Only Eagles Fly

by Graham Guy

  “This is unbelievable.”

  Gina went to the next room.

  The office, as you can see, has two desks and twelve guest chairs of inlaid white lacquer with studded, hand-beaten Italian leather in charcoal grey…

  The descriptions went on and on. Finally she closed her computer down, her head still reeling from what her eyes had witnessed. As she climbed into bed, her mind was racing. All her life she’d dreamed of having a lot of money. Never before had such an opportunity presented itself. Twenty million dollars. She kept hearing the amount over and over. Twenty million dollars. All she had to do was convince someone she knew very well to rip open Bruno’s one tonne safe door. Of all the times she and Franco had been together, she never knew what he did. She didn’t know how he’d react to a suggestion that he and his brothers carry out a raid on a safe a half a world away.

  Twenty million, four ways? That’s five each. Yeah! Bet the greedy bastard would want more. But if I came out of it with two… even three, that’d be OK, she consoled herself.

  * * *

  Gina met with Sebastian McAlister three times over the next four weeks. Each time, she cleverly broached the subject of Bruno Formicella. “Yes, the Italian minister Vincenzo Torricelli had been back in touch.”

  “Yes, there’s no doubt he’s into drugs and money-laundering up to his short little neck.”

  “Yes, police informers say there is no doubt he keeps millions in a safe in his villa.”

  “Yes, he will be in Milan for two days in September.”

  Sebastian never suspected a thing. He just took it as Gina being intrigued, if not a little infatuated, by such a larger-than-life character. That was until the last time they met.

  They were lying back in each other’s arms and Gina was drawing circles around his nipple with her fingernail when rather nonchalantly she asked, “How important is money to you, Sebby?”

  “Don’t suppose I’ve ever really thought about it,” he told her in an inquisitive tone. “Why the question?”

  “Just wondered.”

  “But you must have had a reason?”

  “Sort of. I just imagined everybody thought about money to some degree.”

  “Well, in that respect, I suppose I do think about it. Like everybody else, I’d be in a fine pickle if I didn’t have any.”

  “Would you like to be rich? Or for that matter, maybe you are already?”

  Sebastian laughed. “No I’m certainly not rich. I have a very good income. The house is paid for. I have a few shares here and there. But rich? Good God no! I certainly need that fortnightly ministerial cheque if that’s what you mean.”

  “Let’s say for a moment you were rich. I mean seriously rich. What would you do?”

  Again Sebastian laughed and spun Gina on top of himself. “I’d whisk you away to the nearest desert island and make love to you ten times a day…” He stopped short when he noticed Gina’s mood change. “Will you get to the point,” he said sternly.

  She levered herself from Sebastian and looked him square in the eye. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do for me… for us?”

  The question took him by surprise. “I didn’t think you’d feel the need to ask that,” he told her in a disappointed tone.

  Gina didn’t flinch, instead she held her gaze. She felt she had Sebastian just where she wanted him. “You know this Formicella character…?”

  Sebastian rolled his eyes. “You mean our little Bruno? Quite fascinated by him, aren’t you?”

  “Not in the way you think.”

  “Oh?”

  “What I am about to say may totally floor you, offend you or even have you thinking such words are not coming out of my mouth. If they do, say so and I’ll drop the subject and never mention it again. That I promise you. But all my life I’ve wanted to be rich. When you told me about his safe, twenty million dollars and no security, my mind started racing…”

  Sebastian sat bolt upright on the bed. “Oh for god’s sakes Gina, you’re not seriously suggesting…?”

  “Yes I am!” she told him. “By the very breath in me, I am.”

  “But you’re not part of the underworld… at least I don’t think you are.” Suddenly Sebastian realised just how little he did know about this Sicilian redhead. “You’re not, are you?”

  Gina chuckled. “Not the last time I looked.”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting a raid on Bruno’s safe?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

  “So what are you going to do? Knock on his bloody door and say good morning sir, my name’s Gina and I’m here to relieve you of twenty million dollars?”

  “Not me specifically, but I do have some people in mind.”

  “You’re crazy! You know that? You’re out of your bloody mind!” he told her, making his way into the en-suite and opening the shower.

  “So you think I should forget it?”

  “I don’t believe you should even think along those lines.”

  “OK… it’s forgotten.”

  But when he turned the shower off this time, Gina wasn’t standing by with a towel. After he’d dressed, he walked over to her as she sat gazing out the window. “Come on babe! Don’t be angry. What did you expect me to say?”

  She turned to him. “Why are we here? Why the fuck are we here? You work 70 hours a week for what you get. You’re at the beck and call of every bastard. You’ll be old before you know it, and your life will have passed you by pleasing everybody else but yourself.

  “You’ll collect your super cheque then probably bloody die before you get time to spend it. Do you ever stop to think what you want, Sebby? What you want? Do you? Of course you don’t! You just ring when you can, drop by, fill me up, then leave.” Gina was in full flight. “I just see an opportunity to make a quick killing. If it’s done right, quickly and efficiently, we could walk away with a couple of mill each.”

