The Death of an Irish Consul

by Bartholomew Gill

  Falchi picked up a phone that was sitting on the window ledge near the air conditioner. He spoke into it. A few moments later, he said, “Not as far as anybody knows. Why? How important is it?”

  “Extremely so.”

  Falchi jiggled the cutoff bar in the yoke of the old black phone.

  Foster cocked his head. “You’re very good. I could have killed you up on that roof. I thought about it, too, you know.”

  “Fleetingly, I’m sure. You would then have been fired at yourself. They wouldn’t have missed.”

  Falchi said, “The last time Rattei went to Spain on business he had to take along a translator.”

  “So the man you were talking to wasn’t Rattei, nor was the man at Shannon, nor the man who deposited the money in the Monte dei Paschi.

  “Carlo, what’s the name of the bank teller who set up the account for Signor Foster in the Monte dei Paschi?”

  “Vincenzo Sclavi.”

  “Could you get hold of him?”

  While Falchi placed the call, Foster said, “This doesn’t prove anything, now does it?”

  “Insofar as I’ve confirmed a suspicion in my own mind that Enrico Rattei was one of your ancillary targets, it matters a great deal.”

  Foster said, “Rattei has already been indicted.”

  “Falsely, so it seems. There’s the difference between you and me, Foster, the one I tried to tell you about earlier.”

  Falchi had Sclavi on the line. McGarr introduced himself. Sclavi said he could remember seeing McGarr’s picture in the Italian newspapers years back when McGarr worked for Interpol out of Naples. McGarr asked, “Did the man whom you identified as Rattei have a Spanish accent?”

  “How do you mean? In the manner that you have a slight English accent yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well—now that you mention it—before he told me his name I thought he was Sardinian, you know, some wealthy mobster.”

  McGarr knew nearly all Sardinians spoke Italian with a slight Spanish accent because Spain had held that island for centuries in the past. “You’d swear to that?”

  “Surely.”

  “Would you be willing to listen to Enrico Rattei speak?”

  “Of course—I’ll do anything I can to help you and Commandant Falchi.”

  Falchi looked glum. “I know I shouldn’t have let you speak to him.”

  “It was part of your agreement.”

  “At the time I didn’t know you were Mephistopheles.”

  McGarr turned back to Foster. “After you were put on that desk job, you started to make preliminary contacts with the official, London-based Communist party. That’s where you met Battagliatti, wasn’t it? When he came through on his speaking tour as one of the West’s leading Communists?”

  Foster started laughing now. “No more, little mon. I think I’ve already said too much. And he”—he indicated Falchi—“surely doesn’t want you to say any more either. So, you’re outvoted.”

  McGarr wasn’t put off so easily, however, and continued to question Foster for another half-hour, during which the huge black man said nothing.

  It was then that McGarr’s attitude toward having cracked Foster’s story about Rattei changed from elation to gloom. Foster was too veteran at the business of question and answer to be caught so easily, and, what was more, to virtually admit to having been caught.

  “And it wasn’t an ideological change that made you seek out the Communists, was it? No. It was because you had information and techniques to sell that might be injurious to the government that had treated you so badly. Also, when Browne, feeling sorry for you, offered you a job with ENI, you took it, if only to be close to him. You knew you could find some way to exact a little vengeance, if you were watchful.

  “The Tartan information gave you what you wanted. But you didn’t quite know how to use it, other than getting Browne and Hitchcock sacked and maybe tried for the theft of corporate secrets—until you met Battagliatti. He said he’d pay you that lump sum—fifty thousand pounds, was it?—if you helped him pin Cummings’s murder on Rattei. The situation was ready-made, wasn’t it? But you weren’t interested in Cummings; he had never done anything to you. You wanted Browne and Hitchcock.

  “So, the plan was hatched. On some pretext, Battagliatti arranged to get himself invited to Hitchcock’s vacation home in Dingle. That’s who Hitchcock had been cooking for, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t cook for you, would he? He probably thought you only ate pig’s innards and carp.”

