True to Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  “Little girl. The man has no respect for anything but money, an’ that is the problem. What you do to your hand, Soldier?”

  “Mae cut off my finger with a pair of gardening shears.”

  “You so funny, Major.” Fiorella jerked her chin and looked at Mae. “You still love older women, huh?”

  “I do, yes.”

  Mae moved to the table and held on to the back of the chair beside Kitt, the numbness turning stodgy, like old mashed potatoes, the thickness creeping into her chest. She looked at Kitt. He wasn’t so much maddeningly detached as he was exhausted and doped, although nothing about how he moved or spoke indicated that he was shattered and chemically affected. “Why?” she said simply, looking at a friend who had been like a mother to her.

  “Why not,” Fiorella shrugged. “No one suspect the old lady. The old man, sure. An old man can still make a baby, but an old woman is invisible. Good advantage to have. Maybe I am older, maybe I am slower, but I am smart. I know how to play the game. You set the other players against each other, use them to win.”

  Kitt set his elbow on the table. “Is that what you’ve done, set players against each other?”

  “Sometimes.” Fiorella bobbed her head. “Sometimes players work together to beat another player. Sometimes you gotta sit back an’ let them think they beat you.”

  “Why did you want to have me killed?” Mae said with a mashed potato tongue.

  “Beddita,” Fiorella shook her head. “You like my daughter. I love you so much, and you love me. You my family. Vivi try to kill you. That made me really sore!” she said like she’d stepped out of an old movie. “You wanna know stuff, huh?” She sat back. “Mae, sit down. I will tell you everything.” She waved her hand at the Dutch police officer at the door, the little aquamarine ring on her narrow finger catching the light. “Hey, you, buddy, bring us some tea!”

  “No! No tea.” Mae shook her head. “Please.”

  “Oh!” Fiorella nodded her mouth round. “Yeah. I know. Okay. No. No tea.”

  Mae gripped the chair harder. “Did you arrange the tea, did you send it to—”

  “No, no.” Fiorella shook her finger. “That was no me. That was the Enrico people. They are very angry at you. They are, what is the word…retaliating. I thought this man who died with the tea last night was a pest to you, Mae, he make your life hard, but I did no send him tea. Enrico did. That is a cross my heart an’ hope to die promise.”

  Her head congested with disbelief and ongoing shock, Mae pulled out the chair and sat.

  “I will be honest. I am a little angry. My goddaughter also drank that tea, but turns out she was a greedy li’l brat like Vivi, and these thing happen sometimes, you know?”

  Kitt’s brows arched. “Tanja Goedenacht was your goddaughter?”

  “She is Tania Buonanotte, my goddaughter like Vivi Gallia. They are cuscini, cousins. Vivi has many cousins.”

  “Oh, Jaysus.”

  “It is the greed, you know,” Fiorella sighed. “Greed ruins it all. I kept it small. Small is simple, safe, money flow, lotsa money flow, an’ the family happy. But somebody always want more because more is better. Avariza, greed. Vivi push her way in, an’ kept what she was doing from me, the trafficking, the refugees. Missy got too big for her britches, an’ go to prison, an’ Martini is pushing up daisies. Now look at the mess those two screwups made. Like little kids, they leave it to mama to clean up.”

  Kitt leaned forward slightly. “And what are you cleaning up for Polly Dankwaerts?”

  “Eh,” Fiorella gestured with her thumb and forefinger, “Martini and Vivi mix up Polly in this. An’ then her greedy niputi, nephew, get mixed up in too. He doesn’t know Tania is working for us until Martini and Bianco come to him an’ say ‘Hey, buddy, I know you’ve been stealing from your Aunt Polly. This is how you can fix it. I know you a big investor in a couple freeports. Gimme your passkey. We’re gonna give it to pretty redhead who make us a lotta dough’. Pfft. That redhead.”

  “Ruby Bleuville.” Kitt said, matter-of-factly. “Tania said the freeport passkey came from Martini.”

  “Martini pass the key to Ruby. It is better to blame the dead. That is what is easy. Blame it on Ruby Bleuville. Blame it on Martini. Blame it on Caspar. Blame it on the dead. They cannot protest their innocence or corroborate a liar’s lie. It works. The Yeoh Triad and Enrico Cartel embrace this idea.”

