by Bryan Murray
“I agree. All we can do is give the President the facts and let him and Mulroney and the spin doctors run with it!”
“Yeah, man I’m glad I’m not in their shoes. In the meantime, mum’s the word with Giancarlo, we need to haul ass stateside with zero detection!”
“I’m with you!”
* * *
When they ground up on the beach, Giancarlo was there with the chopper warmed up and ready to whisk them back to Rome and their return flight to the US. He looked totally relieved that they were both still alive, especially Jake.
“I have to be honest, you guys, I never thought you’d pull off whatever it is you just did and I don’t want to know what it was, okay?”
Jake grinned. “Well, the less you know the better, old son and let me tell you without your help we wouldn’t have made it!”
Giancarlo smiled. “And how was the jump? Your first attempt?”
Jake shook his head like it was a bad dream. “Don’t ask. When I dived off the edge into the darkness, you have no idea how close I came to losing all my bodily fluids!”
Giancarlo shook his head in admiration. “Amazing. Recruits do that shit in daylight and don’t get it right, even on the jumping range. You did it towards jagged rocks and into a black ocean with no real concept of the proximity as you zoomed in!”
Jake grinned. “Not recommended, I can tell you!” he reached in his tote and handed the red detonator cartridge to Giancarlo.
“Hang on to this personally, Giancarlo. All three are primed and I will let you know if we need to do anything more, okay?”
The young Italian nodded. “No problem.”
Sarah was as usual getting the next steps in focus. “So, what’s the flight status back to the US, Giancarlo?”
“First thing in the morning. You should be in DC by early afternoon.”
“Great!” Jake replied looking at Sarah. “Be nice to get out of here before the shit hits the fan!”
She smiled ruefully. “You got that right!”
Giancarlo raised his hands defensively. “What shit, I know nothing about shit, no sir!”
The chopper sped away north into the night in the direction of Rome and a safe room for the night in the CIA complex.
* * *
As they were getting ready to crash for the night, Jake’s cell phone rang. It was the President. He checked the caller ID and signalled to Sarah who it was.
“Hello, Mr. President?” he answered.
“Hello, Jake,” the President replied. “How are things going?”
Jake chose his words carefully. “I take it this is a secure line, sir?”
“Of course.” the President was getting antsy.
“In that case, sir, I can tell you that we were right about the Mob being behind the attempt on your life and we are now in Rome after taking care of things, if you follow me, sir?”
“Excellent, well done, guys,” the President replied. “So, what do you want to do now, Jake?”
Jake was still anxious to do some final checking before confronting the President with the entire conspiracy plot. “Well, sir, when we get back into DC we need to check on a couple of things and then we can head into the White House to deliver our full report for yours and Mr. Mulroney’s eyes only.”
The President was quite patient. “Very well, Jake, get some rest and call me as soon as you are ready and I will drop my schedule to see you and Sarah immediately.”
“Very good, Mr. President,” Jake went off the line. He turned to Sarah who had been listening to their end of the conversation. “The President is anxious to know what went on and I don’t blame him, but we have to be one hundred per cent sure about everything before we go around accusing the most popular Vice-President in years of committing treason!”
She nodded. “Exactly. There are two things we must do. One is get the DNA comparison for Lorenzo and Andrew checked out discreetly and the other is to get the photographs printed out from your camera of Lorenzo and Maria and the more recent one of Andrew to show to the President.”
He was in agreement. “Oh, yeah, I knew there was something else I forgot to tell you.”
“Like what?”
“There was also a photo on the wall at the villa of Lorenzo with some of his bikini playmates.”
“Really, including who?”
“Three of the pretty little girls from the First Son’s ski group!”
Sarah was quickly in tune. “So that’s how Lorenzo knew the whereabouts of the boys at all times. So, what do we do about them?”
Jake thought a moment. “Well, we can’t make a move on them without spooking Maria, so, we need to wait a while.”
“I agree,” Sarah nodded. “Now, can we get some sleep?”
He grinned. “Yeah, and one of these days, hopefully it will be in the same bed!”
She gave him a quick kiss before they headed for their separate rooms.
* * *
The next morning before they went to get their flight back to the US, Jake sought out the friendly Doctor in the embassy who had checked out the boys after their return. Jake told him he was putting the finishing touches to the case he had been working on for the President under top secrecy and asked the man if he still had the blood samples he took from the boys. When he confirmed that he had a small sample from each left, to disguise the reason for the request, Jake asked for a small sample of both of them. He thanked the Doctor, swearing him to secrecy before they left for the airport,
CHAPTER 33
As their jet took off for the return flight to Washington DC, further south there was total pandemonium in the Villa Cagliari.
Giuseppe had been awoken from a deep sleep by his Senior Capo who had a snivelling maid at his side, telling him that he needed to come to the Don’s bedroom immediately.
He grabbed a robe and rushed across the villa to the Don’s bedroom, where his men were guarding the door with tears in their eyes. When Giuseppe rushed in, Don Lorenzo was lying in bed peacefully as if he were still asleep until Giuseppe reached out to touch his throat before recoiling in shock.
