The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  March and April playback....

  Claudio Canizzaro had been embracing his new role with enthusiasm; even introducing her to the world of fashion. The result of numerous shopping sprees with her generous uncle, was a wardrobe filled with creations for every occasion. Canizzaro had also acted upon his expressed concern for another aspect of her well-being; namely her formal education. Consequently her already busy martial arts programme was now being supplemented by lessons from the private tutors who attended her daily. In addition to broadening the scope of some standard subjects, she was now learning the languages of French and Spanish alongside her steadily improving English. Additionally, prompted by her uncle, she was tackling a business studies course.

  Maria and Canizzaro were in his study, discussing the role he envisaged her playing in his business life when, as if sensing her scepticism, he surprised her with a few memorable words.

  “You have learned much in your thus far short life, Maria,” he said. “Even how to kill,” he quietly added. “But you must learn more about life itself, and the people who live it in their various roles. Education doesn’t just come from books, or a dojo, it comes from having experienced life. It comes from understanding what drives and motivates the good and bad people who inhabit this planet of ours. In addition to generating employment, the world of business attracts both the commercially astute and the criminally inclined. You cannot kill all of the latter with your knives, or any other of your obvious physical skills. Sometimes all you need to defeat them is a brain. But both of those categories produce ruthless individuals. So you need to observe each of them in order to learn how to recognize the difference between ruthless but good; and ruthless but evil.”

  Canizarro closed the conversation by telling her she would accompany him on future trips to Europe, and even America’s city of New York....

  Maria stirred slightly on the dojo mat, and her breathing quickened as the memory tape reached the last of the five men who had been occupying her mind. ‘Sergio Sabbatini had disrupted her training programme, and had made her heart beat faster....

  April playback....

  March was dissolving into April when the carabiniere officer re-appeared in her life. Graziella announced his arrival at the villa, and, with a twinkle in her eye, said she had deposited the very handsome looking man in the lounge-cum-library room. Still wearing her track-suit, with her hair all over the place, sticky with sweat from the vigorous workout which had been interrupted, Maria went to meet him. When she saw him, she immediately wished that she had made him wait while she showered and changed.

  “Signorina Orsinni, I apologise,” he said instantly, “for obviously having disturbed you.”

  “It’s okay,” she replied, admiring the suit he was wearing, wishing she had at least looked in a mirror before coming in here, “I needed the break anyway. Is it me you wanted to see?”

  Maria immediately fought to smother the smile she could feel forming on her face with the thought that she should have phrased that last question differently.

  “It is of course,” he replied, making no attempt to hide his own smile, “a delight to see you again, Maria Orsinni, but the main purpose of my visit was to speak with Signore Canizzaro.”

  “I’m afraid he’s not here today,” she told him, beginning to think that the colour of his shirt was wrong with that suit.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling now with his addition, “your charming housekeeper explained that he is on a business trip and will not return until tomorrow.”

  Maria made a mental note to have words with the charming housekeeper. Realizing now that if Sergio Sabbatini had known Canizzaro wasn’t here, then he had obviously stayed for other reasons. She told herself that no one else could hear her loudly beating heart.

  “I should of course have telephoned ahead,” he said now, “but I was in the area and decided to take a chance on catching him here.”

  Maria was about to respond, but then Sabbatini off-balanced her with a question which was smoothly posed with seeming consummate ease.

  “Would you perhaps be free this evening, Signorina Orsinni?”

  Her indecision, realized Maria, was being annoyingly signposted by her hesitation.

  “Would you,” said the signpost-reading Sabbatini, “like to come with me to a nightclub?”

  Maria knew by his smile that he could see the answer in her eyes. Unfortunately she had allowed her guard to slip, so he had also seen something else which was causing those dark eyes of his to twinkle as he voiced his next question. A maddeningly perceptive question.

  “Have you actually ever been to a nightclub?”

  “I have never felt the need,” she blurted, inwardly cringing at the sound of her stilted reply.

