The Orsinni Contracts

by Bill Cariad

  The hotel’s given name and location, across the river, on the Via Della Scrofa, near the Palazzo Madama, wasn’t far from her uncle’s villa on the map but traffic on the Ponte Sisto was in slow-to-crawl-mode. She countered her impatience with the thought that Tommaso’s location of choice fitted his role of financier; the Palazzo Madama was where the Medici family had owned a bank five centuries ago. At her current speed, she thought it might take her another century to reach her destination.

  When she finally entered the lounge of the designated hotel, she was already irritable. The sight of Tommaso Kennedy standing beside two suitcases didn’t make her feel any less so. The nervous looking expression on the face of a nearby Stanhope might have amused her on another occasion, but not this one. She silently cancelled her apology for being late.

  “I didn’t want to tell you on the phone,” said Kennedy, “but I’m afraid I don’t have any time now to talk. I’m leaving for the airport. This has all been a bit rushed. My grandmother is very ill and I have to get back to England as quickly as possible.”

  “But of course you must,” said Maria, keeping her emotions under tight control, “I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother.”

  “When I’ve dealt with whatever awaits me there,” said Kennedy, “I’d like the chance to talk to you properly. Can I call you?”

  Maria watched him bend to lift the suitcases; obviously a goodbye kiss wasn’t on his agenda, she thought. “No, Tommaso, when you’re ready to talk, come and find me.”

  She got as far as her car before she found herself having her sixth memorable September conversation. Stanhope was almost breathless but he didn’t look nervous any more.

  “You left so quickly,” he began, “I almost missed you completely. Didn’t even know you were coming. Only came myself to say goodbye to Tom. Listen, none of my business, I know, but don’t judge Kennedy too harshly. I rather think that you’ve knocked him for six, as we English say, and he probably just needs time to adjust his wicket. But I can see my clumsy references to cricket are of no interest to you, and why should they be....”

  “Do you have something to say to me, Signore Stanhope?”

  Maria saw that he was still haphazardly dressed, but none of the deceptive mannerisms were being displayed as he smiled and drew breath.

  “My company would like to discuss your fee for successfully resolving the Baletto kidnapping.”

  Maria concealed her surprise at this switch of subject matter; her mind’s eye still seeing the stricken expression on Tommaso’s face when she’d left him. Stanhope’s proximity pulled her focus back to him. “I didn’t go to Palermo on behalf of your company, Signore Stanhope. As you know only too well, I went to serve my uncle’s interests, and to bring back Signore Kennedy. I couldn’t just leave the girl behind. Your company can consider themselves to have been fortunate on this occasion. They owe me nothing.”

  “They would also like to know,” said Stanhope, “if they can call on your services in the future.”

  Maria watched his eyes and saw the evidence of Luigi’s reporting having also reached the ears of the Stanhope persona being presented to her now. Stanhope the strategist; the man who had originally sought to protect her uncle; the man who had apparently handled himself well when summarily ‘collected’ from his hotel by a Bartalucci snatch-squad; the man of whom Luigi had correctly said was ‘not as slow as he pretends to be’.

  “The work is often very challenging, of course,” he said, quietly adding with a knowing smile, “but on the strength of Palermo reports, I would imagine Maria Orsinni having no difficulty in negotiating any future fees.”

  Silently registering Stanhope’s knowing smile, Maria gave his closing words some thought. What Stanhope was talking about was the future she had trained for; was still training for. A professional future. A reason for her existence and an acceptable justification for the use of her hard-won skills. But Sergio, and Tommaso, each in their own way, were the painful examples of the price she seemed destined to pay for a future with no personal life worth talking about. Stanhope was watching her; showing no sign of impatience; patience personified. She liked the man. She knew he was cool under pressure. She could work with the man. Then as if in tandem with her decision, Tanaka’s voice floated into her head: Let the personal life find its own way to live with the professional one.

  “If they use your voice to do the calling, and only your voice, then tell them yes,” said Maria.

