'There are other ways,' Bravo said.
'Name one.' The Georgian said this without an edge of menace, he simply wanted to know.
'The woman is desperate to get me to believe that someone else is the traitor. She wanted me to believe that someone set her up for the murder of Father Mosto in Venice, and I almost believed her, until she shot Anthony Rule dead.' He did not mention his very personal hatred of Jenny for seducing both his father and himself. 'I can talk to her, I can deal with her. She'll listen to me.'
'In that event, I would be exceedingly careful. Have you thought about how she followed you here?'
Bravo stared at the Georgian.
'Did you tell Father Damaskinos you were coming to Trabzon?'
Father Damaskinos had asked him where he was going next, and Bravo had told him.
'Yes, of course you did,' Kartli said, answering his own question. 'She must have been the one who interrogated him and murdered him.'
'Father Damaskinos is dead?'
'One of our people found him in his apartment last night and contacted me immediately.' The Georgian spat again, more heavily this time, as if it was an uttered curse. 'His face was burned, then his throat was slashed in a very particular manner.'
'What do you mean?'
'It was made with a push-dagger. How do I know? A push-dagger is made for stabbing, not slashing, so when it's used for slashing the wound is unmistakable.' Kartli paused for a moment. 'I know someone who kills in this manner; he's a Knight of St. Clement assassin. He must have trained her. Does this girl carry a push- dagger?'
'I never saw one on her,' Bravo said, 'but all along the bitch has been full of surprises.'
'Do you think it wise,' Damon Cornadoro said as he watched Jenny passing through the narrow streets of the European Market, 'to allow her to go off to meet with Bravo alone?'
Camille studied his handsome face, admiring him as if he were a statue sculpted by Michelangelo. She put a slender forefinger, warm against his cool flesh, across his lips. 'What's the matter, my love? Do you think she can persuade him to the truth, rather than the ever more plausible lie I have laid out for him?'
'Rational argument has nothing to do with it. There is chemistry between them, I felt it the night they arrived in Venice. When I lifted her on board the motoscafo, when I put my hands on her waist and drew her close to me I thought he was going to kill me.'
Camille laughed. 'Mon dieu, what an imagination you have, darling! They fuck and you see skyrockets.'
Cornadoro shrugged his huge shoulders. 'Now that he's isolated I want to make sure he stays that way.'
'Oh, and whose idea was that, Damon, yours or mine? Don't you worry, when it comes to isolation I know all the ins and outs. He hates her now, she killed his beloved 'Uncle Tony,' just as I planned it.'
She could feel his heat, the brief tremor as his yearning responded to the proximity of her body. On the pretext of keeping Jenny in view, she contrived to lean ever so slightly against him, so that the tips of her breasts, the small platter of her belly, the strong pillars of her thighs imprinted themselves briefly on his muscles. 'Not all men are like you.'
'Women rarely get what they want, Camille, though what that might be eludes me.'
He smiled the smile that was impermissible, the smile that revealed his weakness to anyone who, like her, was clever enough to see it. His weakness she knew well, and it made her long for the heady days of Dexter, a man who grasped the big picture and never let go.
'But you-you're different-you know men better than any other woman.'
'Better than they know themselves,' she said casually. 'That's the point, isn't it?'
'How do you do it? That's what I'd like to know.'
She ran her nail across the stubble of his cheek, as if tracing out a scar. 'Poor baby. If you have to ask, you'll never understand.'
He grew angry then, which is what she wanted, his eyes blazing, his reflexes animal sharp. When he made to grab her, she danced lithely away. But she didn't laugh at him. With each of her men she knew where to draw the line, and she never transgressed. That was her secret. She had failed only once, with Dexter Shaw-not that Cornadoro would ever find out.
'Alors, you have the Husqvarna,' she said, referring to the sniper's rifle. 'It's time to take it to the rooftops.'
They stood facing each other: Bravo and Jenny, amid the bustling, noisy, anonymous street. No one in their view paid them the slightest attention, but there were others, hidden from them, who were very much interested in what they said and did.
'I said if I saw you again I'd kill you,' Bravo said.
Jenny spread her hands. 'Here I am.' She had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. How on earth was she going to make him understand?
'Are you armed?'
She laughed, a bitter sound she immediately wanted to spit out like the white under-rind of a lemon. 'Do you imagine I'd shoot you?'
'You shot Uncle Tony-'
'Because he was the mole, he was the traitor-'
'You slashed Father Damaskinos's throat after you set fire to his face.'
'What?' Her eyes opened wide. 'What did you say?'
He came toward her, hating her and at the same time marveling at the naturalness of her performance. 'Where is it?'
'If Father Damaskinos is dead you can be sure I had nothing to do with it,' she said with a good deal of alarm.
'I'm no longer sure of anything.' He'd had enough of her feigned innocence. 'The push-dagger-where is it?'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'I want it!'
'You're crazy! I don't know-'
Taking her by the wrist, he pulled her out of the dust and the grit into the shadows beneath a dilapidated awning. They appeared to be a couple in the middle of a minor dispute, that was all.
'Let go of me,' she said quietly, balefully. Despite her best efforts, her anger at what she saw as his obtuseness was getting the better of her. What was the use of trying to explain what had happened to her? One look at his stony, closed-down face told her that he'd never believe her. He didn't want to. And it was this last realization that spun her down into the lowest depths of despair.
'Listen, you,' Bravo said, 'Mikhail Kartli-surely you know who he is-wants you dead. He had sent one of his men to shoot you for being a traitor to the Order-'
'I'm not a traitor-'
'Shut up!' He jerked her around and she nearly tripped a portly Turk negotiating hotly to buy a copper kettle. He ignored the Turk's brief alarm, ignored, also, the deep circles under Jenny's eyes, the unnatural pallor of her cheeks, as if the pith of her was disintegrating, as if something had devastated her from the inside out. Which was difficult, because it meant ignoring the painful lurch the sight of her gave his heart-despite her lying, her deceit, her murderous treachery he felt… God help him. Again, his heart contracted, and he wondered whether he could forgive himself for loving her still. 'The only reason you're still alive is that I told Kartli I'd talk to you-that I'd get out of you whether there are any more moles inside the Order.'
'I have no idea. You'd have to ask Anthony-'
Rule's name became a scream as he dragged her back into the street. It was his love, he realized with a shock that literally sickened him, that bore his rage on high. His hatred of her was not a professional hatred-he was ignoring Uncle Tony's admonition to disinvolve himself personally, to keep his head well above the rising tide of the Voire Dei's toxic sludge. He loved her and she was evil. How on earth could that be?
'It's to be the hard way, then,' he said with exaggerated grimness. 'I'll take you to Kartli. He has all
