The Carducci Convergence

by Nicolas Olano

  Sal

  PS: Go fishing!

  Marco headed back to the seat next to Patricia and she saw that he was holding the personal letter in his hand and tears were trying to leave his eyes.

  “May I ask what that said?”

  Marco handed her the letter without saying a word. She read it once and then again and handed it back to Marco. Her eyes, like his, were alight with imminent tears.

  “I guess you inherited me,” she said sadly, but with a warm smile. “And maybe I inherited you. I’m two years older than you so I’ll be top dog.”

  Marco read both letters again a couple of times and then remembered the passports in the name of Massimo. He had put them and the credit card in his briefcase, so they would be in New York early the next day. He would need both, he thought.

  An hour passed in relative silence with only some chatter between José and Luigi. Patricia was deep in thought, as was Marco. Both their minds were in the same place without each other knowing. Who was the other person that Sal had willed to each of them? Even though Patricia knew so much about Marco, she didn’t know Marco. While for him, Patricia was a total enigma.

  Joe came over the interphone to advise Marco that they were initiating the descent to MacArthur and Marco went forward to assist him with the delicate approach where JFK and LaGuardia-bound airliners would also be under the same control center. They would be descending in patterns within an upside-down-wedding-cake-shaped airspace until they were handed over to MacArthur tower for final approach and landing.

  Twenty minutes later they touched down on Runway 6 and taxied to the General Aviation terminal. There they saw a Bell 525 idling with the doors lowered and Ian Carlo with two of his bodyguards waiting for them.

  Marco mused that Ian Carlo did not look his part in life. He was five-foot-ten, athletic but not overly muscular, well shaved, black hair combed back. He was dressed in a slate black suit with off-white shirt and a toned-down copper tie; the perfect image of a Wall Street broker of the more successful kind – Andy Garcia, but not as handsome.

  The crew was dressed in their standard uniform of loose-fitting blazers over gray pants and rubber soled shoes that lost in their effort to look formal. Two pilots were in the cockpit of the Bell 525, which can accommodate up to sixteen passengers depending on the configuration. Joe stayed with the Lear as all the others got into the chopper and were airborne in minutes.

  Marco gave Ian Carlo a detailed account of what had happened at lunch and the subsequent conversation with the head of the security company. Little time was spent on niceties and Ian Carlo had acknowledged Patricia only with a nod, ignoring everyone else. Ian Carlo told Marco that he had scanned the whole country for information but no one seemed to know about an attempted hit and not even a side note had appeared in any major media. Only Tampa and Sarasota based news channels had given the incident some significance, but that was soon upstaged by an oil rig spill just off the coast. The evening news had said it was a Mexican drug cartel hit that went wrong and pointed to a Mexican waiter, who had conveniently disappeared, as the intended victim and suspect for the killing.

  “I’m setting us up at the Roslyn place,” said Ian Carlo, “because it’s got better security than the NYC house and it attracts a hell of a lot less attention than the office. A couple of your people will be there if you need them.”

  While this was being said Patricia, who had been busy on her Galaxy smartphone interrupted them, saying, “Don’t waste your time; this had nothing to do with you. I just got an email from my father, who is now in a safe house, telling me that this was an act of reprisal from a Tamaulipas, Mexico cartel called Los Locos. My father, at the request of interested governments, and because of their extreme violence, interdicted a supply of cocaine and heroin from Colombia to this cartel. What has him surprised is that they knew of my existence, let alone my location. I need to get rid of my cell phone and my clothes. A GPS might be embedded in either or they used the GPS on my phone as a locator. We have to do this before we get to wherever we are going. And Marco, please ask the security company to go over my cars to make sure they are not bugged.”

  Ian Carlo, who thrived on stressful situations, was cold as ice when he asked Patricia for her phone. He took out the SIM card, the battery, and unceremoniously threw it out the window and into the deep blue sea off the north coast of Long Island.

