The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  “The man needs a wife,” said Graziella, “He has no dress sense.”

  Maria was once more experiencing the feeling of mixed emotions. Renewed surprise and heartfelt appreciation were two of those emotions. She had never imagined Tanaka investing so much of his time with a man who, up until now, had just been a name on a card he had given her. She also realized that Stanhope’s name and number must have been given to Tanaka by one of his own contacts, and must have been accompanied by a recommendation from someone whose judgement he would have trusted to be sound. Otherwise, she knew, he would never have made contact with Stanhope and discussed her with someone he had never met. Yet despite that probable recommendation, he had taken it upon himself to spend the time necessary to build a rapport with Stanhope and personally take the measure of the man. Tanaka had been determined to ensure that the direction he would be pointing her towards was one in which she would be appreciated for her skills. She swallowed the lump in her throat; she missed Tanaka dearly.

  The third, fourth and fifth emotions preoccupying her currently, were the combined ones of curiosity, perplexity, and gladness. She was inexplicably curious as to whether the financier Kennedy was married, and perplexed as to why she should be curious, and strangely glad that the man whom she reckoned was in his late thirties had not been wearing a wedding band. She concealed all of these emotions behind the question to her uncle.

  “What do you know about the kidnappers?”

  Canizzaro’s hesitation was slight, but sufficient for Maria to guess that Graziella wasn’t privy to such information and that her uncle would reply accordingly. She was right.

  “Enough to know that they are serious people,” he replied, “but Maria, my child, we are in danger here of upsetting Graziella by not affording her delicious meal the attention it deserves.”

  “Mario Corolla would certainly give this his attention,” said Maria, winking at her uncle.

  “His pleasure would be such,” responded Canizzaro, gleefully playing along as he added, “he would imagine he had passed over, since he considers Graziella to be a cook made in heaven.”

  “That man needs to eat less, not more,” retorted Graziella, but she was smiling as she spoke.

  “So, Maria, what have you learned from your first solo assignment?” Canizzaro suddenly asked.

  Maria was momentarily thrown by her uncle’s question, which had been put to her at a time when she had least expected it, and posed whilst she was still thinking about the man with eyes which she remembered as being green in colour. In her mind’s eye she saw Stanhope again, remembering how quick she had been to label him as the nervous type, knowing now she had misjudged him, knowing nerves of steel were required to negotiate with kidnappers She pictured Rosso’s public face, concealing the private man behind it, giving no hint of the crimes he had committed. She recalled Zola, who had obviously been afraid to get too close to Busoni, who had hidden his fear to prevent her going inside the villa alone. She thought of her own painstaking method to project the Pellegrino persona.

  “I’ve learned,” she replied, “that a disguise can take many forms.”

  Maria saw Canizzaro’s face register his understanding of her reply, and then saw that understanding turn to puzzlement when Graziella made her contribution.

  “And you have also learned,” said the cook made in heaven, “that Cupid carries more than one arrow for that bow of his.”

  On the homeward journey to his Via Claudia apartment, over-riding the music being piped through his car radio, Sergio Sabbatini could still hear Maria Orsinni’s voice reminding him of the decisive part she had played in delivering a major victory for himself and his squad. A part which, in order to save the life of Gianfranco Zola, had required her to kill again. Sergio sighed as he recalled now Zola’s account of the affair. Despite his sergeant’s willingness to collude in keeping her out of it, concealment of the truth had not been a viable option. So Kovac had been fully briefed, and had sanctioned carabiniere acceptance of the scenario she had presented them with. But he had done so with cautionary words to his fellow officer.

  “The prize always comes with a price, Sergio, and this one we can afford. But you must be careful to prevent your connection to the Orsinni woman resulting in a higher price. One which might be too high for you to pay.”

  With an effort of will, Sergio pushed aside the memory of Kovac’s words and turned his mind to the call he’d taken from his brother-in-law earlier today. He was impatient to see if the fax would explain David Foster’s tone of urgency. But he was forced to stop at traffic lights positioned on a corner housing a bedding shop, and found himself looking at beds and thinking of Maria Orsinni. The lights changed to green and he was on the move again, but his thoughts were still stuck on Maria Orsinni. Sergio chose another gear-change and a burst of speed, but his thoughts on England’s Shrivenham, and his tense sounding brother-in-law, and urgent faxes, were still being overtaken by thoughts of Maria Orsinni.

  Sergio reached his Via Claudia apartment building at the same time as he reached the inescapable conclusion. He was always thinking about Maria Orsinni. He passed the security desk on the way to the elevator, and acknowledged Enrico’s friendly nod whilst wondering if he was doing so to the man who had told Giovanni Orsinni that his daughter had been here. Finally opening his apartment door, he was reminded of what had transpired on its threshold on the night he had been unable to forget since. Inside, a single glance to where the fax machine rested, told him David Foster’s material had arrived. He shed his jacket and poured himself a drink before retrieving the message sheets from the machine. He sat down in his den to read what David Foster had sent him.

