Reciprosity Read online

  She shouted, “Sì, Giovanni. Quaggiù nel seminterrato.” That was Italian for get your ass down here to the basement. Only kidding. She didn’t say ass.

  After lots of hugging and kissing and back-slapping, Giovanni and three of his soldati escorted or carried our four prisoners, dead Jake’s body, and all the gear the goons brought with them, to his boat mored at Novak’s dock. Virna and I told Alice to secure the data center, program the glass wall and cellar security door to close in two minutes, and return the elevator to its hidden enclosure.

  I suddenly had a wild thought and quickly shared it with Virna and Alice. Sixty seconds later we left the Novak estate on the shore of Lake Lugano.

  The boat was a two hundred thousand dollar Cranchi E30 Endurance. I borrowed Giovanni’s phone and sent a short text to Katherine Novak—copied to Ray Mattock: Kate. Two employees dead at Lugano house. In freezer. Have dealt with killers. Alice watching shop. Send security. Keep it quiet. Love, Luke and Virna.

  Giovanni secured the prisoners in the cabin, gave us bottled waters and energy bars, and pointed the Cranchi at Italy.

  4

  Campione d'Italia is a township in the Lombardy region of Italy. It is Italian territory surrounded by Swiss territory, with the lake on the west and mountains at its back. Much like the way we were now being surrounded by three boats. The navy-style haze-gray boats were loaded with black-clad men pointing assault rifles at us. I counted twelve plus the drivers. I did the quick math. Six of us with 9mm handguns—roughly 90 rounds. Versus 360 or more rounds. I could’t tell in the dark, but their weapons looked like Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles.

  I turned to Virna. “I think we’ve been had.”

  “What?”

  “Set up! Taken in! Duped! Tricked! Taken for a ride. Led down the garden path. Which of those don’t you understand?”

  I could see the wheel of fortune spinning in her head until it stopped on the winning number. “Oh! I see. Ci ha mentito. He lied to us. The signed order was a delaying tactic. Bastardo!”

  My sentiment exactly. “Bastardo molto intelligente.”

  The three boats seemed to have materialized out of nowhere on a clear moonlit night. They were on us like a German wolfpack as we reached the Italian half of the lake, coming up behind us silently in electric power boats. Giovanni and his men were as dejected as I was. They too could do the math. He throttled down the Cranchi and brought it to a standstill. There was one boat on either side of us and one to our rear.

  A man in the rear boat yelled in perfect English, “Throw all your weapons overboard.” We did. He added, more friendly, “Everyone in the water. Start swimming for the casino.”

  Okay, that’s not so bad. I could handle a nice cold swim. I knew Virna could. She could swim laps around me.

  Then the man ruined the moment. “Mr. Luke Cassine and Miss Virna Pieralisi are to remain on the boat. Please sit down with your hands under your asses.” We did. He yelled at Giovanni and his men, “We have no argument with the Cassine family. We will not shoot. Please tell Vittorio Cassine you were treated with respect. Go with God.”

  What! What about me? My fucking name is Cassine! Virna echoed my thought and whispered, “Go with God! What are we dealing with? A boatload of religious fanatics?”

  Giovanni and his men were barely visible in the black water ahead when the rear boat came along side and the order-giver and two men boarded us like pirates. He kept his weapon on us while the others ducked into the cabin. A minute later, the two goons from the cellar helped the wounded one over the side to the pirate boat. Then the bossman emerged from the cabin and stood in front of us.

  He asked his rescuer, “How much time?”

  Go with God answered, “Three minutes before the lake patrol motors by.”

  The bossman asked, “Where’s the case?”

  I answered. “You mean The Case. Not on board, I can assure you.”

  He seemed unconcerned. I on the other hand was very concerned when he knelt before Virna and reached out like he was going to touch her face. His hand paused, then moved down to her left breast—and took the ball-point pen from the top pocket of the kevlar vest she was still wearing. It was his kevlar vest. The one we removed so Virna could treat his wounds—his superficial wounds. Fuck! The yellow labeled 9mm magazines I found upstairs! Non-lethal rounds can penetrate skin and leave a nasty looking superficial wound. I really had been had.

