“Nevertheless,” the other man said firmly, “it was successful. Before you rush to judgement, judge it on those grounds.”
“And Montini? How did he come to authorise all this?”
“He was, as you say, connected to the CIA – what they call ‘an asset’; probably the most important one they had. But when you say ‘servant’ – that, I think, is to misunderstand the relationship. The Vatican’s interests and the CIA’s coincided at that time. Don’t forget, Montini had seen how Pope Pius was criticised for not having done enough against the Nazis; indeed, he criticised Pius himself on those grounds. I think he was determined not to make the same mistake in the Cold War. After all, what would have become of the Church, if it had been forced to give up the Vatican? These were terrible questions for any man to face.”
“There’s a South American saying,” Santini said. “‘Cuando la CIA va a la iglesia, no va a orar.’ When the CIA goes to church, it doesn’t go to pray.”
“Indeed. I’m sure it was a difficult partnership to manage. As for how it started, that was well before my time. I do know that it dated back to the last days of the war. That was when, according to the files I saw, Montini was assigned an OSS codename: Vessel. It was a measure of how important he was to them that an entirely new OSS section, X-2, was set up to run him and analyse the information he produced.”
Santini spread his arms. “Tell me. What should I do?”
The other man smiled. “I always think how apt it was that Our Lord made knowledge, not sin, the deadliest fruit in Paradise, and the only one which led to man’s expulsion from that blessed place. What should you do? What we all must – accept that you have lost your innocence, and guard the secrets of the past so that others may not lose theirs.”
“In other words, do nothing? That sounds like taking the easy way out.”
“Believe me, when it comes to the effect on a man’s soul,” the white-haired man replied, “doing nothing can be the very hardest thing of all.”
SEVENTY-ONE
FIRST THING IN the morning, Daniele produced two boiled eggs, cooked in the temperature bath for six hours. As he’d promised, they were perfect.
She wondered when he’d put them on: while she was sleeping, or before?
It was only one of many surprising things about that night; too many to process now. And what was even more surprising was that she found herself content, at this moment, not even to try.
Holly Boland, you have a wild side after all.
Amongst many other things, they talked about Mia.
“Everything makes sense,” she told him. “Every question has an answer. And yet, somehow, it still doesn’t add up.”
“Mia’s your egg,” he said.
“In what way?”
“Like when I found the formula for the perfect boiled egg, and discovered it wasn’t quite perfect. So then I couldn’t stop until it was.”
She considered this. “I guess.”
He finished his egg and, turning it upside down, put his spoon through the bottom of the shell.
“Why do you do that?” she asked.
“If you don’t break the shell, the Devil can stay trapped in there. Our cook taught me that.”
She looked at him curiously. “Are you sure you never make jokes?”
“Certain.”
“To get back to Mia… What’s still puzzling me is why it was her who was singled out. Although I’ve looked and looked, I can’t find any reason why that should be the case.”
He thought. “Maybe there’s another way in which this is like my egg. You know how the solution turned out not to be boiling it at all? Maybe you need to turn this on its head.”
“But looking at this the other way round doesn’t really get us anywhere.” She stared at him. An idea had just floated into her mind. “Unless…”
“Yes?”
“Unless it wasn’t her they were torturing,” she said slowly, the enormity of what she was saying hitting her with each syllable. “Unless it was him.”
They got the biggest whiteboard he had.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” she asked anxiously.
He shook his head. “That’s the Riemann Hypothesis. It’s been around since 1859. I’m not going to solve it this afternoon.”
She wiped the board clean of the formula he’d drawn on it, then drew two stick figures, one male and one female, together with their names, Mia Elston, Major Elston, and drew an arrow from daughter to father.
“Vicarious torture has been used for thousands of years, particularly on those who are so physically and mentally tough they’d resist all normal methods. But by the same token, those people have a strong image of themselves as protectors of their loved ones. As the officer commanding an RSTA troop, Elston would have known all too well what Mia was going through – he would have undergone something similar himself, as part of SERE Level C. And Mia’s the apple of his eye. He hated being told she was at Club Libero, for example.”
“Which, perhaps, was precisely why they chose it.”
Nodding, she wrote, Club Libero, illustrated with two more stick figures. And then, because she was Holly Boland, the girl with the newly discovered wild side, she drew another stick figure having sex with them. Underneath she wrote, Drugs? Abduction. She drew a second arrow from that group to Mia’s father.
“Elston hates drugs – Specialist Toomer told us that.” She drew another figure. “Elston reports to Colonel Carver. Carver had the reports from Mazzanti, the Azione Dal Molin double agent, delivered direct to him.” She wrote Carver, ADM, and another arrow.
One by one she went through them all – Marco Conterno, the Order of Melchizedek, Carnivia – mapping the connections. “And Joe Nicholls,” she added. “A soldier Elston helped get clean from drugs. Who he went to visit recently, just to remind himself what it was all about. Elston denied there was any connection to the kidnapping. But what if there was, and he just didn’t want me to know about it?”
She wrote, Joe Nicholls/Drugs.
