by Jon Land
The palazzo was a medieval palace in a large piazza. Its single tower rose the length of a football field into the sky and featured a huge, ancient clock. Statues of varying sizes and constructions adorned the palazzo’s front, while its insides were dominated by artistic treasures unaffected by the centuries. Locke would not be entering, though. His instructions were to wait outside among the statues, pigeons, and horse-drawn carriages. He mingled with the natives and other tourists. Someone would contact him there. Chris had to make himself seen but not obvious.
He was strolling amid the pigeons, amused by their boldness, when a horse-drawn carriage pulled up near him.
“A ride, mister?” the driver asked in poor English.
“No thanks,” Locke said, turning away.
“A ride, mister?” the driver repeated.
“Not right now,” Locke said as politely as he could manage.
The driver smiled faintly and moved his right arm over the side of the carriage, holding the reins with only his left.
“A ride, mister?” he repeated a third time.
“Look, I told you—”
Locke’s eyes strayed down and fixed upon a tattoo on the driver’s right forearm, an impression of a small man standing between two large ones. A very small man.
A dwarf.
Locke looked up. The driver winked.
“A ride, mister?” he offered yet again, and this time Chris climbed into the back.
The horse trotted through the center of the old city, undaunted by the small cars surging past blaring their horns. The horse pranced as if it owned the streets and the machines were intruding. Soon it passed onto narrow streets where automobile traffic was prohibited. The ride lasted just over five minutes and ended in a square before what Chris recognized as the famed Baptistery, one of the oldest buildings in Florence. The driver yanked the reins hard, thrusting Chris forward a little. The man signaled him to get out. Locke reached into his pocket for some of the lire he had obtained in Zurich, but the man waved him off and slapped the horse gently with the reins, taking his leave.
Locke moved into the square.
The Baptistery was a striking, octagonal building made of different-color marbles and surrounded by a collection of pilasters that supported its arches. Locke started toward it, watching the numerous pigeons maneuver to avoid his feet without giving up their precious share of ground and breadcrumbs. An old, white-haired woman tossed feed to the birds by the handful, and their movements were dictated by the motions of her fingers.
Chris passed her and felt a batch of crumbs fall against his feet. The pigeons approached tentatively, grabbing their feed but pecking clear of his pants and shoes. Locke looked up at the old woman to find her sauntering away. He looked back down. A rolled-up piece of paper rested between his feet. Cautiously he knelt down and retrieved it, keeping it hidden from anyone close by as he unrolled it. The paper’s few words provided his next destination:
Uffizi Gallery, Madonna Enthroned …
The gallery was located back near the Palazzo Vecchio in the Square of the Uffizi. It contained some of the greatest art treasures in the world, the Madonna Enthroned by Giotto as great as any. As he snared a cab back beyond the Baptistery square, he mused that the Dwarf must be an art lover.
Because it could not use the mall streets and had to negotiate through dense traffic, the cab took ten minutes to get him to the Uffizi Gallery. The gallery was surprisingly empty and Locke had no trouble locating the massive Madonna. The painting dominated an entire wall, which Chris had all to himself. He was glancing at the painting, expecting a nudge to his shoulder or note stuck in his pocket, when he noticed a flicker of white sticking out from beneath the Madonna’s frame. Pretending to inspect the wood, he reached under and snatched it free. An envelope! Glancing around him to reassure himself no one was watching, Locke withdrew its contents.
West side of Ponte Vecchio Bridge. White Alfa Romeo.
The walk across the bridge, past a variety of open-air shops set up along it, took only ten minutes but seemed much longer. The spring warmth of Florence had begun to take its toll on Chris. His shirt was soaked through with sweat and he resisted the temptation to strip off his jacket for fear it might cause the Dwarf’s men to lose him. His mouth was dry and he was horribly thirsty. He realized his last drink had been a mouthful of water from a fountain before boarding the train from Rome.
