The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  And so, no longer bored by female conversation, Maria listened as Helena Sabbatini relayed the horrors which had befallen her family in England’s Shrivenham.

  Via Claudia apartment of Sergio Sabbatini, 30th of July 1985, late evening

  He was tired and he wasn’t expecting company, so the doorbell’s chime startled him. Still guessing, he opened the door to the very last person he expected to see.

  “I came here to talk with you,” said Maria Orsinni, making no move to enter.

  Sergio instantly realized that she was declaring the rules of engagement before coming any further. He smiled at her, remembering what she had said the last time she had stood where she was standing now. He was imagining Enrico at his desk, calling her father even as he spoke. “So come inside, Signorina Orsinni, and we will talk,” he replied, letting his body language signal understanding of the protocol to be observed.

  Sergio breathed in her scent as she passed him, and he was trying not to picture the scene of them urgently undressing one another the last time she had been this close to him in the apartment. She moved to the couch and sat down, placed an evening bag beside her, and crossed her legs. The couch was large enough for both of them, but, mindful of the dangers of proximity, he opted for the chair which placed him immediately opposite her. He was perfectly happy with the view. She was wearing an ensemble of black slacks which were hugging the great looking thighs and falling to gold sandals encasing the tanned bare feet, and the shimmering gold-coloured blouse was rising and falling over the magnificent breasts, and her long black hair was caressing her neck and gleaming as if encrusted with small diamonds...

  “Sergio, you’re staring at me like a hungry lion.”

  “Mi Scusi, can I offer you a drink?”

  “Perhaps later,” she replied. “Sergio, I’ve come here,” she continued briskly, “to talk to you about New York.”

  Her opening had sent his dreamy thoughts back to the bedding shop at the traffic lights, but her closing words snapped him straight back to wide awake reality.

  “New York?”

  “My uncle is taking me there,” explained Maria, “for the last ten days of August. He has told me that the high-flying Sergio Sabbatini will also be there, for the last three days of August. Yesterday, the mother of that high-flying carabiniere officer told me a little of what happened in England, over two years ago, in the place called Shrivenham. My uncle has also told me,” she added quietly, “that it is suspected by your close colleagues that whilst you are in New York, you may be going after a paedophile in an unofficial capacity.”

  Very wide awake reality, thought Sergio, straightening in his chair as he responded.

  “Now why would my colleagues suspect that? And how could such suspicion have been shared with Claudio Canizzaro?”

  “My uncle didn’t say why they would suspect that,” she answered, “but as to how the suspicion could have been shared, I would imagine,” she calmly continued, “that’s down to my uncle and your Colonel Kovac sharing the same Lodge of Il Grande Massoneria Ordine.”

  “Kovac! The Freemasons? But how can that be? How can...?”

  “How can you,” interjected Maria, “not be aware of the facts of Italian life, Sergio. Membership of the Freemasons is granted to those in positions of power and influence, and high ranking officers of the carabiniere qualify on both counts.”

  Sergio felt embarrassed now, not because he was surprised by what she had said, but because he had never put Kovac and the Freemasons together in his mind. But he was doing so now, and told himself that somebody would have proposed Kovac’s membership and someone else would have seconded it. Other carabiniere officers? Or people who sought to have an ally inside the force?

  “My uncle has also told me,” resumed Maria, “of what you have been doing to prevent the carabiniere spotlight shining on Giovanni Orsinni. A spotlight which would pick out his daughter in its beam, which the daughter appreciates not having to experience. Thank you,” she added, choosing her words with great care, “for keeping the spotlight away from this Orsinni.”

  Maria timed her pause, wanting to conceal Zola as being the source of her information, wanting Sergio to assume that it had come from her uncle through Kovac. “I have also learned of your preventing the man named Crocci from reaching my uncle, and also thank you for that.”

  Sergio’s thoughts were split between wondering who else in the Freemasons might be privy to the information emanating from Kovac, and wondering what else his visitor appeared ready to say. He wasn’t left wondering for very long.

  “We neither of us need worry about the dwarf again,” said Maria, “My father has told me that Rinaldi has been terminated by his own people. So that’s one paedophile,” she added quietly, “who won’t be destroying the lives of any more children.”

  “What about the pony-tailed man, Forza,” he reminded her, “he could still be a threat.”

  “He was just a hired hand,” she said, “we won’t be seeing him again.”

  Taking him by surprise, Maria Orsinni flowed upright from the couch and began approaching his chair with outstretched arms, bringing him to his feet as she reached him and held him in her arms. Her breath was warm against his ear as she spoke.

  “You could have destroyed my life at the Via Del Morro. But you chose not to. Others, such as your forensics officer, would have leapt at the chance to arrest the daughter of Giovanni Orsinni for slaying Rinaldi’s man, Conti. Had you chosen differently, I would not have been free these past months to achieve all that I have. I would have been alive to my accusers, but I would have been dead inside. I owe you a great debt, Sergio Sabbatini, and I intend to repay it.”

