by John Gardner
‘Okay. Let me spell it out for you. COLD stands for the Children Of the Last Days.’
‘Sounds like one of these nutty religious groups.’
‘In a way it is. In another way it is not. In some ways it’s like one of these private militias you’ve been hearing so much about in the papers – and they aren’t funny, I can tell you. No, COLD is an organization spread across the country and made up of people who’ve been put out of business by our clampdown on organized crime. Some are ex-Mob, some are crazies, dangerous crazies, and some – mainly the people at the top – are highly intelligent criminals who see themselves as the answer to all the country’s ills. They don’t have the philosophy of the militias – that the people need to protect themselves against the federal government. These people believe that the only way to fight crime is by putting criminals into the government.’
‘I thought you did that already,’ Bond regretted it as soon as he had spoken. ‘Sorry, Eddie, that was a bad joke.’
‘Sure. These nice folks who are the leaders of COLD see the country being run almost as a police state. Deep down, I suspect some of them really think it’s the only way. Let me tell you a story about them. It illustrates how COLD thinks.’
The story Eddie Rhabb told was undoubtedly true. It took place in New Jersey where COLD had a strong foothold. A local parish priest was experiencing a sharp drop in his congregation. He was a wise, sincere and holy man who at first blamed himself and his own ministry for the falling number of faithful coming to his church, but he quickly discovered the real reason. Next to the church was a parking lot where the faithful had always left their cars when they came to Mass. Over a period of two years there had been constant carjackings and muggings in the parking lot. The priest went to the local police and pleaded with them.
‘Sure, Father,’ the cops said. ‘We’ll put someone on it.’
In spite of the promise, the muggings and thefts continued, and at last a member of the congregation suggested – at a wedding reception – that the priest should speak with a friend who was there: a particularly religious man.
Reluctantly, the priest went over to this obviously powerful man and explained his problem.
‘Don’ worry about it, Father. It’s taken care of.’
And it was. Nobody was mugged, nothing was stolen. A few young men in the area disappeared, a few ended up in hospital, but the crime rate around the church dropped like the proverbial stone.
‘That,’ said Eddie Rhabb, ‘is rather how the old Mustache Petes of the Mob would’ve worked, and it’s the way COLD works. Some of the top people in this organization are religious, even religious maniacs. They see this country of ours being riddled with the cancer of crime, but they’re not above using old criminal methods to both deal with problems and line their own pockets.
‘For instance, they are all for enforcing an anti-drug programme, but they would do it their way by killing off pushers and addicts alike; on the abortion issue they are prepared to close down every clinic or hospital that performs abortions, only t Georgetown UniversityriIQhey’d close them down with bombs and guns. They’d levy taxes as well, which means they would lift money from the wealthy by every kind of fraud in the book. COLD would probably give some of it back to the poor and sick, but they’d keep half for themselves. They call themselves Children Of the Last Days because they believe that we are in the Last Days, the days which will spell an end to the kind of democracy for which this country stands. Sure, they’d put paid to a lot of crime, but they’d do it by ruthless criminal means, and they would end up virtually running the country through fear. It’d be the worst possible thing to happen. It’s like looking back to the old Fascist days in Italy and Germany when Hitler and Mussolini made the trains run on time and built good roads. The concept of law would be gone for ever, together with the concept of justice.’
Bond thought for a moment. ‘You know all this, so what can you do about it? Why don’t you get out there and arrest the ringleaders?’
‘Because we don’t know who they are. It’s that simple. This has been brewing for a long time. We’ve got close to a few people, but the real brains – the people who give the orders – remain in the shadows. Now the Tempesta boys are doing deals with them. We know that, but so far they haven’t led us to the heart of this organization. That’s the other thing we want. The Tempestas are our pathfinders. They see COLD as a way of making easy money and they’re trying to get in on the ground floor. So, James, we need you to try and get both of the brothers over here – or at least set the fuses that will eventually bring them here. We have enough evidence to charge either or both of them. We need both, and we need them to get to the heart of COLD.’
