Disappeared

by Colin Falconer

  ***

  It was the prick, Turturro. He should have known.

  His beef had run to fat and his hair was reduced to a few oily strands, but Angeli still remembered him. He was wearing a cheap suit and a grubby shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. He sat down, grinning, as if he thought he was a real big shot dragging the colonel out of his warm apartment into the rain.

  The storm had moved in overnight. Rain drummed on the canvas umbrellas on the footpath. Angeli put aside his newspaper and raised a languid hand. Angeli was a regular patron of the cafés in the piazza. The waiter scurried away to fetch their espressos.

  “Colonel Angeli.”

  “I am no longer a colonel,” he reminded him.

  “I am no longer a sergeant.”

  “That doesn't make us equals.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Turturro's smile slipped a little. “First, let me remind you who I am, colonel ...”

  “I told you, I am not a colonel. If you call me that again I will break your jaw. And I am not here to play games with you or to be pleasant. Do you understand me?” Well, that seemed to do it. The smile fell away completely. “Didn't I see you in the restaurant in Campo de Fiori yesterday?”

  “You do remember!'

  “I thought there was something familiar about you. I couldn't place you at the time. But yes, I remember you now. You worked for me in the Command Action Group. You were the fat one who typed up the interrogation reports and sometimes helped us out with the beatings. You were very good with the picana.”

  “I only did what I was ordered to do.”

  “Va fancul'! You enjoyed it.”

  “When I got the information, I stopped. I didn't keep going like some of those other bastards.”

  “Okay, so we're agreed, you're a real prince. What do you want?”

  The espressos arrived. Angeli smiled and handed the waiter a ten thousand lire note.

  “You've done well for yourself,” Turturro said.

  “And you look like a bag of shit. What are you doing in Rome?”

  “That's my business.”

  Turturro did not seem to like the way the conversation was going. He had expected to be in control. Oh, Angeli knew how to deal with scum like this. He opened a packet of sugar and emptied it into his cup. “You're in trouble.”

  “No, you are,” Turturro had recovered his bravado.

  “Oh? How?”

  “I have something you want.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why are you talking to me like this? We were comrades. We fought the Montos together. We saved Argentina from the communists.” Turturro took his cigarettes from his pocket. He was about to light one when Angeli snatched it from his fingers and threw it on the wet cobblestones.

  “I don't like people smoking. Now that you have established we are almost blood brothers, get to the point.”

  “Okay, I've just doubled the price.”

  “On what?”

  “I have some files, names of the people we interrogated, names of the ones who died. It has our section name at the top: Command Action Group.”

  Angeli raised an eyebrow. “So?”

  “I also have the file of a certain Colonel César Angeli. It has your rank, your date of birth and the original orders for secondment to the Command Action Group as its commander. Best of all it has your photograph. Unlike me, you haven't changed a great deal ... colonel. Hardly at all.”

  Angeli did not allow his dismay to register on his face. He sipped his coffee, giving himself time to think. “And how did you obtain this file?”

  “It was supposed to be shredded. I was in charge of the shredding.”

  “So what do you think you going to do with this useless piece of paper?”

  “I am going to sell it.”

  “To whom?”

  “Gente perhaps. Or Evatremila. They pay big bucks for any hint of scandal.”

  “They might be interested if I was royalty, or a movie star or something. You don't think you're frightening me with this?”

  “Do you want to find out?”

  Angeli knew he could not allow this. Even if he could live with being pilloried in public and the ostracism of certain of his friends, he would not risk having his daughter exposed to it. “You forget, I have done nothing illegal. They even passed a law in Argentina so that we could not be prosecuted. I could go home tomorrow, a free man. What about you?”

  The rain stopped and a weak, yellow sun brought little wisps of steam from the cobbles. The hawkers hurried from the plaza to exchange their umbrellas for postcards. An artist was setting up his finished canvases on makeshift easels in front of Bernini's Fontana dei Fumi.

  “How much do you think you'll get for these bits of paper?” Angeli asked, wondering which particular idiot had allowed his files to pass into the hands of a man like Turturro.

  “Five hundred million.”

  Angeli laughed in genuine amusement. “Lire or dollars?”

  Turturro looked confused, as if he thought that perhaps he had not asked for enough. “Lire.”

  “Well, we all want half a million dollars. That doesn't mean we're going to get it.” The value Turturro had placed on the files took his breath away. The lower classes never knew the real worth of anything. That was why they were poor.

  “It's my last offer.”

  “It would be simpler to have you tossed in a beef mincer and let my dog eat you for breakfast.”

  “Then what about the files?”

  “What about them?”

  “You think I'm stupid? I took a dozen copies and gave them to a lawyer. Anything happens to me, there's a copy sent to every scandal sheet in Italy.”

  Angeli finished his coffee. It was possible this moron was telling the truth. If it wasn't for Simone he might be tempted to take the risk. What the hell was he going to do?

  Chapter 54

  FIVE HUNDRED MILLION lire! Ridiculous. He wondered about the files, if they did in fact exist. It might be a bluff. Turturro was right, the scandal sheets would love to get their hands on them, for the right price. The media in this country were like that, they did not care about news, they preferred gossip. They would rather have soap opera than a serious discussion about anything, that's why the country was in the state it was in.

