fic: Chinese Boxes 3/11

[01cheers]

7. Florence

If this is before the tourists arrive, she’d be scared to see after. Looking at the human throng filing onto the Ponte Vecchio from the balcony of her suite fifty feet above and the same distance to the west of the bridge, Selina is not even sure she wants to go out there.

She has other reasons for wanting to stay indoors, of course; ever since they arrived the previous afternoon, they discovered that their river view suite had an exceptionally comfortable bed, and it would be a shame not to make the most of it. She struggled to keep a straight face when, just as they went out for dinner that night, Bruce stopped by at the Lungarno Suites concierge desk to say, in a casually confidential manner, that they had just come back from East Asia that morning (true), were extremely tired (not true), and should not therefore be disturbed in their suite under any pretext, including housekeeping, fire, and earthquake, for the duration of their stay, unless they expressly asked for it. The concierge nodded his understanding, shot a glance at Selina looking anything but extremely tired, and to his credit, managed to keep a straight face as well.

Their best chance of seeing the city, they soon discover, lies in being quasi-nocturnal. On the second day they sleep obscenely late, grab dinner at the restaurant across the river they are supposed to catch Alfred at - she laughed when Bruce explained to her that the matter of knowing the right restaurant was perfectly straightforward as the only half decent place answering Alfred’s description of being on the banks of the Arno was named, in a testament to the man’s sense of irony, none other than Alfredo sull’Arno - and walk around the city afterwards, when the tourists have mostly dispersed. Later that night they set an alarm to wake up at 5 am to have the city entirely to themselves for two hours at sunrise. She wouldn’t make a habit of it, but it is a magical experience.

They follow a similar pattern for the subsequent three days, except that instead of exploring Florence, they spend early mornings or late afternoons in nearby towns before coming back to the Alfredo for dinner. Florence may be the best known Tuscan attraction, but she soon finds that the region, and Italy by extension, has plenty more to offer, so much so that her list of places to see is now being rivalled by a growing list of places to come back to. And apart from the somewhat regular exclamations of che bella macchina and che bella donna accompanying them on their excursions, they have the comfort of being if not exactly unnoticed, then at least safely incognito in this living-history playground. They stroll through the quaint forest of medieval towers in San Gimignano, brave the steep hills of Siena, marvel at lovely Lucca set like a jewel in its ancient city walls, and even beat their early-morning stunt, this time waking up at 4 am to make it to Pisa and enjoy the usually non-existent peace and quiet in Campo dei Miracoli without a single tourist or a single hawker in sight. Much as she wants to see Alfred, she is glad that the man did not show up on the first five evenings.

***

“Not again,” she teases him on the afternoon of the sixth day as they are preparing to go out.

“What?” Bruce is looking at her in confusion, the jacket hanging off one arm.

“Do you own any casual clothes that are not black?” She makes big round eyes at him. In the five days they’ve been there, she has seen him in at least three different outfits… of the same colour.

“Almost all my shirts are white - “ he begins.

“I said casual. Which means that the business suits don’t count, either.” Not that those are exactly a riot of colour, running the range from dark navy blue to charcoal grey.

With the expression of a Christian martyr, he puts down the jacket, pulls off the black T-shirt, and finally - a real miracle - pulls out a white one from somewhere in the carry-on suitcase. “Point proven.”

“Point taken,” she agrees, reluctantly. “But if you’re still putting that black jacket on top of it and zipping it up…”

He puts up his hands in mock surrender. “OK, you win. But I’m not responsible for not being allowed into the restaurant wearing a T-shirt...” he casts a hopeful eye on the jacket once more.

His tactic is ridiculous; the place is nowhere near formal enough to demand jackets. But it gives her an idea.

“As I recall, when you bought me this,” she pinches the matte silk of her cornflower-blue dress, “we agreed that I’d buy you something in return. And you’d given me explicit permission to be depraved about it.”

He looks genuinely worried for a split second; this is beyond priceless. “OK, if you have to… I’m at your mercy.”

Twenty minutes later it seems like he is regretting his surrender when he sees what exactly she had in mind: the Italian male’s romantic, confident-in-his-masculinity choice of a casual jacket in a colour best described as dusty pink. He looks from her to the garment and back again a couple of times, but says nothing; much as she is enjoying the status quo in its own right, she wants her victory.

“Running from a challenge, are we?”

He shakes his head; invoking challenges is a killer blow. “Fine.” He hands her the jacket. You go and pay for it, rich girl, so we can get out of here.”

She only sees Alfred as a fleeting glimpse. They chat and laugh their way through dinner that evening and she does not know when he arrives, though she knows the instant Bruce has noticed him sitting somewhere behind her back. She turns halfway, as if looking at something or trying to spot a waiter, and sees him there, watching them with an oddly intent expression before finishing his drink, getting up and walking away. She’d like to think that they’ll see each other again, but for now, just seeing the heartbreak of loss gone from his face is enough to tell her that he, too, will be all right.