  “It doesn’t have to be a need,” he calmly responded, “but it can be a pleasure. Providing the food is good, and the music is easy on the ear.”

  “And,” Maria heard him add as those smouldering dark eyes of his penetrated her very soul, “the company pleases the eye.”

  ‘You can talk to the trees,’ her father had said, ‘but you must never talk to the carabiniere,’ and Maria conjured now an image of Giovanni Orsinni having a heart attack upon being told of the reported sighting of his daughter at a nightclub in the company of a carabiniere captain.

  “I am washing my hair tonight,” she told him, and for days afterwards she carried the memory of his disappointed look....

  More April playback....

  April was being devoured by training in its several forms. Her martial arts programme was becoming more intensive, but she was drawing praise from the formidable Wan Lai Tang. She was continuing apace with her academic studies, resting weary body muscles whilst stretching her mind when actually with the private tutors, and gritting her teeth to buckle down to the homework they always left behind them. She had also been dragooned by Graziella into cooking lessons, and was finding that to be an enjoyable diversion.

  Having learned that the grey-haired Graziella was widowed, and having witnessed many examples of her devotion to Canizzaro, Maria had found in the kindly widow a replacement figure for the mother she had lost. Then in the last week of April, returning to her new home with Canizzaro, heavily laden from one of those shopping expeditions, Maria had found Graziella entertaining Sergio Sabbatini in her kitchen.

  “He says he has come to speak with you, Claudio,” announced Graziella, chuckling as she added, “but I think this young man is really here to see our Maria.”

  Maria watched and listened as the young man in question updated his audience on the whereabouts of the American dwarf and his pony-tailed partner in crime. Then Sabbatini fixed her with those dark eyes of his and delivered his challenge.

  “If you are free this evening, Signorina Orsinni, why don’t we try that nightclub idea?”

  “What a wonderful opportunity,” enthused Canizzaro, “to wear one of your new outfits.”

  “And if you don’t go with him, he can take me,” said Graziella, thus contributing to the making of Maria’s first date with a carabiniere officer....

  More April playback....

  “You look beautiful, Maria Orsinni,” were Sabbatini’s opening words when he arrived to collect her for her very first trip to a nightclub.

  Maria blushed. Not just because of the words, but because of the way he looked at her as he spoke them. She told herself he was probably referring to the dress she was wearing.

  “If you mean the dress, I was running late and just grabbed this on the run,” she said, “but I’m glad you like it,” she added with a smile. She refrained from mentioning Graziella’s high blood pressure caused by her assistance with several of ‘our Maria’s’ costume changes.

  “The dress is lovely,” replied her date, “but the wearer is beautiful,” he said.

  “Does the carabiniere actual
ly teach its officers how to flatter?”

  “Flattery is never wasted,” he replied smoothly, “upon that which deserves it.”

  “So they do teach it then,” she retorted, already enjoying the banter.

  Sitting beside Sabbatini in his car, Maria’s feelings were mixed. The simple fact that she was in the company of a carabiniere officer was outweighed by the more significant fact that she was thrilled to be setting out on her first date with a man.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, trying to make the question sound casual.

  “I thought I’d make that a surprise,” he answered.

  Maria lapsed into silence and her driver seemed content to focus on the road as he took them at speed through traffic. When he eventually arrived at the Caffe Greco on the Via Della Condotti, she chose not to tell her escort that Wan Lai Tang’s dojo stood three blocks away on the street running parallel to the one they were now in. Neither did she tell her date that the outfit she was wearing this evening had been purchased this very afternoon on the Via Della Condotti, which Canizzaro had said was known to be one of the smartest shopping areas in the world. Canizzaro was proving to be a real snob, she told herself with a smile. Smothering all of those words which might spoil this special occasion, she instead expressed surprised delight as she was led down steps which took them beneath the Caffe Greco and into its subsidiary nightclub. The club was crowded, and the music was loud.

  “We could try for a table, if you like?” was shouted in her ear by her date.

