Medusa - 9

by Michael Dibdin

  Zen gave a chastened nod.

  ‘You’re right. I apologize.’

  ‘We didn’t know about any of that at the time, but what we did know was that the governance of this country was teetering on the brink during that whole decade. It seemed then, and continues to seem now, perfectly credible that certain people should have put in place a plan for bypassing the democratic process and seizing power in the name of “normalization” and “stability”. According to my informant, such a plan existed. Its code-name was Operation Medusa.’

  At that moment Aurelio Zen did something that anyone familiar with him would have regarded as very uncharacteristic. Whatever his faults, Zen was not physically clumsy, yet now he kicked the low table in front of him hard enough to overturn the tea pot.

  Luca Brandelli went out to the kitchenette, returning with a sponge to wipe up the spillage and brushing aside Zen’s apologies.

  ‘So what follow-up action did you decide on?’ Zen asked when order had been restored.

  Brandelli sighed.

  ‘I was still not completely convinced that it wasn’t a set-up,’ he said at length. ‘Not to murder me, but to plant information which could later be shown to be false, thereby discrediting myself, the paper I wrote for, and by extension the entire progressive movement of that period. In short, anyone who tried thereafter to expose any conspiracy of the extreme right – and there were plenty of them, as we now know – would be laughed off stage and told to pull the other one. Nevertheless, I couldn’t be entirely sure. I therefore displayed a cautious interest and arranged another meeting a few weeks later, with the excuse that I had to go to Cuba to research a lengthy article on political organization under Castro. That happened to be true, but my real reason for not cancelling the trip was to give the other side, whoever they were, a cooling-off period to reconsider the situation. If they were genuine, I reasoned, then they would re-engage on my return. If it was a put-up job, they might well think that they had been rumbled and drop the whole thing.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘On my return from Cuba, I learned of the plane crash over the Adriatic. The papers published photographs of the two victims, the pilot and the only passenger. The latter was identified as Lieutenant Leonardo Ferrero of the Alpine Regiment, attached to a unit stationed in Verona. I instantly recognized him as my informant in the Medusa affair.’

  ‘Which presumably convinced you of its reality.’

  ‘It certainly swung the balance of probability that way.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘I did what I could,’ Brandelli remarked with yet another sigh. ‘Through some of the PCI conscripts at the barracks where Ferrero had been stationed, I elicited the names of some men he had allegedly been close to. I wrote to them both, under the pretext of researching a general background article about “The Army Today”. Neither replied.’

  ‘What about the senior officer on whose orders Ferrero claimed to be acting?’

  Brandelli threw up his hands.

  ‘It could have been anyone! Ferrero was a junior lieutenant. There were plenty of officers superior to him in the hierarchy. I assumed that if the person concerned still wanted to contact me, then he would do so. But I heard nothing.’

  ‘You mentioned that you were not convinced that Ferrero’s death was an accident. Perhaps his superior reached the same conclusion and decided to learn from an example.’

  ‘Exactly what I told myself at the time. So I left it at that, while keeping the file open in case I heard any other whispers about this Operation Medusa. That never happened, and of course I had more urgent and pressing matters to attend to.’

  ‘So assuming that this organization existed, the people concerned were either rank amateurs…’

  ‘Or consummate professionals. Yes.’

  Zen nodded slowly, as if mulling all this over.

  ‘What about the two friends of Ferrero?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They must have retired by now. Have you made any attempt to contact them? Perhaps they might be able to help close that file. And provide some material for your book.’

  Luca Brandelli shrugged.

  ‘One was a man named Gabriele Passarini. He runs a second- hand bookshop here in Milan now. I met him for the first time as a result, perhaps five years ago. I was walking around through the centre of town when my eye was caught by a title that I’d been searching for in vain for ages. I went and bought it and the owner gave me his card. I recognized the name and asked him if he’d once been in the Alpini. He said he had. I then asked if he’d known someone called Leonardo Ferrero.’

  ‘And?’

  Brandelli smiled.

