He nodded casually. “Two guys with cameras behind us, off to the side. And up ahead on the bike, looks like it too.”
John leaned a bit toward Patricia. “We’re on duty.”
“I bet you enjoy that.” She said sneeringly.
They visited a few more gaudy discos and some sleazy bars, before going down to the beach and then back to the boat.
Their guide from the government tried to keep a smile on his face, but he failed to convince anyone with the masquerade. When John asked him what the matter was, he admitted that the nightlife of Puerto Galera wasn’t exactly the one of the highlights he was supposed to show them.
During the following days they cruised past jagged coastlines, lush forests, and beaches with palm trees. Time and again brightly painted fishing boats appeared, sometimes a single one, sometimes in groups, with their clanking engines and riggers stretched out over the water. Some pulled past them quietly with bloated sails. The fishermen waved to them, but otherwise didn’t show much interest in the giant yacht. They went across the Sibuyan Sea, went past the coast of Luzon and then they finally saw the volcano Mayon, a tall and perfectly conical peak with a thin white wisp of smoke coming from the crater, a clear warning of its potential danger.
Patricia suggested going for a stroll through the town Legaspi at the foot of the volcano. Benigno Tatad dared to gently dissent, saying that the town was exceptionally unattractive and boring without a single bit of flair.
“All right,” she replied. “Then we’ll do something else.”
“We should go to Boracay,” the representative suggested. “Many people say it has the most beautiful beaches in the world.”
They continued their cruise, sailing between small and large islands, through water as clear as in paradise, back to the Visaya Sea, and then to the west again. Once, a small plane appeared and circled above the yacht, but they could not tell if there were reporters in it or just rich tourists who wanted to do something unusual. The actual reason why they were cruising around in the yacht was soon forgotten; days blended into one another, marked only by delicious meals and lazy hours in the shade, as they dozed to the gentle swaying of the yacht, and the splashing water as the bow cut its way through the sea. All thoughts of the world beyond their perfect little paradise vanished. To John, the stress he had experienced during the past two years, like running a marathon with hardly a break, seemed to melt away under the tropical sun. He wondered whether he would dissolve completely if he allowed himself to succumb to his ultimate in relaxation.
Boracay. They plowed through the turquoise shimmering water, past wide coves where colorful little sailboats with outriggers crisscrossed the waves, marveled at powder-sand beaches lined with coconut palm trees just like on a postcard. The largest beach, White Beach, turned out to be too heavily developed and crowded with tourists, but with the help of Benigno they found a smaller beach to the south.
“There are wonderful coral reefs. If you want you can dive there,” Benigno suggested.
John wasn’t so keen on the idea. “I can’t dive.”
“I can order an instructor to teach you, no problem. He can bring all the necessary gear.”
Patricia thought this was a great idea. She insisted that Benigno go diving with her. He agreed, though clearly with mixed feelings.
The instructor came the next day. He was an older Filipino with gray hair but, apart from his extensive diving vocabulary, spoke only broken English. He unloaded enough equipment from his boat for half a battalion to take to the sea.
John spent his time on the foredeck, letting the others snorkel and practice diving in the back.
“Officially I am here to give you the code numbers for the locks,” Cristoforo told Ursula smiling. He had to use a walking stick these days. “But of course it’s always nice to get a chance to visit. We always talk about you when we eat. It would be exaggerating to say we’re worried about you but we still keep thinking about you. We have nothing better to do now.”
Ursula looked at the Padrone slightly surprised. She had been somewhat taken aback by his sudden appearance, and was irritated to have another person in the room. “Is it the end of the month already?” she asked.
“It’s the thirty-first.”
“Unbelievable.” She had lost all track of time, as usual when she was digging around in archives and was left alone. It seemed as if she had arrived only yesterday, but at the same time she could have almost believed it if someone had told her that years had passed beyond these old walls. She put down her pencil and stood up. It was ages since she had spoken to anyone. “I have found something that looks odd to me. You should take a look.”
“With pleasure.”
She opened the air-conditioned display case that contained Giacomo Fontanelli’s books. She looked through the books, some of which were roughly bound while others were finely crafted. They had her ragged looking notes, hastily scribbled on, hanging out between the pages. “Here.” She pulled out a thin one, one of the last, opened the book and showed him. “Here, this notation. How would you translate this?”
The Padrone adjusted his spectacles and studied the scraggly faded writing. “Hmm — not easy.”
“As time passed, Fontanelli had got into the habit of writing notations in the margins of his books, as if they were diaries. He wrote down who he spoke to, where he thought there might be business to be done, stuff like that. This is the only note that is private in nature.”
Cristoforo sat down at the desk, pulled the lamp closer and silently read the note. “It is odd indeed,” he said, agreeing with her, and then he translated: “’Spoke with father today. Maybe a way out.’ What did he mean by that?”
“I thought the whole time that he was an illegitimate child and didn’t know his father,” Ursula told him.
“At least that’s what he said in his testament.”