  Maria gave the suggestion a second’s thought. Attempts at seated conversation in this environment would be pointless, she decided. “There’s a space over by the bar,” she shouted back. “I could leave my bag with the barman, and we could just dance.”

  Sabbatini nodded, and they weaved their way through to the bar. Maria thought the barman’s eyes widened when he saw who was asking him to look after a handbag, but she dismissed the thought. She didn’t care now. The barman took the bag, and her date took her on to the dance floor. The rest was just magic, thought Maria, and the dancing was wonderful. By the end of the fourth dance they were on first name terms. During one of the slow ones, he brushed her ear with lips which burned and ran fingers through her hair and sent her pulse into orbit....

  With one day of April remaining on the kitchen calendar, Canizzaro sat in his favourite restaurant alongside his resident Chef. A relaxed looking Graziella was having a night off as her protégé made her culinary debut.

  Maria presented them with a simple, unfussy starter. Graziella was definitely unimpressed, but uncle Claudio seemed to enjoy the melon slices sprinkled with nutmeg. For the main course she served up Pollo alla Diavola with skinned boiled tomatoes and fluffy rice. Before cooking the poultry, she had cut the flesh to allow the seasonings to penetrate, and had grilled the dish until it was golden brown. Canizzaro set about his meal with gusto and later declared it to be the best devilled chicken he had ever tasted.

  “It needed more salt,” said Graziella, pushing aside her empty plate.

  Maria served them ice cream topped by cherries to finish her nerve-wracking experience, and the trio chatted amicably together whilst that too was demolished. Canizzaro raised his glass of wine and smiled.

  “A toast to your triumphant debut, my child.”

  Graziella smiled as she raised her glass and added a reminder for the cook, “It’s also my night off from the washing up.”

  Observing the couple, Maria wondered about their relationship. Thus far, she was reminded, there had been no sign of any other woman in Canizzaro’s life and Graziella had been widowed for four years. On the surface it appeared to be a perfectly straightforward employer/employee arrangement. A commercial partnership between two people hardened by life yet softened by their personal association. Looking at them now, Maria thought they represented a good example of a compatible marriage between Yin and Yang.

  Determined to see her project through to the finish, Maria finally shooshed them from the kitchen and tackled the washing up. Her immediate thoughts were on the main course she had sweated over. Graziella had been right, it had needed more salt. The recipe book had simply said ‘generous quantities’, but obviously she had misjudged. She’d get it right next time.

  The washing-up water was soothing on her hands. Hands which were steadily toughening in response to Wan Lai Tang’s prescribed exercises. She wondered how they would look in a few years time. She wondered about the Chinaman, no mention had ever been made about his wife. She finished the washing-up, called goodnight to Canizzaro and Graziella who were still in the lounge, and climbed the stairs to her bedroom wondering about Sergio Sabbatini.

  Showered and dried, Maria buttoned up the silk pyjama jacket and decided to get some air. She opened the doors to the balcony and stepped outside. Her first thought was that nothing had visibly changed. The landscape before her looked just the same as it had when she had last stood on this balcony one hundred and ten days ago. There below was the River Tiber running under three of its visible bridges, and across the water twinkled the night lights of the Regola district. ‘The view might not have changed,’ thought Maria, ‘but the viewer certainly has.’

  Also across the water, beyond the Regola night lights, past all the ancient monuments and churches and museums leading to the Colonna district, lay some of the other places which had occupied her mind today. Places which had changed her perception of many things. Like the Dojo housing a man who had made her aware that it could be fatal to dismiss the notion of a senior citizen as a potential threat, and had shown her that age was no barrier to achievement in the martial arts. Like the nightclub which had shown her the private face of the high-flying carabiniere officer, and had revealed him to be a warm and funny and lonely man.

