The Carducci Convergence

by Nicolas Olano

  What surprised Ian Carlo was that the contract had come from Las Vegas. The Liguria did business with the Carducci and if the hit was sanctioned by the family, there was going to be a lot of retaliation; it was something Ian Carlo did not want but would not back away from, though he seriously doubted that was what had transpired. Tommy Liguria had been a friend of Ian Carlo since they were in their teens and had always come across as a straight player. He doubted Tommy would sanction a hit on a Carducci capo. Tony Kisses ’fessed up the name Jerry Birko, but it rang no bells in Ian Carlo’s mind or in that of any of the guys present. This had to be settled directly with Tommy Lee, as Tomaso Liguria was known among friends.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Special Agent Delany was still buried in paperwork, meetings with his father’s attorneys, and deciding some property issues with his sister and her asshole husband who thought that by being a junior congressman, the sun shined out of his ass. Finally, there were issues regarding a special election for the now empty Senate seat in the very important and influential state of Delaware. One must remember that an obscene number of the country’s major corporations were seated there. Time was going by and he was not able to get back to his post and strive for the greatness needed to be positively acknowledged in the public eye.

  M&M was following threads at his usual efficient rate. He now had people “interviewing” Marta Escobar about the fatal night at the Delany’s. Her interrogator, a local police major, had chosen a paternalistic approach and now had Marta giving him all the details of how the cardinal’s assistant, the handsome Monsignor had offered to help her family in Venezuela by giving her a small house that coincidentally had been left to the church by a pious nun who passed on to her heavenly reward. He had exacted two promises from her, the first was that he be permitted to privately bless the food that was to be served that night and second that she must go home soon and follow God’s wishes that she take personal care of her parents. He gave her an envelope with $5,000 dollars and his special blessing. She planned to go at the end of the month, but the deaths of the Delany told her it was better to get out of town in a hurry. Unfortunately when she got to Maracaibo, the address of the house was an empty lot but with a $3,000 down payment she had bought a very small house which she now shared with her parents. Some savings and a job cooking at a local café should keep them in food and shelter.

  M&M now knew that Cardinal Dupree and his associates had killed the Delany and Ms. Wells, but he didn’t know why. He wondered if anything to do with the Tamaulipas cleanup of the Los Locos cartel precipitated this assassination since it had been Senator Delany who had contracted the hit. M&M had to keep looking and he knew exactly where to start.

  Cardinal Dupree considered the situation now that Marco Carducci and the Lujan woman were out of the way. In the United States, Senator Mason was taking lead of the others and he himself was in full control of associates in Europe and Asia; maybe Humphreys was a bit of a loose cannon being the only non-Catholic, but he seemed to be keeping his ducks in line. After all, being Anglican was being Catholic, just that they didn’t know it yet…but all in due time. Dupree was the only one of the group who knew with total clarity what he wanted and there was nothing that he would not do in order to achieve it.

  The Catholic Church, God’s only foothold in this world, used to be the most powerful entity in it and he, Cardinal Dupree, was going to bring it back to that position with or without the help of the pope and his curia. He knew that in order to do that he needed unlimited funds and power over the powerful of this world. His sense of destiny overcame any moral or ethical concern, which he didn’t have anyway. Jean Dupree was born a sociopath to a mother obsessed with religion. He was fed Catholicism from his mother’s breast onwards and saw no other destiny for himself other than joining the church at an early age. He grew in “sanctity” in the eyes of a church that rewarded dedication and selflessness. Asexual by nature, he despised the promiscuity of the seminary and the one time that a priest had made an advance on him was the last time that pervert made an advance on anyone. A few days later he was found hanging from a rafter having left a typed note confessing his sins and begging the Lord for mercy on his wretched soul. Young Jean had killed him without remorse or satisfaction. It was the disposal of trash.

  Soon he understood how to progress in an organization that was seniority-oriented but had several escalators that bypassed such stupidity. Dupree became proficient at using them so that before he was thirty he found himself in a comfortable position at the Vatican, away from the Marseille that had been his home since birth. A polyglot and mathematician with an eidetic memory promptly earned a position of trust in the place he wanted to be, the Vatican Bank. He understood from an early age that money and not prayer achieved worldly power and thus the only way he saw for “his” church to be great was to have a great amount of money, and who else better to manage it than himself. The salvation of immortal souls was left to those whose work was fueled by his money. That money also fueled the brilliant careers of politicians the world over who, in Dupree’s psychotic view, would be a power for a “good” that only he could conceive. To achieve his goals he tapped on the most profitable activity that would always be available: laundering money. Unfortunately there was competition.

  On this clear day the Virgin Islands were seen from the cockpit of the G5 like cookie crumbs on a blue mantel. They were named Virgins by Christopher Columbus on his second trip to the West in order to honor St. Ursula and the 11,000 martyred virgins. Most of these islands became British around the end of the sixteenth century when privateers wrestled them from the Dutch. They were slave-powered sugar plantations until the liberation of slaves almost 200 years later. They rose from the Caribbean adjacent to the US Virgin Islands, which were taken from the Danish and then from the Spaniards.

  Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport at Tortola is not really on Tortola. It’s on Beef Island, where it occupies most of it except for a tiny town and a couple of white crescent beaches. Beef Island is joined to Tortola by the Queen Elizabeth Bridge and is the only commercial airport in the B.V.I. The landing is fascinating – you approach over water until a thin strip of beach separates the runway from water. Tourists love to lie on this beach and experience the incoming jets flying by only feet from their noses giving them an adrenaline rush from the sheer size of the huge metal birds overhead.

  The G3 made a perfect touchdown and taxied after a “follow me” truck that took it to a parking spot a hundred feet down from the main building. The arriving party was loud, pompous, and flashy. They made sure everybody noticed the arrival of Mr. & Mrs. MacKenzie, rich, fun-loving, and ready to take on the islands. They and their entourage were escorted to a villa situated on the slopes of Mount Healthy overlooking Brewer’s Bay. At just £3,000 a night it was considered a bargain. Seven bedrooms with in-suite bathrooms, two pools and a waterslide that went from one to the other made this as unique a playground as one can find. A staff of ten served, cooked, cleaned, and gardened. All were locals who had been with the villa for years.

  Separately, another Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie arrived from Puerto Rico on a small island-hopper airline. A middle class British couple that spoke little, bargained much, and chose to stay at a reasonable hotel right outside of Road Town. They were rapidly dismissed by the observer as the typical low-budget tourists that did not deserve a second look. They rented a moped and went off into the sightseeing wonder that is the botanical garden and Mount Healthy. They came back in the evening and nobody noticed that those who left and those who returned were not the same people.

  Marco and Patricia went to their rooms at the villa to shower and change after making a roundabout trip in economy class, changing planes in Miami and Puerto Rico and now anxious to cleanse the grime of that last flight. They later met for an early dinner with all the staff before the substitute Mackenzie went back to the hotel dressed in clothes identical to those that Marco and Patricia had donned when leaving in the mope
d.

  “We need to be totally aware of our surroundings, here and anywhere we go. There are people trying to kill us and they mean business,” Patricia told all their staff. “That includes everyone here; as you know, sadly, in the attempt to kill Marco and me our enemies did not hesitate in destroying a plane with its crew and all on board.”

  Plans were made for the next day so that Marco and Patricia could go to the bank. The bodyguards who would go to the hotel posing as the other MacKenzie would walk around Road Town and survey the area to see if anyone looked or acted out of place, but it would be Marco and Patricia, dressed in a similar attire who would later enter the bank and open the box registered to Marcus MacKenzie of Avon-upon-Thames, Stratford, UK. The rest of the party would spread through town and act spoiled rich so that attention could be diverted from the main event.

  After dinner everyone retired to rest for what could be an eventful day.

  The bank in Road Town was on Main Street just off Rite Way. It was in an old building and only had a small sign with the name on a metal placard and a bell with a speaker. Seconds after Patricia rang the bell, a polite British accented voice inquired the visitor’s name and business. “Marcus MacKenzie to visit my safety deposit box,” answered Marco in what he thought was a somewhat English accent. The buzzer opened the door to a long corridor that led to an interior patio, but before reaching it there was a sign that indicated the British Overseas Investment Bank was to the right.

  The bank was a far cry from the one in Georgetown but was elegant and subdued. A gentleman of many mixed races, dressed in a white linen suit and white shoes but with no tie, received them.

  “I am Ian Locklear,” he said, shaking hands with both of them. “If I can see your passport, Mr. MacKenzie, we can proceed to our vault room.”

  He took the passport, went to a scanner, and scanned the page where the signature was. Satisfied, he returned the passport to Marco. He led them to an adjacent room that was behind a secure looking door followed by a vault door. It was the usual arrangement seen in banks all over the world. A room full of small doors with two locks in each, one for the bank and one for the client. Ian went to Box 260 and opened his lock. Marco unlocked his and the small door opened to reveal a metal box that the bank manager withdrew and placed on a table that was in the middle of the room. He bowed out and told Marcus to take his time. Marco and Patricia looked into the box and found only a small white envelope. They took it without opening it, aware that cameras would be on them. They left the box and called for Ian to open the gate so that they could leave. On the way out Marco returned the key to Box 260 and said he would not be using it anymore. Ian asked if Mr. MacKenzie would continue with the account at the bank. Marco, who didn’t know anything about an account there, asked for a latest statement.

  The investments held by Marcus MacKenzie were all money market and reached nearly 115 million British pounds; the activity was mirrored to that of the bank’s own investments and had proved to be very profitable, having paid in taxes to Her Majesty’s Exchequer the princely sum of nearly nine million pounds in the last year alone. Marco held a straight face, or as straight as he could manage. He said to Ian that he was satisfied with the performance and would continue with the account. Ian asked if the conditions should remain the same, being that the order was not to send statements except when requested by coded fax. Marco said yes to everything except that he wanted to change the code to an algorithm that would change it every six hours. This done, they departed with the envelope in Patricia’s purse.