“In it he also said that he left behind a fortune, and not debts.” Ursula shook her head. “I’ve done all the calculations. All the years, the florins and zechines and marks and pfennigs, it is unbelievably chaotic, but he did his math correctly. If he really did put money away unofficially, it had to be from business deals that weren’t recorded in the books.”
The Padrone carefully paged through the old book. “When is this from ?”
“March 1522.” She checked her notes in a thick notebook filled with numbers. “On that date he was almost five hundred florins in debt and was late in his payments, until someone called J gave him a loan of two hundred florins. He fiddled his way through pretty well, the great philanthropist.”
Cristoforo closed the book and set it aside. “And how do you explain that?”
Ursula rubbed her chin. “I can’t yet. All I know is that I need to go to Rome. I must find the other documents of Giacomo Fontanelli.”
“God knows where they could be.”
“They were moved in this century. There could be records, protocols, or something that’ll help me to locate them.”
“Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes.” She once had sat on a committee examining whether or not teachers, professors, and other government employees in the newly re-united Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall should continue to be employed. She found she had a talent for tracking down documents in the archives of the Stasi. It was awkward uncovering documents that proved someone had worked for the secret police, even though the papers were hidden or incorrectly filed. She had a sort of sixth sense for this type of work. Yes, she could track down the Fontanelli papers.
“Good,” the Padrone said. “We’ll arrange everything. I know a few people you should call upon who can help you open some doors.”
The steward woke John not just to remind him of lunch, but because there was a phone call for him.
It was McCaine, and he said, “Princess Di is dead.”
John sat up, put the phone to the other ear, with a shocked look on his face. “What?”
“Princess Diana,
Prince Charles’ ex-wife. She crashed into a bridge pylon in a car in Paris last night.”
“What?” The humidity hit him in the face. “How did that happen?”
“It appears she and her entourage were trying to escape a pack of paparazzi chasing them on motorcycles. There were four of them in Di’s car: her, her boyfriend, the driver, and her bodyguard. He’s still alive, but they don’t know if he’ll make it. Tragic.”
“That’s unbelievable.” John’s head had cleared, and he realized he ought to feel sad or sympathetic, but he didn’t. “But, why are you telling me this? Do I have to attend the funeral?”
“No, I’m telling you this because the event has seized hold of the public imagination. It’s rather more important than your affair with Miss DeBeers.”
“Aha.” Should John feel offended now? “Does this mean I should return?”
McCaine cleared his throat. “Hmm, looks like you can hardly wait. Is it so terrible being with the world’s most beautiful woman?”
“I can handle it — for now.”
“Since you got her between the sheets I suppose. Alright. No, I wanted to ask you to stay a while longer. I want to observe if the press remain interested. The media are having a multiple orgasm over the Diana story, but even a princess gets buried at some point. Stay out there another two weeks, in case we need to carry on with this charade for the press.”
John stared at his bare feet, wiggled his toes, and then blinked at the endless blue sky. Right now he could not imagine ever going back to his office. “All right, if I must.” I hope it sounded reluctant enough, he thought after he put the phone down and laid back on the lounger. But before he dozed off again, it occurred to him, who thought paparazzi could be so dangerous …?
McCaine put the phone back on the hook and frowned anxiously. It was five in the morning and he had been in the office the whole night. There were three TVs across from him switched to three separate news channels, CNN, NEW, and SKY News. There was a fourth monitor, but it had text running across the screen from Reuters. Outside, London slowly awakened.
“Foster,” he called into the dimness.
The man who approached his desk was slim and tall but apart from that there wasn’t much to say about him other than that he had obsidian eyes and a thin mustache. But he had had different colored eyes in the past and moustache could be shaved off or a false one attached.
“The princess isn’t the only woman who died yesterday in Paris,” McCaine said. He pulled out a thin folder and pushed it towards the man.
Foster read it and looked at the photos. “Constantina Volpe. What happened to her?”
“That is not the problem. The name of the problem is Marvin Copeland. He is a wannabe rock musician and unfortunately a friend of Mr. Fontanelli from the old days.” He leaned far back and ran his fingers through his hair. “By rights he should be sitting in an Italian jail instead of being in French investigative custody in Paris. Mr. Fontanelli made the mistake of getting him out. Had he not done that, then Constantina would not be heroin death number so-and-so in France’s drug-death statistics.”
Foster handed the folder. “What is it you want me to do?”
McCaine sat up again with a sigh. “There is a plane at the airport that will take you to Paris. As soon as the French courts open, I want you to be waiting outside the door. Get Copeland out, pay his bail, talk them into it, whatever it takes, and get him out of the country.”
“Where?”
“To Canada. There is a private drug treatment clinic that does good work and asks no questions as long as the bills are paid.” He opened a drawer and got out a business card. “Here, the address.” He handed him a second card. “The number on this one is from a man in the US who has been working for me a long time. He can provide assistance.”
Foster studied both cards in the dim light and then handed them back. “What is his name?”
