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“Yes, I am.”
“It won’t work, Moira,” he said, slipping her long hair behind one ear.
“Don’t test me.”
“I would never do that. You may not be aware, but I think you’re stronger than I am. But I have some questions that need answering.”
She pouted, inhaled, and then forced out a big sigh. “Okay, go ahead and ask.”
“Not until you smile. Just think of it, if you answer all my questions, maybe we can do something else soon.”
“That’s not fair. But go ahead and ask.”
She sipped her coffee and waited for him.
“Who is it that is doing this to your family? There’s always one core, one nexus, that one person who holds all the evil-doing together, the kingpin, the one with the most power, the wizard of evil. The one who causes all the drama and blows smoke across the solutions, obscures their evil actions with drama elsewhere in a slight of hand, like an evil sorcerer. He makes it so we focus more on the danger and drama than himself. Do you know what I mean?”
She nodded her head solemnly.
“Who would that be? It’s always just one. Can you give me that one person, one name?”
“Enrico Francone.”
“The minister of defense. It would have to be the minister of defense. Christ!”
He looked aside. Well, he’d asked for it, and she delivered the name.
“How the Hell did you guys get mixed up with him? You actually thought you could do battle withhim?”
“He was my father’s partner at one time. My father made a poor choice.”
“I’d even call it stupid, Moira.”
“Well, yes. It was, but at the time none of us knew what we know now. He’s the man who took away most his vineyards, all the little wineries he started. He’s the one Nathan was trying to negotiate with to obtain our release.”
“Well, there’s another fool. He thought he’d worm his way into your dad’s good graces that way? But I guess the larger question is, why wouldn’t Francone agree to the deal. What was in it he didn’t like?”
“My father knows too much.”
“About what?”
“About what he exports, imports. The wine business gives him access to shipping. He ships not only wine, but drugs as well. He also deals in arms. He is able to buy American weapons from contractors in the U.S. and sell them overseas, exchanges them with the Taliban and other groups for the drugs he gets. He sells the drugs for the American market. Supposedly boutique drugs, not garbage from China or Mexico. People will pay a high price for good drugs.”
“You mean drugs they can supposedly trust?”
“Exactly.”
“But that’s folly. Someone somewhere down the line decides to cut it, make their own concoction, and then you have the dangerous additives, and it’s no longer safe. There is no such thing as a safe drug.”
“Yes. I know that. But it’s his brand. My father discovered what he was doing by accident, and Francone found out.”
“It has to be more than that. He could find your father and get rid of him quickly. Why tie up the whole family too?”
“He’s a cousin of my mother—distant cousin, but blood is strong here. The family on Capri is strong. There’s a lid on them, which is a mafia term for a ‘hands off’ warning. Harming my father would begin a war. Francone doesn’t want that. Itwould elevate the skirmish to international headlines. He does everything under the cover of official darkness.”
That was a choice couple of words she spewed out. It aptly described the problem with overreaching governments lining their own pockets, and he wasn’t naïve to think the U.S. didn’t have their fair share of them as well.
Official darkness. What are you going to do? It is what it is.