“Mamma Mia!” he gasped, the truth sinking in.
He looked at the Mob Doctor who had just been rushed over to the villa, his bag in his hand and after taking a quick look at Giuseppe’s face, the Doctor quickly made a check on Don Lorenzo’s body. After a few specific checks, he turned sadly to Giuseppe. “Attacco di cuore, Don Giuseppe!” he whispered reverently.
Giuseppe spoke to the Doctor, still in shock. “I checked in on him before I went to bed last night and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. I must let the rest of the family know!” he whispered as he walked away, a man in a daze.
CHAPTER 34
On the morning flight into DC, Jake and Sarah were still comparing notes on the amazing revelations of the past twenty four hours. Sarah was the first to speak.
“So, if Maria and Lorenzo were lovers for all those years and perhaps even had a child, I suppose that we must assume that neither David nor Andrew actually knew what was going on?”
“I think you’re right. It looked as though the only picture of Andrew around at the villa was only a very recent one, so, maybe she didn’t tell Lorenzo about his son until they kidnapped him by mistake!”
“Yeah, imagine the shock that would have given him. Suddenly you have a twenty-year-old son, you’ve kidnapped him by mistake and Al-Qaeda are expecting you to execute him when the Americans don’t let their leader go!”
Jake was finally getting the picture. “So, that’s why he made it so relatively easy for us to rescue the boys. He didn’t want to hurt his son, he didn’t want Al-Qaeda to insist he was executed and he still wanted to stick to his master plan of returning Jeff like an unexploded bomb to work back in DC!”
Sarah’s mind was working. “That picture of Lorenzo and Maria was dated January 2nd 1992 - twenty years ago.”
“Correct, I know what you’re thinking,” Jake replied. “Andrew must be twenty, so when did Maria
and David get married?”
“Exactly, something else to check out when we get back as well as Andrew’s date of birth, all of which will be academic of course if there is a DNA match!”
“Good thinking!”
The plane started its final descent into DC and both Jake and Sarah were ready to hit the ground running the second they left the airport.
Their first port of call was to Langley, and with the help of Director Grover, Jake was able to work with his old buddy Del Peterson, a forensic chemist, to get the two DNA levels of Lorenzo and Andrew compared. All Jake told Peterson was that they were samples from a couple of suspected felons that needed checking. He also asked Peterson to call him back with a fast turnaround, this was a White House project.
He then printed the photographs from his I-phone for the presentation dossier for the President and Mulroney’s eyes only. Then, after they checked with the bureau of statistics, they found that Maria got married to David a week after the date on the photo of her and Lorenzo and that Andrew was born almost nine months later to the day!
Sarah looked at Jake. “So, the boy could easily have been Lorenzo’s and with David also being swarthy-looking with dark hair, he wouldn’t have suspected a thing when the child was born!”
Jake sat back and sighed heavily. “It’s all stacking up, Sarah and what scares me is that the President will be devastated. How can his spin doctors possibly handle this world-shattering political bombshell?”
She gave a wry smile. “That’s why these guys get the big bucks, as they say!”
“You’ve got that right. Heck, can you imagine the mileage the venomous Republican Congress will wring out of this story when it breaks. It doesn’t bear thinking about!”
CHAPTER 35
Maria was suddenly almost drowning in her own tears. She had been sitting quietly at home on a Sunday afternoon, after the stress of the past few days, while her husband and Andrew had gone out for a relaxing game of golf together. This was when she made the mistake of switching on the TV and turning to the CNN channel.
She was idly watching a news story under the graphic heading of ‘Breaking News’ when she almost dropped her cup of coffee as a picture of Lorenzo came on the screen!
The story explained that a second death in just weeks had occurred in the Cagliari Mafia family. It confirmed that earlier that day, the new Godfather Don Lorenzo Cagliari had been found dead at his villa after suffering a suspected heart attack. The story also mentioned the death just weeks earlier of the previous Godfather, the well-known Mobster Don Luigi Cagliari.
Maria sat there, absolutely transfixed, her fragile world finally torn apart!
* * *
In Rome, a surprised Giancarlo was also watching the same newscast, a knowing smile on his face. “My God, Jake!” he whispered to himself. “You are one tough sonofabitch!”
* * *
Back in DC, Maria was trying to pull herself together before her family returned. She was absolutely certain that of all things Lorenzo had not suffered a heart attack. The man was a fitness fanatic with the heart of a lion and he was always in excellent shape for a man of his age.
All she could think of was that somehow, somebody had figured out that Lorenzo’s men were masquerading as Al-Qaeda terrorists during the abduction of the boys and they had then gone after the Don, right there in his own fortress. Only one man immediately came to mind with the credentials to pull off a stunt like that and that was Jake Harrigan! Damn his soul!
* * *
She sat there totally deflated, her mind going back all those years, back to 1992 when she and her parents had visited Italy for a brief shopping trip before she was due to marry her fiancée David Carrington, the son of a very wealthy Connecticut family.
