“That’s never been proved,” said Di Marco.
Dante grinned his sarcastic grin. “True, in part because in 1973 the CIA director, Richard Helms, ordered most of the documents on the experiments destroyed. Other documents were intentionally misfiled, and finding them turned out to be very challenging, even for the investigators. In spite of that, there are at least twenty thousand pages of documentation in the possession of the US Congress, and they’re now declassified and freely accessible thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.”
“Might I ask you what any of this has to do with what we’re working on now?” asked Spinelli.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to come to that by steps, if you’ll forgive me,” Dante replied. “In any case, what the CIA scientists were working on was at first known as Project Bluebird, just like Sialia sialis, the state bird of New York; in 1951, however, the project changed its name to Artichoke, because the idea was to ‘peel away’ layer after layer in the subjects’ minds, the same way you might do with the leaves of an artichoke.”
“Nice image,” Curcio muttered.
“Then the name was changed again to MKUltra, a more neutral term. I believe you know the meaning of the word ‘ultra,’ Colonel.”
Di Marco nodded imperceptibly. “It dates back to the Second World War. The highest level of secrecy.”
“According to the findings of the Church Committee, there were more than a hundred and fifty subprojects that fell under the jurisdiction of MKUltra, all of them funded separately.”
“Just for the sake of the historical record, did this vast deployment of resources lead to any useful results?” asked Spinelli.
“Not according to the CIA. According to several scholars, however, including Naomi Klein, the results of MKUltra are at the foundation of all modern torture techniques used by special forces around the world.”
“Signor Torre,” Spinelli replied, “what you’re telling us is certainly fascinating and no doubt well documented. But we’re talking about a long time ago, in a different country.”
“And the project was shut down in 1974,” the colonel pointed out.
“In the United States, perhaps,” said Dante. “In the rest of the world . . . there are no reliable data. And what information there was has been destroyed.”
“In the rest of the world?” asked Curcio.
Dante nodded. “After the Church Committee, the US Congress ordered the cessation of all experimentation on American citizens. But it made no mention of foreign citizens. Yet there was an entire section of the project that focused on experiments outside the United States, and we know for certain that experiments were done all over Europe, even though the only surviving records concern two experiments undertaken in, respectively, France and Canada. The section that operated overseas was called MKDelta.” He smiled. “Sorry, but the military lacks imagination.”
“Especially when the military is asked to listen to fairy tales,” said Di Marco. “Do you realize what you’re telling us?”
“Everything I’ve set forth here is documented.”
“But the idea of tying MKUltra to what happened to you is pure conjecture.” Di Marco looked around the table at the others; Colomba looked back with all the malevolence she could muster. “Does anyone really believe that the CIA was behind what happened to Signor Torre?”
No one spoke.
Dante narrowed his eyes. “Do you remember what was going on at the time, Colonel? The Western intelligence services feared that Italy was about to be lost to a communist revolution, and they were ready to do whatever was necessary to prevent it.”
“It was a terrible time,” Di Marco admitted.
“And terrible times demand terrible solutions, evidently.”
“However, nothing that you’re talking about has been the subject of any judicial investigation,” Curcio broke in. “We’d know if it had. The way we learned about other crimes committed by the deviant intelligence services.”
“Do you really think we know everything that happened?” asked Dante. “And what we’re talking about was a small, controlled experiment, the security for which was run by a few men selected carefully from the ranks of the Italian army, men like Ferrari and Bellomo, under the German’s orders. And with only twenty guinea pigs, an assortment of children and adults, isolated, tortured, and stuffed with psychotropic substances by a scientist who called himself the Father, the director of the project, in collaboration with the German. One director whose expertise was security and who may have come out of the intelligence services; another whose area was the scientific aspect, as it were, and who was a civilian.”
“We don’t have any records showing that Bellomo and the others were in the army,” said Spinelli.
“That’s understandable if the top ranks of the military—or, more plausibly, someone in the top ranks of the military—preferred not to have the record show such a thing. If the German’s team really had no links to the army, how do you explain the story that Pinna told Rovere just before dying?”
“Pure delirium,” Di Marco replied.
Dante smirked. “Oh, I’m starting to see why they sent you here.”
“Believe whatever you like.”
“Then how do you explain the barrels? Who put them in the quarry?”
Di Marco said nothing, and Dante took advantage of the pause to study his audience. Their expressions were of bafflement, though also still of interest. The picture that was taking shape was so horrible that they all hoped it wasn’t true. It was much easier to live with the idea of a serial killer than with that of a rotten limb of one’s own country, capable of imprisoning and murdering innocent children and adults. No one sitting at that table was naive. All of them had seen enough in the work they did every day to lose faith in the human race. But what Dante was suggesting went beyond that; it made them feel suspicious of who might be working alongside them, whom they might be reporting to.
“Signor Torre,” said Spinelli after a few moments, “no doubt the theory you’re putting forth is fascinating, but it’s still nothing but a hypothesis.”
“But isn’t that an investigator’s job? To formulate hypotheses and then test them?”
“Then why don’t you just throw aliens into the mix?” Di Marco asked.
