FACETS (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS Book 6)

FACETS

A Novel By

Lawrence De Maria

Copyrigh
t©
Lawrence De Maria 2015

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the autho
r’
s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, transmitted, reverse engineered, decompiled or stored in or introduced into any storage or retrieval system in any form or by any means, electric or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading or distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Published by St. Austi
n’
s Press

              (305-409-0900)             

Dedicated to Patti, without whose love, support and faith this book

–
and other
s
–

would not have been possible,

and to my sons,

Lawrence and Christopher.

Good men, both.

“A beautiful woman has more facets than a fine diamond, and may be just as hard.”

—
   
Anonymous

CHAPTER 1 - OUR LADY OF THE MOUNTAINS

Chamonix, France

1990

Sister Angelina Faggini tapped her ruler sharply on her desk. The girls sitting before her in matching blue-and-white school uniforms looked at her attentively. That is, most of them did. One of them was looking out the window at the massive peaks of the Aiguilles Rouges.

“Now, can any of you tell me what Jesus Christ said to the thieves beside him on the cross at Calgary?”

She spoke in slightly accented English, which was the language of favor at Notre-Dame des Monts, as Our Lady of the Mountains School for Girls was commonly known, although most students and faculty could also get by in French, German and Spanish, in varying degrees of fluency. 

All but one of the 16 girls in the theology class, a much-despised “gut” course requirement of all students, raised their hands. They knew all the answers by rote, even if most of what they were taught made no sense to a student body more worldly than devout. But an “A” for the course was a given — all that was necessary was to make the ancient Sister Faggini happy by repeating, verbatim, what was in their catechisms.

The one girl who didn’t raise a hand was still staring wistfully out at the snow-capped mountains surrounding the Chamonix Valley in which Notre-Dame des Monts lay.

“Put your hands down, girls,” Sister Faggini said. “Let us see if Miss Dallas knows the answer. Do you, Miss Dallas?”

The blond girl sitting in the seat behind Maura Dallas laughed quietly and poked her in the back. Maura slowly turned her head to look at her instructor. And smiled beatifically.

“I’m sorry, Sister. I missed that. What did you say?”

“Kindly stand up, young lady.”

Maura, tall and lithe, slid out of her seat with an easy, almost languorous, movement. She stood erect, her arms folded under her breasts. The smile remained. But it was the smile of someone who was talking to an intellectual inferior. And the teacher knew it. 

“Do you know what our Good Lord said to the thieves who were crucified with him on Golgotha?”

The nun’s tone was sharp.

“I think so, Sister.”

The girl just stood there. There were nervous, expectant twitters from some of the other girls. Maura was unpredictable, which was why she was probably the most popular girl in the school. 

“Well, why don’t you share it with us?”

“I believe He said, ‘What a lousy way to spend Easter’.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” the girl who had poked Maura blurted, and burst out laughing.

Her name was Alana Loeb. While not as popular as Maura Dallas, her best friend, she, too, was admired by the other girls. Her laughter was contagious. The rest of the class, initially shocked into silence after the blasphemous remark, soon joined in.

   ***

After Sister Angelina, red-faced, scowling in her cowl, stormed out of her office, wooden rosary beads clacking, Lucille Etangier looked at the beautiful young girl — a woman, really — and sighed.

“Maura, what am I to do with you?”

“Firing squad, Mother?”

Etangier, the Mother Superior of the prestigious school in the French Alps near the border with Switzerland and Italy, barely suppressed a smile. A radiator under a window hissed and clanked. I really must do something about the heating system, Etangier thought, not for the first time. Notre Dame was housed in what was once a monastery. Impressive, even regal, on the outside, and probably able to withstand artillery fire, the building’s innards ran the infrastructural gamut from the fairly new to the ancient. The heating system fit somewhere in the middle, having been installed during the World War. The first one. It was barely adequate to heat the classrooms, offices and laboratories. What money Etangier could spare went into those laboratories, which had modern facilities, and the school’s brick dormitory, constructed after the Second Word War.    

