The Traitor (The Carnivia Trilogy) (11 page)

“You’ve seen it before,” she said.

He nodded. “You father gave it to me soon after he wrote it.”

“I thought it must be you. But you never mentioned it.”

“I had no idea it might be significant.” He frowned. “Though actually I did bring it up with you once. I tried to be oblique – I wasn’t sure how much you knew of his professional role, and I didn’t feel it was my place to reveal it if he’d chosen not to.”

It was true, she realised. Almost the first time they’d met, Gilroy had told her that her father had raised concerns with him about an aspect of Operation Gladio. But she’d never put two and two together and worked out that her father was part of the same shadowy world as him.

As if reading her mind, he said, “NATO, Military Intelligence, CIA – during the Cold War, we were all part of the same chess game. But that didn’t stop NATO from running its own, sometimes ill-advised, sideshows.”

“Like Gladio.”

“Like Operation Gladio,” he agreed. “As you know, that was an operation its creators in NATO were careful to keep well away from the real spies. And what a mess it turned out to be.”

She indicated the report. “What did you do with this?”

“I passed it up the line to my superiors.” He shrugged ruefully. “What else could I do? Camp Darby was outside my remit, and as your father says, everyone was in a panic after Gladio was exposed. NATO went into damage-limitation mode. That some of the gladiators felt betrayed would hardly have been a surprise, let alone a priority.”

“Do you think it could be true, what he wrote – that they were being encouraged to regroup by people within the intelligence agencies? Maybe even organised by them?”

He made a very Italian gesture, a back-and-forth wobble of the hand, to indicate the impossibility of knowing such a thing for certain. It was a reminder that, whilst he might not have grown up in Italy as she had, he’d been living here since before she was born. “Again, it wouldn’t surprise me. There were NATO staff officers whose whole careers were built on that operation. There would have been some, I’m sure, who would have found it hard to give up.”

“And what he said about you – at least, I assume it was you – was correct as well? That you were involved in tackling the Red Brigades?”

“Yes.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “I spent almost a decade finding a way into that organisation, Holly. When we talk about terrorists today, often they’re as nothing to the Brigate Rosse. They were well run, well financed and completely ruthless. If they were caught, for example, they refused to be represented by state-appointed lawyers, on the grounds that the state was nothing but a collection of imperialist corporations. If a lawyer persisted in trying to defend them, they had the lawyer assassinated.”

“That’s pretty hardcore.”

“Indeed. Eventually, of course, we managed to bring the ringleaders to justice. Why do you ask about that?”

“Because of Daniele Barbo,” she said simply.

“Ah.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Again, you’re quite correct – that was how I came to know Daniele’s father, Matteo. After the boy was kidnapped, as the local Red Brigades specialist I was asked by our government to offer any assistance I could, not least because Daniele’s mother was American. Despite the unlikely circumstances, his father and I became friends. Afterwards we kept in touch, and when it became clear that as well as disfiguring his son’s face, the terrorists had done something even more terrible to his mind, I found myself becoming involved in Matteo’s plans for the boy’s future. It’s a responsibility I still feel today, although as you know, Daniele has never welcomed the fact that I’m his guardian.”

“‘A responsibility’?” she echoed quietly. “Or guilt?”

He sighed. “Perhaps a bit of both. We should have been able to get him out sooner than we did. The Italian operation was a travesty from start to finish. But you know how it is in this country.”

They were both silent for a moment, thinking their respective thoughts. “So,” he said at last. “What will you do with this?” He indicated the report.

“I’m going to find out who tried to kill my father, and why. That means finding out who these people were who were infiltrating his lodge.”

“Is that wise?” he said gently. “You’re still recovering from a major trauma yourself. And even if, by some miracle, there’s anything left to find after so long, it can’t help your father now.”

“Even so,” she said stubbornly. “I need to do this. Will you help me?”

“I’m not sure you know what you’re asking.”