  It might be easier to have Turturro thrown into the Tiber with something suitably heavy chained to his ankle. But what if he wasn't bluffing? What if he had copies of the files hidden in a lawyer's office somewhere, as he said?

  “I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars. That's my last offer.”

  “Two hundred.”

  “One, and that's it. Be here tomorrow at the same time and you'll get your money. If you ever show your face in the Piazza Navona after that I'll rip off your balls and shove them down your throat. Do we understand each other?”

  Angeli's chair scraped on the cobblestones as he stood up. He stalked across the piazza in a rage. He had known this would happen one day. No matter what you did the past was always there, right behind you, dogging your heels like a beggar. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair. He had saved the country from going the same way as Cuba and this was the fucking thanks he got.

  ***

  On that day, the 19th of July, 1994, a car bomb exploded outside the headquarters of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association on Pasteur Street in Buenos Aires, destroying the building. Ninety six people were reported dead and more than two hundred injured. Simone stared at the television and watched the dead and wounded being carried out of the rubble, heard the ambulances sirens and the screams of the wounded almost as if she was there.

  Her father came into the room to turn on the table lamps he saw that she was crying.

  “Caro. What is wrong?”

  Simone wiped her cheeks. “All those people.”

  “Oh, that. They're just Jews.”

  A body, limp as a rag doll, was carried from the wreckage, covered with a bloodied bl
anket. “How could someone do something like that?”

  “They got what they deserved,” he said and walked out of the room.”

  Chapter 55

  I HAVE NOT COME to bring peace, but a sword, Christ said; it seemed to Luke that little had changed in two thousand years. Carabinieri with machine pistols now patrolled Saint Peter's Square in the place where the first bishop of Rome had been crucified; it was a few yards from where, just a few years before, a Turkish gunman had gunned down the incumbent Pope.

  He sat at one of the plastic tables outside a café on the Via di Porta Angelica, watching the tourist buses crawl through the traffic. The hot ferragusto gusted through the avenue, pulling at the clip-on tablecloths. On the sidewalks black hawkers kept up a game of brinksmanship with the police, pushing their trashy icons into some tourist's face before running off down an alley with a carabiniere in pursuit.

  It was almost ten o'clock on a baking September morning and already the square was filling with pilgrims and tourists.

  He saw Jeremy Dexter strolling through the crowd. He waved and Jeremy raised a languid hand in response.

  He was a tall, slight young man with fair hair and a slightly effeminate voice. Because of this, and the fact that he worked for the Foreign Office, people often made the mistake of thinking he was homosexual. In fact, Jeremy had told him once, he was omnisexual. “Roger anything, old chum. Anywhere. Have to keep one's options open at all times.”

  He was wearing a dark woollen suit and navy blue tie even in the sulphurous heat of the Roman summer. “Luke. Buon giorno, old chum.”

  He and Jeremy had been to Cambridge together, but there all similarities in their backgrounds ended. Jeremy had been educated at Westminster and his family claimed Princess Diana as a distant relative. Luke was bewildered that Jeremy considered him a friend. Perhaps it was his Latin ancestry that had attracted him. In their university days he had shown him off to his Sloane Square set as if he were an exotic South American pet.

  After Cambridge Jeremy had departed, inevitably, for the foreign service, while Luke entered the grimy world of Fleet Street journalism. Against all Luke's expectations, their friendship had continued and Jeremy, now stationed in Rome, occasionally fed him interesting news pieces. While having such a source had helped Luke's career enormously, he had no doubt that the leaks were approved at a higher level.

  Jeremy had now arranged informal interviews for Luke inside the Vatican itself to help him with a feature he was writing for the Sunday supplements on the future of the Catholic Church. His editor had approved a junket for him in Rome, his first overseas.

  Luke ordered two espressos and they made small talk, exchanging news of mutual friends, European politics, and England's prospects in the coming season's Five Nations rugby championships.

  Finally Jeremy sat back and crossed his legs. “Look at all these fucking tourists.” He used the obscenity precisely, emphasising the second syllable so that it sounded almost as if it were polite usage.

  “All package deals lead to Rome.”

  “I mean, what is it they hope to find? The Pietá looks like a mannequin in a shop window. One can't sit in silent contemplation in Saint Peter's for the yellow hordes waving their Sonycams in one's face. Can't get close enough to peruse the Last Judgement, have to be seven feet tall.” He finished his coffee. “Besides, one can't look at Rome. Rome is about moral decay. Corruption. Have to feel the juice running down one's chin. Always been that way, ever since the Caesars and the wolf with the big titties.”

  Luke ordered two more espressos. Table service in Rome cost a small fortune. He wondered what his accountant would say when he got home and he put in his chitty for four coffees and they cost more than lunch.