Locke reached the far side of the bridge. An engine kicked on somewhere up the narrow street. Locke swung quickly, senses alert.
A white Alfa Romeo was inching its way into traffic. It stopped right next to Chris, doors snapping unlocked. He couldn’t make out the driver clearly through the tinted glass, but he opened a rear door and climbed into the backseat anyway.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Locke. We are satisfied you are who you say you are and that you have come alone,” the driver said in decent English. Locke was about to respond when he spoke again. “I will take you to the Dwarf now.”
They followed a winding road as it bent around the bank of the Arno River, then swung right into the hills above the ancient city. They wound up a road enclosed by lavish greenery, cars coming from the opposite direction seeming to miss the Alpha only by inches. Locke flinched with each pass. The driver seemed unbothered. Before long, he turned onto a private road and a sign made their destination clear: FORTE DI BELVEDERE.
The driver disregarded a smaller sign beneath it announcing Chiuso in Restauro and continued on until they reached four armed guards at the fort’s entrance waiting to meet any tourists who had not heeded the earlier warning. One of the guards spoke briefly in Italian to the Alfa’s driver, a chain was lowered, and the car slid forward into an impenetrable fortress built nearly four hundred years before.
The Forte di Belvedere consisted of one large central building surrounded by huge fortified parapets offering a fantastic view of the city below and the hills in which it was nestled. Obviously, though, the Dwarf had chosen it for its strategic advantages rather than its aesthetic ones. The Alfa came to a halt and Locke noticed a makeshift tent set up in the center of the fortress’s courtyard. A small man eyed him from beneath it. A giant flanked him on either side.
Locke stepped out of the car and was met by a smiling, tanned man with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
“Welcome to Florence, Mr. Locke. We apologize for any inconvenience our precautions may have caused, but I’m afraid I must now also ask you to submit to a search.”
Chris obliged and as the hands ruffled along his body and clothes, he noticed far more precautions had been taken. Stationed on the parapets were a number of armed men. A sandbagged station at each end was occupied by two men and a tripod-held heavy machine gun. The guards were everywhere, including on the roof of the central building and in the bell tower. The Dwarf was prepared to fend off a full-scale attack.
“You approve of my choice of retreat, Mr. Locke?”
The hands holding Chris allowed him to turn round and face the small man behind him.
“I’m happy to be at your service,” the Dwarf pronounced, extending a thick, miniature hand.
Locke took it and found the grasp surprisingly firm. The Dwarf’s features were not twisted or scarred at all. Instead, his face was dominated by a perfectly trimmed mustache and goatee, eyes above it full but somehow tired. He wore gray slacks and a blue sports shirt.
“I’m impressed,” Locke said, glancing around him.
The Dwarf followed his eyes. “This structure was originally built to protect Grand Duke Ferdinand I. I appropriated it recently because it remains a superb defensive fortress. You can’t be too careful these days.”
“Especially with the information you possess.”
The Dwarfs eyes dimmed. “I possess much information, Mr. Locke, and every piece of it brands me someone’s enemy. In my business there are no friends, only associates. No matter. People have never done anything but disdain me. So I turned to art and history. There I found a refuge whe
re size didn’t matter and prejudice never entered in. You should see my villa, Mr. Locke. I make vast sums of money and great portions of it go into the purchase of original art treasures. There are days when I do nothing else but stare at them, trying to appreciate their fantastic beauty. They are timeless and exquisite, a welcome relief from my dealings with men.” The Dwarf took a deep breath. “But you have not come all this way to listen to my ramblings. We shall get out of this hot sun. You look thirsty.”
Locke kept his pace slow to allow the Dwarf to keep up with him. The little man’s legs were turned outward at the knees, and Locke detected a slight grimace with each step. But not a single complaint emerged from his host’s lips. They moved into the cool shade provided by the tent and sat down at a table. The Dwarf’s guards backed off a little but their eyes remained alert.
“What would you like to drink?” the Dwarf asked.
“Anything cold and nonalcoholic.”
