James Twining - The Geneva Deception

‘You think this is where Cavalli got the ivory mask?’ she asked, looking away with a shudder.

‘I doubt it,’ Tom sighed, sitting down heavily on the bottom step. ‘Whoever owns this place must work for De Luca, and he certainly didn’t look like he’d ever seen the mask before.’

‘He may not have seen it, but he might have found out that Cavalli was ripping him off,’ she suggested, sitting down next to him. ‘Theft and disloyalty, remember? According to De Luca, Cavalli was guilty of both. Maybe Cavalli was trying to sell the mask behind the League’s back.’

‘So De Luca killed Cavalli, Moretti evened the score by murdering Ricci, and then De Luca struck back by executing Argento. He was right. We’ve stumbled into a war.’

‘That must be why they both put the lead discs on the bodies.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Remember I told you that the original Delian League was to have lasted as long as the lead its members had thrown into the sea didn’t rise to the surface? The discs were to signal that this new alliance was fracturing.’

‘None of which explains who ordered the hit on Jennifer or why.’ He sighed impatiently.

‘You don’t think De Luca had anything to do with it?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe…No. I think he would have told me if he had.’

‘Then who?’

Tom shook his head, still no closer to the truth. There was a long pause.

‘She must have meant a lot to you,’ Allegra said gently. ‘For you to have come all this way. For you to be risking so much.’

‘She trusted me to do the right thing,’ Tom answered with a half smile. ‘That’s more than most have ever done.’

There was another, long silence, Tom staring at the floor.

‘How did you two meet?’

He was glad that Allegra hadn’t picked up on the obvious cue and said that she trusted him too. He wouldn’t have believed her if she had. Not yet at least.

‘In London,’ he began hesitantly. ‘She thought I’d broken into Fort Knox.’ He smiled at the memory of their first bad-tempered exchange in the Piccadilly Arcade.

‘Fort Knox!’ She whistled. ‘What did she think you’d…’

She broke off as the door above them was unbolted and thrown open. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway, his long shadow stretching down the stairs towards them. He was holding a hip flask.

‘Let’s go for a drive.’

Banco Rosalia head office, Via Boncompagni, Rome 19th March – 9.24 p.m.

‘So? How much are we down?’ Santos sniffed, helping himself to a half tumbler of Limoncella from the drinks trolley.

Alfredo Geri looked up from his laptop, frowning slightly as he worked through the math. Five feet ten, he was wearing a grey suit, his tie yanked down, jacket trapped under the wheel of his chair where it had fallen on to the floor and he’d run over it. His thin black hair was slicked down against his marbled scalp, his face gaunt and bleached a cadaverous shade of white by lack of sleep and sunlight. To his right, balancing precariously on a slumping battlement of stacked files, was a pizza box that he’d not yet had time to open.

‘Now I’ve had a chance to look properly…eight…maybe nine?’

‘Eight or nine what?’ Santos snapped. He sat down heavily at the head of the table, a blanket of scattered paper stretching along its polished surface like an avalanche over a valley floor. ‘It’s a big number. Show it some respect.’

‘Eight or nine hundred million. Euro.’

‘Eight or nine hundred million euro.’ Santos closed his eyes and sighed heavily, then gave a rueful smile as he kicked back. ‘You know, the strange thing is that a few months ago losing just fifty million would have felt like the end of the world. Now, it feels like a rounding error.’

He reached for his tin of liquorice, shook it, then popped the lid.

‘It’s the CDOs that have killed us,’ Geri continued, putting his half-moon glasses back on and hunching over his screen. ‘The entire portfolio’s been wiped out. The rest is from currency swings and counterparty losses.’

‘I thought we were hedged?’

‘You can’t hedge against this sort of market.’

‘And the League’s deposits and investments?’ Santos asked hopefully.

‘Antonio, the bank’s entire capital base is gone,’ Geri spoke slowly as if trying to spell out complicated directions to a tourist. ‘It’s all gone. Everything.’

Santos sniffed, then knocked the Limoncella back with a jerk of his wrist.

‘Good. It makes things easier. This way I only need to worry about myself. Where did I come out in the end?’

‘I’ve liquidated what I can,’ Geri sounded almost apologetic. ‘Most of it at a loss, like I told you when we spoke. But the bulk of your portfolio would take weeks if not months to sell.’

‘How much?’ Santos snapped.

‘Three, maybe four million.’

‘That barely gets me a chalet,’ Santos said with a hollow laugh. ‘What about the money market positions?’

‘Already included, minus what you had to sell to fund your fun and games in Las Vegas last week,’ Geri reminded him in a reproachful tone.

A long pause.

‘Fine,’ Santos stood up. ‘It is what it is and what it is…is not enough. I need the painting.’

‘You’ve found a buyer?’

‘The Serbs are lined up to take it off my hands for twenty million,’ Santos said with a smile. ‘I’m flying out to meet them later tonight.’

‘And the watches?’

‘I’ve got one already and another on its way. I’ll get the third on the night from De Luca or Moretti. They always wear theirs.’

‘They won’t let you get away with it,’ Geri pointed out, closing his file.

‘They won’t be able to stop me if they’re dead.’ Santos shrugged, moving round to stand behind him.

‘For every person you kill, the League will send two more. You can’t kill them all. Eventually they’ll find you.’

‘How?’ Santos shrugged, stepping even closer until he could see the liver spots and tiny veins nestling under Geri’s thin thatch. ‘The world’s a large place. And you’re the only other person who knows where I’m going.’

‘Well, you know I’ll never tell them,’ Geri reassured him, shoulders stiff, staring straight in front of him.

‘Oh, I know.’ Santos smiled.

In an instant, he had locked his left arm around Geri’s throat and pulled him clear of the table. Geri lashed out with his legs, catching the edge of his file and sending it cartwheeling to the floor, paper scattering like feathers. Then with his right hand, Santos reached round and grabbed Geri’s chin.

With a sharp jerk, he snapped his neck.

Nr Anguillara Sabazia, northwest of Rome 19th March – 9.56 p.m.

‘Drink?’

Fabio Contarelli had turned in the passenger seat to face them, battered hip flask in hand. In his mid forties, short and pot-bellied, he had the warm, jovial manner of someone who prided himself on being on first-name terms with everyone in his village, and who the local butcher had come to favour with the best cuts. Shabbily dressed, his weather-worn face was brown and cracked like a dried river bed, although his fern green eyes shone, as if he was permanently on the verge of playing a practical joke. There was certainly little there to suggest that he had been responsible for the horrors Allegra and Tom had witnessed in the basement of his house.

‘ No ,’ she refused, then watched as Tom did the same. Contarelli shrugged and took a swig himself, turning back to face the road as the mudflecked Land Cruiser danced over the pot holes.

‘How long have you been a tombarolo?’ Tom asked.