After Midnight

by Robert Ryan

  I reached the traffic coming from the left first, a line of scooters, and I took them in two easy swings, shifting this way and that, dodging a little Fiat. I felt the bike judder as my knee caught the side of a Beetle. I rattled across the tramlines, around the rear of a tram, a line of appalled faces peering down at me from the windows, slowed for an Alfetta that hadn’t even seen me and I was gone, heading up towards the station and the Parco Sempione, where I’d make some cut-throughs that no bulbous Lancia could follow.

  I could feel air flapping into my jeans from a rip, thanks to the VW, and now my elbow hurt from clipping the mirror. I risked a backward glance towards the fading sounds of angry horns. There were no cops in hot pursuit, and no sign of the Lancia. I revved the bike and bumped down four steps onto a gravel path and swung into the park. Even as I felt a twinge in my spine from the jolts, I allowed myself the hint of a smile.

  I called the Professor from the phone box at the café at the little airport of Bresso, which is actually within Milan’s city limits, to the north of Ospedale Maggiore Niguarda. I had logged in at the reception desk when I visited him at the Scuola; Gutbucket would have been able to read the entry after slipping the security guard a bustarella, a little packet. So I had to warn him that they would know who I had seen.

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry, you may get a visitor.’

  ‘I have already,’ he chuckled. ‘Very interesting.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Me? Of course. And you?’

  ‘I think I broke every traffic law in the city.’

  Another chuckle. I had to admire his composure when someone had been to his office to lean on him. ‘Which makes you an honorary Milanese.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Your portly friend? To know what we were discussing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I told him to go to hell.’

  ‘Thanks, Professor.’

  ‘Oh, it was a pleasure. You know—’ He named a prominent media figure in the town, one who was reputed to be as ruthless in private life as he was in his professional dealing.

  ‘Not personally. But, yeah.’

  ‘I advise on his art collection now and then. Left to his own devices, he has appalling taste, but I quite like him. I told my visitor I was a friend of the family. A close friend. He got the point.’

  Very Italian. If you don’t have a big stick, then make sure the other guy knows you know someone who has. And the Prof knew someone who carried a telegraph pole.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said again, meaning it.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Oh, and Professor …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The first half-dozen jumps at the new airfield are on me.’

  He was still cooing when I put the phone down and headed back for Maggiore. I stopped at a motorcycle repair shop en route and bought a big ugly rear-view mirror on a stalk which I bolted onto the left handlebar. Anyone planned to pull alongside me, I wanted to see them coming.

  The Cannero was going up in the world, so it seemed. Parked next to the entrance, near the ferry terminal, was a large silver Mercedes. The driver, in a grey double-breasted suit, was polishing the bonnet, even though the whole car already gleamed like the Queen’s best cutlery drawer.

  I parked the bike round the back where it wouldn’t lower the tone, and slipped into the hotel via the side entrance. He must have been expecting that, because he was sitting in the chair near the elevator, where he could keep an eye on both entrances.

  He stood as he saw me and nodded a greeting. ‘Dottore,’ I said. ‘Come to arrest me?’

  I held out my hands for cuffs and Zopatti shook his head. ‘Alas, no.’ He looked down at my knee, where a flap of denim had peeled back to show the raw graze underneath. ‘In trouble again?’

  ‘All part of the joy of bike riding,’ I assured him.

  ‘You looked at the envelope I gave you?’

  ‘You know I did.’

  He ignored that. ‘I want you to come with me to Lake Garda.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ve just been to Como. But you know that, too.’

  ‘Why do you suppose I know anything?’ As he said it, he managed a convincing shrug of bafflement.

  ‘Look, I’m hungry. I can’t argue with cops on an empty stomach.’

  ‘We can get something to eat in the car.’

  I swivelled my head. ‘That’s your Merc? Very nice.’ A Mercedes that size meant he was more than a foot soldier in the SISDe. ‘But can we stop pretending you didn’t have me followed this morning.’

  He frowned. ‘I didn’t have you followed.’

  ‘No? Big Lancia? I clocked it in Milan.’