  “There’s a lot going on even as we speak,” said Stanhope, “I’ll be in touch soon, I imagine.”

  Maria herself initiated the seventh of her memorable September conversations. Mindful of the seven hour time difference, she waited until midnight before making her call.

  “Hai?” said the familiar voice.

  “O-hayo gozaimasu, Sensei, O-genki desu ka?” (Good morning, teacher, how are you?) opened Maria, determined to get the words right and smiling as she pictured his surprise.

  “Arigato, Totemo genki desu,” (I’m fine, thank you) replied Tanaka.

  “I think that’s all the Japanese I have for now,” said Maria through her unseen grin.

  “It has started my day splendidly,” said Tanaka, “but I don’t imagine you picked up the phone at midnight just to wish me good morning. Are you okay?”

  “Yes, and No,” replied Maria.

  “Take your time,” said Tanaka, “Talk to me.”

  Maria began talking to her sorely missed surrogate father, and, when she finally ran out of words, was struck by the sound of silence following the verbal torrent she had poured down the line. The silence was brief.

  “Are you just pausing for breath, or have you finished?” queried Tanaka.

  “I’m finished,” replied Maria, “I’ve missed not having you to talk to like this.”

  “I’ve been reading the works of Oliver Wendell Holmes,” said Tanaka, “who said that it is the province of knowledge to speak and the privilege of wisdom to listen. Have those tutors of yours introduced you to Chekhov, yet?”

  Maria smiled to herself; Tanaka could always be relied upon to come at you from an angle which would surprise. “They throw quotes at me all the time,” she told him, “which they harvest from every creative field you could think of. Playwrights have featured from time to time, mainly Shakespeare. I know Chekhov was Russian. Why do you ask?”

  “What Chekhov saw in our failure to communicate,” said Tanaka, “was something positive and precious; the private silence in which we live and which enables us to endure our own solitude.”

  Maria was frowning as she replayed Chekhov’s words in her mind and tried to figure out why Tanaka had used them. She was still frowning when she thought she had the answer: Tanaka had listened to her pour out her heart; had literally isolated the loneliness theme which had dominated her outpouring, then had linked it to Tommaso’s inability to talk about his feelings towards her after the Palermo business.

  “That’s very deep,” responded Maria.

  “From what you’ve told me,” said Tanaka, “Kennedy sounds like he was a born loner who chose a profession in which the cards have to stay close to your chest. Financiers might be clued up on shares, but that doesn’t make sharing one of their special skills. Put that together with an alpha female with her own intimidating skills-set, one who has spent the formative years of her life in a secret society, and you don’t get a couple of natural chatterboxes who are perfectly at ease in one another’s company.”

  Maria pondered that for a few moments before shaking her head and voicing her resentment. “Are you telling me that this is all my fault? That I intimidate him?”

  “Nobody else,” replied Tanaka, “opened the guy up in a New York restaurant and learned all about his childhood and his career aspirations. Nobody else listened to him talking about wanting to protect someone he obviously cared for, bu
t didn’t tell him why that wouldn’t be necessary. Nobody else put down four Sicilian hoods in a Palermo warehouse in the time it probably takes him to shave in the mornings. Right before his eyes, in a couple of his quiet heartbeats, you went from being a nice Italian girl crying over the gift of a bracelet to some kind of deadly superwoman.”

  Maria’s thoughts raced unchecked. Stanhope had used the words ‘knocked him for six’ not just as cricket terminology or a romantic metaphor, but because he knew what Kennedy had seen her do in the warehouse.

  “I’ve been a bit slow, haven’t I?”

  “By your standards, in your world, yes. Kennedy lives in a different world. Witnessing you in action has now shown him your world. It’s a world which would frighten most men. He’s no Sergio, or Kimoto, or any of the trained others from that side of the divide which separates you from the Kennedy’s of life’s rich tapestry.”

