The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  “I’m aware,” she carefully began, “of the importance a faction of your government attaches to him. I’m also aware of the fact that he has been conducting experiments on human beings at Shrivenham. Experiments connected to... and I quote here... vital military and medical research into the co-relation between brain-cell monitoring technology and military technology.”

  Maria could see more than just surprise registering in the brown eyes, and prefaced her next words with a smile, “I could have just said mind control, but I wanted to impress you.”

  “That information is classified top secret,” responded Albright. “How the hell did you get it?”

  “By way of my unimpeachable source,” replied Maria, watching him compress his lips to suppress his first response. She saw the brown eyes measuring her, saw his quick glance towards the family photograph on the desk, saw the decision made before his lips relaxed and he opened his mouth to speak.

  “The ex-colleague I spoke to on the phone confirms that a protection detail of six men will check in to the Plaza hotel with their charge at twelve noon on the 30th of this month. Your man will apparently be sharing a room with one of those agents, a guy named Melcher, whom I have met, and who is one nasty piece of work. Melcher, and your man, will be sharing room 408.”

  Maria smiled as she rose to her feet and prepared to shake hands with the man, “Grazie, Signore Albright, I will leave you in peace now.”

  “I may be coming with you,” said Albright, “when you go to the Plaza.”

  Her movement instantly halted, completely surprised, knowing she hadn’t misheard the man but struggling to comprehend, Maria was still staring at Albright when he spoke again.

  “Sit down, young lady, I’m not finished yet. I keep referring to you as young lady, and my eyes certainly confirm that you are young,” he paused, and those brown eyes were looking at her with respect as he continued, “but Doyle was the other person I spoke to when I left you in here, and he gave me an edited version of your Chinatown manipulations. Along with a second- hand account of your subsequent actions at Kimoto’s dojo.”

  Maria remained standing, now processing what Albright was saying and wondering why he was saying it, and wondering also just how much more Doyle may have revealed.

  “When I add all that,” continued Albright, “to the fact that you’re here now looking as innocent as a new-born baby, appearing to be as harmless as a catwalk model, and carrying stuff in your head that only people in high places, with presumed sound judgement, could have imparted to your young self, then I have to conclude that Maria Orsinni is one very capable operator.”

  Maria stood, not feeling capable at all, wondering where all this was going.

  “I’m getting a crick in my neck,” said Albright, “would you please sit down.”

  Maria sat, as requested; thinking that for a second, there, he’d sounded like her uncle.

  “But just how do you think,” resumed Albright, his tone devoid of rancour, “you can circumvent a highly trained protection team to reach your man?”

  “I’m still working on that,” replied Maria, seeing no reason to lie.

  “Pin your ears back,” said Albright, “I’m about to ask you what we New Yorkers call the sixty-four thousand dollar question. But before I do, you should know that Harry Albright doesn’t subscribe to any country conducting mind control experiments on its citizens. So, like I already told you, I won’t lose any sleep if Calendar is lost to the programme, and he’ll just be replaced by some other scientist anyway. Here’s something else to think about before I ask the big question. The really good people, the ones with integrity, the ones who know the difference between right and wrong, the ones who wouldn’t have sanctioned the Shrivenham programme if they had been consulted, are the ones who comprise the majority of my country’s government and its Central Intelligence Agency. Those are the ones who will also suffer from the fallout of a possible near-future event at the Plaza hotel going wrong.”

  Maria stared at Albright, with Tanaka’s voice in her head: The weak have one weapon; the errors of those who think they are strong. She was angry with herself. Only yesterday, she had misjudged Yo Cheng Hok; failing to consider that the Triad leader’s professionalism would encompass his knowledge of a wider underworld. She hadn’t ranked him equal to her father who had made it his business to know everyone, had thought of Giovanni Orsinni, and herself by association, as being stronger. For several days she had been thinking about the CIA; thinking about the CIA’s despicable act of protecting a monster; thinking about ways to defeat... the CIA. The acronym had blinded her to the fact that it stood for an organisation with thousands of members, and they couldn’t all be protecting monsters. She could hear Canizzaro’s voice in her head now;... the difference between ruthless but good... and ruthless but evil. Today, she had come here despising the faceless CIA, an entity. Harry Albright’s words had made her realize the error of her ways, and his words were still coming at her.

