The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  The Israeli had lost a brother to the Munich massacre. But back then all of the dead Jews had been looked upon as brothers or sisters to a nation in mourning, and the terrorists had aroused the wrath of those who protected that nation. The Israeli had been one of those protectors, before he had opted for a more financially lucrative private practice. In those days he had been one of the members of Mossad’s ‘Metsada’, the Special Operations Division which dealt with assassination, paramilitary operations, sabotage, and psychological warfare.

  The man now gathering up his books and papers from the rooftop table had been a member of one of the assassination squads which had hunted down those deemed to have been responsible for the Munich massacre. He had spent a month stalking two of those terrorists. Both of them had been high-profile members of the PLO and difficult targets to take down. One of them had even been a cousin of Yasser Arafat himself, and the other had also been a high ranking official.

  The Israeli’s thoughts continued as he began making his way to the elevator which would take him to his floor. The Mossad had trained him and had given him the deadly skills which he had added to over the years, but even before that he had possessed the skill of patience. And all those years ago he had used that patience to find the way which had enabled him to successfully penetrate enemy defences without being seen. And he had used only one of his deadly skills to take his PLO targets down. He reminded himself now that despite his currently unsolved problem, he still had the patience and was now even more deadly.

  In the sanctity of his hotel room, the Israeli assassin shed his jacket and stripped off the white clerical collar. He spent some time in the en-suite bathroom before re-emerging as a thinner-faced individual without the cheek-pads he had temporarily removed. He kicked off his shoes, selected a soft drink from the mini-bar, picked up the TV’s remote and threw it on the bed, sat down in the chair beside the bed and poured the drink whilst switching his thoughts from the past to his present deliberations regarding entirely different targets. Different targets, but, for equally different reasons, still challenging ones.

  The Israeli sipped the orange juice as his fresh thoughts poured through his mind. He had used two of his three weeks here to establish his cover and observe the routines of both Canizzaro and the Orsinni woman. Each of them were vulnerable to solo strikes at several locations, but he had decided to take them down at the same time. There were two locations where he could do that. This third week had mainly been taken up by visiting the known contacts who could supply whatever materials he would finally choose to use.

  Getting close to the targets would not be a problem, there were no bodyguards to contend with. If he chose to get close. Taking down the targets wasn’t really the problem; that part promised to be embarrassingly simple. The tricky part, the part which had been testing his patience, was selecting the method by which potentially serious repercussions for Rinaldi could also be eliminated. The dwarf was paying a great deal of money, so devising an elegant way to justify his fee was the challenge.

  The Israeli used the remote to activate the television, and found himself watching a news item concerning the captioned ‘An American Parish in Rome’. On the screen now was a shot of the church named Santa Susanna and the commentator was running through its history.

  ‘Decades ago, the church of Santa Susanna was kick-started towards its current status of an American parish in Rome by pushy disciples of a New York missionary order. But it took many more years before the necessary papal support was gained to confirm it as the church of the American community in Rome. Last month the city’s fire brigade received an anonymous call reporting serious problems with Santa Susanna’s ceiling. The fire brigade carried out an inspection, and ordered that the church be closed down. Santa Susanna remains closed as we report to you now, but aggrieved American parishioners say that the sag in the church ceiling has been there for a long time and posed no threat whatsoever to their congregation. A brigade spokesman told us that there is nothing to substantiate claims that neighbouring Cistercian Nuns made the anonymous call which has robbed the American community in Rome of its church. Moving on now to....’

  The Israeli assassin used the remote to kill the television and smiled with the thought, ‘to those who wait, comes that which others rush to miss.’ He rose from the chair and began slowly pacing up and down the available floor-space with his faster moving thoughts. Triggered by the televised news item, the words fired off repeatedly in his mind, ‘Anonymous, Fire Brigade, New York... Anonymous, Fire Brigade, New York,’ until three of the words became the foundation stones of a plan. He stopped pacing to raid the mini-bar again, re-filled his glass, and sat back down to calmly marshal his thoughts.