  “Paolo did remind me,” said Maria, smiling, “that you come out with some pretty heavy stuff.”

  “You were probably smiling as you said that,” responded Tanaka, “which is good. You need to retain a sense of humour along with a balanced perspective. You must live your life, Maria, and it must be the kind of life you choose to live. It will take a special kind of man who elects to share that life. If Kennedy is that man, he will come and find you again.”

  “You have given me much to think about,” said Maria.

  “You go and think, little one, I’m going to have breakfast, sayonara.” (Goodbye)

  “Arrivederci, Moi tomodachi.” (Goodbye, my friend)

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Tempus Fugit

  At the beginning of 1985’s October, Maria Orsinni answered a distress call from Mario Baletto. All she was told at that stage was that a friend of his was in trouble and couldn’t go to the carabiniere, and wouldn’t let Mario help him with money. Intrigued, Maria agreed to Mario’s request that she meet the friend in question.

  Which resulted in her introduction to Alfredo Provenzano, Palermo’s leading theatrical make-up artist and widower father to an only son. She was instantly charmed by the overweight man with a cherub-like face whose door-step words were spilled in a rush from his lips. He apologised for disturbing her day whilst at the same time disarmingly telling her that only desperation had brought him to her door. ‘Mario seems to believe that you can help me and I don’t see how you possibly could, and yet here I am!’

  Inside Canizzaro’s villa, restlessly pacing because he couldn’t be persuaded to sit, Alfredo’s problem was explained. Sicilian kidnappers were holding his beloved son. The taped message sent by the kidnappers had warned Alfredo that if he contacted the carabiniere, his son would be returned to him one body-part at a time. Alfredo’s savings had been swallowed by hospital bills for his recently deceased wife; he wasn’t as wealthy as the kidnappers believed him to be. Borrowing money would only give him another problem impossible to solve and the ransom deadline imposed by the kidnappers was fast approaching. ‘Why would Mario send me to you, Signorina Orsinni?”

  And so had began her journey back to Sicily; on that occasion, Sardinia. Everything had been against her: Time had been running out even before she had discovered that she would be going up against one of the most ruthless clans on the island. But she had beaten all the odds against her and had safely reunited Alfredo Provenzano with his only son. As a result of this, Luigi Costello had passed on to her the received wisdom that the Sicilian clans specialising in kidnapping had marked her down as someone to be avoided. ‘They know who you are now,’ Luigi had said, ‘Next time, it will be harder for you to get close before they see you coming.’

  Luigi Costello’s ‘heads-up’ having made her aware of how difficult her future incursions to Sicily were likely to be, Alfredo Provenzano’s practical offer had been impossible to refuse. In response to her having waived a fee for returning his son to him, he would provide his services ‘free of charge for life’ whenever she required them. She was to make use of his magic fingers and his ‘Props Box’ many times in the future, consequently adding a mastery of disguise to her ever growing skills.

  Stanhope the strategist brought her flowers in late December. He also brought with him a dossier on the opposition she would face on her next assignment, as a result of which she missed Christmas with her uncle and Graziella. The ‘penetration and extraction’ assignment took her to Northern France for one week. She spent the first few days practicing her French with the locals, whilst familiarising herself with the terrain within which lay her target building. Inside the building was a female hostage not expected to be returned in exchange for the ransom money currently being negotiated. The dossier on her four opposition ‘targets’ had made for unpleasant reading, so Maria went in hard and fast on the fourth evening and put them down without mercy. She handed the woman over to Stanhope’s people at Calais the following morning, before hiring a car and driving herself south to Monte Carlo. She spent two weeks in the south of France and on her last evening she succumbed to her raging hormones and allowed a smooth talking Frenchman to share her bed....

  Having failed to successfully make contact by telephone throughout the last month of the previous year, Tom Kennedy returned to Rome in early January of 1986. His surprise visit to the suburban villa of Claudio Canizzaro reunited him with a weary looking Graziella who was tending the bed-ridden uncle of an absent Maria Orsinni.