  Marco got on the phone to Pete. “Get in touch with Major Allen and ask him to squeeze more information out of the cops. We need to know who the shooter was. That fucker’s been in jail here and in Mexico from the tats on his neck. Do it now.”

  Under instructions from Ian Carlo, the chopper requested and got permission to land at St. Francis Hospital where a scrub Patricia’s size was waiting for her. People who know people; that was the world in which they lived. In a few minutes the change of clothes was complete and they were on their way. It was decided still prudent to retire to the Carducci Estate at Roslyn.

  The estate spread over several acres not far from the Vanderbilt museum in Suffolk County. The Bell landed lightly in the stone yard next to an ample side entrance to the home. All of them, with the exception of the pilots and Patricia’s bodyguard, had suites in this home. Ian Carlo had not taken over Sal’s quarters, so Patricia went there and found all the clothes that she needed for what was to be a short stay.

  By now it was dark and everyone was starving. Ian Carlo arranged for the staff’s accommodation and meals, then he, Patricia and Marco sat down to roast rack of lamb, medium rare, spinach and dandelion salad with orange pekoe vinaigrette; a loaf of ciabatta bread and a good chianti rounded it off. As they were finishing the last bottle, Ernie Goldman showed up. He was the only person other than Marco who could enter unannounced. He kissed Patricia, gave her a new phone, and hugged both Marco and Ian Carlo.

  “I just finished talking to Francisco, Patricia, and I’m comfortable to say that this incident has nothing to do with our organization here.” he said looking at them gravely. “But it has everything to do with some of our most lucrative international business abroad. On both sides of the tracks, may I add.”

  Francisco Jose Lujan y Cordoba sat in a comfortable but basic office just outside of Lima looking at a long list of transactions that scrolled past his eyes. The monitor was huge by any standards and all of the navigation was touch screen or voice commands. He had spent hours at this and was weary of the effort. At sixty-six years he was in fine condition, but age forgives no one and he could not put in the hours he had even just a few years back. He let the monitor go to sleep and as he rose from his chair, the computer automatically went into shutdown protocol and would not come to life again until his voice and an optical recognition of his retina brought it back. He moved to a small lounge with a large window overlooking the darkened sea where only chips of light confirmed its existence in what otherwise was a black void.

  He poured himself a generous glass of a fine Malbec and replayed in his mind the events of the day as he sipped the wine. It had been a peaceful morning until the panic button on Patricia’s phone had sent him into action. Following her whereabouts with very sophisticated GPS tracking software furnished by the CIA, Francisco knew the exact location of her cell phone and was able to listen to what was going on around it, as well as see through its camera lens if the situation allowed. He was immediately aware that she was unharmed and in the company of trusted people. He called his contact at the FBI and was soon talking to a very deferent agent in Sarasota who would promptly assess the situation without creating unnecessary lines of inquiry.

  Within an hour Francisco was totally apprised of the attempt in every detail. He was satisfied that Patricia was in no way connected to it by the local authorities, and proceeded to determine its origin. He called his offices in Bogotá and gave specific directions to the head of that operation, which, under the guise of a call center, administered an immense amount of data that was filtered and prioritized originating from every cell phone, computer
, and tablet in the hands of known illegal drug merchants, terrorists, arms dealers, and pirates throughout the world. This chatter would come in from clones on every government spyware and eavesdropping system on earth, from PRISM to LECTOR. From Canada to Patagonia, DC to Beijing, the software would milk the satellites and databases with the same sophistication that Google tracked every website. As if on cue, the intelligent software traced an unusual pattern between a cell phone in Matamoros in the State of Tamaulipas, Mexico, and two cell phones in Sarasota, one of which was found in the perpetrator’s pocket; all of them were burn phones but the traffic pattern did not evade the spyware.

