Patrick Carlton 01 - The Diamond Conspiracy

by Nicolas Kublicki

  Forza shrugged. “Bene. But it will make things harder.”

  “Of course. But if someone were killed and the operation went sour, the repercussions would be devastating.”

  Forza observed the contents of his glass silently. The wine glowed ruby red in the Sicilian sunlight. He finally nodded and stood. He was taller than Carlton imagined, but still shorter than he. “Bene. You have a deal, dottore Carlton.”

  They shook hands.

  77 PONTIFEX

  Via Del Pontifice

  Financial District

  Rome, Italy

  9:20 A.M.

  The title ‘Bishop of Rome’ was often used, but its meaning more often glossed over. Like most, Romans thought of the elderly man in white robes and long pointed miter simply as the pope. Rarely did they think of him as the local leader of the Church in Rome. Yet he was. What happened after the Bishop of Rome received Monsignor Rancuzzi and the Vatican Secretary of State proved it.

  The news traveled fast. But nowhere did it travel faster than in the business center of Rome itself. Telephones, computers, fax machines; all relayed the news. Soon it was on everyone’s mind and lips. Receptionists abandoned telephones. Secretaries abandoned computers. Lawyers abandoned briefs. Accountants abandoned financial reports. Stockbrokers abandoned electronic boards. A flood of humanity streamed from office buildings and converged into the avenue en masse. Cars destined for meetings were piled two and three deep along frenzied sidewalks. Traffic ground to a standstill. All flocked to see the Vicar of Christ who lived among them, whom they saw on television and in newspapers and magazines, but rarely in person. Police trucks carrying emergency crowd-control troops dispatched at the last minute were trapped in the ocean of vehicles.

  Although most Romans were Catholic, many were so in name only. Like most Catholic Europeans, they were cultural Catholics. Secular Catholics. They liked Church holidays, bought gifts at Christmas, were proud of their churches, loved the atmosphere of Mass. Few obeyed religious tenets or attended Mass on Sunday or truly believed that Jesus Christ was their personal God and savior. But this was different. This was unplanned. Today the pope wasn’t in a foreign country torn by civil strife or flood or famine. He wasn’t in a political meeting with heads of state. He wasn’t at an abbey or monastery or cemetery.

  He was here.

  For them.

  A little after nine in the morning, as cars and mopeds and buses ferried people to work, an odd-looking truck had carried the Bishop of Rome straight to the center of the financial district. Known to the world as the ‘popemobile’, the white Mercedes 4x4 Gelandewagen with a podium, enclosed in bulletproof glass after the miraculously failed 1981 assassination attempt, was halfway down the Via Della Conziliazione before people realized what was happening. By the time the popemobile and its two-bus convoy filled with priests arrived at the heart of the financial district, it trailed a mile-long line of followers behind it.

  More amazing than the spur-of-the-moment papal drive through Rome was the pontiff’s exit from the popemobile to a small altar and cross erected between the outline of two trees along the main avenue. Protected by plainclothed Swiss guards who kept the growing crowd at bay, filmed by a half-dozen rooftop and helicopter television crews, accompanied by a contingent of 100 priests, dressed in white robes and papal miter, leaning painfully against a tall bronze staff that ended in a crucifix, but with eyes sparkling with life and hope as always, the pope traced the sign of the cross high above the crowd.

  “In nomine Patris et Filius et Spiritu Sanctus.” His frail voice cracked as it lilted through the benediction. Amplified through the remote microphone, it boomed through 50 loudspeakers arranged along the avenue during the previous night. The growing crowd of already 25,000 men and women wrapped in heavy overcoats responded with a collective sign of the cross under the weak winter sun and a resounding “Amen.”

  The crowd lined both sides of the large avenue. Its members pushed and pulled to get a glimpse of the most outspoken, the most visible, the most traveled, and the most beloved pontiff in modern times. Some stood on the roofs of cars. Others hung from lamp posts.