  One hour later, Sergio finished his bachelor meal in concert with his third careful reading of the faxed material sent by David Foster. He pushed his plate aside, and sat back to look at the notes he had made and to think about why his brother-in-law had wanted him to read about four dead men. Two of them had died in 1984, the first of those in March, the second in November. In March, Roger Hill, a 49year-old radar designer and draughtsman employed by Marconi Space and Defence Systems, had died from a shotgun blast in his home. The coroner had returned a verdict of suicide. In November, Jonathan Wash, a 29year-old digital communications expert who had worked at a secret research centre belonging to British Telecom, had died as a result of falling from a hotel room balcony in West Africa. Prior to his death, Wash had apparently expressed fears that his life was in danger. The coroner had recorded an open verdict.

  Two of them had died this year, one in February, the other in April. In February, 24year-old Vimal Dajibhai, a computer software engineer with Marconi Space and Defence Systems, had fallen 240ft to his death from the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. The police report had mentioned a needle-sized puncture mark on his left buttock, later attributed to the fall. According to friends, the man had reportedly been looking forward to starting a new job. At the time of his death he had been one week away from completing his contract with Marconi. The coroner had recorded an open verdict.

  Sergio wondered what Zola would have made of the notes on the April death, because they read like something from a far-fetched crime novel. Arshad Sharif, a 26year-old satellite systems expert, had apparently died in his car as a result of placing a ligature around his neck, tying the other end to a tree, and driving off in his car with the accelerator pedal jammed down. The coroner had returned a verdict of suicide.

  Sergio scanned the fax sheets again, comparing them with the notes he had made, and saw that he had missed something. Sharif had lived in Middlesex, but had died in Bristol. The fax sheets also showed that Arshad Sharif had lived near to Vimal Dajibhai, the man who had apparently thrown himself from a 240ft bridge in Bristol. Sergio shook his head and shuffled together the original fax material and his notes. Whilst he thought it was all very intriguing, and the April ’85 death in particular was bizarre, he
couldn’t understand why this missive had been referred to as ‘Shrivenham material.’ He rose from the table to stretch his legs and pour himself a second glass of red wine as he continued to ponder David Foster’s reason for not just sending the fax, but connecting it to Shrivenham and wanting to talk about it. Sergio frowned with the definitive thought that David would only have connected it to Shrivenham if a connection did in fact exist. He began thinking about connections. Reading about suspicious deaths and English bridges had made him think about Claudio Canizzaro and the Vatican. It had reminded him that two years had elapsed since Roberto Calvi, the Italian financier headlined by newspapers as ‘God’s Banker’ had been found hanging under London’s Blackfriars bridge with fifteen thousand dollars and bricks in his pockets. The London coroner had returned an open verdict, but the Sicilian Mafia had been suspected of murder and the Vatican had acknowledged their ‘moral involvement’ with a two hundred and forty-one million dollars settlement to creditors.

  Sergio dismissed this connection. This couldn’t be about Vatican finances and Canizzaro, David would have used official channels to talk about that. And besides, whilst the Carabiniere knew that he moved money around for the Vatican, Canizzaro was no Calvi. Marconi Space and Defence Systems was another obvious connection to two of the deaths, and of course all four of the deceased had apparently been experts in their chosen fields of technology. Sergio frowned again, whilst those connections would have aroused his own suspicions had he been investigating these deaths, and the Sharif method of committing suicide defied belief, he still couldn’t see the connection to Shrivenham.

  Sergio checked his watch and saw he had a bit of time before he was scheduled to receive the follow-up call from David Foster. He decided to use it by going through the case notes he had brought home with him. Only the other day, he was reminded now, his increasingly disrespectful sergeant had told him privately, ‘If you ever lavished as much attention on Maria Orsinni as you do on your case files, then your bachelor days would be over’. Sergio smiled now at the memory, his sergeant was a breath of fresh air in every working day, and the fact that Zola had joked about a private life whilst himself leaving the office with his own home-bound burden of paperwork was one of the reasons the new squad had been so successful.

  ‘Follow the money’, had been the squad’s motto from day one. Organized crime had moved on since the days when Chicago’s Capone had been taken out of circulation for tax evasion, and the Sicilian Mafia, led by the Bartalucci family, were never going to be brought down by such a simple mechanism. They were protected by top-flight accountants and financiers who could perform more tricks with dirty money than any magician ever could. But financial magicians, legal or otherwise, still needed to perform their tricks in the commercial arena. Dirty money could be made to disappear, but it still had to re-appear looking clean and defying you to guess where it had been.

  Sergio was good at guessing. Capitano Sabbatini was now acknowledged to be a permanent stone in the Bartalucci shoe. But something more than just skill and patience was required to source the shell companies within shell companies, track deflective signatures to yet more faceless signatures, devise the means by which names finally emerged, and trick those names into leading you to the seemingly respectable businesses fronting organized crime.

  Sergio smiled as he made a note on a case file and thought about guesswork. So far the squad’s guesswork had been effective, but, as his irreverent sergeant was wont to remind people, ‘It takes a cunning Sicilian Volpe to catch ever alert Mafia chickens’. Sergio smiled again, only Zola would have the nerve to compare the squad captain to a cunning fox.