  Within minutes the team was almost certain that the originating phone belonged to a small but vicious cartel called Los Locos who were famous for their ability to smuggle goods into Texas and their propensity for violence. The area where they operated belonged in principal to the New Gulf Cartel but was constantly disputed by Los Zetas. “El Chusma” Camacho, the head of Los Locos, managed to maintain tempered relations with both cartels – mainly because his ability to smuggle and his willingness to kill were mutually appreciated. With this confirmation Francisco knew that this was a retaliation taken against him for having “quarantined” Los Locos. Mexico and the US had been putting pressure on everybody since Los Locos had butchered a couple of ICE agents and four Federales who had raided one of their tunnels at the wrong moment. What puzzled and alarmed him was that they even knew who he was, and who Patricia was – and where she was.

  This revelation was now Bogotá’s priority. To keep his head straight while they crunched data, Francisco had immersed himself in the multibillion dollar transactions that moved the world – which he constantly monitored for the patterns and evident algorithms that would guide his own very significant actions on the world financial stage.

  Finally he thought about his conversation with Ernie Goldman, a man whom he had learned to trust and appreciate through the years. He was an alter ego to Salvatore Carducci and now was the man to talk to while Marco and Ian Carlo fledged. They had reached the conclusion that the shooting was not part of a takeover attempt within the Carducci operation; both agreed that the most important matter at hand was to determine who was really behind this action. After all, Los Locos was small potatoes and didn’t have the know-how or clout to pull a stunt like this, particularly because Patricia had been the target and her role was known only by a handful of people. This spelled problems at the highest level.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After dinner at the Roslyn mansion everybody retired to their suites and slept easily knowing that the security of the house and grounds was in the hands of professionals. Patricia went to the main suite while Marco and Ian Carlo went to their respective quarters, rooms that they had known since their early teens when Sal had bought the place from a prominent New York stage actress who had fallen on hard times. Each suite had a private bathroom, walk-in closet, kitchenette, and all the necessary amenities that assured privacy when it was needed. Ernie went to a guest suite that he had used for the past twenty years, yet it held no imprint of the lawyer’s life. He pulled out his tablet and perused emails in several accounts sending the significant, urgent, and important to a folder and delegating the rest to his secretary in NYC who would distribute them among several attorneys and paralegals for action or information.

  Ernie then opened the folder that held only six emails that he had chosen as worthy of his personal attention. One beckoned for immediate attention. It was from MI6 and disclosed that a Saudi national who had been detained at Heathrow for improper documentation had been found carrying photographs of Marco Carducci. The photos were attached to a sheet of paper with addresses and telephone numbers as well as recent whereabouts for Marco. The final destination of said individual was New York City. The MI6 network had a flag for Marco Carducci and indications that Ernie Goldman was to be contacted in regards to anything related to this name. Furthermore, the individual had been identified as Ali Hussein Waked, a low-echelon thug with ties to several terrorist groups who was listed on Interpol’s no-fly list. Relieved of his false documents, cell phone, and tablet, Waked was promptly sent back to Riyadh to face Saudi authorities, a one-way ticket to hell.

  The burn phone carried by Waked only contained one number in the memory and that corresponded to a line that was no longer in service, but Ernie noted that it was the same as one of the phones in Florida that had been called by Los Locos just before the attack on Marco and Patricia. This was a definitive indication that the attempt had been on both Patricia and Marco, which had grievous implications.

  Alfredo “El Chusma” Camacho was relaxing at his favorite whorehouse just outside Matamoros. He was drinking pulque and beer, a lethal combination, while he enjoyed the company of a sixteen-year-old puta called “Gingercita” because her mother was named Ginger. Five of his men were with him and another five sat outside in their SUVs keeping guard. At 9:00 p.m. three RPGs entered the establishment’s door and two windows while another two immediately followed, taking out the two SUVs and their occupants. The only surviving member of the party was a soldier who had been taking a piss behind an abandoned cement mixer, but he couldn’t say a word because both his eardrums had been ruptured by the explosions. Los Locos had been permanently decommissioned.

