“I was thinking...”
A smiling face appears in the old man’s visual field. It is his secretary who reminds him of the next meeting.
“I must go.”
“See you soon.”
The older one makes for the door, but before going out, turns. “Give my regards to your wife and again, congratulations!”
He walks a few dozen meters along the sidewalk, crosses the street and stops by an anonymous brick building, in front of a brass plate beside a black door. The Overseas Bank has one of its branch offices here. The old man leans his right hand against the fingerprint detector and when the door opens, he steps into an entrance covered with fitted carpet. A young woman of Chinese origin with a pencil skirt and a silk blouse receives him. She is tall and thin, with dark eyes emphasizing her pale complexion.
“Good afternoon! The director is waiting for you on the second floor. This way, please.”
They take the elevator and enter a small room without windows. The director is behind a table. The two shake hands.
“Can I help you?”
INVESTIGATIONS
A gala dinner. Large round tables covered with dark blue tablecloths, and on them goblets, china and cutlery, all with the Confederation symbol, four golden stars on a turquoise background, as many as the inhabited worlds of the solar system. Crystal chandeliers, whose ruby color matches perfectly with the red damask tapestry. Swarms of waiters in white livery.
In front of the Confederation flag, there is a long table with a decoration of pink peonies. The President is in the middle, surrounded by his executive. Bogart is among them, busy discussing with a senator through the neural chip, for secrecy reasons.
"How far is the approval of the invasion?"
"An hour ago the opposition leader gave his assent."
"When is the official ratification foreseen?"
"The parliament will meet tomorrow afternoon. In the evening it will be all finished."
In Bogart’s visual field, appears a message. It is C573Y, who is asking for an urgent meeting. The Head of Security takes his leave and goes to a small room.
The neural chip transmits him his assistant’s image. “Yesterday Nihil’s company made a second fund transfer. One thousand solars, the same amount used to corrupt the Space Agency employees. First our agents went to the intermediary’s office with a local investigator. A police search and interrogation didn’t yield any results. So they broke his neural chip open…”
He clenches his fist. “He was telling the truth! Before leaving, they inserted a bug in his frontal lobe and erased every trace of the operation. The subject doesn’t remember anything.”
James has a pensive look. “What about the Exotic Foods manager?”
“He has implanted only an old model of virtual secretary that did not provide us with any useful information. Our team had to use the old methods. They were quite rough… He had a heart attack, damn! Now he is in intensive care and we don’t know if he will survive the night.” C573Y makes a grimace. “However the program hidden in the bank computer has reported the transfer was sent to a businessman of the Wonderful Islands.”
“Let’s kidnap him!” cries Bogart. “The President is ordering the invasion of the Wonderful Islands in a few weeks, but we cannot wait. I will personally ask for the authorization.”
“The operation will take place in a foreign country. He is going to entrust the secret service with it.”
“I will insist on assigning at least the command to Security.”
WONDERFUL ISLANDS
@
“The Wonderful Islands are among the most enchanting places in Net. The luxuriant vegetation covering a large part of the country, is interrupted at intervals by yellow, red and dark blue expanses. Here flowers of all sizes spread even across the beaches, inside the villages and towns, so that the whole country is perfumed. The coastline is indented with uncountable inlets where the whitest beaches alternate with rocks striated with black and ochre. The sea is populated by a world of corals and colored fish. No wonder these islands are an exclusive holiday resort. The bungalows, hidden in the green, offer exactly the comfort and privacy the most exigent customers demand. The capital is on the largest island, around a wide bay from which the skyscrapers rise like crystals from a geode.
Since the independence of the country fifty years ago, its government has introduced tax regulations in favor of foreign investors, passing laws which allow the setting up and management of bank accounts and companies in total anonymity. These opportunities have attracted the most important corporations in the Solar System, as well as small firms and private investors.
But a few years ago, crime started infiltrating the institutions. Since then the country has undergone dramatic changes: the offer has been extended to money laundering and illicit trades, but what is worse, the immense wealth flowing in from abroad has become a blackmail tool.
When the Confederation asked the Wonderful Islands to sign a transparency protocol, it received a definite refusal. It put forward other proposals, all of them wrecked. Attitudes became soured, but even threats and commercial sanctions didn’t have any effect. Today the situation is dominated by the calm before the storm. The President has stopped giving ultimatums, maintains that only an invasion can unblock the situation and masses troops on the borders. It seems that Special Forces units have infiltrated the enemy network...”
The Solar System Chronicles, February 20th 2300, “Beyond tax heavens”.
A STRANGE PERSON
@
A woman is swimming some meters above the coral reef, towards the white sandy shore. A shoal disperses at her arrival, while a moray peeps out from its hiding-place.
She rises from the sea showing her athletic shoulders and a shapely pair of legs, walks gracefully across the beach. Her ivory complexion and platinum blond hair make her look like an angel, but her eyes are icy. Halfway, she turns round. In the crystal clear water, turquoise and dark blue spots follow one another. Against the horizon, thin clouds stand out.
