August 27, 1998, 1:45 A.M.
“What the hell is that?” Rafael inquired as he watched Gus crack open a large bottle of orange juice.
“What’s it look like, genius?’ she retorted as she took a swig, swishing it around in her cheeks to get the taste of Craig out of her mouth.
“Gus, in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve only drunk that black mud that you like to refer to as coffee.” He sipped at the covered cup of hot chocolate she’d brought him from the all-night convenience store they were parked in front of.
She remembered other nights when she and Rafael would hang out like this. Such a long time ago. . .
“Well, I’m just not in the mood for coffee,” she said distantly as she used her tongue to dig bits of pulp from the spaces between her teeth. She turned her head and nailed him to the driver’s seat with her eyes. “Why are you so concerned with my diet all of a sudden?”
He stared right back at her. “Calm down, I didn’t mean anything by it, it just surprises me, that’s all.”
She scratched an itchy spot behind her left ear and glanced in the back seat. “Are those for me?” she asked, indicating the files poking out of the backpack he’d slung in the back seat after getting in.
“Donovan told me to deliver these to you and see that you were thoroughly briefed as to the assignment at hand,” he explained as he retrieved the files and handed them to her.
“Just like Donovan to send back-up in without notifying me. Next time I see him, I’m going to staple his earlobes to the wall,” Gus muttered as she flipped through the first manila folder.
Rafael stared at the wheel and pursed his lips as he considered his words. “Actually, he didn’t send us in for back-up.”
Gus arched an eyebrow. “Oh, really? Pray tell what were you doing at the Kiriakis mansion, then, hmmm?”
“We had a rogue element recently introduced into the operation. One of our operatives has gone code orange.”
He looked at her and she blinked. Her nostrils started to quiver and itch. She chewed on the inner part of her bottom lip as she began to grasp what he could be intimating. Code orange was used to mean one of two things: “desertion” or “defection.”
“Who?” she finally asked, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be who she was placing her bets on.
“What do you want to know about Stefano Dimera?” Franco rasped, wincing as he tried, without success, to block the pain. Even his eyelids hurt, if that was possible.
Ramon sighed. “It’s a simple question, Kelly. What do you know about Stefano Dimera?”
“Same as everyone!” Franco said. “Absolutely nothing.”
“He’s lying,” the young woman said without preamble.
“I am not!” he protested. “Listen, I was hired by him to work for Kate Roberts. She wanted her daughter Billie and that idiot cop she was dating, Bo Brady, to get back together. I had the simple job of breaking up Brady and his long-time sweetheart, Miss Hope Williams. Stefano owed Kate and he figured he could buy her off by giving me to her as her personal henchman.”
“That explains the Kate Roberts connection, but you still haven’t told us how you are involved with Stefano Dimera.” Ramon pulled up a chair and straddled it, facing Kelly.
Franco swore softly. “Can you let me outta this straitjacket. I’m freezing my butt off?!”
“No chance,” Ramon deadpanned. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it and took a deep drag.
“You know that stuff will kill you,” Franco said, motioning to the cigarette with his head. Ramon said nothing. He just stared at Franco. Franco looked towards the young woman. She was also staring at him. “All right, I met Stefano Dimera when I was in trouble. He was my savior, of sorts.”
“Debra?”
“Yep.”
“You gotta be kidding me!”
“Nope.” Rafael started the car and backed out of the parking lot. “In those files are a rundown of the original mission, the supposed reasons and ramifications concerning Deb’s defection and most importantly, the classified information about Franco Kelly that you were denied access to.”
“It’s about friggin’ time! Ouch, watch the road, Garcia!” she hissed as she braced herself while he briefly hydroplaned. She swore again, more softly this time. “I can’t read in this light!”
“Oh, so we’re back to ‘Garcia’ are we?” He smirked and tapped the folder. “I’ll give you a summary of Franco Kelly’s background. He was born in 1970 to Frances Kelly, a.k.a. Francesca Cellini a.k.a. Francesca Corelli. No father is named. If you remember you history of the ISA, she was last heard of pursuing a lead on Regina von Amberg.”
