The Absolution (13 page)

“The fire has consumed what little oxygen was left,” the hacker said. “The tunnel has become a vacuum.” At the back, fire engines were approaching, their flashing lights blossoming and fading on the monitor. There was no way for them to reach the centre of the conflagration: too many cars were already involved. A moment later, the camera failed too. The screen went blank.

The cleric turned to face the other two men. His eyes shone with excitement.

“Allah be praised,” he said. “What do you need?”

DANIELE BARBO WALKED
along the Fondamenta Záttere, deep in thought. Across the Canale della Giudecca, the lights of San Giorgio Maggiore twinkled in the distance.

It was only in the small hours that he wandered like this, when Venice's narrow
calli
were deserted. Although the day had been scorching, a night breeze coming in off the lagoon had cooled the stones of the buildings, and the temperature was now almost comfortable.

Not that he noticed the temperature. He was thinking about the nature of beauty.

When James Watson and Francis Crick set out to unravel the structure of DNA, they were convinced that they would know it when they saw it because anything so important must surely be beautiful. And when they first blocked out the famous double-helix pattern, they realised immediately what it was.

To Daniele's mind, there was a similar beauty in perhaps half a dozen mathematical formulae, from the fundamental theorem of calculus to Newton's constant of gravity. Yet the irony was that one could not arrive at such truths by deduction, only by intuition. Einstein formulated E=MC
²
long before he was able to prove it. Newton glimpsed gravity in the path of a falling apple before he worked out the mathematics
it embodied. You couldn't hope to calculate the algorithm that would prove P=NP; you could only hope to recognise it when it arrived.

It would be simple, and it would be beautiful. That was all he knew.

Half-closing his eyes, he tried to make himself see the world around him as if it were nothing but numbers. The movement of the waves against the sea wall – that was determined by the Navier–Stokes equations of fluid dynamics. The relationship between the moon and the tides – that was so mysterious, even Newton had failed to understand it fully. And the architecture of the church on his left, Spirito Santo, was all Euclidean geometry, the Gothic arches and rose-windows deliberately fashioned to express a beauty which, its builders believed, echoed the perfect mathematics of God. Its proportions were based on the Golden Section, the mathematical ratio found in everything from pine cones to snail shells, from the seed of a sunflower to the swirl of a galaxy.

He turned the corner of Punta della Dogana, the old Custom House. Ahead of him, the curious octagonal structure of Santa Maria della Salute stood sentinel at the mouth of the Grand Canal, its huge dome resting on the skyline like a massive royal crown, given a rime of silver frost by the moonlight. There were some, he knew, who believed that its design had been inspired by mathematics of a different kind: the numerical mysticism of alchemy and ancient Hermeticism. It was said that alchemy sent Isaac Newton mad, so that he spent his last years filling notebooks with strange speculations about the transmutation of matter. Leonardo da Vinci became obsessed with the ancient conundrum of “squaring the circle” and even Galileo, the arch empiricist, had devoted much of his life to astrology and star charts.

You'll know it when you see it
, Daniele promised himself.
It will be beautiful. But it will be real, too.

He had emptied his life. Now he must try to empty his mind as well.

AS THE PLANE
banked over Sardinia, Holly saw through the window a long vista of grey, treeless mountains that looked hot even from up here, their rocky slopes plunging almost vertically into the Mediterranean. Below her, where the peaks ended, was a crescent of sand fringed with white hotels. That would be Alghero. A sleepy resort, tucked away in the island's quietest corner. Even from this height, she could make out the scattering of black dots in the sea where tourists were paddling.

She picked up
Il Giornale
from where it lay in her lap. The paper's front page was dominated by the freak accident in the Fréjus road tunnel. Investigators were still unable to reach the wreckage: cars and trucks had fused into one solid mass, along with a section of tunnel roof that had melted in the heat. At least twenty people were unaccounted for, including twelve schoolchildren returning from a school trip in a minibus. It wasn't the worst road tunnel disaster in history – the Gotthard crash in 2001 had caused one hundred and thirty-nine casualties, the 1999 Mont Blanc fire killed over forty, and twenty-eight died in the 2012 Sierre tunnel disaster – but it was already shaping up to be one of the most baffling. The Fréjus tunnel had a good safety record, and had been further upgraded after the Mont Blanc fire. There were
no reports of any technical failures, although investigators were looking into allegations that the automatic sprinkler system had failed to come on. A spokesman for the tunnel authority said they weren't ruling out any possibilities, including driver error.