  “And my cellphone?” he asked politely.

  She looked at me and I nodded. “In my hip pocket,” she replied.

  “Hand it to me, slowly.”

  She leaned to her left, retrieved the phone, handed it to him and sat back on her right hand.

  “You can keep the rest of the shit,” he said with a smirk.

  He held both objects up in front of our faces and bragged with great satisfaction, “Recorders. Every word uttered since you woke up, every word said in the cellar, recorded for posterity. I want to thank both of you for being so obliging.” His man said it was time to go. “Okay.” Then to me, “Luke, I’m not going to kill you because a long time ago in Mexico, you saved my sister. We are even now. I won’t be so charitable with the others.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Three questions before you go. Did you really think no one would die from those non-lethal rounds at close range?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “What’s your second question?”

  “Who are the others?”

  He shook his head slightly. “Final question?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “John Adams Jr.”

  I sat there slack-jawed as he leapt into the pirate boat. Then the three boats sped off toward Lugano in total silence.

  Virna immediately bombarded me with questions.

  “Later,” I answered. “Lets get this tub moving and pick up your brother and his men before the lake patrol shows up.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed reluctantly.

  We picked up Giovanni and his men two minutes later. It was difficult to find them in the darkness so I just pointed the boat toward the casino, and there they were, doing a slow but steady breast stroke toward shore.

  The Casinò di Campione is Europe's oldest casino. It looks like a giant tuning fork surrounded on both sides by symmetrically stacked Lego blocks. Lit up at night, it was the most spectacular site on the entire shoreline. I had heard through the grapevine that the Cassine Family was currently in negotiations to take over operations. I was going to ask Giovanni about it but everyone was in a foul mood so I remained silent. He took over the controls and directed the Cranchi toward a dock two-hundred yards north of the casino.

  No one said a word as we walked up the dock toward a plain white building that looked like it housed apartments or condos. The closer we got, the more it looked like it was ready for a serious facelift.

  “Condemned,” Giovanni said at last with a wink. “The Family arranged to have it listed as unsafe for human habitat due to a dangerous mold spreading through the walls and ceilings. Then we bought it for a song. Only two million Euros. We compensated the twelve tenants. Neighbors think we are the cleaning and renovation crew, if anyone asks.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Six months. Perfect location to monitor the rich and famous, and of course certain criminal elements operating in the Lake Lugano area.”

  Translation: Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta, with the Romanian, Bulgarian and Bosnian gangs thrown in for good measure.

  The tour of the inside was an eye opener. The ground floor was an assortment of living, eating and recreational spaces, well furnished and very comfortable. The second level held wall-to-wall electronic eavesdropping, surveilance and communication equipment in every room. And an armory equipped for a siege. The third and fourth floors were sleeping quarters. Giovanni directed Virna and me into an unused bedroom that looked like a picture postcard for a B&B.

  “Talk before rest,” I said, stopping Virna and her bro
ther at the door.

  “About damn time,” Virna announced. “Who the hell is John Adams? What is non-lethal ammunition? And how the hell did he take us like that?”

  I smiled. “Second president of the United States.”

  She punched my wounded arm. I winced. “I hope that hurt, you big lummox.”

  I felt like a lummox for being taken in so completely. I directed them to a reading nook on the landing. “You sure this isn’t a bed and breakfast, Gio?”

  “Stop joking, Luke. This is serious.” Virna was in her no sex until you tell me the truth mode.

  She was right. But in my own defense, I rarely lie to her. Fib, maybe. We sat. “Okay. First things first. Your’e right, Virna, this is very serious. We’ve been had by a pro.” I was the one that had been duped, but misery loves company. I laid it out for them.

