“I’m not questioning the religious convictions of the Vacchi family. What I do question is the relevance of the prophecy.”
“I thought the two things were linked.”
“No. I just don’t believe one single person can restore humanity’s lost future. I don’t believe money can do it either. But then again I’m not even sure humanity’s future is lost in the first place.”
John’s eyes opened wide. “All the calculations say…”
“They’re wrong. They have always been wrong. There were calculations done at the turn of the century that predicted that by now city streets would be waist-deep in horse manure. That is all nonsense, John. We live no more or no less in the end of times than people did in any other period in history. We’re only a bit nervous because a new millennium is approaching. That’s all.”
He came back over, stopped in front of her and looked into her eyes. She sensed a heavy burden in his soul. “You have no idea how it is. To have this much money means having the world’s destiny in your hands. I would love to do something good with it, but I don’t know what. I don’t even know if anything good at all can be done with it. But what I do know is that it is very easy to do a lot of bad things with it.”
“Then give it away. Create an endowment. Hand it out. Don’t let it crush you.”
“You don’t understand. I’m the heir. I have to…”
“You have to live, John. Live.”
“Live,” he repeated in thought, like he never used this word before. Something like pain was in his expression. “To be honest, I don’t know how to do that.”
No! It was as if some magnetic aura was drawing her to him. No, I am not getting romantically involved here. She forced herself to recall Friedhelm, and New York, but all the memories were fading; they already seemed indistinct, like a photograph from the previous century. “You already are doing it. You just need to stop thinking it’s God’s will. It isn’t.”
“Whose will is it then, Jakob Fugger’s?”
“Nobody. It is only a story, nothing else.”
His was breathing rapidly and had been for some time, though she only noticed it now; he was panting, like someone about to break into tears. His hands trembled — dismay was written all over his face.
“But if …” he began, breathed hard, and whispered, “if I have no task … if I have no task in life … who am I then? Who? Why am I alive?”
She couldn’t help it. She took him in her arms and pulled him close to her when he started to cry. She felt him shudder and shake and felt his desperation and how his tears gradually began to wash away the dismay and he started to calm down again. What a scene, she thought, the two of them surrounded by all those old tomes, in this ancient house.
He finally released himself from her hug. She realized she didn’t like letting him go. “Thank you,” he said and sniffled as he pulled out a kerchief. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“A lot has happened.” She found it strange how awkward they were together.
He stood there and watched her closely, apparently lost in thought. “I liked it … your touch.” He sounded a bit amazed to be saying what he was. “This may sound strange, but I didn’t want to leave without telling you that.”
She felt herself swaying. “It doesn’t sound strange in the least.”
They stared at each other. They just stood there and looked into each other’s eyes, and something happened. Don’t do this, something inside her shouted, but there was a force between them that nullified all rules and invalidated all restrictions and made them embrace. Then they just stood there and held each other tight for what seemed like an eternity before their lips found one another, and they melted, and something stronger than the universe carried them away in the great dance of life itself.
“Let’s go upstairs to the apartment,” was the last clearly articulated sentence either of them said that evening, and later neither could have said which of them had said it.
That night at 2:30 a.m., Cristoforo Vacchi died, and it was a curious coincidence that he did so only minutes before an earthquake shook central Italy killing several people and badly damaging the world famous Basilica San Francesco in Assisi. The epicenter was in the mountainous region of Foglio and the quake could be felt as far away as Rome and Venice. But in the fifth story of the Vacchi firm a man and a woman were far too busy with one another to feel anything except their passion.
$36,000,000,000,000
MCCAINE RAMPAGED THROUGH the mountains of binders scattered over the floor in his office. Things couldn’t continue like this. But since the new safe had finally been delivered the day before and bolted to the floor under his watchful eye, he would not have to endure this much longer. Stack after stack of documents were examined, ordered, put into a folder, then a hanging file, were given a registration number, an index card, nice and neat and easy to find, and available at any time. There was a shredder in the corner of the room, but it didn’t have much to do; McCaine didn’t like destroying files. He knew how often he had had to look back in old files to find details of deals done long ago, be it to learn from own past mistakes, or to follow certain developments.
The steel cabinet was a monstrous thing, but it was cunningly disguised with fine walnut paneling making it blend in very well with the rest of the office. McCaine would have preferred rosewood, but this would have been inappropriate for the boss of a corporation that promoted environmental protection. He had to watch out for details like that. He had given interviews before in this office, to TV reporters too, and furniture made of tropical wood certainly would have been noticed. Although, he considered it all nonsense and just another example of the shortsighted methods generally accepted to protect the environment. In his opinion, the most effective way to stop slash-and-burn land clearing was to allow the countries with rainforests to sell the wood and make good profits instead of burning them down, destroying the valuable wood. But he had lost hope of one day convincing the media and public of his idea.
Time and again he stuck his head out the office door, but the reception area was still empty this early in the morning. “Am I the only idiot in the world who works this much?” he grumbled as he closed the door again.
