The Storm Protocol (9 page)

‘The CIA has its uses,’ said
Guido. ‘We just have to make sure we don’t pull too many favours; they tend to get a bit too interested if we do. And the one thing we don’t want is a lot of CIA heat at the moment.’

‘True,’
added Ernesto, ‘but that greedy double dealing bastard is always useful to have onside. It is amazing what money can do; especially when the recipient is a public servant. It really does loosen the tongue.’

‘Anyway, let’s forget about Street. He had his uses
, but all weapons fail eventually.’

‘I already have,’ said Ernesto. ‘Street; who the fuck was he?’

He walked behind Guido and pressed the button on the intercom next to the solid oak door frame.

‘Yes, Mr Mancini?’
asked a disembodied voice; half statement and half question.

‘Can you send up our usual please? And make sure it is hot this time. We wouldn’t want a repeat of last night
, would we?’

Even through the metallic disguise of the intercom
, you could hear a distinct swallow. Ernesto smiled with not a trace of humour.

‘Certainly not,’ said the voice a little shakily. ‘It will never happen again Mr Mancini.’

‘See that it does not.’

Ernesto returned to his seat. The leather was literally creaking under his backside as he sat
, when there was a discrete knock on the door.

‘Come,’ said Guido quietly.

Two middle aged men entered the room, the second one pushing a large silver trolley. They were dressed as waiters; immaculate in black tailored trousers, crisp white shirts with black bow ties and red and white check waistcoats.

Both Guido and Ernesto considered any facial hair a character flaw and regarded both beard and moustache wearers with deep suspicion. As a consequence, any man who worked for them was clean shaven with tight
, close cropped hair.

The two servants made their way to the large dining table by the window. One of the men switched on the standard lamp in the corner, while the other re-opened the full height velvet drapes and then moved two exceptionally large candelabras to the centre of the table. One removed a cantilevered box from the bottom tray of the trolley. He opened the lid and extracted two knives and two forks; buffing and polishing them until they were gleaming. He then removed two red leather tablemats from the trolley and set a place deftly at either end of the table; there were only two chairs
, so it was impossible to lay them in the wrong place. As he added two napkins and two drinks coasters, his colleague was just finishing the task of lighting all twenty four candles, before placing a chilled ice bucket carefully to the left of each chair. Two large bone china dinner plates and two large crystal champagne flutes completed the picture. The two waiters bowed deeply and exited quickly, before even receiving the brief nod of dismissal.

The individual flickering lig
hts of the silver centrepieces cast oddly moving shadows against the window, combining with and reflecting the late evening Manhattan skyline. The two men got up and ambled over to the table before sitting down at their respective places; Ernesto nearest the door with Guido facing it. They smiled at each other; another part of the ritual played out.

11
th
May 2011 – The morning after the Storm.

There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master. – David Herbert Lawrence.

There was another discrete knock at the door.

‘It’s open,
’ Ernesto shouted.

A small man in his late forties entered the room with a large bag over his shoulder. He was wearing a red nylon uniform with the legend
Rudino’s
on the left breast pocket. The same moniker was visible on his baseball cap, which was pulled down over his face. He smiled as he entered the room, making the gap in his front teeth obvious.

‘Mr Ernesto, Mr Guido, how are you two gentlemen this evening? Or should that be very early morning?’ he asked expansively.

‘Fine, Sam, just fine,’ said Ernesto. ‘But we are very hungry.’

‘Good job I’m here then
, isn’t it,’ he said with another smile, removing a large Pizza box from the bag.

He took the plates and opened the box, extracting three large slices
onto each. He brought the plates to the brothers, who regarded him with interest as he removed two bottles from the bag. The bottles had been chilled; the condensation was still visible, and there was an audible pop as the cork was released from each one.

‘May I?’ he asked Ernesto first; pouring half a glass at the silently mouthed reply.

He dropped the bottle into the bucket and retrieved the second bottle, repeating the process for Guido. He then stood back and waited.

Both brothers took a huge bite; large pepperoni and salami with a sprinkling of parmesan. They delicately mopped their mouths with the crisply starched virgin white napkins, and washed the first mouthful down with a sip of the sparkling white wine.

‘Mmm, this is perfect,’ said Ernesto.

‘Absolutely top class; and hot
too this time,’ added Guido.

Sam pushed the c
ap back from his head, breathing a sigh of relief. The black eye was clearly visible now, as were the row of stitches going from the corner of the eye to the ear on the left hand side.

‘You don’t know how relieved P
apa will be,’ he said.

