The Abomination Read online

  “I’ve got no proof of any such thing, Holly. But I simply can’t think of any other reason why there should be documents written in Serbo-Croat in the tunnels under Camp Ederle.” The blue eyes looked into hers, level and calm. “No one was ever disciplined for Gladio, much less arrested. What did those people do next? Did the network really disband, or did those guys all keep in touch with each other, hatching other plots under the radar? You know, after Gladio was revealed, the police were sent to retrieve its caches of arms and explosives. They’d been hidden in church crypts, catacombs, remote farms . . . and without exception, they’d vanished by the time the police got round to digging them up. Around a year later, the first bombs were used against civilians in Bosnia. For years I’ve been asking myself if the Company wasn’t made fools of a second time.”

  She heard the passion in his voice, and knew he was talking about something that still mattered to him very deeply.

  “So,” he said with a smile, “I guess you have a decision to make, Holly. The person who asked for the information is dead—”

  She looked at him quickly. “You think because of this?”

  He shrugged. “My information is that the Italian police don’t see any connection.” She didn’t ask him where his information came from, or point out that he hadn’t actually answered her question. “The point is, you have no obligation to do anything at all with this information, let alone to go digging for more. No legal obligation, that is.”

  “NATO’s basically the US,” she said slowly. “If I tried to find out any more, I’d be looking for evidence against my own side. I’d be a . . . a whistleblower.”

  He nodded, conceding the point. “On the other hand, I’d know who to go to with whatever you found. We could keep all this in-house.”

  “We? You’d help me?”

  “Of course. I owe your father that much, at least.”

  It took her a second to register what he’d just said. “My father? What’s it got to do with him?”

  He looked her squarely in the eye. “Back in the day, Ted Boland was one of those who raised concerns about what we now know as Gladio. He tried to pass them up the line. Hell, he even mentioned them to me. Not knowing any better at the time, I assured him there was nothing to worry about. But by then he’d been identified as a troublemaker. He stayed in post, but I think it blighted the rest of his time at Camp Darby.”

  “I didn’t realise,” she said slowly. But it all fitted. There’d been an intangible feeling of failure in those later years, a sense that in some way mysterious to her he’d blotted his copybook. And then the drinking had started, followed a little later by the first of his strokes.

  “If I were to pursue this,” she said, “how would I do it?”

  “Just follow the evidence. It seems likely to me that it was quite a small group of people taking policy-making into their own hands. They wouldn’t have trusted the usual channels of communication – there would have to have been face-to-face meetings, like the ones you’ve already identified. And that means there must be some kind of evidence trail.”

  “Mr Gilroy, sir – Ian – I need to think about this.”

  “Of course you do. It’s a big decision.” He paused. “I should tell you, it’s been a while since I ran an active operation, Holly. But whatever expertise or advice an old spy can still offer, it’s yours.”

  Twenty-three

  SHE COULDN’T GO to bed. She was still too psyched by her conversation with Ian Gilroy, too disturbed by the implications of what he’d said. It was after midnight when she got back to the base, but she heard the distant throb of rock music pumping from the direction of Joe Dugan’s bar.

  Outstanding, was how Private Billy Lewtas had described it.

  It was Saturday night. She started walking in the direction of the music.

  Billy Lewtas had been right: Joe Dugan’s was a pretty cool bar. In fact, if your idea of a good bar was a dimly lit, spacious blues shack somewhere in the Texas countryside, crammed with physically fit young men, where the music was so loud the bass lines flipped in your chest and groin like a second heartbeat – and frankly, Holly didn’t know many people for whom that wouldn’t describe a pretty good bar – then you were going to love it.

  Still in the woollen Stefanel dress she’d worn to her meeting with Gilroy, she was a little overdressed for her surroundings, but it was better than fatigues. She texted Billy, to see if by any chance he was here.

