The Carducci Convergence

by Nicolas Olano

“Then there is the methodical destruction of the middle class, which until recently constituted the engine of progress. Since just after the Second World War it brought productivity and human welfare to unexpected heights converting the technology of war into the vehicle for prosperity; the middle classes surged. Since then, no war has produced any benefit to humanity. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have been to the deterioration of millions for the benefit of few. Not to mention the thousands of regional and local skirmishes that keep the weapons manufactures in business. The bottom line is that the wealth of the world’s middle class is under water. It owes far more that it owns. The value of the currency that supports its remaining assets is fallacious and can collapse at any time at the will of few. Since no form of substitute value is possible, the primitive requirements of mankind, food, water, and shelter will prevail and precipitate wars so devastating and senseless that humanity may not survive. It will be religious and racial mayhem where national boundaries become irrelevant and their currencies with them.”

  Sal looked straight into Marco’s eyes and he felt the strength of the man even through the inanimate media at which he was looking. The substance of Sal’s statements was stratospheric compared to the highest macro-economic contemplations he’d ever had, even in the highly charged liberalism of his days at Kellogg. Patricia seemed to be as astonished as he and only the calm countenance of Francisco Lujan anchored the naiveté of their thoughts. Marco looked at Francisco with questions in his eyes but the man just signaled towards the monitor, indicating that he should continue listening to what Sal had to say.

  “As you may have surmised by now, money means very little to us as an element of value in itself and we have acquired in time a great amount of influence over the outcome of much, but, so have our opponents and they have a simple agenda: dominate the world’s food source and dictate to its population not only how they should act but how they should think and feel. Better yet if that population has been disseminated by war and reduced to a more controllable number. Without pretending a moral stance our objectives, or if you wish, our agenda, is to fortify and expand the middle class everywhere as we believe this will create stability minimizing the strength of racial and religious tensions and allowing trade to flourish – trade that we hope to control to a substantial degree. Note that I say we, as I expect to continue this quest through you. I love you both.”

  And the video stopped.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Toscana had been navigating for three days and was approaching the Virgin Islands. The order was to dock at Little Dix Bay but the captain who was appointed by Allen Security did not feel comfortable in that situation and decided to anchor offshore. He stopped first off Tortola and had a refueling barge fill the almost depleted tanks and then cruised to Virgin Gorda and weighed anchor just outside Spanish Town around the corner from Little Dix Bay. He deployed the tender and waited for further instructions.

  On another boat just off the north coast of Long Island, Tommy Lee called Jerry Birko into the lounge of the trawler. When he walked in and saw who the other person was he blanched and turned to flee. Strong arms and a gun in his face stopped him in his tracks. The two capos were comfortably seated in ample chairs, looking nonplussed, and staring at the panicked Birko who was now on the verge of tears.

  A few seconds passed until Tommy said to him, “Tell us all about it, Jerry. Leave nothing out.”

  Birko was stupid enough to say he didn’t know what Tommy was talking about. A flat hand slap to his right ear sent pain shooting through his head and made him dizzy and nauseous.

  “Do I have to ask you again?” said Tommy.

  Birko was silent for half a minute not daring to look at either man in the eye. Then he asked in a low voice, “Is this about Carducci?”

  “What do you think, asshole? Yes, it’s about you trying to kill someone in whose shadow you cannot stand and it’s Mr. Carducci to you,” said Tommy. Now answer Mr. De la Rosa’s questions and don’t make me get off this seat or you will live to regret it.”

  “I was doing God’s work,” said Birko, puffing himself up with borrowed righteousness. “Monsignor told me that Mr. Carducci was trying to destroy the Church and that it was my duty to help him get rid of an enemy of God. I did nothing wrong. It’s God’s will. He told me that God would show me the way and soon I heard about Tony Kisses’ problem with Mr. Carducci. I knew it was God telling me what to do. I told Monsignor about Tony and he asked me if Tony was a believer. I checked him out and as it turned out Tony is a heathen who loves only money. So I told Monsignor about that and he told me to offer Tony a hundred grand to listen and five hundred grand if he did the job. He thinks it was the Liguria who was paying him.”

