Medusa

VII

As soon as Zen entered the bar just off Via Nazionale, the broad paved ditch between the Viminale and Quirinale hills, he felt an intruder. The political centre of the country might lie further down the hillside, at Palazzo de Montecitorio and Palazzo Madama in the centro storico, but this was where those entrusted with the dirty work of implementing any decisions made by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate gathered. Like its counterpart in the business world, which was also heavily represented, this society was rigidly hierarchical, and the resulting distinctions extended far beyond the workplace. You would no more think of frequenting your superior’s bar or restaurant than you would of moving into his office. It would be inappropriate and embarrassing for all concerned.

Zen could not determine the exact status of the clientele in this establishment, discreetly hidden away on a side street near the opera house, but it was definitely a cut above his own; senior rather than middle management. The woman enthroned at the cashier’s dais looked as though she had put in a few decades being chased around the desk by most of the men in the bar before taking early retirement in her current position. While paying for his coffee, Zen slid his Ministry identification card on to the counter between them. The woman glanced at it and at him, then reached down into some cubby-hole inviolate from the common gaze, and handed over a blank white envelope.

Without wasting thanks or a smile on her, Zen proceeded to the bar, where despite the tip he had laid down with his receipt he had to wait until several other men, who had arrived after him and had not troubled themselves to prepay the cashier, were served with due ceremony and attention. This was a club you couldn’t buy your way into. You had to belong.

The coffee, when it finally arrived, was one of the best Zen had ever had in Rome, where standards were notoriously variable. He turned away from the bar, savouring the velvety essence, and tore open the envelope. Inside was a piece of paper bearing the handwritten message: ‘Gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini, 15.00. Destroy this immediately.’ Zen shredded the note and distributed the fragments between two of the metal canisters serving as ashtrays and rubbish bins, but it was with a heavy heart that he walked out into the cold streets. There were messages that were in themselves messages, and in this case the news did not sound good.

The sun had come out by the time he reached the hanging gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini near the foot of Via Nazionale, and, hanging low in the sky at this time of year, its light was blinding. He climbed up the marble steps past the exposed brickwork of some Imperial Roman structure which, stripped of its marble finishing, looked much like the remains of a late-nineteenth-century factory.

The gardens themselves, some ten metres above street level, consisted of a maze of gravel paths curving between islands of lawn edged with stone verges and punctuated by headless antique statues and the bare trunks of ancient chestnuts, cypresses, palms and pines. There were sufficient evergreens to provide a verdant background, but in general the trees were oppressively overgrown for the setting, and much of the shrubbery had a faded, moth-eaten air about it.

In addition to the usual contingent of insomniac deadbeats and feral cats, the gardens were populated by a few local peo¬ ple walking their dogs and an alfresco ladies’ hairdressing salon. Here and there amongst the trees, about a dozen middle- aged women who knew exactly how much they were worth, down to the last lira, sat perched on folding plastic chairs being made reasonably presentable for a reasonable fee by much younger women who had brought all they needed for the job in bags and boxes. No licence, no rent or rates to pay; a no-frills service at a no-frills price.

Although the gardens were quite small, their intricate layout made them seem deceptively large, and it was some time before Zen made out the figure of his superior standing by the wall at the far end, looking out at the view over Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline to the Gianicolo and the line of hills on the north bank of the Tiber. Brugnoli looked smaller than Zen had remembered him from their one previous meeting. He was wearing a navy-blue cashmere coat worn open over a suit which managed to suggest by various almost imperceptible details of cut and fabric that it was not a mere garment but rather an ironic statement about such garments, but so expertly and expensively executed that most people would never notice the difference, still less that the joke — whose punch-line was of course the price tag — was on them. In short, this was not a business suit, but a ‘business suit’.

‘Good to see you,’ Brugnoli exclaimed as they shook hands. ‘So glad you could make it.’

He made it sound as though Zen had done him a personal favour by showing up. Unsure how to respond to this unfamiliar rhetoric, Zen opted for silence.

‘How are things going?’ Brugnoli continued, steering his subordinate down a side path well away from the nearest hairstylist and her client. ‘I trust your new position is satisfactory?’

‘Perfectly, thank you.’

‘And your private life? I hear you’ve moved to Lucca.’

‘Yes.’

‘Charming place. Couldn’t live there myself. Too quiet. But it suits you?’

‘It does.’

‘Good, good.’