‘What kind of time-scale are we talking about?’
‘Like yesterday, but I guess this could linger on for years. We don’t expect an overnight cure. You gotta understand that the Tempesta boys are probably not the only large dynasty built on crime that wants to get into something like this. We know the Russian Mafia are interested, though they have no damned scruples. The Chinese will probably get taken out of the picture, so they’d be edgy. As for the rest of Europe, there are a fair number of influential small groups who would buy in. James, you gotta see that the rewards would be huge.’
‘And the disruption . . .’
‘Would be even larger. No, we don’t want the drug culture but we’re hardly denting it. We want safety on the streets. We want civil and racial unrest taken out. All those things are plusses. I can even see how some Godfearing people might cheer COLD on to victory, but the price would be a ripping apart of the country’s infrastructure. What’s worse, if COLD, with the help of criminal factors from other countries, finally had their way, they would move on. Eventually we would be back in the Dark Ages throughout the entire world. Not in our lifetime, buddy, but eventually. So, we have to nip it all in the bud in our lifetime.’
In his life and dangerous time, Bond had faced many evil adversaries who appeared to be aiming for a kind of world criminal domination, but this was different. These people had a plan that appeared to be rational – at least to themselves. Crime tied to an almost Calvanistic morality which could lead to the collapse of freedom world wide.
In the days that followed, Bond had several conversations with M on a secure line to England. They also received two detailed messages from Toni Nicolletti at the Villa Tempesta, the second of which told them that she had casually dropped Bond’s name into the conversati up with?’
7
A JUDAS KISS?
He had never put a face, body or personality to Luigi Tempesta, and the FBI had no recent photographs. Someone had made a point of saying he was camera-shy, and the passport picture was – well, it was a passport picture and did not provide a true likeness.
Now, seeing the man for the first time, was almost a shock. For one thing he was small, just under five feet. Small and very elegant, from his thick, backswept grey hair to the impeccable dark blue suit, with a good half inch of cream silk shirt cuff protruding at his wrists, displaying large circular cufflinks fashioned from ancient Roman coins. At his neck, he wore a heavy silk tie that matched the suit and was overlaid with polka dots.
Below the sweep of his hair, Luigi Tempesta’s face could have been the face of a Roman Emperor. Somehow there was a nobility about him that Bond had never suspected. He glanced forward as the Rolls pulled away from the airport and saw that the chauffeur and bodyguard sat erect, like the retainers they were. He shifted in his seat and looked back through the rear window. A sleek black Ferrari was keeping station with them some fifty yards behind.
Luigi saw the look and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Bond. They’re looking after us. You’ll see another one ahead a couple of kilometres up the road.’
The most striking thing about the man, Bond now realized, was his eyes which were the colour of pewter. Cold and hard even when he smiled. They reminded him of the North Sea on a bitter midwinter day. Eyes that could be scary
and ruthless. Certainly eyes through which you could read nothing.
‘You go well protected,’ Bond said, trying to disengage from Luigi’s penetrating stare.
‘It’s the safest way.’ Luigi’s smile was charm itself, yet again not reaching the eyes. ‘Someone recently wrote that the wealthy should protect themselves like Renaissance princes these days.’
‘The price we all pay for freedom.’
‘Just so. It is particularly important in my country.’ Luigi Tempesta made a tiny motion with his right hand, but the one simple movement seemed to indicate that he all but owned Italy. ‘We seem to be disappearing under the weight of crime and such a lack of purpose that the young are abandoning their heritage. for a long timeat stepmother
‘In the outlying rural areas of Italy, men and women are leaving, almost vanishing before our eyes. They vaporize to reappear in other parts of Europe, or in our overcrowded major cities, even in the United States. When this happens, when the villages die, the country begins to disappear. It causes great concern.’
He made another move with the same hand. The body language suggested concern over the smaller towns and villages. In this short period of time, Bond had discovered that Luigi possessed the extraordinary talent of using his hands to express detail behind the spoken word – like some extra sign language that was immediately apparent and accessible.
