The Absolution (29 page)

THEY SAT IN
the music room at Ca' Barbo. Kat, Daniele, Holly. Each of them, for different reasons, utterly defeated.

Holly recalled previous times when everything had seemed lost: how it was always Kat, with her energy and good-natured bossiness, who had pulled them out of despondency and assigned them tasks. But now she seemed quite broken.

It's up to me now
, Holly thought.

She turned to Daniele. “Daniele, could I borrow a whiteboard?”

He waved his hand at the boards covered with mathematical formulae that lined the walls. “Be my guest.”

“I'm going to write down what we know,” she said as she wiped the boards clean. “One of us may spot something the others have missed. We'll use red for Carnivia, blue for my father, and green for the terror plot. OK?”

It might have been her imagination, but she thought she heard a faint sigh escape Kat's lips.

“I'll go first,” she said, scribbling. “I believe my father was silenced by corrupt Freemasons who had previously been part of NATO's Gladio network. According to Ian Gilroy, he'd asked my father to find out more. But according to Staff Sergeant Kassapian, my father ended up making copies of the US's own secret cables to and from Washington. Why, I don't
yet know. And I can't read them until the floppy-disk drive we've bought off eBay gets here. Kat?”

Reluctantly, Kat took the green pen and stood up. “I started out investigating the murder of a banker who'd betrayed his fellow Masons' plans for an independent Veneto. The Masons' Grand Master, Count Tignelli, was financing a terror attack by a jihadist hacker, but that seems to have been averted.”

“Wait a minute,” Daniele said, looking up. “Did you say a jihadist hacker?”

She nodded. “That's right. He was enrolled at a technical college in Palermo. Why, I have no idea, as his skills were clearly far in advance of the other students'. In any case, he seems to have slipped out of the country—”

“He's the one who's created the virus in Carnivia,” Daniele interrupted. “He must be. And it's not true that the attack's been averted. In just over twenty-four hours' time, he intends to launch a coordinated attack on the Internet of Things, using a botnet of Carnivia users. It'll be like a hundred thousand Fréjuses all happening at once.”

“Hang on,” Kat said, trying to get her head round all this. “I know there's speculation that what happened at Fréjus might have been a hacker, but what's this about a botnet?”

Daniele explained about the worm inside Carnivia, and the zero-hour that would be triggered at midnight the next day.

“Can you prevent it?” Kat said when he'd finished.

“I specifically designed Carnivia so that kind of intervention is impossible. The only way would be to create a virus of my own, and wipe Carnivia.”

“To temporarily shut it down, you mean?”

Daniele shook his head. “That wouldn't be enough to disrupt the instructions the hacker has sent to each user's
computer. I need to write a piece of code that will wipe everything – my servers, our users' identities, their own computers, the lot.” He smiled ruefully. “Websites that deliberately fry four million people's hard drives aren't too popular. There'll be no coming back from that.”

“But you'll do it?” Kat asked. “You'll stop the attack?”

“Yes,” Daniele said. “It's my site. My responsibility. Besides, I've been looking for a way to extricate myself from running it. Might as well go out with a bang.”

Holly wondered at the apparent lack of emotion with which Daniele spoke. She knew his relationship with his website was a complex one, but she guessed that, whatever he said, destroying the world he'd created would be no easy matter for him.

“And then Flavio died,” Kat said, turning back to her board. “I've got no absolute proof that it's linked to the Tignelli investigation. But the last time we spoke, he said he'd found something – something significant. I think he must have tied Tignelli's death back to a person or group, in Rome perhaps, with a vested interest in blocking Venetian independence.”

“Any idea who?” Holly asked.

Kat shook her head. “But I think that was why they killed him that night. Whatever it was he'd worked out, they didn't want him repeating it to me.” Something else occurred to her. “Though the time
before
that, when I was in Sicily, he said something about you. How perhaps you weren't as crazy as you seemed.”

“What could he have meant by that?”

Kat shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Could he have come across a connection between the two cases?”

“Well, I can hardly ask him now, can I?” Kat snapped. There was a long silence. “Sorry,” she muttered.