  Mae swallowed, trying to clear ears that were clogged with the paste that filled her pores and throat. “Is Caspar alive?” she said with a paste-coated tongue, a hammering head, and a knot in her chest.

  Fiorella glanced at Kitt and slid black pearls between her fingers before she exhaled. “Caspar, ah, well… He is good friends wit Martini an’ Bianco. Caspar shoulda stayed dead an’ live wit all his money an’ play in his gardens in Malta and Croatia, but he come back from the dead an’ call himself ‘Bruno Sciacca’. He buy a big old house, like Polly’s, ’bout an hour from here, and fix up the gardens nice. Then Caspar get this idea. He convince Martini and Bianco there is money to make in giant greenhouse farming. He was right, it is a good way to clean money. They build a couple enorme greenhouses, really big—you saw this morning, huh? ‘Bruno Sciacca’ run the Big Bertha farm for us; it make good money for us and the Enrico Cartel, but ‘Bruno’ got ideas, an’ show-off the greenhouse in the National Geographic. The Enrico and Yeoh don’t like the attention.” Fiorella sighed heavily.

  A high-pitched ringing filled Mae’s pounding head. “Where is he?” she whispered, her hands quivering on the tabletop. “W-where is he?”

  Fiorella pressed her lips together. “Beddita, he is dead again. For good. I wash my hands of him. He die yesterday. A big Chinese guy,” she chuckled, “his name is Man. He snuff Caspar in sex shop Bianco own in Amsterdam. Yeoh an’ Enrico ask, I say okay. They use Man. Vivi use him too. You pay, he kill an’ clean. He speaks such nice Italian.”

  The world around her paused, as if frozen, and she was trapped beneath a crust of paste that had turned to ice. Yesterday, she had looked at Caspar’s mashed, bloodied, bearded, plastic-wrapped face and hadn’t known him. She had never known him. He had never been. At once, the frozen world cracked open, everything unclogged, life rushing back to speed. Mae let out a shuddering cry and inhaled sharply. She looked at Kitt, tears streaming down her face, her nose running. He gave her a soft smile and blinked back the moisture that burned weary blue-grey eyes full of warmth and relief.

  “No, no, no,” Fiorella waved her slender hands. “You don’t cry for that man no more. No. No. He hurt you so much. You don’t cry for him.” She pulled a little lace-edged cotton handkerchief from her bra and pushed it toward Mae.

  “I’m not crying for him,” Mae sniffled and half-sobbed, looking at Kitt. “I’m not crying for him.”

  Kitt held her gaze, lifted her hand, kissed the middle of her palm, and pushed the handkerchief into her fingers.

  Mae blew her nose. “There’s a picture of you with him not so long ago.

  “Somebody watching him, huh?” Fiorella gave a nod. “That is not a surprise. He wanna show off the greenhouse an’ garden, ’specially the poison one. His National Geographic publicity expose the Cartel an’ Triad. They don’t like that. I don’t like that he and Martini use his friend Torrisi an’ my Polly to move people, the clandestini.” For a moment, Fiorella’s mouth was a grim line. “I see all the greedy hands start to grab at the same time. The Yeoh Triad, the Enrico Cartel, an’ this family fighting already. Everybody wanna take over business, moving the people ’roun the world. They do not see they are heading for a war an’ they do not want to listen to the old lady-picciridda. Wars are shitty. Wars make refugees. Polly was a refugee. Lotsa people dying. Children, babies drowning. I don’t like that. You can move an’ clean money an’ not make desperate people schivao—slaves. War is bad. You can profit from war without making slaves. Me an’ my fidanzata Polly survive the big war. You know, in the war, she ate tulip bulbs so she wouldn’t starve.” />
  Mae blinked. “Polly Dankwaerts is your fiancée?”

  “You are never too old for love. Remember that.” Fiorella grinned a little shyly. “I ask her to marry me. She wanna but she is a little bit mad at me now. I am today engaged and arrested. Maybe I get a conviction, but non andro in prigione—I will not go in prison.” She shrugged, the corners of her mouth pulling down. “No. For that, I am too old. Berlusconi, not as old as me an’ they give him tree years, but he no go in prison. He work in old people’s home in Milano. You see. I will get the same. I will go cook pasta per i vecchi—for the old wit no teeth, an’ I do that already. Or maybe the Yeoh or Enrico people will kill me. Me ne frega. Now, kiss me, an’ go home wit the Major. Him and me, we know: the people who kill for you are the people who love you the most.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Three days later, they were home. Life had returned to something familiar with familiar habits.