  McGarr still couldn’t get a rise out of Foster, who kept laughing.

  “Using your old supplies of ketobemidone, you prepared a bottle of wine which Battagliatti brought when he flew the helicopter over from London. You and whoever you hired to play Rattei were in the black Morris Marina rent-a-car down the road. After Hitchcock passed out, Battagliatti waved to you. You probably made the other fellow wait in the car while you bound Hitchcock, carried him to the shed, and dumped him in. You waited until the ketobemidone wore off, searching the house for the cork. Finally, you couldn’t wait any longer and one of you—Battagliatti, I’ll bet; one shot in the back of the head looks like something he probably learned in the Comintern—dispatched the poor bugger.

  “Browne was easier. You probably told him Hitchcock wanted a meeting at Dingle. He went along willingly enough until he saw the dark house. You clubbed him, tied his hands, and then put him out of his misery. You then drove back to Shannon and stole aboard the American jet to Russia. That way Ignacio Garcia got out of Ireland without appearing on our computer, that way Moses Foster could return to London with the alibi he’d been in Russia all the time. Even the Russian authorities—against whom he had spied for nine years—would vouch for him.

  “Here in Italy, Battagliatti had arranged all the incriminating evidence against Rattei. The idea was for you to give yourself up here where Battagliatti could help you enormously. The Irish authorities would be unlikely to win an extradition with Battagliatti and the Communist party against it. And in eight or ten years you’d be out again, and this time with a sizable pension. It was all very neat.”

  Foster was still laughing. “Was?” he asked, and laughed even louder. He was holding his sides now. A tear had appeared in the corner of his right eye.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” said McGarr.

  Foster howled.

  The little man opened the door as if he would rush in to mop the floor, but Falchi stayed him, then asked, “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “No,” said Foster and waited until he could breathe more easily. “I don’t see why I should. But, if it makes you happy, I’ll say it’s been delightful hearing your friend grasp at straws in French. It’s a pleasant change from Italian.”

  “I need a drink,” said McGarr. He felt foolish, having hypothesized the collusion of Foster and Battagliatti here where Falchi had heard him. And it seemed as if Foster hadn’t laughed so much at what he was saying but rather at the foolish spectacle McGarr had made of himself.

  And Foster laughed him right out of the office.

  McGarr, Noreen, O’Shaughnessy, McKeon, and Ward dined at the Excelsior that night. Although they ordered cacciúcco, a rich fish stew like bouillabaisse, and drank Moscadello, a soft, sweet, golden sparkling wine that McGarr enjoyed, he was preoccupied throughout the meal and hardly ate. Twice the maître d’ asked him if he found the dish satisfactory.

  And later that night, he couldn’t sleep. True, it was hot, but really no hotter than the other nights they had spent in Siena. He got out of bed and padded into the sitting room of the suite. There he switched on a table lamp and raised the blind of the balcony to a height at which he could duck under it.

  On the balcony, he looked out over Siena. The festive atmosphere of the Palio was still present, and even though it was 2:30 many tourists still strolled along the piazza and past the air-conditioned café on the corner. He could see people standing at the marble bar drinking tall glasses of yellow or green
iced concoctions. That made McGarr himself want one very much indeed, but he was at once too lazy to put on his clothes and too involved in thinking about this case to want to talk, and had a long-standing rule that he would not take a drink in order to make himself fall asleep. That smacked too much of alcoholism to him, and, whenever he had tried it, the results next day had been disastrous.

  A cool breeze smelling of the country was blowing off the hills now.

  McGarr eased himself against the iron railing of the balcony and folded his arms. He was wearing only pajamas, and his feet were bare.

  McGarr thought about Battagliatti. What did McGarr know about him?

  First, Battagliatti had appeared much too gay at the party in London. What was it he had said about the victim? McGarr searched his memory. Ah, yes—“Some would say the victim invited the crime, that some imbalance obtained in his personality that begged for an untoward act to be done to him.” By that standard McGarr supposed Cummings had begged for his murder. He had stepped into a tight circle of friends, all of whom had loved Enna Ricasoli in some way, and had stolen her from them. Then, not walling her away, he had teased at least Battagliatti and Rattei over a nearly thirty-year period, letting them take his wife to dinner, allowing Rattei to make love to her, making no secret of his own bisexuality, perhaps even inviting Battagliatti and Pavoni and Zingiale to his home to witness all of that.

