Major Allen also belonged to an informal association of security enterprises that had learned to act in tandem when needed and held strictly to the same standards and ethical behavior so that each knew that they could extend their reach throughout the world without risk of compromising the interest of their clients. Thus a small army of highly qualified PSCs were locating into the BVI and the USVI forming a coordinated perimeter along the navigation route of the Toscana that would be circling around these waters for a couple of days. These men and women had quietly been supplied from an American trawler with an assortment of weapons that went from Glock 9mm pistols and mini-Uzi for each to Ferfrans HVLAR, or High Volume Light Automatic Rifle, for a few of the operators. Similar hardware was aboard the Toscana with the addition of several RPGs and two 50-caliber machine guns. Two fast twenty-foot jet boats armed to the teeth would maintain a 2,000-foot perimeter around the Toscana. A Schweitzer 333 light helicopter adapted with two rocket launchers and two 30mm machine guns was at readiness on a barge that followed the Toscana at a distance.
Defense of the Toscana included the ship’s high-resolution radars plus the feeds leached off the US Coast Guard and the British Navy radars located high on the island’s mountains. To this add two satellite feeds that alternated every two minutes. Bogotá’s array of sophisticated listening software was attentive to any chatter that could compromise the safety of The Board.
It was not enough.
While the members of The Board converged on the highly fortified boat, Enrico Testa had been able to trace the only thing that was missing from the picture and that was precisely the Toscana. Once he noticed that the house in Florida, though well-guarded, lacked the urgency of a siege; he saw the empty docks and realized that the Toscana had to be the clue to Marco Carducci’s whereabouts. From there it was simple to follow the tracks of the mega-yacht to the waters off Tortola. Dupree had used Senator Mason’s access to US satellites and radar to complete the picture. Within a few hours Testa had a plan and began its implementation. He needed a team of six experienced operatives preferably ex-Navy Seals or HMSS Boat Services with great expertise but low moral values. Fortunately there were plenty to choose from. Then he needed the proper equipment and the delivery of the same to a location in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico where he had found a dive trawler with ideal specifications.
He found the operatives through the Mercenary Contractor, an online service that provided “proactive” security personnel. Of the twenty five submitted he chose four men and two women. He made the travel arrangements and proper documentation for the operatives and ordered them to fly to Dominican Republic and from there to Aguadilla. They were posing as an underwater exploration team for the National Geographic going to sea on the Abnegated, a 72-foot trawler with all the necessary support for a team of divers.
Dupree was on a conference call through secure lines with Senator Mason and Lord Humphrey, discussing the latest impasse to their progress that they blamed on The Board. One of their enterprises, a huge agricultural conglomerate that was privately owned by the Meredith family, a member of their group, had been accused of accumulating enormous tracts of land in Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. These purchases were done by a diversity of companies but the land authorities of these countries, and most unfortunately the press, had received detail of the transactions and how they all traced back to the same owners. The investigations were now of public domain and the reversal of many months of hard work was imminent. In all of these countries there were anti-trust laws precisely against “Latifundistas,” a word that means great landowners, and now the Meredith family was caught with their pants down and their dirty underwear for all to see. Expropriation, fines, conspiracy, incarceration, disbarment of counsel, and many other such expressions were rampant among the corridors of the justice departments of these countries and Meredith was spending hundreds of millions in legal defense fees.
All thanks to The Board.
“This is just the latest of their interference in our endeavor,” said Mason who was the most directly affected other than the Meredith, as they were the biggest supporters of his political career. “We cannot sit still and not retaliate. Meredith expects me to do something and even though I have the State Department working this through our embassies in these countries, they want more than that. They want blood. I’ve had Edward Meredith in my office twice this week and the man is adamant. He wants to know how the information got to the press and who is responsible. He may lose billions on this deal and he wants, as he put it, ‘The help I paid for,’ though I think it’s Ana, his mother, who is the person we should worry about.”
“I second that,” said Cardinal Dupree. “Half the dioceses in the Mid-west depend on the Meredith for most of their charitable work and they also support the Church in all the countries you mentioned. And if Ana gets pissed off at us much of that money may evaporate.”
“This is nonsense,” Humphrey Houghton countered. “We have too much at stake here. Land purchase in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, and a few other countries has been going on without obstacle, but this is a big warning that things can go south if The Board gets wind of it. In the meantime we have been wasting time and money chasing this Carducci character and the Lujan girl. I just don’t see why they are so important. I understood that old Joseph Delany had to go because he sold out to the Saudis and that would have put us at too much risk…but Carducci is a nobody. I mean, who is he…? I don’t think he has or will ever have the caliber of Sal Carducci and even he never posed that much of a threat.”
“You are wrong, Lord Houghton,” said Dupree with some impatience in his voice. “It’s not what he is or what he was. Marco Carducci wrote his master’s degree dissertation on the economic recuperation of the Western Hemisphere. I sent you all a copy of this document. If you read it, and you understand it, Marco Carducci as part of The Board can use the resources available to them in ways that would really impede our common and individual goals. For the time being you must know that every penny spent on getting rid of him is well spent. And in that respect I hope to give you positive news is the near future. God’s will be done.”