‘Give our regards to Mr Rudino,’ said Guido. ‘And no hard feelings
, I hope? In our defence, you know how finicky we are about our food.’

He wagged his fin
ger in Sam’s direction, like a teacher admonishing a wayward pupil.

‘None ta
ken, Mr Guido,’ responded Sam.

He hopped from one foot to the other, almost nervously.

‘But I do need your approval on something. We are down to our last few bottles of the Prosecco. We’ve organised for a special shipment of the one you like, directly from Treviso. We just need to get your say so.’

‘Talk to Antonio downstairs, he’ll give you what you need,’ said Guido.

Sam waited for another couple of minutes; until he was certain his services were no longer required. He then headed out, closing the door softly behind him.

‘He showed a lot of balls,’ said Ernesto, with a mouthful of pepperoni.

‘What else could he do?’ asked Guido.

They spent the next couple of minutes in companionable silence, punctuated only by the sounds of chewing and the occasional clink of glass on crystal. They finally sat back together almost on cue; as if they had been choreographed. Ernesto raised his glass and Guido did likewise.

‘So, how are the negotiations coming?’ asked Ernesto.

Even though the brothers had worked together si
nce their teens, from the start, they had made the decision to manage separate parts of the operation. That was why their evenings were so important to both of them. It gave them time to catch each other up on all of their diverse businesses and holdings.

‘I’ve setup the
holding company like we discussed,’ replied Guido. ‘That particular company in turn owns a second company, which in turn owns a third company that I have just incorporated in Ireland. All of the ownership transactions are offshore and virtually untraceable.’

‘What about the negotiations on the facility?’

‘That really is good news,’ said Guido with a smile. ‘The IDA is desperate to get direct foreign investment. So much so, that they are proposing to grant-aid us to the tune of almost full staff cost for first year,
plus
they are willing to get us a sweet deal on the real estate. A major Pharmaceutical company pulled out of an R&D facility in a rush last year, and all of the hardware and tooling is still there, apparently. It should be possible to re-use a significant portion of it, saving capital and start-up costs.’

‘IDA?’ asked Ernesto quizzically.

‘Industrial Development Authority; the body tasked with getting investment into Ireland.’

‘So
, what’s the catch?’ asked Ernesto.

‘Not so much of a catch,’ said Guido. ‘Obviously
, I would have preferred it if we were in Dublin; it’s the capital city and is where most of the imported equipment and goods are landed. But this facility is in West Cork; a couple of hundred miles from Dublin; miles away even from the city of Cork and really not that easy to get to.’

‘So
, when is the cut off point; when do we have to make a final decision?’

‘In the next couple of weeks; we haven’t s
pent a lot of money yet, but if....’

Guido paused briefly
, before resuming.

‘
....no,
when
we decide to go ahead, the floodgates will open.’

‘Hmm,’ said Ernesto, leaning back in his chair. ‘I’m still
not really sure about this. I know
you
go on gut instinct most of the time, but we don’t have a lot of information to make an informed decision. A lot of promises, a lot of ifs, buts and maybes, but nothing concrete; at least not that I have seen.’

‘I know what you’re saying,’ said Guido. ‘If I was in your shoes
, I’d be asking those questions too and rightly so. And if it makes you feel any better, it was the way I felt up until recently.’

He held up his fingers and began to curl them over one by one as he spoke.

‘Firstly, if nothing else, my informant is very trustworthy. He has made us a lot of money.’

He stopped momentarily at Ernesto’s upraised eyebrow.

‘Okay,’ he laughed, ‘he has made himself a lot of money too, but the point is that we can trust him.’

He gathered his thoughts for a second or two.

‘It’s a pity about that whole messy business with Street. That idiot O’Reilly, the one with the gambling debts, had no clue what he really had on his hands. If we had managed to get our hands on his copy of the folder, it would have enabled us to cut out the middle man and saved us a lot of money in the process. As it is, we’ll have to stick with our original informant and plan.’

‘Maybe we should have come clean with Street? Cut him in on the action?’

Guido shot Ernesto a cold look.

‘You know what he’s been like recently where drugs are concerned. He gets really jumpy; doesn’t like it at all. Self deception is not a happy place to be. We did the right thing; he was outliving his usefulness anyway. Let’s face it, he managed to persuade himself that drugs were not a big part of our operation and it suited us at the time to let him believe that.’

‘Do you think he knew what we were planning to do with the Storm Protocol, when we got our hands on the folder?’ asked Ernesto.

‘Not at the time,’ said Guido. ‘But he’s
not stupid. I think after the pharmacy situation, he would have read the file from cover to cover. He’d have an inkling after that of what we intended to do, if not to the level of where and why.’

