by Peter Watson
1
OPERATION GERYON
IT ALL BEGAN WITH A ROBBERY, deep in the south of Italy. Melfi is a small town in the mountainous Basilicata region—east of Naples and north of Potenza. It is a savage landscape, cracked with dried river beds, the scars of distant earthquakes, the soil baked pale by the Mediterranean sun. Though Melfi is sleepy and nondescript, its medieval castle is spectacular. It is said to contain 365 rooms—one for every day of the year—and its nine forbidding square brick towers, the oldest built in 1041, mark an imposing outline, like large jagged teeth, against the sweep of Mount Vultura, a looming mass of dark red rock that rises up more than 4,000 feet. In the time of Frederick the Second, Melfi was the Norman capital of the south (before Palermo assumed that honor), and it was from here that Pope Urban II called the First Crusade, to conquer the Holy Land.
Thursday, January 20, 1994, was a cold, brilliantly sunny day in Melfi. There was a faint smell of olives in the air, as the pickers in the fields below the castle ate their lunch in the shade of the trees. It was 1:45 PM.
There were no visitors to the castle that day. The building had been given to the Italian state back in 1950, and three rooms had been turned into an archaeological museum. One of the main attractions of the museum was the so-called Melfi vases. These are eight terra-cotta pots, each 2,500 years old, brilliantly decorated in white, red, and brown, with stories from the Greek classics—goddesses playing lyres, athletes being crowned with garlands, scenes of dancing and feasting.
Luigi Maschito was bored. He had been a guard at Melfi Museum for nearly three years now and he had often been bored, but on brilliantly sunny days like this one it was worse, and he would much rather have been out in the fields or exploring the lower slopes of Mount Vultura with his dog. Maschito had with him a new book of crossword puzzles that he had been given for Christmas. It was a gift he had asked his mother for, precisely to help relieve the tedium of just such a day as this. Even so, and despite the rudimentary wooden chair he was perched on, he couldn’t help dropping off to sleep every now and then. He had already eaten his lunch and that invariably made him drowsy. His crossword book, open on his knee, fell to the floor.
He opened his eyes and bent to pick it up.
His forehead struck something hard—and when he looked up he gasped.
He was staring at the barrel of a pistol.
The man holding the gun didn’t say anything but held a finger to his lips. Maschito knew what that meant—who didn’t? He didn’t resist as another man tied him to his chair. “Merda! Cazzo!” he thought. “Is this really happening?”
How had they gotten in unnoticed? The castle could only be entered via an old stone bridge, and it had not one but two protecting walls. The men must have known that at lunchtime the castle came to a standstill.
Maschito’s shoulders were pulled back, hard, by rope. He sat mute, terrified, as three men, all dark-haired, all in their thirties, all wearing sunglasses, took a huge metal lug wrench and attacked the glass case protecting the Melfi vases.
The glass of the case shattered immediately and fell in a shower of fragments on to the tile floor. The sweat of fear ran down Maschito’s forehead and into his eyes as he watched the three men reach forward and snatch at the eight precious vases. The men still didn’t speak—the entire operation was carried out in complete silence.
One man took three of the smaller objects. The second man lifted the smallest vase, a jug, and placed it inside one of the others, a larger bucketshaped vase with handles. He slipped these under the arm of the man with the gun, so he still had one hand free for his weapon. Then the second man took the remaining vases, one of which had a narrow neck, making it easier to hold, and hurried out of the room. They had obviously rehearsed this procedure beforehand.
The man with the pistol pointed it again at Maschito. The robber lifted the barrel so that it was vertical and touched it to his lips—another warning to keep silent. Then he too was gone.
Maschito was no fool. He struggled to free his hands before starting to shout and scream. In no time, two of his colleagues appeared. In fact, they had heard the alarm go off when the glass of the protecting case had been smashed but assumed that the alarm had malfunctioned. Never dreaming there was a real robbery in progress, they hadn’t hurried.