“Amen,” said the others.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Major Allen was looking at a chart that indicated the location of the Toscana which was updated every three minutes. It also gave the location of all vessels and aircraft up to twenty five miles from it. Most of them were identified by their radio calls, transponders or power signatures. It showed which ones were moving and which were static and graded them by size as well as by proximity to the Toscana. This lovely piece of software had been “borrowed” from the US Navy and allowed him to evaluate possible threats. He did not like the congestion of the waters where the Toscana was and gave it orders to head east into deep water and away from the traffic of small recreational boats. He gave orders for the speedboats to pick up some of the assets from both Virgin Gorda and Tortola and to maximize fuel so that they could be of support to the Toscana away from land. Finally he ordered that the landing platform of the Toscana be deployed and the helicopter to land on it after refueling on land. Satisfied with these measures he continued to monitor the progress of the yacht as it headed out to the Atlantic at 25 knots.
Inside the Toscana, dinner was being served for members of The Board. As it was custom, the meal was simple and only nonalcoholic beverages were available. Francisco had welcomed each of the arrivals and sent them to their stateroom cabins to get ready for the evening meal and meeting. There were no previous meetings scheduled and everyone other than the crew was encouraged to stay inside until advised by the captain.
Marco had spent all his time aboard getting through a lot of information that was on other sections of the same memory card. The accounts with banks, hedge funds, investment funds and a few portfolio managers in known financial havens added up to over eleven billion dollars. His uncle was right. The Carducci fortune was a pittance and so was that of any individual crime family in the
US that he knew of. Maybe all together they would be in the same league; but not individually. The legal manipulation of other people’s money and other people’s trust was where the real money was and that is what the big boys and girls were doing. The other documents pertained exactly to what The Board was doing and what the opposition was up to. There was a lot of detail about subverted land purchasing by an American firm, a British-French enterprise and a retired Italian politician. That land had a book value of at least one hundred and fifty billion dollars. Now his money was a dime in the piggybank compared to the figures being played by these folks. Furthermore, the assets held by The Board were a third of a trillion dollars. He had to stop and try to equate micro-economic assessment to macro-economic figures. This was about as much as the total wealth of Chile yet it was at the disposal of so few.
A light knock at the door and Francisco Lujan came in, accompanied by Ernie Goldman.
“Have you seen the figures?” asked Francisco.
“Yes, broadly. It’s just very hard to comprehend.”
“Maybe I can help you with that.” He was silent for a few seconds, concentrated, thinking, and then he said, “The money you have and the money that we manage belongs to us as much as the stars in the sky or the salt in the sea. Man has had stewardship of the wealth of this earth since self-consciousness appeared, yet the inescapable reality of our own mortality negates the strength of that hold. The more we hold in that stewardship the less dominion we have over it. We are no exception, nor is our opposition. The vast amount of wealth held by each of us has its own mass inertia and is all but impossible to derail or change its direction. This is where we believe you will become a great asset to this group. We read and re-read your thesis at Kellogg and we are convinced of its wisdom. If I were to put your whole dissertation in a nutshell, you believe that there has to be reforms in four fundamental economic factors or the world’s socioeconomic structure which, as it now stands, will implode.”
“Yes,” said Marco, “depolitization of the lendable capital allowing for bank reform without loopholes; land reform by geographic consumption which gives midsize farming operations a business opportunity; and recapitalization of the middle class by tax and social service reform. Finally, a rationalization of our energy and transportation resources, which is symbiotically linked.”
“OK, let’s leave this conversation for later when we’re all together,” said Ernie. “I think The Board needs to hear more of it.
“By the way, I just received an updated report from Allen Security. All protective assets are in place, but the major feels that the waters around the Virgin Islands are by far too congested to maintain a good level of security, so he has ordered the ship east into deeper water and less traffic. Given the events of the last ten weeks, we have to assume that there is an active pursuit of you and Patricia, which means that this applies to all aboard the Toscana. As a precaution we are keeping everyone on board just for the meeting and then we are headed back closer to land and we will disembark several of us via helicopter and others via speed boat. Now, let’s enjoy dinner and continue with our agenda with The Board.”
Marco stayed for a moment alone while Ernie went to greet the other guests. Had it really only been ten weeks since Sal’s death? It felt a lifetime away now, with so much at stake, not the least his life and that of Patricia’s, which, he realized, he suddenly cared greatly about. How close he had become to that mysterious woman and her father.
Once dinner was over the dishes were taken away; the table was now all business. Francisco Lujan stood up and addressed the group.
“As sad as it is to meet without Salvatore Carducci, our partner, our friend, and husband to my daughter, I formally present to you Marco Carducci. You all know him through the documentation that was submitted to you days ago and some of you might have met him personally before dinner. It is now my duty and honor to formally submit his name for full membership of The Board.”
