The 4 Phase Man Part 32

Twelve.

"There are three Corsicas," the saying goes. "The pilferers of the seas, the bandits of the ground, and the Brothers of the Unions."

"They are the water, wind, and fire, but-for the mercy of the world-they shall never unite."

"Until the day of the plague is called, and the world brought to its knees."

But that was just legend and myth, rhymes without reason. Or so the few people that knew the inhabitants of the small island, closer to Italy than France, prayed.

Because to know the Corsicans was to fear them.

The island is ruled by that fear, always has been.

In 550 B.C. the Romans conquered the island, only to be slaughtered legion after legion for decades until they left, a beaten and shattered empire.

The Vandals, Byzantines, and Moors all arrived, all seemed to conquer, all were driven away b.l.o.o.d.y and broken. Italians and French both tried, both died.

In the Second World War the Germans lost more men and materiel in their brief occupation of the less than 3,500-square-mile island than they did to the French, Greek, and Polish Resistance movements combined.

And Corsica remained.

Oh, some things changed-the harbor at the mouth of Girolata still had the Roman sentry tower and German artillery emplacements-now a church and school.

The Haute-Corse still used Moorish roads and Vandals' field ca.n.a.ls-to tend to the thin crops of olives and wheat that the island produced.

Sartene, Corte, and L'ile-Rousse still carefully maintained the French underground storage grottoes-if storing things other than wine and olives in these more modern times.

But the heart of the island and its violent people who lived by vendetta and blood feuds remained essentially as it was in the days of the Lombard Kingdom. True to the other well-known saying of the Corsicans.

"My enemy may bleed me, but I will learn from that blood and it will drown my killers."

In the heart of the island-amid the almost jungle undergrowth and rock formations of the maquis-the small village of Cammeo sits as a virtual doorway to the imposing Mount Cinto. The ancestral home of all the Unions of the Corsican Brotherhood, Cammeo grows olives, processes wheat into thick black bread, and allows no strangers within.

There are no hotels, hostels, or inns here. No one will offer you a room or a bed. There are no restaurants, gas stations, hospitality centers, or attractions to draw the casual tourist. And any that might be found in the sleepy, harmless-looking village come nightfall will be significantly the worse for wear by morning.

It's not that the people aren't friendly. Like most island people of the Mediterranean, they are easygoing and casual. But they have protected themselves in this manner for generations and have thereby become known as the safest safe haven in the world.

Which was why many of the people of Cammeo looked with open concern and violence at the six outsiders that had been brought to refuge in the cave homes halfway up the mountain behind the village.

But they'd been brought with the blessing of the Council and that ended all open discussion. Besides, a more ocontroversial topic was sweeping the dusty, dark streets of Cammeo not even an hour after the strangers had settled in.

The Council had called for a tribunale-a meeting of the leaders of all the clans of Corsican Unions on the island and around the world. They would all be coming within two days to the church hall. Not just a meeting of Union heads or a convening of the Council itself, the tribunale was a centuries-old tradition for settling disputes within the Brotherhood itself.

The word had circulated quickly that Franco DiBenetti-clan leader of the Cammeo Brotherhood-had directly challenged the Council.

And that he had enough support within the various factions and Unions of the Brotherhood to force this tribunal, where the world's Corsican leaders would decide the outcome.

Where the losing side would die painfully.

Three heavily armed men sitting in the rocks outside the small house carefully studied Franco as he came up. Never, in their lifetime, had a man directly challenged a Council ruling. It was a nearly unthinkable thing to do.

But the man was of Cammeo, so must be taken seriously. And his argument-snippets of which had been circulating in the hours since their arrival-was such that their Corsican blood boiled, and their warrior souls called out for vengeance.

But to challenge the Council...

They nodded noncommittally toward him as he pa.s.sed.

Franco ignored them as he walked up to the house. His mind was far from the coming political/life battle, distracted from issues of ethnic ritual and tradition. Instead his mind wandered over the problem of how to deal with the men waiting for him inside.

He pounded three times on the door, then let himself in.