“Princess Gina?! The art thief?”
Rafael nodded grimly. “Francesca disappeared in 1982 in Lugano, Switzerland. Some man named Andrew Merida had something to with it, but he disappeared as well in 1984. Anyway, this Merida character had gone through the formal channels to become guardian of her son, who she’d christened Francesco Andre Cellini. Evidently the young man was worth something to him and the last we heard of the Cellini boy he had been placed in the care of a woman named Lilian Doris Faversham by Merida. This was in 1984.”
Gus listened, her eyes getting wider and her ears burning. My god, it was incredible! Andrew Merida was a known alias of Andre Dimera. Could it be the presumed-dead Andre Dimera that had something to do with this?
“Now Lilian Faversham is one of the wealthiest women in the western world, being the widow of Reginald Howard, the late Duke of Wyndham. She’s an art connoisseur, and it is her passion to find lost pieces of art that had once belonged to Jewish families who had been stripped of their possessions during the second World War, and return them. A hobby that she had on the side was taking in orphaned children and bringing them up. In her care were Francesco Cellini and a young girl named Margaretta von Amberg. We looked into the girl’s past and it turns out that she was the daughter of—“
“Regina von Amberg, right?” Gus leaned her head back against the car seat. “Are you telling me that Miss Faversham, the famous art collector, was raising both Franco Kelly and Princess Gina’s daughter?”
“Seems they were best friends and Miss Faversham looked on Margaretta as a grandchild.” Garcia said, then chuckled. “You catch on quick, Fredericks.”
“Bite me,” Gus said as she drained the last of her orange juice.
Rafael grinned and continued. “Throughout the years while Princess Gina and Miss Faversham were having fun in Monaco, Constantinople, Paris, Rome and London, pieces of her artwork were being, as she termed it, ‘misplaced.’ When they did turn up again, we had our suspicions as to their validity, but Miss Faversham wouldn’t hear of investigating von Amberg, who was our only suspect. Too bad, we could have caught her if Miss Faversham had enough sense. But she loved her companion, and refused to have her investigated. We went ahead and did it anyway, but we got caught with our pants down before we could take the evidence to her.”
“I can’t imagine anyone getting the better of you, Garcia,” Gus said as she smirked. She felt a thrill go through her as he made a difficult turn with ease and the car eased into a swift and steady speed down a long stretch of road.
Rafael rolled his eyes. “During a party that Miss Faversham was giving in 1985, her most treasured piece, Garden at Twilight, was stolen. At the same time, Princess Gina disappeared and proved to be untrackable. Miss Faversham closed her doors to the public and trusted only Francesco and Margaretta, and her maid, a hulk of a woman named Lucille. By all accounts, Francesco was very kind to Miss Faversham and doted on the lady, as she did on him. Margaretta was more difficult to handle as she had a taste for what she called ‘adventure’ and got into some really bad scrapes. When Margaretta ran away in 1990, Miss Faversham was devastated. She and the unit leader in Switzerland were very good friends and I was put on the case with my brother. We kept up with her, but we lost track of her when she got to New Orleans; she obviously wanted to cover her tracks.
“She must have been good to elude the Garcia brothers,” Gus remarked softly, shifting her weight.
He ignored her and continued, “Miss Faversham still continued to care for Francesco until he reached his majority and took a tour of the Continent in 1991. We think that he saw something involving Little Ant’ny Moroni and then he made the bad mistake of getting mixed up with Stefano Dimera while trying to straighten it out. While they were in the Caribbean, Stefano coerced Francesco into working for him. I guess that Stefano saw something in the kid’s character he could use.”
“I wonder what he did,” Gus mused, becoming more and more interested.
“You and me both,” Rafael said and finished the last of his hot chocolate. “All we know was that we had tentatively contacted Francesco in the hopes that he would want to come and work for us, but he turned us down after several promising interviews. Said that he owed a debt to Dimera and he couldn’t work for us. It’s a shame, he would have been a great operative.