  A shake of the head. ‘I assure you, if I had wished to have you followed, you wouldn’t have noticed.’

  I accepted that. His people would have done a better job than the jokers who tailed me. They’d have more than one car for a start, maybe even a couple of guys on motorbikes, too, a dozen people in all. ‘What’s at Garda that is so urgent?’

  ‘I want to explain about the items in the auctions.’

  ‘Has it got anything to do with me and my plane?’

  ‘It might have. And the death of Signor Nino Leone.’

  ‘You could tell me now,’ I protested, ‘while I eat.’

  ‘I could. But context is all, don’t you think?’

  ‘Are you sure you aren’t arresting me?’ I asked again.

  ‘As I said, no. I hope there is no need. But if you come with me voluntarily, I’ll make sure you get your plane back, Mr Kirby.’

  I nodded my agreement, pretty sure I wasn’t going to get a better offer all day. I was wrong, of course.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘THE SALA DELLO ZODIACO,’ said Zopatti, waving his arm wide around the room. ‘Here, every evening, Mussolini and Claretta Petacci would meet for a session of lovemaking.’

  I looked up at the faded stars on the peeling ceiling, which seemed to have reacted to the thought much as I had, with something close to disgust. Pieces of it were floating down towards us in a steady shower, like celestial dandruff. ‘At least, that is the legend. Those with their ear to the door claimed they mainly argued about favours for Claretta’s family. That was when Mussolini’s wife wasn’t trying to scratch her eyes out.’

  I was getting the guided tour of Villa Feltrinelli, an elaborate pinkish wedding-cake confection on the shores of Garda. Except the wedding cake had collapsed a little and someone had eaten the icing, as well as shooting the bride and groom and hanging their bodies upside down from a petrol station at Piazzale Loreto in Milan. Even the pink stone was tainted here and there by drab olive camouflage paint which had been inexpertly removed.

  ‘They weren’t executed here?’ I asked, trying to get clear the hazy details of Mussolini’s demise.

  Zopatti didn’t answer immediately, but led me through to another first-floor room, its wood panelling warped, with fading cherubs staring down at us from the water-stained fresco. Two tall glass doors, several panes shy of a full set, looked over the lake, where the mountains descended to the water. Beyond them was a limitless horizon, suggesting we were looking at the sea, rather than a lake.

  ‘No. They were shot at the Villa Belmonte on the shores of Como.’ He gestured to the west of where we stood. ‘In one version they were shot elsewhere, with il Duce bravely trying to stop their captors abusing his mistress. ‘The execution we all know about was then faked for posterity.’ His smile was mirthless.

  ‘You don’t believe that?’ I asked.

  ‘It smacks of convenient fable,’ he said, flinging open one of the doors, provoking a small avalanche of glass shards. ‘Come.’

  We moved downstairs, passing towering panels of stained glass of cathedral quality, taking steps which he told me were not marble, but polished plaster over wood. Fausto Feltrinelli, the timber magnate who built this place as a summer home, had considered marble far too commonplace to use, Zopatti explained.

 
On the ground floor we passed through a salon, its yellow and gold striped banquettes torn and stained, and stepped outside onto a stone terrace dotted with clumps of weeds and slick with moss. Uneven steps led down to a once formal garden, shaded by unruly olives. To our left was a dying rhododendron tree—not bush—the largest I had ever seen. My tour guide indicated we walk along the waterfront to the small pier.

  ‘You know,’ Zopatti said, ‘a strange thing happened one day. We found a dead man in a boathouse.’ He pointed at the brick structure next to the jetty. ‘Not this one. Some way to the south.’ We both watched a steamer ploughing across the water, heading in the direction of Sirmione, a tiny sailboat racing in its shadow. I envied the people on board that sailboat, their heads full of nothing more than the whip of taut sails, the war something they barely, if ever, thought about.

  ‘Recently?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘Forty-four,’ said the Dottore. ‘He had been shot with a Beretta. The strange thing was, he had been broadcasting.’

  I walked across and sat on one of the low lichen-covered colonnaded walls. I knew he wouldn’t do likewise, for fear of staining his suit. ‘You found a radio?’