This was serious work. Each binder meant a business, a victory, an invasion, and not all of these projects were successful ones. On the contrary, everything kept getting more difficult. The stock market was going up like crazy, the most ridiculous companies were suddenly worth billions, certain Internet companies, for instance, composed of practically nothing more than a name, an office, a few lousy computers, had never earned a cent. Okay, he didn’t want them anyway, but this trend was spreading. Like in telecommunication: one of these days a telephone company would reach a worth of a hundred billion dollars. Beyond financial reach. The bitterest part was that he himself was partly to blame, due to everything Fontanelli Enterprises had been doing in the market of late. All those companies’ purchases were paid with hyped stocks, with air, so to speak. Now he had to foot the bill.
Finally, at ten minutes to seven, the first secretary arrived. “Coffee,” he bellowed at her before she had even taken off her coat. “A whole pot.”
And John Fontanelli was still in Italy, with the Vacchis. He hoped they wouldn’t talk him into some sort of bullshit. He had the sudden urge to throw something at the wall when he thought about all the good he could have done with the Fontanelli fortune if he only had it twenty years earlier. Too late! He thought like that a lot these days. It had all been too late and too slow! Everything he did, to get things rolling, to drive things forward, it was all too slow, no matter how hard he worked.
He looked at the map of the world on the wall behind his desk with all the subsidiaries, companies, holdings, co-ops, and affiliates marked on it, their markets, monopolies, and their level of influence. It was an empire like no other before, but it was still too small and too weak to change the way the world turned. And it was not at all obvious what he could do a
bout that.
A knock on the door, and the coffee was brought in. He took it and told the secretary to call Dr. Collins and forward the call to his telephone. Then he stood there, looking out the window drinking coffee directly from the pot.
Twenty years earlier and the avalanche could have been prevented from rumbling down the slope. All they were doing now was trying to stop it when it was at full speed — useless.
The telephone — Collins was still sleepy. “I need results,” McCaine demanded. “I want to come to you, tell me when.”
“Next Friday?” the professor suggested. “Until then…”
“All right. I’ll be there on Friday at five,” McCaine said and hung up.
“Do you know what’s a bit embarrassing?” John asked.
“That you let yourself go … totally? That you shouted like a steer in heat?”
“Did I?”
“I don’t know. Could have been me.”
“No. I’m embarrassed to have forgotten about Marco and Chris. They probably sat in the car the whole night. They probably know what happened.”
“Oh, your imperial guards.” Ursula put the pillow over her face. “I had forgotten what sort of life you lead.”
“Here I have this woman who’s been investigating my past all the way down to the last detail and then she says that.”
“Don’t grin like that. This is serious for me.”
“You think it isn’t for me, too? My only choices in the beginning of all this was too little money or way too much, and believe me, I already knew what it was like to have too little.”
“What would they have done if you had refused to accept the money?”
“I’ve never asked myself that question. It would be interesting to know and to have seen their faces, wouldn’t it?”
“For sure. It would have made quite a picture … Hey, what is that?”
“Guess.”
“Well, I may have to re-think my theory of Jakob Fugger being impotent …”
When they awoke the second time it was a bit after eleven thirty.
“We should think about getting up,” John mumbled sleepily, who rolled over to Ursula and gave her a passionate kiss.
She wrenched herself free at one point and gasped: “My God, I’ve never been kissed like that before. For a moment I really thought the Earth moved.”
Flattered, John smiled. “Must be my desire to catch up that makes me…” He stopped speaking abruptly. “Oh shit, I think the Earth is moving!”
They watched a cup sitting on the table jitter to the edge and then fall on the stone floor and shatter.
The previous night’s earthquake in Umbria was followed by two more the next morning, one at 11:41 and the other at 11:45. They destroyed the mountain villages of Cesi, Collecurti, and Serraville. They heard the news on their way back to the Vacchis’ house from the two bodyguards who had listened to the twelve o’clock report on the car radio. They also told John and Ursula that the Padrone had died that night, peacefully and in his sleep.
Back at the house there was an atmosphere of sadness but also relief. Cristoforo had been an old man, who was allowed to go in peace after a full and prosperous life, some of the people from the village told them as they came to pay their last respects. Giovanna prepared plenty of food and served everyone who came. Gregorio organized the funeral, which was to be held on the following Wednesday. His older brother Alberto stood out in the garden and twisted his beard. Now he was the oldest Vacchi. Soon he would be called Padrone.
To John and Ursula it seemed far too inappropriate to tell anyone what had happened or display their new love considering the circumstances. They went to their own rooms at night, and then later, when all was very still, the guards would hear a door creak as it opened slowly, and naked feet on the stone floors as they hurried down the hallway. When the second door closed they discreetly repositioned themselves away from the room that now had two people in it. They were far enough away not to hear what was going on inside, yet close enough to hear a shout for help, just in case.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Ursula asked in one of those nights. “I mean when all of this is over?”
