Milly’s mind slipped easily into rumination mode. He loved that place where fury at those who would conspire against him could be spun into delicious retaliation, something the creators of God’s hell could only envy. He wasn’t yet fully sure as to how far Abelard had gone in his duplicity or, for that matter, whether there was even any treachery involved. Milly was endowed with an overconfident intuition, which had always served him well, and that keen sense had told him Abelard fabricated at least part of his story about the small jeweled cross. That was sufficient for Milly to place Abelard on his undesirables list and make him a target for hard lessons. The cross, he was in no doubt, existed. How Abelard acquired this famous artifact and why the Donatello were showing such a keen interest in Abelard was still a mystery. For this intelligence he would have to talk directly to the Donatello. He didn’t need intuition to know they were involved. The crooked crosses Abelard had lifted from the dead men at the lodge were plainly the same ones that appeared on the family crest. An extensive search had uncovered no other sightings of such a cross. Milly was not surprised that they would be behind the armed intrusion at the lodge. After all, he reasoned, the Donatello ancestors willingly sold their shady services to people much like him when reason and cajolery failed to bring obstreperous competitors to heel.
“Shakespeare,” Milly said, “we are going to Florence, you know what arrangements to make.” Shakespeare had been through this before and was familiar with the drill. Milly wasn’t privy to what went on at the Florentine palace but assumed that it would not meet the standards set for acceptable behaviour by either the securities watchdogs or the legislative frameworks of most western countries. He would set up his doomsday mechanism that would destroy the Donatello if anything unpleasant should happen to him while in their company. It was a hardened briefcase which housed a wireless transmitter programmed to send messages to the computers of all major news outlets if it was not turned off at the specified time set by Milly. He was very pleased that this technology was now available as he never felt comfortable with the human component he had previously used to run the doomsday system. The current message had to do with the Fixer, who he is now close to certain is a Donatello agent. Whenever Milly needed outside help to turn a deal in his favour he would meet with the Fixer and a felicitous outcome was practically guaranteed.
Shakespeare sat in steerage on the big private VBI jet. He was not at all happy with his role in this affair. As an ex security agency operative he was fairly certain that Milly was about to operate outside the law. He knew that Milly often resorted to unscrupulous tactics but there was nothing apparently illegal about unscrupulous behaviour. These trips to Florence, though, and this was the third one in as many years, he knew were beyond unscrupulous. The other two were each followed by events which turned out to be very favourable to VBI. On one occasion, a containment dyke at a gold mine in South America had suddenly burst, cyanide poisoned water polluted much of the surrounding countryside, killed several people and drawn the operator into a criminal investigation. Coincidently, that very same operator had been in a bidding war against VBI for a particularly strategic takeover. Inevitably, the operator abruptly withdrew from the battle and VBI made the acquisition at a very favourable price.
At the airport area reserved for private traffic, they were met by two vehicles; an armoured limousine and an SUV. Shakespeare instinctively made his way to the SUV and greeted the two large men who were part of the protection detachment he had contracted from the local offices of an international security firm with which he usually did business. The driver’s first gesture was to pass Shakespeare a fully loaded 9mm berretta automatic. They departed almost immediately, closely following Milly’s limousine. It was early Spring and tourists were all but absent, greatly facilitating travel through the city.
The Donatello palace sits on the Via Ricasoli, which also leads to the church of St. Mark and the Accademia in which Michelangelo’s David lords it over a daily sea of gawking humanity. At the gate, a five meter high steel grill, cameras began swiveling in place to scan the waiting vehicles and a small man, the first small person Shakespeare had seen in this context, emerged from a small doorway through which even he had to stoop. Here, Shakespeare surmised, the circumstances were perfect for employing a small person. His only job was to aim a camera into arriving vehicles so that each occupant could be looked over by someone, somewhere who would make the call as to whether they had any legitimate business at the palace.
While the outside had the same brown grey, unpretentious brick exterior as most of the other buildings in the area, the inside was of an entirely different character. The vehicles passed through the gate into a large cobblestone courtyard, a fountain at the center, around which they maneuvered to arrive at the main entrance. There were three floors, the middle one dominated by a balcony enclosed by delicate filigreed columns. Once through the main entrance, there were three dominant colours, burgundy, royal blue and forest green covering the walls, mainly in stripes with the occasional flourish into gigantic swirls.
Milly did not deign to admire the almost perfect architectural and textural balance. He needed to give an impression that he was not impressed; that compared to perhaps his own possessions these were, at best, tedious. He had wasted no time, stepping briskly up the small stone staircase to the ornate main doors, which were held open by yet another small man in very sober black livery. Shakespeare, on the other hand looked admiringly at the surroundings and, in his mind, compared them very favourably to Disney World, which was one of his favourite vacation spots.
