The Absolution Page 8

  The more she thought about it – and on the plane she’d thought about little else – the more certain she’d become. Only an insider would have had access to his medical records. And only an insider would have had sight of that memorandum.

  So her start point had to be whoever he’d given the memorandum to.

  I have therefore passed the memorandum to a US intelligence officer of my acquaintance who, I knew, had previously been involved in the neutralisation of terrorist organisations such as the Red Brigades, in the hope that he will be able to distribute it to those best placed to take action.

  She sat bolt upright. Pulling out her phone, she made a call. It went straight through to voicemail.

  “Daniele, it’s Holly,” she said. “I need to speak to you. Call me back, will you?” Just to be sure, she sent a text as well.

  She waited twenty minutes to see if he’d reply. Then she dialled another number. This time it was answered immediately.

  “Holly,” an American voice said warmly, before switching to Italian. “Come stai? Così sei tornata in Italia?”

  “Fine,” she said hesitantly. “I just got back. Look, could we meet?”

  A few kilometres away, in the music room of Ca’ Barbo, Daniele looked at his phone as it displayed, first, Holly’s caller ID, then the voicemail alert, and finally the text.

  Holly Boland.

  Holly Boland voicemail.

  Holly Boland message.

  Glancing at the To-Do list still taped on the wall, his eye rested on the second item.

  Finish with Holly.

  He had slept with the wiry blonde American just once, but the experience had disturbed his dreams for weeks. Sometimes he found himself entertaining crazy fantasies of domesticity, in which they lived together like any other ordinary couple. Then he would catch sight of his face in a mirror – the horribly truncated nose, flat-tipped like a pig’s, the white rose buds of scar tissue where his ears had once been: the twin legacies of his childhood kidnap – and he loathed himself. Not for what he looked like, but for his weakness in not accepting that cosy domesticity would never be his lot. Whatever Holly’s motives for going to bed with him – and in his bleaker moments he believed she had been pushed into it by his guardian – he knew it hadn’t meant the same to her as it had to him.

  Reaching for a pencil, he crossed the second item off. Then, abruptly, he pushed back his chair and stood up.

  FOURTEEN

  KAT CALLED FLAVIO from the boat on her way back from La Grazia. “I may not have any leads, but I have got some eels. Can you come round tonight?”

  There was a long silence at the other end.

  “Or we could meet at a hotel,” she added, mentally kicking herself for her stupidity. As part of his security arrangements, Flavio wasn’t meant to spend more than one night a week in the same place, and he’d last been to her apartment just a few nights ago.

  A couple of times recently he’d tried to warn her that she shouldn’t get too involved, that his life wasn’t one that anyone could share, but she didn’t care about that. If snatched encounters in hotel rooms or his office was the price of a relationship with him, it was one she was willing to pay.

  But as it turned out, that wasn’t why he was hesitating.

  “Captain, I think you should come and see me straight away,” he said formally. “There’s been an important development.”

  By which she took him to mean, first, that he wasn’t alone, and second, that the investigation was about to get even murkier. Had Tignelli been stirring up trouble already?

  She turned the Carabinieri boat hard to port, towards Santa Croce and the Palace of Justice.

  As well as Flavio, there were two other men in his office. One was Benito Marcello, a prosecutor she’d worked with before. He was young, bright, impeccably dressed and, she knew, utterly craven, especially when it came to making any decision that wouldn’t directly further his own career. The other was a short, grey-haired man she didn’t know.

  “This is Colonel Grimaldo,” Flavio said, introducing him. “Prosecutor Marcello you’ve already met. We thought it best to inform you straight away.”

  “Of what?”

  It was Grimaldo who answered. “Responsibility for the investigation you are currently working on is being transferred to AISI.”

  “To the Intelligence Service!” she said, astounded. “Why?”

  “It impacts on a parallel operation by the anti-terrorist division. That’s all I can say.”