***

She feels it before she has opened her eyes, like static crackling on her skin. They are back in Lugano, having returned mid-afternoon the previous day once they’d seen Alfred, and she was planning to sleep late and drive the Harley to the office after lunch, letting Bruce take the Sesto in the morning. But even though she knows it is still early, the tone of Bruce’s voice talking to someone on the phone at the far end of the terrace goes through her like a jolt. She knows that voice.

“Do we know how he died?”

She is petrified. Please, please for God’s sake, don’t let it be Alfred. Or Lucius, or Theo, or Gordon, or even Blake. Please, don’t let it be any of those. She throws on the silk shirt and steps out; not knowing what happened is even worse.

He sees her and reads the question in her eyes - and shakes his head a fraction of an inch, seeking to dispel her fear. No one who matters to him, or to her. But the set lines of his face, so sharp that she can practically see the outline of the mask, tell a different story.

She walks, or rather staggers, back inside and sits on the bed until he has finished the call, grabbed by a crazy fear that he will just conjure up the damned suit from somewhere, jump in the car and be gone. It’s a relief when he steps into the room, though a slight relief at that.

“That was Theo on the phone,” he explains, saving her the need for a question. “He says he and I have just been invited to the funeral of Giacomo Varese.”

________________________________________

Notes to Ch 7

Before you think it was a convenient invention of mine, I must tell you that the Alfredo Sull'Arno is not only real, but is, in fact, the only half decent place overlooking the river a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio on the side opposite the city centre. You can look it up on http://www.alfredosullarno.com ; I've been to Florence a few times (the company I work at has its HQ there, among other reasons), but only discovered this gem of a fact by "walking" along the Arno with Google View to pick a good restaurant for this chapter. I am now convinced that it was Nolan's reason for sending them to a Florentine café in the first place ;)

Generally speaking, the comments on Italian locations in this and the following chapters reflect reality; but I won't spam readers with photo links for commonly known places such as Florence and Portofino. If you are curious (I hope you are ;) ), a Google image search will show you what they are like.

8. Fallout

She knows that logic is powerless here; she could argue that it is premature to blame himself unless they are absolutely certain of the cause of death; that even if Varese has not died from natural causes, it does not necessarily point to Chinese assassins; that even if there is a Chinese connection, the fact that the mention of his name has been a death warrant likely means that the man was doomed already; that it seems far-fetched to say the least - but she knows that dissuading him will not make him feel any less responsible for a few words he has uttered on a deserted airstrip four thousand miles away.

She tries it still.

“Did Theo say how he died?”

“No.” His voice is hollow, years older than yesterday. “The way he talked about it, doesn’t seem that anyone suspects.” Talking as if all those worst-case scenario facts had been established already.

“If he was killed because you simply mentioned his name, then he had no chances anyway, then it could have been anyone or anything triggering it - “

“But it was me.”

“You don’t know that. Don’t you believe in the presumption of innocence?”

“When there is any innocence to be presumed, yes.”

She wants to slam into him and tackle him to the floor, and not in a sexy way. “You really enjoy taking the blame, don’t you ? Just like your hero persona - “

“I can’t...” the pain in his voice makes her flinch in sympathy. “I can’t just switch it off like that. I am no longer Batman but I can’t suddenly be OK with people dying because of me.”

And we’re back to square one, she thinks; but then she should have known what she was getting into and who she was getting into bed with. This is, after all, the man who stared death in the face to save a city that had demonised him, once its hero, but this ridiculous crazy attitude is one of the reasons she came back for him in a doomed city instead of leaving, after all. This is the ultimate fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread; he is certainly no angel but he sure is one big suicidal altruistic fool of a demon.

“You’re going to the funeral, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going with you. No argument.”

“There’s a reason why you can’t.” He sounds so fucking satisfied saying it. “Remember, I told them that you were his son’s fiancée and we were having an affair. We can’t be seen together.”

“I’m still going. I just won’t go to the funeral itself.”

“Is there anything that can stop you?” He sounds defeated; she did not expect him to give in so easily.

“You know the answer.”

He just sighs. “Come on, let’s get dressed. We need to go and warn Theo about all this.”

***

“Non mi dire delle cazzate, Wainwright.” Theo sounds positively severe, like a headmaster berating a misbehaving pupil, and has upgraded from his habitual non mi dire delle stronzate, as in don’t bullshit me, to basically accusing Bruce of verbal idiocy. “You can’t possibly blame yourself for this.”

Across the table from him in his Wainwright Security office, Selina mouths a silent thank you.

“Sorry for the French, Céline,” he gives her a quick look. The colloquial Italian designation of profanity unexpectedly makes her smile.

“No worries.” She is proud of being able to reply to him in Italian, even if it is a simple thing. She is still miles away from being fully fluent, but her efforts are paying off. “Living with him,” she nods at Bruce, “I really need to practice Italian swearwords.”