  Sergio opened his mouth to speak, but she must have sensed the intention. His lips were covered by her hand, then she released him to stand back and look straight into his eyes.

  “What is said here from now on,” she began, and he could hear the steel in her voice, “is for our ears alone and can never be shared. Capiche?”

  Sergio nodded, and she stepped in close again and smiled as she spoke.

  “Now this Sicilian girl doesn’t think that this Sicilian boy,” she was delivering light punches to his arm to emphasise her points, “would be going all the way to New York for just three days unless he knew something which would make the trip worthwhile. So this simple Sicilian girl reckons you have compelling information about your Shrivenham paedophile which is taking you to New York. Kovac told my uncle that for some unknown reason the American CIA are protecting this paedophile, so obviously the creature would be a difficult target to take down. So, Sicilian boy, do you have a plan?”

  Sergio held her penetrating stare as he shook his head. “Not what you would probably consider to be a plan,” he replied. “We want to take a look at him. We’ve never seen him.”

  “By we, you mean your brother-in-law I presume?”

  “Yes. David says he wants to be able to recognize the man he will arrest one day.”

  “How realistic a prospect is that?”

  Sergio couldn’t look at her as he answered that. “Not very,” he said quietly.

  “If you’ve never seen him,” said Maria, “how can you recognize him?”

  “His reportedly constant CIA shadow is a large, shaven-skulled black man named Melcher. So when we see him, we will see the object of the exercise.” Sergio led her to his den, and showed her the faxed material along with his own notes. When she’d finished reading, he took her through the recent conversations he’d had with David about the now dead informant, and Evelyn Calendar’s planned trip to New York. He told her about Calendar’s habit of giggling at grossly inappropriate moments; citing the informant’s wish to treat a dying relative to a Disneyland trip, and of how Calendar had responded.

  “So this Calendar creature,” said Maria quietly, “just giggled and made a
joke about Disneyland’s Mickey Mouse as he was shown a photograph of a dying boy.”

  “That’s what David’s source reported.”

  “The source he believes to have been killed,” murmured Maria, “along with these others whom he believes were used as guinea pigs for Calendar’s experiments.”

  “You’ve summarised it perfectly,” answered Sergio.

  “So why,” responded Maria, “do I have the feeling you’re not telling me everything? What was done to your sister’s child demands retribution, I understand that. But when you were speaking about this Calendar I heard something else in your voice, Sergio. What haven’t you told me?”

  Sergio turned away from her without answering her question, and made his way back into the lounge. She was at his elbow as he poured himself a drink.

  “Sergio, remember our pact,” she said quietly, “what gets said stays between us.”

  Sergio moved back to the chair and sat down, sipping the brandy as she re-occupied the couch opposite him. She was only a few years younger than him, he recalled now, but she looked older sitting there and watching him with what looked like genuine concern. He took another sip of brandy as the thought came to him that Maria Orsinni was potentially the closest to a confidante, of either gender, he had known since losing his sister. She had all the credentials, he told himself. She would know how to respect a confidence, she had lived in a secret society which had taught her that loss of such respect could result in loss of life. She knew what it took to function in a violent environment, she had been brought up in one. She had courage, but would have tasted fear. Like himself, she had needed nerve to get to where she was now in her life, and would know how a steady nerve could sometimes be difficult to find.

  “What you probably heard,” he said quietly, “was my shame.”

  “About what?” she queried, the puzzlement there in her gently voiced question.

  “I pledged to my brother-in-law that when we found the animal who had raped and mutilated my sister’s child, I would disembowel him.”

  In the brief silence which followed, Sergio forced himself to meet her gaze and saw understanding in the eyes which held his own as she spoke.

  “And now you have discovered that you are unable to fulfil that pledge, yes?”

  “Yes,” he acknowledged, suddenly mortified as he felt the moisture in his eyes.

  “Had I been you, over two years ago,” began Maria, “I would have made the same pledge. And if I were you now, I too would be unable to fulfil it.”

  Sergio stared at her, her words resonating in his skull with the sound of truth, and tried to blink away the moisture in his eyes.

  “I’m not looking,” continued Maria, firmly, “at a man who has dishonoured himself. I’m looking at a man who, over two years ago, reacted like any man worthy of the name. I’m sitting opposite a carabiniere officer who has been trained to use his brain. And that older and wiser brain has rightly told you that it would be madness to destroy your own life by attempting to fulfil a pledge made when you were two years younger and in shock.”

  “Calendar didn’t kill my sister,” blurted Sergio, the admission gate wide open now and inviting him to tell all, “She slit her own wrists and bled to death, and David and I found her.”

  “I just assumed...,” began Maria.

  “We didn’t want my mother, our mother, to know,” he explained, “so we told her Sophia had been killed alongside her child.”

  “Sergio, I would like some coffee,” said Maria, rising to her feet and stepping forward to offer her hand to him, “and I think you could probably use some too.”

  Sergio clasped her hand and rose to stand beside her. “Coffee sounds good.”

