Kill the Father

by Sandrone Dazieri

  As far as Bellomo’s military service is concerned, the information in my possession also fails to match up with Pinna’s report. I requested information from the Ministry of Defense, and I received in return a brief note informing me that Bellomo had been discharged as unfit for duty. For that reason, and in fear that Pinna might be considered a wholly unreliable source, I wrongly reported to the investigating magistrate only the last part of my conversation with him, the part regarding Bellomo’s new location in Paris, considering it to be reasonably solid. I then proceeded, in concert with the French authorities, to move forward with the operation that was meant to lead to his arrest. Given the sensitivity of this case, I assigned it to my most trusted collaborator, Deputy Captain Caselli, in part to protect my office in the eventuality that Pinna’s account concerning Bellomo proved to be the fruit of pure fantasy.

  But two grim events undermined my confidence about how much might be fantasy and how much reality in the story Pinna told me. The first of those two events was the horrible outcome of the operation designed to culminate in Bellomo’s arrest, a massacre of which I hardly need remind you. The second was Pinna’s death as a result of suicide by hanging in his home on the same day as the unsuccessful outcome of our attempted arrest.

  In those terrible days, made even grimmer for me by the death of my wife, while I was performing with great sadness the duties of my office, a doubt was, however, worming its way into my mind. However hard I might try to dispel that doubt, it insisted on returning to torment me with ever greater insistence. I wondered whether, setting aside the fanciful hypothesis of nuclear contamination, Bellomo’s unit without insignia might actually have existed. Pinna’s account of his meeting with Bellomo was vivid and rich in details that, in contrast to other accounts, appeared completely rational and sequentially linked. And if that were true, it meant that the ministry was concealing the truth out of national interest, that same national interest that, it is sad but necessary to point out, still covers part of the activity of the state agencies responsible for the fight against terrorism. I wondered whether the responsibility for what had happened was mine because I had, as the saying goes, opened the proverbial Pandora’s box of a military secret that had been successfully concealed over the years, perhaps concerning intelligence operations into the last lingering offshoots of the subversive activities of the seventies, which were focused on the area surrounding the controversial nuclear power plant.

  The nighttime mission to the warehouse that Pinna and Bellomo took part in might perfectly well have involved the dismantling of an eavesdropping and surveillance center, kept secret and properly so, even though nothing could justify the repeated reference to a little boy who was a victim of that activity, with the possible exception of the cover-up of an accident that had taken place during the unit’s service and that might even have been kept secret from their own superior officers.

  If such was the case, however unlikely it might appear, it could mean that the bomb set off in the Paris restaurant and Pinna’s death were not unconnected events, due simply to the mental instability of isolated individuals, but rather actions taken in order to deflect duly appointed investigators by what remained of the platoon without insignia, in order to prevent the authorities from learning the truth about what had happened in the past. I know, it may seem from this text that I have contracted the same madness as Pinna, but I felt the responsibility for those deaths weighing upon me, and I needed, for my own peace of mind and conscience, to find out how much truth there was in his words.

  In the weeks that followed I therefore burst into a frantic round of research in an attempt to find any confirmation of what Pinna had told me, a story I had at first dismissed. I started with the most recent events, that is, the “job” that, according to Pinna, Bellomo had done in early 2013, a job in which another boy had been a victim.

  My attention had been attracted by the sad story of a terrible accident that had occurred during an excursion to the sanctuary of the Blessed Rizzerio in the township of Coda di Muccia, in the province of Macerata. In January 2013, during the festivities of Epiphany, a minivan traveling to the sanctuary in question plunged into a ravine, as a result of the driver’s having lost control of the vehicle due to a mechanical fault believed to have resulted from normal wear and tear, compounded by the failure to perform proper maintenance. Riding in the minivan were several adults—two priests and a female elementary school teacher—and two children, ages six and eight, from the parish church of Sant’Ilario in Fano; they all died on impact. That impact was so devastating, and was further complicated by the rare event of the resulting combustion of the gas tank, that the recovery and reassembly of the bodies had presented a significant challenge. What struck me was the extraordinary coincidence in terms of place and date, according to Pinna’s account, with the “job” performed by Bellomo, a job that had triggered in him the crisis of conscience described above. What if that job had involved sabotaging the vehicle in order to cause another senseless massacre? But why? Should this too be filed under the category of cover-ups of past activities? Was there someone in that minivan who needed to be silenced once and for all? It was sheer madness, I realize and I repeat, even to think it, but the idea never left my mind.

