The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  “Your uncle is a stubborn man, Maria,” said Stanhope, “He continues to resist advice which would keep him away from enemy lines.”

  The short silence following Stanhope’s statement was of a different kind to unworrying, and Maria caught Kennedy’s angry glance towards the instigator of change.

  “What do you mean by advice?” asked Maria, quietly, seeing her uncle’s look of anguish as she added, “And what do you mean by enemy lines?”

  “Your uncle has said,” began Stanhope, fingers nervously playing with one of his earlobes, “that he told you about the kidnapping situation we three have been endeavouring to bring to an end. Thanks to Tom’s efforts, we’ve organized the money to free the hostage, but the kidnappers have said they want your uncle to be present for the handover. Tom doesn’t think that’s a good idea, and I agree with him. Tom has said he will go instead, but your uncle won’t agree to that.”

  Maria looked at Canizzaro, and saw in his body language that there was something Stanhope didn’t know about. Her uncle returned her knowing look as he spoke, and his words chilled her.

  “The Lucchese family have stipulated I must be present, or there will be no handover.”

  Maria’s thoughts plunged her back in time to her encounter with Feruccio Busoni, the so-called ‘Python’. Zola had said Busoni was the Lucchese family’s chief enforcer when she had gone up against him. Her uncle didn’t know about Busoni’s fate at her hands, didn’t know she was responsible for stripping the Lucchese family of their feared enforcer... Didn’t know?

  “Have they told you why?” she asked, holding her uncle’s stare.

  “It’s complicated,” replied Canizzaro.

  “Your uncle mentioned,” said Stanhope, “that you yourself have had dealings with that family recently, but he wasn’t very forthcoming on details.”

  Maria saw the unmistakeable facial expressions of both Kennedy and her uncle, which told her that Stanhope had angered them both. Which told her that the nervous looking man had probably just said what he had not been supposed to say. But she remembered her uncle telling her that Stanhope’s amateurish appearance and outwardly nervous manner concealed the sharp mind of an efficient strategist. So discount the clumsy dress sense and the deceptive mannerisms, and beware the strategist, she told herself now: Stanhope wouldn’t have broken ranks unless he had a good reason to do so. She strove now for the mindset necessary to see her through this. Concern for her uncle was the primary thought. Could the demand for Canizzaro’s presence at the handover, be a retaliatory move by the Lucchese family following their humiliation at the hands of his niece? More than probable, thought Maria. Another thought, startling in its inclusion, was that she didn’t like the idea of Tommaso Kennedy putting himself in harm’s way to protect her uncle. That he had seemingly been prepared to do so, without intending her to know about it, filled her with admiration for the quietly spoken Englishman with the green eyes and....

  Maria applied the brakes to her derailed thoughts and retook control of her mindset. Sergio or Zola wouldn’t have told Canizzaro about the incident with Busoni. But Sergio’s boss, Kovac, had probably revealed all at one of her uncle’s info-sharing lodge meetings.

  “Complicated, how, exactly?” asked Maria, her tone calm as she addressed Canizzaro.

  “Some senior clerics at the Vatican,” said Stanhope, “don’t want your uncle raising his head above the parapet on this one.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” retorted Maria, her calmness smothered by frustration and the steel in her voice causing Stanhope to recoil in fright.

  “It means,” said Canizzaro, wearily, “that they can’t be seen to be involved in this matter. Which is why I was originally forbidden to deal directly with the kidnappers. My connection to the Vatican was considered to be too high profile.”

  “But the Vatican asked for your help,” remonstrated Maria, her frustration still audible.

  “Because they knew,” said Canizzaro, “how delicate a situation they faced, and that they could trust me to handle it with discretion.”

  Maria saw that Tommaso Kennedy was avoiding eye contact with her, but Stanhope, the one who had initiated this dialogue, Stanhope the strategist, was watching her closely.

  “Who was kidnapped?” asked Maria, addressing Canizzaro but seeing the body language of Stanhope sending its message that she had asked the right question.

  “The daughter of Mario Baletto,” answered Canizzaro.

  “Baletto as in the Baletto?” queried Maria, aware of the high-profile industrialist’s social standing but never having heard of the wealthy widower having any connection to the Vatican.

  “The same,” replied Canizzaro.

  “So he can afford to pay,” responded Maria, “for the return of his daughter. Why is the Vatican involved in this?”

  “And Mario would have paid,” replied Canizzaro, “had it not been for the intervention of mischance. A photograph was found secreted by the daughter on her person.”

  “Which changed things how? And why?” Maria responded succinctly.

  “It was at that point,” began Canizzaro again, a resigned expression on his face now, “that the Lucchese name was used by the kidnappers. The daughter’s given name is Angelina Baletto, and she was taken from the family home in Roma.”

  Maria instantly picked up on the phrasing, and the slight emphasis she had heard her uncle place on a word. “Her given name?”

  “Her real surname,” came in Stanhope, “would never have been heard on anyone’s lips, or appeared on the birth certificate. She’s the ten-year-old love child of one of those senior clerics I mentioned. One who is close to, and apparently important to, His Holiness himself.”