The central room was empty. A table with five chairs at its center; on the table a cork mat with a loaf of black bread, a spread of olive paste and loose olives, and a razor-sharp knife with an eight-inch blade.

Franco hesitated. The loaf was intact-imperfectly round, crust hard and smooth-which meant, in Corsican parlance, This place is safe for our friends. But we do not yet know if you are our friend.

Had the loaf been sliced, it would've meant that he was welcome, among allies. If one piece was missing, it meant friends open to persuasion. But intact...

He closed the door behind him. "In bocca al lupo," he said in a strong voice to the emptiness.

"Crepi il lupo," a smallish man responded as he stepped out of the one bedroom. Everything about him seemed measured, planned; every step, gesture, or expression planned out to the most infinite detail.

"Crepi il lupo," a second man said as he stepped out of the kitchen. He was huge, well over six-five, 240 pounds. He held a cold leg of lamb in his hand, and it wouldn't have surprised Franco one bit to find the rest of the dismembered animal just behind the big man.

Franco turned as a third man moved out of the shadows to his right. He'd come from no room, no alcove or closet, must've been in the room within Franco's sight all the time. But he'd been invisible to the cautious Corsican leader, completely still and part of the shadowed woodwork.

"f.u.c.k the wolf," he mumbled in English. "Let's talk business."

"Thank you all," Franco said pleasantly as he sat at the head of the table. "I owe you each a favor in return for your coming. You have my word on that."

"What makes you think you're going to be around long enough to do me any favors?" the small one said."

"Show's not till tomorrow," the big man mumbled. "You could be a memory by then."

Franco shrugged. "But what a happy memory," eh? He smiled. "What does it hurt to talk?"

The quiet one looked him in the eyes. "Council'll have the b.a.l.l.s of anyone who's with you if you lose. I say we should wait until it's over."

But no one at the table got up.

"Well, the Council has their schedule. I have mine," Franco said lightly. "Now, are we done with the bulls.h.i.+t, or what? None of you would be here if you gave a s.h.i.+t what happens tomorrow."

"We're not here because of you," the big man said clearly.

"And the Council is full of zucconi odiosi," the quiet man said without moving. "As you are, Franco."

Franco smiled at the small one. "Let's not get personal."

"We're here because it's personal," the small man continued. "We each lost someone at Le Sangue Bambini." Il Luogo dei Bambini che Sanguinano.

"And we're going to f.u.c.king know why, before we hear another word from you." The quiet man's eyes narrowed, he grew cold, detached... lethal.

For long moments Franco thought about the answer. He considered and rejected retelling Valerie's story, railing against the Chinese conspiracy or invoking democracy versus communism. These men wanted simpler answers. Who was responsible, why? No shades, degrees, or cutouts.

And, more important, could all the deaths-thirty-two in all, mostly children-have been avoided?

It was a question he'd asked himself over and over again in the hours since the attack.

The clinic was under his protection. He'd brought the fugitives safely out of America and into what had become ground zero for the butchery. h.e.l.l, it'd been him that had coerced Xenos into looking for Paolo in the first place. It could all be considered his fault.

If the men around him came to that conclusion, he would never live to possibly be executed by the Council tomorrow.

"Fratelli, what happened in Toulon was caused by two things. First, a mother trying desperately to save her children; and second ..." He sighed deeply. "My brothers, you know the second as well as I. The second reason is that we are Corsican."

"While we hold ourselves to standards of civility and protocol, do things in the proper way through the proper channels, the rest of the world never has. The Cinesi betrayed us, even as we offered them a way out of the crisis. A way that would have been equitable for everyone."

He shook his head. "But we now know, from the depraved tortures they inflicted on our men, that they were never serious about the negotiations. Why should they be? We are just Corsican, and when has the world wept bitter tears at the death of any of us?"

He paused, taken up in his own emotions and memories of that night. "Or at the wrecked bodies of children of color from an embarra.s.sing war?"

He took his time, looking each man at the table in the eyes, in the heart. "It happened, my brothers, because the Cinesi care no more for us than the dirt beneath their feet; it happened because this man who works for them enjoys pain and blood."

