Medusa

XVI

The worst part was having to take the underground. There was something aggressively demotic about this system of transportation that never failed to remind Alberto of everything that was wrong with the country. From the security point of view, however, it had the virtue of near-total anonymity.

Lepanto, his local station was called, after the street where the station was situated. Below ground, next to the tracks, the walls were plastered with huge advertisements in French informing the hordes of blacks pouring in from North Africa how they could telegraph the money they made illegally in Italy back to their starving broods in the desert, so that they too could hire a scafista to smuggle them in to pillage the wealth of Europe.

The platforms were packed with jostling, raucous, overexcited students from the high school on Viale delle Milizie. How many of them had the slightest clue what Lepanto signified? The seventh of October 1571. The decisive naval victory of Christianity over Islam, settling that matter for another four centuries. News as up-to-date as today’s headlines, but where were the Sebastiano Veniers and the Augustino Barbarigos of today? Cervantes had served among the Spanish forces during that encounter, and had sustained injuries that had permanently maimed his left hand, but he counted Lepanto ever afterwards as the most glorious day in his life, beside which the composition of Don Quixote was a mere bagatelle.

The letter from Gabriele had arrived two days earlier. Alberto had at once forwarded the envelope, though not of course the contents, to the service’s Scientifica unit. Their forensic experts had found minute traces of corn, fertilizer, mould and birdshit. An agricultural location was evidently indicated, but that and the Crema postmark was all there was to go on. However a little discreet research in the provincial land registry office had revealed that the Passarini family once owned an agricultural estate in the Valpadana. Cazzola, who had already interviewed Gabriele’s sister Paola without result, had been dispatched there on Friday to do some preliminary investigation. His call had arrived that morning.

‘I’ve visited the property, capo. I took some photographs and I’ve got a full description, but in accordance with your orders I didn’t investigate further.’

‘Very good. How soon can you get back to Rome?’

‘In a few hours. By this afternoon at the latest.’

‘We need to meet in person so that I can fully debrief you. Location seven, time D.’

‘ D’accordo, capo.’

The orange train finally disgorged itself from the tunnel, almost unrecognizable beneath the graffiti that obliterated even the windows, huge curvy garish crazed capital letters spelling God knew what, but certainly nothing sane or good. As if that wasn’t enough, at the Spagna stop the carriage was invaded by a mob of Veronese football hooligans who packed the space, drinking limoncello out of a communal bottle, smoking in open defiance of the law, and screaming ‘ Roma, Roma, vaffanculo! ’ in an obscene, pagan chant. Alberto was dearly tempted to take out one of his numerous false IDs and arrest the lot of them on the spot, but of course that was impossible under the rules of engagement.

In the event, the soccer fans got off two stations later at Termini, presumably to catch a train back north. Unfortunate¬ ly the few ordinary solid Italians who had been aboard also left, to be replaced by a mob of blacks and gypsies and asylum seekers who had been begging, picking pockets and selling counterfeit junk outside the main railway station all day, and were now going home to their illegal squatter camps on the fringes of the city. With a slight chill, Alberto suddenly realized that he was the only Italian in the carriage.

Nothing happened. If anything the atmosphere grew warmer and more relaxed as the stations ticked away. All the foreigners were chatting away to each other, laughing and telling stories in their barbaric tongues. Alberto was hesitant to admit it to himself, but what it felt like, to be perfectly honest, was something very similar to the society in which he had grown up back in the fifties. Here too there was that sense of community and of shared experience that had all but vanished from the peninsula during his lifetime. He could of course never feel at home with these people, but they seemed to feel at home with each other, each in his own clan with its own language and traditions. What did the Italy of today have to offer in return? That pack of drunken football yobs, or a bunch of flashy yuppies with one spoilt designer child in tow like a pedigree dog. We’ve lost something, he thought. We’re stronger in lots of small ways, but they’re stronger in one big way.