  Maria stared at her uncle as she took this information on board, and then heard the quiet voice of the man with the green eyes.

  “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple,” said Kennedy, smiling a sad looking smile into Maria Orsinni’s eyes as he added, “Oscar Wilde.”

  “So what you’ve just heard,” said Stanhope, fiddling with his necktie, “is the reason why my role of negotiating on behalf of Signore Baletto, had me running hot-foot to the Vatican when the opposition suddenly introduced to the equation the senior cleric who shall remain nameless.”

  “Which in turn,” contributed Canizzaro, “led him to me and my restrictive instructions from the Vatican’s hierarchy. Which is why Signore Kennedy’s expertise was brought into the picture at my request. The Vatican Lira I have moved to his instructions, has been replaced by uncut diamonds from sources which will make it impossible to prove that the Vatican was involved in this matter.”

  “Unless, of course,” said Stanhope, “Signore Canizzaro presents himself at the handover.”

  Maria silently processed this disclosure; in her head now was the voice of one of her English tutors, quoting from Jane Austen : ‘Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.’ She sighed with the thought that this was the last thing she needed on her plate right now.

  “When is the handover scheduled to take place?” she asked her uncle.

  “Ten days from today,” replied Canizzaro.

  “Where?”

  “We’ve been told Sicily, but not yet which part,” answered her uncle.

  “Why ten days? “ queried Maria, “If the ransom is ready, why the delay?”

  “We’ve been delaying them,” said Stanhope, “using your country’s recent currency devaluation as an excuse for the difficulties we’ve been telling them we’ve been having.”

  Maria stared at Stanhope as she gave that some thought. It was true that an agreement made by Italy’s Central Bank Governors, and Ministers of member states of the European monetary system, had resulted in an 8% devaluation of the Lira coming into effect from just over a m
onth ago. But she didn’t believe that was the reason for the delay in handing over the ransom to the Lucchese family. Stanhope, the strategist, had more or less admitted that. Stanhope, the strategist and past confidante of Tanaka, had, reckoned Maria now, deliberately engineered this conversation in order to arouse her interest, and prevent her uncle from coming to harm by presenting herself to the Lucchese family at the handover.

  “We’ll talk again about this, uncle of mine, when we return to Rome,” said Maria.

  Shortly following her declaration of intent as to future dialogue on the kidnapping issue, Maria stood with her uncle in the hotel’s reception area as he said goodnight to his guests. One of them turned to her, and she could see the green eyes twinkling again.

  “Does this mean you’re breaking our date?” Kennedy asked her.

  “Did we have one?” she replied, unable to stop her smile, or the blush.

  “Carl Gustav Jung,” responded Kennedy, “would say we did.”

  Maria stared at the Englishman, admiring the relaxed way he had delivered the words, wondering how much over thirty he might be, wondering what he was thinking as he stood there. “I’ve read some of his work,” she said, “but I don’t recall him saying anything about us.”

  “Jung said,” replied Kennedy, quietly, “the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

  Maria saw his smile disappear as he ended, and she was suddenly held by the intensity of the look in his eyes. She could feel the skin on her arms tingling.

  “He might have been,” said Maria, watching his eyes, “referring to our meeting tomorrow.”

  “He might even have said,” responded Kennedy, “One O’clock tomorrow in the lobby of the Waldorf Hotel,” he ended with a grin.

  “I will be here in case he did,” replied Maria, still smiling as she watched him walk away.

  Maria and her uncle shared a hotel elevator in silence. They reached their floor, and their room doors, in silence. Canizzaro was the first to break.

  “You are angry with your old uncle,” he said, “so you do not speak to me.”

  “I am not angry. I would have been, if you had left me in ignorance of this Lucchese business. But I know about it now, and you’re not going to any handover. So relax.”

  “You’re the bossy one, but he is a crafty one, that Stanhope, eh, Maria?”

  “He could have been an Italian,” she replied, kissing him, “ See you at breakfast, seven thirty sharp, Buonanotte, uncle of mine.”

  “Buonanotte, Maria.”

  Thinking about how much she had enjoyed wearing it, once inside her suite Maria removed her dress and carefully re-united it with the others in the closet she had dedicated to hold her evening wear. Stripped to her underwear, she thought about an Englishman who could quote from the writings of a Swiss psychologist and sound as if he had the soul of an Italian.

  She stood under the room’s chandelier to perform the Tai Chi exercise Wan-Lai-Tang had taught her, alternating between three postures from the ‘Ten Heavenly Stems’ as she told herself that Tanaka would have approved of Stanhope’s dinner table strategy. By his actions he had alerted her to a situation which undoubtedly would have placed her uncle in danger had she remained unaware. Which put the deceptive persona of Stanhope firmly on the side of the angels as far as she was concerned.

  Thirty minutes later she stood under the shower thinking about the Lucchese family and her shopping list for tomorrow. She didn’t know enough about the Lucchese family, so would speak to her father when she returned to Rome. The shopping list, she thought, shouldn’t be a problem in a city like ‘The Big Apple’. She could recall her father telling her that in New York, you could buy anything from a bar of soap to a bazooka with no trouble at all. She stepped out of the shower, towelled herself dry and slipped naked into bed.