  Sebastian looked at her. “I’ve never seen this side of you before,” he told her, almost glumly.

  “Does it scare you?”

  “Yes, I think it does.”

  “So we drop it.”

  Sebastian ignored her comment and began to pace the floor. “Let’s say you did decide to do it. Where the hell would you start? Besides, there’s no guarantee the money would be there anyway.”

  “But didn’t that Italian minister tell you it would be?”

  “Well, over dinner and in other conversations since. But I haven’t pressed him on the matter.”

  “Press him.”

  “OK. Let’s say the money is there…”

  “On that weekend in September of the Milan fashion show…”

  “OK, in September. How are you going to break into a safe with a door that weighs a tonne… quietly and unnoticed. Steal the so-called twenty million and get away… quietly and again unnoticed?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “For twenty million, it’s worth the risk of finding out.”

  Sebastian was getting frustrated. “Gina, for god’s sakes, you’re looking at Portofino. Hell, I don’t even know where Portofino is without looking at a map…”

  “Turn left at the top of the leg,” she cut in.

  “OK, whatever that means. It’s eight, maybe ten, thousand kilometres away. You have to get in, do the job and get out. How are you going to do that?”

  “Fly”

  “Oh, bullshit! What? Just front up to the airline check-in counter and say Please, Mr Qantas man, a return ticket for… how many are going…?”

  “Me and three others.”

  “Oh, shit! This gets worse! So you want to go too?”

  “Yes, in a private plane.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Gina, a private plane?” he said raising his voice and throwing his hands in the air. “You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Did it not occur to you there might be a slight hitch with things like flight plans and reasons for going? How you are
going to fund it? Where will you get fuel on the way over and on the way back? Who will fly the plane and where the hell are you going to land it in this country with a pay-load like that?

  “And just one other minor detail. Where the hell are you going to get a plane from anyway? Especially one to travel all that way? You’d have to go undetected and that means flying under the bloody radar.”

  Almost exasperated, Sebastian knelt down beside her. “Forget it babe, just forget it. No good can possibly come of it,” he told her. “Besides, that sort of money wouldn’t make you happy. You’d be looking over your shoulder all the time. Will you forget it?”

  “Will you help me get it?” she replied, her tone determined.

  Sebastian sprang to his feet. “I don’t believe you. After everything I’ve said.”

  “Will you help me, or won’t you?”

  Gina knew he couldn’t refuse her. She also knew that simply by being with her, his entire career and life was down the toilet.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then go… and don’t come back.”

  “You don’t mean that?”

  “See if I don’t,” she answered bitterly.

  He went to her. “Gina, for god’s sakes, it’s only money…”

  “And I don’t have any. I just reckon I can pull it off.”

  “So you’re telling me to help you rob a guy of twenty mill or don’t come back? Is that all I mean to you?” his tone dropping away as he slumped into an armchair. “I can’t do it.”

  Gina could see she was losing him. She had one last card to play.

  “I don’t know what your plans are, but mine are to have my own place with two keys. I have one. You have the other. I have a mobile phone and you are the only one with the number. Sebby, I want to grow old with you, even if it’s part-time. You are my life. My skin withers and dies without your touch. I only come to life when your heart pounds against my breast. Sebby I only want this for us.”

  She closed her eyes as guilt raced through her body. She had never known herself to tell such outrageous lies, but this was a situation that called for desperate measures.

  Sebastian held her at arm’s length. “Tell me you love me!”

  “With every breath in my body,” she answered.

  “Gina, if this leaks, I’m dead. You do realise that, don’t you?”

  “It will never get out,” she promised.

  “OK. I will help you, but I don’t want any money, all right? No payoff. The only pay-off I want is you and for those words you just spoke to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  Gina threw her arms around his neck.

  “Oh Sebby, thank you. Thank you, my darling, darling man,” she gushed.

  “So what do you want me to do?” he asked, uneasily.

  “Just confirm for me as best you can that Bruno and his family will in fact be in Milan for two days in September. And that safe. Confirm the existence of the safe and that there’s always a shitload of money in it.”

  “But I’ve already done that,” he protested mildly.

  “Vincenzo is it?”

  “The minister?”

  “Yes. Vincenzo…?”

  “Vincenzo Torricelli.”

  “Talk to him again. Find an excuse. But I just need to know what we already know is full-on.” She turned to him with a smile he was never able to resist and breathed, “You want to make me a happy lady again?”

  * * *

  When Sebastian returned to his own home later that night, he paced the floor, searching his brain for a scenario which he felt the Italian minister would accept. Slowly the bits and pieces came together.

  Stepping from the lift the following morning he checked his watch as he made his way to his ministerial office.

  Rome is eight hours behind. If I ring Vincenzo at five today, it should be nine o’clock this morning over there. I’ll do that.

  A full book of ministerial appointments lay ahead for Sebastian McAlister. Before he realised he’d even skipped lunch, he flashed his eyes to the clock on the wall.

  Good lord! What happened to today?

  He reached for his phone and dialled international. It had hardly rung.

  “Pronto.”

  “Vincenzo? Sebastian McAlister in Sydney.”