The row over the taps on the undersea internet cables was petering out, relegated to the middle pages. The United States was now proposing that Italy reinstate them voluntarily, as part of a new information-gathering alliance called VIGILANCE. “VIGILANCE, short for Virtual Intelligence Gathering Alliance, will be the most effective anti-terrorism measure the West has, while taking into account legitimate concerns about privacy and data security,” a White House spokesman was quoted as saying. The Italian government had rejected that suggestion out of hand – which was hardly surprising, Holly thought. Surely no country, having discovered it had been spied on, would choose to submit to exactly the same scrutiny of its own volition.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be landing at Alghero,” the stewardess said over the PA, her voice as mechanical as a recording. There followed the usual warnings about not getting out of your seat until the seatbelt sign had been switched off – warnings that, as usual, everyone ignored except for Holly. This too, she reflected, was the product of being an army brat. The instinct to obey authority to the letter had been ingrained in her since childhood.

She'd read somewhere that army brats had rules where others had principles, which was why, when they did go off the rails, they often did so in spectacular fashion. She'd seen it with some of her own contemporaries. Daddy's little princesses on base, once away at college they'd become the sluttiest, wildest girls on campus.

Somehow, she'd gone the other way. Sometimes she wondered if she wasn't just storing her rebellion up, waiting for a trigger.

Was
this
the trigger? Supposing she did find something that proved her father had been deliberately silenced because of what he'd found out about Operation Gladio, what would she do with that knowledge?

She sighed.
Cross that bridge when you come to it, Boland.

As she filed off the plane, she noticed a group of half a dozen men. They looked familiar – not the individuals, but the type. Burly, well built, with the broad chests and inflated biceps of those who spent too much time working out. They weren't in uniform, but their buzz haircuts were a dead giveaway. Sure enough, as they walked towards the Arrivals hall, they unconsciously fell into step, their legs hitting a perfect parade-ground stride. You could take the man out of the base, she thought, but you couldn't take the base out of the man.

By the time they'd been through baggage reclaim, most of the group were toting golf bags. Master sergeants, she guessed, getting in some seaside R&R.

She rented a car from Sixt and drove to a climbing shop she'd found on the internet. Everything was pre-booked, but she lingered for a chat with the heavily tattooed and dreadlocked young owner, knowing from experience she'd learn more from him than any guidebook. Sure enough, he spent a good half hour telling her about the island's best climbing areas. It confirmed what she'd hoped: her destination was well away from the spots usually favoured by recreational climbers.

From there she drove south along the coast towards the small town of Bosa. The road, she knew, had been built only a decade or so ago; in the seventies and eighties, when the
Gladio network used this area as a training ground, it had been accessible only by boat. Even now, it was one of the most spectacular drives she'd ever made. On one side craggy, jagged mountains soared vertically into the shimmering sky; on the other, they fell away into the sparkling sea. Her car felt tiny and insignificant, sandwiched between the immense masses of rock and water. There were no buildings, no farms or crops; no side roads to towns or villages even. A couple of coaches passed her, coming in the opposite direction, but otherwise the road was eerily quiet, her only companions a few mouflons, wild brown sheep with extravagant curly horns, nibbling the scrub on seemingly inaccessible ledges.

She felt, deep down in her soul, a sharp tug of love for this sea, this sky. Did people back in America feel this way about the landscapes of the US? She imagined they must do. But a part of her was now as deeply Italian as it was possible for someone not actually born here to be.

Eventually she saw a rusted chain-link fence next to a small turning, and pulled off the road. Even though she'd seen no one, she parked behind a rock, out of sight.

Getting out, she discovered that it was very still and very hot. The turning was little more than a track, zig-zagging down the side of the mountain towards the sea, two hundred feet below. If there were any guards or surveillance devices, she couldn't spot them.

Fifty yards from the track, she hammered an iron peg into the ground, then clipped a rope to it. She'd brought a simple friction hitch to slow her descent, along with climbing shoes and kneepads. Although the US Army insisted on helmets and gloves when abseiling, Holly, like most real mountaineers, disliked them: the gloves because they increased the
likelihood of getting your fingers caught in the friction hitch, and the helmet because it impaired upward vision.

As she cleared a small overhang, the base came into view below her. It wasn't much to look at: no more than half a dozen windswept concrete buildings, so ugly they could only be military. Everything seemed derelict. She abseiled another hundred feet before reaching a ledge. There she waited, making sure no one was around.

Satisfied, she dropped the last fifty feet. A second fence bore a warning that this was a military zone and that trespassing, photography and mapmaking were forbidden under the Italian penal code. A smaller, more recent sign warned that it was also in danger of collapse. A graphic of a snarling guard dog needed no explanation. But there were large rusty gaps in the chain-link and what looked like rabbit holes pocking the ground on either side. If there had ever been dogs here, they'd long since departed.

She'd read online that the site was still officially used by the Italian Intelligence Agency as an observation post – observing what, she wondered? – but if so, she couldn't see any signs of it.

She walked to the nearest building and peered through the broken window. It contained twenty or so bunk beds. But the mattresses and everything else combustible had long since been burnt, only the iron frames and charred bedsprings remaining, strewn across the floor.

She moved on to the next hut. This one looked more promising. Old papers and bottles were scattered around, as if it had been vacated in a hurry. In the middle was the burnt-out carcass of a billiard table.