“Does he always blame himself for everything?” She suspects that Theo knows the answer.

“You have no idea,” she says in English, to best display the emphasis.

“The fact remains that Giacomo Varese has paid for our lucky escape with his life,” Bruce cuts in, grimly. “You may disagree but I am positive about it. But whether or not I blame myself is irrelevant at the moment. The other fact is that we don’t know if they’re going to come looking for us,” he points to himself and to her, “which means that they could also pose a danger to you.” As an added source of self-torment, he told Selina on the way to the office that his villa had been registered in Theo’s name for years since he bought it, at least until they found time to take care of transfer formalities a month ago, which meant that anyone who might want to track him to Lugano would probably pick up Theo on their radar screen, not to mention their business association posing the same risk.

“I can take care of myself,” Theo cuts him off, and continues, ignoring his impatient look, “and my family. I’ll send them to my in-laws’ house in Lucerne tomorrow, I have a couple of former colleagues living there and the house itself is a hundred yards away from a police station. You worry about yourself,” he finishes his stern declaration, “and about Céline.”

Now is Bruce’s turn to say the silent thank you. “I told her not to come, good luck dissuading her.”

“At the very least,” Theo is ostensibly talking to Bruce, but looking at her, “she shouldn’t be seen anywhere near the ceremony.”

Bruce reacts to this with a not-so-silent that’s what I said.

“I agreed to that already,” she jumps in.

“Good girl,” Theo mutters and continues, now looking at Bruce: “Are you positive you don’t want me to go along? If we need to start digging up dirt, as I suspect you want to, it could help if we - “

Apparently, they are destined to keep interrupting each other in this discussion, though little wonder considering its subject matter and their mutual concern.

“I forbid you to,” Bruce states flatly. “I own the fucking company and I insist that you are needed here to take care of business. I am not going to be responsible for your children growing up orphans.”

Theo looks like he might try arguing, but decides to drop it and change tack. “Do you need any extra surveillance installed in Carona?”

Selina puts on a sarcastic face. “What do you mean, extra? I don’t think he has any.”

“The fact that you didn’t see it doesn’t mean there isn’t any,” Bruce counters smugly. “And the fact that you’ve seen it doesn’t mean that there isn’t more to it than meets the eye.”

Oops.

“Don’t tell me you saw me.” It  really shouldn’t matter, but she can’t help blushing at the thought that he actually watched her break into the villa a month ago.

“Not at the time,” he concedes. “I admit I’d switched off the sensors, I need to recalibrate them because I was getting really tired after I kept getting the alarm triggered by, well, bats flying by.” She has no intention of exposing him, but finds his imploring look directed at her after these words positively endearing. “But as soon as I looked at camera footage the following evening after we came back from the movies, I saw you right there,” he concludes, quietly triumphant.

She is momentarily stumped. “But that’s a regular - “

“That,” he continues, all but grinning, “is an Axis Lightfinder camera in regular camera housing.” She notices Theo nodding his understanding and, embarrassingly, smirking at her. “We make them under licence from the Swedes, but I decided not to advertise the fact that I have a camera with night vision capability to anyone who might want to come looking.”

Theo takes pity on her and directs his next question at Bruce, who is still enjoying his minor victory. “What about files, papers,” he looks at Selina, “jewels and so on? I know you have a safe there, but I’d still suggest you - “

“I’ll bring all that to the vault here,” Bruce finishes for him.

“And I don’t have any jewellery besides these,” Selina adds, touching the string at her neck. “And I’m going to wear them anyway.” She probably should explain to Theo about the tracker, but figures that it can wait.

“I keep most of my stuff at the company vault as it is,” Bruce continues. “I’ve made a habit of it years ago, after a madman burned down my house,” he explains. “Miranda’s father, actually,” he adds for Selina’s benefit.

“Figures,” she scowls. Theo just looks from one to another, curiosity written on his face.

“Long story,” Bruce mutters. “And the worst of it was, to add insult to injury everyone said I’d started the fire myself in a drunken stupor. Now you’ve told me you’ve been checking on that pulp mill already,” he goes on, changing the subject. “Any leads?”

Theo shakes his head, looking less than pleased. “Chen and I have been able to pull up their company registration data and tax records but it all looks hopelessly clean. Even though I agree with you that a pulp mill in that area has to be an excuse for something. To make it worse, it is listed as a foreign investment and its immediate owners are a collection of Indonesian fronts, and it’ll take time to work our way through that.”

“Could you pull strings at the Interpol?” Bruce interjects hopefully.