"And it happened because we are Corsican, and the world allows their Corsicans, their Jews, their people of color or strong beliefs other than their own to die alone and forgotten."

"Because it is easier than doing anything about it.

The big man nodded solemnly. "The Council should never have negotiated in the first place. After Paolo, the rest was already written."

"You remember Serge and Bern Collatino?" the small man asked.

"Sure. Franco remembered them. Serge had been laced from groin to shoulder with automatic weapons fire. Bern's head had been blown into two-oddly balanced-halves."

"My wife's brothers. Not that the f.u.c.king Council gives a s.h.i.+t, but my wife is home crying. The little man's every aspect dripped anger and death."

"f.u.c.k this," the quiet man said calmly, distractedly. "What do you want? You're sitting under the executioner's blade and you're giving moving speeches, but you aren't saying s.h.i.+t, Franco. What do you want from us?"

Franco smiled spasmodically as the man sliced the loaf and left the slices on the mat.

"Vendetta," he said simply.

The small man shook his head. "You aren't good enough."

Franco took no offense. The pyre of the clinic was grave silent witness to that fact.

"Twenty-one children under my, our Brotherhood's, protection lay torn open on land that was blessed by the church as a refuge. Nine of our finest men, two of our most virtuous and sacrificing women lay butchered by a man-by a system-that tortures and murders three of our elders."

He hesitated. "Have you lost your b.a.l.l.s, along with the Council? I will see this vendetta satisfied."

The men ignored the insult, such was the pa.s.sion of the moment and it could easily be forgotten. But the central problem remained.

Pa.s.sion, pain, commitment, and anger couldn't counter the mentality, resources, and organization that had pursued the fugitives halfway around the world and organized a ma.s.sacre that the world's press was calling a "terrorist attack by Afghan separatists."

"How are you, little lost Franco," the big man spat out, "going to see this done? Eh? I've heard of this man who works for the c.h.i.n.ks. He's an inglese spook with unlimited resources and the most malignant genius that ever crawled out of h.e.l.l's depths!"

Franco smiled-a strange, odd, broken, deceptive thing. "This Canvas is not the most malignant, diavolo pericoloso even of my acquaintance."

"No?" The quiet man gestured angrily at the man in front of him. "Tell me, then! Huh? In your vast experience with these things, who is worse, more reeking of the devil than this man who rapes our souls for la Cina?"

"Durete."

The men might have been hit with an icy blast.

"Will you talk with him, then? Franco asked after a full silent minute had pa.s.sed. All the while fighting a temptation to slap them and laugh in their faces."

They looked at each other, then nodded.

Franco stood, walked to the door, and opened it. A moment later Xenos limped in.

His hair-much of it burned in the fire-had been cut extremely short, blackened patches of skin showed on his arms and neck, a hastily sewn closed laceration slightly oozed pinkish fluid through his T-s.h.i.+rt.

His face seemed devoid of all human feeling.

The other men stood when he walked into the room. These were among the toughest, most capable, most intelligent men of any of the Corsican Unions.

But they were, well, uncomfortable at facing this legend sitting vulnerably.

"In bocca al lupo," they all mumbled.

Xenos took a step into the room.

"I need three specialists," he said without preamble, "men who speak accentless English, are familiar with the States-who will not be made as foreigners. I need these men to be able to take orders and carry out complex tasks, but be able to think for themselves and improvise. I need three men with special skills, men of iron and commitment-willing to die, but smart enough to stay alive-to get the job done."

"I need a man of water."

"A man of wind."

"A man of fire."

The small man-Ugo Albina-a man wanted in seven countries for his seemingly supernatural abilities to get into and out of the most secured places, bit off a piece of skin from his left little finger.

"Ecco! Un uomo d'acqua!" He held the hand palm-up toward Xenos.

The quiet man-Constantin Vedette-known to the police of four continents as "the Watcher," bit his little finger and held it out.

"Ecco! Un uomo di vento!"

"Ecco!" the big man-Lucien Fabre-a.s.sa.s.sin, demolitions expert, martial artist, said with pa.s.sion and commitment. "Un uomo di fuoco!"