  I told them about the yellow labeled 9mm magazines I found in their gear upstairs. Non-lethal ammunition that I would bet my eye-teeth was custom loaded to look, shoot and sound exactly like a regular 9mm round. All part of the very clever deception. The only thing they didn’t foresee was me shooting one of them in the eye. It explained why Jake died the way he did.

  “This was never about Alice or the Novak servers,” I continued. “It was a well orchestrated plan to get us to reveal your server address, Virna—where everything was being rerouted.”

  Virna has a razor-sharp mind. It only took her seconds to look back in time to the moment Adams was bragging on the boat. Alice had been in default voice mode when she talked about the servers. The servers Virna had reprogrammed to divert any new incoming recordings to her own private IP address. Alice read out the IP address and also displayed them on her screen.

  “We have to stop them,” she said with alarm.

  “Do we? Let’s think this through. You said your servers were in the GCE building where we met?”

  “What of it?”

  “It’s two hours or more by car or train to Turin.”

  “One by helicopter,” Giovanni offered.”

  I looked out a window. The sun was coming up. “What time does GCE open for business?”

  “To the public, eight o'clock in the morning,” Virna answered. “But there’s always staff working twenty-four-seven. Business hours, probably upwards of a hundred regular employees. Then there are the armed escorts. Ex-military and police types. Well trained. They come and go at all hours, usually through the basement garage.”

  “Good. They can’t get in before eight, and there’s no way they would start a gunfight with well trained guards in the middle of the day and risk the servers being destroyed. My guess is they will make their move tonight, or perhaps when all the regular employees are leaving for the day. What floor are the servers on?”

  “Top floor, Luke. What are you thinking?”

  “How long would it take someone as skilled as you to hack your system, find the files, transfer them to some kind of storage device...”

  She shook her head. “The files are big and they’re constantly streaming in. They would need to transfer them to other remote servers. Reroute them like I did.”

  “Even better,” I said. “How long?”

  “Three or four hours, minimum. But why don’t I just log in and send them on to another location and erase mine?”

  “Because I think they’re also after everything that has to do with the Cassine operation on those servers. Remember, back in December when we shared those files with Vittorio?”

  It took the three of us nearly seven hours to listen to and watch all of the recordings stored on Virna’s private servers. We didn’t discuss what we were witnessing. We simply absorbed the astonishing levels of perfidious acts planned and played out by world leaders and corporate executives. And by an international criminal foundation called The Endowment. Based on three secret meetings we viewed, they were systematically blackmailing and murdering their way to the top of a criminal pyramid and would soon control trillions of dollars—compliments of the Department of Defense.

  Looking Glass revealed, as Vittorio so eloquently put it, “a world in desperate need of a giant enema.” When we were finished I knew what I was going to do. I was going to help administer that enema.

  “Remember, Virna,” I continued, “Vittorio shared some ideas that included taking control of The Endowment fortune and putting it to good use. I liked the way he thought back then. I honored the Creed in the Maldives: vindicta perfidiam vindicarint innocens—revenge treachery, vindicate innocence.”

  Giovani repeated the Creed oath and signed the secret Creed version of the cross: Two fingers of his right hand to his forehead to symbolize his unity with the Family, then slashing the fingers, left to right across his chest to symbolize the revenge of treachery, and a final slash down to his stomach to symbolize innocence vindicated.

  I made the sign of the tired: I yawned and stretched. “Sleep now. I’ll brief you on my plan over breakfast. Shall we say noon?”

  I woke up at eleven. Virna was in the bathroom showering. I joined her and we washed each other’s backs—and so on. We found Giovanni in the kitchen preparing a very non-Italian breakfast of bacon and eggs, hot butter rolls and gravy, and simple black coffee. None of that latte crap.

  While we ate I explained my plan. Afterward, Virna excused herself so she could do her part. Giovanni was disappointed that my plan didn’t include him or his men. I understood his desire to revenge the humiliation he and his men suffered on the lake.

  When I explained phase two he nodded with enthusiasm. “We’ll be there.”