  The Orsinni woman’s father was the known-to-be-ex-consigliere of the Bartalucci family. If the carabiniere were to receive an anonymous call warning of the impending assassination of Canizzaro, and if that caller hinted at Bartalucci involvement, and let slip something which would later point a carabiniere finger at Giovanni Orsinni, then, in the aftermath of the Vatican advisor’s demise, the heat and the headlines would be focused well away from the New York based Rinaldi. Giovanni Orsinni would be questioned, the loss of his daughter would guarantee that anyway, and the carabiniere would leap at the chance to implicate him.

  The Israeli rose again from his chair, and began preparing for bed as his thoughts ran on. The carabiniere would probably tape incoming calls. His own Italian was fluent, but the voice would be wrong. One of his indigenous contacts would make the caller sound authentic. Which just left the actual double-assassination itself. Which needed to be spectacular in order to prevent the carabiniere throwing a blanket over publicity. Which needed to cause outrage to galvanize the carabiniere into action. Which needed to look like something the Mafia would do.

  Apart from the special hair-net, worn to prevent the black dye appearing on his pillow, the Israeli slept naked by choice and slipped into bed now unfettered by garments and indecision. His problem had been solved, and the decision had been made regarding the method of execution and his materials of choice. He had decided that he would use an explosive device.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Monkey

  New York City, Manhattan’s Lower East Side, beginning of May, 1985

  The small and wiry looking man who had been commissioned by Wan Cheng-Jian to take the life of Carmine Forza, had firstly been faced with the challenge of getting close enough to do the job. Concealing his obvious handicap had been the problem. Whilst his height wouldn’t raise suspicion, or become an incriminating feature of witnessed identification, his face was a problem. Li Sun-Lee’s face was unmistakeably that of a Chinese man.

  He had chosen a replacement face which complimented his favoured martial art of ‘Monkey Boxing’, and, along with the brightly coloured facial make-up, had covered his body with the costume of a clown. He stood now on the Lower East Side’s Rivington Street, within view of New York’s famous ‘Economy Candy’ shop. He was surrounded by children scrabbling to take one of the helium balloons he was distributing free of charge, whilst amusing them with the strange and funny facial contortions which were a distraction tool of ‘Monkey’ fighting.

  Li Sun-Lee was waiting for Carmine Forza to emerge from the candy shop.

  Luigi Rinaldi loved candy. He was crazy about candy; particularly the varieties offered by the Economy Candy shop. If he had to choose between pickles and candy, he knew he would be in a bind. He knew that Irving Berlin, the dead composer guy who had grown up here, had once said that ‘Everybody ought to have a little Lower East Side in their life.’ Rinaldi liked that sentiment, but could have told Berlin that everybody oughta’ have a little candy in their life as well.

  Carmine wasn’t too crazy about candy, he was more interested in the dame behind the counter giving him the ‘come to bed and give me babies’ look. ‘Go figure how a dame could be turned on by a scary look
ing guy like Carmine,’ thought Rinaldi, giving his bodyguard the sign that he was ready to leave. Carmine also wasn’t too crazy about carrying the bags of candy. He was still thinking about candy when they stepped outside and all hell broke loose.

  Luigi Rinaldi saw things on the street very quickly go from normal New York crazy, to something that looked like jungle madness. Cheered on by a bunch of kids, a little guy in a clown’s costume was somersaulting his way real fast towards where he and Carmine were. Suddenly the little guy left the ground completely and the clown became a flying creature with the screwed up screeching face of Tarzan’s chimp, and for a split second Rinaldi saw savagely bared teeth skin-depth distance from Carmine’s neck. And then everything happened so fast, Rinaldi wasn’t sure what was going down before his eyes.