“Then there was something called Exodus. A classified rendition programme in Afghanistan. Elston seems to have only been tangentially involved, however.”
She added Exodus, drew a final line, and stood back.
It was meaningless. All the connections led to and from Major Elston, but some vital bit was missing.
“When people talk about Riemann,” Daniele said, “they sometimes talk about ‘the golden key’. It’s the part you have to hypothesise, the missing piece that makes sense of what you do have.” He pointed to an area of empty board between Carver and Elston. “What would make sense of this?”
She shook her head, frustrated. “That’s what I still can’t figure out.”
SEVENTY-TWO
“YOU WANT TO do what?” Saito said incredulously.
“To investigate the killings of Frediano Caliari and Tiziano Capon,” Piola said calmly. “As part of a linked investigation which also encompasses the deaths of Ester Iadanza, Cristian Trevisano and Max Ghimenti.”
Saito passed a hand across his face. “This is madness. Just when everything was… was…”
“Was all neatly wrapped up, and everyone was happy,” Piola agreed. He pointed to the small cross in Saito’s lapel, a crucifix whose stubby downbeam turned into a sword. “Congratulations, General. I see that you have been elected to the ranks of the Worthy Brethren. I’m sure you’ll be a great asset to them.”
Saito shot Piola and Kat a suspicious look. “This investigation. What would it entail?”
“We’ll need to interview all the men involved in Mia’s rescue. And their commanding officer, Colonel Carver. Oh, and many of the politicians who have supported the American bases over the last sixty years.” Piola paused. “If we’re right, there’s been a large-scale and continuing conspiracy to deprive the Italian people of their right to make a democratic decision about the American military presence here. We want to find out why.”
“Dear God.” Saito seemed
almost to have lost the power of speech. “Dear God,” he repeated.
He insisted on accompanying them to the meeting with the prosecutor. By a stroke of good fortune, the magistrate they were assigned was Flavio Li Fonti, a protégé of the legendary Felice Casson, the Venetian magistrate who in 1989, while investigating the deaths of three carabinieri in a bombing, unearthed Operation Gladio, NATO’s clandestine network of right-wing Italian guerrillas. Li Fonti’s own speciality was Mafia prosecutions, as a result of which he still had an armed guard accompanying him wherever he went. While he was certainly no pushover, he was a far cry from some of the craven, politically motivated prosecutors Kat and Piola had worked with in the past.
He heard them out, occasionally making a note on a legal pad in front of him. Piola made his case in careful, measured language, but Li Fonti wasn’t fooled.
“So you want to rattle their cages,” he said when Piola had finished. “In the hope that some useful evidence may get dislodged.”
“We want to spread the investigative net quite wide, certainly,” Piola said cautiously.
“It’s the wrong approach,” Li Fonti said. “The answer’s no.”
Kat felt disappointed. She’d hoped for more from this dashing, energetic man with sad eyes.
“It’s the wrong approach because, if you’re correct, you’ll both get killed long before you achieve anything,” Li Fonti added. “Stop trying to be heroes, and start trying to be effective. Dig into the evidence that already exists, and look for discrepancies. Identify the weak links, the people who have nothing to lose by talking to you, or who are sick of lying, or who might want to swap a confession for immunity. But most of all, find me some proof, however small or insignificant. Then we’ll use it to kick up a shitstorm. But not the other way round.” He looked at his pad. “Begin with the skeleton, Colonel, since your suspect there, Major Garland, does at least have the advantage of being dead. And speak to your politician, this Sandro La Sala. After all, it’s possible there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for Signor Ghimenti’s death.” He looked at Kat. “And you, Captain, should focus your efforts on examining Mia Elston’s rescue. But don’t go straight to Colonel Carver. Trawl through the technical stuff. I assume the farmhouse has been searched?”
“There’s a forensic team still on site.”
“Good. Find me some discrepancies, Captain. Something I can use.”
Back at Campo San Zaccaria, Kat put in a request for copies of all the technical reports from the search teams at Frisanco. Then she set to work tracking down La Sala. She checked the register of deaths first, since if he’d been a partisan during the war he must be at least ninety by now, but there was no record of a death, and no obituary online. It seemed he must still be alive.
From the electoral records she found an address and phone number in Lapio, in the hills south of Vicenza. When a woman answered the phone, Kat asked if she could speak to Signor La Sala.
“He doesn’t come to the phone,” the woman said. “I can give him a message.”
“Are you his wife?” Kat enquired.
“No.”
“His housekeeper then? I’m with the Carabinieri—”
There was a click, and the line went dead.
They drove out to see him anyway. Kat had forgotten how lovely these hills were, a green swathe that interrupted the flat Veneto plain like the spine of a scaly dragon. They’d travelled only an hour or so from Venice, but they could have been in a different country: a place of rolling vineyards and tiny, pocket-handkerchief-sized fields, where even the farm machinery seemed to date back to a time before the war.
Lapio was a small village overlooking the Lago di Fimon, a bucolic stretch of water where a few fishing boats drifted sleepily. There was nothing rustic about La Sala’s residence, however; an aristocratic villa surrounded by vines and olive groves.