Bond simply nodded, leaning back in the leather seat. He turned to look out of the window, streaked with a fine mist of rain, glimpsing a signpost that pointed towards Viareggio. For a fractional moment he recalled the last time he had been in Tuscany: a hot, dusty, August day, with the ground parched and the red roofing tiles on buildings appearing to soak up the burning sun.
He remembered some almost forgotten poem about chanting choirboys moving through an avenue of cypresses: this last triggered by the sight of a roadside church with a stand of cypresses like a line of guards waiting to flank a bride and her groom; a child awaiting baptism, or – most likely in this part of the world – the coffin carried in that last journey of the dead.
‘I’m told your villa is magnificent.’ He looked towards Luigi again, not avoiding the eyes.
‘Naturally, we think it’s a little more than magnificent. It’s been in our family’s keeping for around five hundred years.’ He gave a short but not unpleasant laugh. ‘Mind you, Mr Bond, it’s rather like the old broom that’s had three new handles and four new heads but is still the old broom.’
‘A lot of restoration, then?’
Luigi smiled his mirthless smile. ‘That was what I was trying to express, yes. Externally it actually remains the same. We have a painting showing exactly how it was in 1685, and as you approach it from the lake you’d think every stone, window and tile was the same. It has been – how do you say it in English? – carefully restored?’
Bond nodded, remaining silent. He wanted to get the measure of the man and the place to which he was being taken.
‘The interior has been substantially altered,’ Luigi continued. ‘Modernized is an unpleasant word, for my family is not what you would call modern in its outlook. The kitchens and bathrooms have been made more comfortable, as have the main rooms, but with an eye to what they were in the past. We now have good heating, and air-conditioning for the heat of summer. We also have state-of-the-art security and communications.
‘My brother, Angelo, and I control many complex businesses, so it is most useful for us to be able to do so through computers which speak to other computers in faraway places. Across the world.’ He made a little petulant sound. ‘But, of course, you know this already. You’ve talked to our computer and communications sorceress, the lovely Toni. She tells me that you were a lecturer at Georgetown University when she was taking her degree in computer sciences.’
‘Just for one semester. She studied under me.’
Luigi’s right eyebrow went up, making a circumflex accent above the eye. ‘Literally, I understand.’
‘That was out of class and had nothing to do with her ability as a student.’
The little man gave another of his cheerless smiles, then Glidrose Publications riIQshifted his body towards Bond. The disconcerting eyes appeared to alter again, this time becoming like dangerous grey lava. His voice also changed as he hissed rather than whispered. ‘One small thing before we get to the Villa Tempesta, Mr James Bond. No, it’s not a small thing really. I want you to remember that Toni Nicolletti now works for the Tempesta family, so she is, in her way, bound to us body and soul. She is one of us, and in a sense she also belongs directly to me. Capisci, James Bond?’
Bond gave back a smile as good – or evil – as he was receiving. ‘The world has long changed since people owned other people, Luigi Tempesta. Today you must be careful to whom you express yourself in those kinds of terms.’
‘It is our way still, and it would be to your advantage to remember it, Bond.’
‘Oh, I capeech fine, Luigi.’
‘Good. I’d hate us to get off on the wrong foot. Our poor young stepmother was unconscionably fond of you.’
Bond nodded. ‘Yes, her death came as a terrible shock.’
‘Tragico.’
‘Molto tragico,’ Bond had almost stared him down. ‘And if I ever find the man or men that did it to her, I’ll make it my responsibility to personally exact vengeance.’
‘Ah.’ Tempesta nodded and looked away.
After a kilometre or so Bond asked, ‘Is the Villa Tempesta on this side of the lake?’
‘There is a long way round which demands a drive through Viareggio itself. We find it easier to run our own vehicle-carrying barges from Torre del Lago. Pleasure boats and a transport service run from there, just a few steps from Puccini’s house, where the composer’s body is entombed.’
‘Yes, I know it. It also sports a wonderful statue of Maestro Puccini.’
‘So, you know this part of the world. Interesting.’