  Utilizing my own free time and the time off that I had accumulated in considerable quantity, I therefore went to the site of the accident and consulted with the local police in order to learn more about the previous investigations. I found that during the expert examinations, nothing had emerged that might point to any tampering with the vehicle—tampering that someone like Bellomo, an experienced mechanic, could certainly have undertaken—but that nonetheless all the investigators were unwilling to accept the virtually uncanny coincidence that had resulted in the deaths of all the passengers. The minibus, in fact, had gone off the road at precisely the most dangerous spot on the route, where the steepest drop yawned, and where a powerful and swollen river scattered and further lacerated those unfortunate remains. Far from satisfied with what I’d discovered, and in fact even more deeply tormented by the thought that the “coincidence” could instead have been the product of a specific strategy, I went to meet with the relatives of the dead, in search of any potential link between them and the elusive platoon without insignia. I will spare the reader any account of the immense pity I felt for those families, deprived of their loved ones. Their irreparable sense of loss and guilt only further reinforced my determination to find out whether there was some other truth cloaked behind the facts.

  The only odd detail, if I may say so, obtained during this personal investigation of mine, was related to me by the parents of one of the children killed; they declared that they had found their child’s shoes left on their doorstep, a detail that was never explained. A few months later, this detail would prove crucial in showing me that my suspicions might actually have a basis in fact, but upon departing the city of Fano I was left with nothing but doubts and coincidences . . . and a sense of uneasiness that I couldn’t stifle. While the investigations attributed the responsibility of the massacre of Paris to an act of insanity on Bellomo’s part, I continued to search for anything that could refute or confirm my theories. I therefore began to delve into both Bellomo’s and Pinna’s pasts, in search of any evidence confirming that anything in particular had actually happened on a December night in 1989. And as I researched what had happened at that time, I stumbled upon the case, notorious though shrouded in the mists of time, of the so-called boy in the silo. It was then that

  That was how Rovere’s file ended, with a brusque white space. The flash drive contained a few other files on individuals implicated in the case, but nothing more. Still, what Colomba had read was enough to bring back the Rovere that she knew, the boss who had always helped and supported her, the honest man incapable of looking the other way. He had kept his secret in order to defend the institutions he believed in, and as the secret had begun to spill out someone had put an end to his life.

 
; 11

  Dante grinned when Colomba looked up from the sheets of paper, though he looked much less cheerful than his usual self. By now the sun had set and the rooftop terrace was lit only by a few solar-powered Ikea lamps and the embers of Dante’s and Santiago’s cigarettes; Santiago was sitting in front of the computer with Jorge and the guy with the tattooed hands, talking in low voices and typing.

  Colomba ran her hands through her hair and sighed. “So that means Rovere planted the whistle; it wasn’t the Father at all.”

  “Yes, he did it to rope me in to the investigation.”

  “He was clever, that one.”

  “Chi per la patria muor vissuto è assai,” said Dante, quoting an Italian opera, as if sensing Colomba’s thoughts. “He who dies for his country has lived well and truly.”

  “Hush,” she snapped.

  “Take as long as you need to process the information. It took me three days, and I’m still not done. Too bad he didn’t tell us everything right away, your boss,” he added sarcastically. “Maybe we’d be a little further ahead right now.”

  “He didn’t want to—” Colomba began, but she cut herself off immediately.

  “Yes, I know,” Dante went on with some irritation. “He thought he’d just stumbled onto one more of the ten thousand Italian secrets, and he was afraid of unleashing a scandal. Too bad that the child Bellomo was talking about was me. Or the kid I saw murdered.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Of course I can. Look at the dates. December 1989. That was when I ran away. And the Father’s little squadron eliminated all the traces. But Rovere was afraid of the scandal. Muddying the reputation of the institutions.” Dante got to his feet and leaned back against the rooftop railing, a black shadow against the city’s white light reflected off the clouds. “But he was wrong. It’s been twenty-five years. Who do you think gives a damn about a couple of kids who got caught up in some military maneuver? They’d have just covered it all up, anyway.”

  “I give a damn about them. And a lot of people give a damn, people who do their jobs, without fear or favor,” she said bitterly. What she’d read was still churning angrily inside her. “Or do you think that we’re all corrupt or compromised?”

  “No, just outclassed by an organization far more powerful than yours.”

  “Which organization?” asked Colomba.

  “I don’t know that. But clearly someone in the army is involved. The photograph, Pinna’s account . . . And then Bodini, the man they accused of being the Father and who killed himself. He was from the army, too.”

  “Do you seriously think that we’re up against the army?” asked Colomba, aghast.

  “Not now. The Father turned to an old friend to have you killed. If he’d been able to turn to the army or the intelligence agencies, he’d have used someone younger and much more efficient: there’s always plenty of cannon fodder lying around ready to leap into the breach. Not to mention the fact that they could have just had you removed from the hospital with a few official stamped documents, and now you’d be in Guantánamo.” He paused briefly. “But in the eighties . . . what do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Neither do I. Whether it was for their own ends or on behalf of some organization, why did they kidnap me? Why did they kidnap the other boy and then the Palladinos’ boy and Luca? And you want to know the thing that I find most upsetting?” Dante turned to look down into the courtyard, his shoulders bent. “I’ve spent my whole life believing I was the victim of a maniac, a brilliant one but still crazy. But now I realize there was a whole battalion and that they might actually have had a motive. A motive, do you understand that? To keep me aging like a piece of beef in a butcher’s freezer.”