Seeing Maschito tied to the chair, one guard ran toward him while the other, Massimo Tolve, turned and gave chase out of the room. He rushed from the building, through the two arches set into the two protecting walls, and out along the stone bridge, the only way in and out of the castle.
The road fell away sharply beyond the bridge, and there was a parking lot farther down. As Tolve turned off the bridge, he saw a car reversing in the lot. He watched it pause while it changed gear, and then it moved forward, accelerating down the remainder of the hill, heading west for the road to Calitri.
Thanks to that pause, he was later able to tell the police just two things about the car. That it was a Lancia Delta—and that its license plate was Swiss.
An ornate, four-story, ochre-and-white baroque palazzo, a small jewel on the Piazza Sant’Ignazio in the center of old Rome, lies just across from the Jesuit church of Sant’Ignazio, famous for its trompe l’oeil cupola painted by Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709). This splendid edifice is the public face and headquarters of the Carabinieri Art Squad, the Italians’ way of showing the value they put on their heritage. The squad also has twelve regional units and one of these, in Naples, now became the operational headquarters for the Melfi investigators. One of the vases that had been stolen in the Melfi theft showed Hercules carrying a circular shield and in combat with Geryon, a three-headed monster. Because the monster with three heads resembled the antiquities underworld, which manifested itself in many different guises, Colonel Conforti—the man in charge of the Art Squad—code-named the Melfi investigation “Operation Geryon.”
At the time of the Melfi theft, Roberto Conforti was fifty-seven and had been in charge of the Art Squad for a little over four years. He is old-fashioned, experienced, round faced, with a small mustache and the gravelly voice of a man who smokes two packs of Marlboros every day. He was born in Serre, near Salerno, and still speaks with a distinctive southern Italian accent despite his many years in Rome. His father was a civil servant, his mother was—and his sister still is—a schoolteacher, and his wife was in the same class as his sister at school. He grew up at a time when it was normal for him to address his father as “voi,” the Italian equivalent of the French “vous.” In those days, the commander of the local Carabinieri would cuff children over the head if they were out on the streets too late, when they should have been home eating dinner with their parents. He studied law at Naples University but preferred law enforcement as a career and joined the Carabinieri when he was nineteen. In the nearly forty years between then and Operation Geryon, Conforti was involved in one tough assignment after another. He was in Sardinia in the late 1960s, the years of Sardinian banditry, during which time his wife and first daughter needed bodyguards. In 1969, he moved to Naples to become commander of the Poggioreale area, with its notorious Poggioreale prison. This area Conforti himself describes as “fetente,” fetid—nasty and stinking—a place where his wife had to lock herself and their daughter in their bedroom, with water and emergency medicines, refusing to come out until he arrived home. He was promoted to run the investigative unit in Naples, a critical time when the Camorra (the Naples region version of the Mafia) and the Sicilian Cosa Nostra were beginning to consolidate, as they began their foray into drugs. One of the main Mafia figures escaped from prison at that time and, as Conforti puts it, “Homicides just happened in repetition.” It was gang war. His successes there resulted in further promotion, this time to Giuliano, probably the most Camorra-infested area in the Naples hinterland, after which he was given command of the entire Naples area. He was moved to Rome in the late 1970s and given command of the operational unit there, at a time when terrorism was growing, in particular groups like the Red Brigade.
Conforti has been involved in all the hard, intractable problems of Italian crime. He has learned the tricks of the trade, has spent long parts of his career working undercover, against the most formidable, well-equipped, determined, and organized criminals that Italy has produced. Despite the pressures on his wife and daughter early in his career, he and his wife had three more girls, and Conforti is now a grandfather five times over. Such is his commitment to law enforcement, and the need to uphold Italy’s institutions, that it has rubbed off on two of his daughters, who are themselves magistrates and, moreover, are married to magistrates.
In 1990, Conforti was given command of the Carabinieri Art Squad. He was charged with “reviving” it. The squad then consisted of just sixty men, who occupied the palazzo in Piazza Sant’Ignazio—and nowhere else. Within two years, Conforti had established a branch in Palermo, two years after that in Florence. Next, newly opened at the time of the Melfi theft and Operation Geryon, came Naples. Bari, Venice, and Turin lay in the future.