  Sweat-drenched from his run, Kitt unhooked the dog’s lead and hung it from coat rack beside the door, just above the chair where he put his sports bag. Felix shot into the sitting room and scurried about in front of Bryce—and The Consortium’s silver-haired Special Operations Deputy Director, Barbara Cubby.

  Seated on the button-back Chesterfield, Cubby, clearly not a dog person, rolled her eyes at the animal’s excited spinning and rushing about in a short circle.

  “How’s the hand, Kitty?” Bryce said, sipping coffee and biting into a chocolate biscuit that Mae always seemed to have on hand in case the Welshman dropped in.

  “Healing nicely. Good morning, Deputy Director Cubby.”

  “Major,” she said, eyeing the dog the way one did a crusty-nosed two-year-old child with a cold. “Forgive the intrusion at home.”

  “Not at all. I appreciate you stopping by to inquire about my health.”

  “Please sit, Major.” Cubby gestured to the empty leather club chair.

  “Forgive me, ma’am,” he glanced down at his damp grey tee, “I’m a bit sweaty.”

  She nodded. “Your butler’s assumption was correct. I did some reading about what caused your injury, Major. Reports state the gympie-gympie is a plant so diabolically painful it can, and has driven men to suicide—or to cut off their own limbs. I believe diluted hydrochloric acid followed by wax strips is the standard treatment for gympie-gympie stings.”

  “Unfortunately, the standard treatment wasn’t available in the Chateau Sicilië poison Garden. I had to improvise.”

  “What did the doctors say about your finger?” Cubby chose a biscuit from the plate on the tea tray Mae had set up.

  “That Valentine did a remarkably tidy job of severing it cleanly.”

  Bryce make a face, biscuit at his mouth.

  Cubby wrinkled her button nose. “The alligator notwithstanding, that was quite a garden, useful in a way in as much as Tox-Lab was able to establish that the poison that killed Roger Llewelyn came from a dwarf specimen of the Cerbera odallam, more commonly known as a ‘suicide tree’. There’s one growing in the greenhouse poison garden. A seed from the tree was ground up into the chai Hilary Wint presented to Llewelyn. We passed that information on to the Americans. The same toxin was found in Ruby Bleuville and Milton Foley. Curiously, Morland’s stroke was just that. A stroke, nothing fishy about it.” She paused to sip coffee.

  “Johnson found Hilary in the Bahamas,” Bryce lifted a biscuit. “She said two men came and told her that they fed her father to a shark and if she didn’t want to be an orphan, she would do exactly what they said. She’s in protective custody.”

  “We have a bit of news the Italians and the Dutch have passed along,” Cubby said. “The Hedison’s product appraiser who flagged the Dankwaerts jewellery pieces as fakes was able to identify the blond Dutchman who tried to sell the gems on behalf of his ‘Aunt Polly’, as Gert Hugo, the manager of a sex shop in Amsterdam, where, I believe, you found the body of Valentine’s husband.”

  The healing skin beneath his bandaged left hand itched. Kitt wiggled three and a half fingers to stop the sensation. “So, Vlaming was fleecing his Aunt Polly while Gert was robbing him.”

  “In addition,” Cubby licked cocoa crumbs from her finger, “Jill Charteris was an associate of Ruby Bleuville. The two women worked together appraising artwork held in freeports in the US State of Delaware—and Singapore, where you nearly died late last year. Charteris filed a complaint against Bleuville. She was also listed to give evidence in a case involving Fedelio Columbo, the Brazilian artist who laundered money for the Enrico Cartel.”

  “Good morning, sir.” Mae entered with a carafe of coffee and biscuits wrapped up for a delighted Bryce. She wore her standard uniform navy-blue shirt dress, white apron tight and Doc Marten Mary-Janes. Bryce, bless him, had clearly rung ahead to let her know he would be stopping by with a guest in an official capacity. Felix trotted to her, rising up on his hind legs to paw at her. Gently, she pushed him down. “Would you like your coffee, now?” she said.

  “No, thank you, Valentine. I’ll have it with my breakfast, after I shower.”

  “As you wish.” She poured more coffee into Bryce’s mug.

  Kitt turned to his unexpected early morning visitors, watching Felix poke his nose behind Cubby’s knee and begin to lick.