“I’ve been trying to, already,” Theo answers, “I’ve called the guy at the China NCB and he was willing to talk, considering those GPS-tracker police radios we supplied to them. But there isn’t much to go on. He ran a firearms database search for me, no recent crimes involving AK47s in Qinghai or neighbouring regions. In principle he could get a blue notice issued, the info request, but to do that we need a suspect name, at the very least. I’ll keep looking into the Indonesia connection, if we pull up something there the China NCB could help us with a query, maybe through the financial crime unit, to see if there is any evidence of Triad money laundering through those fronts. But it all takes time,” Theo rubs his forehead in annoyance, “and I have to rely on favours. If I had a normal person at the Swiss NCB to deal with, it could all be done a lot faster, but the current head is the worst kind of coglione stickler for bureaucracy. Sorry Céline.”

“Which kind is that?” she asks, waving away his apology.

“A coward,” Theo replies. “Won’t stray an inch from procedure for fear of his ass being kicked, because he knows he’s too incompetent to be in his post in the first place.”

They spend a few more minutes talking, mapping out their next steps, until Theo gets called away on an urgent business matter and bids her and Bruce a reluctant goodbye.

“I still say you’re taking it too personally, Brandon, but I know you won’t listen. I’d have probably felt the same way in your place. And I hope I don’t need to tell you to watch out,” is his final admonition. “We still don’t know for sure who it was, or why they did it. It could be your Chinese friends, or it could just be the local Chinese mafia there, or even the Italian Mafia, or it could be family, some pissed-off relative settling scores. Or he could have died of a heart attack. You never know. Just keep playing clueless.”

He shakes hands with them both before abandoning the business etiquette in favour of hugs, and sends them off.

***

Several hours later they are driving past the gently rolling Tuscan countryside, past the dark green candlesticks of the cypresses and the dots of scarlet poppies sprinkled amid grass whose fresh early-summer green has not yet been bleached to dull yellow by the July heat. Weren’t they just here? Yesterday, a hundred years ago.

Instead of heading all the way back into Florence, they take the exit to Prato, the Tuscan textile capital, twelve or thirteen miles to the northeast. As she eventually sees, it has a lovely, compact medieval centre; but it takes a few minutes driving through dreary industrial suburbs to get there. It is not heavily industrial by northern European or even northern Italian standards, but is distinctly lacking in appeal, with rows of graffiti-covered corrugated iron fences screening off the long half-barrels of warehouses and the ugly, low square boxes of factories, with occasional glimpses of laundry on washing lines strung between windows. The factory workers in this area are mostly Chinese, Bruce tells her, and they are made to live in near-inhuman conditions by Triad enforcers; those who have to live inside the factory may be lucky by comparison to those who have to share a hundred-square-foot room with four others. To prove his point about the makeup of the population, the majority of shop sigs and even some street names, except in the very centre, are written in hanzi.

They find a welcome respite from this jarring scene in the stylishly monochromatic Wall Art Hotel just off the city centre near the train station, its Oriental undertones more evocative of Japanese minimalism than ornate Chinese opulence. Bruce immediately powers up his laptop to continue looking for possible connections, however implausible, between Tessuti Varese, the late Giacomo’s company, and the Chinese mill, and she takes the Sesto into Florence to get herself a business suit, in case Bruce changes his mind about her attending the funeral or, more likely, in case any subsequent investigation they may end up doing should require business attire. Her Hong Kong wardrobe, while predominantly safely black, veers more to the smart casual than the formal end of the range. She is happy to find what she was looking for, an elegant dark grey pantsuit, before the shops close for the day and before she goes back to Prato for a quiet dinner in a simple local restaurant in the old centre.

The next day, when Bruce is away to attend the funeral, she switches on the TV and does her best to follow the Italian programs; with the exception of the occasional insightful documentary, these are known for their inane boredom and questionable taste, but her priority is getting a better hang of the language. Bruce may argue all he wants, but she has a sense that it may come in handy in the coming days.

He comes back mid-afternoon, looking understandably downbeat, additional reasons becoming apparent as he tells her about the ceremony. The family were all mostly there, but they were either too scared or too completely in the dark to say much. The apparent cause of Varese’s death was said to have been a severe food allergy; while highly suspicious, it is nowhere near as conclusive as a bullet in the head, and apparently an autopsy was done in the Florentine hospital the ambulance had taken him to, San Giovanni di Dio, and no other irregularities found.

On the unexpectedly promising side, however, he tells her that he has an appointment for later that evening.

“Gianfranco wants to talk to me about installing additional security at the villa,” he calls out to her, lounging on the bed, as he sits down to continue his online quest. “It’s already festooned with sensors to the back teeth, but I don’t blame him for wanting more.”

“Who’s Gianfranco?” she asks. Obviously a relative, but the name has not come up before.

“His son,” Bruce replies. “He had three children, two elder daughters, both married and living in Milan, and this one. He’s your fiancé, by the way,” he finishes, a hint of irony in his voice.

She remembers the story he hastily conjured up in China, though he had never mentioned the name. “Did you tell him that?”