“No, I'm sorry,” Holly said with feeling. “This is a shit time for you.”

“For all of us,” Kat corrected. “You and your father. Daniele and Carnivia . . . It's all shit. So what do we do now?”

“I think we have to go right back to the beginning,” Holly said. “In Daniele's case, that means his kidnap. For me, why my father was so interested in those Autodin transcripts. And for you, perhaps, establishing who was powerful enough to kill not only Tignelli but Flavio too, and what it was he found out before he died.”

“
I NEED MORE
ECT,” Daniele told Father Uriel. “A higher current, a longer seizure – whatever it takes to shake my memories loose.”

Father Uriel regarded him over folded arms. “No,” he said quietly.

“If you don't . . .”

“I don't care what threats you make, Daniele. You wanted ECT, and we've tried it. We won't be doing it again.” He paused. “However, that's not to say I'm giving up.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's a new therapeutic technique I've started using recently with some of my other patients. It's unproven, but I think you in particular might find it effective.”

“Why me in particular?”

“Because it involves your own website,” Father Uriel said. “Tell me: you built Carnivia – could you build a replica of the room in which you were imprisoned by your kidnappers?”

He built the four hundred and seventeen uprights in the bricks along one wall, the two hundred and four along the other. He built it eight paces by eleven, and then remembered that he had to go back and adjust for the fact that, at seven years old, his strides had been a lot smaller.

It was many years since he'd created Carnivia, but the language in which it was coded was as familiar to him as his mother tongue. Even so, constructing the room took him several hours, building up every tiny detail, pixel by pixel.

When he had finished he showed Father Uriel.

“Good. Now I want you to create an avatar for each of the principal kidnappers.”

That was easier. He made avatars for Claudio, Paolo and Maria. To each of them he gave a mask. It meant he didn't have to spend time getting their faces right, but he dressed them in the clothes he remembered each one wearing – Paolo's denims, Claudio's beret, Maria's leather jacket.

“And I want you to make an avatar for yourself, as you were at the time you were kidnapped,” Father Uriel said.

Daniele made himself very small, and placed himself in the room.

He was more used than most to living his life through the medium of a screen. But even he was surprised at how quickly the real world seemed to melt away as he manipulated the avatar. With a part of his brain he was back there again, a kidnapped child. “You say you've done this before?” he asked.

“A little,” Father Uriel said. “It was after I first started working with you, in fact, that I began to wonder about the possibility of using virtual worlds in psychotherapy. I soon discovered I wasn't the only one exploring that area – there are psychiatrists treating victims of sexual abuse, for example, using avatars to help them re-enact what happened in a non-threatening environment. I simply flipped that process on its head. So I might get sex offenders to re-enact their assaults, while simultaneously asking them how they could have done things differently. Because they're in a more controllable
version of the world, they don't feel the same pressure they would if it were real.”

Daniele frowned. “You think that could be why I built Carnivia? Because I needed a more controllable version of the world?”

“It's crossed my mind. If you think about it, it's a remarkable feat of dissociation. Some people use alcohol or medication to block out trauma. You just went ahead and rebuilt the universe the way you wanted it to be.”

When Daniele was ready, Father Uriel put him into a light trance. After a few minutes he felt himself drifting into the same state of mental focus and physical lethargy he'd experienced in previous sessions.

“It's the final week of your kidnap,” Father Uriel's voice said from a long way away. “You've been here a long time now – thirty-three days. What's going on?”

“They're arguing.” Daniele indicated the avatars. “Always arguing. And they're scared. We're all scared.”

“What are you scared of, Daniele?”

“Of them killing me.”

“Why will they kill you?”

“Because my mummy and daddy still haven't paid the ransom.”

“Why haven't they?”

“Because they don't love me,” he whispered. “Because I'm strange.”

“Who says so?”

“Paolo.”

“Are you scared of Paolo?”

Daniele nodded, his eyes wide.

“I want you to be Paolo now, Daniele. Control his avatar for me. Make him say the things he says to you.”