  He was. Within minutes she had a beer in her hand and was surrounded by a crowd of eager young men. Males outnumbered females here by about three to one. It was one of the things you just got used to in the army. Coming from a family where she’d been the only girl amongst three brothers, she often wondered if that was one reason she was so comfortable with military life. If you had a problem with men en masse – or indeed with buckish high spirits, hollering, cheering, being splashed with beer or with a general overabundance of testosterone all around you – this was not the place to be.

  She soon discovered that one reason the testosterone level was particularly high was because three companies of Marines had just flown in from Afghanistan. This was their first R&R since being shot at. Cameras and phones were being passed around, displaying films and photographs. She gathered that their mission had been incredibly hot and incredibly dangerous. She saw pictures of village elders with extravagant beards; women in burkas with glittering eyes; grinning Afghan children in brightly coloured woollen hats, holding packets of M&Ms in one hand and giving a big thumbs-up with the other.

  She saw a picture of a Taliban fighter with his throat cut, and another in which a soldier clowned around, holding a severed head in front of his own like a mask. Mostly, though, she saw an awful lot of brown houses and brown fields and suntanned Marines in sunglasses and no shirts.

  A second lieutenant called Jonny Wright bought her a beer. It irked her slightly that he assumed he had the right to monopolise her, just because he and she were level-pegging junior officers, but when he told her he was going outside for a smoke she went too.

  By “smoke”, it turned out, he meant dope. “Finest Afghan black,” he said with a grin.

  “You brought this stuff back with you?”

  “Hell, no. We have to unpack our bags and pass them by the sniffer dogs before we even get on the plane. I get this in Vicenza.”

  They went round the back of the block to smoke it. It was strong and sweet and she loved the way her head seemed to fill up and expand softly like a helium balloon at the very first toke.

  “You going to give me a blow job now?” he asked, taking another puff.

  “Am I fuck!” she laughed.

  He passed her the reefer, and as she took it he held her wrist, put his foot round behind her knee and forced her to the ground, swiftly and deftly. “No, I mean I really need a blow job. Right now.”

  “Fuck you,” she spat, suddenly aware that he was serious.

  “I shared my dope with you, I bought you a beer. I haven’t had a BJ in six weeks, and it ain’t going to suck itself. Now open that pretty little mouth.”

  He was strong, and he had her arm twisted in such a way that he could control her with one hand. With the other he flipped his penis out.

  She tried to stay calm. “This will end your career in the military, Jonny. Think about it. Then do the smart thing and put that away. Do it now and I won’t tell anyone.”

  He laughed at her. “End my career? But you’re not telling anyone about this, Second Lieutenant. Not unless you want to fail a drugs test.”

  She’d been an idiot, she realised.

  “Just do it,” he breathed, taking her silence for assent. He leant back against the wall and put his hands over her ears, steering her head towards his now-erect penis. “Don’t make me give you a slap.”

  “OK,” she said quickly. “OK, all right? Just ease up, will you?”

  “Good girl. No tricks now.”

  His hands relaxed. She got one foot underneath
her, so that she was crouched like a runner at the starting block.

  Go.

  She powered up at him, her head lowered so that the top of it rammed up into his groin with the force of a quarterback’s charge, directly at his balls. With the wall behind him, his body had nowhere to go. She felt him fold around the area of impact like a book.

  He slumped to the ground, his breath wheezing, as she stood up.

  “See you around, Jonny Wright,” she said sweetly.

  Twenty-four

  KAT WOKE ON Sunday morning and registered a faint sense of disappointment. What was it? She glanced across at the empty side of the bed. No, it wasn’t that. Although it had been a while since a Saturday night had gone by without her enjoying some male company at the end of it, she could live without it – in fact, it was usually round about now that she would be wondering how she could tactfully suggest to Ricardo or Quinzio or whoever it might be that it was time he had a shower and got going.

  No, she realised that the reason she felt disappointed was precisely because it was a Sunday, and thus a day off work.