  Ian Carlo did not bother correcting Birko about Tony’s status among the no longer breathing.

  “Who are you talking about? What monsignor is this?”

  “He told me his name was Gabriel Angelo and that he came from Rome. He had the purple hat and everything. I met him at the Cathedral when I was working in the sacristy. He said that he had come from Rome just to meet with me. He blessed me and told me all about Mr. Carducci trying to kill the pope and destroy the church.”

  Ian Carlo stood up suddenly and shouted in Birko’s face:

  “You fucking idiot, don’t you have enough brains to know that the name he gave you was that of an archangel?”

  “Yes, yes it was him,” shouted Birko as if enlightened. “It was the Archangel Gabriel who came to me. Can’t you see that I had to do God’s will? I am blessed among men for I have heard the voice of God!” Then he knelt and started shouting hosannas and praising God and all his angels. All those present realized they were in the presence of an irredeemable idiot. Ian Carlo looked at Tommy who raised his shoulders like saying “what can we do? The guy’s a moron.” There was little more that they could get from him. Ian Carlo had planned a dramatic demise for the little prick but knew that it would not be a morale booster to his men if he made him suffer. At a signal to one of his enforcers they grabbed Birko, took him outside, and unceremoniously threw him overboard.

  Ian Carlo and Tommy returned to shore, picked up the ladies and went to dinner at La Bussolla, a nice Italian restaurant that served an unbelievable osso buco. On the way Ian Carlo asked Tommy to see what he could find out about the visiting monsignor. He also spent another burner phone for a few minutes putting Marco up to date. Surprisingly Marco told him that he was pretty sure he knew who had sent the impersonating archangel.

  Marco said he would be away for some time but that he was up to date on all business matters and that he wanted to know if Ian Carlo would agree to give Leon Goddard a more significant role in the running of the legitimate side of the business. Ian Carlo didn’t hesitate to agree as he was confident of Marco’s judgment in that area. Also Marco enigmatically told him that their businesses should expect a substantial capital investment from overseas.

  Leon Goddard was Marco’s classmate from the Kellogg Business School of Northwestern University in Chicago. Before getting his MBA he had worked for Lever Brothers, Johnson & Johnson, and Ciba, doing five-year stints at each. He had been general manager or managing director in several overseas posts and finally a VP of International Business. He then decided that he needed more credentials before he could aspire to the big money. At Kellogg he met Marco Carducci and a friendship accompanied by better money than he could ever get in the corporate world had put him at the head of Carducci Enterprises Inc. Now with a wife and two children, he could afford to live in a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park East. His daughters were in Christ Church Elementary and his wife shopped on Fifth Avenue. He was frequently wined and dined by the business elite of NYC, the operating managers of the city government, and several reporters who consulted him. Leon had a 24-K work ethic, no mistress, and a fierce sense of loyalty toward Marco. His police record showed one traffic violation in 1999 that had been dismissed with a warning. That was it. Even though he was a
ware that Salvatore Carducci had been investigated for alleged racketeering, nothing had been proven and that was enough for Leon. His business was to manage legitimate enterprises of unimpeachable record without ever having to cut corners or sacrifice his views or criteria to anybody’s whims.

  Today was a hard day for Leon. He was going to the memorial service of a close friend. Joe Strasso and he had been members of the Long Island Soaring Association where they shared their passion for flying gliders. They owned together a Falcon developed by Advanced Soaring Concepts on which they had enjoyed the freedom of powerless flight in a high performance machine. At today’s service he would be representing the company and Marco, who was out of the country and could not return for the memorial. Ian Carlo would not show up. He didn’t want to taint one business with the other. Hundreds of employees from the Carducci companies had been given a few hours off so they could attend the service which had been the wish of both Marco and Leon, even though most of them had never met Joe or in many cases had never even heard of him. He was referred to in the obituary as Vice President of Transportation and Logistics. Joe’s aging parents who lived in Sicilia couldn’t make it either because his father was too ill to travel or his mother would never leave her husband’s side. Thus Joe was memorialized by one close friend, several acquaintances, many strangers…but no family. His and his wife’s mortal remains rested forever adrift in the deep Atlantic.