  “Oh, Sebastian, my good friend, how are you?”

  The two made small talk for a couple of minutes, then it was the Italian who said, “I could talk to you all day about the soccer my friend, but somehow I don’t think that is why you are calling.”

  “Bruno Formicella,” he replied.

  “Ah yes, our little friend.”

  “I might be able to help you nail the little bastard.”

  “That I find most interesting. Do go on.”

  “When we last spoke, you mentioned how well connected he was. Do you feel those connections would stretch to Australia?”

  “Most certainly. That and other reasons is why I would love to get a look inside his safe. That would tell me exactly what I want to know. But not much chance of that I’m afraid,” he said, his voice dropping away to a dejected tone.

  “Maybe I can do something from this end.”

  “Oh?” Vincenzo replied, sparking up.

  “What if I approached the Prime Minister for permission to set up a top secret task force, say about six SAS troops and hit that bloody safe when he’s away in September?”

  “Mama Mia! You can do that?”

  “I can try. I feel the hook to get it off the ground is if you firmly believe Bruno has money-laundering and drug connections in this country.”

  “That is my firm belief, Sebastian. How can I help?”

  “I need the best and most accurate information your government can give me on Bruno’s whereabouts on that weekend in September, if there’ll be any security at the villa and if there will in fact be a stash of dollars if we bust in.”

  “When do you need to know this?”

  “I will see the Prime Minister tomorrow. So if you could call me in a week, then every three weeks leading up to September. We keep in touch daily in the week leading up to the fashion show in Milan.”

  “Of course, Sebastian,” the Italian cried gleefully. “You think we might finally get to nail this little… bastard.”

  Sebastian laughed. “Keep this to yourself will you. Don’t speak to any other minister here about it and be damn careful about any leaks.”

  “Of course, of course. We’ll talk again soon.”

  Sebastian put the phone down and began to pace the floor of his ministerial office. He convinced himself there was no other way to obtain the information Gina wanted. He began to tremble at the prospect of being found out. His entire life. His entire career. His entire standing in the community. Not to mention his wife and children. The thought of going to prison flashed through his mind. He couldn’t stand it.

  My god! What have I done? What the hell have I done?

  He reached for the phone and was about to push re-dial and call the whole thing off when suddenly he heard Gina’s words all over again. ‘Oh Sebby, my skin withers and dies without your touch.’

  He replaced the phone.

  * * *

  Gina was over the moon. She had been able to convince Sebastian to provide what information she needed. All she had to do now was sell the story to Franco.

  Then suddenly. “Oh, shit! How come I know so much about it?”

  You’ll think of something, she told herself, wondering already what it would really be like to actually hold a million dollars in her hands.

  Chapter 5

  Senior Sergeant Ken McLoughlin was travelling slowly down a dirt road when he braked suddenly and swung his vehicle hard to the left, coming to a standstill.

  “That’s it back there I reckon,” he said quietly to himself, craning his neck to see over his shoulder. Then he saw a sign on a gate next to a ramp which read: Katie’s Place.

  He checked his mirrors, swung his vehicle
round and drove across a ramp made from railway tracks. The property was bordered by white fenceposts. A long driveway led down to the house and, as he proceeded, he tried to take in his surrounds. McLoughlin focussed on what appeared to be a myriad of sheds, implements, stables and various other paraphernalia associated with farmyard activities, but it was the house that stopped him. He drove forward a little.

  “That’s not a home. That’s a bloody show-home.”

  First he took in the white gravel and paved driveway. “That’s about half a hectare,” he observed. Strategically placed every few metres were Victorian-style street lamps. In the middle was a highly manicured garden featuring Australian natives and a large Italian marble fountain bird bath featuring two exotic fish, mouths wide open, offering an endless stream of water. The massive homestead was built of rust-coloured brick and bluestone, each side of which was shaded with an open verandah. Off to the left was a triple garage and attached to that, what looked like a smaller self-contained home.

  He parked in front of a small yard and stable and got out. Over the wooden fence he could see a large chestnut Clydesdale and a newish looking and very big shed. Off to its left, very, very elaborate horse stables. Still trying to come to terms with what he was looking at, a young girl rode towards him on a magnificent white stallion.

  “Hello,” the girl called from atop the stallion.

  “Hi… er, I’m probably lost… but is this where I can find Gabe and Katie Caplin?” McLoughlin asked.

  “Sure! That’s mum and dad. I’ll get mum for you. Come on down.”

  The young girl turned the stallion’s head and cantered off. Moments later, a woman appeared wearing an apron and with her hair tied in a scarf. She was carrying a mixing bowl.

  McLoughlin grinned. “Katie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ken McLoughlin, Ma’am… from the police.”

  “Oh god, Ken! Yes, Yes… oh, I’m sorry… how are you?”

  Quickly she knelt down and placed the mixing bowl on the verandah and went to him, her arms outstretched. After they momentarily hugged each other, she said, “Oh Ken, it’s wonderful to see you. But look at me! I feel like a wreck. You should have phoned.” She turned to the girl. “Emma, ride down the paddock and get your father. Tell him we have a very special visitor.”