The Geneva Deception (7 page)

Amalfi Casino and Hotel Resort, Las Vegas

17th March - 11.56 p.m.

Tom had insisted on getting down on to the floor early, guessing that whoever had been sent to meet him would already be in position and that it would help if it looked as though he was keen to do the deal. More importantly, it gave them a chance to see the money, to see that this was for real. It was at Tom’s feet now - twenty million in cash, neatly packed into two aluminium suitcases.

Twenty million dollars.

There was a time, perhaps, when he might have considered…But those days were behind him now, although you wouldn’t have guessed it from the obvious reluctance with which Stokes had entrusted the cases to him, and his pointed reminder that they were electronically tagged. Then again, maybe Tom was nałve to have
expected anything else. All Stokes had to go on was his file, and that told its own, damning story.

He looked around the blinking, cavernous floor to get his bearings, momentarily disoriented by the tumbrel-clatter of the roulette wheels, the dealers’ barked instructions and the machines’ remorseless chuckling. The place was packed. If Vegas was suffering from the economic slowdown that the press had been so gleefully reporting for the past few months, then it was hiding it well. Either that or it was still in denial.

He spotted Jennifer at the bar to his left, nursing a coke. Ortiz, meanwhile, was to his right, pretending to play video poker and losing badly. Stokes, he knew, was in the back with the casino’s head of security, watching the screens and coordinating the other agents who had been posted around him. In front of him was a roulette table, the animated abandon with which a noticeably younger crowd were merrily flinging chips on to the baize contrasting with the silent, mesmerised application of the older people on the slots.

On cue, a woman wearing an
‘I love Fort Lauderdale’
T-shirt waddled over to the machine next to him, the stool screeching under her weight. Resting a bucket full of quarters on her lap, she bowed her head briefly as if offering up a prayer, and then began to feed it with metronomic precision, the tips of her fingers stained black by the coins. A kaleidoscope of changing
colours immediately skipped across her rapt face, her eyes gazing up at the spinning wheels with a mixture of hope and expectation.

Tom wondered if she knew that her faith was unlikely to be rewarded. In here, chance danced to the casino’s tune. The roulette tables that paid out thirty-five to one, when the odds of winning were one in thirty-seven. The deliberate location of the premium slots next to the main aisles and blackjack tables, to lure people in. The lack of clocks and the suppression of natural light, so that everyone lost track of time. The careful variation in ceiling heights, lighting levels and music zones to trigger different emotional responses. The strategic location of the bathrooms, to minimise time off the floor. The purposefully labyrinthine layout, so that the sightlines provided neither a glimpse of a possible way out, nor allowed a potentially overwhelming view of the entire space. In this broad church, you were damned from the moment you walked through the door.

There. A man with his back to him at the neighbouring blackjack table, his head snapping back a little too fast to suggest the glance he had just given him had been accidental. And again, only this time he didn’t break eye contact. He knew Tom had seen him. He was tipping the dealer, getting up. This was it.

‘Blackjack table,’ Tom muttered into his mike, hoping the others could hear him over the noise.
‘White hair, black…’ His voice tailed off as the man turned round and nodded.

Dressed in a black suit, he was about five feet ten with a curling mop of white hair and a farmer’s sun-blushed cheeks that echoed the red handkerchief peeking out of a trouser pocket. But it was the white band encircling his neck that had drawn Tom’s attention, its unexpected glare seeming to cast a bleaching wash over everything at the periphery of his vision.

‘He’s a priest,’ Tom breathed in disbelief, as much to himself as anyone.

The man advanced towards him, Tom reassured that as Jennifer had predicted to Kezman earlier, he wasn’t carrying anything that might have contained the painting. That would have marked him and whoever he was working for as amateurs, and amateurs were unpredictable and more easily spooked. Instead, slung over his left shoulder was a tired leather satchel.

They met in the middle of the main aisle. Saying nothing, the priest reached into his bag and handed Tom a series of photographs. They showed the
Nativity
, but in more detail this time, with closeups of the faces and hands, always the hardest things to paint. From what Tom could tell, the brushwork looked genuine, and although the canvas had been slightly damaged over the years, overall the condition was very good, the faint reflection of a camera flash in a couple of the
photos suggesting that it was being kept behind glass.

There was no sign of a signature, but Tom took that as further proof of the painting’s probable authenticity. As far as he knew, Caravaggio had only ever signed one painting,
The Beheading of the Baptist
, where he had marked an M for Merisi, his family name, in the blood spilling from John the Baptist’s neck.

‘Is it close?’ Tom asked.

‘Close enough,’ the priest replied, Tom detecting an Italian accent.

‘I need to see it.’

‘Is that the money?’

‘Twenty million dollars,’ he confirmed, tapping the case nearest to him with his foot. ‘Unmarked, non-sequential bills, as requested.’