  The crowd-control police troops were enormously outnumbered. Why didn’t the Vatican warn us? They wondered, confused at the unannounced Mass. Despite the relative calm of the crowd as it strained to hear the pontiff’s words, it was difficult to control with so few police officers. Outnumbered a thousand to one, they had not been given sufficient time to prepare and were pleased when five army trucks forced their way through the crowd.

  The army trucks stopped in front of the six-story limestone Banco Napolitana Lucchese headquarters and backed up against its entrance. Forty green-garbed soldiers armed only with radios and safety batons exited the trucks. Five of them cordoned off the trucks. The remaining thirty-five placed themselves under the orders of a very relieved junior police lieutenant, who directed them to various strategic positions among the crowd.

  The rooftop and helicopter television crews were too busy filming the scene below to notice two soldiers hop out of an army truck in the narrow alley behind the august building. The soldiers punched an access code into a door keypad and disappeared inside the building’s maintenance room.

  A dozing member of the Guarda di Finanza inside rose to his feet. His hand was halfway to his holstered Beretta when the invisible mist from a tube in the soldier’s hand reached his lungs. He crumpled to the stone floor like a sack of rocks, alive, but in a deep sleep. A quick glance around the room concluded that the guard was its only human inhabitant.

  While one of the soldiers searched among a forest of heating and air-conditioning ducts, his colleague removed a small canister from his backpack and screwed on a short tube ending in a long needle. The first soldier pointed to a ventilation duct. His colleague inserted the needle into the duct’s aluminum skin, opened a valve on the canister. Thirty seconds later, he removed the syringe and both soldiers exited the building by the same door they had entered, leaving only a small pinprick hole in the heating duct.

  The crowd could not see the ten soldiers wearing gas masks who exited from one of the truck’s rear doors and entered the glass double doors against which it was parked.

  As soon as they entered the Banco Napolitana Lucchese’s lobby, it was clear their two colleagues had accomplished their mission: a GDF guard lay asleep on the marble floor in a contorted pose. Though his chest rose and fell in regular breathing movements under the strap of his gun holster, the guard would not be awake for at least an hour.

  The GDF had sealed the bank a week before. There were no employees or clients inside, only GDF guards. Without a word, the ten soldiers split into two groups.

  The first group located the stairwell and proceeded to the lower floor, careful not to trip over the bodies of sleeping guards. Once below, the group was confronted by row after row of small rooms, each numbered by a black and white sign and protected from entry by thick shiny metal bars. Beyond the bars were wide columns of armored vaults stacked from floor to ceiling.

  The team leader walked to the room labeled ‘5’ and pointed at a small electronic keypad between two of the bars. The soldier behind him punched in a numeric code. The codes were changed daily, but Forza’s men had obtained the code earlier that morning. A series of bolts thumped open with deep metallic thuds. The leader pushed the door open and waited patiently as his men removed two small keys from their pockets. One was supplied by a Forza operative in the bank’s administration. The other was the late Secretary General Altiplano’s key, provided by Benedetti.

  The leader checked his watch. They had practiced hard during the past two days.

  Thirty-seven minutes to go.

  His glance darted around the small room, then into the hallway. Above a desk hung a video surveillance camera. He waved at it defiantly. Who would notice him? Everyone in the building was asleep. By the time the videotapes were analyzed, they would merely reveal the robbery by men wearing Italian Army fatigues, faces
hidden by gas masks. He smiled and turned his attention back toward the small room.

  On the fifth floor, GDF guard Danieli Romano watched the papal mass through an open window. Unlike most of those who thronged the avenue below to see and hear the Holy Father, Romano was a devout atheist. He had no particular love for the white-robed man to whom so many looked for moral guidance. Still, he found it entertaining to watch the Mass and the crowd, like a theater piece. After watching for a while, the spectacle bored him. He crushed out his cigarette in a black plastic ashtray.