  ‘He almost threw me out of the shop. No, he almost threw himself out. He was in a total panic. Amateurs, I thought, not professionals. But he wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t believe that even you, dottore, with the full panoply of the law behind you, could have got anything out of him.’

  ‘He was that tough?’

  ‘Not tough. Terrified.’

  Zen digested this for a moment.

  ‘Do you recall the name and address of the bookshop?’

  Brandelli produced a business card from the file on his knees and handed it to Zen.

  ‘You can keep that. I don’t think I would be a welcome customer again.’

  ‘And what about the other friend of Ferrero’s? Have you tried to get in touch with him?’

  Luca Brandelli smiled even more broadly.

  ‘I didn’t think it worth the trouble, not to mention the trouble it might cause. His name is Alberto Guerrazzi, and he is now a full colonel and divisional commander with the military secret intelligence service.’

  Zen looked suitably impressed.

  ‘Which might seem to make them professionals rather than amateurs,’ he remarked.

  Brandelli clapped his hands together.

  ‘Exactly! Everything contradicts itself. Frankly, I’ve given up any hope of ever finding out the truth in this matter.’

  Zen rose stiffly from his perch at the edge of the sofa.

  ‘Have you really given up journalism entirely?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, supposing that I uncovered further information tending to confirm the existence of the Medusa conspiracy, would you be interested in writing a piece about it?’

  Brandelli made a non-committal gesture.

  ‘That would depend entirely on the nature and the authenticity of the information.’

  ‘Of course. But in principle?’

  ‘In principle, yes.’

  ‘And could you get it published?’

  Brandelli now looked distinctly dubious.

  ‘Why would you want me to do that? You’re a policeman. ’

  ‘As I said earlier, I’m operating off the record. Anyway, that’s no concern of yours. Any material I bring you will be genuine. What I need to know is whether you could get it published.’

  Brandelli drew himself up with a certain hauteur.

  ‘My name may not be a household word these days, but I still have my contacts and a certain reputation in some quarters. If there is a story here, I will certainly write it up. I could certainly get it published in Il Manifesto. I might even be able to get it into La Repubblica. Subject to there being a documented story in the first place. But do you really think there is one?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Brandelli made a tired, defeated grimace.

  ‘I would love there to be, of course. But no, I don’t really believe it. It’s all too long ago. Anyone who knew what really happened, assuming anything did, is either dead or covering their tracks. They’re not going to talk. And now that the new regime has successfully cowed the judiciary into a comatose state of inertia, there’s no one in a position to make them do so. So to be honest I don’t think there’s any chance that we’ll ever find out what happened to Leonardo Ferrer
o, or whether there really was a right-wing military conspiracy to take over the country back in the seventies. Anyway, that’s all history. And no one will care even if we do. Nowadays people think that history is what was on TV last night.’

  Zen buttoned his coat against the chilly streets.

  ‘This is not just a question of setting the historical record straight. Certain high-ranking people in the government have taken a public line on this affair. If it turns out to be false, and you can arrange for the truth to be published, then the whole affair will be on TV not just tonight but tomorrow night and every night for the foreseeable future. Wouldn’t people be interested then? And wouldn’t you?’

  Brandelli considered this.

  ‘Of course I would,’ he replied finally. ‘And maybe so would they.’

  ‘Never underestimate the power of the people,’ was Zen’s parting shot.

  XV

  Of the various transport choices available from Luca Brandelli’s fog-bound apartment building, Zen opted for the M3 underground line, the political kickbacks from whose construction had brought down the Socialist government of the city in the early nineties. It turned out to be efficient, cheap and clean, an irony which he did not fail to appreciate.