  Marcello tapped his pen self-importantly on the desk to gain her attention. “You will hand over any evidence you have gathered so far to Colonel Grimaldo and his team. That includes records, forensic reports, and physical evidence such as Signor Cassandre’s laptop. His body has already been moved to the hospital in Milan, where Grimaldo’s team will conduct the autopsy. General Saito has been informed.”

  “An anti-terrorist operation?” she repeated slowly. “I don’t understand. All the information we have so far suggests that Cassandre was involved in financial crimes.”

  “Then perhaps,” Marcello said smoothly, “the secret services have done their job, Captain, and managed to keep their involvement, and by extension the operation, secret.”

  She got the implication. “So he was an informant?”

  Colonel Grimaldo gave Marcello an annoyed glance. “All details of our involvement with Signor Cassandre remain subject to operational secrecy. Although I’d be interested to know, Captain, what makes you reach the conclusion that he was engaged in criminal activity.”

  “We recovered a large amount of money in electronic form from his office. We also found a number of high-denomination casino chips.”

  “Well, we will follow the leads you’ve developed to the very best of our ability,” Grimaldo said. “My thanks for all your efforts.” He stood up and addressed Marcello. “Avvocato, can we speak in your office?”

  When they were alone, she turned to Flavio. “Terrorism? Really?”

  He shrugged. “Cassandre was registered as an informant on the AISI database. Marcello showed me the entry.”

  “But there has to be a financial angle,” she said, thinking aloud. “And what about Tignelli? I suspect he’s involved somehow, but there’s surely no way he can be part of some terrorist plot.” It was only just sinking in that she had been removed from her first homicide investigation as casually as a moth being brushed off a coat. Disbelief was rapidly giving way to anger. “I bet those fucking pricks at AISI have got this all wrong, as usual. Either that, or they’re part of the cover-up as well.”

  “Why do you say that about Tignelli?” Flavio said, going straight to the point as usual.

  She told him about her visit to La Grazia. “I’m sure he knew exactly why I was there,” she concluded. “There was all this fancy misdirection with the eels, but he’d clearly been prewarned. Plus he’s the only person I’ve spoken to so far who hasn’t seemed frightened by what happened to Cassandre.”

  “Those are the eels, I take it?” He pointed at the bag she’d left by the door. Every so often it gave a violent wriggle, as the eels tested the limits of their confinement.

  She nodded. “Can you come round tonight?”

  “I can’t ask the bodyguards to stay outside your apartment all night,” he said quietly. “Not again.”

  “Just for an hour or two, then,” she said reluctantly.

  He made a decision. “All right. I’ll be there at eight.”

  As she turned to leave, he added, “And Kat? I’m sorry about this investigation. But there’ll be others. Grimaldo was impressed at how much you’d found out in a couple of days, I could see that.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She didn’t bother to tell him that, in her opinion, Grimaldo hadn’t been so much impressed as alarmed.

  FIFTEEN

  “THANKS FOR MEETING me,” Holly said.

  “Not at all – it’s good to see you. And, if I may say so, looking rather better than on the last occasion w
e met.” Ian Gilroy’s piercing blue eyes scrutinised her carefully. “Are you quite sure you’re up to returning to duty?”

  Ian Gilroy was seventy-two and long retired from his job as chief of the CIA’s Venice Section. He kept his mind agile, as he put it, by teaching classes on military history at Camp Ederle, the US base near Vicenza where Holly was stationed. But the main reason he’d become her mentor and confidant was because he’d been a friend of her father’s. One of her earliest memories was of a barbecue at Camp Darby, when she was eight or nine years old. She’d stood on Gilroy’s feet, one foot on each shoe, and he’d marched her round the party like she was a general. All the officers had to salute her in turn, while she barked nonsensical orders that they’d pretended to carry out.

  “You must think I’m stupid,” she said, shaking her head. “Me an intelligence analyst, and I never realised my dad was part of that world himself.”

  They were sitting outside a café in the centre of Vicenza, in the cool shade afforded by Palladio’s grand basilica. Gilroy stretched his legs out and looked at her thoughtfully.