“I think I do.” She tapped the report. “If this is right, when Prime Minister Andreotti told the Italian parliament about the existence of the Gladio network and in almost the same breath said it had already been dismantled, he was lying. But the implication is even bigger than that. It’s now well established that dozens of bombings and other atrocities during the Years of Lead were actually committed by Gladio agents. If my dad was right, and Gladio didn’t go away, what did they get up to after they were supposed to have disbanded? When did they disband? Did they
ever
disband?”

“There are many people, even today,” he said quietly, “who won’t want those questions asked, let alone answered.”

“I’ll be ready for them. And I’ll have a head start.” She indicated the report. “According to this, the Gladio headquarters was in a remote region of Sardinia called Capo Marrargiu. I’ll look there.”

“What makes you think there’ll be anything left to find after so long?”

“I’ve got to begin somewhere. And in the meantime, maybe you could find out who else read that report.”

He looked worried. “I don’t like stirring things up while you’re out in the field. It’s bad tradecraft.”

“It’s the surest way to get a response,” she pointed out.

“Hmm.” He thought. “Are there any duplicates of this?” He nodded at the report.

“I made a paper copy at the airport, just before I flew back. And I emailed one to myself as well.”

“Good,” he said, although it seemed to Holly that he said it almost with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do. Be careful, won’t you?”

“Of course.” She stood up. “I’d better go.”

After she had left him, Ian Gilroy sat for a long time, thinking. He reread the memorandum one more time, although he was already familiar with its contents, and had been ever since he received the original, many years before. He had never imagined that it would come back to trouble him after so long.

Reaching for his cell phone, he dialled a number. It was one he’d committed to memory long ago. For reasons of security, though, he had never stored it as a contact.

“I need something done,” he said when it was answered. “To be carried out immediately.”

He spoke for just under a minute. The call over, he removed the SIM card from the back of his phone and snapped it in two. Then he beckoned to the waiter for another coffee.

T
HE
EELS
WERE
in Kat’s sink now, waiting to be cooked. She got hold of the first one using the same method Tignelli’s workman had, wrapping her hand in a carrier bag to get a firm grip just below the head. Even so, it writhed vigorously around her fist as she carried it over to the counter, head and tail thrashing in opposite directions.

She’d already laid out a sharp knife, a chopping board and a cleaver. In one decisive movement she stabbed it through the top of the head, pinning it to the board. Then it was a simple matter to lop it off just above the gills with the cleaver. The eel’s long tail wriggled away across the counter, scattering blood. She dropped it into a bowl of water and vinegar, then repeated the process with the other one before cleaning up.

Skinning them was equally straightforward, thanks to a trick she’d learnt from her grandmother. Looping a piece of string behind the gills, she tied both bodies to a doorknob, then got hold of the skin at the severed end and pulled, peeling it away from the flesh like a stocking. A real traditionalist would have told her not to bother – in days gone by, eel cooked
su l’ara
wouldn’t even be washed, since fresh water would have been too precious a commodity for the glassblowers of Murano, in whose furnaces the dish originated, to waste on anything except drinking. Kat didn’t think of herself as a traditionalist, but she did use the customary five handfuls of bay leaves to line the bottom of the pot. The eels would roast quickly in their own juices, the bay leaves both flavouring them and protecting them from the heat.

She opened a bottle of white wine, a Ribolla Gialla from the mountains to the north: its sharp acidity would cut through the richness of the meat. Then she sent a text.

You’ve got twenty minutes. If you’re late, I’ll do to you what I just did to the eels.

She knew, though, that Flavio would never be so rude as to show up late for food. Sure enough, almost immediately the answer came back.

Better let me in then.

Crossing to the window, she saw a car pull up outside. Flavio climbed out of the back and bent down to say something to the man at the wheel. It would only be going around the corner, she knew: the bodyguards were never more than a short sprint away.

The water for the pasta was already boiling, while in another pan she’d prepared a simple sauce of anchovies, chopped parsley and onions softened in butter. She threw a couple of handfuls of buckwheat
bigoli
into the boiling water, and opened the door just before he knocked on it.