‘What do you think he did with the folder?’ asked Ernesto.

‘Knowing Street, he put it somewhere safe as an insurance policy,’ said Guido.

‘Will it come back to haunt us?’

‘Not a chance; certainly not given the retainers we pay our fancy city law firm.’

‘Do you think he is still alive?’ asked Ernesto.

‘No I don't,’ said Guido. ‘He would have contacted us to negotiate the return of the folder, in return for an amnesty.’

They both ponder
ed that statement for a few minutes.

‘I’ve also recruited a couple of staff,’ said Guido
, into the silence.

Ernesto looked blankly at him, his face registering the beginnings of surprise.

‘Ok, it’s like this,’ stated Guido. ‘We have a product that we want to manufacture. We know what chemicals and compounds we need to produce it and what processes we need to pass it through. But that is high level; we are not chemists and don’t pretend to be. But we also need a cover story.’

H
e wiped a morsel of pepperoni from the corner of his mouth.

‘Something that is viable and feasible and believable. So I got Max to do some background checking. He read the file from cover to cover, then went onto the internet and did a huge amount of research, with particular relevance to the universities a
nd specifically ones with post graduate courses. After a month or so of searching, he came up with a couple of mature students who were working out of New York; a complete stroke of luck. They were investigating the very same area of the brain, or at least the area that our drug compound targets. It wasn’t difficult to persuade them to come and work for us; Max gave them edited sections of the folder and they were very excited. And it gives us a great cover story; these guys now work for G&E Chemicals, on new treatments for diseases of the elderly.’

‘We’re not exactly anonymous,’ said Ernesto. ‘You didn’t talk to them directly
, did you?’

‘
I’m not completely stupid,’ said Guido, affronted.

‘And also; G
&E Chemicals?’ asked Ernesto. ‘Although I’m sure I’m going to be sorry that I asked.’

‘Guido and Ernesto,’ said Guido with a smile.

‘What?’ he asked, at Ernesto’s pained expression. ‘It was the best I could come up with at short notice.’

‘So these guys have no idea what our real purpose is?’ asked Ernesto.

‘None at all; as I said, I had their research checked out by Max, and he was very pleased.’

Max was one of their trusted lieutenants; an industrial chemist
, whose special skills had come in handy in a number of the Mancini business lines.

‘As I said, I gave the file to Max and asked him to put the stuff through its paces. We’re going down to see him tomorrow for a thorough briefing. I installed him as the current CEO of G&E Chemicals and he has been checking out the work of our two student friends. He confirmed what o
ur CIA pal told me; that I wasn’t just a deluded old man wasting my time.’

‘My, you have been busy behind my back.’

Guido shot Ernesto a pained expression.

‘Some things you have to keep to yourself till the time is right to bring them out,’ he said. ‘Anyway, Max was astonished to find that their research was very similar to what is in our file
. However, the truly surprising thing is that the results
they
have been getting are derisory. They cannot get it to work; just goes to prove how good our friend Nigel was. Max thinks it’s the reason they jumped at the chance to work for us; they can see an opportunity to make their own research successful too.’

Ernesto sighed, roused himself out of the chair momentarily, and then slumped back down, studying the back of his hands for a couple of minutes.

‘So, explain it to me again,’ said Ernesto. ‘How is this scheme going to make us some serious money?’

‘Have you not read this file?’ asked Guido incredulously, waving the Storm Protocol dossier. ‘We have a drug here that seems to give its user an incredible high
, without the drawbacks of physical addiction. The addiction is mental, a much harder nut to crack, and one which works massively in our favour. I even thought of a slogan to use;
all of the highs with none of the lows
. This drug seems to have
no
risk at all to people’s health, and because the addiction is mental, there is no physical trigger to remove. The more people want it, the better for us. We can sell more and make bigger profits at the end of the day.’

‘I understand all that,’ said Ernesto dismissively. ‘But I still don’t see why we have to manufacture the stuff ourselves.’

‘Simple,’ replied Guido. ‘It all comes down to the principle of supply and demand. At the moment, we are completely at the mercy of our suppliers. Most of our merchandise comes from South America or the Middle East. Those guys can jack their prices as much as they want and there is very little we can do about it.’

‘Okay, I’m with you so far,’ said Ernesto. ‘But the reputation, and thus the demand for these drugs have been built up o
ver many years. Cocaine, Heroin and Speed have all been around for a long time. We are talking about an untried and untested product here. In the real world, there is no knowledge of it. There is no rumour, no urban myths, no history, not even any marketing done. People are not aware that it exists.’