  “Tastes good too when you make it,” she replied, grinning as she linked arms with him. “You can tell me the rest as you work with the beans,” she added with another grin.

  In the kitchen galley, already feeling as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, knowing her humour had been deliberately induced to lessen the tension, Sergio prepared the coffee as he told Maria the story of his sister’s subconscious having stored the memory of a giggling sound as she had lain battered and bleeding beside the child being raped and butchered in her hearing. Maria was silent when told how Sophia had blamed herself for failing to protect her daughter, and bowed her head when Sergio described paddling in his sister’s blood as he had looked for signs of life.

  As they drank their coffee, Sergio began telling Maria about the other children.

  “Over the past two years, David has logged several child killings which bear the same hallmarks as the Shrivenham incident. Calendar has always been in the vicinity of the scenes where the crimes were committed, on proven legitimate official business, and he never travelled anywhere without close protection. Even if he had been questioned, which he never has been, he would have had a valid reason for being near every single one of those crime scenes. And he would have claimed to have been accompanied at all times.”

  “Those hallmarks,” began Maria, hesitating before asking, “were convincing enough?”

  Sergio took a deep breath and gave a detailed breakdown of what had been done to his niece, and then described what the police forensics reports had said about all the other children who had been sexually molested and butchered.

  “Mother of God,” whispered Maria.

  Sergio waited, wondering if she had heard, wondering if she would disappoint. But she had, and she didn’t.

  “If he never,” began Maria, “travelled anywhere without his close protection....”

  “...then his close protection...,” broke in Sergio, willing her to finish the sentence.

  “...would have witnessed the killings,” ended Maria.

  “So now you know all of it,” said Sergio.

  She didn’t speak, and he watched as she closed her eyes and moved her head around on her neck to ease some stiffness. She opened her eyes and shook her head to move her hair off her shoulders, and he saw how it sparkled with health under the kitchen lights.

  “All that security surrounding such a creature,” she began, “provided by two governments back to back, when put together with the American presence in Shrivenham, means a substantial investment in whatever he does professionally has obviously been sanctioned at the highest level within those two governments. To have also sanctioned the covering up of such crimes, means whatever he’s doing for them must be of monumental importance to them.”

  Sergio stared at a relaxed looking Maria Orsinni as she glanced around his kitchen, and reminded himself that she was not only beautiful, but was also very intelligent. He had been busy purging himself of the shame he had felt, relating the Shrivenham story in all its grisly detail, and had pulled her focus towards the child killings and Calendar. She had listened, but she had also read through the faxed material. He had looked at it several times; she had scanned it once and had seen the bigger picture.

  “David’s source,” qualified Sergio, “said that the experiments were connected to, and I quote, vital military and medical research into the co-relation between brain-cell monitoring technology and military technology.”

  Sergio had barely finished when she delivered her emphatic response.

  “Mind control,” said Maria. “The Russians have been experimenting with the idea for years, so it’s no big surprise to discover the British and the Americans are in the game also.”

  “And you know of such things, because...?”

  “You think we Sicilian girls are too simple to know of such things?”

  Sergio decided silence was the better part of valour, and watched as she slid off the kitchen stool and walked towards the cutlery drawer she had earlier seen him forage in for spoons. He saw her open the drawer and extract a knife, one of the very sharp ones, he noted, then she turned to him as she
spoke again.

  “So these Shrivenham experiments, if linked to the deaths detailed in David’s fax, must be experiments into the use of mind control by Britain and America.”

  Sergio remembered what he had read in the faxed material, remembered the bizarre ways in which people had been judged to have committed suicide, and suddenly thought that maybe he and David had been fortunate just to have been warned off by being deflected into other assignments. “And Calendar,” he replied, “is getting the investment and the protection because he’s convinced them he can deliver that control.”

  “I suppose,” said Maria, “it takes a monster to devise the means by which monstrous things can be done to human beings on such a scale. What I find equally monstrous is that this particular creature, this Calendar, is being protected by America’s CIA.”

  “And the British before them,” he said, wondering what she planned to do with his knife.

  “The creature,” she resumed, closing the cutlery drawer and coming back to the table, “who will be staying at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan for the last two days of August.”

  Sergio realized that she wasn’t really expecting any reply. She was merely speaking her thoughts as she arranged them in her head. Something he did all the time, but was usually interrupted by Zola.

  “The creature,” repeated Maria, now seated again at the kitchen table and waving the knife in his face, “which you, Sergio Sabbatini, and David Foster, would be unable to get anywhere near to, officially or unofficially, because of that protection.”

  “We could get near enough to memorise the face and maybe even photograph it,” he said, “What, exactly,” he asked, “do you plan on doing with that knife?”

  “I plan on drawing blood,” she replied.

  Sergio stared into Maria Orsinni’s deadly serious looking face and saw another knife in Conti’s throat, and her lethal intent upon a rooftop terrace, and remembered what Zola had told him about her encounter with Busoni.