Mikhail's sons. Look familiar?'
'Yes.' Bravo frowned. 'That's a man named Michael Berio. He met us in Venice, hired by a friend of mine.'
'I'm afraid your friend's been duped-and so have you,' Khalif said. 'His real name is Damon Cornadoro. He's a member of one of Venice's Case Vecchie.'
'One of the twenty-four founding families of Venice.' Bravo nodded. 'Like Paolo Zorzi.'
'More importantly for you and for me,' Khalif said, 'he works for the Knights of St. Clement. In fact, he's their top assassin.'
'Christ, and he's here.'
'Here, and asking after your whereabouts. This is what Mikhail told me after his son summoned me back to his shop.' Khalif opened one of the beers, took a deep swallow, set the bottle down. 'Bravo, I must tell you that the fact that the Knights have sent this man after you is the worst possible news. He is powerful, determined, clever, and very, very nasty. These traits have been bred in his bones, in his very blood.'
'And now he's insinuated his way into my best friend's good graces.' Bravo shook his head and took out his cell phone. At once, Khalif stayed him. 'What are you doing?'
'Calling my friend Jordan. I have to warn him-'
'The moment you do that, you alert Cornadoro you're on to him. Think, Bravo-is that what you really want?'
'If he's half as nasty as you make him out to be, you bet I do.'
'And then what will happen, do you think?'
Bravo fought to put aside his anxiety over Jordan's safety. Fought to bring himself back to the here and now. 'You're right, of course. The Knights will send someone else, someone we won't know about, someone we have no hope of controlling.'
Khalif looked shocked. 'Mikhail and I were talking about killing Cornadoro. Controlling him is-'
'Terrifying, yes, I agree. But killing him now will have the same effect as my calling Jordan. The Knights want what my father was guarding, what he's leading me toward. They won't stop with Cornadoro's death.'
'Obviously you have something in mind.' Khalif opened the decanter of scotch and filled two tumblers. 'Tell me, please. We are in this together.'
Damon Cornadoro found Irema, the Georgian's daughter, at the Trabzonspor Club in the Ortahisar. It was named after one of Turkey's most famous football teams, and its decor showed their colors in pennants and photos signed by past and present team stars. All the serving girls wore team jerseys that came down to the middle of their bare thighs. Turkish techno music squalled from four large black speakers parked in the corners of the black-painted room. Television screens showed highlights of past games. The smell of beer and pot smoke hung like a pall.
Cornadoro sat at the bar and ordered a beer. Irema was sitting at a round table in the far left-hand corner with a number of her female friends. They were drinking and laughing. One of them, a heavyset girl with a flattish face, got up and danced while they laughed and clapped, and they bought her a beer when she sat down, flush- faced. It was all very innocent, which had immense appeal for him.
An hour and three beers later, he rose, went over to Irema and asked her very politely to dance. She looked up at him with her large, dark doe eyes, possibly to see if he was about to pull a joke on her-maybe he had come over on a dare from his buddies, maybe there was money riding on her response. But she saw only sincerity in his face-a handsome face, a face that was both sensual and sexual, a face that stirred her. She heard the laughs, the lewd encouragement from her half-drunk friends. Half-drunk herself, she held out her hand in a curiously formal gesture and allowed him to pull her gently onto the club's minuscule dance floor.
She had it in her mind to dance with him for one song, but the one song morphed into three, three melted into six, and on and on she danced, feeling their hips bump, their middles meld, their pelvises grinding as she moved ever closer to him.
'My name is Michael,' he said, speaking to her in Georgian.
Her besotted eyes opened wide. 'Just like my father.'
'I am not your father,' he said, swinging her around.
She laughed. 'Oh, my God, no, you're not.' She was breathless and flushed.
She told him her name and he said it was beautiful, that she was as lithe and graceful as the deer for which she was named.
She laughed again and held on to him as they spun, her arms around his neck trembling slightly with the onrush of her emotions. With her mother's delicate features and cool, porcelain skin, she possessed a freshness that was appealing. Her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, which whipped this way and that as she whirled around.
For Cornadoro's part, it was easy for him to make her believe he liked her-he did like her, in the way he liked virtually all women: their animal scent set his blood to boiling. There resided in him a certain insatiability that was like an itch he'd long ago given up trying to scratch. He wanted what was between a woman's legs, simple as that. And as superb a lover as Camille Muhlmann was, what she demanded of him was difficult for him to maintain: monogamy. He had never complied, not really. At first, he'd tried, but he'd failed so quickly-who had it been with, the dirty-blond American teenager on holiday or the sinuous Taiwanese five years younger than he had guessed or possibly someone else altogether, he could never be certain-that he'd never attempted it again. Instead, he had perfected his lies-no easy feat with Camille, something of a human lie detector-so that he could remain in her bed. He didn't want to lose that pole position, for many reasons, both carnal and political.
Camille was brilliant, no question, but the basic problem with her was that she was old. What he craved most was fresh meat, young and dewy and luscious in its innocence. Like Irema. Plus, he didn't like Irema's father, which gave the act of seducing her a frisson that made him lick his chops with anticipation.
As their dancing progressed he could feel her falling under his spell. It was a physical thing he experienced in his throat and his arms and his groin; it was like sex, like death. The blackness of the abyss was where he drew his sexual energy, it was what made it so feral, so irresistible.
He danced with her and, as he did so, he could feel that old familiar feeling creeping along his skin. He loved Irema and he made her feel it, though, of course, the source of it remained unknown to her. He loved her for the information with which she would provide him.
No lights were on when he brought her to his hotel room. The glimmer of the city came through the jalousied window in pale horizontal stripes, illuminated her like a neon sign. He told her to strip and she did, slowly before his greedy, glittering eyes. Then he told her what else to do. She didn't seem to mind; in fact, she liked it. She was used to being ordered around, there was a high degree of comfort in the known, but he suspected from looking at her that wasn't what she wanted, not really. And tonight he was determined to give her what she really wanted.
Naked, she looked more like a girl, small breasts, slim hips, tiny waist. But her legs were long and nicely rounded, and her rump… He had her continue to stand with her back to him, her arms at her sides. She was wholly unself-conscious about her nakedness, unafraid about what he might do with her. He had her trust, and this, more than anything, inflamed him.
He popped the buttons on his shirt pulling it off, and he was already so rigid that his trousers gave him a struggle. She turned in response to his growl of frustration and used her nimble fingers to unbuckle his belt, unzip him. As his trousers came down so did she, until she was on her knees. He ripped the band from her ponytail, twined his fingers in her loosed hair.
When he lifted her, her legs opened, her thighs gripping his hips as she gave a little moan. He felt her skin against him, warm, smooth as ivory, the bony hardness of youth still upon her. Enough to tip any man over the edge, but he held on, leading her up the sexual arc until, shuddering and groaning, she reached the apex. One wasn't enough for her, he'd known that from the start. Hot little thing. Like a star, intent on burning to a cinder. He waited her out, he was adept at that; in fact, the denial fired his nerve endings to the fever pitch he longed for, had to have.
But he needed her to feel that, too. She didn't have his reserves, didn't understand what was happening, trembled uncontrollably as he brought her to the final brink, then pulled them both back, over and over. Tears came and she clasped him desperately, implored him to finish it.
It wasn't until she said, 'Why are you waiting, it's torture, I'm dying,' that he ended it for both of them, so