“You always did have good instincts about that sort of thing,” Gus said, smiling as she looked out the window at the rainwashed night.
Rafael felt the left side of his mouth turn up and returned to briefing her. “In the meantime, Miss Faversham continued to collect artwork and work with the ISA to return the pieces to the remaining members of the families from which they were stolen. It’s all she has to do because she became very despondent after losing both of her wards and refused to take more children in. We didn’t hear anything about the case for a few years, and then a man named Steven “Jonesy” Jones, turns up in Salem living in a townhouse belonging to Stefano Dimera and alerts our agents because he was using what looked like a copy of Garden at Twilight to cover a hole in his window.”
“You’re kidding!” Gus said, trying to control her mirth. Imagine using a masterpiece of artwork to keep the rain out!
“When we questioned him he said that it was a pretty picture and since it was made of ‘oil’ paint, it wouldn’t suffer. He’d just tacked it up there with tape until the window could be replaced. Isn’t that wild?”
“Yeah!” Gus agreed. “So, what now?”
“Well, a woman that looks a lot like Princess Gina turned up in Switzerland and was taking the Orient Express with Miss Faversham this past month. We don’t know what’s going on, but Donovan sent you to Salem to get Roman back on the case, because he was actually getting somewhere before his brat got shot.”
“And Franco?”
“He goes by the alias ‘Franco Kelly’ and has obtained a fake greencard from his contact, Roberto Barelli, who happens to do ‘contract’ work for Big Joe Moroni. The U.S. government’s sent Agent Raskin of the INS to check him out and is breathing down his neck. Franco’s still in trouble with the Moronis and they tried to take a shot at him on the 7th of August. At least, we think it was aimed at him and not Sami Brady. I mean, you know how protective Roman is of his kids.”
“Yeah, he almost arrested that punk that Carrie married,” Gus replied. “That would be enough to bring him home posthaste. What happens now?”
“Well,” Garcia said as he turned onto a mountain road. “We have reason to believe that Franco Kelly saw Little Ant’ny Moroni off another kingpin mobster in the Milan in 1987, while he was on a trip with Miss Faversham and Margaretta. We have reason to believe he tried to blackmail Little Ant’ny and Big Joe in Rome in 1997 and now he’s got Big Joe after him. Dimera refuses to protect him because according to our inside man, ‘the boy needs to learn not to make threats to “family men”.’ Now we can’t afford to lose Kelly because he may be the only one who witnessed this murder and it’s our ticket to exposing the dirty dealings of the Moronis and bringing them down.”
“Who did Little Ant’ny shoot?” Gus asked.
“Some man named, um. . .” Rafael searched his brain for the name. “Damn, can’t remember for the life of me. It’s in the folder, so don’t worry about it.”
They drove in silence for the better part of ten minutes as Gus felt herself getting lightheaded and succumbing to the throbbing in her leg. She looked out the window and saw that the road was enveloped by trees. “Where are we going?” she asked listlessly.
“Our underground base near the Green Mountain Lodge resort. Ramon and Angelina are holed up in the interrogation room with Kelly right now, getting some answers. I noticed that you’re leaking blood through your jeans and we’ll patch you up there, too, if you’d like.” His voice was solicitous and kind, but cool.
Gus closed her eyes and remembered the last time she’d had her leg “patched up.” Even now, she could feel Craig Wesley’s hands on her hip and her bare back, she could remember the lionlike build of his body as he had stretched out on top of her. What she remembered the most was that that rough, sexy, black velvet voice as he verbally seduced her.
”Take that to bed with you, Augusta, and when I see you again, tell me that you didn't dream about me. Tell me that you didn't wonder what it would be like between us," he had said after he’d kissed her that last time in his office. She took a deep breath and wished that she could forget. She also wished she could forget Rafael Garcia and Trevor Maxwell and her latest indiscretion. . .
Unfulfilled desire was destined to be the tune that her body played over and over again where men were concerned. She wanted to curl up into a little ball as she sat in the car, wishing this crazy day had never happened.
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