Gentle readers: welcome to my entry for the Literotica Halloween Contest. It has benefited immensely from the invaluable editing of the lovely and talented
legerdemer
. I hope you will enjoy it.
*
On this particular October morning, Helmut was pretending to be someone that he was not. He was assuming the role of a savvy investor with money burning a hole in his pocket. Helmut had spent most of the previous year living in Hong Kong under the name "Helmut Pagel". He had spent plenty of the German government's money on various financial deals, in order to make his disguise convincing, and he had done well with them. It was necessary to make trades on a large enough scale that it would make him interesting as a potential client. He had made quite a splash in Hong Kong. But now he was in Venice. His nostrils were full of it.
It was a heady mix of aromas, and a confusing one, at first. As Helmut strode deliberately along the paving stones next to the canal, he was gradually able to sort it out -- the omnipresent smell of salt water, plus the sharp (Helmut did not find it unpleasant) scent of the fumes from boat motors, and finally the heavenly aroma of freshly baked bread that wafted from the nearby shops. He liked the olfactory cocktail; he liked the way that his path was alternately brilliant with the morning sun, then subdued with the deep shade of the buildings he passed; he liked the feeling of the espresso he drank in place of breakfast, assaulting his central nervous system.
Helmut walked close to the water's edge, smiling to himself as a bright yellow, red and blue ice cream vendor's boat glided past on his left. He wore his blond hair stylishly long, and had worn it that way over the past year as he had grown into his identity as Herr Pagel. He was wearing a pricey geometric-patterned polo shirt, Santoni shoes, and slacks. He could pass for a member of the
Schickeria
, the fashionable set, but he was still, at heart, a cop.
His years of experience as an investigator for the Financial Intelligence Unit of the
Bundeskriminalamt
, the Federal Criminal Police of Germany, had prepared him well. Helmut knew the world of finance, and he knew that the line between clever investing and criminal activity was often difficult to discern. Nonetheless, Helmut was more than able to discern it.
Helmut looked out across the green waters of the canal, watching a gondola skim through them with the grace of a swan. He was on his way to meet his new quarry for the first time, Mr. Till Acquati. Acquati was a leading executive of the famous Assicurazioni Generali, the giant Italian reinsurance firm often referred to simply as "Generali." He was known to be a specialist in the complicated world of financial derivatives, the convoluted system of financial "hedging" that often devolved to nothing more than complex wagers. Derivatives traders hired whiz-kid math PhDs right out of college just to try to follow the twists and turns of the bets they were making.
Acquati had a reputation among derivatives dealers. It wasn't that he was quick about understanding the details of the bets (although he was). It was that he always knew who was making them, and why. He was a strategist, said to possess a prescience that verged on clairvoyance. This reputation inevitably attracted the attention of criminal investigators, because it smelled like insider trading, or some related practice that was just a few steps to the wrong side of that line between what is legal and what is not. The amounts of money that passed through Acquati's hands on a daily basis were legendary. However, if Acquati were doing something untoward, it had thus far escaped the scrutiny of law enforcement investigators.
Generali would have state-of-the art security and intelligence capabilities, so Helmut had lavished a lot of care and expertise on creating a false identity that would stand up to scrutiny. Now it was time to put it to the test.
Helmut crossed over a small tributary canal on an arched footbridge, then entered the lobby of the Metropole Hotel. He passed through the glass doors into the palatial interior, admiring the geometric tiled floor. He cast his eyes around the lobby for a minute or two before he spotted Acquati, who was relaxing inconspicuously in a corner with a large, sober looking man whom Helmut took to be a bodyguard.
Acquati had an aquiline nose, intelligent brown eyes and an impeccably barbered mane of iron-colored hair, swept back from the forehead and ending precisely at collar level in the back. He wore a dark suit from a tailor too exclusive to be in the men's magazines, and a silk shirt open at the collar.
Helmut was halfway across the lobby to him before Acquati raised his eyes and acknowledged him. He rose courteously and offered his hand. "You must be Mr. Pagel," he said.
"That I am," said Helmut, accepting his handshake. Both men spoke English, the language of business, confidently and with almost no trace of an accent.
"Well, I'm delighted to meet you, sir. I understand that you have an interest in derivatives." Acquati's smile was a perfect balance of accessible warmth and professional decorum.
"I do. I have had some experience with them, but I increasingly feel that I am out of my depth, and I'm hoping to benefit from the experience of yourself and your firm." Of course, Generali's intelligence division would know exactly what Helmut had done with derivatives.
"Well, I hope that we may be able to assist you." Acquati was inscrutable. "Mr. Pagel, I'm guessing that perhaps you are German?"
"Yes. Does it show?" Helmut smiled wryly, or at least, he hoped that he did.
"Well, your name does suggest it. My mother was Austrian, which is how I came to be named Till. My father was Italian, of course."
Of course. Helmut, in turn, was already fully aware of these things, having done his own homework. Seeing no perceptible sign on hesitation on the part of Mr. Acquati, he launched into a discussion of the business relationship he hoped to establish, a discussion which continued cordially for 20 more minutes, until Acquati excused himself and promised to soon develop some proposals that Mr. Pagel would find interesting. Acquati rose, offered his hand once again, and made his way through the lobby to the hotel entrance, accompanied by his silent companion (who, Helmut realized, had remained standing during the entire encounter). Helmut watched through the hotel windows as the two of them strolled to the canal outside and boarded a sleek powerboat that materialized just as they reached the water's edge, then carried them off into the distance.