‘
Bene
,
bene.
’ The priest nodded. ‘Good.’ There was an anxious edge to the man’s voice that surprised Tom. For a pro he seemed a little tense, although twenty million was enough to make most people tighten up.

‘I need to see the painting first,’ Tom reminded him.

‘Of course,’ the priest said. ‘You have a car?’

‘The painting’s not here?’

‘It’s not far. Where’s your car?’

‘The money’s going nowhere until I see the painting,’ Tom warned him.

‘Don’t worry,’ the priest immediately reassured
him. ‘We have a deal, see -’ He reached for Tom’s hand and shook it energetically. ‘You have the money, I have the painting, we have a deal, yes?’

‘We have a deal,’ Tom agreed.

‘You want this painting, yes?’

‘As much as you want the money,’ Tom answered with a puzzled smile. It was a strange question to ask. Why else would he be there? ‘My car’s in the garage.’

‘It has been a long time. You will be the first, the first in many years to see it.’ His eyes flicked over Tom’s shoulder as he spoke and then back again. ‘It is beautiful, still beautiful, despite everything it has been through.’

Tom felt his stomach tightening. Something wasn’t right. First a hint of nervousness. Now an abrupt shift from urgency to an almost languid calm as if…as if he was trying to waste time so that somewhere else …

A shot rang out, its whiplash crack cutting through the casino’s raucous din. Tom staggered back, the world suddenly slowing, as if someone was holding the movie projector to stop the reel from turning - the individual frames crawling across the screen; a roulette ball, frozen in midflight; the soundtrack stretched into a low, slurring moan as words folded into each other.

Then, almost immediately, everything sprang forward, only sharper, louder and faster than before, as if time was overcompensating as it tried
to catch up with itself. The ball landed, the winner cheered. But their celebration was drowned out by a terrified scream, one voice triggering another and that one two more until, like a flock of migrating birds wheeling through a darkening sky, a sustained, shrieking lament filled the air.

Tom glanced instinctively to his left. Jennifer was lying on the floor. Her blouse was blotted poppy red.

Institute for Religious Works,

Via della Statzione Vaticana, Rome

18th March - 8.08 a.m.

As the six men opposite him bowed their heads, Antonio Santos picked up his spoon and studied the hallmarks. To the left he recognised the symbol of the Papal State, and next to it the initials NL - Lorenzini Nicola, an Italian silversmith active in the mid eighteenth century, if he wasn’t mistaken.

‘
Nos miseri homines et egeni, pro cibis quos nobis ad corporis subsidium benigne es largitus, tibi Deus omnipotens, Pater cælestis, gratias reverenter agimus
...’ Archbishop Ancelotti intoned grace, his voice rising and falling as if he was reciting some mediaeval incantation. Turning the spoon over, Santos smiled at the way its polished surface distorted his reflection.

‘
Simul obsecrantes, ut iis sobries, modeste, atque grate utamur. Per Iesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
’

‘Amen,’ Santos agreed enthusiastically, carefully returning the spoon to its proper place before anyone had opened their eyes.

Ancelotti looked up and nodded at the two young priests standing near the door to serve breakfast. He was wearing a black simar with amaranth-red piping and buttons together with a purple fascia and zuchetto. A large gold pectoral cross dangled from his neck. The other five men sitting either side of him were similarly dressed, although, as cardinals, their buttons, sashes and skull-caps were scarlet.

‘Thank you for coming, Antonio,’ Ancelotti said, motioning with his finger to indicate that he wanted one, two, three spoonfuls of sugar. ‘I apologise for the short notice.’

‘Not at all, Your Grace,’ Santos said with a generous shrug, holding his hand over his coffee as one of the priests went to add cream. ‘I apologise for being late. The Carabinieri seem to have closed off half the city.’

‘Nothing too serious, I hope,’ Ancelotti enquired, brushing his hands together over his plate to dust some crumbs from his fingers.

‘My driver told me that they’ve found a body in the Pantheon,’ Cardinal Simoes volunteered, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses back up his nose.

‘Dear, dear,’ Ancelotti tutted, licking some jam from his thumb with a loud sucking noise. ‘We live in such wicked times. Jam?’

‘No, thank you.’ Santos gave a tight smile. ‘I don’t eat breakfast.’

‘You should, you should,’ Ancelotti admonished him. ‘Most important meal of the day. Now, does everyone have what they need?’

Seeing that they did, he waved at the two priests to retire to the outer room, then turned back to face Santos.

‘I believe you know everyone here?’

He nodded. Cardinals Villot, Neuman, Simoes, Pisani and Carter. The Oversight Commission of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione. The Vatican Bank.

‘Your eminences,’ he said, bowing his head. Their murmured greetings were muffled by fresh croissants.

‘Antonio, we asked you here today in our capacity as the largest shareholder in the Banco Rosalia,’ Ancelotti began, sipping his coffee.