  “I never think you’re stupid, Holly. Quite the reverse. It takes a special kind of detachment to question the assumptions we grew up with, and your father was too conscientious to tell his family the details of what he did. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve discovered?”

  She told him about the memorandum, and the realisation that someone might have tried to kill her father because of it. Gilroy heard her out, nodding occasionally.

  “And the document itself?” he said when she’d finished. “Where is it now?”

  She indicated the backpack at her feet. “In there.”

  “May I see it?”

  She took it out and handed it to him. For a while he was silent as he read, occasionally flicking back to a previous page to check something. When he was done he placed it on the table and looked at her.

  “You’ve seen it before,” she said.

  He nodded. “You father gave it to me soon after he wrote it.”

  “I thought it must be you. But you never mentioned it.”

  “I had no idea it might be significant.” He frowned. “Though actually I did bring it up with you once. I tried to be oblique – I wasn’t sure how much you knew of his professional role, and I didn’t feel it was my place to reveal it if he’d chosen not to.”

  It was true, she realised. Almost the first time they’d met, Gilroy had told her that her father had raised concerns with him about an aspect of Operation Gladio. But she’d never put two and two together and worked out that her father was part of the same shadowy world as him.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “NATO, Military Intelligence, CIA – during the Cold War, we were all part of the same chess game. But that didn’t stop NATO from running its own, sometimes ill-advised, sideshows.”

  “Like Gladio.”

  “Like Operation Gladio,” he agreed. “As you know, that was an operation its creators in NATO were careful to keep well away from the real spies. And what a mess it turned out to be.”

  She indicated the report. “What did you do with this?”

  “I passed it up the line to my superiors.” He shrugged ruefully. “What else could I do? Camp Darby was outside my remit, and as your father says, everyone was in a panic after Gladio was exposed. NATO went into damage-limitation mode. That some of the gladiators felt betrayed would hardly have been a surprise, let alone a priority.”

  “Do you think it could be true, what he wrote – that they were being encouraged to regroup by people within the intelligence agencies? Maybe even organised by them?”

  He made a very Italian gesture, a back-and-forth wobble of the hand, to indicate the impossibility of knowing such a thing for certain. It was a reminder that, whilst he might not have grown up in Italy as she had, he’d been living here since before she was born. “Again, it wouldn’t surprise me. There were NATO staff officers whose whole careers were built on that operation. There would have been some, I’m sure, who would have found it hard to give up.”

  “And what he said about you – at least, I assume it was you – was correct as well? That you were involved in tackling the Red Brigades?”

  “Yes.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “I spent almost a decade finding a way into that organisation, Holly. When we talk about terrorists today, often they’re as nothing to the Brigate Rosse. They were well run, well financed and completely ruthless. If they were caught, for example, they refused to be represented by state-appointed lawyers, on the grounds that the state was nothing but a collection of imperialist corporations. If a lawyer persisted in trying to defend them, they had the lawyer assassinated.”

  “That’s pretty hardcore.”

  “Indeed. Eventually, of course, we managed to bring the ringleaders to justice. Why do you ask about that?”

  “Because of Daniele Barbo,” she said simply.

  “Ah.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Again, you’re quite correct – that was how I came to know Daniele’s father, Matteo. After the boy was kidnapped, as the local Red Brigades specialist I was asked by our government to offer any assistance I could, not least because Daniele’s mother was American. Despite the unlikely circumstances, his father and I became friends. Afterwards we kept in touch, and when it became clear that as well as disfiguring his son’s face, the terrorists had done something even more terrible to his mind, I found myself becoming involved in Matteo’s plans for the boy’s future. It’s a responsibility I still feel today, although as you know, Daniele has never welcomed the fact that I’m his guardian.”

  “‘A responsibility’?” she echoed quietly. “Or guilt?”