  The commandos who executed the mission quietly confirmed the effectiveness of the interdiction and returned to a chopper that would fly out into the Gulf of Mexico and deposit the team on an oil rig from where they would be flown to their operational headquarters in New Orleans under the guise of oil workers. An encrypted and highly circumvented email went out to Lausanne saying only “All is quiet on the Western Front.” The recipient, a Saudi prince in his early thirties then sent confirmation to a man known only as “M&M” – a moniker used by the people who worked for him or were in any way associated with his operations.

  Early Saturday morning Patricia, Ian Carlo and Marco were having breakfast when Ernie walked into the room to join them, still talking on the cell. Usually very private with his phone habits, Ernie’s one-sided exposure caused the group to quiet for news written already on Ernie’s face, which had morphed into a thin, cynical smile that had no mirth.

  “I just received confirmation that Los Locos is no longer a factor but that both Marco and Patricia were the targets of this attempt,” Ernie announced, taking a seat. “While we know that they had the motivation, we’re sure that they didn’t have the ability to know where you were with such precision and timing. It implies a far more sophisticated operation and a highly-placed and dangerous opponent. And, while Ian Carlo has apparently not been targeted, it would be prudent to maintain a high level of security until every detail of this attempt has been clarified.”

  Ian Carlo and Marco looked at Ernie with questioning eyes. This didn’t make sense. Ian Carlo was the one exposed to danger, not Marco. It was clear that the latter was being targeted, which was confusing. On the other hand Patricia was obviously accepting of these facts and did not look flustered by what was being said.

  Marco took the business letter from Sal out of his pocket, held it in his hands for a few seconds, and showed it to Ian Carlo and Ernie. He kept the personal letter to himself for the time being.

  Ian Carlo pulled out a similar letter, two passports, and a credit card that he had received from Ernie in an envelope addressed to him by Sal. The letter congratulated Ian Carlo on his becoming head of the family…apparently Sal had anticipated the outcome. But it also reminded Ian Carlo that Marco was indispensable to him and that Patricia would be playing a very significant role in both of their lives. He said nothing about fishing but explained that he had left the Sarasota home to Marco for personal reasons that had nothing to do with the equal love he felt for Ian Carlo and his family to whom he had bequeathed the Third Avenue townhouse. He said that Marco, once having completed some instructions, would advise him of what was, in reality, their business and their patrimony.

  The one outstanding poi
nt was the underlined importance of Patricia in all their futures and that Sal still pulled some strings from the other side. Ian Carlo and Marco, but not Ernie, looked at her in unison with the same expression of puzzlement and expectation. Acknowledging the time had come for a significant explanation, Patricia rose to the occasion. “My father Francisco and my husband Sal became very close friends over the years, and eventually business associates,” she began. “Together, with others, they pooled their international interests and created a fund, as they put it. These interests did not consider national or international borders, cultural boundaries, or even laws as impediments. They surmised that the world had dynamics that no particular nation, organization, or man could alter significantly, but that anyone in tune with these dynamics could exploit them for the acquisition of immense wealth and eventually, immense power. They anticipated that the Arab Spring was inevitable and they profited greatly from that happening. They forecasted with precision the investment market’s revitalization, gaining billions on futures. When diametrically opposed forces took root in Venezuela and Colombia, they divested in the first and bought mining and oil rights in the second. In five years they quintuplicated their investment and expected yet another five years of growth at an accelerated pace.”

  Patricia paused for a few seconds while she poured herself a cup of coffee, an action that she used to put her thoughts in order before she continued.

  “More to the point as to why I’m…or rather we…are here, is that these are, and were older men who wanted to ensure that their creation would live on even after they died. The first to go was Sal – and per their agreement, when the first of them passed a new generation would be brought into The Board, which, by the way, is the only name by which the organization is known to its insiders. As I am the daughter of one board member and was married to another, I was inducted early on and participated through my father and Sal in many decisions that apparently have created enmity enough to have someone want me or us dead. Now your family, represented by Marco and advised by Ernie, will be on The Board. And by what Ernie just told us, Marco too was targeted by whoever wants the demise of our organization.”