‘I once did a little job near here.’ Bond gave him his own enigmatic smile. In the back of his mind he saw the past: a velvet dark night, his quarry stumbling up a deserted beach and dying hard under Bond’s hand. The man had been a traitor and needed to be silenced. It was what he had done regularly in those days, with his licence to kill and the double-O prefix.
He nodded forward, ‘They your boys?’ Another black car keeping them neatly boxed in. It was the first hint of the car Luigi had mentioned as they left the airport.
‘Good men. They’ve kept out of sight well. But we’re almost there.’
They had left the main road, and, in a matter of minutes, the Rolls swept into the small square adjacent to the lake. He saw the house, railed off and protected by shrubbery. There Puccini had written La Bohéme, Tosca and Madame Butterfly. His bones now lay within the house which had known some of the composer’s great moments, and the one terrible scandal - the suicide of a maid who was said to be pregnant by him. Yet, this small community contained a number of men and women who had the Puccini look. The statue still stood looking across the small square: a life-sized Puccini in overcoat and snappy trilby.
There was a ferry moored at the pier, and women like black crows shuffling up to its deck, on their way to other lakeside communities after a day’s shopping. The car that had appeared just before they pulled off the main road was parked forward of the bows of the ferry, and the Rolls pulled up behind it, with the Ferrar very quicklytadi almost on its bumper now. Just offshore, a flat, bargelike craft wallowed, ungainly, as it waited for the ferry to depart.
‘If I recall it correctly,’ Bond sounded offhand, ‘there are a number of tributaries that run from the Lago Massaciuccoli.’
‘Canals mostly. Very beautiful to traverse, and there is, of course, the canal that takes you right into the port of Viareggio. Now there’s a place that’s changed.’ Luigi seemed to relish what he regarded as bad news. ‘It was near there, on the beach, that your poet Shelley was cremated on a funeral pyre and his friend plunged his hand into the burn
ing corpse to pull the great man’s heart from his body. In those days you could do that. Now, ha! Now, you must pay for the privilege of even setting foot on the beach. In Viareggio you must pay to breathe the air.’
The ferry cast off, with a long blast on its whistle, and, as it set course for the far side of the lake, the Tempesta’s vehicle barge came backing into the pier. Two men in black slacks and striped jerseys started to let down a ramp from the stern, one of them leaping ashore to make certain the heavy metal incline was secure. Within minutes, the three cars had inched their way onto the wide deck and the ramp was back in place again just before the craft backed off, turned, rocking gently in the still water, then set off, its bows pointing towards the right side of the lake.
In the distance, Bond could see the almost sensual slopes of the Tuscan hills. He had forgotten how beautiful this part of the country could be. It was not surprising it brought hordes of tourists flocking from all over the world. A man could regain his sanity and find peace just looking at the sunlight on those hills, he considered. He thought about the generations of Tempestas who had lived and rested on the shores of the lake.
As though reading his thoughts, Luigi spoke softly. ‘Though we are Romans born, this is the place to which we come regularly in order to unwind, to search for the true meaning of our lives. To think on our destiny.’ He moved again and his jacket fell open. Bond glimpsed the soft leather holster and the black butt of the pistol within.
His first sight of the Villa Tempesta came just as the rain started to clear and a shaft of sunlight crept through the overcast sky. It appeared to fall like a huge spotlight on the lakeside home.
There was a dock and pier down by the lake itself and above it two long solid structures running out on both sides. Boathouses, he presumed. From the pier a gravel road snaked up towards the house while a low grey stone wall ran around the property in a great square U shape, ending at the extremities of the boathouses.
The road rose up a gentle slope, and he had the impression of landscaped grounds, more cypresses, and a huge turning circle large enough to take five or six vehicles. Above this, a short flight of long grey stone steps led up to a terrace that ran the length of the house which was L-shaped, low, built from the same grey stone and topped by the familiar red terracotta tiles. The entire structure looked old and beautifully built. He wondered what tales of drama, melodrama, treachery and plotting that stone held secret.