  Kennedy stayed for two days before returning to England and Graziella told Canizzaro that the Englishman was suffering from the delayed effects of a thunderbolt strike.

  Maria was unable to contact Kennedy on her return from France; the Englishman had left no telephone number or address. She didn’t want to discuss it with Stanhope, so resigned herself to doing nothing and waiting to see what might happen next. The night spent with the passionate Frenchman had broadened her experience and calmed her libido, but it hadn’t made her skin tingle and she wondered if she would ever again experience that feeling....

  During the course of 1986, Maria undertook six assignments on behalf of Stanhope’s company and each successful conclusion served to enhance her growing reputation: Not just within the Italian underworld, but also beyond that. The name of Maria Orsinni was now being whispered by the ever widening circle of influential families and friends of those people she had brought back from their individual nightmares.

  In June of that year Kennedy telephoned the villa and spoke to Canizzaro who was now back on his feet.

  “I’m afraid you’ve missed her again, Tommaso, she is away somewhere on the business of Signore Stanhope and I do not know when she will return.”

  “So be it,” replied Kennedy, “I have to go on a business trip myself next month. To Scotland. I’ll be gone for a while but I’ll call if I get the chance. Glad to hear that you’re back on your feet, Claudio. This line is pretty crackly so I’ll say Arrivederci for now.”

  Canizzaro relayed the conversation to Graziella. “I heard the voice of a lonely man,” he told her. Graziella rebuked him for not having obtained the Englishman’s phone number.

  Towards the end of the year, Giovanni Orsinni died in his sleep. Maria and Paolo stood together at their father’s graveside. Luigi Costello was there to represent the Bartalucci family and was the only person to shed a tear as the coffin was lowered into the ground.

  “I didn’t think you would come,” said Maria.

  “I came for you, little sister, not him,” replied the still unforgiving Paolo.

  In December of that year Wan Lai-Tang introduced Maria to Wang Shu Jin, the man to whom he had handed over control of the dojo and its students.

  1987’s first quarter kicked in at pace for Maria Orsinni. Her two year business studies course was nearing final exam time: Advanced dojo sessions with Wang Shu Jin were constantly stretching her; strengthening existing knowledge whilst introducing new disciplines and their techni
ques. Whatever spare time she could find was being devoted to Graziella and her uncle, both of whom she was becoming increasingly concerned about. Her gruelling schedule was only disturbed whenever Stanhope the strategist appeared carrying flowers; which he did as March drew to a close and she was launched into action again.

  On the first day of April 1987, hoping he wouldn’t be thought of as a fool, Tom Kennedy arrived unannounced at Canizzaro’s villa to find that the man had suffered a stroke and was being tended to by privately hired male nurses. Graziella, to his eyes a now frail looking shadow of her former self, told the Englishman to go home and forget about the woman who was off again somewhere on her matto avventuras.

  Kennedy took Graziella to lunch instead; and the old woman politely waited till they had reached the coffee stage before subjecting him to questioning.

  “For why, Tommaso, you never leave your telephone number, or your address, even?”

  “I wouldn’t want,” replied Kennedy, smiling, “to find a dear John letter in my mailbox.”

  “Who is this John, Tommaso? Why would his letters be in your mailbox?”

  But Graziella still hadn’t received an answer to any of her questions when two days later the Englishman bade her farewell and departed for the airport.

  Upon her return from the latest of what Graziella had called her ‘crazy adventures’, Maria stood in her uncle’s favourite restaurant and allowed herself to be simultaneously thanked and chastised by the old woman she adored. She was tearfully thanked again for her pre-departure organizing of the male nurses for Canizzaro, and gently chastised for once more missing the visit of that bello gentiluomo, Signore Kennedy. Finally retreating to her bedroom, Maria found pinned to its door an envelope with her name scrawled on it. Inside the envelope was the letter left to her by Graziella’s so-entitled ‘nice well-bred man’.