She went inside. On one side of the table was a small metal plaque. “To the men of Gladio, with my warmest
admiration, Giulio Andreotti.” Well, at least she was in the right place. She wondered at the personal gift of appreciation from the same prime minister who'd subsequently revealed the network's existence. It was surprising the departing gladiators hadn't ripped the plaque off in disgust. Or had leaving it here for others to see been the more pointed comment?

In a room at the back her heart quickened when she spotted a small safe. But there was nothing inside, only some charred fragments. The Gladio clear-up, if that was what had happened here, had been thorough.

Or perhaps, she thought, the clear-up had been carried out later, by the Italian security services, when they were handed the site as an observation post.

She checked the other huts, but the story was the same. In the former mess hut even the empty wine bottles had been smashed, the broken glass crunching like gravel under her feet.

Well, what did you expect after so long? Documentary evidence?
But even though she'd known it was a long shot, she couldn't help feeling disappointed. She'd been hoping for something – anything – that told her the trail wasn't completely cold.

Her ears caught the sound of an engine. Going outside, she saw a military truck coming down the track towards her.

Shit.

Quickly, she retreated back inside the hut. She watched through the window as the truck pulled up by the buildings and two soldiers in Italian uniforms climbed down, pulling out packets of cigarettes as they did so. Leaning against the truck's side, they smoked and chatted in the sunshine. Then one of them walked straight towards the building she was hiding in.

She ducked her head back from the window and held her breath. A moment later, she heard the splash of urine against the wall. “They need to play him in position,” a voice said, suddenly very near; he was still chatting to his companion over his shoulder. She was close enough to smell the sharp reek of his urine. When he'd finished, the men got back in the truck and drove off.

A routine patrol, she guessed. Just one more pointless duty in a day filled with pointless duties, carrying out an order given by some panicked bureaucrat a decade or more ago and never rescinded.

She didn't bother to climb back up her abseil rope but simply walked up the track, the sun blasting off the rock and crumbling tarmac onto her face. High above her, a griffin vulture swooped around the mountaintop and then, without apparently moving a wingtip, floated down to inspect her more closely.

Pausing to enjoy its magnificent five-foot wingspan, she thought,
Well, at least I saw
you
. So it wasn't a completely wasted trip.

Something flashed in the corner of her vision. A windscreen, catching the sun, as a vehicle pulled off the coast road where it snaked round the same mountain, high above her. She could just make out that it was a Land Rover. Tourists, most likely, stopping to admire the view. She waited for them to set off again before she moved.

After she'd waited ten minutes, she realised they weren't coming. Which meant that they'd stopped to take more pictures. Or . . .

Or they were watching her, waiting for her to move. If she hadn't paused to look at the griffin vulture, she'd never have spotted them.

She drove back to the climbing shop, checking occasionally in her rear-view mirror to make sure she wasn't being followed.

“Think I chose a bad route,” she said noncommittally to the owner. “Look, do you happen to have a map of the military installations here on Sardinia?”

The man gave her a look. “You mean, a map of the places we're not allowed to map?”

“That's the one.” Just as nautical maps showed seabed channels and underwater reefs, so climbers needed to know which parts of the mountains were off limits. If anyone had a map like that, it was likely to be him.

He considered. “As it happens, I do.”

He pulled out a cylinder of thick paper and unrolled it, weighing its corners down with coffee mugs to reveal a large-scale map of the island. Parts had been hatched with thick red lines. “If you're worrying about DP, you're right to.” He pointed to an area in the south-east with one heavily tattooed, muscular arm. “This region here, Quirra, is the largest weapons-testing facility in Europe. Leukaemia levels in the surrounding area are running at up to sixty-five per cent of the population. The shepherds had so many deformed lambs they couldn't make a living, so they've all moved to other parts of the island.”

By “DP”, she realised, he meant “depleted uranium”, the residue of shells made from radioactive metals.

“But that's not the only area they've contaminated.” He tapped the island's north-east corner. “There was meant to be an EU scientific study into Lake Baratz, here. They found so much unexploded ordinance the scientists had to pull out for their own safety. The point is, the Italian government charges international weapons manufacturers a million dollars a day
to use these mountains. That money goes straight to Rome. When our regional president managed to get a compensation fund of ten million euros, it was hailed as a great victory. But actually it was less than two weeks' income for the people who run this place.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as if his anger at these manifold injustices had long since been exhausted.

“What about other bases?” she said, squinting sideways at the map.

“Take your pick. Down in the south you've got Decimomannu. The largest airport in Italy, and it doesn't host a single civilian flight. And Capo Taluda.” He pointed again. “That's where they test white phosphorus. This whole island's just one big playground for the international military.”

“Any bases that have been closed or mothballed in, say, the last fifteen years?”

He considered. “There's the old US–NATO base on the island of La Maddalena. That was closed about ten years ago.”