  The GDF had a strict no-smoking policy while its guards were on duty, but in Italy, like in the rest of Europe, rules often were merely suggestions. The no-smoking rule was a suggestion Romano opted not to follow. He may not have feared divine retribution, but he still feared his boss. He left the window open, rubbed his hands to ward off the chill, and returned to his video console.

  He stared at the images of the men in the vault in disbelief. Ché?

  His fear subsided as soon as he noticed the men’s Italian Army fatigues. Romano had been told the army and police and God only knew how many other government agencies would shuffle through the bank’s files and vaults during the next few weeks. He exhaled in relief, only to be surprised a second time.

  Why were they wearing gas masks?

  The second team of soldiers was composed of only two men. They climbed to the fifth floor and cracked open the stairway door before entering the bank’s computer room. Several GDF guards lay sprawled on the floor, immobile. The two men proceeded to the main computer terminal, whose monitor displayed the large floating letters of the bank’s screen-saver. While his colleague watched their flanks and rear, the other soldier removed a cellular telephone the size of a matchbook from his pocket, attached one end of a cord to its base, and searched for the correct port behind the large computer.

  “You have heard the Church speak out against many evils.” The supreme pontiff was too weak and physically devastated by Parkinson’s disease to deliver his sermon, so it was read by a young monsignor whose voice echoed through the silent crowd outside. Three younger prelates had read the first, second, and gospel readings, all in Italian. Now was the time for the sermon, also delivered in Italian. The pope gazed at the crowd, leaning painfully against his brass staff.

  “Against poverty. Against the culture of death. Against violence. Against racism. But there is another evil. An evil to which society has grown accustomed: the evil of materialism. Material goods in themselves are gifts from God. Food. Clothes. Shelter. These are good things. And we labor hard for them. And that labor is good if it is paid for fairly. But society has taken these gifts and transformed them into a struggle for wealth. Not only individuals, but entire organizations are motivated purely by material greed. Society has become accustomed to this. Society’s obsession to gain material wealth for its own sake with disregard to people’s needs has forced society to abandon its values and morals. It has alienated people from their families. From their neighbors. From their faith.

  “That is why I have chosen this place today. Not a slum. Not a hospital. Not a church. But one of the world’s financial centers. Our financial center. Banks, stock markets, corporations, and all businesses are made up of people. If these organizations are to change their ways, to move away from greed and blind materialism and environmental harm and unfairness to workers that threaten the spiritual fabric of society, it is the people who make up these organizations that must make that change.

  “You must make that change.

  “And so I stand here with you to pray for that change. So that you may have the strength to make that change. So that in doing your daily work, you become beacons of Christ’s love for all of humanity. It is not enough to curse the darkness. To change the world, each one of us must light a candle. The Church is not just priests and nuns and bishops and popes. You are the Church. You must become the light of love and hope and life within every enterprise.”

  Baffled more by the gas masks over the soldiers’ faces than the pope’s statements against runaway capitalism, Romano switched his screen to another camera. His fear returned. This time it didn’t go away. He switched to another camera. Then another. And another.

  Santa Maria! All of his colleagues lay on the floors. They look...they look dead.

  Terrified by his coworkers’ fates, his heart pounded in his throat. He reached for the telephone.

  He punched an automatic dial button.

  “Polizia,” a voice answered.

  Down in the bank vault, the team leader looked at his watch.

  Twenty minutes.

  The good news was that the little bags of diamonds were light. The bad news was that there were so many of them. Nine million carats, made up mostly of one- to two-carat diamonds.

  On the outside, the bags were identical to ordinary canvas mail bags. Inside were attached smaller bags, each lined with velvet pockets, each of which in turn contained small white envelopes filled with diamond roughs of the highest quality and color, VS1 F or better.

  Though well-informed and well-organized, the team leader had not anticipated so many bags. They would never have enough time, he thought. He backed away from his original plan and ordered his men to form a human chain from the basement vault to the top of the stairs on the first floor. The bags could be moved more quickly that way.