As Daniele slipped into the persona of his kidnapper, Father Uriel saw how he became stronger and more assertive. When he took him back into Daniele's childhood avatar again, his hands no longer shook.

He made Daniele role-play each kidnapper in turn, then moved on a day.

“What day is it today, Daniele?”

“Day thirty-four.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm scared but I'm excited.”

“Why are you excited?”

“Because these are the best numbers. Thirty-four is a Fibonacci number and a semiprime and a heptagon. If you make a four-by-four magic square, the numbers always add up to thirty-four.”

Uriel raised his eyebrows. “I didn't know that.”

“Maria showed me. Maria isn't her real name, but I'm not allowed to know what her real name is. It's like she's wearing a mask.” He paused. “That's cool, isn't it? For people never to know who you really are.”

“Indeed.” Father Uriel mentally tucked Daniele's comment away for future discussion. “It sounds as though you quite like Maria.”

“She likes numbers too. She teaches me. She's better than the teachers at school.”

“Is that confusing for you? That someone who kidnapped you is also an effective teacher?”

“I don't know. Thirty-five is a good number too. It's the highest you can count on your fingers using base 6.”

Father Uriel took him forward one day at a time, probing for anxieties. When he reached day thirty-six, Daniele fell silent.

“Why are you quiet, Daniele?”

“I'm thinking about the thirty-six officers problem. It's a puzzle set by a man called Euler. He wanted to know how you could arrange six regiments of six officers in a grid so that no rank or regiment gets repeated. I've drawn it on my wall.”

“It sounds very difficult.”

“Euler thought it was impossible. But he wanted to prove
why
it was impossible. That's interesting, isn't it? Not just saying it can't be done, but showing why numbers can't work that way.”

“What are the kidnappers doing while you're thinking about your puzzle?”

“They argued this morning. Then Claudio went out in a rage. Paolo went to sleep. I think Maria went out for a while too, but not for long. Then she comes into my room. She's got a bottle of medicine.”

“What kind of medicine?”

“She says it will make me sleepy. But I don't want to sleep. I want to think about the puzzle. She says I have to drink the medicine to please her. So I do. But I don't get sleepy, not really. And then she comes back. She's got a knife. It all happens so fast I don't . . . don't . . .”

He screamed: the high, piercing scream of a child. His hand flew to his left ear. Then, moments later, his other hand went to his right, his eyes locked onto some unseen terror in front of him.

“It's her!” he shouted. “It's her!”

“Daniele, it's all right. I'm going to take you to a safe place . . .”

But the child kept on screaming.

It took a good half hour, and all Father Uriel's skills, to calm Daniele down.

“Do you remember everything that just happened?” he asked when he'd brought him out of the trance.

Daniele nodded numbly. “It was her. The woman I knew as Maria . . . Carole Tataro. The one I trusted. Who understood numbers like I do. No wonder I didn't want to remember.”

WHILE HOLLY SCOURED
the internet for anything that might explain her father's interest in the Autodin transcripts, Kat dug out the copy of Cassandre's hard drive that the Carabinieri technician, Malli, had made. She went through the files a second time, looking for anything that might give them a lead.

After two hours her head was aching and her vision was starting to blur. “This is hopeless!” she exploded. “Let's go out for a coffee.”

“Give me a couple of minutes,” Holly murmured. “I'm right in the middle of some really technical stuff about troposcatter relays.”

While she waited, Kat brought up Cassandre's web history. She hadn't looked at it since she'd found the Wikipedia articles about coup plots.

On the page about the Golpe Bianco plot, she noticed a paragraph she'd skimmed last time.

In his memoirs, the instigator of the coup, Edgardo Sogno, recalled that he visited the
CIA
station chief in
Rome
in July 1974 to inform him of his plans. “I told him that I was informing him as an ally in the struggle for the freedom of the West and asked him what the attitude of the American
government would be. He answered what I already knew: that the United States would have supported any initiative tending to keep the communists out of government.”
^[5]

Sogno maintained that he would have succeeded had he not been betrayed by his co-conspirators: “It is possible that too many people knew of our plans.”

She clicked on another page Cassandre had visited, this time about the 1970 Golpe Borghese coup attempt.