  ‘An aerial. No radio. Whoever killed him disposed of it. I don’t understand why we didn’t detect a radio so close to our centre.’

  ‘Because it was a Red Stocking set,’ I said, and explained the system designed for communicating right under the enemy’s noses. I talked about the Mosquito’s high, fast flights. Aware that we had been on opposite sides in the conflict, I again kept my tone neutral. It wouldn’t do to gloat.

  ‘Ingenious.’

  ‘Not so ingenious—you caught one of them. Poor guy.’

  ‘I said he was shot. Not by us, though.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because it would have been big news. Whoever made the discovery would have made a … what do you say? A song and a dance about it. Citations. Promotions. And they would have turned over the radio set. There was a reward for radio sets.’

  ‘Do you mind me asking what you were doing here back then?’

  ‘Not at all.’ There was defiant pride in his voice. ‘I was a junior Intelligence Officer with Decima-Mas. You know of it?’

  ‘I know it earned a lot of respect,’ I said carefully.

  ‘Later on it was wrongly used, but to begin with, I think we were the equal of your Special Boat Service.’

  That was quite a claim, but I didn’t want to disabuse him. He might even be right. The first chill wind of night was getting up, and the villa suddenly felt oppressive and gloomy. ‘You patrolled the lakes?’

  He nodded. ‘And the shoreline. One of my colleagues discovered the body.’

  ‘Forgive me if I don’t see—’ I began.

  ‘Let me finish,’ he said firmly. ‘I think the man was murdered by a compatriot of his. A partisan.’

  ‘Your point being?’

  ‘For the past twenty years, we have listened to the same story. Patriots good, fascists bad.’

  I grinned at him as if this were a self-evident truth and I got a look in return that threatened to freeze the lake behind me. ‘Tell me, Mr Kirby, do you think it is possible to be a good man in a bad place?’

  ‘I can’t give you absolution, Dottore.’

  He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. After he had lit up, he said: ‘I don’t want your or anyone else’s absolution. I am not ashamed of what I did in the war.’

  The irony wasn’t lost on me. ‘I wish I could say the same.’ To answer his querying expression, I said: ‘I made some mistakes, made decisions I am not proud of.’

  Zopatti came close to me. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t make mistakes. The problem is, we make a mistake in peace, it costs someone their career, their happiness, their freedom, perhaps. Back then, it costs them their life. I am not here to defend il Duce, Kirby, I know what I think about him, I know how I wish it had turned out differently. But I don’t think he deserved to be displayed like that. Humiliated. My God, even Hitler was spared that.’

  ‘I thought Stalin used Adolf’s skull as an ashtray?’ I had heard it had been recovered from the charred remains outside the bunker and found its way to Uncle Joe.

  ‘Another convenient fable.’

  The breeze began to whistle through the garden, a mournful sound that did nothing to lift my mood. I didn’t feel up to this discussion. Mussolini, who might have begun his career with noble ideals, ended up costing the lives of 400,000 Italians, blighted many, many more, had left the entire nation with a heritage that still wasn’t resolved. I could accept that Zopatti thought he was doing the right thing back then; we all did. He had to accept that time had spun a different tale.

  ‘My point is this,’ he went on. ‘The partisans contained both good and bad. They raided each other for weapons, argued about who got the most supplies—’

  ‘I was there, Zopatti. I saw all that.’

  ‘Maybe you missed some things. Follow me.’ He began to walk through the olive grove, away from the lake, towards the cliffs at the rear of the property. I limped after him. My knee was aching. I badly needed a good, long soak in a steaming hot bath with a cold beer in my hand. On our right were a series of concrete pilings, and in between them the shattered remains of huge panes of glass. It was an old lemon-house, now derelict, the trees within it unkempt and dying.

  ‘I will tell you something interesting, Mr Kirby.’

  ‘There’s a Hilton next door with limitless hot water?’

  He laughed. ‘Not yet. I was due to meet up with Nino Leone on the day his body was discovered.’

  It wasn’t quite as good as having a decent hotel within limping distance, but it got my attention. ‘How come?’