“Strange you should mention aliens,” Dante said. “Because, you see, after the revelations concerning the existence of MKUltra, there was an epidemic in America of people who swore they’d been kidnapped as children by soldiers and that they only remembered it much later. There are many pages on the Internet about this phenomenon; just search for the phrases ‘MKUltra children’ or ‘MKUltra abduction.’ Among them, there are several who claim that the many notorious alien abductions reported were nothing more than a cover for the experiments of MKUltra. Personally, I always assumed they were merely an urban legend. But now I find certain unsettling similarities to what happened to me.” He turned to the woman from LABANOF. “Ma’am, have you by chance found something to corroborate my thesis in the remains of those poor souls?”
Caught off guard, Roberta started. “How would you know about that?”
“I saw the look on your face when I was talking about psychotropic substances.”
The woman exchanged a glance with Spinelli, who nodded. “We have a great deal of work left to do, but in one fragment of a femur, there was still a certain amount of reasonably well preserved bone marrow. And, as you all may know, it is possible to detect in bone marrow residues of whatever substances were present in the bloodstream at the moment of death.”
“Go on,” said Spinelli.
“We believe that the victim had been subjected to the repeated administration of a substance similar to propranolol—an antianxiety agent developed in the fifties but that has recently been the subject of study because it seems capable of triggering selective amnesia.”
“And that’s not all,” Dante added, his eyes sparkling. “It can be used for posthypnotic conditioning as well as t
o eliminate inhibitory brakes. It was one of the substances that the scientists at the CIA were studying in their work to come up with a truth serum.”
“But that might be nothing more than a simple coincidence,” said Curcio.
“Yes, but there are starting to be a lot of coincidences, don’t you think? Certainly, if the German confessed, or if one of the other men in the picture said what he knows, it would all become much easier.”
“Have any of them been identified?” asked Colomba.
“Only one, the man standing next to Bellomo,” Curcio replied. “We’ve worked our way through Bellomo’s and Ferrari’s acquaintances, and he seems to have been a skydiving instructor who died in an accident six years ago.”
“So that leaves two,” said Colomba. “Including whoever took the picture.”
“And we’re looking for them, Deputy Captain,” Curcio replied. “Just as we’re searching for other ties to the German.”
“So we still don’t know who he is?” asked Roberta.
“Unfortunately, no,” Spinelli replied. “But what we do know about him is sufficient to link him at the very least with the kidnappings and the murder of Luca Maugeri’s mother. Signor Torre, if what you say were true, why at a certain point would the German and his platoon have killed all the prisoners?”
“Because times had changed and the Italian MKUltra program was shut down,” Dante replied.
“If it ever existed,” said Di Marco.
“We can always rely on you,” Dante sneered. “In 1989, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the idea of a Soviet invasion became much less plausible and it became harder to justify the allocation of funds to keep the operation running. The German was ordered to clean house. And a few weeks later, he did exactly as he was told.” He lit his fifth cigarette since he’d started talking. “Nineteen guinea pigs wound up in plastic drums at the bottom of the lake. One of them is here, talking to you today. The members of the brigade responsible for the surveillance and kidnapping of the guinea pigs were sent into retirement with generous pensions. The equipment and the pharmaceuticals were destroyed and burnt. We’d never have heard another word about them if the Father hadn’t decided to get back into business four years ago, to judge from when the first kidnapping of the new season took place. That is, of course, unless there’s a whole set of prisoners in other containers that we know nothing about.”
“You said earlier that the idea of a communist invasion is obsolete these days,” said Curcio. “Why would the MKUltra program have been revived?”
“I don’t believe for a second that it’s been revived,” Dante replied. “What I think has happened is that the Father has found a new customer. He’s working for a private company.”
27
Dante lit his sixth cigarette since he’d begun talking, off the butt of the one before. “I believe that the Father went on studying the results of his so-called research over the years and came to the conviction, rightly or wrongly, that one of his guinea pigs, before being killed, had actually benefited from the mix of pharmaceuticals they were injected with. Am I wrong, Doctor, or is propranolol now being studied as a potential cure for a disease that is otherwise incurable?”
“Yes, autism,” said the scientist from LABANOF, shaking her head as she returned to the topic at hand. “Though autism isn’t a disease. It’s more accurate to think of it as a cluster of personality disorders.”
“True, you’re quite right,” Dante admitted with an apologetic smile. “And I don’t know whether one of the guinea pigs really was autistic and whether he actually improved before being killed and dissolved in acid or whether the Father is simply a madman. What I do know is that he has resumed his experimentation on prisoners, choosing very specific guinea pigs to work with.”
“Were they all sick, Madame Judge, even before the kidnapping?” asked Curcio.
“As of now, only five of the ten prisoners in the containers have been identified. All of them suffered from one form or another of autism or cognitive deficit,” Spinelli replied.
“It can’t have been a random selection,” Dante observed.
“And would the Father have done this just to find a cure?” Curcio inquired.
“Just?” asked Dante. “Aside from the possibility that he considers this his life’s mission, do you know how much an effective cure for autism would be worth on the market?”