  Alone in his apartment, free from scrutiny, Sergio’s grin now was more wolf than fox, because he had been devious and crafty, he had bent all the rules, but he was fighting people who had no respect for rules other than their own. He felt no remorse about his methods, Kovac would have disapproved had he known about them, but the Colonel had been happy to share in the results. Some of the Bartalucci front men were already behind bars, and others would follow. He began putting away the case notes in his briefcase, thinking about fighting a ruthless enemy with paperwork and a brain, thinking about the alternatives, thinking about Maria Orsinni and remembering how she had looked on a rooftop terrace, thinking about what Canizzaro had finally told him regarding the intended future use of her skills, thinking about the ways by which she would probably deal with some of the people he was up against now.

  Sergio checked his watch, and his telephone rang as if cued. The line from London was clear of interference, and David foster’s voice in his ear wasted no time at all on preamble.

  “Have you read it?”

  “Of course”, replied Sergio, surprised by the abruptness of the question, “But I don’t see any connection to Shrivenham.”

  “You will, Sergio, you will, just listen to me first.”

  Sergio hadn’t heard his brother-in-law sound so wound up since the terrible days they had spent together in Shrivenham. The voice was terse in his ear again.

  “The RMCS hierarchy at Shrivenham have been paying selected people large sums of money to take part in secret experiments. My source told me that these experiments are ongoing and are expected to involve many subjects prior to being completed sometime in 1987. My source also told me that these experiments are connected to, and I quote, vital military and medical research into the co-relation between brain-cell monitoring technology and military technology. The bank accounts of the people you’ve been reading about each received a large deposit prior to all four men seemingly dropping out of sight for several days. On the same day each of them reappeared to take up their individual lives, a second deposit was paid into their accounts.”

  The voice stopped, and only David’s breathing confirmed the man was still there. Sergio wasn’t quite sure which question he should ask first. ‘Follow the money’ thought-flashed.

  “You said, large sums of money?”

  “The two deposits each of them received totalled twenty thousand pounds.”

  “A substantial sum”, responded Sergio, “for such a short period of their time.”

  “More than a research programme sponsored by the British government would ever pay.”

  “But the Americans would?”

  “The Americans are footing the bill for a big hush-hush military experiment. That’s the talk down at Shrivenham’s local pub.”

  “David, you sound... I don’t know... pretty tense... and upset. You have done since we began this conversation. Are you officially investigating these deaths? Are you asking me to help you in some way? When you rang me at the office and said you were sending me Shrivenham material, I was expecting something else. But if I can help you I will, of course. What does your source say about the deaths? Can you tell me anything about your source?”

  Sergio heard his brother-in-law’s sigh travel down the line before he responded.

  “No official investigation is being conducted into any of the deaths. Everything I’ve found out about them was done on my own time. Listen, I’m sorry about how I sound, Sergio.”

  “No, that’s okay”, said Sergio, still wondering why all this was being brought to his attention.

  “I should have told you sooner, Sergio”, resumed David, “I should have consulted you. I almost did when we spoke a few months ago, but you were juggling a few plates yourself then as I recall, so I decided not to bother you. I also really wanted to put more of the pieces together before presenting this to you. And getting the bank details wasn’t easy, I had to use a lot of official muscle to do that and I’ve probably woken up those people who warned us both off Shrivenham three years ago.”

  Sergio’s ears pricked up at David’s last words. “So what”, he began, slowly phrasing the question, “does this have to do with our Shrivenham problem?”

  “My source was just a voice on the phone and
we only spoke once”, responded David, seemingly ignoring Sergio’s question. “He must have known about me when I lived there, because he said he had spoken to Sophia once and she had been nice to him. He obviously knew I was at New Scotland Yard, but that was never a secret, and he gave me his name but refused to meet with me. He told me about the experiments, and the money, and he gave me names. But he didn’t tell me anything about the deaths, and he’s not likely to do so now either because I just got back from a private meeting with Chief Inspector Duggan. My source is lying in an Oxfordshire morgue.”

  Another silence followed and Sergio allowed it to run this time, quickly gathering his thoughts. David obviously wanted to feed him information piecemeal, he was clearly building up to something related to their past, and he sensed the man was willing him to find the right words in the right order.

  “Was his death accidental?”

  “He was found at the foot of stairs in his Shrivenham flat with a broken neck. Our old adversary, Duggan, is now a friend of mine. He unofficially contacted me because he knows I’m interested in all things RMCS. I recognized the name of my source, of course, and Duggan says it fits the description of the man in the morgue. And yes, Oxford CID are writing it up as an accident.”

  “But you don’t think it was?”

  “No, I don’t. Neither do I think those four others were suicides.”

  “Do you think the deaths are somehow linked to these experiments? You said these people had been selected. Were they selected for their technical expertise, do you think?”

  “Given the objective of the experiments, professional expertise in specific fields would be an obvious element of the selection criteria. And my gut instinct tells me the deaths are linked to the experiments. How and why they could be linked, I have no idea.”