  “So this Calendar creature,” continued Albright, “rabid dog though he may be, can’t just be shot down in such a public place as the Plaza hotel. So my sixty-four thousand dollar question is this: Even if you can get close to him, are you good enough to make it look like an accident?”

  Maria’s thoughts raced. Albright’s short homily and the rest of his words were still resonating in her mind. And now this! So far, all her focus had been on getting to the target; not on the method of taking him down. She hadn’t even considered an accident. Up until listening to Albright, she hadn’t had any reason to do so. She could hear Tanaka’s voice in her head again; A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.“Why is it called,” she began, smiling to mask her inner turmoil, “the sixty-four thousand dollar question? Why not a million?”

  “You’re being evasive,” retorted Albright.

  “I’m being patient,” responded Maria, “I’m waiting to hear why you said you may be coming with me to the Plaza hotel.”

  Albright’s facial expression was grim as he replied, “Can’t really blame you for being evasive. You’ll be even more so when you hear this. The guy I spoke to told me that on the evening of the 30th, the Plaza hotel is hosting a lecture in their Terrace Room for some European scientists. The guest speaker is a Russian scientist named Krenkov, but Calendar has been invited to speak about advances in the field of Telemetry. The CIA have reserved the entire fourth floor, obviously adding to your problem. Theo Welbeck is the man I spoke to and he leads the six who check in at noon, and his room will be next to Calendars’. When the lecture ends, so too does his responsibility for Calendar’s safety. Theo hands him over to someone else, and, from what I can gather, he won’t be sorry to do so. Seems he’s had problems with Melcher. Theo has invited me to evening drinks with the scientists, for old time’s sake he said, but I think old Theo just wants to unload his woes on a former colleague who doesn’t have any axe to grind. He told me I could bring a guest.”

  “You would present me as... your guest?”

  “Unless, Signorina Orsinni, you can come up with a better idea. Face it, you wouldn’t get near Calendar without me.”

  “Why would you choose to do this?”

  Maria saw Albright’s glance towards the displays of his past achievements, and his tone was bitter when he replied to her question.

  “I should have had the guts to stop the bastard myself when I had the chance. I can’t look at these walls anymore without telling myself that.”

  Maria watched him finger the frame holding the photograph of his family as he continued, “Without asking myself how many children I might have saved had I done the right thing. I allowed myself to follow the company line, even when I knew damned well that line was more than just crooked. I chickened out on my watch.”

  Maria saw the brown eyes return to look directly into her o
wn as he went on, “Now you turn up, and if I was the romantic type I could kid myself that you were summoned by my conscience. Who knows, maybe I’ll feel better about myself if I can help you by getting you close to enough to do what you have to do.”

  Maria heard the pragmatism in Albright’s closing words.

  “But I don’t want that bastard to also be responsible for me losing what I’ve got left. So, here’s the deal, Maria Orsinni. If you can’t come up with an answer to the sixty-four thousand dollar question that gets the job done for you, and gets us both out of the Plaza hotel clear and clean, then we won’t be going anywhere together.”

  Maria held his stare and didn’t flinch at his ultimatum. Having seen for herself the walls displaying the past of a successful career CIA officer, having heard the professionalism embedded in all his earlier words, she knew that Albright was no romantic. He had been a warrior in his own world, a world which could punish mistakes in the field with death, a world with no healthy place for fools, and he had survived because he was, to paraphrase his own description of herself, ‘a very capable operator.’ He was also a realist. Protecting himself from fallout was second nature to him. She would have expected nothing less.