“No, I figured I’d go with Theo’s advice and not put too much trust in anyone here. Besides,” he shoots a quick glance at her, “I didn’t want to give pretty boy any ideas.”

“He’s pretty, huh?” It is a good opportunity to tease him, but she can’t quite muster the enthusiasm.

“You’ll see for yourself,” he replies. “I told him you’d be coming along as a colleague of mine. I figured I could do with a second pair of eyes, and there are worse places to go to than a house my company equipped with alarms.”

She isn’t going to be so unsubtle as to thank him for bringing her along, but sure as hell she isn’t going to argue, either.

***

Pretty, she reflects, is in fact a perfect description of Gianfranco Varese. He looks to be in his early thirties, a couple of years older than her, and looking at his refined, almost delicate features and stylish appearance, she can’t quite apply the handsome epithet to him - he is too refined for that - but pretty he definitely is. Of average height but good build, with a full head of dark brown hair that is more curly than wavy - a considerable asset as many Italians tend to baldness regardless of age - and limpid blue eyes, dressed in an expensively tailored suit, wearing a Rolex and shoes that look custom-made, he looks quite the playboy; not, perhaps, of the over-the-top and fiercely reckless Wayne brand, but of a subtler, mellower, softer persuasion, and way too fidgety for her taste.

They are talking in his late father’s dimly-lit, wood-panelled, leather-upholstered, cluttered-looking study on the ground floor of the extensive villa, just over a mile northeast from Prato’s centre in the hills rising toward the hamlet of Filettole; the ostensible reason is, as Bruce told her earlier, Gianfranco’s desire to bolster the already considerable security, and it is apparently important enough for him to spare half an hour away from his father’s wake in the sombre dining room next door. They look like some sort of uniformed secret society attired in designer charcoal grey tropical wool, between Gianfranco’s Brioni and Bruce’s Zegna and her Armani; no self-respecting Italian north of Rome would wear the disgrace of a black suit that is not actually a black tie dinner jacket, even to a funeral. She listens to them discussing camera specs and sensor trigger values and cost estimates and pretends to take notes; as a thief, she would be supremely interested in these but her interest now is more of a psychological than technical nature. And the thing that strikes her most is that Gianfranco does not look terribly bereaved.

Sure enough, he mentions the loss, but Gianfranco’s main concern seems to be the family’s dilemma of what to do with their stake in Tessuti Varese now that Varese senior is gone, considering, Selina reflects, that he seems to have been the only one emotionally invested in the company. His two married daughters, Gianfranco’s sisters, have no interest in it and no desire to move from their comfortable Milanese homes for the drab reality of Prato, and Gianfranco himself apparently is not keen on running the company either. He talks about having always wanted to go to California to open a restaurant, about the opportunities it could open up for his aspiring-model girlfriend, currently away on a photo shoot in Bali and unable to come back for the funeral. Bruce seems to have picked up on it as well and casually casts oblique questions about the situation with the company, trying to gauge the extent of Gianfranco’s indifference and see if he can perhaps pick up any hint of resentment.

It doesn’t seem to be the case, except that Gianfranco seems highly sceptical of his late father’s dogged resistance to handing the company over to professional management in favour of continuing as a hands-on manager himself and trying to keep Tessuti Varese a family business, a view that Bruce seems likewise unimpressed by. Apparently Giacomo had seen the Chinese partners as a way of keeping the status quo, as they were similarly uninterested in newfangled management tricks and public listings. If Gianfranco gives off any vibe talking about all this, it is not one of resentment but rather one of reserve, of being guarded and carefully weighing his words. After a few minutes it is apparent to both Bruce and Selina that they are not going to get any more useful information out of this encounter, and having exchanged a furtive look and promised to Gianfranco that they would get back to him with an estimate for the extra surveillance equipment, they take their leave and let Gianfranco rejoin the wake.

“I have to give it to Theo,” Selina muses in the car on their way back to the hotel. “Don’t know if he’s met Gianfranco, but there may be truth in his hunch about family.”

Bruce does not answer immediately. “I don’t think he killed his father, if that’s what you imply.” He chews his lower lip for a second. “Or that he paid anyone else to do it. But he definitely knows more than he’s letting on, and the trouble is, without him we’re going to be poking around in the dark on this end once we’ve confirmed the most basic facts.”

“Which basic facts do you mean?”

“The fact that Giacomo was poisoned. Men in their sixties don’t suddenly develop food allergies, and in all the time we’ve been talking to Gianfranco, he never mentioned it once when talking about his father’s death.”

***

Hospitals are scarily easy to get into, she reflects; it is true that most people who end up in them are more concerned with their health than their security, but she does not envy those who may have problems with both. Basically, they just go in, tell the receptionist a ridiculously implausible story about Selina needing to retrieve a medical certificate she forgot to ask for earlier after an imaginary walk-in visit that she must present to her employer as an excuse for a missed day of work, give the names of a doctor and night nurse they’ve looked up online, and are allowed to go upstairs, where the nurse is supposed to be keeping the certificate for them - no ID checks, no calls to the nurse or the doctor, no way of telling that instead of going two floors up, they are indeed headed two floors down, into the mortuary. No cameras, either, thus giving Selina a free hand with picking the mortuary office lock.

