A single forty-watt bulb glowed in the overhead fixture. Beneath it sat a plain stool. An array of video cameras, red lights blinking slowly, all out of sync, focused on the seat.
Heldridge couldn’t confine his irritation. He glowered into the centermost camera. “How do I know the Excelsior is receiving this transmission?”
Five floors up, in a darkened theater with six rows of executive seating, various viewpoints of Heldridge’s entrance played across the many screens mounted to the main wall.
“An imprudent endeavor, coming here.” The deep voice of Meroveus Franciscus thrummed like distant thunder. Except for the plain elastic band restraining the curls of his waist-length black hair, his appearance was that of a handsome thirty-something businessman in a Rolex advertisement—and he did wear an exquisite timepiece with his bespoke suit.
“He’s still annoying.” Giovanni Guistini’s voice was also distinctive, but not for a mellifluous quality. Giovanni’s every word scratched the ear in a painful rasp. Beneath his pointed chin an ugly scar gnarled the flesh of his neck. In life, his throat had been torn open. “Note his stance, his lifted chin. He is our prisoner, yet conceit pours from him. The young masters are always intolerable. They think they know so much.”
Mero countered, “Sometimes they do.”
“Sometimes they’re just overconfident fools,” Giovanni retorted, melting into a pose that might have been an attempt to appear thoughtful in counterpoint to the fierceness his shaven head afforded him.
Mero was familiar with his counterpart’s contemptuousness and had long considered Giovanni a deliberate egotist who dressed in black V-neck shirts and collarless jackets so no one would ever miss seeing his scar.
Both provided advice to the Excelsior, but Mero often found himself choosing words and opinions that would balance Giovanni’s typically stubborn and pitiless claims. The trick was guessing what opinion the other advisor would choose, then expressing his own opinion first, so that Giovanni sounded like a squabbling child.