Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  Piper reached for a deck of cards he found in the pocket of the jacket Iona had loaned him, shuffled them in midair as he discussed finances. All the while, he held on to a manly dexterity in his hands, refusing to look too finicky or effete, as was Ainsley’s style. “I’m thinking it’s meat and potatoes this time, boys, an old fashioned English dinner.” Iona and Cliff laughed. “They’re the futures to buy big over the next few months,” Piper explained. “Water shortages worldwide, prolonged drought, record high temperatures, food futures in general look good, but they’re already up, already absorbing all that speculation. But with farmers selling off the cows they can’t afford to feed in these dry spells, leaner than they should be… and famine a rising specter, potatoes are the fallback play of choice for surviving famines…”

  “But we’re coming off the sharp end of summer. The worst of the heat is behind us,” Iona protested.

  “And that’s what the rest of the market thinks, which is exactly why we should be in meat and potatoes,” Piper argued, continuing to juggle the cards, sometimes shuffling with one hand, sometimes making individual cards do somersaults in the deck to land right-side up.

  “What makes your predictions any better than the herd mentality?” Iona said, playing devil’s advocate, undoubtedly anticipating the hard-hitting questions he was going to get peppered with when they decided they were ready for the big-time.

  “There are additional sensor-arrays coming on line to boost the accuracy of the weather-modeling supercomputers that I can factor into my equations ahead of the competition, based on certain privileged relationships. Give me just the amount of money you’re willing to lose, ladies and gentlemen, and I’ll secure your windfall.”

  Cliff and Iona laughed. Cliff hooted so crassly, he essentially broke from character as Ainsley. “I never knew you were such a card sharp.”

  “It’s weird,” Piper said. “It was just there when I wanted it. And so was the image of this old man in the theater, who’d been taught the magic trick by his father. Maybe we Renaissance types are more connected than we know. Maybe this villa is sited on one of those energy mounds ancient shamans used to work their magic and walk between worlds.”

  “In any case, nicely done,” Iona said, clapping. “But you’ll have to do better than that meat and potatoes story. These guys make plays like that without being coaxed.”

  Piper smiled ominously. “Whether they buy my act, or, sense I’m so off my game, they give me just enough room to hang myself… Either way, I can make it work. I need just enough time to slip the funds into a numbered offshore account, and retire in disgrace.”

  Iona’s face was frozen in shock, not knowing what to make of this. Cliff alone laughed as if he was expecting the news. “You want to explain?” she said.

  “You get it well enough,” Piper said reading her reaction. “You’re just not sure you’re sold on the approach yet, if you can trust the tickling sensation down below, and the shards of electricity shooting up your spine.”

  Iona remarked, “You want us to spend the rest of our lives hiding out from every conceivable authority, Interpol, CIA, MI6, whoever and whatever, so we have no choice but to keep taking our game up a level. We never get to jump off the Ferris wheel, not even for a second?”

  “Sure, we do,” Piper said. “As much as we like. We get time off by staying two steps ahead of everyone else. When we start slipping, that’s when we can’t let up.”

  “It’s madness,” Iona protested.

  “Divine madness,” Cliff said, rallying to Piper’s support.

  Iona turned to Cliff. “You support him in this?”

  “It was my idea,” Cliff said. “Took him a while to come around, too.” He dabbed his cigarette in the ashtray, and started another one. The chain smoking struck Piper every bit as suspicious as his own excessive drinking of late. What a strange time to clog up their bodies now that they needed them more in fine tune and more at their disposal than ever. Maybe Cliff was adding to the extra challenges he was up against more out of a self-destructive streak than any desire to up his game.

  Iona stood up, paced the floor to help her think. “You should have told me every police agency in the world was after you before getting me involved. And that—should you manage to pass yourselves off as Ainsley and Augustin, just to prove how slippery you are—you intended to put yourself back into hot water all over again.”

  She was furious. Piper figured she was contemplating the reprecussions for her side-business as art thief and “social worker.”

  She pressed her face up to the recently restored sliding-glass door, and wandered her mind over the big picture view, inviting more space in her head, by analogy, with which to think.

  Piper decided it wasn’t a bad idea to take a moment to decompress; so he did as she did.

  That was when he saw them.

  GIS guys poured over the hills. Sasha, sitting statue still, continued to calmly assess the situation. He was really starting to like that dog. Maybe she knew if she so much as twitched a muscle at this point, the entire hillside of weapons aimed at them would open up, bringing fire raining from the sky.

  “Cliff, you’re the professional killer, right?” Iona’s tone sounded calculated.

  “Last I checked.”

  “You want to come take a look at this?”

  Cliff pranced over, and regarded what she was eyeballing. Hopefully the light level was low enough inside relative to outside that no one had yet detected the mice were on to the cats. Then again, maybe not, Piper thought, as the first bullet penetrated the sliding glass door. Sasha ducked to the floor ahead of it.

  They retreated deeper into the relative blackness of the house. “What do we do?” She asked.

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing,” Cliff replied calmly. He eyed the red dots on his chest, which caused Piper to notice they all had a collection of red dots on their chests. “Save put our hands in the air,” Cliff said.