  Colomba stood up and went over to him. Then, a little surprised at herself even as she did it, she put her arm around his neck. The contact gave her an expected feeling of comfort. How long had it been since she’d hugged anyone? “Pinna thought there was some kind of an atomic plot,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “Maybe they wanted to use you as a guinea pig.”

  “I’m not radioactive. And they didn’t test lethal weapons or bacteria on me,” Dante retorted with a forced smile. “Aside from my hand and the malnutrition, the doctors found nothing out of the ordinary. And after all, the Father wouldn’t have wasted time teaching me to read and write.”

  “Could it have been a vendetta?”

  “But for what reason? My birth father has a terrible personality, but they turned his life inside out like a sock when I disappeared. He didn’t have any links to crime or the army, and if he had, they would have found them. He didn’t even do his military service because he had a heart murmur.”

  “Whatever motive the Father might have had, when we catch up with him we’ll make him spit it out if we have to kick it out of him. I promise you that,” said Colomba, trying to seem more confident than she was.

  Dante shrugged his shoulders, taking care to move as little as possible. He didn’t want Colomba to move away. “What are the odds that we catch him?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. But we still have some ammunition we haven’t used yet. Let me tell you what I did while you were sleeping.”

  To Dante’s disappointment, Colomba moved away and went back to sit in her armchair. “I’m listening.”

  Dante leaned against the railing again, assuming a pose of sorts. “Well, then, if we dismiss the nuclear issue, I figure that the five men in the picture were working in the Caorso area because it’s the most tightly controlled place in Italy, on account of the feared terrorist attacks that never materialized. No foreigners, all access roads watched, video cameras along the roads. Anyone in uniform, on the other hand, could move freely.”

  “And the Father was the chief of the little group in uniform—that is, if he really is the German,” said Colomba.

  “He didn’t have a German accent, that much I can swear to you, but it’s certainly him. And he was the one who made Rovere realize that it hadn’t all been a dream. Do you remember when he asked you to stop investigating?”

  “I’d just shown him the identikit done by the wrong mother,” said Colomba, remembering how strange Rovere’s attitude had seemed to her and how sudden his change in mood.

  “The identikit probably matched the description Pinna had given him, even if years later. He could no longer doubt that it was all connected. You’d brought him the proof he needed, and now he could tell you to go back to your kennel. He’d understood that Bellomo and the Father were connected. Which meant that the bombing in Paris might have another explanation.” He paused. “And now that the Father has killed Rovere with a bomb, it’s reasonable to imagine it might have been his handiwork in Paris, too, not Bellomo’s. He just wanted to shut Rovere’s mouth; he didn’t trust him.”

  “Are you sure about this, Dante?”

  “Yes. You’ve been tormenting yourself pointlessly for all these months, CC. It wouldn’t have changed a thing if you’d shot Bellomo the minute you saw him. The Father was somewhere around there. And it was the Father who pressed the detonator.”

  “But they found fragments of it on Bellomo’s body.” Colomba was short of breath.

  “He doesn’t work alone, that’s something we know now. Maybe he has friends there, too.”

  “God,” Colomba murmured, covering her face with both hands. Dante stood there looking at her, but he lacked the nerve to get any closer. He cursed himself for a coward, then undid the parka and put it around her shoulders. She smiled. “You’ll have to just give me this jacket, sooner or later.”

  “As long as you stop letting dogs chew on it.”

  Colomba wrapped herself tighter in the parka. “The Father must have considered Ferrari even less reliable than Bellomo, if he brought him in later.”

  “Seeing how he acquitted himself in hand-to-hand combat, I’d have to say you were right,” Dante sneered. “I checked the cell ph
one you took from his apartment. Many of the numbers are of no importance, others need to be checked out, but there’s one that we can definitely trace back to the Father. A Skype number, like the one he used to call Luca’s mother, though not the same one.”

  “Not that we need any other evidence to show that they were working together,” Colomba pointed out.

  “No, I’d say not.” Pulling the picture out of his pants pocket, he pointed to the faces of the two nameless ones. “Coming back to the group of uniformed men, I’d say that these two we don’t know are even less reliable or out of play entirely. Dead, or else they emigrated with a nice pile of cash.”

  “Like Ferrari with his regular income,” said Colomba.

  “Or Bellomo, who burned through his. Pinna said that before he killed his girlfriend he led a comfortable life. Then he lost it all. They stopped paying him once he murdered her. There must have been a good-behavior clause in the agreement.”

  “Established by whom?”

  “Maybe by the Father himself.” Dante twisted his mouth. “I don’t like the idea that he isn’t the boss. Still, even the Father must have run out of money at a certain point.”

  “The video,” said Colomba.