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Page 11.
 The Learjet streaked along, on approach toward Sicily.
The largest island in the Mediterranean, situated at the bull's eye of history, Sicily was a triangular football that had been kicked around by the peninsular boot of Italy since time immemorial.
Speaking of soccer—Cartouche was not a man of many luxuries or pleasures. He did, however, avidly follow the world's leading sport—futbol, or soccer. For many disgruntled persons and peoples around the world, soccer was the one level playing field on which a Third World nation with primo runners and kickers could defeat teams fielded by the corporate monsters who now bestrode the dinosaur swamps of history, with their vestigial nation-partners running by their feet.
Louis head a soft leakage of Brazilian soccer stadium cheers from the cockpit and found it quite soothing—like sweet cream pouring into fine coffee—along with announcer commentary in German and Arabic.
Palermo had one of the strongest soccer teams in Italy this year. From the cockpit on the Bombardier flowed a steady play by play of a FIFA World Cup playoff game just then playing in Rio de Janeiro.
The pilots, both Egyptians, cheered. They high-fived at each goal. Frankfurt was taking a beating from Cairo in a tightly fought match, 12-6.
A Palermo announcer in blunted Sicilian Italian added his excited commentary to the global, Third Millennium flavor of the moment. Whoever won in Rio would play Palermo next week in London.
For the first time, the failed engineer and dead-end doctoral candidate had something of value to offer to a rich and willing buyer. Not being a gambler, he did not enjoy the game of negotiations. This luxury flight gave him, even if for a few hours, a taste of the rich life, and he knew he'd enjoy more of that. He was starved for it. He simply must not appear desperate as he met for the final negotiation with Anaconda's agents in Palermo. That made his palms very sweaty, indeed, and his palate very parched with thirst.
An attractive young Asian flight attendant in immaculate dark blue uniform—a color hard to keep spotless, but she managed, along with sharp creases—brought Cartouche the tea he had requested. She smiled accommodatingly as she set a tiny glass of pinkish-white mirabel brandy beside it. It was his third drink on the long flight. He had hardly slept for all of his anxiety.
Cartouche's gray-blue eyes reflected the twin emotions of a man licking his lips over the business deal of a lifetime, as well as the acid-gut terror of a third string poker player about to bet his stack while knowing he was out of his league in a first-class, major casino game.
Cartouche decided that, if he failed, he would jump to his death from the Eiffel Tower, or perhaps the Arc de Triomphe. He hoped it would not come to that. Money would buy him the two things he craved most—a good woman, and a sense of accomplishment. Both had eluded him in his 45 years to date. The new money would make his heart's wishes possible at last.
The jet whistled softly to a landing at Punta Raisi International Airport (PMO), one of Italy's busiest. It lies outside Palermo, capital of the autonomous region of Sicily.
Cartouche watched from his window in the jet. A red guide jeep with twirling orange roof light shunted the throbbing jet to a private, corporate terminal directly overlooking the blue Mediterranean. Light wind ruffled tall palm trees on a nearby beach, amid colorful umbrellas. Fingernails of surf crinkled on a beach that seemed made of light brown sugar.
The main hull door opened, pushed by a flight attendant's delicate hand and blue-uniformed arm with white silken cuff.
A young man with short, curly black hair sat casually waiting below, having driven a motorized stairway to the plane. The youth's rumpled white shirt and airport epaulets contrasted with his dark tan and open shirt collar.
Louis and the flight attendant walked down those stairs. It felt good to stretch one's legs.
The young man in the orange ladder-tow motor rattled off on a black gout of diesel exhaust for his next deplaning, as it was called with industrial, saw-blade harshness.
The stewardess signaled. From a shady spot under trees, a black SUV slowly peeled loose and flowed across the blistering concrete. Its driver had been killing time near the electrified fence, which was part of the local corporate world's defense against criminal elements. There were, as well, regular patrols outside the fence, by corporate, uniformed paramilitaries with assault rifles and dogs.
The SUV pulled up, and a gorgeous Italian flight attendant stepped out of nowhere. She wore a crisp black uniform with jaunty cap. She held open the car's rear door for Cartouche. "Welcome to Palermo," she said brightly. "We will await your return for the flight home, Signore."
"Merci," he said instinctively, although he had meant to say thank you in English, the world's international language. On impulse, he said in his minimal Italian: "Grazie."
"Per favore," the Italian woman said. Her voice was smooth as a forty-euro glass of the finest red wine, served at a five star restaurant. Anaconda knew how to lay it on thick, and Louis loved it. Both women bowed their heads. If this was how his life would be with corporate money, he wanted more of it.
Inside the car, he felt himself sucked into luxury amid plush leather seats with all the buoyancy of air cushions. Instead of cheap, sticky plastic, these were form-fitting black leather seats anchored with black velvet buttons. Their leather fragrance filled the interior, as did the continuing stream of soccer coverage. The driver, a black man in a chauffeur suit, said in a mellifluous accent: "Welcome to Palermo, Monsieur Cartouche. My name is Pino. I am Nigerian, with all the proper legal papers and a commercial license. Please let me know if you need anything during our drive. We will be at the Villa Caproni in about thirty minutes. There are drinks and crisps in the bar before you. I believe you call them potato chips."