  She shooed the dog away.

  “I’m sorry,” Kitt said. “The dog has slight anxiety issues we have yet to work out, not a surprise since the poor animal’s been bounced from place to place these last few months. Valentine, the dog, please.”

  Mae clicked her tongue and the dog followed her to the kitchen.

  Cubby watched the kitchen door for a moment “Your injury places you on second reserve. You’re fine to continue in SOST, but once you’ve healed, I’d like you reassigned from training, Major.”

  “To where?”

  Cubby didn’t say anything, she merely looked at him for a moment as if mulling over how to phrase something.

  Bryce slouched in his club chair. “Go ahead and ask him. I told you exactly what he’s going to say.”

  “For fifty pounds, Sergeant,” Cubby’s brown eyes cut to Bryce, “they have to be Kitt’s exact words”

  “My exact words?” Kitt said.

  “The deputy director has something she would like to ask you.”

  “Ma’am?” Kitt said, and waited. Cubby asked her question, which wasn’t as much a question as it was a story laced with insults, praise, a little damnation, rationalisations, and a hint of supplication. “Why not you, ma’am?”

  “My area of speciality is lacking, meaning I am not quite fit for purpose. You are. I would prefer to keep it that way.”

  After a long moment where Bryce sipped coffee and chewed a biscuit, Kitt gave his answer.

  Cubby tucked the curved edges of her silvery bob behind both ears and handed Bryce a fifty-pound note. Then she rose and brushed a crumb of chocolate biscuit from her red skirt. “Please thank your butler for her sterling service, Major. We’ll let you get to your breakfast and see ourselves out. Let’s go, Sergeant.” She paused at the door Bryce had opened for her. “I still expect your report on my desk by the end of the week,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kitt sat on the sofa the SOD Deputy Director had vacated and watched them leave. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and left a handprint of moisture on the sofa’s armrest when he rose to answer the door buzzer. Rather than Bryce grinning at him on the little security monitor screen, Mae’s brother scowled at the camera. Kitt buzzed him in.

  Ten seconds later, Sean shoved open the flat’s door Kitt left cracked open. “Here’s yer bleedin’ document, the one you asked me to ask me friend to finagle for ya.” The blue-eyed man thrust out an envelope.

  “You’re so Irish when you say finagle.”

  “Get stuffed, brother-in-law.”

  Kitt dabbed sweat from his chin and wiped his hand on his jogging shorts. He opened the envelope and slid out the paper inside. It was gold edged, Vicariato Del Citta’ Del
Vaticano across the top, with Parrocchia della Bascilia Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano Certificato di Matrimonio centred below that, a red seal on the lower left. “Thank you.” He said, his throat tight. “Thank you.”

  Sean held out his hand. “You’re welcome. It’s my penance for keeping secrets from her and for you. I’ve made peace wit me sister, now I make it wit you. Peace to ya, brother.”

  Kitt took the man’s hand and shook it. Then Sean jerked him forward into a slapping, bear hug. “You hurt her and I’ll kill ya.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Kitt slapped back.

  Felix in her arms, Mae watched them from the open kitchen door. Why was it the men in her life, the ones she cared for, always threatened to kill each other?

  Her brother let Kitt go, waved at her, and left, singing, “In da naaaaame ov luuuuuuuv…” at the top of his voice like a demented Bono.

  She set the dog on his feet, turned about and tied on an apron. “What was that death threat all about?” she said, Felix scampering to paw at Kitt as he entered the kitchen.

  He handed her the envelope and picked up the dog, cuddling him close, watching her pull out the thick certificate. “I think it may be time you met my parents,” he said.

  Mae looked down at the official document. “It’s lovely.”

  He smiled at her. “Yes. It’s only a piece of paper. I know you didn’t need it, but I did. I didn’t do it for you, Mae. It matters to me. It’s a gift to me, like your love.”

  Mae chewed her top lip for a second. “I really, really want to mock you for that last bit. I mean really. But look at me.”

  He did. Two fat tears rolled down her face. His face was wet too. “It means we’re legal, my love.” He sniffled. “Our marriage legally registered and recognised. Your brother did the paperwork, had a friend at Vatican City help. It’s not as uncommon as people think, usually it’s military, happens on battlefields, and well, love is…”

  “A battlefield?”

  He kissed the top of the dog’s head. “I was going to say something that knows no bounds.”