  By now it was known that Marco Carducci had not been on the Lear when it exploded but the other four passengers who were presumed dead in the accident were not yet identified. This news had people in Rome, Washington, London, Dubai, and Cape Town seriously worried. The assumption of Marco Carducci’s demise had precipitated decisions that were now considered rash for they showed a hand that was not yet to be played.

  In Rome Jean Dupree, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Dean of the Vatican Bank, was concerned but not worried. He was never worried. He didn’t have the emotional capacity to be worried, but he was concerned. Failure was not a common occurrence in his experience and the survival of Carducci from a well-planned attempt was not an expected occurrence. What was worse was that his whereabouts and that of the Lujan woman were not known. He also knew that with time he would be located. Nobody can hide too long and if Carducci was going to be a player he would have to show his hand. But this cardinal was proactive and called in his “sword” as he called Monsignor Enrico Testa and briefed him on the situation and the need to complete the mission at which he had failed.

  “Carducci is potentially a problem. He is of no significance at this moment but once he becomes active on The Board he can interfere in our mission and that is not a risk I’m willing to take. He will acquire knowledge of our operations soon if he has not already done so. So find him and kill him – and the Lujan woman too. I think she already knows too much. Use the Luxembourg account for your expenses. There is no fund restriction on this one. Just go out and do it. And Enrico, don’t fail us this time. God be with you.”

  Testa knelt down to receive the cardinal’s blessing and left without another word. He went back to his apartment in Via Capucci and packed his suitcase with ecclesiastical and lay garments together with two pairs of black cargo pants and black long sleeve T-shirts. The only weapons he packed were a garrote well camouflaged in the piping of his suitcase and an insulin kit for diabetes in which he carried two types of very lethal poisons. The injector was a powerful blowgun that could accurately deliver a small dart with the poison up to twenty feet from the victim. A missal that included the New Testament was the only non-practical item in his luggage. The three passports that he carried were real: a US passport to which he was entitled, as he was born in Milwaukee to an Italian father and a Polish mother; a Vatican passport issued by the Holy See as per his operational post; and an EU passport that he had right to by his father’s Italian birth. Two more full sets of documentation were waiting for him in New York, his next port of call: a false but very credible US passport with driver’s license and credit cards that corresponded to the address of a safe house that he used as a general base of operations when in the US The other was a Brazilian passport issued to Joao Pernambuco whose address in Rio de Janeiro was also legitimate. That evening he took an Alitalia flight to JFK using an untraceable American Express to buy a business class ticket. The last time he had been in the United States he was in Washington DC in the company of “his” cardinal. On that occasion he had managed to access the kitchen at the Delaney residence and assure that the right plates with the toxin went to the right people. It all went perfect except for the maid that disappeared before he could eliminate that loose end.

  That loose end had already provided M&M with enough information about the monsignor that he was able to determine which of Dupree’s several assistants the assassin had been. He was looking at the dossier his people had prepared on Enrico Testa. The thirty-six year old ex-Seal and ex-NSA agent had lost faith in the institutions of his country as they secretly acted to compromise the people in futile police actions and distract them with sexual scandals and minutia of the glitterati, keeping them blind to the reality of their diminishing liberties. He quit his job and drifted for some time taking odd jobs on cargo ships until once in Naples he had killed a man who was trying to rape a young girl in an alley next to a bar. He had used only a fast openhand to the man’s nose that sent bone into his brain and busted one of his eyeballs. His bad luck was that the police passed by as the girl ran away screaming and he was caught red handed, to be blunt. He was sent to jail and left to rot because the dead man was the brother of a local magistrate. The case reached the curia because the prisoner, an American, spent most of his time on his knees praying. Other inmates had soon learned not to bother or much less attack him. Several broken limbs and two blind inmates were sorry witnesses to the man’s prowess. His constant praying had caught the attention of the prison’s chaplain who reported the case to his bishop and so on until it reached the desk of the then-head of the disciplinary office of the Holy See, Monsignor Dupree, who was now on the short list to become Cardinal. Dupree had gone to visit this man in prison several times. Eventually, and through the services of lawyers and some financial aid to the family of the magistrate, Enrico was released into the custody of the Catholic Church.

