The Cold Cold Ground

23: THE ITALIAN JOB

I landed at Linate Airport just before dusk. I changed two hundred quid into lira and at the airport gift shop I bought a hunting knife and a map of the Como area. I had an espresso and some kind of meat filled pastry which made me feel that this was the first time I had tasted food in my life.

A taxi took me to the Central Bus Station in Milan without too much trouble. It was off season, too late for summer travel, too early for the skiers.

The bus to Como left at 6. A Red Brigade bomb scare delayed it until 7.30 and made me feel at home.

At Como I caught a local bus up the Via Regina.

We arrived at Mezzagra in the middle of a street party. It was a harvest festival and kids were dressed as grapes and ears of wheat.

It was cold and braziers had been set up to warm the crowd. More good food. Beautiful women. People enjoying themselves.

Italy with its chaotic politics and twenty-plus prime ministers since World War Two was still the inverse of Ireland — bomb threats notwithstanding. This, I thought, is what normality looked like.

I found a stand selling home-made toys and, changing my mind about the knife, I bought a realistic-looking cap gun in the shape of an ACP. In Ireland all toy guns had to be orange so weans didn’t get shot by cops or soldiers on foot patrol. But this one, from a distance, looked like the real thing.

I laughed.

It would be funny if this worked and funny if it didn’t.

I watched a puppet show about the capture of Mussolini by the Resistance which, if I understood it correctly, happened on this very spot.

At 9 o’clock I caught the last local bus to Campo.

Lake Como was the black empty mass to my right as we hugged the shore and drove past the homes of the very rich. Beautiful villas from the baroque and rococo right up to the present day. Father Faul told us that the Younger Pliny had owned two villas on Lake Como. One on a hill and one on the lake. The upper home he called Tragedy, the lower Comedy.

The bus stopped at every village and went slowly along the shore road. It finally left me off at the hamlet of Campo at around 11.30.

A quiet, attractive, unearthly little place in the foothills of the Alps.

There were no people.

No cars.

Occasionally a truck roared by under the vast yellow arc lights of the SS36. The rest was silence.

Snow had been falling since the day before and the bus station car park was a frozen world.

An ice mirror reflecting the winter constellations. A landing strip for migrating birds.

I unfolded my map, strapped the rucksack across my shoulders and headed east.

The house was at the end of a long track off Vicolo Spluga.

The incline was steep and I had to catch my breath a couple of times.

Wind was whistling down from the Swiss border, eight miles to the north.

These were not the high Alps but it was still freezing. According to the map we were up at 1400 metres which I reckoned was over 5500 feet. I was wearing a leather jacket, jeans and Adidas trainers. I was underdressed. I hadn’t expected it to be this frigid in early October.

I took another breather to steady my nerves.

From up here I could see the lights of planes landing at Milan and boats putting across the black waters of the Lago di Mezzola.

I walked on. I passed a ruined mill, a couple of small cottages and a barn that had been destroyed by fire.

Freddie’s house was built in a typical Tyrol style: wood beams, a deck facing south, a steep timbered roof. It wasn’t particularly large but I knew that he owned much of the surrounding forest too. He told everyone that he had inherited the place from his grandfather but that wasn’t true. The whole shebang was bought and paid for by MI5.

Since June and Freddie’s ascension to the Army Council things had really begun to happen for him.

Gerry Adams had been out here. All the top guys in Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Even a couple of US Congressmen.

I imagine that it was bugged. And since people were chattier out of their natural environment the intel must be pouring in.

There was a brand new silver Mercedes SL parked under the deck.

The moon was out and I could read my watch without hitting the backlight. 12.20 now. Getting late. I walked around the ground floor looking for a way in but there was none.

You had to go up the steps and enter from the first level.

The stairs were sparkled with frost so I gripped the hand rail and took them cautiously.

The deck had sliding French doors, large plate-glass wraparound windows and a view to the south-west of Lake Como and to the north, between two mountains, the 4000 metre-tall Piz Bernina.

The view, the mountains, the chalet, Freddie and his scary pals — the whole thing had a Berchtesgaden vibe circa 1939.

At the top of the steps I took out the knife and the cap gun. I weighed the two options. “Aye, let’s try the bluff, Freddie will appreciate that,” I said to myself.

I pulled on a pair of leather gloves and reshouldered the backpack.

I walked round the deck, looked in through the glass windows and saw Freddie standing there in front of a large TV set. He had videoed an Inter Milan match on his Betamax and he was fast forwarding through the game in search of goals.

I took a step backwards and retraced my steps around the deck until I came to a door.

I had brought my lock-pick kit but when I turned the handle and pushed, the door opened.

I stepped cautiously inside.

I took off the rucksack and set it down on a tiled floor. I removed the note I had written on the plane and looked again at the cap gun. Was it convincing? We’d soon see.

I walked through a large, modern kitchen illuminated by night lights.

I pushed the kitchen door and tiptoed my way along a hardwood corridor until I made it to the enormous living room.

Freddie was sitting now, watching and rewatching a beautiful goal by a blond-haired Inter player.

“Lovely stuff,” Freddie kept repeating to himself.

I slipped behind Freddie’s reclining leather chair.

The knife would have done just as well.

I shoved the cap gun against Freddie’s ear.

“What the-” he began.

I put my finger to my lips and still keeping the cap gun in his ear, handed him the note.

He looked at me and read the note. It said: “Turn off all the recording equipment and make no sound until you do so.”

Freddie was reassured by this. It told him that I was a reasonable, forward-thinking young man, not a nutcase bent on some vendetta.

He nodded. I took one step backwards keeping the cap gun pointing at him and letting the sleeve of my jacket droop over it so that he wouldn’t get a good look at it.

He got to his feet and pointed to a door at the end of the living room. I gave him the OK sign.

We walked into his study and he turned on the light.

There was no tremble in his gait and he didn’t look frightened in the least. I didn’t like that and it put me on my guard.

The study was small, with a desk and a few metal filing cabinets.

There were signed pictures on the wall.

Freddie with Vanessa Redgrave. Freddie with Senator Ted Kennedy.

He pointed at the desk and began walking towards it. I shoved the gun in his back and he froze. I pushed him to the ground, stepped over him and opened the desk drawer.

The gun in the drawer was a Beretta 9mm.

I checked that it was loaded and put the cap pistol back in my pocket.

Freddie sighed.

“Can we speak now? There’s no tape going. It’s not turned on, is it? I mean, what’s the point? It’s just me here,” Freddie said.

“Show me,” I said.

He got to his feet and looked ruefully at the gun barrel of his own pistol aimed at his chest. He pulled open the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets.

“Look in there,” he said. “If it was recording, the spools would be going round, wouldn’t they?”

I looked in the filing cabinet.

Two enormous spools of tape on an expensive looking recording device.

The thing was evidently turned off and the spools were not going round.

Of course there could have been a back-up somewhere in the house.

“Is there a back-up? The truth now, Freddie,” I whispered to him.

“Back-up? That one cost two grand. Those cheap bastards are not going to install a bloody back-up, are they?” he said with an attempt at levity.

I tried to impart the seriousness of my question with a waggle of the Beretta.

“No! There’s no back-up. This is it.”

I believed him.

We returned to the living room.

I switched off the TV.

I motioned him to sit down in the leather recliner and I sat on the glass coffee table opposite him.

“Talk,” I said.

“About what?”

“Tell me everything.”