“Not bad for a former communist,” Piola murmured as they turned up the long drive. But Kat noticed how the olive groves on either side had a neglected air, as if their owner had lost interest in tending them.
The doorbell was answered by a nun in a grey habit. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’d like to speak to Signor La Sala,” Piola said, showing his ID.
“I doubt he can talk to you. He’s not been well for some time.”
She led them into a beautiful drawing room that was clearly little used for its original purpose now. Medical equipment and hospital linen were stacked around the walls. A handbell rang in an adjacent room, and a thin voice called, “Is someone there, Maria?”
“It’s the Carabinieri,” she called. “I’ve told them you’re not well.”
“Bring them in.”
They followed her into what must have once been the dining room. A bed, the sort that could be electronically raised or lowered at each end, had been set up by the window, overlooking the lake. In it lay a frail-looking old man.
Piola introduced himself and Kat, and explained that they wanted to talk about an incident that had happened during the war.
“The war? I can remember the war,” La Sala said weakly. “It’s the last few years I have a problem recalling.”
“It’s about a man known as Max Ghimenti,” Piola said, sitting down in a chair by the bed. “You see, we found his body, or the remains of it, in a makeshift grave near what was once the old Dal Molin runway.”
“Max Ghimenti.” The old man’s liver-spotted eyelids fluttered. “Wasn’t he captured by the Germans?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Piola answered firmly. “No, he wasn’t. And I understand that you were with him when he died.”
Another pause. “I don’t… recall.”
“Mr La Sala,” Piola said, more gently. “It’s quite clear to me that there’s no prospect whatsoever of you standing trial for any crimes that you may have witnessed, or been an accomplice to, or committed. But it would help us to understand the circumstances of Max Ghimenti’s death if you could explain exactly what happened. Whatever it was, I don’t believe it was something you would forget.”
A small sigh escaped La Sala’s lips, as if he was too weary to dissemble any longer.
“We know it involved the Americans,” Piola continued. “Major Garland of OSS, for example?”
The silence went on so long that Kat wondered if La Sala was asleep. Then, his eyes still closed, he said, “There was a plot.”
Piola leaned forward. “Yes? Whose plan?”
“Our comrades in Yugoslavia. A group of them came to see us. Bringing orders from Tito himself, and approved by the Party. To claim the Veneto for the workers when the Germans withdrew.”
“You make it sound very simple,” Piola said. “Presumably there would have been resistance?”
The old man’s head bobbed on his pillow. “The Badoglini – the monarchists – would have tried to stop it. But we communists outnumbered them. And we were popular. It was just a matter of speed and surprise. Town halls and police stations would have been occupied, strategic roads and bridges held. The red flag would have been flying over Venice before anyone knew what was going on.”
“Who stopped it?”
La Sala gave a tiny shake of his head. “It was betrayed. All the leaders were killed, apart from myself. And the Americans made sure that after that, we were never entrusted with any more heavy arms or mortars.”
“Why did the Americans spare you?” Piola said. “I understand why they eliminated Ghimenti and the others. But why not you as well?”
Again La Sala shook his head. “You don’t understand. It wasn’t the Americans who stopped the plot. It was me. I was the one who betrayed it.”
“You!”
La Sala sighed. “The Germans were one thing. Even the Blackshirts – I could kill them, because they’d shamed our country. But I couldn’t have fought my fellow partisans – the monarchists and the Catholics. When I heard those Yugoslavs discussing their plan, and Max and the others agreeing, I knew I had to do something.”
He fell silent for what seemed like an age, then roused himself again.
“There was a church where we used to sleep. I did it there. One bullet in the head for each of them. Max woke up, but I’d taken the precaution of emptying his rifle.”
“Then what? What did you do with the bodies?”
“I asked Major Garland to take care of them. We were on our way to meet him anyway. He got them away from there, and I went back to my group with the story about Ghimenti being ambushed.”
“Thank you,” Piola said quietly. “I’m very grateful to you for clearing this up.”
La Sala nodded. “I don’t have long left. It’s a relief to get this off my chest.”
“Well, in the circumstances, we won’t need a formal statement,” Piola said. “If you’d just sign my captain’s verbatim notes, we needn’t trouble you any further.”
He gestured at Kat, who brought over her notebook. She had to hold it up in front of the old man’s face, then guide his hand to the right spot. The signature was shaky, but still just legible.
Piola was quiet as they got back into the car. Kat glanced across at him. “So you were right,” she said. “All except the detail of who actually shot Ghimenti. But effectively, he was the first victim of the Cold War, just as you said.”
“I may have been right about some things,” Piola said. “But La Sala was lying to us, all the same.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When Dr Hapadi examined Ghimenti’s skeleton, he found a bullet in the right shoulder. It had gone right through Ghimenti’s head, from a point just above the left ear. The gunman would have been standing just behind Ghimenti, who was forced down onto his knees.” He sighed. “In other words, it was a left-handed gunman. And La Sala signed that confession with his right hand.”
“What makes a ninety-year-old man give a false confession on his deathbed?” she said, puzzled.
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