. Alan declined with courtesy, and the man shrugged. He gave directions rapidly, insisting
that the Caffe Lettieri was on the Via San Giorgio. Alan followed the new directions as best he could.

Ten minutes later, he was deep in the old part of the city. He passed two of the city's foremost Roman attractions and stopped, his temper flaring. The anger about his changed orders was just below the surface again, ready to flare at any provocation. He took a deep breath, looked at his map, and began to doubt that any members of the shore patrol had got this far from the fleet landing. Then, deliberately calming himself, he walked slowly until he found a cross street whose name appeared on his map and moved briskly south toward the Via San Giorgio. By then, the sunny day had turned gray, and thin Adriatic drizzle had begun to fall, and he was hurrying because he was afraid he would miss Rose.