  Soon Enrico Testa was an intern in a quiet monastery just outside of Siena where he was thoroughly indoctrinated in the tenets of Roman Catholicism. A year later he was ordained and two years after that he was elevated to Monsignor. The background in the Navy and the NSA read like the training manual of a covert operator. All the boxes checked; multilingual, proficient in hand to hand combat, holding the highest black belt in Gu Yu Riu and other lesser schools of karate. He was trained and highly effective with handguns of all types, but he preferred the Glock 17 9mm. He had a full explosives training and several missions applying all those skills deep in Kandahar.

  What the dossier didn’t say was that Testa had been since he was a child a religious fanatic of reborn Christian parents who dragged him from revival to revival showing him off because he could enter into “Divine Trances” at every opportunity and used him to milk the cash cow of imbecility. He enlisted in the Navy the day he left high school and was rapidly accepted as a candidate for Seal. He excelled at this new “religion” and graduated first in his class. He served honorably and bravely as he defended and fought to the death for his teammates but never made a close friend. A loner by nature, he did not participate in off-duty activities but spent innumerable hours in the dojo sparring with whoever was available. He became a sniper and learned about explosives including IEDs, at which he became the team’s expert. He did three tours until a psych evaluation caught the attention of an NSA deputy director who made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. His job there is a secret as secrets can be in the dark files of the darkest agency of the USA. That man was now “the Sword” that Dupree used as God’s enforcer; but that part was obvious to M&M.

  Testa was in
the right place at the right time. He was doing the only thing he thought was right…whatever Cardinal Dupree told him to do. After all Dupree had been God’s answer to his prayers. Now M&M had the who and the how; all that he needed was the why. Delany had been a very powerful US senator who was indubitably a valuable ally to Dupree, yet the cardinal, most surely with the concurrence of others in that conclave, had eliminated him and his wife. M&M wanted the bigger picture and to that effort he set his well-oiled machinery to work.

  Special Agent Joe Delaney was back in New York feeling a loss of power. Many calls went unanswered, others barely acknowledged, and his quest with the Carducci investigation was going nowhere. De la Rosa was keeping a low profile and Marco Carducci apparently was down and out. His informers said that he had been shunned from the business and was living somewhere in Florida. He needed a break.

  Francisco, Patricia and Marco were sitting in the main lounge of the Toscana. Their luggage was being brought in later by the tender under the supervision of Luigi and Jose. Pete was to stay in the villa. The security in the Toscana was as good as materially possible. The decoy establishment at the villa continued and the “MacKenzies” were in residence. Now it was time to get The Board together and plan for action. Ernie Goldman was on his way to St. Thomas from La Guardia and would immediately be transferred to the Toscana. Cornelia Papadakos was already in St. Bartholomew with her fifth husband and she alone would join them later that evening. Erick Williams, a flame-red Welshman, and Esteban Espinoza, a banker from Spain, were flying in directly to Tortola on the G500 of an obscure Lebanese electric engineer by the name of Hakim Abilshair, whose enterprises were constructing dams all over the world, including China. The last two members of The Board were Airi Takahashi and Sun E, two women who were partners in the second largest silicon and germanium semiconductor factory in the world, were now in Puerto Rico visiting one of their manufacturing facilities and would be aboard the Toscana by early evening. The fellow board members called them Sunny and Airy in a bad westernization of their names. The safety of these people was in the hands of Major Allen.