Notwithstanding the advent of the electronic age, the principal autopsy report on Giacomo Varese is to be found on paper in the office and contains a detailed description of the symptoms and consequences of anaphylactic shock brought about by a severe peanut allergy. So detailed and seemingly exhaustive as to make the two of them wonder if it had been lifted out of a textbook, and make them spend an extra half hour, after photocopying the report, on cracking the computer password to see if they can find Varese’s previous medical history through the link to the database of local health provider data that the hospital is able to access in case of emergencies such as the dying Varese’s arrival.

Their effort is rewarded when they see the date of the most recent update on Varese’s history as the day after his death, and reading through it, they see the same textbook-perfect allergy diagnosis. And looking at the signature, they see the same doctor’s name as the one on the autopsy report.

“Do me a favour,” Bruce mutters to her as he folds the autopsy report photocopy to put into his jacket pocket and she gets ready to power down the computer. “See if you can look up the contact details of this Michele Secchi guy. I think we’d better talk to him.”

***

Michele Secchi is scared out of his wits, and trying in vain not to show it. He is sitting on the sofa in his well-appointed apartment, his equally scared girlfriend is whimpering in a corner, and Bruce and Selina are sitting on either side of him in case he tries to bolt again, as he did when they showed up, after they’d come in and admitted to him that their fake emergency story and his colleague’s referral were just that, fake. Tying him up might be a more efficient option, but the danger then is that he’d either start screaming and need to be gagged, or lose his voice altogether.

After about five minutes of accusations, begging and dithering, Bruce asks the girlfriend if there is any grappa in the house - a plausible assumption in case of a doctor moonlighting at autopsies and, apparently, at falsifying records, as an emergency tranquiliser to counteract frayed nerves - and ten more minutes later, having drunk what seems half a bottle of the rocket-fuel stuff - Selina and Bruce both barely managed two sips - Secchi is finally ready to talk.

“Please, I beg you, don’t mention my name anywhere, or they’ll kill me.”

“Who?” Selina asks; Bruce has wisely let her take the lead, considering that his voice seems to send Secchi into paroxysms of panic.

“The people who came here two days ago, after I’d done the autopsy on Varese’s body. They - they threatened us with guns and locked Giovanna in the bedroom and made me go with them back to the hospital and burn the autopsy report I’d just written and rewrite it, and alter his medical records. Please, I can’t let anyone find out. If the hospital finds out that I did this I’m fired, and if the Chinese find out that I told you I’m dead,” he concludes, shaking.

“They were Chinese?” Selina prompts.

Secchi realises his slip, but is already so scared that it makes little difference.

“Yes,” he moans. “You know Prato’s full of them, and half of them are Chinese mafia. It’s chased the Italian mobsters away from here. I never thought I’d end up in their way, it’s this damned Varese man, why did he die in time for my shift?”

“What was in your original report?”

Secchi looks like he is about to start crying.

“We won’t tell anyone, I swear. Not your name, not about the false report. We’re going after them from a different direction,” Bruce assures him in his softest and quietest voice, which, Selina thinks, is surprisingly soothing. “We just need to know, for ourselves.”

Secchi looks up at him, and makes the leap of faith.

“Poison,” he breathes.

___________________________________

Notes to Ch 8

The AXIS night vision outdoor camera is technically called AXIS Q-1602-E, but I figured it would be too boring a name. It does, however, use patented Lightfinder technology.

NCB stands for an Interpol National Central Bureau, its main coordination and liaison unit in any given country. Blue notices are Interpol information requests; the Interpol uses a colour-coded system for its various notices, warrants, and alerts.

What I write about the Chinese in Prato may sound rather xenophobic (I shouldn't be talking, I was not born here either), but it is true that Prato is the centre of the Tuscan textiles industry, that it is being taken over by Chinese businesses (and their rank-and-file workers, often illegal immigrants, live in appalling conditions), and that the Chinese mafia aka Triad has been replacing the Italian mafia around Florence and in Prato. As a side note, the day before I posted this bit, we had lunch with a colleague who was visiting the Rome office from Florence HQ and lives near Prato, and he was telling us that most of the street signs and shop signs around Prato are now in Chinese and that many of them live right in the factories (both of which, as you've seen, I've stuck into my narrative), and that Triad presence there is a real thing.