  She looked at the clock. Half past nine. She’d slept late, but then she hadn’t got home until after two. She and Piola had worked until midnight, then eaten risotto all’Amarone – the classic Veronese recipe, the rice cooked in red wine made from partially dried grapes – at the little osteria round the corner from Campo San Zaccaria, talking about the case until exhaustion overcame them.

  She got up, made some espresso in her Bialetti, then headed towards the shower. En route, she booted up her laptop. There was still some background searching to be done – she’d made a list, in fact, of all the things she wanted to double-check when she had time.

  Opening her notepad, she found her notes from the interview with the American army officer. She typed “Dragan Korovik” into a search engine and hit “Enter”.

  An hour later the coffee pot was empty, and she still hadn’t had that shower.

  Daniele Barbo hadn’t yet been to bed. He’d been walking the streets and alleyways of Carnivia, invisible as an angel, looking for women in Domino masks. Several times he’d followed one, only to see her disappear into one of the gambling halls or cyber-brothels that were Carnivia’s main places of recreation. He was fairly certain that none of these were the woman he was looking for.

  He checked back at the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, as he’d done repeatedly over the last few days. As he approached it he saw two figures slipping through the tall oak doors, and quickened his pace.

  Inside, a curious sight met his eyes. The pews were full. Around thirty figures in matching Domino masks and black costumes sat facing the altar, motionless, their heads bowed. A stream of encryption filled the air. It would be intelligible to all those who shared a passkey: he’d bet that meant every person present except himself.

  At the front, facing the group, was a lone figure. It, too, was wearing a Domino mask. It was also, somewhat incongruously, wearing a chasuble and stole.

  As Daniele watched, the figure spoke. “Freg mkil yrt ortinariop?”

  As one, the congregation replied, “Kptry iplf dwsta.”

  He was watching a priest take a service, he was in no doubt about that. At any other time, he would have been amused as well as intrigued to discover that Carnivia was being used for such an unexpected purpose. But now, given all the events of the last week, his first thought was “Why?”

  Holly woke up in her bare, functional room at the Ederle Inn Hotel that smelt of air conditioning and boot polish and remembered it was Sunday.

  She’d slept badly, unable to rid herself of the anger she’d felt at the Marine officer’s attempt to force himself on her. Anger at him, yes, but also at herself. She’d walked into a trap, sharing that reefer. Not that she’d have reported him anyway – or at any rate, not unless she’d been unable to fight him off. In the army, it wasn’t the culture to complain about any but the most serious transgressions. You were expected to fight your own battles.

  Just like it wasn’t the culture to be a whistleblower.

  Outside, the sounds of the base were much as they were on any other day. A platoon of grunts was jogging past her window, egged on by a staff sergeant. As the soldiers ran, they chanted a Jody, in time-honoured fashion.

  Used to love a beauty queen

  Now I love my M-16.

  Tomorrow, perhaps, they’d be deploying to Afghanistan, where they’d be shot at by an enemy who didn’t wear a uniform and who improvised bombs out of clothes pegs and cell phones. Perhaps it was no surprise some came back a little crazy.

  She wondered how long it would be before she herself saw combat. Several years, probably, by which time the Afghan war would in all likelihood be over and a new conflict risen to take its place. Some people were predicting a Cold War in Africa, with China as the new enemy. Others said there’d be a conflict with a resurgent Islamic alliance led by Iran. The only thing certain was that, somewhere in the world, the United States would always be fighting.

  Could it really be, as Gilroy had suggested, that some of those wars were being stoked by the military itself? It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, she knew. Even within the army, there were plenty of people who thought that the claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been cooked up and given to the British in order to provide the Pentagon with a compelling, but arm’s-length, pretext for invasion. But she couldn’t shake her conviction that the people who did such things had betrayed the deepest-held principles of the service.