“Two iced teas,” the Dwarf called behind him. “Bring a pitcher.” Then his eyes returned to Locke. “You have nothing to fear from my guards. They are here to ward off any assault on the part of the Committee.”
Locke tried to wet his lips, but his tongue was also dry. “You know that’s why I’ve come here.”
“Dogan hinted as much but I wasn’t sure until I saw the fear in your eyes when I mentioned their name. The Committee is quite good at stirring fear in men’s souls, though few live long enough to express it. My compliments in that respect, Mr. Locke.”
Chris shrugged his thanks. “Felderberg believed you’d know much about them. He sent me to you just as he sent my friend Lubeck.”
“And now both of them are dead. An unfortunate legacy.”
“I don’t plan on joining them.”
“And you won’t if I can help it. But first you must highlight for me what you have learned so far.”
When Chris finished, the Dwarf was nodding. “You are to be complimented on your resourcefulness, Mr. Locke, and now I will tell you just what I told your friend. But beware of information. It’s like an anchor. After you have dragged it from the water, it must be carried on your back.”
Strangely, Locke didn’t feel frightened, just more determined. “But the weight can be spread out. Knowledge can balance it.”
The Dwarf looked impressed. “Spoken like a true scholar.”
“A long time ago I used to be a college professor.”
“I know,” said the Dwarf with a slight smile.
A burly man set down a tray containing two glasses and a pitcher misted with ice. He filled both glasses with iced tea, allowing several cubes to slide out and clink together.
“I was never involved with the Committee in a direct sense,” the Dwarf began. “I was one of many middlemen retained by them for a specific purpose, in this case to provide sensitive information pertaining to certain South American leaders.”
“For purposes of blackmail?”
“And assassination. Sooner or later the land deals Felderberg spoke of had to be extended beyond paper transactions into active development. At that point governments would raise questions, present barriers, create inconveniences.” The Dwarf sipped his tea. “Consider, Mr. Locke, that the Committee is trying to achieve in South America what no one has ever dared attempt before: the fullest development of its agricultural resources. But the land is spread out, much of it isolated. To achieve their full goal of production and export, then, a strong central organization was necessary, apart from and above the governments of the individual nations. They needed absolute control.”
“So leaders were replaced.”
“Entire governments were toppled. Check the pattern of communist-terrorist activities in that part of the world. It was too precise, too organized to be random.”
“Organized by the Soviets, most thought.”
“Which is exactly what the Committee wanted people to think. The Soviets were responsible for enough of it to provide the screen, and they deny everything anyway. The Committee has mastered the art of misdirection. That explains how they have survived unnoticed for so long. Much of the unrest in South America was arranged by the Committee to distract attention from what was really going on.”
“And to place puppet leaders in positions where they could manipulate decisions and affect policy.”
“All toward the successful end of the operation you have stumbled upon,” the Dwarf completed. “Exactly, Mr. Locke. I’m impressed with the degree of expertise you’ve gained.”
Chris took several large gulps of his iced tea and reached for the pitcher. “Desperation makes a better teacher than I could ever be.”
The Dwarf leaned forward. “And now we come to the greatest lesson of all: What was the Committee to do about North America? Here they were with millions of farmable acres and a means of turning them full of crops almost overnight. Yet the United States presented a seemingly impenetrable obstacle, for how could they possibly hope to compete with the world’s greatest crop producer? A factor was missing.”
“Something to do with the U.S. no doubt.”
“Yes,” the Dwarf acknowledged. “Its economic destruction.”
Chapter 20
THE GLASS OF iced tea supped and tilted in Chris’s hand. A pair of ice cubes toppled over the side to the ground below.
“Understand, Mr. Locke,” the Dwarf continued, “I have no proof of this, only speculation. But the evidence exists and it is overwhelming. To begin with, the Committee has been moving its vast deposits from U.S. banks for some time now. The process has been too gradual to stand out, but billions and billions have been either withdrawn or divested from U.S. holdings. Much of the money has shown up in Euro-dollar transfers and in new accounts from England to Switzerland. But more has been used to purchase gold, diamonds, silver, even oil resources, along with tremendous quantities of land all over the world.”