  Marcello Mastroianni Mascerano, better known as “M&M,” was pondering the information he had. Obviously the Vatican banker had killed a close associate, a powerful senator of the United States, and apparently got away with it. What was not clear was why. Jean Dupree was a very young cardinal and held the second post within the Vatican Bank, yet he moved in very rare circles. Since the Yank, as he called Senator Delany, had called the hit on the Mexicans coincidentally at the same time as Francisco Lujan, and as M&M did not believe in coincidences, he now knew that the killing of the senator, the attempt on Patricia Lujan, and probably the American who was with her were all related. What made his ears prick up was when he noticed the name of the American, Marco Carducci. He knew Salvatore and this was one of the heirs apparent even though it was a man called Ian Carlo de la Rosa who had assumed the head of that family when Salvatore died. This was getting better and better. If he chose well whom to cast his lot with there could be many millions in the making. “Think, M&M, think,” he said to himself out loud.

  Francisco Lujan didn’t own a jet but he always had one when he needed it. In Lima, Bogotá, and Miami, which were his most frequent residencies, he had charter companies that would give him priority over anybody. He never had used a weapon, but he was a very protected and lethal person. He was the chairman of The Board. He had more power than most presidents of large nations with the exception of the G8, but then, they could always be persuaded to share some of that power with him. Today he was at his Bogotá office at the top of a big building on Avenida Chile, which is the city’s financial center. Shortly he had an early breakfast appointment with the president and his Natural Resource minister. It would be in the same building as the Bankers Club, just a floor above. The food was good, the view exceptional and privacy guaranteed. The meeting was about royalties on a couple of mining licenses that had turned out to be far more productive than any geological study predicted. Thus the minister had recruited the president to negotiate a better deal with the owners of the enterprise, represented by Francisco Lujan. But before that he had to review again the events of the last few days. His only daughter had been targeted as well as the heir of his partner and close friend Salvatore Carducci. Things like that did not go unanswered in Francisco’s world. There would be consequences, first the ones that affected business and then the personal response to such an affront.

  Directly after breakfast he headed for Tortola flying non-stop from Bogotá in a jet that belonged to a bank he dealt with and was chartered through Privé. For this flight he was using a Citation that was more than enough for the trip. The only inconvenience was the hellish traffic from his office to El Dorado International Airport, and that had been avoided by the generous use of the private helicopter of a very rich and very corrupt ex-president whose money The Board administrated or, better said, dry cleaned and pressed to impeccable standards. Simultaneously, another jet had departed for Lima ostensibly having him on board, and so it would appear in immigration records both in Bogotá as well as Lima. The jet that flew to Tortola was carrying Telluride Bosch, a rich businessman from Luxembourg, and so the records showed.

  Ian Carlo disposed of Tony Kisses in such a manner that not a trace of him would ever be found. A blast furnace that melted titanium eventually vaporized the bastard leaving nothing but assorted gasses that flew out of a cooling tower. Unfortunately for Tony the feeding belt to the furnace was very slow and he roasted alive for what must have seemed like eternity before his blood finally boiled him dead.

  In the Limo on the way back to NYC Ian Carlo called Tommy Lee.

  “…’s up, Gucci,” said Tommy. He had always called Ian Carlo “Gucci” because since they were young, Ian Carlo always dressed in impeccable bespoke suits and handmade shoes.

  “Tommy, long time. Why such a stranger? Isn’t New York good enough for a transplanted Brooklyn Heights spaghetti pusher or you just don’t bother to call?”

  “Hell Gucci, if I was in NYC the first goober I would call was you. You know that the business keeps me here on a short leash. You’re planning on a Vegas weekend or what?”

  “Tommy, I need to know something, who’s a guy called Birko? Does he work for you?

  “Yeah man, he’s a minor associate, why?”

  “I need to ask him some hard questions. Do you have a problem with that?” Ian Carlo held his breath. The answer would tell him where Tommy stood on this shit.

  “Gucci, you call it, I’ll
play it. How do you want to do this?”

  Ian Carlo breathed out.

  “Keep him under your thumb and I’ll get someone to bring him here.”

  “Better yet, I’ll ask him to come with me to NY and you can take it from there.”

  “I’ll have a jet for you at McCarran tomorrow morning. Bring along whomever you like and we’ll have some goo with the wife after we have our chat with Birko.”

  Tommy Lee knew better than to fuck with Ian Carlo. He ran the toughest outfit in the New York area and he also meant security for a lot of Tommy’s family who still lived in the area. Besides that, he was a friend. Birko was expendable if it came down to that. He was not a made man and Tommy had always suspected he served more than one master. Anyway, he called his girlfriend Tatiana, a respectable girl from Phoenix who managed a Chico store in Vegas, and asked her to call in sick for a couple of days. Then Tommy called his first lieutenant Joe Tellez and told him to get a couple of guys to come with him to New York to watch his six. He knew Joe would include Birko and that would also confirm something he suspected; Joe was AC/DC and Birko was for sure a little faggot that spent all his time dressing saints at Guardian Angel Cathedral.