The military attaché at the US embassy was tightly connected with the Borghese coup organisers. US President Richard Nixon closely followed the preparations for the coup, of which he was personally informed by two CIA officers.
^[10]
These facts were confirmed in 2004 through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Italian newspaper
La Repubblica
.

However, the FOIA request also revealed that only a few marginalised sectors of the CIA were in favour of the coup, while the main response was to not allow major changes in the geopolitical balance in the Mediterranean.
^[11]
The plot was eventually aborted after Borghese received a phone call, reportedly from the American Embassy.

“I'm done,” Holly called from across the room. “Want to get that coffee now?”

“Not right now. I think I may have found something interesting.”

Senator Giovanni Pellegrino, in charge of a subsequent parliamentary inquiry, said, “Somebody in Italy claimed they
had support overseas. But, once informed of what was going on, the relevant people immediately blocked Borghese and his people.”

“Is it significant,” Kat said thoughtfully, “that after several of the failed coup attempts in Italy, someone's pointed at the CIA as being the ones who stopped it?”

“Well, of course they do. If they couldn't blame the CIA, it would be aliens and flying saucers.”

Kat glanced at her. “You said yourself you thought the CIA had infiltrated Gladio,” she reminded her. She gestured at the screen. “Besides, these people aren't cranks. They're senators, investigative journalists, even the heads of intelligence agencies.”

Holly came to read over her shoulder. “Then let's say it's true. We believe in democracy. So?”

“
Cui bono
,” Kat said slowly.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, who benefits? Look, I've been assuming that it's the Italian government in Rome that doesn't want to see the Veneto split away from Italy. But there's another geopolitical player in this region, isn't there? The US. Your government wouldn't want Italy to break up any more than Rome would.”

“Because?”

“How many US military installations are there here in the Veneto? How many American nuclear weapons silos? How many listening posts? How many radar stations and runways and drone hangars? What would happen to those if the Veneto became independent? If the decision were up to local voters, they'd all be gone within a year. Far easier, perhaps, just to despatch Tignelli, and close his plans down that way.”

Holly was silent. Kat tapped a name into Google Maps.

“Aviano US Air Force base,” she said, pointing. “Seventy kilometres north of Venice. A helicopter could reach La Grazia in fifteen minutes, and if it dropped an assault team over the lagoon, no one would ever see. Camp Ederle in Vicenza is about the same distance, as is Camp Del Din. If the CIA wanted to stop Tignelli, they had no shortage of Special Forces stationed nearby to help them do it.”

“We don't operate like that,” Holly said. “Not in Italy, anyway.” But in her heart, she knew what Kat said was possible. Who could now deny, after the countless drone strikes around the world, that America wouldn't stoop to assassination to achieve its aims? Who could claim, after the abduction of Abu Omar and others, that her country would respect the laws and institutions of its allies? Wasn't this in effect what she herself had been saying to Kat all along – that America had been secretly influencing Italy's affairs since her father's time and beyond?

“I think Tignelli, like Sogno and Borghese before him, was a former gladiator who got too big for his boots,” Kat said. “A gladiator who, along with many others, used Freemasonry as cover after Gladio was exposed. But instead of simply causing terror and chaos, Tignelli decided – whether from greed, political conviction, or a mixture of both – that he was the one to bring stability. I think Tignelli was cleverer than those earlier plotters, though. He didn't commit the mistake of asking the CIA for their blessing. But, thanks to Cassandre, they found out anyway. And, just as they did with those earlier coup plots, the Americans decided to stop him.”

“And your proof?” Holly said at last.

“I don't have any yet. But I'm absolutely certain of one thing. What you've been saying all along is right. What happened to your father, what happened to Daniele, what
happened to Tignelli and Cassandre and Flavio, what will happen to all of us if Daniele doesn't destroy Carnivia – it's all connected.”

There would be a time to mourn Flavio, and mourn him she would. But first she needed to ensure that he hadn't died in vain.

“There's someone I have to talk to,” she said, standing up. “Someone I think can tell me more about what's really been going on.”