  He gazed at his watch again.

  Seventeen minutes.

  78 WITHDRAWAL

  Banco Napolitana Lucchese Headquarters

  Rome, Italy

  9:51 A.M.

  The impromptu papal Mass made access to the bank difficult, but not impossible. Three police cars tore down the narrow alley behind the bank. Twelve police officers leaped from the cars before they had stopped rolling and lined up at the door. Romano had warned them. Each slipped on a gas mask before entering, following their captain’s orders.

  Twelve minutes.

  The team leader waited impatiently as his men removed the last canvas bags from the armored shelves. Finally, his second-in-command gave him a thumbs-up and began closing the doors. The team leader engaged the dual locks while the human chain moved the bags from the vault floor up to the entrance lobby and into the truck.

  “Hurry,” the soldier whispered to his colleague who continued to kneel under the table, looking for the correct computer port.

  “I’m still looking. I can’t find the damn thing,” he whispered back. He finally gave in and removed his flashlight and a telescopic metal rod fitted with an angled circular mirror, like a dentist’s tool. He pushed aside the dusty wires behind the computer and was about to insert the metal rod in the opening when he suddenly sneezed.

  His colleague slapped him on the head.

  Romano couldn’t contain his frustration. He was in agony. Armed and fully aware of the situation, he couldn’t leave the room for fear that whatever gas had killed his comrades would kill him too.

  He had to do something. He looked around the room another time to find some way to protect himself from the gas. Then he heard someone sneeze.

  He froze. It came from the room next door.

  He tiptoed to the door and peered through a small peephole placed at eye level. The lens distorted the adjoining room in a bizarre fish-eye view. He would have to open the door. What about the gas?

  Then he realized that he had nothing to fear. Thanking his high school science teacher, he remembered that air travels from high to low pressure. The air outside was colder, higher in pressure than the warm air in the room. Clean, cold air would blow in from the outside, saving him from the gas.

  Romano dried his sweaty palms on his shirt, removed the Beretta from his holster, cocked it. Slowly, careful not to make any sound, he slid back the door bolt and cracked open the door. As expected, he felt cold outside air breeze through the space in the doorway into the adjoining room. He peered into the next room.

  Nothing.

  He blinked away the sweat from his eyes and looked again.r />
  There! Two men wearing army fatigues and masks were crouched next to the main computer terminal. He held his breath and opened the door farther. He raised his Beretta, aimed it at one of the men.

  A loud crash erupted behind him as a gust of cold air slammed the window shut.

  One of the soldiers spun around, saw the Beretta just as Romano fired. The force of the bullet slammed into the soldier’s bulletproof Kevlar vest and punched him backward onto the computer worktable. The two ducked under the worktable, protected from Romano’s fire by a row of low hard drives encased in glass.

  Romano moved back behind the door, anticipating the soldiers’ response. For several seconds he remained behind the safety of the door, panting. But there was no response from the soldiers. Not a bullet. Not a word. He waited for several minutes before opening the door again. Unable to contain his anger, he held his breath again and lunged into the room.

  Romano fired repeatedly. The hard drives exploded among shards of glass. He moved forward, emptied his magazine, expelled it, then expertly slapped another into the Beretta’s butt. He was about to resume firing when he felt something touch his foot. He looked down.

  Green smoke billowed from a short metal cylinder on the floor. He kicked the tube away and held his breath, but his vision began to blur, then went black. By the time he crumpled to the floor, Romano was sound asleep.

  One soldier kicked the Beretta from Romano’s hand while his colleague who continued to search for the appropriate computer port lifted a lid behind the computer. “Got it.” He plugged the wire into the port, turned on the cell phone, and hid the tiny device under the jumble of wires. He sneezed again, then motioned to the other soldier. “Let’s go.”

  79 CORRUPTION

  Banco Napolitana Lucchese Headquarters