“Milly,” Gianni Donatello, the family patriarch, boomed, “it has been too long,” he flattered, a little concerned as to why exactly this powerful man wanted so eagerly to see him. “As soon as I got your message, I cleared the decks, as you Americans like to say,” he snorted in his peculiar laugh. Milly did not bother to correct his nationality error. He ‘cleared the decks’ so quickly only because Milly had added the P.S. to the message: ‘You may be interested in a set of little crosses I have recently come across’.
“It is growing late,” the elder Donatello said, “and I do hope you will join us for dinner.”
“You are very kind Gianni, but I do have a previous engagement,” Milly lied, not wanting to spend too much time in the scorpion’s abode. “I would need only a few moments of your precious time. It is about some intriguing little crosses; a crooked one, like the splayed three fingers of a hand, which has turned up with the men, now deceased, who recently held myself and my executives at gun point; and a mysterious little jeweled cross, which I have been told about by a trusted executive.”
Gianni was aware that the attempted snatch of Abelard had not succeeded and he had guessed his men were no longer among the living, but he knew none of the details. Abelard and the entire enterprise connected to him had become an irritation, which had by now cost him five men. He kept silent for a few moments, averting his gaze from Milly, concentrating rather on the auto stereogram his brother had recently given him which hung near the door to the first floor study. The intricate trompe-oeil pattern helped him concentrate on anything but the inscrutable picture. Sensing Milly’s impatience he made his decision.
“Milly, it would be best if you could change your plans and have dinner with me and my daughter, Dona Maria, whom I believe you have already met. It is a rather involved tale and I would much prefer we were sitting and that Dona Maria be there. Please say you will stay.”
“Fine,” Milly intoned, without hesitation. He was pleased. This would be much easier than he expected. But, as though there existed only a limited supply of pleasure at any one time, it was his host who was now uneasy. As people who deal in duplicity and rarely, if ever, hesitate to lie, Milly’s quick and easy acquiescence was immediately regarded with suspicion by the senior Donatello. What is Milly’s game? Only a moment earlier he was bound by urgent other business that can now be discarded with impunity. He would need closer scrutiny.
Donatello summoned the m
an in the waiter’s tuxedo, who had been practically invisible, standing motionless against the bright rays of a setting sun streaming through the oversized, ornate windows. He was to inform the kitchen that there would be three to dinner. Shakespeare, who had been discreetly shuffling about on a tiled floor that seemed to have been carefully conceived to magnify even the most determined attempts at inconspicuous shuffling, seized the opportunity made available by the family patriarch’s momentary inattention to whisper a warning into Milly’s ear. He was sure that each and every person in the house was carrying a weapon. Would Milly prefer that he arrange for more body guards?
“Gianni,” Milly said, without acknowledging Shakespeare’s word of warning, “I’ve been in these clothes too long and would need to freshen up. I’ll be back in about an hour.” There was no question mark at the end of ‘back in one hour’. This was Milly’s wish and this is how it would be. The valet, who had been following them, not so closely as to be a nuisance, but not so far that he would miss his cue, had barely time enough to lead an already departing Milly to the doors. Milly, once a decision had been taken, did not hesitate. His car was already half way out the gate before Gianni could send him off with a feeble wave. At the hotel Milly at once set about preparing for the evening dinner. But he did leave part of his attention free to enlighten Shakespeare.
“A man in Mr. Donatello’s business,” Mr. Shakespeare, Milly having effortlessly jumped from speculation to certainty about the family’s clandestine activities, “cannot depend for his security and peace of mind on the goodwill of others or, indeed, on the disinterested cooperation of the authorities. It is hardly surprising that he would wish his employees to be able to help out in the event of any misunderstandings that must now and again arise during the normal course of his affairs.” Milly tended to slip into a sort of cruel sarcasto-speak each time Shakespeare pointed out the obvious. “So the trained bodyguards posing as household domestic staff should not be taken as a sign that I am being personally targeted. Now, that I have put your mind at ease, be so kind as to give me the briefcase.”
Shakespeare’s face betrayed a complete failure to grasp the dripping mockery in Milly’s words as he smartly handed over the case. Milly sometimes wondered why he even bothered with such petty attacks; a cruel streak, hope that one day Shakespeare would catch on, chronic impatience, all of the above. No matter, Shakespeare’s future did not depend on quick intelligence, only on loyalty and experience in security matters. He put it out of his mind and proceeded to dial the combinations on the two locks. Inside was a small grey metal box, bolted to the case, with a short antenna protruding from one end. Milly flicked the power switch and the display on a numbered keypad sprung to life. He punched the four button and the display switched to countdown mode. Milly closed the case and gave the combination buttons a spin. He handed it to Shakespeare.
“If I do not walk out of this palace within four hours, you know what to do,” Milly said, with more than usual solemnity. Although he had set up a process to be followed in the event of his unexpected end – to ensure proper succession at VBI and, much more importantly, to seamlessly pass on his estate to his wife and his niece – the rare time such a possibility arose, it did leave him mildly uncomfortable.
*