One by one they all voted “aye” and Marco stood up, accepted, and thanked everyone individually, going around the table and shaking hands. He then returned to his seat and said, “I have been told by Francisco that you have bestowed this honor on me more because you believe in a thesis I wrote over fifteen years ago than because it was Uncle Sal’s wish that I do so. This I find extremely flattering and I find myself humbled by your trust in what I’ve held dear over the years but did not have the means to implement in any way. I have given this much thought and I think I understand your motivation.
“Most of you are highly invested in the consumer. You need disposable income in the hands of many so that your businesses truly succeed. The other or others, on this I’m not clear, appear to desire centralization of wealth and redistribution of benefits to a subservient society. A society without the capacity to consume what you have to offer would subject you to the service of a single client. Not a pretty picture. Also I see you compete with the opposition for the business of asset conversion throughout the world and so far I can see that in the last year or so, you are succeeding brilliantly. This has to have caused stress among them.
“I also believe that they are aware of me and Patricia and probably know about Francisco, and obviously knew about Sal; but, from all I can gather, the rest of you continue to be quite anonymous as far as this association is concerned.”
“And we fervently wish that it stay in such manner,” said Sunny. “It would make us extremely vulnerable to those whose interests you have so succinctly put. But as we are mostly unknown to them, so are they to us. The picture is always blurred, there are so many fronts, so many transactions, so many people involved, that it is hard to see through the fog of business.”
“Mostly true but not entirely,” said Francisco. “Ernie and I have implemented software that recognizes legalese in several languages and this has cleared the picture to some degree. We know for a fact that the Vatican Bank is a major player but we don’t know their motivation. They have been under tremendous scrutiny by regulators everywhere and all their transactions are now vetted by a team of international auditors that reports to the IMF, yet time and again we find the hand of the IOR, the Vatican Bank, deep into the pockets of national wealth of several financially disrupted countries.”
“And a group of US Senators show their hand far too frequently influencing the outcome of land purchases by an agricultural conglomerate owned by the Meredith family,” said Ernie. “This has been particularly obvious because of the lobby by diplomatic personnel in several countries in Latin America.”
“Also a couple of earls who own a bank in Jersey that owns a bank in Canada which owns a bank in Caymans and so forth,” said Patricia. “They show up in as many transactions as the Vatican bank in tandem or sequentially.”
A discreet knock on the door interrupted their discussion and Francisco answered the door ready to give a piece of his mind to the person who, in spite strict orders for privacy, had violated the rule, but it was the captain in person who handed Francisco a note, saluted, and retired. Francisco read it twice and thought for a few seconds before he continued.
“I’m going to read this aloud as it is by coincidence, or not, very pertinent to our present discussion. It was sent to me via Bogotá by a person whose services we have used to great advantage in several occasions but whom I don’t trust at all, as he is for sale to the best bidder.”
He read the note in his hands: “The person who is trying to take out Marco Carducci is Cardinal Jean Dupree. He also had Senator Delany and his wife killed. He uses an ex-Navy Seal who works for him. His name is Enrico Testa and he is beyond dangerous. Do what you deem pertinent, but you owe me big. Signed M&M.”
Silence prevailed during a few seconds and then excited chatter broke out among the present. It was interrupted by Marco.
“At least now we have a name to this threat. Ian Carlo de la Rosa had told me that it was a monsignor passing himself as God’s messenger who had duped a fanatic bagman with the Liguria’s to set up t
he destruction of the Lear, believing that we would be on it.”
“We have a lot more than a name,” said Francisco gravely, “we have an extensive dossier on His Eminence Cardinal Jean Dupree. He is one of the ‘super cardinals’ of the Catholic Church. A strict disciplinarian, he headed the purification process that tried to eliminate the pedophile invasion of the rank and file and particularly prosecuted the bishops that covered up the actions of these degenerates. He gained the trust of the pope and practically asked to be placed in the IOR supposedly to do the same for that institution, which was fraught with corruption. He has been there three years and while playing ball with the regulators who think he is impeccable, we have reason to believe he heads the operations and manages the associates of the capital centralization effort that we oppose. Now we have a smoking gun, if you can excuse the venality of the example. Dupree is adamant about the Catholic Church’s adhering to its fundamental principles and truly believes that it is mankind’s only path to earthly salvation.
“We fear that he’s Machiavellian in his pursuits and will stop at nothing to achieve the recuperation of power, prestige and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church. What makes him a very formidable foe is that he has no personal agenda. No secret life of his own, no desire of personal wealth, and no romantic attachments of any kind. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment with no elevator to his fourth floor lodgings. He exercises by walking up and down the stairs and to and from his office at the bank or the one he keeps at the Holy See. He says Mass every day at 5:45 a.m. at St. Giuseppe della Montagna, a very quiet convent on Via de Vaticano, and then has breakfast at a small café nearby, generally with Testa or another of his adjutants. The rest of the day he spends at his office except when the pope calls him in, which is about once a week.”
The Carducci Convergence Page 12