  “I’ll need some time to prepare my answer,” she replied, “I can reach you here?”

  “I’ll be here,” he replied, “and the clock will be ticking.”

  By the time she had gathered up Tony and settled herself behind him in the taxi, Maria’s watch was telling her that it was one fifteen. She was hungry, but she knew where she would be having lunch.

  “I need to get to the Plaza hotel as fast as possible, Tony.”

  “Then hang on to the hat you’re not wearing,” he replied.

  Maria sat back and closed her eyes; thinking about Harry Albright and his offer of help. Thinking that without the information he had supplied prior to making that offer, she would have been doomed to failure. Thinking that she needed to come up with a satisfactory answer to the sixty-four thousand dollar question, because her pledge to Sergio would be unfulfilled if she couldn’t. Thinking about accidents, and their various forms. Immersed in her thoughts, her eyes remained closed throughout the journey, so she didn’t see the corners professionally cut by her determined driver.

  “You can let go of your hat,” said Tony, “We’ve arrived.”

  Maria opened her eyes and glanced at her watch. One forty-five. Lunch would be a sandwich, a quick affair, but she couldn’t be sure about the reconnaissance. Decision time.

  “I’ll need an hour, Tony,” she told him, without waiting for his acknowledgement.

  The Plaza hotel’s reception area still impressed on her second viewing, and the combination of winning smile and a twenty dollar bill guaranteed the full attention of the uniformed young man who led her beyond the French doors of what he said was entitled the Palm Court Room, and into the room she had come to reconnoitre. She wasn’t heartened by what she saw. Her first thought was that she had entered an arena resembling a cross between a glitzy shopping mall and a Pharaoh’s tomb. Looking at her from one end of the room, and carved from what looked like marble, a large lion imperiously reclined on a dais flanked by arched mirrors rising to ceiling height. The mirrors reflected the rows of marble columns which reached the ceiling and were supported by raised walkways on either side of her which ran along the length of the room. Leading off the walkways, were glass-panelled doors to as yet unknown interiors.

  The Terrace Room dated back to 1921, said her financially motivated guide as they stood under its chandeliers which, she was further informed, were not only crystal but copies of those that hung in the Palace of Versailles. The ceiling, said her guide, spoke for itself, and Maria murmured agreement as she looked up to a ceiling adorned with figural paintings evoking the spirit of the Italian renaissance. An expressed wondering as to the Terrace Room’s capacity, elicited the answer that it could accommodate up to five hundred souls but that lesser numbers was the norm. By way of example, qualified her helpfully chatty guide, in seven days time the room would become an evening theatre for one hundred people.

  “...attending a lecture to be given by a Russian scientist, we’re told. It has ruffled a few feathers here, I can tell you,” said her loquacious guide, “No hotel staff are to be allowed entry to this room while the gig is going down, not even our security staff. Barry, he’s one of our security staff, told me that even the audience will be searched before they get in here. Barry’s a real funny guy, he says that will stop the audience from smuggling in enough drugs to keep them all looking interested and happy throughout the lecture.”

  Maria let him ramble on whilst she looked around her surroundings. Imagining the configuration of chairs which would seat one hundred people, and the observation points afforded by the walkways above, she knew this would not be the place in which she could deal with Calendar. Pointed in the right direction, she travelled alone to one of the wash-rooms which served ‘The Terrace’. A journey which took her through a door and into a small corridor. The ladies powder-room door was to her left, at one end of the corridor. Inside the powder-room, the floor was marbled and echoed her footfalls. The standard requirements were unsurprisingly positioned and all in the luxury class, comprising trios of toilet cubicles, wash-hand sinks, soaps and towels, and mirrors. Maria visited one of the cubicles, and used a wash-hand sink, before eventually rejoining her guide to inform him she would be lunching in the hotel’s restaurant overlooking Central Park.