  I left him to clean up and found Virna with a laptop in the sitting room. She looked up, smiled and patted the cushion next to her. “Sit and look at this.”

  She had found some news archive stories that answered some questions I was pondering. Topmost was, who the hell was John Adams?

  Fort Worth Star Telegram

  Army Family Tragedy (This story has been updated.)

  Major John Adams and Mrs. Jessica Adams were both killed in a head-on collision on I35 Sunday. Their 16-year-old daughter survived the accident and is expected to make a full recovery from her injuries. Mrs. Adams was the sister of Congressman William Hedrin of Virginia. The congressman will attend the funeral in Fort Worth, Texas, birthplace of Major Adams. The Major had no surviving relatives.

  This was the same article I discovered in a scrapbook in Secretary of Defense William (Bull) Hedrin’s home in Virginia in January. It was followed by an update.

  Correction: It has been learned that Major John Adams and Mrs. Jessica Adams did have a 21-year-old son serving in Afghanistan. He was reported killed in action only hours before the tragic car accident. This news never reached the Adams family.

  Okay, that answers the who. There were some additional stories I had never read.

  Madelyn Adams, the 16-year-old daughter of Major John Adams, was adopted by Congressman William Hedrin and his wife yesterday...

  Madelyn Hedrin served in Army Special Forces. She was killed today, in a courtroom in San Francisco. Witnesses said she sacrificed her life to save an unidentified man from a gunman that was holding the judge hostage...

  That would be me.

  The EC-155 is a high performance, long range helicopter with a six-seat VIP interior. It was waiting at the GCE Guardian Express terminal in Lugano. Virna and I boarded with our gear and gave instructions to the pilot. The same pilot that brought us to Lugano last December, Philippe.

  DAY TWO

  5

  GCE Guardiano Espresso was the name on the building. Above it flew the company logo, a white dove. The building was five-stories high and located in the northern section of Turin, Italy. Its neighbors included FedEx-TNT Direzione Generale and Credit Data Research Italia. They were among many buildings in the office park, but unlike FedEx, GCE specialized in deliveries of a delicate nature. Deliveries that required one or more armed escorts. The delivery could be a document, a package, freight, or even a person. Last December they del
ivered Mark Swan, who in turn was delivering The Case to Luke Cassine.

  The first three floors plus the basement garage were dedicated to GCE operations. The garage was where the armed escorts would leave or return from assignments, using a variety of armored vehicles—cars, limos, vans or trucks. The basement also housed service bays, secured storage lockers, and a shooting range. The fourth floor housed a research and development center where Luke and Virna discovered how to unlock The Case. One-third of the top floor was management. In this case, management meant the Cassine organization and its capo, Vittorio Cassine. He was rarely in the office, preferring to work from remote locations. The other two-thirds of the fifth floor housed a small server farm—where Virna had redirected all the Looking Glass files. Where any recordings from the private residence were stored.

  The 150,000 square-foot building didn’t use a single watt of electricity from the grid, nor a drop of water from the city. All of the building's power came from solar panels studding its roof and façade, and back-up generators in an emergency. A geothermal system circulated water through a ground-source heat pump to service plumbing, air conditioning and heating. In short, the building was self-sustaining.

  None of that meant it was safe from external forces, such as the six men exiting a large SUV and walking toward the GCE lobby entrance. The white SUV was emblazoned with the SCSI name on the side. The Italian Satellite Communications Service was the largest of its kind in the country

  The men were of mixed nationalities, wearing white SCSI service uniforms and pulling equipment carts or carrying back-packs. They each had a SCSI ID badge clipped to their pocket flaps. The only oddity was the footwear. They all sported black tactical low-tops. It was closing time and crowds of employees were exiting the building. The men weaved through the crowd, entered and walked up to the lone security guard at the customer counter. He was talking to four women, laughing, joking, flirting, touching—contemplating the prospect of a little sesso di gruppo when his shift ended.