  “That’s the best you can do?” Iona sounded betrayed. “Really? I’m trading you in on a more rabid mastermind.”

  Cliff smiled. “We’re Ainsley and Augustin, remember? And you’re an art critic writing copy for the local gazette, not casing your next mark for the heist of the century. I suggest we play our parts to perfection as the best exit strategy.”

  “I’m thinking they found the cardboard box,” Piper said.

  “Impossible.” Cliff sounded shaky.

  “Why?” Iona asked.

  “I put it through the incinerator,” Cliff said.

  “Maybe one of the boys had a metal insert in his skull from childhood.”

  Cliff’s mouth ran dry, judging from the extra swallowing he was doing in an attempt to hydrate himself. “Well, fast talking is part of the skill set.”

  “I hope you sound this smug when they have a pair of electrodes wired to your ass,” Iona blasted.

  “Trust me, he’ll sound this smug when the news hits that Armageddon hasn’t been a test run,” Piper said.

  “I see you two believe in shtick above all else, even survival.” Iona’s tone didn’t sound complementary.

  “You won’t travel far in life if you don’t get your priorities straight,” Piper said deadpan, though it was just good acting. He was scared shitless.

  When Cliff fell to his knees and clasped his hands behind his head, Piper and Iona aped his movements.

  “How’s this going to work?” Piper tried to remain casual as he regarded the red laser dots dancing on their chests. “We may look alike, but under a microscope those similarities are going to break down.”

  “The boys do most of their work from home, on line,” Iona explained. “There are probably less than five people in the world who know what they actually look like. Just play your parts well, and we’ll be fine.”

  The glass door opening to one of the heavily-Kevlared figures sounded to Piper damnably like a knife skirting a silver chain choker as it glided across his neck.

  SIXTEEN


  “You’re one of the five guys who claim to have seen these guys in person,” Inspector Herron said, sounding impatient and bullying. “So, are they who they say they are?”

  Herron had the blunt, abrasive personality of an unsharpened ax delivered to the back of the head. His short stature was unimposing, but Taggart wouldn’t want to have to wrestle his handcuffs away from him. His plain looks meant women looked right past him to the men who were a good deal more imposing for a hundred and one reasons beyond his looks: he wasn’t the best dresser, nor did he have the best posture; nor did he seem exceptional in any way. Except for that blunt-edged hardness, which some women, Taggart conceded, might find alluring.

  With his hands clasped behind his back, Jace Taggart pressed his eyes against the two-way mirror to Augustin’s room. He made sure to keep his five-thousand-dollar suit clear of contact with the wall and the glass pane, which had more human stain on them than hotel bed-sheets. For whatever Herron was currently reading into his behavior, he had his own reasons for hesitating: these guys were giving out free financial advice, and if they were the real Augustin and Ainsley, it was worth heeding; meaning the last thing he wanted was to be ushered out of the room.

  “It’s been a while,” Jace said. “Augustin looks leaner than I remember, a little more defined. But a lot of us hit the gym pretty hard, especially when our portfolios take a dive.” Herron looked him over, his gym-body announcing itself through his suit somewhat intentionally, and figured he knew what he was talking about. Being East Indian, a recent import to the US, it had to burn Herron up that Jace was already doing ten times better in the marketplace, despite Herron’s family being here for however many generations. He was missing the point as to why Americans couldn’t compete, anymore. They had gotten soft. Too many generations of hard-working immigrants had preceded them precisely so they could follow their dreams, make better lives for themselves, not return to the salt mines with backbone to spare. “You’ll need to give me more time. Get them to give more free financial advice. That’s hard to fake for people in our weight class.”

  “I bet,” Herron remarked cynically. “Look, pal, I didn’t bring you in here to pad your portfolio. Spit out what you know or you’ll be the next one in the sweat box.”

  “Augustin wore his face under a well-manicured beard a few days old. This one is clean shaven. But people like us change our looks with the weather, reinvent ourselves from one day to the next.”

  “Yes, yes, with the rising and falling of your portfolios. I got you the first time,” Herron said impatiently.

  “I’m afraid if you want an honest assessment, you won’t have any choice but to allow me to evaluate his financial acumen. As to the rest of it, yeah, it could be them. Augustin had a commanding, forthright way to him, speaking as if he already owned the world. This guy is like that. You can see it in his body language.”

  “Fine,” Herron conceded finally. Into the com in Japhet’s ear, Herron said, “Get him to talk money, to prove he knows more about it than the rest of us.” Herron dialed up the audio in the room, and quieted himself to allow Taggart to eavesdrop—that included desisting from rubbing the leather soles of his shoes raw on the cement floor.

  ***

  Piper spoke in Augustin’s Czech-accented voice, which sounded strangely like German aristocracy by way of English boarding schools to ensure good breeding. Japhet was working on the theory this was Piper until proven otherwise. “You say you’re Augustin and not Piper; make me swoon with your financial acumen.”

  “And get on the wrong side of you?”

  “Touché.”

  “Touché? What’s that, you trying to mock my good breeding? Is that the one word you took away from an Ann Lander’s column on the use of proper manners in polite society?”