  And Battagliatti was growing older now. It looked as if he was losing his grip on the younger members of his party, that he would never get the chance to rule all of Italy. Never one whom his party members loved for himself, Battagliatti would probably have to pass the rest of his life alone, with some money (that much was certain), but most probably friendless. Was that the reason he had panicked and shot at Rattei—that his soul’s companion was at last free and seemed to prefer his own company to that of the handsome rival and he wouldn’t tolerate any change in the situation?

  McGarr then wondered if Battagliatti had any family, any brothers or sisters, nieces or nephews, who might take care of one of the grand old men of Italian politics, a national hero.

  Ducking under the blind, McGarr walked to the coffee table where he pulled Battagliatti’s dossier out of his briefcase. There, among the photos and news clippings that Falchi had hurriedly assembled, was his family history.

  Battagliatti’s father had been a contadíno with a small farm near Montalcino that was taken by the government after World War I as a storage area for old tanks and armored personnel carriers. Whereas the settlement seemed generous, the old man felt cheated, and indeed he was, since the land was never used for the stated purpose, and a year later was sold at private auction to the director of mines, Mussolini’s brother-in-law’s uncle, who promptly established a highly profitable zinc mine there. Battagliatti himself, a university student at the time, was outraged. He was arrested and spent eight months in jail for assaulting the director.

  He had two brothers who had fought and died alongside him during the Second World War, and a sister who lived on the site of his father’s former farm. A modest house had been built in the cavity of the excavation site and given to Battagliatti by his Communist supporters as a symbol of government collusion in schemes of capitalist exploitation. His sister was older than he and a spinster.

  McGarr glanced through the balcony and down into the streets where the cafés were. Again he quelled the urge to get himself a drink.

  Instead, he kept pawing through the mass of documents Falchi had supplied. Everything had been arranged chronologically, starting with Battagliatti’s birth certificate and baptismal picture and running through early school diplomas, pictures of his first communion, confirmation, graduation from secondary school, and his first university picture. Then there was all the information concerning his assault on the director of mines, his prison term, his statement upon getting out that he would work for the establishment of social justice in Italy. The Fascist press interpreted that as meaning he had learned the true purpose of the present government and been converted to their cause. In that picture he looked drawn, more like a confused child than the future leader of the Italian Communist party.

  McGarr turned the page and looked down at Enna Ricasoli sitting next to Battagliatti on the steps of the university mensa on Via Giovanni Dupre. Her beauty was startling. After a while, McGarr realized that the man sitting directly in back of her was Enrico Rattei. He was looking down into her hair. Was she leaning against his leg? McGarr wondered.

  Then McGarr read of Battagliatti’s exile from Italy, his role in the Russian Comintern—most of it speculation by the Fascist police and press and therefore not very flattering—his return as a freedom fighter, and after the war his early work building the Communist party in Tuscany, later in Umbria, and finally in Emilia-Romagna.

  The succeeding pictures were all of a type. They showed him at different stages in his life, dressed in the same double-breasted gray suit, the style of which changed only slightly in accordance with popular tastes. He was either shaking hands with well-wishers and officials or on a platform or in a radio or television studio speaking to his electorate.

  Quickly, McGarr began flipping through these. But first one, then another, then a third recent picture stopped McGarr. He even stood and lifted the dossier to place it directly under the table lamp. In each of those pictures Battagliatti was wearing a pair of wraparound sunglasses, the like of which McGarr had tried on in the lost-and-found closet of the Avis operation at the Heathrow Airport in London. This was only the second time in his life McGarr had ever seen glasses like these. They had thick chrome-steel frames that ran, high and low, around the lenses, more like goggles—aviator’s goggles!—than glasses. The lenses were rounded like head lamps to deflect the glare. In all, the effect was frightening. In each, Battagliatti looked more like a bug-eyed monster, some creature from another planet, than a small man. McGarr speculated that the glasses had been made especially for him, and the glasses in the lost-and-found carton had been equipped with prescription lenses which were traceable.

