Solipsum by Daniel Couto

Author:Daniel Couto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publish on Demand Global LLC

Interlude Three—Vatican City

Cardinal Synn stood on a balcony of the Vatican Bank, surveying St. Peter's Square and the throngs of people. Some already carried Campaign of the Century bags, and that was very pleasing to his eye. He patted his ample girth and said a silent prayer of gratitude for the life he had been blessed with, a life of such rapacity and sensory gluttony as to rival some of history's greatest predators. All in the service of Holy Mother Church.

Cardinal Synn was acting head of the Vatican Bank, a position not without a considerable amount of power. It was a power he used as relentlessly in business as he did in the pursuit of ever more esoteric forms of self-gratification.

He had held this position for the past twenty years. The Bank was the largest of three that sat in what was effectively the world's smallest country, Vatican City, population 800.

It was an unusual bank, a bank which reported to no one, answered to no laws and was never audited. It had but one shareholder, the Pope, who took no interest whatsoever in the Bank's day to day “operations.” This he left to that most trusted of his advisors, Cardinal Synn, who ran the bank ruthlessly. Lethally.

For the Bank was like a web, and he the spider at its center. Together, they had caught a great many flies—trusting, stupid, greedy flies. Drug laundering, outright theft from Holocaust victims and Mafiosi, Nazi gold, rampant currency speculation, scandal, cover-up and murder. All of these he had taken part in. But they were as nothing compared to the profits he foresaw from his co-venture with Fa-Shin, Inc. Or rather, his solo venture, as they would find out in one year's time, when a blind trust he had organized took over their entire company.

It had been very expensive, this funding of The Campaign of The Century, and perhaps he had placed more of the Bank's resources than was prudent in this one basket. But there was simply too much money to be made. As one of his contemporaries had so eloquently stated, “You cannot run a bank on Hail Mary's.”

The Campaign was not even fully complete and the reports he had heard had surpassed even his expectations, which meant he had already won. Now he needed only to sit back and wait. Like a spider. As an added delicacy, it would be very nice indeed to see that sluttish Creative Director on her knees, mouth stuffed, her glottal begging the most pleasant of fugues as he signed the papers of transferal.

He turned from the balcony and smiled, then stepped into the room and girded his loins in preparation for his daily massage.

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