  Carmine Forza had encouraged the woman’s attention inside the shop. Enough to amuse himself. Enough to distract him. Enough to compound his mistake by agreeing to carry the bags of candy. Enough to interfere with his concentration. Enough to allow the teeth of the clown who had become the monkey to be close to tasting his carotid artery.

  Forza’s physical reaction time could probably never have been calculated, and his mental speed was even faster. In a micro-second his brain had categorised the fighting style and his body had made the subtle shifts to take on the counter-attacking form of the vicious and deadly Northern Praying Mantis. Physically, the speed of his movements was inestimable and would only have been followed by a martial artist of equally advanced level. Three of those movements were seemingly simultaneous, and dramatically awesome in effect.

  A head-butt smashed a monkey’s teeth and closed its eyes and shattered its nose-bones, a Chi-powered knuckle-strike to a monkey’s forearm shocked the creature’s radial nerve and induced pain which paralyzed, and the powerful forearm of a Northern Praying Mantis crushed a monkey’s ribcage and drove bone into its lungs. But the monkey still didn’t touch the ground.

  Rinaldi watched in amazement as the clown’s crumpled and lifeless form was held under one arm of his bodyguard, and Forza’s spooky voice made Rinaldi shiver.

  “We’ll take him in the car and drop him off somewhere.”

  “Who the fuck is he?” managed Rinaldi.

  “Some Chink’s dead monkey,” growled Carmine Forza, “guess which Chink.”

  The flurry of action, briefly witnessed by children holding helium balloons and adult passers-by in a hurry to reach more important things, had been too fast for any of them to comprehend its violent nature. What some of the adults had seen was a funny little clown jump into the arms of the bigger man with a pony-tail hairstyle. What other adults would have seen was the pony-tailed man holding underarm what might have been the crumpled figure of a dummy in a clown’s costume. At that stage, the balloon-holding children had figured the clown was probably tired out after his game with the big guy. Those children had lost interest in any case, they now had other things demanding their attention.

  Stunned by Forza’s reply, Luigi Rinaldi could only watch as the bunch of kids fought over the bags of candy which had split open to scatter their contents over the sidewalk. ‘A fucking beef with the Hip-Sing Tong, I could do without,’ was his unhappy thought. He glanced around, unsurprised at the lack of attention being paid to his bodyguard who was propping up the clown in the custom-built back seat of the car. ‘Now I gotta’ give up my seat to the clown who’s gonna’ stink out the car,’ was his second unhappy thought.

  Rinaldi sat in the front passenger seat, staring directly at the glove compartment, furious that he was being made to feel like a child in his own stinking car.

  “This is about the Chink you put down in Rome. It’s about saving face, right?”

  “No doubt about that,” Forza calmly replied, “but it’s also a smoke-screen.”

  “What the fuck do you mean?”

  “Wan Cheng-Jian knew his monkey would never defeat me. What he really wants is the six children his Tong paid for but haven’t received yet. So if you throw them eight new ones, then he can tell his council that face has been saved and a handsome profit has been made.”

  Rinaldi thought about that. He had already used the dough he had taken from the Tong leader, and if giving the bastard eight kids for their sex market would prevent a costly war....

  “Okay, Carmine, set it up,” ordered the dwarf, opening and closing the glove compartment with a grunt of disappointment. ‘No fucking candy,’ was his closing unhappy thought.

  Carmine Forza had been trained in evasion techniques designed to counter any attacks made whilst in a moving car. He didn’t really expect anything else to happen after the monkey thing, but he wasn’t about to lose concentration again. He didn’t respond to the dwarf’s command, a response wasn’t necessary and he had other things on his mind. The CIA had shown him the door after the torture thing. They had benefited from the result, but had rushed to distance themselves from the method by which it had been obtained. The Forza future had looked bleak, he reminded himself now, until a friend in ‘New York’s Finest’ and the fickle finger of fate had pointed him in the direction of the dwarf mobster seated beside him now looking pissed off. The money had been the magnet which had pulled him deeper into Rinaldi’s world. That and what the CIA analysts had called ‘A broken moral compass.’