Nevertheless he did not relax his guard. When he left the train at Cinecitta, one stop before the terminus, a group of four Moroccans or Senegalese followed him up the escalator. They were intensely black, all dressed in loose, brightly patterned cotton robes, their skin burnished like some precious metal. As he reached ground level, a gust of cold air blew in through the portal leading to the street. They’re going to freeze in that desert gear, he thought with a mixture of admiration and contempt, buttoning up his heavy overcoat and lighting a cigarette.

Suddenly they were all around him, closed in like a pack of wild dogs, one of them demanding something in mangled Italian. Alberto had no idea what he was saying. He knew only that the tone was loud, insistent and menacing, and that he was all alone. He instinctively pulled his knife and stabbed out at the nearest of the four, but the man was no longer there. Alberto whirled around, carving the air to left and right, until an inexorable grip stilled his wrist, immobilizing the knife. Two brown eyes, infinitely wide and deep, looked into his.

‘What sort of animal are you?’ said one of the men.

And then it was over and they were gone, striding away like gods, laughing and talking amongst themselves, not bothering to glance back and see if he was coming after them. They’d even left him the knife, because for them he didn’t count. He was just a sad old man who had panicked because some strangers had asked him for a light at the entrance to an underground station.

‘ Ma che razza di animale sei? ’ Well, he’d soon show them the answer to that. Not those illegal immigrants, who would never dream of bringing the incident to the attention of the authorities, thank God, but the only two people who still mattered. They’d soon find out exactly what sort of animal he was! He checked his watch, but there was no need to worry. ‘Time D’ was still a good twenty minutes off, and it would take him no more than half that to reach the spot. He had timed the route carefully, as he always did, although he had never used ‘Location seven’ before. It was somewhere he had been saving for a long time as a ‘one-time-only’ venue, in much the same way that he had nurtured Cazzola along for many years as a potential one-time-only resource, should the need arise.

He had spotted Cazzola shortly after taking up his post as a divisional commander at SISMI’s headquarters. He had already formed a clear impression of the kind of man he was looking for — young, insecure, ambitious, diligent, malleable but not too bright — and Cazzola fitted this identikit portrait to perfection. Alberto had taken him under his wing, flattered and encouraged him, and arranged for him to be promoted into a meaningless but fine-sounding role as his personal aide-de- camp. Within a year, he owned Cazzola. ‘You’re like a father to me,’ the young man had once blurted out.

Once Alberto’s authority had been established beyond question, he had tested out his protege on a few minor but strictly illegal missions of no real importance in themselves. The object had been to ensure that Cazzola was prepared to perform any and all tasks under Alberto’s personal direction and authorization, reporting only to him, and to keep quiet about them at the time and afterwards. He had passed these tests with flying colours.

So when the long-dreaded eventuality finally came to pass, Alberto had the instruments he needed to hand. Over the years, he had used the resources of the servizi to keep track of the other two former members of his cell. Nestore’s move to Venezuela, and the change of name and citizenship that followed, had thrown him off the scent until Soldani had solved the problem himself by enlisting Alberto’s help in setting up various illicit but lucrative deals involving petroleum and guns. With an antiquarian bookshop licensed with the city of Milan under his own name, Gabriele had posed no such problem. In both cases, Alberto’s approach had been oblique and tacit. Each year on the anniversary of Leonardo’s death, he had sent them both a blank postcard of the Cellini bronze depicting Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa, as a reminder both of the event that would link them for the rest of their lives and also of the fact that he knew where they lived.

As soon as the storm broke, however, he had moved on to the offensive, using the considerable powers which his position afforded him for information gathering and logistical support, and then calling in Cazzola to execute his orders. Nestor Machado Solorzano, as Nestore now styled himself, had been his first target. Cazzola had kept him under surveillance, reporting on the target’s helpfully regular life and then breaking into his wife’s car and identifying the type of telecomando that the couple used to open the automatic gates of their villa. After that it was just a question of requisitioning some Semtex and a radio-controlled detonator from stores for a fictional anti-terrorist operation and then putting Cazzola’s bomb-making training to work, linking the two together in an unobtrusive package and retuning the detonator to the wavelength of the remote control transmitter.

