Medusa - 9 (11 page)

Back at his base, he checked the fine cotton thread he had strung across the door set in the main gateway, its green-painted slatted planks faded now to a gentle blue. The tell-tale was unbroken. He bent under it and stepped through into the echoing
aia
, looking around the space which was so familiar to him that it was almost invisible behind its panoply of memories. He kept expecting a door or window to open and a voice to shout, ‘Gabriele! Welcome home!’ But those voices were all dead. How much work had been done here, how many lives lived out! Like a battlefield, he thought; an endless, indecisive engagement in a meaningless war fought with outdated equipment for reasons that no one could now remember.

Back in his eyrie, as he had named it when he first moved there at the age of fifteen, he carefully lowered and secured the light-proof blinds he had cut from an oilskin tablecloth, before replacing the batteries of the camping lantern and turning it on. Despite the windbreaks of elms and poplars around the house, in this level landscape any light might show for miles, and would immediately attract interest.

He filled the saucepan with water from the bucket in the corner, set it on the butane stove and settled down to read the paper he had brought back. Most of the articles didn’t interest him – the usual exaggerated fuss about some impending cabinet reshuffle in Rome – but his eye was caught by one of the headlines on the
Cronaca
page, about a killing in some town called Campione d’Italia. There was a photograph of the victim, who was identified as Nestor Machado Solorzano, a citizen of Venezuela. To Gabriele’s eye, he very much resembled a slightly older Nestore Soldani.

He skimmed rapidly through the article, then re-read it several times with close attention. According to his wife Andreina, speaking through an interpreter, the victim had been phoned at home on his birthday and had driven out to an impromptu appointment with a person or persons unknown in Capolago, just across the Swiss border. On his return, the BMW Mini Cooper which he was driving had blown up at the entrance to their villa in Campione. The explosion had utterly destroyed the car and gates, and shattered the windows of the surrounding houses. Virtually no trace of the victim’s body had been recovered.

Gabriele quickly worked out the dates. The murder had occurred the day after he had left Milan, having read about the discovery of Leonardo’s body.

The pasta water boiled over. He removed the saucepan from the stove with trembling hands. To think that only an hour or so earlier he had been jeering at himself for having panicked unnecessarily, and raising philosophical questions about the nature of the proof that would be required to justify his having fled into hiding here. Here was his proof! So far as he was aware, only three men knew for sure what had happened to Leonardo Ferrero, and one of them was now dead, killed by a bomb in his car two days after the discovery of the body.

That left only him and Alberto. He was loath to contact Alberto – indeed, he half-suspected him of being behind the series of mute, implicitly menacing postcards that arrived every year around the anniversary of Leonardo’s death – but now he felt he had no choice. Whoever had killed Nestore would have his name next on their list. This was no longer a game of hide-and-seek but of life-and-death. He couldn’t hide out at here at the
cascina
for ever, but neither did he wish to live in perpetual terror back in Milan, or to emigrate and eke out a miserable existence in some foreign country where they would still be able to reach him sooner or later.

In short, he had no choice but to force the issue, and Alberto was the only person he could turn to. It would have to be drafted carefully, of course, giving nothing away about his present location, still less his fears. He must sound confident and assertive, even a little dangerous. He would outline his quite reasonable apprehensions on hearing the news of Nestore’s death, make it absolutely clear that the secret of Operation Medusa would remain forever sacrosanct, and demand further details of who had murdered Soldani and what was being done to bring them to justice and protect the two remaining members of the Verona cell.

He would enclose his mobile phone number with a date and time for Alberto to call, allowing him a week to formulate an appropriate and satisfactory response. The letter would be posted from one of the larger local towns that he could reach easily by train from the unmanned station at which he had arrived, Crema perhaps. When the time came for Alberto to call, he would make a return trip in the other direction, to Mantua, taking the call on the train. They would never be able to trace his whereabouts, and at the very least he would know exactly where he stood. One thing he had learned from his time in the army was that while imaginary fears exhausted and paralysed him, real and present danger left him cool and collected. It was time to confront the enemy, whoever they might be, to force them to come forward and reveal themselves. Whatever the outcome, it could not be worse than living in a state of perpetual uncertainty and inchoate terror.

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.’