Conforti himself had no special training in art. At his liceo, or high school, there had been a Professoressa Prete, an art teacher he always remembered because she wore a different hat every day and taught him that, in Italy, one is everywhere surrounded by art. So, for as long as he can remember, Conforti has loved Caravaggio as much as he has loved Beethoven and Chopin, the three artists he most admires.
He learned early in his time in the Art Squad that though Italian art museums are well guarded, their archaeological treasures are the poor relation. They have less money spent on them and rank lower down in the government’s priorities. And so he took the theft at Melfi especially badly. There was only one aspect of the theft that gave him hope.
Spectacular thefts, like the one at Melfi, are always carried out with an international angle. The Swiss number plate in this case proved it but I would have suspected an international angle anyway. There is no need to risk an armed robbery just for a local theft. When thieves steal important, high profile objects, they do so either because they already have a buyer, or they think they have a buyer ready. Many times we have tracked thefts and lootings as far as the Swiss border, but usually our inquiries stop there. Our jurisdiction goes no further, the Swiss laws are helpful to the criminals and it was always my hope that one day we could extend our investigations beyond Italy’s border, to show the international side of the traffic in antiquities. When the vases at Melfi were stolen, and we learned that the thieves drove a Swiss car, I remember thinking, “This could be the springboard that takes us into Europe.”
But Conforti had no idea what was about to unfold.
Italian police (to use the term loosely, since the Carabinieri are in fact part of the army) have one advantage over similar authorities elsewhere. Because the looting of antiquities is such a widespread problem, at any one time the Art Squad has a number of people under surveillance. In particular, phone tapping is routine. The taps are voice activated, and the legal permissions to operate them have to be renewed every fifteen days. In the wake of a big theft like that at Melfi, however, they are essential, for the telephone traffic tells the police who to focus on.
Long experience had taught the investigators what to look out for. At the lowest level, the tombaroli, or tomb robbers, are invariably laborers or farm workers, who don’t make many calls. Above them come those the tombaroli call the capo zona, the head of a region. The tomb robbers normally sell their finds to a capo zona, frequently a man with a white-collar job, meaning he has some sort of education, and whose telephone records as often as not show that he regularly makes calls abroad. In this case, following the Melfi raid, there was a burst of telephone traffic centered on the Casal di Principe area. Casal di Principe is a small town north of Naples, in the center of the region that produces the delicious buffalomozzarella cheese.
Analysis of the telephone records in Casal di Principe showed that four men in particular had recently been making a lot of international calls. One of these, a certain Pasquale Camera, was particularly interesting, for a check on his background produced the arresting information that he had been a captain in the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s finance and customs police. He was careful not to use his home telephone very much, but the calls that he did make were to Germany, Switzerland, and Sicily.
This early burst of telephone activity didn’t last, however, and it seemed that the investigation had stalled. Spring came and went; so did summer. Then, quite by chance, Art Squad headquarters in Piazza Sant’Ignazio received a call from the German police in Munich. The Germans said they had received a request from the Greek police, asking them to raid and search the home of a certain dealer in antiquities who lived in Munich. This man was an Italian named Antonio Savoca, known as “Nino,” and he was believed to be involved in the illegal traffic of antiquities out of Greece and Cyprus. In view of the fact that Savoca was Italian, the Germans said, were the Carabinieri interested in taking part in the upcoming raid? Colonel Conforti didn’t need to be asked twice. He selected two officers, a lieutenant and a marshal, who took the first Alitalia flight to Munich. The raid was scheduled for October 14, 1994.
At the briefing on the morning of that day, twelve people were gathered in Munich police headquarters—two Italians, two Greeks, the rest German. Savoca, they were told, lived in a three-story villa in the Pullah suburb of the city, a prosperous area in the south, wooded and quiet. The villa had been under discreet surveillance for some time, and the raiding party was shown a sketch of the house and its surrounding garden. There was a high hedge, enclosing some mature trees and a well-kept English-style lawn, bordered by flowers. Four people were detailed to surround the house, which left eight to take part in the raid proper. Each of these was given a room to inspect as soon as entry had been effected.