“Sit down, child.”

Maura Dallas arranged herself in one of the two uncomfortable wooden chairs across from Etangier’s desk. But she didn’t look uncomfortable as she crossed her legs, smoothed her dress and put her hands demurely in her lap. 

“Sister Angelina wants to give you a failing grade.”

“That is her prerogative, Mother Superior.” Maura smiled, but this time without a hint of condescension. She knew something of the Mother Superior’s past, and thus liked and respected her. “One can hardly blame Sister Angelina. I am, after all, a royal pain in the ass.”

Now, Etangier was unable to suppress a smile. 

“My dear, I can’t remember any student failing theology. Just about everyone receives an “A”. In fact, you have earned top marks in theology in your first three years here at Our Lady. Why jeopardize what will otherwise be an exemplary senior year? All your other marks are superior. You are one of the brightest students I have seen in my time here.”

“You are making my case for me, Mother. This is an excellent school. You have finally taught me to think for myself. That puts me at odds with what Sister Angelina wants from me. I am not a parrot.”

Not for the first time, Etangier wondered whether Maura Dallas had indeed learned to think for herself, or, perhaps, just spent too much time under the influence of Alana Loeb, the mysterious Argentine girl. The two of them had roomed together for the past two years. But, no, it could just as easily been the other way around, given Maura’s family background. Both girls were brilliant and rebellious, but also leaders. Unlike the nuns from Faggini’s era, the younger generation of the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of the Innocents, the religious order that ran Notre-Dame des Monts, welcomed, even nurtured, mavericks. Especially if they came from the wealthy families that basically subsidized a school that would have foundered without their support.

The teaching order was down to 23 nuns worldwide, of which only seven resided in Chamonix. At 66-years-of-age, Etangier was the youngest of the seven, and one of the youngest in the entire order. And although she couldn’t be certain, she suspected that having once been married, she was the only one of her flock that had slept with a man. She often thought of Lucien, the French resistance fighter killed by the Gestapo in the waning days of World War II. Their time together had been brief, but she still recalled, without regret, the wonderful physical relationship they experienced — a sensual experience made more intense by the constant danger they faced. She had also been handled roughly by the Germans before her liberations, and miscarried the child she and Lucien had conceived.

Etangier never remarried and her strong spirituality steered her toward a religious life. She had found both solace and a calling with the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of the Innocents. Her real-life experience made her ideally suited to mentor and manage the liberated, and often-damaged, young women of the 1970’s and 1980’s that were the stock in trade at Notre-Dame des Monts. It also helped that Etangier was native to the Haute-Savoie département in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. In her youth, she had skied in Chamonix, one of the oldest ski resorts in France and host to the 1924 Winter Olympics. Indeed, she had met Lucien on the slopes, where he was a ski instructor.

Etangier stood and walked around to the front of her desk and leaned back against it. Unlike Sister Angelina and one or two other nuns, who wore a traditional “penguin” habit, she was dressed in a gray sweater and matching skirt that fell below her knees. She fingered a small gold cross at her neck and looked down at the girl.

“Don’t you believe in God, Maura?”

Maura Dallas looked up at Etangier and smiled.

“Oh, Mother. What does that have to do with anything?”

***

After Maura Dallas left, Lucille Etangier sighed deeply, picked up her phone and dialed a number.

“Reichmann und Gesellschaft.”

“Herr Kuttell, please.”

“Please hold.”

“Herr Kuttell’s office. How may I be of assistance?”

Etangier identified herself and was immediately patched through to Juerg Kuttell, the managing partner at Reichmann and Company who personally handled the financial affairs of Joseph Dallassio, one of the bank’s largest customers.

“Lucille, how are you?” Kuttell spoke in his passable French, as a courtesy to his caller.

“I am well, thank you, Juerg. And you?”