“All natural resources …”
“As if an impending collapse of the dollar-based economy was imminent.”
“Inevitable because the Committee made it so. But how?”
“That I don’t know,” the Dwarf replied. “All I have is a word one of my people stumbled upon in the course of work: Tantalus.”
Locke’s eyebrows flickered. “Greek mythology …”
“Then the term is familiar to you.”
Locke nodded. “The Gods punished Tantalus for his crimes by placing him chin-deep in water he couldn’t drink. Over his head were fruit-filled branches he couldn’t reach. It’s where the word tantalize comes from.”
“Yes,” added the Dwarf, “and as I recall the punishment was to last for eternity.”
“With no chance for a reprieve. But what does that tell us about the Committee’s plan?”
“Their recent financial resettlements indicate a plot to render the United States as helpless as Tantalus was in determining its own fate.”
“Food,” Locke muttered. “The allusions all come back to food. Food that can’t be eaten, lying out of reach for …”
“Eternity,” the Dwarf completed.
Locke returned to Rome some hours later on a private plane arranged for by the Dwarf. The shape of what he was facing was clear now, and he found himself more frightened than ever.
Tantalus… .
The Dwarf’s portrait of the Committee painted them as invulnerable. This was the ultimate criminal organization, for its crimes lay less in action than in the ways in which forces around them were manipulated. Those ways were always subtle, the shadowy sub-layer behind them hiding their true intentions behind screen after screen.
In the cab from the airport to the Rome Hilton, Locke determined Dogan was probably in San Sebastian by then and his family was God knows where. It was afternoon in Washington. If all was well, Greg would be dragging through the last hours of school thinking about baseball practice, Whitney would be passing notes in math, Bobby would be pounding out guitar riffs, and Beth would be showing a house in Bethesda. Locke prayed that
was the way things were because it would mean the Committee hadn’t touched them.
He’d know for sure soon enough, because he was heading home. As soon as Dogan reached Rome, Chris would advise him of his plans and refuse to be talked out of them. Charney had told him to trust no one. The arguments had seemed valid when the enemy had been merely a shadowy outline. But now that enemy had taken a shape that held terrifying implications. Someone in Washington would listen. Information relayed by the Dwarf and Felderberg could be confirmed. The Committee would not be allowed to condemn the world to the fate of Tantalus.
Locke checked into the Hilton exhausted, craving a shower and a long sleep with the air conditioning turned on high. He had only the one bag from the Vaduz Station locker that Dogan had returned to him, so he told the desk clerk a bellhop would be unnecessary; the fewer people who saw him, the better.
His room was on the sixth floor, and in his fatigue he neglected to press the proper button in the elevator until it stopped on two. Four floors later he moved thoughtlessly for his room. The key slid in easily, the door just clearing the carpet as he swung it open.
A light was on in the far corner. A shape was seated not far from it.
“Good evening, Mr. Locke,” greeted the shape.
Panic seized Chris and blood rushed to his head. He swung quickly back toward the door and found himself facing the biggest man he had ever seen.
The giant stepped forward. Locke moved backward. The giant, a grinning Chinese wearing a white suit, closed the door and threw the bolt.
“We have some business to transact, Mr. Locke” came the voice of the shape, and Locke turned back toward it. The speaker was on his feet now. He was a tall, striking man with perfectly styled jet-black hair and dark eyes. A cigarette in a gold holder danced in his right hand. The man pressed the cigarette out in an ashtray. His features were not American, European, or Oriental but somehow a combination of all three.
“Who are you?”
“Ah.” The dark man smiled and Locke felt the giant draw up close to his rear. “The standard question. Who I am doesn’t matter,” the man continued. “I suspect you know who I represent.”