“I will take you away to my stately home,” he mumbled sleepily. “Wrap you up in suede and silk, shower you with jewels, and then we’ll get married and have tons of kids.”
“Great! That’s how I always imagined my life.”
It sounded sarcastic enough to get John out of his drowsiness. “Why do you ask? We’ll stay together, isn’t that obvious?”
“I don’t know if it’ll work between us, John.”
He sat up, fully awake now. “Hey, now don’t tell me that I’m just some fling for you.”
“And what about me? What am I to you?”
“If you are what? Say again!” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You are the love of my life. I thought that was obvious by now.”
“I saw a magazine down by Giovanna. You were on the front cover, hand-in-hand with Patricia DeBeers. A vacation trip to the Philippines. Did you tell Patricia the same thing too?”
“No … wait, oh, damn it. It wasn’t what you think. I…”
“You don’t have to explain. It’s okay. You are a wealthy and famous man, women will obviously fall for you …”
“For me? Dream on. For my wallet maybe.”
“I’m not complaining, it’s been fun, but you don’t have to pretend. That’s all I wanted to say.”
He shook his head. “I’m not pretending. I didn’t have an affair with Patricia, honestly. And I … I love you. Let’s get married, please.”
“I have to think about it,” she said and turned over on her side, her pillow buried beneath her. “Besides, you don’t ask a woman to marry you like that. You do it over dinner and with flowers.
On Monday, they drove to Florence to do some shopping since neither of them had anything appropriate to wear for the funeral. John didn’t have cash with him so he marched right into the Banco Fontanelli, and only when he saw Ursula’s shocked expression as she looked around at all the gold, stucco and marble, did he suddenly realize what a bad idea it had been to come here. Then one female employee made it worse when she almost collapsed with reverence, shouting, “Signor Fontanelli!” over and over and so loudly that all eyes were staring at them. Then the woman asked if she should take him to the bank director … or call the director down? John lifted his hands and tried to explain that all he needed was some cash.
“How much money will you need?” he asked Ursula after the woman finally understood and went to the counter.
Ursula only had eyes for the tall marble columns, the thick-framed gold plated renaissance paintings on the walls, the wide, modern painted dome. “All this is yours? She said in awe. It is, isn’t it?”
John followed her eyes. McCaine said back then that the main office for Banco Fontanelli should look like they had bought St. Peters Cathedral and turned it into a bank. The sight was a bit too much even for him. “I’m afraid so.”
She pulled herself together, shook her head as if recovering from a dizzy spell. “A Fugger in the city of the Medicis. I guess you can afford to take me into one of those smart stores, Gucci or Coveri or whatever. Take out twenty million lira.”
He told the man behind the bulletproof glass, and asked, “How much is that in dollars?”
“About ten thousand, I think,” Ursula said and linked arms with him. “By the way incredibly rich lover, why does someone like you not have a credit card?”
“I just don’t,” he simply said. He didn’t think it would be the right time to tell her that the things he bought were simply delivered to his home and that he didn’t have to be pestered with little details like paying bills. “Oh, better give me forty million lira,” he told the cashier as he hurried to count out the bills while the cashier fawningly asked for a signature.
“Do you think it is okay to have people crawl before your feet?” Ursula asked as they stepped out into the busy
medieval city.
“No,” he answered. “But I’ve given up trying to get them to stop.”
With a skeptical expression she looked at the four bodyguards surrounding them again. “They drive me nuts being around us with their cool sunglasses,” she whispered to him.
“Hey, calm down, I do have forty million on me, after all.”
“Yeah, sure. Then you can sit together with your cool buddies at a street side café, while I do a little shopping on my own — like a normal person.”
There were far more people at the funeral than the little village church could hold. It was very crowded even in the front rows with the reserved benches and a lot of people had to stand outside, following the service through the open doors. Nobody had thought to provide loudspeakers for those who had to stand outside.
People lined the narrow village streets as the funeral procession made its way to the cemetery. Cristoforo Vacchi was, as he had always known he would be, placed to rest in the family crypt, which had stood for centuries behind the chapel with a slight downward slope so that it appeared to be the centerpiece of the churchyard.
“It is a nice view from here,” Alberto Vacchi said pensively after all the prayers and all the hymns were done and all the flowers and wreaths were placed.
On their walk back Ursula linked arms with John. At one point she nonchalantly pulled him off to the side. “I would like to introduce you to my parents,” she whispered to him.
John looked surprised. That sounded promising to him — when does one introduce a quick fling to one’s parents? “Anytime,” he whispered back. “And I want to do the same.”
“On the way there we could do some sightseeing in Augsburg.”
“Augsburg?”
“The city of the Fuggers.”
“The Fuggers? I thought they didn’t exist anymore.”
“You thought?”
He felt a swell of joy. This could be a time to organize that dinner, with flowers. “Sure,” he responded. “When do you want to go?”
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