He paused and looked round, then buttoned up his coat. They were in the shade of the great trees now.

‘I understand that you’ve been looking into this business about the body they found in that military tunnel.’

Zen nodded.

‘With what results?’

‘Well, I inspected the scene of the discovery with one of the Austrian cavers who found the body, and then talked briefly to a junior doctor at the hospital in Bolzano who had been present at the autopsy.’

‘What about the carabinieri? It’s their case, after all.’

‘I spoke to a Colonel Miccoli by telephone, and he expressed a willingness to meet me. When I went to the carabinieri headquarters in Bolzano, however, I was informed that he was unavailable.’

‘What about his colleagues? Were they cooperative?’

Zen hesitated.

‘They were correct,’ he said at last.

‘But not cordial?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Nor particularly forthcoming.’

‘No.’

‘No,’ Brugnoli repeated. ‘No, I don’t suppose they were.’

They walked in silence for some time.

‘We’re having a bit of a problem, you see,’ Brugnoli said at last, pausing to examine the bark of a giant palm tree.

‘A problem?’

‘With our friends in the parallel service. They’ve rather slammed the door in our faces, to be perfectly frank. No fine phrases, no specious evasions. Just bugger off. And this at a very high level. Very high indeed.’

They split up to pass a young mother trying to quiet a fractious child in a pushchair. He should be walking, thought Zen. These gardens must seem like the Brazilian rainforests to him. He wants to explore and conquer, subdue the native tribes and discover the lost treasure of El Dorado. But his mother is afraid he’ll fall over the parapet and dash his brains out on the pavement beneath. We no longer trust our children, and then wonder why they grow up untrustworthy.

‘Did they give a reason?’ he asked Brugnoli once they were out of earshot.

‘Oh yes. They weren’t polite, still less cordial, but to use your own telling phrase, they were correct. They gave a reason. They also enjoined on us in no uncertain terms not to divulge this reason to anyone below ministerial level. Nevertheless, I’m now going to tell you.’

‘Wait a moment,’ Zen interrupted. ‘I’m not sure that it would be appropriate for you to confide in me. I mean…’

Brugnoli laughed and moved on again, steering them away from an elderly man walking a dog and an alcoholic, passed out in the shrubbery.

‘What you mean is that you don’t want my confidences, dot ¬ tore. Fair enough, but I’m afraid you don’t have a choice. I’ll only give you the outline. That’s almost all they told us, for that matter. Briefly, they claim that the corpse which was found was that of a soldier who was accidentally killed during a military exercise.’

Brugnoli paused, but Zen made no comment.

‘The need for secrecy, according to la Difesa, is because the victim was a member of an elite special force drawn from within the army on a volunteer basis and modelled on the British SAS and the American Delta Force. Its very existence is officially denied, and no comments are ever made about its personnel, training or operations. Still less about any fatalities that result. The next of kin are of course informed, but even they are not always told the truth about what happened.’

Zen’s mobile started chirping. He checked the caller’s number and then switched the phone off with an apology to his superior.

‘At any rate,’ Brugnoli continued, ‘our sources — and I stress that they are at the very highest level — claim that the First World War tunnel where the body was found is regularly used as a training site for this unit. Tradition, esprit de corps, our glorious forefathers and all that. They further claim that due to an unfortunate set of circumstances the young man was killed. For obvious reasons, they don’t wish any of this to come to light, and have therefore taken the necessary steps to ensure that the matter remains secret.’

‘My informant at the hospital in Bolzano told me that the carabinieri raided the premises in force last week and took away the corpse, all personal effects, as well as the photographs and tape-recording of the preliminary post-mortem.’

Brugnoli stopped at the edge of the gardens, staring up at a vast bureaucratic palazzo constructed strictly according to Mussolini’s preferred architectural techniques, avoiding the use of imported steel. A man was looking down at them from a third-floor window, or perhaps just admiring the view of the gardens in the late autumn sunshine.

‘Also, according to my source, the victim’s clothing was civilian and had had all the identifying marks removed,’ Zen remarked.

Brugnoli puffed sardonically.

‘The Defence people will say that that was perfectly normal. These men belonged to a unit trained to work undercover or behind enemy lines. They don’t wear traditional uniforms.’

‘Not even shoes?’

‘Shoes?’

‘The corpse was barefoot.’

Brugnoli thought about this for a moment, then gave a dismissive shrug.