***
Helmut stood amidst the noisy chaos of the front office of the Italian
Guardia di Finanza
, waiting for a meeting with Lieutenant Antonio Durante, who was in charge of liaison with foreign police agencies. After another ten minutes of patient waiting and enduring the aural assault of excited people chattering in Italian, Helmut was summoned into an interior office where it was blessedly quiet. The room was spartan in its decor, occupied only by a central desk whose surface was crowded with open files and memorabilia. Behind it, Lieutenant Durante awaited him, wearing a rumpled gray suit.
"OK, good morning, yes, Mr. Delker, what am I going to do for you?" said Durante to Helmut, whose real surname was Delker.
"Good morning, Lieutenant Durante, I am investigating Till Acquati."
Durante rolled his eyes. "Till Acquati, yes, he's a big shot, you can't touch him. Besides, he's clean. I watch him for years. Assicurazioni Generali, my god, they're a big company, very legitimate. Maybe a few bad eggs once in a while. But Acquati? Yes, Mr. Delker, no, he won't break the rules." He nodded his head vigorously to underscore the point.
"Just the same, I'd like to have a look at him. I won't make waves while I am here."
"You have been working in Italy before?" Durante's demeanor was genial, but his eyes narrowed slightly. Sometimes a foreign cop could be a bull in a china shop.
"Yes, once before, in Milan. I'll do it by the book."
"OK, Mr. Delker, but yes, I think you are chasing a wild goose." Durante shrugged his shoulders.
"Maybe, maybe not. It won't hurt to look just a little bit deeper. I'll share with you anything that I find."
"Mr. Delker, yes, that's exactly what you should do. Keep me up there in the loop." Durante flashed a smile with a hint of fatigue and offered his hand. Helmut shook it serenely and took his leave.
After Helmut had departed, Lieutenant Durante picked up the phone on his desk and spoke rapidly in Italian to a colleague. He informed him that a German financial cop was pursuing the same line of investigation that his team was working, and that he could be a potential problem if he got in the way.
***
The paving stones of the famous Piazza San Marco glistened from the recent rain. The square looked like an expanse of lake, reflecting the impossibly ornate and ancient structures that lined its perimeter. At the border of the Grand Canal sat the Palazzo Ducale, the Doge's Palace. For more than a century, the palace has housed an art museum, the Museo dell'Opera, and this was Helmut's destination.
Helmut was considering his plan of attack. The next move would be Acquati's. Acquati would make some business overture on behalf of Generali, which would in turn determine how Helmut would proceed further. In the meantime, Helmut would keep his powder dry, relax and think. This was what he hoped to do at the Museo dell'Opera. Fate held something slightly different in store for him.
He wandered through the chambers of the former palace, with their elaborately vaulted and mural-ed ceilings, gazing at the paintings. Helmut preferred the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, with its Raphaels and Da Vincis, to the collection of mostly Venetian painters he saw here. But some were catching his attention.
As a young man in Berlin, Helmut had shown an aptitude for painting. At the university, he had vacillated between majoring in art, and majoring in criminology. Criminology had won out, but he still thought wistfully of becoming an artist.
Helmut walked into a room where paintings by Paolo Veronese were on display. His eye was drawn to painting where a very serious-looking blond woman, dressed in colorful robes of antiquity, appeared to be standing on a prostrate man. The point of view was unusual, looking upward at the woman from a short distance away, with a brilliant blue sky in the background. This painting was entitled "The Punishment of the Forger," and it was all the more remarkable for the fact that there were two of them, one on the wall, the other a faithful copy being painted by a young woman who was seated at an easel in the middle of the room.
She wore her dark hair very short. One might be tempted to call it boyish, were it not for the fact that she was quite full-breasted. Her glasses with large frames emphasized her dark eyes and her slightly bushy eyebrows, and from her ears dangled twin strips of shiny metal in abstract shapes. She was concentrating intently on her brush-strokes which mimicked those of Paolo Veronese, and she was unaware of Helmut as he studied her and her painting.
Helmut was fascinated by her hands. They were quite compact, and the fingers were broad, but they moved the brush with steady, fluid, elegant motion. Eventually, Helmut ventured to speak. His Italian was sketchy at best, so he decided to go with English and hope for the best.
"That's very good work," he said.
The woman was momentarily startled, then smiled shyly and replied. "Thank you. I really like that painting." Helmut noticed that she rolled her "r"s heavily in a way that was clearly not German.
"What will you do with the copy you are making?"
She shook her head lightly from side to side. "I do this because I want some classical technique. I went to art school and learned to paint with... modernism and abstraction. I don't know what I will do with this." She grinned ironically, and continued. "If I ever finish."
"It looks very close to being finished now."
The woman grinned again. "No, no!"
Helmut peered again at the original painting. "What is the woman doing to that man?"
The painter laughed. "I'm not sure. She is punishing him for being a forger, I think."
"He probably deserves it. Are you a professional painter?"