The woman makes her way along a path winding through orchid bushes. She passes through a palm grove and arrives at a lawn with a spotless bungalow in the middle. In the shade of a porch, she lies down on a deckchair and half-closes her eyes, enjoying the background of Caribbean music. A waiter dressed in white lays a fruit cocktail on a small bamboo table.
She is satisfied indeed with having bought this virtual atoll, so perfect in every detail it seems real. A few years before, when she ran into the offer for sale, she wanted to visit the island at once and remained so dazzled, that she unhesitatingly paid out an exorbitant sum for it.
But now the time has come to work. She calls her secretary. A smiling face appears.
“Did instructions arrive?” asks the woman.
“I am forwarding them. Do you need anything else?”
“For now that’s all, thank you.”
When the small figure has vanished, she examines the request, and then starts working out a plan. She, an artist in her own field, must produce an original work, able to excite the admiration even of sworn enemies. After several attempts, she conceives a satisfying idea. This time she will surpass herself, creating a real masterpiece. In order to realize such a perfect work, she must take care of every detail. The woman enters the bungalow and goes to the living room.
“Show me some period costumes!” she orders the computer.
“What era?”
“18th century dress.”
Clothes for men and women appear in mid-air. She turns around flared skirts and examines a few lace-edged corsets. "I wonder how they could get in…"
Then she stops in front of a black costume with an austere cut. “Put it aside.”
An invisible hand moves it to a corner.
“Since you have chosen a suit,” points out the computer, “I imagine you want to change your appearance too.”
Various looks materialize: young and old, blond and dark. She casts a scornful glance at the nea
rest ones. “I don’t like those. Take them away!”
They disappear at once. She rummages about for a few minutes and finally stops in front of a tall man. “What magnificent raven hair!”
She runs her hand through his hair. “I want this.”
The male figure walks as meekly as a lamb, next to the suit.
“Do you need anything else?” asks the computer.
“You can go.”
The woman admires her choices.
"Now I must get ready."
She reaches for a mirror and taking a scalpel, puts it to her forehead and starts cutting downwards through the skin. She continues across her face, down to the pubis. She seizes the borders just below her breast and tears them up, making a luminous mist appear. She continues till all the covering has been slipped off. She draws her new features up and lets them spread all over her body. Finally, she puts on the suit.
Now the transformation is complete. In the room, stands a man with a dark complexion and well-kept beard, wearing a black cloak and a cocked hat. He wraps himself up in the cloak and disappears in a flash.
He reappears in a distant place of Net, in the middle of an alley lined with narrow medieval houses. Flaking walls, clothes hanging from the windows. Thick fog, insinuating itself into the cracks of the time-worn building in front. A brackish smell, a sharp cold. He holds the cloak tightly and massages his shoulders vigorously, then makes his way whistling a cheerful tune.
A minute later he emerges into a paved street running alongside a channel. He makes for the main door of a marble palace, with slender windows ending in spires. He stops in front of it. Few pedestrians pass by. A carriage hauled by two pawing black horses, enters rattling.
Slowly the glimmer of the fog weakens. From the windows, the first lights shine out. Silence, broken only by the water lapping against the banks and from time to time by the shouts of boatmen announcing their arrival. Muffled voices.
Suddenly, just in the middle of the waterway, a dim light looms out of the fog, followed by a lonely figure standing on a boat and intent on pushing his single oar.
LANDING
@
The ovoids, hidden from sight and any surveillance system, skim over the sea, cutting a furrow in the smooth surface and raising a wake. On board, along the fuselage, the Security Special Forces. They carry war weapons and wear thick shields. At the end, wrapped in wide-mesh nets, a heap of metal cases.
“The wind is increasing,” announces the captain. “Cyclone arriving.”
Low, dark clouds. Rare clear gaps, penetrated by moonlight that lights up the leaden expanse with silvery flashes.
On the horizon, the downtown skyscrapers loom up. Garlands of light crowning the bay.
Before reaching the coast, the ovoids turn to the right.
“The atoll is twenty kilometers away. We are entering the storm.”
In front, flashes of lightning pierce the sea. Sharp waves spread in every direction, in the middle of a thick fog of vaporized water.
Sheer cliffs emerge from the ocean. A front like the palm of a giant, that at the top is fifty meters high. The breakers pound the reefs furiously, leaving trails of white.
The flight turns to the left, skirting the rocks, just below the edge. The villa is behind a crag, near the beach.
Seemingly undefended and solitary. A criminal’s den.
The aircrafts open like the legs of a spider. They start circling.
C573Y’s ovoid lands on the beach.
Till twelve hours before, soaring palms, snow-white sand. An earthly paradise. Now, a hell. Sand filled gusts cut the breath, volleys of pebbles pound against the shields. Behind, the boiling sea. Walls of water face each other and disintegrate into foaming spray. A howling, deafening wind.
Bent forward, with their weapons in their arms, the raiders climb along a muddy path, up to a lawn studded with palms bent by the wind.
C573Y steps over an uprooted trunk, staring at the five dots in his visual field that are converging towards the center.
Then he stops. Encirclement completed. The villa is fifty meters farther, on a bank.
They approach stealthily, from all directions.
Ready.