The squad arrived in Pullah at about seven in the morning. The weather was overcast and it was threatening to rain. Savoca’s home was on a quiet, dead-end street and had a sloping Mansard roof. All the men were in uniform, which made them appear more intimidating. The villa was quickly surrounded, and the German captain in charge of the operation rang the doorbell. Savoca himself answered. A small, round-faced, dark-skinned man of forty-four, Savoca had spiky hair and was wearing a blue shirt and jeans. (His family originally came from Messina in Sicily, but he had been born in Cernobbio on Lake Como in the far north of Italy.) He was read his rights and told he could telephone a lawyer if he wished, though the police did not have to wait for the lawyer to arrive. He seemed nervous but was relatively calm in comparison with his wife, Doris Seebacher, a small blond from Bolzano. She was furious, which Conforti’s men interpreted as an auspicious sign.
There were three other people in the villa besides Savoca and his wife: their two children, and Savoca’s mother. She remained with the children while the police searched the rooms. The laws of evidence demanded that Savoca or his wife be with the raiding party at all times.
The search did not begin well. Just inside the front door, to the right, there was a huge study, with a central desk, bookshelves with books, and below them, a display cabinet with lights and antiquities on display. To the Italians this was no more than normal. People mixed up in the illicit traffic in antiquities often pose as collectors—they keep the loot in properly lit display cases, as a “collector” would, to deflect suspicion. The police spent several minutes tapping the walls and floors and ceilings for hidden compartments but discovered nothing. Beyond the study was a huge kitchen, and beyond that a monumental spiral staircase, made of marble, that led both up and down. They tried downstairs first.
The basement was divided into three sections. The first room they came to was a storeroom, a magazzino in Italian, which contained scores of boxes, each containing fragments of antiquities, many with dirt on them, and each carefully classified—“red-figure,” “black-figure,” “Attic,” “Apulian,” and so on. The police found this promising. There were also a few complete objects in this room, vases mainly. The second feature
of the basement was a huge laboratory, spotless and laid out like a medical pharmacy, with scientific instruments, lancets, magnifying glasses, jars of chemicals, paints, brushes, and other equipment with which fragile antiquities could be cleaned and restored to their former glory. This was even more promising than the magazzino.
Beyond the laboratory, however, the raiding party was in for a real surprise, something that none of the police there that day had ever come across before—not the Italians, nor the Germans, nor the Greeks who had flown in from Athens. It was a pool. At first glance it looked like a swimming pool. It was five feet deep, more than sixty feet long, and some thirty feet wide. It was lined in tiles, with skimmers to ensure the efficient circulation of water. But this pool wasn’t used for swimming. Standing in the water, in rows, like so many giant chess pieces, was a score or more of ancient vases and jars. This was Savoca’s way of cleaning the bigger antiquities—they were dipped in the pool, then left for a few days, and the chemicals in the water removed the encrustations and other blemishes that they had acquired down the ages. The police were dumbfounded. This was restoration on an industrial scale. The great majority of the vases were of Italian origin, though there were some from Bulgaria and some from Greece. Next to the pool were a number of plastic vats, containing stronger chemicals used to clean the vases with really difficult encrustations. The smell from the chemicals in the vats was quite strong, and no one risked putting his fingers in the liquid to reach for the artifacts. Savoca was silent. There was no hiding what the pool room was used for.
For the Carabinieri, however, the pool and its contents were just the first of several surprises that day. Alongside the pool, standing in a neat row next to the vats, and in a very clean state, were three of the magnificent vases stolen from Melfi. They varied from about nine inches to more than two feet high. One showed a naked youth crowned with a diadem and holding a phiale (a plate) with sweetmeats on it. Another showed a woman with a crown, dancing and playing an ancient tambourine. A third showed a warrior, in armor, with a shield and spear, relaxing and talking to a maiden. They didn’t seem to have been damaged during their journey north across the Alps.