There had been extremely bright prospects forecast for both of them, since they were both academically bright and ambitious.
What had started as a most enjoyable day, visiting the top fashion houses in Rome to buy Maria’s trousseau and after spending a small fortune on all their purchases, her parents, exhausted from the long day’s outing, had retired early for the evening.
Maria was still hyper with all the planning of the forthcoming wedding on her mind and she had gone down to the elegant hotel bar for a nightcap and to listen to the music.
Totally unplanned, that was also the night when Lorenzo had decided to take a night off from his role as a Mafia soldier on the streets of Rome and he had decided to grab a relaxing drink in the same bar.
He was ruggedly handsome and elegantly dressed like most mobsters and when he saw Maria and she smiled at him, he had immediately asked if she would like to dance. It had been just like someone lit a torch inside both of them. The attraction was immediate and before the evening was over, they were both in bed together in Lorenzo’s elegant apartment, just down the block from the hotel.
Their lovemaking had been breathtaking and Maria only just managed to get back to her room before dawn, so that her parents across the corridor would not realize that she had been out all night.
During the night together, Lorenzo had told her that his grandfather was the local Godfather and that he was a Mafia soldier, but in all reality, if he had told the love-struck Maria that he was a serial killer, which wouldn’t have been far from the truth, it would not have affected the way she felt about the charismatic Italian.
She had also told him that she was just days from being married and in view of the total disparity in their respective lifestyles, where he would never have been allowed to leave the family and with Maria being beholden to her fiancée and a whole upper class family scenario that she had to consider, the young lovers had consequently agreed to live their own lives but stay in touch and see each other discreetly whenever they could.
However, the fire had regrettably been lit and in spite of Maria being newly-married, she and Lorenzo had managed to keep in touch one way or another. After Maria had later given birth to Andrew and realized immediately when she saw him that without a shadow of a doubt he was Lorenzo’s child, she had decided not to complicate things for herself or her Latin lover.
Although she was still deeply in love with Lorenzo, she was also devoted to her darling son and knowing that if Lorenzo even suspected that the child was his, like all Mafia fathers, he would have wanted at least some interface or joint custody of the child and with the dangerous lifestyle of the Mob, many of whom died young, there was no way that Maria wanted that to happen to Andrew, a quiet, loving child. The scandal that such a disclosure would have brought to her wealthy in-laws, would also no doubt have put a swift end to her blossoming career in politics
When the child had been baptized, she had chosen a middle name of Lawrence, the latter being the English equivalent of Lorenzo and nobody realized why she chose the name except Maria.
Over the years, as both their careers had flourished, Lorenzo had risen quickly in the family business, spending long periods with his grandfather’s soldiers in the US, after his father had been killed in a shoot-out with a rival family in Palermo.
Maria in turn had chosen politics as her career and with her academic skills, together with her charismatic persona, backed by the Carrington millions, she had made a meteoric rise in the political scene in Connecticut.
The two of them had cherished the fleeting moments they had been able to spend together and as they had become more and more powerful, they had then decided to work together to help each other to become even richer than they were.
During their stolen moments together, Lorenzo had realized that Maria had a son, but it had never even crossed his mind that the child could be his.
When Maria finally ran for the governor’s seat in Connecticut, with additional ghost financial support from Lorenzo as well as the Mob providing well- orchestrated smear campaigns against her running rivals, she had been comfortably elected as governor.
After taking office, her more than lenient approach to the expansion of organized gambling had immediately start
ed to put some of the original mob money spent on her campaign straight back into Lorenzo’s pockets and this had all been without the knowledge of either her husband or her son.
She and Lorenzo had been two people on a clandestine roller coaster ride of secret passion and emotions and when Maria had eventually been chosen as the running mate for Stephen Parker in his second term, Lorenzo had also discreetly helped to fund her run in the election.
He had long realized that Maria’s unswerving, all-consuming, obsessive and over-riding ambition had been to get all the way to the Oval Office and this was when he came up with the audacious plan to assassinate the President and blame it on the terrorists!
He also wanted to time it so that there would be almost a full term left after Maria took over in the White House, during which time they could repeat what they did in Connecticut, but this time nationwide!
This would have given her the power she craved and given him multi-millions in additional gambling revenues and other undercover discreet earnings, compared to the dire struggle that he had been having with President Parker and his anti- organized crime task force.
* * *
Now, as she dried her tears yet again, looking out at the still falling snow in the gathering gloom outside, she realized that it had all been for nothing.
She now realized what a huge mistake it had been to leave the planning of the kidnapping of Jeff to Lorenzo and his team and also not to alert them that her son would be travelling with Jeff, the ultimate target. Consequently, when the shocking news came through that Andrew had also been kidnapped by mistake, she had been forced to tell Lorenzo about his biological son, just to make sure that the boy wasn’t harmed.
As a result she had almost lost the son that she worshipped, the love of her life was now dead, her present marriage was just a sham with her husband and his never-ending string of girlfriends and now she was virtually doomed to play second fiddle for the rest of President Parker’s second term and after that it was anybody’s guess.