In his eleven years with the firm, Mitch had visited about a dozen of its offices, mainly in the United States and Europe, and, truthfully, the shine was wearing off. Each was different but all were similar, and he had reached the point of not slowing down long enough to appreciate the serious money on the walls and floors. After a while, they were beginning to blur together. But he reminded himself that the opulence was not for his benefit. It was all a show for others: well-heeled clients, prospective associates, and visiting lawyers. He caught himself mumbling like the other partners about the expense of maintaining such a facade. Much of that money could have trickled down to the partners’ pockets.
Things were different in Rome. There, the offices, as well as every other aspect of the practice, were under the thumb of Luca Sandroni, the founder. For over thirty years he had slowly built a firm that was housed in a four-story stone building with no elevators and limited views. It was tucked away on Via della Paglia near the Piazza Santa Maria, in the Trastevere neighborhood of old Rome. All of the buildings around it were four-storied stucco with red-tiled roofs, and tastefully showed the wear and tear of being built centuries earlier. Romans, new and old, never cared much for tall buildings.
Mitch had been there many times and loved the place. It was a step back in time and a welcome break from the relentlessly modern image of the rest of Scully. No other office in the firm had such history, nor did they dare say “slow down” when you entered. Luca and his team worked hard and enjoyed the prestige and money, but they were Italians and refused to succumb to the workaholism expected by the Americans.
Mitch stopped in the alley and admired the massive double doors. An old sign beside them read: Sandroni Studio Legale. The merger with Luca allowed him to keep his firm’s name, a point he would not concede. For a moment, Mitch thought of the law offices he’d seen that week, from his own shiny tower in Manhattan, to the grungy Pontiac place in Memphis, to Lamar Quin’s sleepy little suite upstairs above the town square, and now this.
He stepped through the doors and into a narrow foyer, where Mia was always sitting. She smiled, jumped to her feet, and greeted Mitch with the obligatory dramatic peck on both cheeks, a ritual that still made him a bit uncomfortable. They spoke in Italian and covered the basics: his flight, Abby, the boys, the weather. He sat across from her, sipped espresso that always tasted better in Rome, and finally got around to Luca. She frowned slightly but revealed nothing. Her phone kept ringing.
Luca was waiting in his office, the same one he’d had for decades. It was small by Scully standards, at least for a managing partner, but he could not have cared less. He welcomed Mitch with more hugs and kisses and the usual greetings. If he was sick, it wasn’t apparent. He waved at a small coffee table in a corner, his favorite meeting place, as his secretary inquired about drinks and pastries.
“How is the beautiful Abby?” Luca asked, in perfect English with only a trace of an accent. His second law degree was from Stanford. He also spoke French and Spanish, and years earlier could handle Arabic, but had lost it through neglect.
As they caught up on the McDeere family front, Mitch began to notice a weaker voice, but only slightly. When he lit a cigarette, Mitch said, “Still smoking, I see.”
Luca shrugged as if the smoking couldn’t possibly be related to a health issue. A double window was open and the smoke made its way through it. Piazza Santa Maria was below and the sounds of the busy street life emanated upward. Mia brought coffee on a silver tray and poured it for them.
Mitch tiptoed through the minefield of Luca’s family. He had been married and divorced twice and it was never clear if his current companion had lasting potential; not that Mitch or anyone else for that matter would dare to ask. He had two adult children with his first wife, a woman Mitch had never met, and a teenager with his second. A hot young paralegal broke up the first marriage, then ruined the second by cracking up and fleeing with their love child to Spain.
Amidst that wreckage, the bright spot was his daughter, Giovanna, who was a Scully associate in London. Five years earlier, Luca had finessed the firm’s nepotism rules and quietly landed her a job. According to the firm gossip, she was as brilliant and driven as her father.
While his private life had been chaotic, his professional career was without a blemish. The Sandroni Studio Legale had been romanced by all the players in Big Law before Luca finally got the deal he wanted with Scully.
“I’m afraid I have a slight problem, Mitch,” he said sadly. With years of practice he had flattened out almost every wrinkle in his accent, but “Mitch” still sounded more like Meetch.
“The doctors have run tests for a month now, and they finally agree that I have a cancer. A bad one. In the pancreas.”
Mitch closed his eyes as his shoulders sagged. If there was a worse cancer he was not aware of it. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
“The prognosis is not good and I’m in for a bad time. I’m taking a leave of absence while the doctors do their work. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“I’m so sorry, Luca. This is awful.”
“It is, but my spirits are good and there are always miracles, or so my priest tells me. I’m spending more time with him these days.” He managed a chuckle.
“I don’t know what to say, Luca.”
“There’s nothing to say. It’s top secret, classified and all that. I don’t want my clients to know yet. If things deteriorate, then I’ll gradually inform them. I’m already handing off some of my cases to the partners here. That’s where you come in, Mitch.”
“I’m here, ready to help.”
“The most important matter on my desk right now involves Lannak, the Turkish contractor and a longtime client. An extremely valuable client, Mitch.”
“I worked on one of their cases a few years back.”
“Yes, I know, and your work was superb. Lannak is one of the largest construction companies in the Middle East and Asia. They’ve built airports, highways, bridges, canals, dams, power plants, skyscrapers, you name it. The company is family-owned and is superbly managed. It delivers on time and on budget and knows how to do business in a world where everyone, from a Saudi prince to a cab driver in Kenya, has his hand out looking for a kickback.”
Mitch nodded along and noticed Luca’s voice fading a little. On the flight to Rome he had read the firm’s internal client memos on Lannak. Headquarters in Istanbul; fourth-largest Turkish contractor with estimated annual revenues of $2.5 billion; large projects around the world but especially in India and North Africa; an estimated 25,000 employees; privately owned by the Celik family, who seemed to be as closemouthed as a bunch of Swiss bankers; family fortune thought to be in the billion-plus range, but one guess was as good as the next.
Luca lit another cigarette and half-heartedly blew smoke over his shoulder. “Are you familiar with the Great Man-Made River project in Libya?”
Mitch had read about it but only knew the basics. His knowledge, or lack thereof, didn’t matter, because Luca was in his storytelling mood. “Not really.”
Luca nodded at the correct response and said, “Goes back decades, but around 1975 Colonel Gaddafi decided to build an underground canal to pump water from under the Sahara to the cities along the coast in northern Libya. When the oil companies starting poking around for oil eighty years ago, they found some huge aquifers deep beneath the desert. The idea was to pump the water out and send it to Tripoli and Benghazi, but the cost was far too much. Until they discovered oil. Gaddafi gave the project the green light, but most experts thought it was impossible. It took thirty years and twenty billion dollars, but damned if the Libyans didn’t pull it off. It worked, and Gaddafi declared himself a genius, something he has a habit of doing. Since he then had dominion over nature, he decided to create a river. There is not a single one in the entire country. Instead they have seasonal riverbeds known as ‘wadis,’ and these dry out in the summer. Gaddafi’s next breathtaking project would be to combine some of the larger wadis, reroute the flow of water, make a permanent river, and build a magnificent bridge over it.”