"Thank you, Pino. In French Canada, we call them croustilles.
"Crew-tee," Pino politely echoed. "Oui, monsieur."
"Well done, Pino. I'll just have some ice water, thank you." He made a point of being kind and polite to hired help, unlike the way he had often been treated. It was appreciated, too. Pino did not respond, but Louis could see he was pleased, by the crinkles around his eyes and his slight smile seen in the rear-view mirror.
Cartouche's mouth felt parched again. His fingers shook slightly as he took a thick crystal glass from a stainless steel holding shelf. Fresh ice cubes twinkled in a ceramic pot with a mahogany cover. He scooped up a half glassful, and filled it from a filtered-water spigot.
The Nigerian drove safely and slowly, as if he wished to avoid disturbing the gravelly roads that could pepper his precious car with tiny scratches and dings. From the crowded streets of the city, through sleepy suburbs where half-naked children ran in the streets, the car reentered a lush green coastal district in the foothills of Monte Pellegrino. The roads leading in to the wealthy suburb were guarded by stone lions and hidden paramilitaries. One was as likely to see a rubber-tired wagon pulled by a donkey, and laden with canisters of olive oil, as a passing gasoline truck still bearing the ancient Esso name, or a modern De Tomaso Qvale Mangusta purring by like an exotic blossom leaving a dust cloud.
"The Villa Caproni is just ahead," the driver Pino said.
Cartouche knocked back his third glass of water, and his fourth finger of brandy of the day, and sat back in the luxurious ebony seat leather.
The car entered the Porta Capronese along the Sea Street—a gate through high brick walls in the ancient Traianic style. The walls were smothered in ivy, from whose green profusion peered Berber and Norman cefalue—carved heads, from the ancient Greek kephalos. Along the tops of the walls stood garlanded Greek and Roman style vases of aloes and miniature feather palms. Ivies hung everywhere in redundant profusion.
The car stopped by a tall central fountain in a paved courtyard. The house was Late Palladian, in the 18th Century Jeffersonian style, with a central rotunda of clean round lines, topped by a domed, round-beveled roof like a whorl of creamy meringue.
Pino remained in the car, while several tough-looking young men of the ubiquitous Mediterranean phenotype—dark hair, olive skin, Caucasian features with aquiline nose and expressive mouth—stepped from an ogived portal to welcome their guest. The young men were all former Carabinieri, who were parachute and karate-trained, packing discreet Mannlicher-Carcano automatics in shoulder holsters. They wore sharply tailored charcoal suits, pointed shoes of fine leather, and white silk shirts with dark blue silk kerchiefs. One opened the door, while the other two bowed slightly from the waist.
Louis stepped out, so wobbly on his legs that two of the young men hurried to steady him by his elbows. He looked lost, in his oversized suit, which he had borrowed from a neighbor—a beer truck driver half a head taller than he—in Longueuil, Greater Montreal. They ushered their guest into the cool interior of the mansion.
Inside, Cartouche's eyes accustomed themselves to a marbled gloom, in which arose minutely detailed statuary with gilded fingernails, rouged cherubic lips, and improbably sky-blue eyes on glazed skin. The statues all fit together as if in frozen Baroque choral song. Their eyes turned toward heaven. Their tiny hands were piously folded.
Amid the whispering central foyer arose a carved spiral staircase, whose rosewood and pine still breathed a faint, residual essence from long ago into the cool air.
"The committee are waiting for you upstairs," said one of the hard young men, as he gestured with a fight-calloused palm toward the empty stairway.
Louis screwed up his courage, and started ascending to meet his fate.
Outside, Pino drove the Lincoln Navigator carefully in a circle around the fountain, and down a gravel path that ran along the ivied wall. He had a vague sense that unseen eyes were upon him, maybe malevolent garden spirits, but he pushed their dark touch away from his thoughts. It was too lovely a day to think of alusi spirits. He turned on the radio, which poured out a rich tapestry of music on multiple speakers and full range. The disk playing was his own, from the Top 40 of his homeland. The song was The Look of Love, a terakota remake by native African artists of the old Brasil 66 hit. One of those tunes, Pino thought, that will be remade again and again, for as long as man and woman fall in love on this earth.
The path was cool with the overhead shade of a row of ancient olive trees. In about two minutes, he came to an asphalt plaza coated in windblown dust from Africa. The plaza was about twenty meters (60 feet) in diameter, perfectly round as if carved with a pastry knife along its edges. On one side was the brick wall, then clockwise a semicircle of identical garage doors under red tile roofs, and, at five o'clock to Pino's right, a round waiting area with wooden benches around a gravel circle.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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