  In the restaurant, there was no sign of her Spanish waiter but another white-gloved attendant, a handsome Englishman, ‘from the land of Shakespeare’ he told her with a smile, took her order. Her view over Central Park remained the same, but her view of the returning Englishman bearing the requested sandwich and coffee reminded her of how hungry and thirsty she was.

  “Grazie, Mi Amico, and I’m glad I’m not staying here at your hotel. The coffee is so delicious I imagine it could become habit forming.”

  “There are worse habits,” said the no-longer-smiling Englishman, “than a caffeine habit.”

  Maria looked at him closely, but could see none of the signs which would indicate that this man was an addict, or a pusher.

  “No doubt you are referring to the kind of drugs,” said Maria, “which are a problem in your country as much as this one. I don’t do drugs,” she told him with a smile, “apart from coffee.”

  “If my sister had stuck to coffee,” said the Englishman, “she would still be alive today. But I shouldn’t be disturbing you. Ciao, Signorina,” said the Englishman, turning to leave.

  “I am sorry to hear about your sister, Englishman,” said Maria, and watched as a sad looking smile replaced his earlier sunnier one along with his answer.

  “Thank you, Signorina,” he acknowledged, pausing, as if to check whether or not a continuance would be acceptable, before adding, “Another Englishman, named Whittaker, said that we can no more end drug abuse by eliminating heroin and cocaine, than we could alter the suicide rate by outlawing high buildings or the sale of rope.”

  Maria watched him walk away, her expression thoughtful. Her view of Central Park might not have changed, she thought, but her conversations with Plaza hotel staff had suddenly improved the view of her Calendar problem. She sat for a while with her eyes closed, looking at the new view. She finished her sandwich and coffee, left the money on the table along with a generous tip, and went in search of a telephone. Five minutes later, the subject of her new focus having confirmed that he was still where she had left him, she left the hotel to find trusty Tony waiting for her.

  “I need to be back at our first port of call as fast as possible, Tony,” she told him.

  “Jump in and hang on to that hat again,” he replied, grinning.

  Maria sat back in her seat and closed her eyes, her mind busy with the beginnings of a plan. Tanaka’s voice sounded in her he
ad, quoting, he had told her with a chuckle, an American General who had gone on to become this country’s President: ‘In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.’ She tuned out Tanaka, determined to improve upon the first part of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s quoted opinion.

  The journey time was consumed by her thoughts and Maria’s watch told her it was just after three when Tony announced their arrival. She entered the Greenwich Village bookshop for the second time to find Mister Pope still in disguise.

  “You know where to go,” he said, grinning as he added, “and I think you’ve got him worried.”

  Maria opened the familiar door and stepped inside the general purpose room to find Doyle seated at the table and writing. He looked up, but didn’t rise to his feet.

  “I’ve been sitting here so long,” he said, “I think my legs have died on me. Come and sit down.”

  Maria complied with a smile, not just because she was glad to see him again, but because of what else she could see. Doyle was gathering up official looking forms in his massive hands and stuffing them into a file-folder as he spoke again.

  “Stake-outs don’t usually come complete with a private office,” he said, smiling, “which gives me a chance to catch up on paperwork. So, Maria Orsinni, this is getting to be a habit. What can I do for you this time?”

  Maria had been rehearsing this encounter in her mind on the way to here, but she was still thinking about where to begin when Doyle’s Irish lilt travelled across the table again.

  “God spare me from dark-haired Italian beauties with blue eyes in their scheming heads and revenge in their hearts,” said Doyle, pausing to let her see the smile, “You’ve got that Sleeveen look in your eyes again, Maria Orsinni, so spare me the build-up, what the hell do you want?”

  Maria told him.

  Fifteen minutes after shocking Doyle, and following a brief but informative conversation with Mister Pope, Maria climbed back inside Tony’s taxi. “The Upper West Side again, Tony...,” she began....