  “That’s good. Keep trying to get a rise out of me. Turn the tables, I like that. Much more fitting for a psychopath, albeit a high functioning one, than a suave Wall Street type, who’d already have sunk into his comfort zone, talking about money, without any more provocation from me.”

  He noticed Piper missed a beat, all but satisfying Japhet as to his actual identity. But Herron was slow and conventional, less inclined to seat-of-the-pants diagnoses, even if he shared the same gut reactions.

  “Fine. We’ll talk about money, as fun as it is to toy with you. And I was so enjoying this adventure away from the office. Not to mention the bragging rights of being sweated in an interrogation room. Not like I get carried away in paddy wagons beside the Occupy Movement people. Wouldn’t look good for a Wall Street type to be associated with them, not good for business, though my sympathies are definitely with them. God knows half of us should be lynched, the other half thrown in a meat grinder. We are to blame for the end of the world, no doubt about that. The jury’s out as to whether that’s a good thing or not.”

  Japhet figured Piper had switched to using reverse-psychology, speaking in a way that was guaranteed to win him over. Smart. But either one of these guys would be smart enough to play him. After all, sales were a big part of Augustin’s job, which meant playing people; pressing his buttons would be second-nature. “What do you mean you’re not sure if the end of the world is a good thing or not?”

  “Think about it. So long as the wheel keeps turning, the old system keeps limping along. Nothing breeds failure to change better than success.”

  “But if no one’s got disposable cash to keep the demand going for the suppliers, game over. No choice but to invent a fairer economic system,” Japhet offered.

  “Not that simple, I’m afraid. There’s India to step in as the new China for cheap labor, so there’s plenty of blood left in that turnip. Meanwhile, enough inventors keep hitting on the right niche for themselves daily to wheedle themselves into the top one percent. Soon, they can buy and sell among each other, generate enough prosperity to forget about the other ninety-nine percent. With an expanded one percent to say four percent, factoring global population figures, shit, that’s more people than you have in the entire U.S. Plenty of room to grow an economy faster than the rest of the world and keep it growing faster, until it functions in hyperspace relative to the conventional universe the rest of us inhabit, where time and space is still a factor—a limiting factor on what you can and can’t do.”

  “Damn, you’re every bit as scary as any Wall Street type I’ve heard talk. Maybe scarier. But a good sociopath would be keyed to my fears better than I am. I still haven’t seen you wow me with numbers that send me running out of the room to find a financial wizard like yourself to let me know if you’re putting me on or not, the kinds of figures that even a CPA couldn’t make sense of.”

  Piper laughed. “I like you, Japhet.”

  “I bet. The better the sportsman, the better the sport. It’s all about the game with you guys. I guess in that one sense, there isn’t much separating a sociopath from a Wall Street wizard, so my confusion is understandable. Another fine move on your part.”

  “Why don’t you find me a pad of paper so we can settle this debate once and for all?”

  Japhet slid his policeman’s notepad over to Piper. “Hope you can write small.”

  “It’s not ideal, but it’ll do.”

  Japhet paced the floor, circling the table to catch an over-the-shoulder glance at Piper’s handiwork as he moved the pen across the paper like a crazed cartoonist. Japhet sucked on his cigarette, growing increasingly nervous by Piper’s compelling performance. Hell, if he was a financial genius on top of everything, he had just played right into his hands, given him the very key he needed to unlock the door keeping them both prisoners in this room. Damn! Damn! Damn!

  Japhet was chain smoking by the time Piper handed him the notepad, having filled every blank sheet in it—both sides—cover to cover. The math, the diagrams, Japhet couldn’t understand any of it, but it looked terrifyingly like the stuff they tried to stuff in his brain in high school in analytic geometry and trigonometry class. Shit! Shit! Shit! How could he let this guy p
lay him like that?

  He stuffed the pad Piper handed him into his inside jacket pocket, as if its only value was as another move on the board in the game of mental chess between them. As if, his bluff having been called, he had no intention of running out of the room.

  Japhet leaned against the wall, standing as if he was propping up the building instead of the other way around, ignoring the earthquake shaking him inside. “So let me get this straight; it’s your position that—despite looking like the two we have on video offing a known psychopath in a very public area—you’re in fact a pair of businessmen spotted at the Ashcot art gallery with Iona Pax, famous art critic. She has been your concubine for some days, and not your prisoner, who I fear suffers from Stockholm Syndrome. That last part I would have deemed questionable, until I saw how fast you got inside my head.

  “Moreover, the two bodies in the bathroom of the art house are in all likelihood our killers, Piper Masters and Cliff Shiftly. Some enterprising sociopath spotted them before we could get to them, or maybe just a concerned citizen. And then, the deed done, afraid they’d be traced back to him, possibly because he was caught on camera at the palazzo along with them, he removes their heads and arms…”

  “Some of that fast talking is you filling in the missing pieces. I’m not quite as good at making up stories as you are, detective. But certainly there were a lot of people who saw us at the gallery who could set this mystery to rest, as I’ve been insisting all along. Strange you keep skirting the subject.”