9. Glorified accountants

Selina suspects that the Cassa di Risparmio di San Miniato, where Tessuti Varese s.r.l. has its company accounts, would take a rather dim view of Bruce impersonating its Prato branch director... but thankfully they’ll never know, as he is doing it sitting in the Wainwright Security offices, tapping on his laptop keyboard. He has decided to look for company accounts rather than the Varese family members’ private accounts, as he thinks it likely that the latter are mostly offshore and, like his own, probably numbered, while the name of the bank keeping company accounts is publicly disclosed. After they came back to Lugano late last night, Bruce and Theo have divided tasks, with Bruce starting his quest from Tessuti Varese and Theo continuing to look at the Chinese pulp mill, its customers and the Indonesian fronts that own it and potential Triad leads; with any luck, they say, they’ll cross paths somewhere. Selina feels the odd one out considering that both of them are better at these things than she is, but does not feel like staying at the villa away from the action, so she opens the Italian course files on her tablet, puts on the headphones, and tries to concentrate, until she gives up and sits next to Bruce to watch him at work.

Cassa di Risparmio aside, what Bruce is doing is not so much hacking as bypassing lengthy and tedious bureaucratic application procedures to access information that is, in fact, disclosed to the interested public upon request, using previously-created usernames and passwords to log into Chamber of Commerce company registers and tax agency websites in Italy and partially China (Theo is handling Indonesia on his own) as recognised and authorised users, to view tax filings and financials and company ownership data.

A few hours of this snooping have told him that Tessuti Varese is currently owned 24% by the Varese family, 25% by someone called Wu Ming, and the remaining 51% by Chinese fronts that, at first glance, look fairly impenetrable. He has also found out that Tessuti Varese, or rather the late Giacomo, bought 25% in Qingdao Jinglian, a trading company in China, a year ago. He was surprised to see it labelled as a trading company whereas Varese had told him that he owned a stake in a yarn factory, until he then discovered that Qingdao in turn owns 100% in Zhenjiang Zili that, he saw, does indeed produce and spin polyester yarn. It would seem logical that Zili would be a direct supplier of spun yarn to Tessuti Varese given their indirect co-ownership, but instead Zili production is then bought by an intermediary called Xianrong that trades in all sorts of textile goods, and if Tessuti Varese is among its buyers it is not immediately clear. However, the subsequent look at Tessuti Varese bank accounts at the Cassa di Risparmio points him to increased amounts recently paid to a Chinese supplier that is, indeed, listed as one of the Xianrong clients. It would seem stupid to pay two intermediaries’ margins to procure yarn from a company Tessuti Varese has a stake in, but that would assume that their dealings are straight business - which they most likely aren’t. Finally, a look at Tessuti Varese tax filings and financial records on the Agenzia delle Entrate web site database shows losses for the past two years due to falling production despite increased payments to suppliers. Obviously, the company’s real business must have been moved off the books.

“As the least-evil scenario, it’s tax evasion,” Bruce tells them both over the quick takeaway dinner they have ordered into the office before calling it a day, “but unless we prove it, we can’t ask to arrest them just for making losses... by that logic, I’d have spent a couple of years in jail for the losses my family’s company had run until recently. And even if we do prove tax evasion it’ll make us look like little more than glorified accountants.”

“I have trouble seeing you as an accountant, Brandon, glorified or otherwise,” Theo argues, “though you’re pretty good at this stuff.”

“I’ve never been one, luckily, but I was on the board of my parents’ company for a while, and there was plenty of accounting being discussed,” Bruce explains, the usual not-the-full-truth.

“Your parents could have done much worse than put you there,” Theo remarks. Selina steals a quick glance at Bruce and is struck by how he looks sad and proud at once. Of course he can’t mention to Theo that his parents never lived to see him take his place on the Wayne Enterprises board, let alone put him there.

“How much info did you find on the Chinese co-owners?” Theo asks next. “Is there anything we can hang an Interpol blue notice on, or do a nominal database check?”

“Not really,” Bruce scowls. “The direct co-owner’s name is Wu Ming, and doing a query on that sort of name is next to hopeless. At a conservative estimate, there are about thirty million Wu in China, and Ming is a very common given name. Can you imagine how many of them may have been arrested for petty crime? We might be better off trying to check with the Italian authorities for immigration records.”

“That’s assuming he isn’t illegal,” Theo corrects him. “And even if he arrived legally, which I doubt, we run into issues here because of the mess of a relationship between the Polizia dello Stato that reports to the Interior Ministry and the Carabinieri who report to the Defence Ministry. And with the guy I knew at the Rome NCB just retired, I have no major favours to call in. And besides,” Theo concludes, “they hardly ever nab the big guys, it’s mostly expendable forty-niners stupid enough to get caught.”

“What does American football have to do with it?” Selina asks, and is somewhat embarrassed to see both men grin.

