David Stone - The Venetian Judgment

Table of Contents

G. P. PUTNAMS SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group
(Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of
Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin
Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group
(Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson
Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,
24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright 2009 by DavidStoneBooks

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any
printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy
of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stone, David, date.

The Venetian judgment / David Stone. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-03208-4

1. Dalton, Micah (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. Intelligence officersFiction. I. Title.

PR9199.3.S833V

813.54dc22

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

for catherine stone

Linebacker I and II B-52 Air Operations over North Vietnam leave the NVA war-fighting machine in ruins. Cut off from the North, despised as murderous butchers by the people of South Vietnam, the Viet Cong insurgency collapses. Demoralized, with forty thousand NVA killed that year alone in their failed Easter Offensive, North Vietnamese leaders remove General Giap from command and sign the Paris Peace Accords. The Vietnam War ends in a de facto USA/RSVN victory.

Nixon and President Thieu of South Vietnam meet at San Clemente. President Nixon reaffirms an earlier promise, backed by the U.S. Congress, that the U.S. would recommence Linebacker Air Operations over Hanoi if the NVA violated any elements of the Paris Peace Accords.

Intimidated by antidraft student riots, and sensing Watergate blood in the water, a Democratic Congress passes the Case Church Amendment, forbidding any U.S. involvement with Southeast Asia as of August 15, breaking solemn American covenants made only nine weeks earlier. Freed from the Linebacker threat and given massive material support by the USSR, the NVA immediately and aggressively violates the Paris Accords. Abandoned by the U.S., fighting not only the NVA but a proxy war with the USSR, Saigon falls in April of 1975. That same month, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge army of psychopathic fifteen-year-olds arrives in Phnom Penh and the killing begins. Over the next ten years more than three million Laotians, Cambodians, and South Vietnamese die in reeducation camps, at the hands of roving murder squads, or in suicidal attempts to flee.

part one

KROKODIL

Dalton shot the bodyguard first, because thats how these things are done, taking him as he came out of the west gate of the Piazza San Marco, right where it opens into the Calle de LAscensione. The guard was a bullnecked, buzz-cut Albanian kid, likely some hapless third-rater drummed out of the Kosovo Liberation Army, judging from the way he pixie-pranced right out into the calle, looking this way and that in the dark, with his war face on and his brows all beetled up, as if he actually knew what he was doing. He had a Tokarev in his left hand, a deeply useless piece of scrap iron, and he never even got it into play before Dalton stepped out of the alcove on his left and punched a soft-nosed, subsonic .22 caliber round into his temple. That was pretty much that, as the slug pinballed around inside the kids skull for a few seconds, making a lumpy gray soup out of his life so far. The boy went downstraight down, like a sack of meat falling off a flatbed.

Mirko Belajic, the kids boss, had been hanging back under the arch, waiting for the all clear, so when Dalton took out the bodyguard the wily old Serb flinched a half step back and reached into his Briony topcoat. But by then Dalton had the muzzle of his Ruger up against the mans barrel chest.

Dah, Krokodil! he grunted, as if his most depressing expectations for the evening had just been grimly confirmed. Dalton stepped out into the faint glow from the lights of the piazza, his face stony and a green spark in his pale blue eyes, his long blond hair pulled back from his hard-planed face. He was wearing a blue Zegna topcoat, black leather gloves, and a navy blue turtleneck, so in the dim light from the piazza he looked like a skull floating in the shadows. The snow was sifting down, a curtain of powdered glass, diamond-lit by a sickle moon. Their frozen breath hung in the still air between them, a pale glowing mist, slowly rising up.

Krokodil, you... you wait now, just a bit, the old man said, in a flat, steady voice, no quaver, not begging, just making a suggestion, as if they were arranging to meet for drinks. Not too late for you. We talk

No. We dont, said Dalton softly, squeezing the trigger once, popping a round into the old mans chest about an inch below his left nipple. The old man staggered back, his roast-beef face losing color and his mouth gaping open. He plunged his hand into his coat and brought out a small stainless-steel revolver, which Dalton easily plucked from the mans gnarled, arthritic hand. He threw it into the alley behind him. It struck and skittered across the frozen cobbles with a dull metallic clatter.

Belajic stared at Dalton for a time, blinking slowly, then pulled his suit jacket to the side and looked down at his shirt, where a black stain around a tiny frayed hole was starting to spread open like a black poppy. He put a meaty palm over it, winced, looked back at Dalton, his breathing now coming in short, sharp puffs as his lung slowly collapsed. The expression on his face wasnt fear, or even anger.

He looked... offended .

I am... stabbed? Mirko Belajic is... dying ?

Cora Vasari, said Dalton, and had his suspicions confirmed by the flicker of recognition in Belajics face, a fleeting muscular contraction around the old mans left eye, a blue vein flaring in his neck, gone in an instant.