The two traded banalities for a moment, which included friendly barbs about their respective favorite soccer teams. Finally, Kuttell, said, “But I suspect you did not call to chat about soccer and the weather.” A pause. “Is our girl giving you another headache?”

“More like a migraine. One of her instructors is threatening to give her a failing grade.”

“In what subject?”

“Theology.”

The banker laughed.

“Of course. This is her final term, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“And she has never received anything but the highest marks?”

“Yes. All honestly earned, I might add. The girl is a superior student. But she is, how shall I put it, irreverent.”

“Not the best attitude in a theology course, I expect. But surely there is something you can do. Explain the special situation to the teacher.”

Etangier swiveled her desk chair and looked out her window. A large raptor, surely a Golden Eagle to judge by its huge wingspan, circled high over the valley, searching for prey among the dwindling patches of snow. The Mother Superior was very familiar with the valley and its surrounding peaks, and was something of an amateur ornithologist. The Golden Eagle, while not rare in the area, was one of her favorite birds, a superb hunter noted for its binocular vision, which gave it the ability to judge both distance and depth to within inches. The unwary rabbit, and the occasional lamb or mountain goat, stood little chance when spotted. Some of the older peasants in the valley insisted that the eagles did not always limit their hunting to wildlife. Children were put to bed with tales of missing toddlers. Just legends, Etangier thought. Then she shivered. Most legends had a basis in fact. Well, whatever the prey, they had as much chance as she had to convince Sister Angelina Faggini to change a grade!

“The instructor is an institution at Our Lady,” the Mother Superior said. “She may be older than Mont Blanc. And just as immovable.”

“Dear lady, Reichmann and Company is also an institution.” Kuttell paused. “You know our agreement. The Dallassio family was very specific.”

Lucille Etangier knew very well what the “agreement” with the Dallassio crime syndicate entailed. Maura Dallas — the name the girl now used — was to graduate with top honors. In return, Notre-Dame des Monts received $100,000 a year for ten years, or six years more than the girl would be attending the school.

And who knew what other benefits might await in the future, in terms of future donations and referrals. The arrangement, one of many the school made over the years, did not bother Etangier or her order in the least. The institution had been a refuge for girls from certain families, not all of them Catholic. At one time or another, Our Lady had enrolled children from the Mafia, Unione Corse, Yakuza, Irish mob, South American drug cartels, the Jewish Mafia and Russian Bratva. Even some ex-Nazis on the run after World War II had managed to get their children enrolled. After all, the students were innocent of the crimes of their fathers. At least while they were at Notre-Dame des Monts. The money provided by such “benefactors” not only kept the school running and allowed it to hire top lay educators now that the pool of nuns was drying up, but also provided scholarships for the less-fortunate girls who made up almost 20 percent of the student body.

As for the provenance of some of the money? Well, Etangier knew that the Vatican Bank, which offered Notre-Dame des Monts no support, had its own skeletons in the closet. Like all her predecessors, Mother Superior Lucille Etangier was devout — but practical. New heating systems did not grow on trees.

Still, the Vatican Bank did have its uses.

“Juerg, perhaps a phone call to your friends in Rome might be helpful.” Etangier said.

The Swiss banker’s knowing chuckle came through the line.

“What do you have in mind, Lucille.”  

***

“You are seriously deranged,” Alana Loeb said. “I thought old Faggini was going to have a fucking stroke. What did Etangier say?”

With a final, post-orgasmic shudder, Maura Dallas rolled on her side and raised herself on one elbow to look at her friend. Her black hair fell across her cheek and Alana brushed it away lovingly.

“She tried to act mad,” Maura said, getting her breathing under control, “but I could tell that she was amused. I don’t imagine a woman who experienced what she did during the war can take anything too seriously. And she was married, after all.”

They knew all about the Mother Superior. The Dallassio family, which rarely left anything to chance, had thoroughly investigated every aspect of the school and its staff.