  Maria stifled a yawn and turned back into the bedroom. She closed the balcony doors, immediately feeling the warmth of the room, and slipped into bed wondering why a warm and funny and sexy man was also a lonely one. She didn’t know when she would see him again, she didn’t object to the idea and would certainly say yes if she was asked, but nothing had been arranged and she couldn’t begin to imagine how she could possibly fit anything else into....

  The month of April was one day away from May on the calendar page when Maria Orsinni closed her eyes and surrendered to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  In The Name of the Father

  Rome, Italy, May 1985

  The Jerusalem-born Israeli who had irritated Luigi Rinaldi in New York was now on a rooftop terrace in Rome. He had been in the city for three weeks. Back in Manhattan’s lower east side he had answered to the trade name of ‘Saul’, but here in ‘The Eternal City’ the passport he had selected to be held by the five-star luxury La Griffe hotel on the Via Nazionale declared him to be David Weintrub.

  “Helluva’ view,” said the man clutching to his chest a ten-gallon-Stetson as he continued without waiting for a response, “Any-ways you’re obviously a man of the cloth so tell me sir, or do I call you father, in which direction will I catch a look-see at the Vatican City?”

  Fortunately, for the questioner, the Texan had been logged as harmless from the moment of his approach and the Israeli reminded himself that the need to act out a cover justified its having been manufactured in the first place. The Israeli was a meticulous man and his cover was sound. Ignoring the question as to title, he briefly chatted to the Texan about the Vatican City before the tourist headed off to the required viewing spot on the terrace.

  The Weintrub passport in the hotel’s safe declared its owner to be an American citizen. It also supplied a birth-date entry which made its subject forty-one years old, and the photograph depicted a dark-haired and clean-shaven and cherub-cheeked face of a man wearing a white clerical collar around a strong looking neck.

  Accurately matching that photograph, was the face of the man currently sea
ted on the hotel’s rooftop terrace overlooking magnificent views of Roma. The medium-height body of the man was stocky looking inside the stylishly cut grey suit, and his dark silk shirt was neck-laced by the white clerical collar. Silver cuff-links glinted below thick wrists and stubby fingers moved now over the books he had spread on the table to discourage company. The display hadn’t deterred the Texan, but the open bible and books of ancient churches and cathedrals had reinforced the image which the hotel and its other guests had accepted as genuine.

  Carried by the night air enveloping the rooftop terrace, the babble of voices around him conveyed a variety of nationalities and professional occupations. The Israeli was unsurprised by this, as his careful planning had anticipated their presence. Aside from its location being conveniently close to a rail station and the Leonardo De Vinci airport, and its reputation for excellence which attracted visitors from all over the world, the Israeli knew that three main current events had ensured his own stay at the La Griffe hotel would be adequately camouflaged. 1985 was the ‘European Year of Music’, and occupying tables around him were musicians forming part of the rooftop ensemble. Additionally, the European Union was hosting its own presidential elections in this city next month, so a fair sprinkling of their opportunistic officials who had flown in under the ‘advance party’ banner were already taking advantage of their expense accounts. And thirdly, represented by a rooftop table of celebrating dignitaries, the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) were currently presiding over an athletics grand prix final which was being held here in Italy.

  This last group of voices discussing athletics had derailed the Israeli’s current train of thought. Taking him back in time, to 1972, to when he had been a younger man in the service of Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence service. To when the Palestinian Liberation Organization had sent the aggressive faction calling themselves ‘Black September’ to massacre eleven of his country’s athletes in Munich. The Israeli briefly held the thought that some of the voices he was listening to now might even have supported the decision to allow the Olympic games to continue that year. A controversial decision, which had catered to those who had obligingly watched the continued pursuit of medals whilst Israeli burial parties were still carrying the coffins of those who had perished. The Israeli pushed that thought away, replacing it with a more pragmatic one. If the games had been stopped, the terrorists would have been presented with their victory. It wouldn’t have been their originally desired ‘gold medal’ release of 200 Arab prisoners and safe passage to Germany, but stopping the games would have sent the fundamental basis of terror message that they could stop anything by duplicating the atrocity at some other time and place.