While he and Nestore were having their meaningless discussion at the remote station halfway up Monte Generoso, Cazzola had put yet more of his technical skills to work in the mainline car park down by the lake. His tutor, a former professional car thief whose sentence had been halved thanks to the intervention of one of Alberto’s contacts, boasted that he could open any car in less than twenty seconds without attracting attention or setting off the alarm. Cazzola had proved an excellent pupil, and the bomb had been planted under the driving seat of Nestore’s BMW Mini Cooper S even before its owner had boarded the train back down the mountain.

One down, one to go. The second operation was always going to be more difficult, since the target would have been alerted to the danger by the first. Hence Alberto’s decision to tackle Gabriele after Nestore, on the basis that he had always seemed duller-witted, more timid and altogether less of an apparent challenge. Alberto had formed this opinion when they were junior officers thirty years earlier, and had seen no reason to revise it now. What he hadn’t counted on was Gabriele simply disappearing.

But disappear he had, and if he hadn’t made the stupid mistake — so typical of a weak, frightened man — of sending Alberto that letter full of bluff and bluster, he might never have been found until Gabriele eventually emerged and returned, as he must have done sooner or later, to his normal life. Alberto had been prepared to wait if necessary, but he hadn’t been at all happy about it. The situation was too unstable and unpredictable and there was just too much at stake. For Alberto personally, of course, but also for the nation and above all the honour and reputation of the forces pledged to defend it. Still, it had all worked out for the best in the end. Once he had attended to this little chore, he would travel north in person and remove the last remaining threat to the pristine secrecy that had always surrounded Operation Medusa.

He unbuttoned his coat and transferred the knife from it to his right-hand trouser pocket. The street along which he had been walking was bounded to his left by a high wall. There were no cars about, and it was too cold for pedestrians to venture outside. Alberto opened the unmarked metal door, stepped inside and closed the door, leaving it unlocked.

The key had come into his possession almost ten years previously, after he had met one of the managing directors of Cinecitta at a reception. The next day he had phoned the man and mentioned that a friend of a friend was trying to seduce a married woman, so far without success, and had had the crazy idea of taking her to the famous open-air lots of the film studio one sultry August night and trying his luck there. For obvious reasons they could not enter through the main gate. The friend once removed in question was a leading political figure, whilst the woman’s husband was none other than… Was there by any chance a way of entering the complex unobserved? It would only be a matter of an hour or two, and the persons concerned could naturally be counted upon to be discreet, not to mention grateful.

A key to one of the service doors to the complex had duly been provided, and returned shortly afterwards along with a lengthy and salacious account of how the imaginary tryst had gone, but not before Alberto had made a copy. He had then filed this away in a safe place where he stored many other potentially useful artefacts until the managing director in question retired and his own involvement in the matter had been entirely forgotten. Alberto was not one to rush his plans, nor to leave anything to chance.

At thirteen minutes past ten precisely, the ‘Time D’ referred to on their mutual schedule, the door in the wall opened and Cazzola walked in. Alberto, obscure in the gloom lit only by the faint radiance of a distant street lamp, waved to him. His subordinate approached and handed over a manilla envelope.

‘It’s all in here, capo. The exact location, photographs, a map and a full written report.’

‘Any sign of anyone living there?’

‘None that I could see. The property is set well back from the road. It’s really only a paved lane anyway. The land is dead flat and there’s almost no cover. It looked as though there were fresh bicycle tracks leading up the driveway to the place, but if I’d tried to stake it out and do a proper surveillance I might have been spotted. I’ll be only too glad to go back and break in if you want. It’s an old abandoned cascina out in the middle of nowhere. If our man is there, I can easily get in and take care of him.’

