GENESIS (GODS CHAIN) (13 page)

There were a few rumours of a national cover-up and
claims
that the
council
was
in denial
run in local pamphlets, but these did not strike the attention of the community and eventually the whole matter was forgotten or ignored
.
One thing that could not be denied
, however,
was
the
change.
The
whole county
experienced
a sharp drop in temperature
,
felt e
ven in the
dusty
city of academics.
Somehow, after that fateful day,
t
he world had changed.

The only people who put two and two together were the villagers, in whose minds the earthquake and the temperature drop were inextricably linked. But for the rest of the world,
which
did not acknowledge that the quake had ever happened, this possibility went entirely unnoticed.

CHAPTER II

GENESIS

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

—Genesis 2:1

Don Luzio Ilario was
n
ot
a particularly
light
humoured
gentleman
.
He was r
uthless
, in fact, or so
he
seemed
to anyone who really knew
him.
A
more accurate description
might
be lethal
although most people were unwilling to say so aloud
.
But everyone knew that u
nless you wished to casually end up swinging over the side of a bridge with your neck stretched
,
he was a man who commanded respect.
Of course,
Don Luzio had
a variety of
faces to fit his numerous business interests
—his
shifting personality could be both persuasive and witty when required
, and he had a
light-hearted
, diplomatic
c
harm
that belied the gravity of his purposes.

Don Luzio o
wn
ed
many casinos and
other
businesses in Italy
.
M
ost of his companies were honest businesses, built up over generations by his father and grandfather
.
U
nlike his forefathers,
Don Luzio
built
other businesses upon
his
solid family foundations
,
d
iversifying into the utilities and
manufacturing sectors. He now supplied many services to the government
, and b
illions of
pounds
flow
ed
through his fast growing empire.
His lifestyle
had
ma
de
him a little fat
,
almost jovial to look at; the man would not walk anywhere far,
and
he did not need to.
With
a
still
-
young look and smart, short
-
brown
hair
,
an outsider
would
consider him nothing more than a brilliant young entrepreneur.

Today marked the bidding of
another lucrative contract
,
and his organisation w
as
busy
preparing
the many tender documents
for perusal. Although everything was nearly ready, the team
would wait until about ten minutes before
the deadline before they
ma
de
the final document transfers. It was a tried and tested procedure
that had won them many
e-government tender contracts
.
Their competitors never kn
e
w
that
the real reasons
their
bids
were unsuccessful
—
even if
discussions with candidates or tenderers took place afterwards,
even if someone filed a
debrief or complaint
, no other offers
would succeed if
t
he
Ilario Holdings expressed an interest
.

To win contract
after contract
with the central government would
eventually
force other companies out of business
,
and then
Don Luzio’s
competitors would be ripe for the picking.
Ilario
planned to eventually
own all the utility suppliers
in Europe—
be
they
cleaning services, road repairs, parks and recreation
, security
or the supply and manufacture of
g
as equipment.
The Don was already a prominent and very powerful figure in Italy
, and well on his way to expanding his organisation
.

Most governments he considered for his growing empire us
ed
a formal mechanism for assess
ing
pre-qualification
of contracts through tendering exercises
.
European
governments
required
assurance that potential suppliers of services and products were suitable to tender for public contract opportunities in terms of their legal, financial,
and
technical capacity,
as well as their
honest integrity and credibility.
His subsidiary companies always passed these credibility qualit
y
checks with flying colours!

Ilario’s c
ompanies used and owned a
n
online supplier information database service available to all supplier companies or
competitive
organizations. Many suppliers accessed the databases via the internet and
the information service was
truly global, crossing all natural borders worldwide
.

Likewise
,
government
buyers would interrogate this common database using the same system or suite of internet applications.
These applications would then ask certain supplier companies to “Express an Interest”
in various
buyer contracts
,
depending on what kind of tenders were on the offering.
The buyer and suppliers
wer
e presented with their own dedicated portal interfaces
,
al
though the underlying database was the same
.

Ilario Holdings was the parent company of a small software company
called
Ventisei Software Solutions Ltd
, which
specializ
ed
in electronic tendering
,
known glibly as “e-tendering”. The Managing Director
of Ventisei,
a tough business woman
named Nina Ventisei, had for her
sole purpose
the
develop
ment
and provision of these services
.
T
he tendering software suite
used was
called
“
The Crypt
.
”

Based in Scotland
,
“The Crypt”
and
all
other such applications had been aggressively
purchased
from a local family business and now
was
wholly owned by Ilario Holdings.
This left no
-one
to
provision
a competitive
e-tendering service in
all of
Europe
.
T
he transition
of the software
from family business to
Ilario Holdings
was seamless
and went completely unnoticed by
the
European
press and government
.

“
The Crypt
”
provided suppliers with two levels of certification
—
self
-
certified and accredited. On accessing
an
application, suppliers would complete a certif
ied
Proforma
,
detailing the key information normally requested by public sector
b
uyers when seeking requests for
“
Expressions of Interest
”
in a particular tender
.
These forms were
normally very secure.
“The Crypt”
was
then used to exchange important and sensitive tender documents using the latest security encryption technologies. Governments and suppliers alike would
ignore
all pre-qualification documents
,
as part of earlier
qualification
processes.
In the post tender negotiations between the government and supplying companies, key principles
would be conducted within the scope of the European Community procurement directives.