It was good to be able to kiss him properly, so unlike their snatched moments in the Palace of Justice. Good, too, to be alone. She considered herself too thick-skinned to be put off by the bodyguards’ glances when she entered or left his office, but it was a welcome relief not to have them there all the same.

As their kiss deepened, he ran his hand up her hip and cupped her buttock, pulling her body into his. “Uh-uh,” she said sternly, pulling away. “Eat.”

“Eat first,” he corrected with a wolfish grin.

“Eat first,” she agreed, her insides fluttering with anticipation.

They sat at her tiny table, their legs companionably tangled, and ate the pasta while the apartment filled with the deep, almost medicinal aroma of the bay leaves. Not until the eel was on their plates did they discuss the case.

“I stopped by the casino this evening,” she told him as they ate. “I’ve got a contact there, someone who’s given me bits of gossip in the past.”

“And?”

“Cassandre had been coming in for months, buying chips with cash, then placing a few small bets before taking the chips back to the cashier and asking for a cheque. Money laundering, in other words. The cashiers would get a couple of chips as a tip, so they weren’t going to call him on it. But recently, my contact said, he’d also been gambling for real. He’d spend twenty, thirty thousand euros a night on the tables. Losing it, mostly, but winning just often enough to make sure he kept coming back.”

Flavio raised an eyebrow. “For a banker, that sounds remarkably stupid.”

“Or desperate. Then, about a week ago, he stopped coming in.”

“From which we deduce…?”

“That either his luck had changed, and he wasn’t desperate any more. Or he’d realised he was drawing attention to himself.”

Flavio got up and fetched the bottle. “Even if Cassandre
was
laundering money, that doesn’t mean Grimaldo’s story about using him in an intelligence operation isn’t true. Cassandre wouldn’t be the first white-collar criminal to do a deal with the security services.”

“But what if the truth is the exact
opposite
of what Grimaldo is saying?” she persisted. “What if they’re actually part of it? And this is something AISI is trying to cover up, not investigate?”

“This is beginning to sound like
dietrologia
,” he said, his smile robbing the words of any offence. To many Italians, there was always a hidden truth that lay
dietro
, or behind, the official explanation of events.
Dietrologia
was the faintly disparaging term for taking it too far. Although Flavio came across many bizarre conspiracies in his work, he always made a point of not jumping to fanciful conclusions without having explored the simpler alternatives first.

“Father Calergi made the point that all Freemasons think their first loyalty is to their fellow Masons, not to the law. What if these people are all protecting each other?”

“Then we’d need some evidence,” he said gently. “Investigations come to court because someone has assembled a cast-iron case, not because of hypothetical speculation.”

She nodded. “I know. That’s why I asked Malli, our IT expert, to take another look at Cassandre’s computer.”

Flavio looked startled. “I thought he’d handed the laptop over with all the other evidence?”

“He did. But he’d previously made a copy, an ‘optical image’, as they call it. After they took the laptop, he asked me what he should do with the copy. I told him to go ahead and examine it.”

“Which you had no right to do. Kat, anything you find will be inadmissible. It’ll have been completely compromised as evidence.”

“We don’t have to tell anyone else what we find. But something about this smells, and I can’t think of any other way to find out what it is.”

He was silent a moment. “And when will this Malli get back to you?”

“He said he’d email me tonight.”

Flavio threw up his hands. “You’d better find out what he’s said, then.”

She crossed to the counter where her laptop was and opened her emails. Malli’s was at the top.

Subject: Is this what you’re looking for?

There’s a lot of stuff on here
– I can’t be sure what’s important and what isn’t. A lot of it is technical: spreadsheets, lists of numbers, what look like banking details.

But I’m sending the attached document as Cassandre had deleted it recently, or thought he had.

The attachment was headed “Insurance”. She opened it.

It was a list of names, running to several pages. She spotted the names of dozens of local politicians. Others were industrialists or businessmen. Many had titles – General, Archbishop, Prince, Deputy, Judge.