  McGarr folded the three pictures and placed them in his pocket secretary. He then dressed quickly and went down to the café for several drinks.

  There he met Liam O’Shaughnessy, who said, “Couldn’t sleep. I’ve got that little tyke on my mind.”

  “Battagliatti?”

  O’Shaughnessy nodded.

  “Then take a look at these.” McGarr handed him the pictures.

  O’Shaughnessy smiled. “I’ll fly back to London tomorrow. Too bad so many of us touched them.” He then glanced at McGarr, who nodded. The Galwayman, elated now, kept speaking. “They’ve got to be prescription. Otherwise, I suspect he’s blind as a bat. Well, this time make sure you’re carrying a shooter, and make sure Falchi or somebody official is present. He may be small, but he’s dangerous, he is.”

  But several things were still bothering McGarr and he remained silent. First, he felt the same deflation he had experienced when he had cracked Foster’s story. Something was amiss here. If Battagliatti had dropped those glasses he would either have gone back himself or sent somebody else for them. Doubtless prescription lenses, they were far too readily traceable to him.

  Next, Rattei’s knowing the make and caliber of Battagliatti’s weapon still bothered him. Through Falchi, McGarr had learned that was not public information. In fact, that Battagliatti saw fit even to carry a gun came as a shock to his close associates. That simply wasn’t like him. The automatic itself was an unusual weapon. In the past McGarr had noted how small men were wont to carry large-caliber weapons, the diameter of the barrel seeming to vary inversely with the stature of the man. That gun was more like one a woman would use. How did Rattei come by the information and what did it mean?

  The last thing that bothered McGarr was the man who was reading a Sera in the shadows near the corner of the tall bar. McGarr could remember seeing him not just in Siena but in Livorno, too, and—he racked his memory—yes, in London just today, or�
�McGarr checked his watch—yesterday. It was now 3:14 A.M.

  McGarr ordered another round of Chartreuse drinks and asked the barman for a telephone token. He called Falchi’s house and was surprised that the number answered immediately. It was Falchi himself, who explained, “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me too,” said McGarr. “I’ll buy you a drink. It’s just around the corner.”

  Twenty minutes later the carabinieri commandant arrived dressed in his street clothes.

  During that time McGarr and O’Shaughnessy kept talking while McGarr noted every aspect of the man’s appearance, which had been so devised as to fit in most anywhere. For instance, the suit was some dark gray material with a darker pattern running through it that looked almost Parisian, but it could also have been something an old, middle-class Sienese would wear, or, say, a white-collar Englishman who had met with moderate success. The black bluchers were trim and well made, but the heels were just slightly too large. This could be vanity, but it was also an Italian preference. But Italian-style shoes were sold in Paris and London too. Likewise, the man’s face was regular and clean shaven. He had slicked his hair back as older men in most European countries did when beginning to bald. McGarr himself had worn his hair like that. A gray summer fedora was on the table in front of him. He was drinking coffee, and that was a mistake. He was the only person in the crowded café who had ordered a stimulant. Obviously, he was still at work.

  “Who’s that?” McGarr asked Falchi after he had joined them for a time.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “Certainly.”

  The man didn’t move, and a few minutes later Falchi made a call.

  TEN

  NEARLY TWELVE HOURS LATER, McGarr was sitting in the Palazzo Ricasoli. The back of the tall chair concealed him from anybody who might suddenly enter the room from the hallway.

  Enna Ricasoli had thrown open the windows of the room. She was standing in front of him, hands on the sills, looking out onto the Piazza del Campo. McGarr himself could see the Mangia bell tower. The clock read 2:45. Francesco Battagliatti was due to arrive at the palazzo for lunch. The day was cool and dry, a relief welcomed by all.