Alberto put the envelope in his coat pocket and patted the other on the arm.

‘No, no. No need for that.’

He had started walking along a track between the enormous blind walls supported by scaffolding. A building site, one might have thought.

‘Are you sure that you weren’t observed?’ Alberto murmured.

‘Well, the sister saw me of course, but she’s already forgotten I exist. Apart from that it was strictly by the book every step of the way. False identities, no personal contact, no paper trail. I came and went like a wraith.’

‘Good for you, Cazzola.’

They had reached a clearing between the structures on either side. To their left was one of the piazzas in Assisi. Medieval buildings in the warm pink stone from Monte Subasio framed the facade of a large church with a circular rose window above the western portal. To their right stood one of the Imperial forums, its pillared basilicas and monumental arches entirely undilapidated and restored to their austere if slightly vulgar glory. Alberto held out one hand to either side.

‘Which way?’ he asked.

Cazzola stared at him confusedly but did not speak.

‘Since we’re here, we might as well take full advantage of the facilities,’ Alberto remarked jocularly, leading the way into the Roman forum.

‘This is one of the sets they used for all those epics they churned out back in the fifties,’ he explained. ‘Before your time, of course, but they brought in a lot of foreign money at a time when we desperately needed it.’

He took off his overcoat and laid it over a section of low wall that resounded hollowly as his foot struck it. Next to come off was his jacket.

‘What are you doing, capo?’ asked Cazzola with a slight edge of anxiety.

‘I want to show you something.’

Alberto rolled up the right sleeve of his shirt. He turned his arm towards the other man, pointing out a small black tattoo with the forefinger of his left hand. Cazzola advanced awkwardly, as if too great a physical proximity might seem disrespectful.

‘What is it?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘The head of Medusa. One of the Gorgons. Mythical monsters.’

He rolled his sleeve back down and fastened the cuff.

‘I wanted you to see it, Cazzola, because that’s what this whole business has been about. A clandestine military operation of the nineteen-seventies, code-named Medusa. It was to be activated in the event that the revolutionaries and anarchists who were running around rampant at that period ever managed to come to power. Those of us in the organization pledged ourselves ready to take whatever steps might prove to be necessary to restore law and order. Do you understand?’

Cazzola nodded dumbly.

‘Good,’ said Alberto. ‘Only I had to be sure, do you see?’

‘Sure of what?’

‘That you’d understood.’

He bent his head suddenly.

‘Damn!’

‘What’s the matter, capo?’

‘One of my contact lenses has fallen out. See if you can find it, like a good lad. I’m half blind without it…’

But Cazzola was already down on his hands and knees, searching the fibreglass paving stones minutely. Alberto moved round to stand behind him, reaching into his trouser pocket.

‘Who’s that?’ he gasped.

As Cazzola raised his head to look around, Alberto grasped his chin from behind, tugged it sharply up and slit his throat.

So much blood, he thought. But none on his clothing, although the coat would have covered any stains. He wiped his fingers off on a length of toilet paper, then put his jacket and coat back on and dropped the knife, gloves and the wad of paper into the self-sealing plastic bag he had brought along for the purpose. Back at home, he would wash and dry the knife carefully. It had served him well in the past, and might well do so again in the future.

So much blood. About twenty thousand Turks had been killed at Lepanto, together with half that number of Christians. The human body contains almost six litres of blood. Say one hundred and eighty thousand litres in all. The scuppers of the galleys must have been awash in it, the Gulf of Patras turned to a new Red Sea.

Once the initial pressurized gush had subsided, Alberto carefully searched the body, but Cazzola had indeed been doing everything strictly by the book, and there was nothing that could have identified him. Even if there had been, enquiries would not get very far. Like every other agent of SISMI, Alberto himself included, all records of his existence had been removed from the hands of the civil authorities and destroyed. To all intents and purposes, Cazzola had never existed.

Like a wraith, Alberto thought with satisfaction as he closed and locked the metal door behind him.