‘They’ll say that he was wearing army issue boots which had to be removed to prevent a positive identification. They’ve got every angle covered, Zen.’

He turned away and started to stroll down one of the side paths.

‘When did this supposed incident happen?’ asked Zen.

‘They declined to be specific on that point. “For reasons of operational security”.’

Zen stopped and fussed over lighting a cigarette to cover his growing feelings of alarm. Both literally and figuratively, Brugnoli was leading him down the garden path, and into what was potentially very dangerous territory indeed.

‘You’re probably wondering why they left the corpse in situ,’ his superior went on. ‘Well, they claim that the fatal accident involved a test with some sort of nerve gas, one of those chemical warfare things. Since they could not be sure about the potential risk involved, they decided to seal the site by exploding a charge to block the tunnel. The family was told that their son had been killed in an unfortunate accident which had disfigured him so badly that it was necessary to hold a closed coffin funeral to avoid distressing the mourners.’

‘But the tunnel was not blocked. The body was discovered by those Austrian youngsters and then extracted by the carabinieri. I crawled in there myself.’

‘They suggested that there must have been some subsidence since the event.’

‘That’s impossible. The rock in those mountains is like iron.’

Brugnoli turned to Zen with a level gaze.

‘You don’t think for a moment that we believe any of this, I hope?’

‘What does it matter whether we believe it or not?’ Zen demanded. ‘We can’t disprove it, because they haven’t given us anything to disprove. The identity of the victim is being withheld, along with the date and nature of the alleged incident, access to witnesses and physical evidence, as well as all records of the post-mortem examination. Frankly, they might just as well have said that the case had to be hushed up because the victim was an alien invader from outer space and the public would panic if word got out. And if all this is being relayed to us “at the very highest level”, then it is only at such a level that any progress can be made. I therefore fail to see what steps I can effectively be ordered to take in the matter.’

This last phrase was spoken in the coldest and most bureaucratic tone Zen was capable of, and it made its effect. Brugnoli took his arm with a defusing laugh and walked him towards the only exit and entrance to the gardens perched high above the street.

‘ Caro dottore! There’s no question of ordering you to do anything at all. This is not the old days! Remember my motto, “Personal choice, personal empowerment, personal responsibility”. If you don’t feel fully committed to a course of action, you’re not going to perform well and achieve the desired results.’

‘And just what are the desired results?’

Brugnoli gestured broadly.

‘You have rightly objected to being unnecessarily burdened with confidences, so I shall not go into details or name any names, but the fact is that in the current political situation, with a cabinet reshuffle widely rumoured to be imminent, there is a distinct tension between certain high-level players in the Defence Ministry and those on our own team. Potentially there’s a very great deal at stake, believe me.’

Both men stopped dead as a haggard figure erupted from the shrubbery on their right, demanding money. One of his arms had been amputated at the elbow, and his skin was the colour of the tree trunks all around. He was dressed only in shorts and an undershirt, and kept talking incessantly and incomprehensibly in a series of loud, stabbing phrases.

Brugnoli ignored the beggar and walked on. Zen dug into his pocket and poured some loose change into the man’s remaining hand.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Brugnoli remarked when Zen caught up with him. ‘It only encourages them.’

‘It’s my insurance policy.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

But Zen chose not to answer this question.

‘What has the current political situation to do with this specific affair?’ he asked instead.

Brugnoli sighed heavily.

‘ Dottore, you surely must have experienced cases where you could not immediately achieve your primary objective, for lack of evidence or cooperative witnesses or whatever, but where you were able to make progress by pursuing a secondary objective where these conditions did not obtain and then using that as a lever to crack open the original problem. Well, it’s the same here. It would be counter-productive, and for that matter probably futile, for us to tackle la Difesa openly about this matter, which is in any case peripheral to our real interests. But assuming that they are indeed lying through their teeth, then a skilled operative such as yourself might be able to turn up some potentially interesting material which might provide us with the advantage we need to address the larger issues concerned.’

Zen nodded slowly, as though all these long words and abstract concepts had confused him. In reality he was assessing the respective risks involved in accepting or refusing Brugnoli’s proposition.

‘So what you want…’ he began ponderously.

‘What I want is a huge scandal that will be front-page news for days if not weeks, better yet the head of some eminent name on a plate, and ideally a confession implicating the entire Defence Ministry from the onorevole himself down to the night cleaning staff. However, I’ll settle for almost anything — just some grit to throw in the machinery and generally foul things up.’