  Pulling on her own PTs, she headed outside, easily keeping pace a couple of hundred yards behind the grunts, their chanting so familiar to her that it barely registered until it turned profane.

  See that lady all in black?

  Makes her living on her back.

  See that lady from the South?

  Makes her living with her mouth.

  She thought about Second Lieutenant Jonny Wright. Was he capable of taking part in an operation like the one Gilroy had described – an operation that ran counter to everything that the US Army was supposed to stand for? Of course he was, if someone else planned it and told him what to do. And who would stop people like that, if not her and Gilroy?

  Do not presume to think that because this mission is easy and safe it is unimportant or without valour, Major Forster had said to her. Well, now she was being offered a mission that was surely more important to the honour of the military than any task she had ever been given.

  I’ll do it, Dad.

  She recalled something Gilroy had said, just before they parted. She’d asked him why he cared so much about these secrets of the past. Surely he should be enjoying his retirement now?

  It was just as they were leaving the restaurant. Venice was foggy and the lights along the canals were fuzzy with mist. At their feet, the black waters stretched away like a gently rocking dark mirror.

  “I’ve realised that there are three things I care about, Holly Boland,” he’d said at last. “One is my country, which I served for thirty years. The second is my former Agency – its probity and its reputation. And the third – well, the third is this place. It gets under your skin, Italy, doesn’t it? Hell, I’ve lived here so long, I’ve probably gone a little bit native by now. If some of our people were screwing with this country, and they did it on my watch, I want to know about it. And if I can, I want to put it right.” He laughed, and patted her shoulder. “Or maybe it’s just more interesting than giving lectures on Roman military history.”

  Despite the difference in their ages, she’d recognised in him a fellow outsider, one who could, like her, see this situation from a broader perspective. But now, thinking the evening over, she realised how cleverly he’d hooked her. He’d said he’d help her – made it look as if he was agreeing to be enlisted by her. But a part of her acknowledged that it might have been the other way round: that it was actually her who’d just been recruited, and to a cause she still didn’t fully understand.

&nb
sp; Twenty-five

  “LOOK AT HIM! Such an adorable bambino! He gives her such pleasure, doesn’t he?”

  Kat sighed. Much as she loved her mother, she sometimes wished she could be just a little more subtle. When every sentence came freighted with innuendo like this, it made a family lunch exhausting.

  Mamma was talking about Kat’s thirteen-month-old nephew Gabriele, who at that moment was sitting on the lap of Kat’s grandmother, Nonna Renata. Gabriele clutched a teaspoon in a pudgy fist that was already greasy with ragù. His fat little face was also liberally plastered with it, like a lipstick that had gone horribly wrong. In addition he wore a huge, delighted smile, as Nonna Renata combined feeding him with jiggling him on her knees.

  “Eighty-nine years old, and she’s lived to see her great-grandchildren,” her mother said. “Well, her first great-grandchild. Of course, she’d had me and all your uncles by the time she was your age. And she’d taken four years out before that to fight in the war.”

  The subtext, of course, was that Kat’s sister Clara had succeeded in producing a baby, whereas Kat had not. And Clara’s perfectly round watermelon of a bump, not to mention a radiant smile to match little Gabriele’s, was a constant reminder that another was on the way. Despite being the older sister, Kat was a disappointment. She hadn’t so much as brought a boyfriend home since college, let alone produced a child. Her mother had been uneasy about her career choice from the start, and the continuing lack of anyone permanent in Kat’s life only reinforced her fears.

  For her parents’ generation, the Carabinieri were simply the butt of jokes. Even now, her mother would happily trot them out after a grappa or two . . . A farmer sees a Carabinieri car driving backwards up a mountain. “Why are you driving backwards?” he asks. “We’re not sure there’ll be anywhere to turn round,” comes the answer. A little later the farmer sees the same car driving backwards down the mountain. “Why are you driving backwards now?” he asks. “We found somewhere to turn round after all,” the carabiniere replies.