  Maria Orsinni’s bedside clock was ticking its way into her fourth day in New York as she fell asleep thinking about the co-relation between chemical substances and two personalities being transformed by their meeting....

  At 9am on the morning of her fourth day in New York, wearing black slacks and a matching light casual sweater, Maria climbed into Tony’s taxi and handed him the slip of hotel notepaper containing her shopping list. Tony’s grin prefaced his response to his first reading.

  “Fishnet stockings and a ski-mask. You sure you’ve brought the right list?”

  “The first five items are all you need to focus on, because they’re the ones I want you to get for me. I’ll be getting the other six, so you can just take me to wherever I can get them. And I need to be back here for twelve noon, Tony.”

  “So I just get,” said Tony, reading aloud from the list, “these five normal every day shopping items, such as a roll of strong duct tape; two clear plastic bags, small but strong, a small knife or scissors... brackets... to cut the duct tape... and a stopwatch and a pull-over-type black ski-mask.”

  “That’s it,” she confirmed, returning his grin, “And the mask is for me, Tony, so if you’re not sure about size just get a variety you think will do the job.”

  “Your list first, or mine?” he asked, looking serious now.

  “Whichever is easiest for you,” she replied, watching him scan the list again.

  “We’re gonna’ have to make three stops,” said Tony. “My list I can get in one place. Shop two gets you one thing only, shop three gets you the rest. We’ll do shop two first, and I’ll wait for you. I’ll drop you at shop three and leave you, because it looks like you’ll be a while. So I’ll pick up my list and then meet you outside shop three. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds like you do this every day,” she replied, smiling.

  “Don’t forget I’ve got a wife and daughter, Maria. I’ve majored in female shopping manoeuvres. Hang on to that imaginary hat again,” he said, “We’re off and running.”

  Maria sat back in her seat to reflect upon her shopping list, too preoccupied with thoughts of her Plaza end-game to give the scenes outside the taxi much attention. Strictly speaking, she told herself now, the ski-mask was superfluous to requirements; being seen wasn’t the consideration behind its inclusion. But its ‘stopper’ effect would buy her vital seconds, and speed and timing were the all-important factors.

  Their first stop was in an underground car-park off Seventh Avenue, and following Tony’s directions Maria rode the elevator which deposited her on the required shopping-mall level. In response to her query, an armed security guard said she didn’t need one but smiled as he pointed her in the direction of ‘Madame Fifi’s’ Wig Boutique.

  Inside the shop, thankfully empty save for Madame Fifi, the proprietress listened and expressed surprise at her customer’s explained need to camouflage her appearance. Madame Fifi listened some more, and became sympathetic to the plight of being married to a jealous control-freak-husband, and was now understanding of the need supply her customer with the means of throwing said husband’s detectives off the scent. Madame Fifi then expounded at some length on the merits of weaving, texture, strength, and colour, before finally advising that the Asian hair was her own personal favourite for the required task. Thirty minutes and three shade-trial-fittings later, Maria emerged from the boutique with her wig of choice.

  The taxi’s second stop was in Chelsea’s ‘Garment District’. Tony showed her where he would be waiting, before driving off and leaving her outside on West 64th street. Glancing at the sign which told her she was about to enter ‘The World’s Largest Store’, Maria walked into Macy’s department store with her mental list of five items. She found and purchased her first four items fairly quickly, so her shopping carrier held the cotton wool, a cheap handbag, fishnet stockings and the glitzy earrings, as she took her time in selecting a suitable ladies trench coat. The name badge pinned to the shop ass
istant’s breast told Maria that ‘Debbie is assisting you today’ and she concealed her amusement at Debbie’s evident inability to understand why her customer should take the trouble to strip down to her underwear simply to model progressively ill-fitting examples of a trench coat.

  As testimony to her excellent training, Debbie refrained from saying that inside the finally selected garment her customer looked like one of the Big Apple’s street hookers. Had Debbie voiced this opinion, she would have been surprised by her customer’s reaction. Because Maria would have been pleased. It was precisely the image she sought to project.

  Maria met up with Tony again at the pre-arranged spot and as she clambered aboard with her shopping bags she saw that a Wal-Mart bag already lay in waiting on the back seat.

  “Any problems, Tony?”

  “It’s all there,” he assured her, “And you were right. I couldn’t decide on the size for the ski-mask, so I bought three for you to choose from.”

  Maria checked inside the Wal-Mart bag and confirmed that everything was there.

  “We can go back to the Waldorf now, Tony.”

  “Yours to command,” he acknowledged. “You planning on robbing a bank, Maria?” had an apprehensive sound to it, thought Maria.

  “Just a surprise party, Tony, that’s all. When you’ve dropped me off at the hotel, I don’t think I’ll be needing you again until tomorrow morning. So can we say a ten o’clock pick-up unless I call you to change the time?”

  “Sure thing,” he replied.

  They travelled back in silence, but Maria was happy with that. She was thinking about the other item which was an essential part of her planned end-game at the Plaza hotel. Tomorrow she would move it into place, she decided. She switched to another mindset and began to think about what a chemical substance should be seen wearing at its first date.