Zen was silent for a long time.

‘The Austrian caver gave me some digital photographs his friend had taken of the corpse,’ he said eventually. ‘They’re not very clear, but he suggested that it might be possible to do something called “an enhancement”.’

Brugnoli nodded vigorously. ‘No problem! One of my first initiatives was to upgrade all such equipment and facilities. Just go to Technical Services on the second…’

He broke off.

‘What do these photographs show?’

‘As I said, the prints aren’t very clear, but potentially a marking of some sort on the dead man’s arm, possibly a tattoo. It might be of assistance in making a positive identification of the victim.’

Brugnoli pursed his lips judiciously.

‘Then you’d better get it done privately.’

‘You don’t trust our own technicians?’

‘I trust them to do good work. I don’t trust them not to leave copies of it lying around in some computer file where the opposition might find it. And if it means anything at all to us, it’ll mean a lot more to them.’

It took Zen a moment to grasp the point.

‘The Ministry of Defence has a spy within the Viminale?’ he asked.

‘I’d be amazed if they didn’t. Almost certainly several, in fact. Not to mention the secret services. Disgruntled operatives who feel they’ve been wrongfully passed over for promotion, time-servers with a year or two to go until retirement who want to feather their nests while there’s still a chance, that sort of thing. Hence the deliberately indirect manner in which this meeting was set up. You’re already known to the carabinieri in Bolzano, and they will almost certainly have reported your visit there to their masters at the Defence Ministry. If I had simply told you to come to my office this morning, that fact might well have been reported and the obvious conclusion drawn.’

‘Perhaps you should use someone else then,’ Zen suggested rapidly. ‘Someone untainted by previous associations with the case.’

Brugnoli’s expression revealed that he had not been deceived by this attempt to wriggle out of the assignment.

‘No, no! You’re the man for the job, Zen. After all, the fact that you’ve already begun enquiries makes it all the more natural that you should then follow them up. What must be protected at all costs is any connection between your level and mine. If a lone officer doggedly pursues further evidence in this case, that’s one thing. But if our enemies begin to suspect what we’re really up to, they will immediately take steps to neutralize the threat.’

And possibly the ‘lone officer’ concerned, thought Zen.

‘The rules of engagement are that you are to report solely to me, and in person,’ Brugnoli continued. ‘Not by phone, either land-line or mobile, nor by email, fax, letter, postcard, carrier pigeon or any other form of overt communication, unless of course I initiate the contact. Our modus operandi must allow for total deniability by all concerned while the operation is in progress. If you need to contact me, write an unsigned note stating a place and time, seal it in a plain envelope and leave it with the cashier at the bar you went to today.’

Zen nodded wonderingly.

‘She’s that trustworthy?’ he asked.

Brugnoli took a luxurious amount of time to answer.

‘She used to be my mistress,’ he said complacently.

He glanced at his watch decisively, as though to cover this indiscretion.

‘Right, well, I must be going. Please remain here for at least ten minutes after I leave. I’m almost certain that we have been unobserved so far, but one can never be too careful.’

‘Oh, just one small thing…’

Zen was searching in his coat pocket for his notebook and a pen.

‘While I was in Bolzano, I ran into a patrolman named Bruno Nanni.’

He wrote the name down, tore out the sheet and handed it to Brugnoli.

‘He’s doing his hardship time up there, and it seems to have been very hard on him indeed. Basically he’s an excellent young officer, very willing and capable, but he’s totally out of his depth in the Alto Adige and, I have to say, given to occasional outbursts which in my opinion might reflect negatively on the force’s reputation in that sensitive area. I hate to bother a man like you about a trivial matter of this sort, but I was just wondering if…’

‘Where does he want to go?’ asked Brugnoli.

‘Bologna.’

The other man nodded.

‘I’ll send a memo down to Personnel this afternoon.’

‘I think it might be best.’

To Zen’s surprise, Brugnoli walked over to him and tugged the sleeve of his coat.

‘Eh, dottore! ’ he said with a light laugh. ‘Don’t take all the supposed changes around here too literally. Yes, many things have changed, but the important ones remain the same. That applies to your relationship with me and the people to whom I was alluding earlier. You look after us, and we’ll look after you. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Zen gave a series of rapid nods.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I understand completely.’