  He sighed. “Perhaps a bit of both. We should have been able to get him out sooner than we did. The Italian operation was a travesty from start to finish. But you know how it is in this country.”

  They were both silent for a moment, thinking their respective thoughts. “So,” he said at last. “What will you do with this?” He indicated the report.

  “I’m going to find out who tried to kill my father, and why. That means finding out who these people were who were infiltrating his lodge.”

  “Is that wise?” he said gently. “You’re still recovering from a major trauma yourself. And even if, by some miracle, there’s anything left to find after so long, it can’t help your father now.”

  “Even so,” she said stubbornly. “I need to do this. Will you help me?”

  “I’m not sure you know what you’re asking.”

  “I think I do.” She tapped the report. “If this is right, when Prime Minister Andreotti told the Italian parliament about the existence of the Gladio network and in almost the same breath said it had already been dismantled, he was lying. But the implication is even bigger than that. It’s now well established that dozens of bombings and other atrocities during the Years of Lead were actually committed by Gladio agents. If my dad was right, and Gladio didn’t go away, what did they get up to after they were supposed to have disbanded? When did they disband? Did they ever disband?”

  “There are many people, even today,” he said quietly, “who won’t want those questions asked, let alone answered.”

  “I’ll be ready for them. And I’ll have a head start.” She indicated the report. “According to this, the Gladio headquarters was in a remote region of Sardinia called Capo Marrargiu. I’ll look there.”

  “What makes you think there’ll be anything left to find after so long?”

  “I’ve got to begin somewhere. And in the meantime, maybe you could find out who else read that report.”

  He looked worried. “I don’t like stirring things up while you’re out in the field. It’s bad tradecraft.”

  “It’s the surest way to get a response,” she pointed out.

  “Hmm.” He thought. “Are there any duplicates of this?” He nodded at the report.

  “I made a paper copy at the airport, just before I flew back. And I emailed one to myself as well.” />
  “Good,” he said, although it seemed to Holly that he said it almost with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do. Be careful, won’t you?”

  “Of course.” She stood up. “I’d better go.”

  After she had left him, Ian Gilroy sat for a long time, thinking. He reread the memorandum one more time, although he was already familiar with its contents, and had been ever since he received the original, many years before. He had never imagined that it would come back to trouble him after so long.

  Reaching for his cell phone, he dialled a number. It was one he’d committed to memory long ago. For reasons of security, though, he had never stored it as a contact.

  “I need something done,” he said when it was answered. “To be carried out immediately.”

  He spoke for just under a minute. The call over, he removed the SIM card from the back of his phone and snapped it in two. Then he beckoned to the waiter for another coffee.

  SIXTEEN

  THE EELS WERE in Kat’s sink now, waiting to be cooked. She got hold of the first one using the same method Tignelli’s workman had, wrapping her hand in a carrier bag to get a firm grip just below the head. Even so, it writhed vigorously around her fist as she carried it over to the counter, head and tail thrashing in opposite directions.

  She’d already laid out a sharp knife, a chopping board and a cleaver. In one decisive movement she stabbed it through the top of the head, pinning it to the board. Then it was a simple matter to lop it off just above the gills with the cleaver. The eel’s long tail wriggled away across the counter, scattering blood. She dropped it into a bowl of water and vinegar, then repeated the process with the other one before cleaning up.

  Skinning them was equally straightforward, thanks to a trick she’d learnt from her grandmother. Looping a piece of string behind the gills, she tied both bodies to a doorknob, then got hold of the skin at the severed end and pulled, peeling it away from the flesh like a stocking. A real traditionalist would have told her not to bother – in days gone by, eel cooked su l’ara wouldn’t even be washed, since fresh water would have been too precious a commodity for the glassblowers of Murano, in whose furnaces the dish originated, to waste on anything except drinking. Kat didn’t think of herself as a traditionalist, but she did use the customary five handfuls of bay leaves to line the bottom of the pot. The eels would roast quickly in their own juices, the bay leaves both flavouring them and protecting them from the heat.