  The car was brought to a halt beside some waste-ground in the Bowery district, and the custom-built seat was relieved of its burden. The monkey was dumped unseen in a trash-can, and Carmine Forza unhurriedly re-positioned himself behind the wheel of the car containing the front seat passenger who would shortly become his ex-employer.

  The financial bond between himself and Rinaldi would soon be broken. He now had enough money to buy a stake in Tanzen Kimoto’s dojo. Maybe even enough to persuade the Japanese master to make it a partnership. He glanced to his side, knowing his passenger would be even more pissed off when he heard the news.

  The car was moving through Chinatown when he thought of the monkey, and of what could have happened if the Forza reflexes had been a split second slower. Another thought occurred to him. This was the Chinese year of the Ox and he recalled a dictionary telling him the name specifically applied to a castrated male of the bovine species.

  A thoughtful looking Carmine Forza brought the car to a halt outside Luigi Rinaldi’s Lower East Side apartment. He emerged from the car with a smile on his face. He was wondering how the man who had sent the monkey would feel about being personally castrated.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Proverbs

  Rome, Italy, May 1985

  ‘A child’s life is like a piece of paper upon which every passer-by leaves a mark.’

  Wan Lai-Tang was recalling to mind the Chinese proverb as he watched Maria Orsinni preparing to fight six opponents in his dojo. He was thinking about the number of people who had already left their mark on his remarkable student.

  As a lifelong practitioner of those martial arts founded in Taoist beliefs, it was the woman’s mother who was commanding pride of place in his mind. For it had been within the mother’s womb that Maria Orsinni had been energised by her pre-birth Chi. That she had been born with knowledge had been evident to him from their first days together, and during the past months she had continued to impress with her natural instinct for physical combat. As was witnessed now by the ways in which technically she was doing some things wrong, but was still defeating more experienced opponents who were doing everything right.

  The father had also naturally left his mark. The sometimes hot, sometimes cold Sicilian blood flowing through Maria Orsinni’s veins was testament to that. She had already killed, and would likely do so again, but, unlike the father, she had tempered the gene of ruthlessness with a more worthy moral code. This had strengthened her mental well-being.

  The brother had left his mark. By emulating the male ego’s pursuit of a physically strong and heal
thy body, the energy stemming from Maria Orsinni’s post-birth Chi had been positively channelled from an early age in the gymnasium provided by their father.

  Tanaka had left his mark. Presented with a natural-born-warrior, over a seven year period of sustained teaching he had passed on to Maria Orsinni levels of martial arts knowledge and skills which should have been beyond her capacity to absorb. That she had successfully done so was again being witnessed by the way she had just defeated six opponents using the deft footwork and paralyzing open-palm strikes he had introduced her to barely two weeks ago.

  ‘A Jade stone is useless before it is processed; a man is good for nothing until he is educated.’

  Wan Lai-Tang was reminded of this second Chinese proverb as he watched Maria Orsinni respectfully bowing to the older and highly skilled students who had just failed to successfully put her down on the mat. She was conversing with one of them, using passably fluent French.

  Canizzaro was still making his mark; and not only with the dojo’s now favourite student. In the early days, the Vatican advisor and proud uncle had visited the dojo. He had brought with him a gift for Jasmine, which had delighted the daughter and confused the father. And a smiling Canizzaro had made him laugh, which had amazed Jasmine, when he had bowed and said that he had already given Wan Lai-Tang the gift of his niece to work with. Canizzaro had shown great respect for the abilities and aspirations of his niece, and had demonstrated his awareness of the important role which Wan Lai-Tang’s dojo would be playing in her martial arts development. He had done so by discussing the education programme planned for his niece, and had sought to ensure it wouldn’t clash with her martial arts programme. ‘We are both feeding the same mind and body,’ Canizzaro had said, ‘but with different foods. By speaking with you, I seek to help you provide our Maria with a well-balanced diet.’