  “Which leads one inevitably to the subject. “The gentleman you're about to meet this morning. Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for the Vatican. Name's Salvatore. From Argentine, so he's a former countryman of yours. Ran foul of the junta in the seventies, ended up in Mexico. Came under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Puebla, Don Cardinal Comacho. Must have been impressed with him because when he was promoted to Rome he brought Salvatore with him. Now he's his his private secretary. Fluent in Italian, Spanish and English. '

  “And he's happy to talk to me?”

  “Wants to use you as much as you want to use him.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Flying kites.” An American passed them on the footpath wearing a Leonardo da Vinci t-shirt and voluminous shorts. He was complaining about the heat. Jeremy raised one laconic eyebrow but said nothing. “Between you and me and the rest of the Catholic world, Il Papa's on the way out. Passed his use by date. Absolutely. Man of the moment during the Cold War. Bit of an embarrassment now. They're all lining up for a crack at the big hat.”

  “He's dying?”

  “We're all dying. Nothing imminent. One year, five years. Blink of an eye in the life of the Vatican.”

  “Who are the likely candidates?”

  “Curia want another Italian. One of their own. Martini perhaps, from Milan. Except he's progressive. Bad form. The Third World's gathering pace. A lot of Church thinkers want someone from outside Rome. Unite the social concerns of the Third World with the traditional values of the Church, all of that.”

  “Is there someone?”

  “Gantin perhaps, from Benin. Didn't get a sniff last time. Because he's black. Only difference between the Curia and the Klan is the colour of the frocks. Who else is there this time? Old Gianpaolo's spent the last two decades loading the deck. Most of the College are all die hard conservatives now. Neves in Brazil, Lustiger in France. No abortion, no thingies on your todger. Really.”

  “Is there a compromise candidate?”

  “Comacho.”

  “I see.”

  “Intellect. Man of the people. Also reasonable chap. Won't ban contraception and abortion, of course. Just won't make a big issue of it like the incumbent.” He looked at his watch. “That's your briefing. Now to have it from the horse's mouth. Time to go. Can't keep the Church waiting.”

  They dodged the cars and tourist buses around the Largo del Colonnato. Barriers had been erected around the square to funnel the tourists and pilgrims towards the colonnades. Jeremy and Luke followed the right hand colonnade to the Bronze Door. A Swiss guard in a medieval costume of blue, orange and red stripes snapped to attention. An officer met them on the steps and led through the portals to the reception desk.

  ***

  FATHER PAOLO SALVATORE was nothing like Luke had expected. He was a slight man, unusually pale for a Latin, with dark, intelligent eyes and a quick smile. He ushered them into his office with the businesslike manner of an investment adviser.

  The interview took place below a smiling picture of the Pope. It was more like a debriefing session, Luke thought. Salvatore had expounded on several subjects, such as the moral arguments against the doctrine of liberation theology, the ongoing debate over celibacy among the priesthood and the ordination of women priests. He also spoke passionately about the need of the church serve the Third World, if it was not to become an anachronism in a rapidly changing world.

  He also gave Luke some insights into the current infighting inside the Vatican over the succession. It was at that point that Archbishop Comacho's name was raised.

  “An illuminating article on the Archbishop's career to this point in your newspaper cannot do any harm,” Salvatore said.

  But it was near the end of the interview that Salvatore made an offhand remark that piqued Luke's interest.

  “Of course,” he said, 'should Cardinal Comacho become Vicar of Rome we shall perhaps see an investigation into these persistent rumours of financial irregularities in the IOR.”

  Luke raised his eyebrows. “I thought all that ended with Calvi in the eighties.”

  Salvatore smiled. “Oh, is that what you believed?”

  “What sort of irregularities?”

  Salvatore seemed to think he had already s
aid too much. “Nothing I am at liberty to speak of, I'm afraid.” He looked at his watch. “You must excuse me. I have an appointment with the Under Secretary in a few minutes. I am afraid I shall have to bring our interview to an end.”

  “Thank you for your time, Father.”

  But I have not given you any time,” Salvatore said, with a smile. “I am "your unidentified source inside the Vatican," no?”

  Luke returned his smile. “Of course.”

  ***

  AFTERWARDS JEREMY DROPPED him off opposite the church of Sant' Andrea della Valle. To appease the accountants at the newspaper Luke had spurned the luxury hotels of the Via Veneto for the faded glamour of the Campo de Fiori.

  “What did he mean?” he asked Jeremy, 'that remark about financial irregularities?”

  “Always rumours, old chum. Who knows what he meant? Now don't forget I'll pick you up at five. I've managed to organise invitations to the investiture of this new orphanage in Esquiline. There'll be a few people there I think you should meet.”

  Luke crossed the busy Corso, turning over everything Salvatore had told him. He was excited. This would be his first big feature.

  The narrow streets echoed with the tinny rattle of Fiats as they sped over the cobbles of the Piazza de Biscione. He was looking forward to the reception this afternoon, Jeremy had promised it would yield some very priceless contacts. He didn't know it then, but one of them was Simone Rivera, and she was about to turn his life on its head.

  Chapter 56

  THE CASA DI SANTA MARIA had been commissioned by a sixteenth century cardinal as a college for religious education. It had been a hotel for a short while in the nineteenth century - Byron was reputed to have stayed there - and had more recently fallen into disrepair.