They burst into with leveled guns.
Security General Headquarters, two hours later.
“He escaped, damn!”
C573Y’s hologram, still at the mercy of the excitement that followed him during the whole mission, approaches furiously.
“A servant saw him before he left. He was wearing the looks of a tall brown man, with a strange black suit. He didn’t say where he was going. We questioned the staff: no suspicions. Great class; a nice person, according to them.”
He gets his breath back. “We seized his virtual secretary in an encrypted directory. A good hideout. She was seemingly ready to cooperate, but then started dragging on… We threatened her. At that point she answered back that we couldn’t hurt her!”
Bogart sighs. “She doesn’t know us, clearly.”
“We began to erase her programs, one after the other. When she realized we were tearing her to pieces, she started blabbing it all out. Her boss is a businessman among the richest in the country, but with a peculiar hobby: he is a killer, the best in the market. He received the money, but she does not know the reason and has no idea where he is. Just before his departure, she handed him a file. The instructions, I imagine.”
“Did you verify she was telling the truth?”
“We had her memory access code delivered to us. So we found an old image of Nihil with the killer, on the beach. The Head of the Elects visits the island once a year at least. The two are friends, evidently.”
“Do you have an image of the killer?”
“The domestic who caught a glimpse of him, doesn’t remember enough for an identikit. I have set the best search programs on his track, but I doubt I will find him in time. Ah, before he disguised himself as a woman. His secretary told us. This hologram was extracted from her memory.”
Between the two of them, a woman with a black leather coat materializes.
VENICE CARNIVAL
@
They find themselves at the end of an alley flanked with medieval houses. Victoria takes her feet out of a smelly puddle. She has a quick look at her costume: a full length yellow damask skirt to her ankles and a lace-bordered corset finishing with a revealing neck line. The cold makes her shiver, she covers her shoulders with a short golden cloak. James is a few meters away. Dark knee-length trousers and socks, a velvet jacket. He arranges his wig, puts on an ostrich-plumed hat and starts looking around. From a half-closed door, comes a caterwauling. A thin and ruffled kitten darts between his legs and disappears into a nauseating heap of garbage. The man walks a few steps up to a street plaque. “We have ended up in the right place.”
Victoria wears her mask. “Let’s go!”
Walking arm in arm, they come out into a square, where ladies and gentlemen in fancy dress are dancing before four musicians. They pass by a doughnut seller. A stench of burnt fat.
James strides to a flaking main door. “The appointment with our guide is at ten o’clock.”
They walk through a corridor, where an acrobat surrounded by a dozen spectators, is performing contortions. The people clap. In a corner, three men chat while smoking long pipes.
A person with a white mask leaves the group and makes for them. In front of the couple, he takes off his hat and bows. “Good morning. I am your guide.”
James checks his identification code. “We can go.”
The three go into the street, plunging into the historical reconstruction of the Carnival of Venice, to which James and Victoria were invited a few days before.
“Pay attention to the maskers,” warns the Venetian. “They hide pickpockets and prostitutes, in a few cases even criminals. A problem that the state hardly curbs.”
They pass by two policemen. “Whoever is found in possession of a weapon is sent straight to jail. Even honest citi
zens go inside.”
The small group walks alongside a palace with triple lancet windows. “A card room, one of the few places, together with churches and convents, where masks are forbidden.”
They admire a row of Renaissance buildings. “These palaces are deserted. The rich moved to mainland villas or have fallen into disgrace.”
A beggar kneeling at a street corner, holds out his hat trembling. The guide drops in a penny. “You have heard about the Doge, I imagine.”
“The first authority of the town!” exclaims Victoria.
“Once the nobles resorted to corruption to be elected. Today instead the Doge has no power anymore. The theatres are full of shows ridiculing him. The aristocrats don’t allow him to go out of the Doge’s Palace without an escort. If he gives up his mandate, he risks the confiscation of his property and even his life. And he cannot hope that one day this gilded prison will end: his assignment is for life! Inevitably, the best elements keep away from this position...”
“Do you know Giacomo Casanova?” asks Victoria.
“A few years ago he was imprisoned not far from here, in Piombi prison, on a witchcraft charge. Only a swindler! In his life, he has never got anything together. He had himself expelled from a seminary for immoral behavior. In Rome, he was fired by a cardinal. Another scandal! In Venice, he ended up in prison. Then, a year ago, his jailbreak.”
“At least ladies enjoy his escape…” sighs Victoria.
“They would lose enthusiasm if they knew about his affairs with men!”
They continue walking for ten minutes. Then the guide stops short in the middle of the street. “The Flight of the Angel, in San Marco square!”
“What’s it about?” asks James.
“The most important Carnival celebration, held on the last Thursday before Lent.”
The three enter a labyrinth of alleys and after a quarter of an hour, come out in a wide paved area, surrounded on three sides by Renaissance palaces and opposite by a Gothic-Byzantine basilica, with five entrances and with the same number of domes.
“San Marco square, the largest in the city,” announces the Venetian proudly. “An immense hall in the open air, that everybody envies us. The only space in the city which is called ‘square’. The others are named ‘fields’.”