“What’s his name, yes.” McCaine thought for a moment. “Let’s say his name is Ron Butler.” He opened another drawer, took out a steel box, and pulled out a thick envelope. “Here are a hundred thousand pounds, that’s all there was in the safe. If you should need more for the bail, call me. Whatever you do, call me as soon as you have Copeland. I’ve informed the clinic already, I’m only waiting for their confirmation; their offices are only open during the day.”
“Very well.” Foster stuffed the envelope into his jacket pocket. He hesitated. “A clinic … is that a safe solution?”
“Copeland is a friend of Mr. Fontanelli’s. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
“Besides, I can reassure you; the clinic is located in the middle of nowhere in Quebec, and the people there know how to take care of the patients. Their record of escapes is better than Alcatraz’s. A person leaves the place only when he or she is absolutely clean … sometimes not even then.” McCaine rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “As long as the bills are paid, and they will be.”
Foster nodded. Was there a faint hint of a smile? Maybe it was only an illusion caused by the poor lighting.
McCaine stretched out and let his hand fall on a stack of files. “That is all for now. As if I didn’t have enough to do already with all these cartel lawsuits, complaints, and balancing the books. Now I have to take care of idiots who cause disaster wherever they go. It makes me sick. Off you go, Foster, solve this problem for me.”
“As usual, Mr. McCaine.” He gave McCaine a short nod, stepped back into the shadows and seemed to melt away. He stopped at the door. “This incident … if the media should catch wind of it, then it could be unpleasant for Mr. Fontanelli, right?”
McCaine looked darkly at him. “Right.”
“Then the death of the princess was lucky for us.”
“Yes.”
They cruised on even further south, into a world of a thousand islands, past small and even smaller dots in the ocean, rocky shores, sandy coves, hanging palm fronds, wherever the radar found a passage.
Patricia and Benigno went diving whenever the Prophecy anchored, and told John of the colorful corals, anemones, and schools of fish when they were sitting at the table. He had noticed an increased intimacy between the two and wondered if Patricia might have started an affair with the good-looking government representative. But it wasn’t any of his business. Let them have their fun.
He did get a bit bored lounging around all day, every day, and he finally let himself be talked into going for a dive too. He started with snorkeling under the watchful eyes of the instructor, watched the other two disappear into the mystic azure-blue water, looked at the bottom of the Prophecy’s hull, and was bored.
As the yacht plowed through the crystal clear waters again, John practiced with the breathing apparatus, learned the important hand signals, and how to put on the neoprene wetsuit. They finally anchored again near a large and obviously populated island. The yacht was floating in front of a jutting cliff behind which was a coral bay, its sandy beach covered in driftwood.
“That island there — do you know the name of it?” John asked the government envoy.
He was busy with his diving suit. “Panglawan,” he said giving John a fleeting glance and a somewhat cramped smile.
John knew by now what this sort of glance meant; it meant that Benigno either didn’t know or at least wasn’t sure. But it really didn’t matter. After listening to the final warnings from the instructor, John put on the mask like the others and adjusted the mouth piece, and down he went into the turquoise-blue sea and down into what he expected to be astounding nature, untouched by man.
First, he saw only a wild jumble of bubbles all around him. The air bottle seemed to want to get away from him and he took a short while to get used to it. When he finally was able to look around, all he saw was a desert. Everything here was dead. A handful of colorful fish scooted over the gray bottom, as if they only wanted to get away from here. When John got close to them, they disappeared into the dark holes of the dead coral. John took hold of som
ething that looked like a rock, but it crumbled in his hand. He turned his head; Patricia was coming towards him looking like a mermaid with her long floating hair. He saw in her eyes the same distraught expression that he was feeling.
They swam onward, with Benigno still a fair distance ahead. But wherever they swam they found only a gray and lifeless underwater world. Most supermarket parking lots had more life forms living there than this coral bay. Benigno stopped swimming and signaled to them to come to him. At this moment John heard a dull boom, then another. It took a few moments before he realized that what he was hearing was explosions.
$32,000,000,000,000
ALBERTO VACCHI WAS waiting for her on the hotel terrace when she returned from the national archives. Just as he had been the previous few days. She had no idea what he did the entire day while she was in there. Maybe he did nothing more than sit there and drink cappuccino.
She sat on a chair across from him with her bag containing her notebook and photocopies on her lap. She looked at him with an exhausted expression on her face.
“You’re early today,” the old lawyer said to her after they exchanged looks for a moment. “Would you like something to drink? Your throat must be pretty dry.”
“Not only my throat,” Ursula nodded and placed her bag on another chair. “A water, yes, please. Or a whisky, a double, a triple …”
He made a gesture for the waiter. “Madre mio, that doesn’t sound like good news.”
“It’s useless, Alberto. Useless. I can’t think of any other key word to search under. It feels as if I’ve gone through every piece of paper in there.”
“Maybe you need help. I could get a few students from the…”
“No, it’s not that. The people who helped me did an excellent job. They are diligent, use their heads, and even know English better than I do. No, the documents aren’t there, period.”
The cameriere appeared, a dark-skinned man with a sharply hooked nose. Ursula ordered a San Pellegrino and a caffe con latte, and Alberto an amaretto.
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