“Billions,” said Roberta. “There are at least five million people with autism in Europe alone: an enormous market. But as I was saying earlier, it’s a syndrome, not a disease. Autistic patients need speech and learning therapy, not injections. Psychotropic drugs can be used in certain cases strictly to mitigate states of crisis.”
“What about the theory that autism can be caused by vaccinations?” asked Curcio.
“Pure idiocy,” Roberta replied tensely.
“I believe that the Father has been funded by someone who had a specific interest in having him continue with his experiments. Someone who offered him access to an ideal venue, such as Silver Compass, where he could select his guinea pigs, someone, however, who got tired of wasting his money and two years ago cut off the funds. That’s why Silver Compass shut down and the Father started to sell child pornography on the Web to raise money.”
“And just who would his financers be?” Curcio inquired.
“Find out who supplied him with pharmaceuticals, and you’ll have your answer.”
“If he’s truly convinced he can find a cure,” Spinelli broke in, “why hasn’t be made use of a standard experimentation protocol?”
“Because no one would have approved treatment based on his methods, given the fact that he couldn’t tell anybody how he got started. And because he wanted to isolate his guinea pigs, the way he did before, and that, too, wasn’t possible under normal conditions.” Dante shook his head. “Deputy Captain Caselli and I have always wondered why the Father didn’t just take street children or abandoned kids. Why go to such extreme risks, why commit murder and stage car crashes? In the context of medical experimentation, the answer becomes clear: he needed to know everything about his guinea pigs, including any potential hereditary defects. He needed to know who the parents were, how they’d lived, what treatments they’d undergone.”
“Laboratory conditions,” said Roberta.
“Exactly.” Dante looked over at Spinelli. “Forgive me if I jump in for a moment and ask questions myself . . . but can you tell me whether the medicines found in the German’s cellar storehouse have been analyzed?”
Spinelli nodded. “So far, there have been no matches with pharmaceuticals on the market.”
“Maybe they’re not on the market yet.”
“Signor Torre, would you rule out the possibility that the German was operating alone the whole time?” asked Curcio. “The presence of this Father has never been pinned down in the investigations. The German might very well know something about medicine.”
Dante shook his head. “I know that you’d rather believe that he never existed, but the Father is still out there,” he replied. “He has no men, he no longer has the German to kill for him, he no longer has funding. But he was the one who set the whole thing up, and he’s the most dangerous one. He’s the one who has to be stopped before it starts all over again somewhere else, with new guinea pigs.”
For a few seconds there was silence.
“Are you done?” Di Marco asked rudely. “Because if so, I ought to go back and work on some serious matters.”
“I’m done,” said Dante. “Thanks so much for your invaluable contribution.”
Spinelli held out her hand to the colonel from IISA. “Thanks for taking part.”
“It was my duty, signora.” Di Marco got up and left without saying good-bye. The others exchanged doubtful and slightly embarrassed glances. Deep down, Dante sighed. He’d hoped to be hailed as a conquering hero, but the outcome, unfortunately, was the lukewarm response he’d actually expected. He’d planted a seed; perhaps somethi
ng would come of it one day. All of them, magistrates and cops, the next time they found themselves confronted with a new coincidence, a tiny significant match, might be less likely to file it away with a shrug of the shoulders. At least they might stop and think.
He lit another cigarette and felt the urge for a good espresso, followed by a Moscow Mule big enough to swim in. As he was saying good-bye to them all, thanking them for their words of praise—especially the scientist from LABANOF, Roberta, who gave him her phone number—Dante couldn’t help but notice that Colomba was remaining at a distance, shut up in her own thoughts, with the grim expression of the very worst times. Yet she’d been in a good mood when she’d arrived earlier that day. And the mood had held for almost the entire meeting. What had happened? He was about to go over and talk to her, but Curcio beat him to it.
The police officer locked arms with Colomba and led her over to the parapet. She gave him a half smile, and he released her arm immediately. “What I just saw was very interesting, though I’m not sure how useful it will prove to be. What do you think about it?”
“I believe it,” Colomba replied grimly.
Curcio stroked his mustache. “Even without evidence.”
“We fished evidence out of the bottom of the lake. But thanks for everything all the same.”
He smiled. “You’ve already thanked me once, when we met at the farmhouse, but if you really want to pay me back . . . why don’t you come by my office one of these days? To talk about your future.”
“In the police?” Colomba asked, astonished.
“It’ll take a while before all your legal issues are cleared up once and for all, but I’m pretty sure everything will turn out all right. So why shouldn’t we do some advance planning?”
Colomba shook her head. “Give me a few more days.”
“All right. A car is going to take me back to Rome in a few minutes. Would you care to join me? With Signor Torre, if you like.”
“I still have something to take care of here. I have to . . . meet someone.” Looking over Curcio’s shoulder, Colomba saw that Dante was coming over, and she felt a surge of panic. “I need to go, excuse me.” She turned on her heel and hurried out, leaving Dante open-mouthed and feeling hurt. Colomba felt guilty for having abandoned him, but he seemed to read her mind with disturbing ease. She’d have had to lie to him, and that was something she knew she couldn’t pull off. Better to just turn and run and apologize later.
Kill the Father Page 44