“Nothing,” Bruce answers. “It’s a code used in the Chinese Triad structure. There isn’t actually one single centralised Triad organisation, rather a large number of separate and competing Triads, which also makes them harder to fight. But each of them has exactly the same structure. There’s the boss known as Mountain Master or Dragon Head, who always has a numeric codename of 489; then there are three of his deputies with different names but the same code, 438, then there’s the so-called “Red Pole” or chief enforcer who is a 426, then the “White Paper Fan” administrator who is, I think, 415; and the rank-and-file are called forty-niners. It’s an I Ching numbers thing.”

Oh well, maybe it isn’t so embarrassing after all. There was no way she could have known that.

***

Eventually, by the afternoon of the following day, they have found enough to be able to put the pieces together. There is no direct, obvious business connection between the pulp mill, Gonghe Rongbaolin, and Tessuti Varese, but they do get two telling intersection points. One, Theo has tagged Qingdao Jinglian, Varese’s minority-stake investment in China, as a Gonghe Rongbaolin client, and two, they have discovered, after working their way through the otherwise largely unhelpful info on the Chinese and Indonesian fronts respectively, that the ultimate parent of the Chinese fronts that Bruce tagged as Tessuti Varese owners, an outfit called Huaya Holdings, is exactly the same as the ultimate parent of Gonghe Rongbaolin through the Indonesian fronts that Theo found. If Huaya Holdings belongs to Triad owners, there is no obvious proof of that; but Theo hopes that he may be able to change that with more digging.

“Thing is,” Bruce reflects glumly, “by now we pretty much know who we’re dealing with, but we still have no idea what it is they are really doing. I mean, textiles are not exactly a lethal business, it’s not as if they’re making pharmaceuticals or building nuclear plants or involved in other dual-use technology.”

“I still figure that there must be drugs hidden in those boxes Rongbaolin is making,” Theo suggests. “I wonder if Zhenjiang Zili uses Rongbaolin’s boxes to ship yarn to Tessuti here?”

“Why the hell would they package synthetic yarn in cardboard when plastic is enough?” Bruce wonders.

“Precisely,” Theo responds, turning to him. “There would be no logic to it unless there was more to it than meets the eye. So if we do manage to prove that Zili packages their yarn in Rongbaolin boxes and supplies it to Tessuti, we’ll have plenty more to go on.”

“We need to find out if Zili, or rather that Xianrong trader they use, ships overseas,” Bruce picks up where Theo leaves off. “If they do, it’ll show up in their records as payments to COSCO, considering that they’re the state shipping monopoly.”

Sure enough, there are regular, if not exorbitant, payments to COSCO on Xianrong accounts; and once they have established that, they run a check on which of the COSCO container ships call into Livorno, Italy’s huge port less than 70 miles away from Florence and Prato. They come up with five, all sailing under the Greek flag; called respectively the COSCO Beijing, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Yantian, and Greece, calling at Livorno at roughly bi-weekly intervals - makes sense as the sailing time between Guangzhou, China’s largest southern port, and Livorno is about a month and they take about a week to offload and load cargo; that way there is always a ship arriving every two weeks. It is looking more and more like the murky picture is coming together, but there is still plenty to be done to obtain definite proof beyond theoretical conclusions.

“Just think of the irony,” Theo says, trying to lighten the mood. “What we have here is a string of holding-company Chinese boxes owning a questionable outfit that makes, quite literally, Chinese boxes. It isn’t often that you come across criminals as consistent as that.”

___________________________________

Notes to Ch 9

Apologies if the ownership chain and financial stuff in this chapter is beyond boring; this has been my area of work expertise for quite a while and being a plausibility freak, I had to think through the logic of how Bruce and Theo could put two and two together, but it won't feature in the later plot at this level of detail. In case you are curious to work your way through it once you get to the relevant point, I ended up drawing a chart to map out the situation for myself; it should help clarify the "Chinese boxes" of Tessuti Varese ownership and business connections:  (in reality, something like this would be more complicated, but I don't want readers chasing me with a poleaxe, or worse, falling asleep). Grey boxes are fronts and holdings, blue boxes are manufacturing companies, blue arrows are shareholding stakes, and red arrows are supplies. The relevant thing to remember for future chapters is that there is an indirect but nonetheless active connection between Tessuti Varese and Gonghe Rongbaolin, the pulp mill.

For the record, I have no idea how easy, if at all possible, it is to hack into Chamber of Commerce and tax agency data. The reports in question are, indeed, largely available to interested parties but take time and bureaucratic procedures to procure, but I imagine that the tax agency is quite well protected against hacking, as, obviously, are banks.

Wu and Ming are, indeed, a very common Chinese surname and given name, respectively (the Chinese custom is to put surname first and to refer to people by surname); I got the 30 million estimate from a percentage of Wu in the total population that I found somewhere.

I based Chinese company names on versions of actual company names in the respective industries, with the exception of COSCO and its Greek-flag ships where I got the exact company name and ship names - I hope they don't sue me ;)

...and I trust Wikipedia on the truth about the I Ching-based Triad code numbers.

(end of Ch 9) - continued in part 4