  ‘I had traced him in Switzerland. He was in a little legal trouble. I said if he talked to me, maybe I could help. Unofficially.’

  ‘What were you going to talk to him about?’

  ‘I will show you.’

  We reached the cliff where he indicated a stone arch, an entrance of some kind, blocked by a slatted wooden fence. He pulled at the barrier and it swung aside easily. I felt a breath of stale air on my face. A tunnel led into the hillside. Zopatti produced a small flashlight and stepped in. I again took up the rear, brushing cobwebs from my face as I went. I could smell mould and damp, and hoped I was only imagining the scuttle of rodents.

  Judging from the way the beam petered out into blackness, and the dull echo of our footsteps, it was an enormous space. ‘The Germans built these tunnels,’ said Zopatti’s hollow voice. ‘When Mussolini was rescued by Otto Skorzeny in 1943 and brought here to set up the Republic, you know there were rumours that Skorzeny also took il Duce personal bullion hoard during the raid, which never surfaced.’

  We moved deeper into the complex, the ground sloping down, and I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure there was still daylight back there.

  ‘I heard Skorzeny ran an underground railroad for Nazis from Spain,’ I said. ‘Die Spinne. The Spider. That he was rich.’

  ‘Not from the bullion, though. Firstly he set up the Perons’ secret police in Argentina. A very brutal secret police, so I heard. He did the same for Nasser in Egypt, often using SS men. Then, Skorzeny helped move Nazi diamonds and war criminals out of Europe, and for all I know still does. That’s how he got rich.’

  ‘He’s alive?’

  ‘In Spain. A good place for an old fascist hero.’ He sneezed and took out a handkerchief. The dust and spores in the air were getting to him. ‘No, Hitler did not get reparations for the rescue in gold. It was from what was stored in here: Mussolini’s war chest. Billions of lire worth of artefacts, stolen from churches and art galleries and museums across Italy. Some of it was still here in these caves at the end of the war, the dregs. However, in August 1944, a certain Sturmbannführer Knopp came with a bill for the Skorzeny rescue. Three truckloads of art and artefacts were to be given to him from these storage areas. It was to be taken
to the railhead of Chiasso, under guard by the 29th SS Division. The SS were to head south. The art was to be put on a sealed train through Switzerland.’

  I got his drift now. ‘The 29th SS Division was attacked by partisans en route.’

  ‘Yes. They were mauled, not destroyed.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But in the confusion of battle, the three trucks disappeared.’ He coughed. ‘Shall we get out of here?’

  I nodded. I wondered if he realised I knew the next part. That the 29th SS Division had been attacked by Gruppo Fausto. That I had been there.

  The sun was kissing the mountains goodnight by the time we re-emerged into the garden, and Zopatti was still sneezing from the dust and dirt. I sucked in the fresh air to try to shift the smells that had lodged in my nostrils. I finally turned to him. ‘You know I took part in that raid?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  I wasn’t sure I believed him. ‘You think I had something to do with the missing loot?’

  He laughed. ‘If you got rich on stolen Italian art, Mr Kirby, you have done a fantastic job of hiding it.’

  I looked down at myself. I should have been offended, but I joined in with his laughter. Then, slowly, as the shadows overtook us and I began to shiver—not only from the cold—I told him what I remembered about that night.

  All we did—Francesca, Pavel, Rosario, Ragno and I—was provide covering fire from high up on the hillside, concentrating on the tank transporters. Once we had blown the tyres of those, then we knew the column would grind to a halt. I could still smell the stench of cordite, fuel and flesh, feel the judder of the Bren against my shoulder, the ache of the bruises for weeks afterwards. I remembered Francesca’s elated face, lit devilish red in the burning oil drums.

  It was too easy. Even as I watched tracers pour into them, saw the flash of grenades hurl body parts into the air, I knew we weren’t fighting front-line troops. They would have hit back. These men were slaughtered, until two of the half-tracks broke a path through for them to cut and run, leaving us to collect a handsome stash of weapons from the dead. There were no wounded. Fausto saw to that. It was a cruel night. I remembered the bark of his Labora, over and over again as he stepped among the fallen.