The Wedding Officer

26

JAMES FOUND himself increasingly curious as to why CIC were reluctant to let him into their offices.

The Americans’offices were next door to his own bedroom. One night, he waited until everyone was asleep and climbed onto the ledge of one of the huge windows. A brief nerve-wrenching scramble from one window to another, and he was inside their inner sanctum.

The place was full of documents. Everywhere he looked, there were boxes of files. He riffled through them until he found one marked “Top secret—CIC only.” It contained a single folder. This must be it, he thought. It was marked “Operation Gladio.” He opened it and scanned the first page.

BACKGROUND

After the war, the political situation in southern Italy is likely to be troubled. The British support the automatic restoration of the monarchy. However, this is by no means the only possible outcome. In the south, some wealthy individuals are agitating for an independent “Kingdom of Naples.” The communists, who have the support of the majority of the poor, are content to let these fantasists exhaust themselves, and will attempt a Stalinist revolution as soon as the Allies withdraw, linking up with workers’ movements in Greece and Yugoslavia in order to create a European superstate stretching from Moscow to Milan.

At the present time, the only alternative to communist takeover in Italy is probably the remnants of Mussolini’s fascists, who are more than willing to deal with the communists if they are given the means to do so.

The third most powerful grouping in southern Italy is the organized crime element known as the camorra. They have no political allegiance, but are vehemently opposed to the communists, probably because they sense that the communists would make life more difficult for them than most of the alternatives.

The most unpredictable element in this are the partisans, many of whom are presently fighting the Germans in well-organized, effective groups run on communist lines….

There was much more in a similar vein. It made no sense to James at all. Why were the Americans worrying about what happened after the war, when they couldn’t even get a grip on the black-marketeering and corruption that was going on right under their noses? And what on earth was so secret about a fairly obvious assessment of the political situation in southern Italy?

He was replacing the folder when his eye was caught by a small book on one of the tables. He picked it up. It was an Italian phrase book he had seen being sold in the street markets, entitled What Is Sufficient to Speak in Italian—the Small Modern Polyglot. There was a marker, and he opened it at a section headed “Greeting the Ladies.”

“Good morning, madam. How beautiful you are. Have you a bridegroom? Indeed, you have made me very agreeable,” he read. He smiled. Perhaps he had nothing to fear from Eric after all. He put the book down, and exited the way he had come in.