‘Largest and most important shareholder,’ Santos added generously. ‘We are, after all, working to help finance God’s work.’

‘Ah yes, God’s work.’ Ancelotti clasped his hands together as if in prayer, pressing them against his lips. ‘Which is, as I’m sure you understand, why we need to be especially vigilant.’

‘I’m not sure I do understand, Your Grace,’ Santos said with a frown, placing his cup back down on the table. ‘Vigilant for what?’

‘For anything that could harm the reputation of the Catholic Church, of course.’

‘I hope you are not suggesting that -’

‘Of course not, Antonio, of course not,’ Ancelotti reassured him warmly, ‘But after what happened before…well, we have to go through the motions, be seen to be asking the right questions.’

He was referring, Santos knew, to the huge scandal that had engulfed the Vatican Bank in the 1980s, when it had been implicated in laundering billions of dollars of mafia drug money. It was partly in response to this that the Oversight Commission had been set up in the first place.

‘I fail to see how…’

‘Your year-end accounts are almost a month overdue,’ Cardinal Villot said in an accusing tone.

‘As I’ve already explained to Archbishop Ancelotti, there are a number of small, purely technical matters that the auditors have…’

‘We’ve also heard your liquidity position’s deteriorated,’ Cardinal Carter added, his voice equally sharp.

‘Not to mention the provisions on your real estate portfolio,’ Cardinal Neuman chimed.

Santos took a deep breath. So much for casting the money lenders out of the temple, he thought ruefully. Instead, armed with an MBA and a bible, the Oversight Commission seemed to be setting up shop right next to them.

‘A number of banks have withdrawn their funding lines, yes, but that’s to be expected with the squeeze that the whole market is feeling. We still have more than enough headroom, given our deposit and capital base. As for our real estate book, we’ve seen a slight uptick in bad debts like everyone else, but the provisions we took last year should be more than …’

‘I think what we’re suggesting is that a short, sharp financial review would help allay our concerns, in light of the extreme volatility of the markets and the rather bleak economic outlook,’ Ancelotti said in a gentle tone.

‘What sort of a financial review?’

‘We’d probably start with a quick canter through your latest management accounts, bank statements and ALCO reports,’ Ancelotti said breezily. ‘We have a small team of accountants we like to use for this sort of thing. They’ll be in and out in a few weeks. You won’t even notice they’re there.’

A pause. It wasn’t as if he had any choice.

‘When would you like them to start?’

‘Is the day after tomorrow too soon?’ Ancelotti asked with a casual shrug, although Santos noticed that the archbishop’s eyes were locked on to his, as if to gauge his reaction.

‘Of course not,’ Santos replied with a confident smile. ‘That gives me enough time to brief the team so that we can make sure that we have a
room set aside and all the documentation prepared.’

‘Excellent, excellent.’ Ancelotti stood up to signal that the meeting was over and leant across the table to shake his hand. ‘I knew you’d understand. By the way, I’m hosting a Mozart recital in Santa Sabina next month. You should come.’

‘It would be my pleasure, Your Grace,’ Santos smiled. ‘Please forward on the details. Your Eminences…’

A few minutes later he was down on the street in the rain, angrily loosening his collar as he flicked a tin open and pushed one, then two pieces of liquorice into his mouth. Then he reached for his phone.

‘We’re fucked,’ he barked into it the moment it was answered. ‘Ancelotti and his performing monkeys want to audit the bank…I don’t know what they know, but they must know something, and even if they don’t, it won’t take more than a few days for them to figure everything out…I need to bail. How much would I have if I liquidated everything?…No, not the property. Just whatever I can get out in cash by the end of the week …Is that it?’ He swore angrily, earning himself a disapproving look from two nuns walking past. ‘That’s not enough,’ he continued in an angry whisper. ‘That’s not even halfway to being enough…Hold on, I’ve got another call.’ He switched lines, ‘
Pronto?
’

‘It’s done,’ a voice rasped.

‘Are you sure?’ Santos stepped out of the rain and sheltered inside a doorway.

‘It’s done,’ the voice repeated. The line went dead.

Smiling, Santos went to switch back to the first caller before pausing, a thought occurring to him. He helped himself to some more liquorice as the idea slowly took shape. It had only ever been part of the set-up, but why not? Why the hell not? The trick was getting to it, but if he could…the Serbians would take it off his hands. They were always in the market for that sort of thing.

‘Spare some change?’

A beggar wearing a filthy army surplus overcoat, his face masked by a spade-like beard studded with raindrops, was holding a creased McDonald’s cup up to him. Santos glanced up and down the street behind him. It was empty. With a flick of his wrist he knocked the cup into the air, the few, pathetic coins it contained scattering across the pavement. The beggar dropped moaning to his knees, his blackened fingernails scrabbling in the gutter.

‘Spare
you
some change?’ Santos spat. ‘I’m the one who needs a handout.’