  In the centre, the fog was dense and pervasive. The lines of jammed traffic seemed as permanent a fixture as the rows of five-storey buildings to either side. On the pavements, visibility varied from a few metres to zero. Zen had to trust to luck, intuition and a few directions from passers-by, one of whom sent him totally out of his way. It was only when he stopped to light a cigarette outside a shuttered shop, trying to work out whether he had been going round in circles, that he realized t he had reached his goal. Chiuso per Lutto, read a rather faded handwritten sign on the window behind a lattice of steel barriers designed to foil thieves while allowing potential customers to view a selection of the books that would be available for purchase when the proprietor returned to work after coming to terms with his grief.

  Some distance down the street, a nimbus of diffused light glowed through the surrounding gloom. On closer investigation, it turned out to be a bar. Most of the customers were ordering coffee stiffened with a shot of grappa or sweet liqueur. Zen followed their example. The café was a dingy, noisy place, but it felt warm and comforting after the streets. The clientele was seemingly a mix of tradesmen, clerks, shop assistants and low-grade functionaries postponing as long as possible the horrors of their journey home.

  Zen slipped a banknote across the counter to attract the barman’s attention.

  ‘Do you have a hammer I could borrow for five minutes?’ he asked.

  ‘A hammer?’

  ‘I’ve got a flat tyre on my car, but the hubcap is dented and I can’t prise it off with my bare hands. And of course there’s no chance of calling out a tow-truck in this fog…’

  The man nodded sympathetically.

  ‘There should be one out the back somewhere.’

  He led the way into the rear of the premises, a wasteland full of spare furniture, mineral-water crates and assorted junk apparently being stored on the you-never-know-when-it-might- come-in-handy basis. There was also a payphone, now a historical relic from the days before the mobile revolution, and a framed aerial photograph showing one of the small towns of the Valpadana, presumably the one in which the proprietor of the bar had grown up: a little circular urban patch surrounded by a vast expanse of arable land dotted with the huge cascine farm complexes typical of the region.

  ‘Here you go,’ said the barman, returning from some inner sanctum with a hammer. ‘I’ll need it back, mind.’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  Zen pocketed the hammer and proceeded back through the clammy murk to the bookshop. The front door and main window were too distant to reach, but the remaining panes angled out to either side, ending within arm’s length. A potential thief still wouldn’t have been able to grab the books on display, but Zen wasn’t interested in them. There was no sound of footsteps or cars in the street. Taking the hammer from his pocket, he thrust his arm as far as it would go through one of the rect¬ angular gaps in the shuttering, and then struck the window repeatedly. The glass first crazed, then cracked spectacularly. At the same moment, a yellow light flashed above and a piercing siren began to wail. Zen made his way back to the bar and returned the hammer.

  ‘Thanks very much, that sorted it out. Now I’ll go and change the tyre.’

  ‘What’s all that racket down the street?’ the barman asked with a worried expression.

  ‘No idea. Probably a faulty burglar alarm. Those things are always going wrong. More trouble than they’re worth.’

  Before long, a different siren sounded in the streets, but what with the fog and the blocked traffic it was another ten minutes before the patrol car finally arrived at the bookshop. Zen showed his identification card to the crew, whose attitude instantly changed from truculent suspicion to awed respect.

  ‘I saw everything,’ Zen told them. ‘Pure chance. I was passing by on the other side of the street. I heard the noise of the glass smashing and went to investigate. The burglar ran off before he could steal anything. I gave chase, but he slipped away in the fog.’

  At this point, a man named Fulvio intervened. He was the janitor of the building. No, the owner was away and couldn’t be contacted. A family tragedy. Long business. One of those. But he, Fulvio, could be trusted to have the window repaired and to board up the shop in the meantime. Other members of the family? Just for the record, to keep things regular and official. Well, he believed that there was a sister. Paola Passarini. Lived just off the motorway to Varese, in Busto Arsizio, out near Malpensa airport. He didn’t know the address.

  The police computer did, however. The patrolmen offered to give Zen a lift, but advised that with driving conditions what they were he would be better off taking the train. Besides, the address was strictly speaking out of their territory, being just inside the Provincia di Varese.

  They dropped him off at the nearby station of Porta Garibaldi, and Zen completed the journey by train and then taxi through a grim swathe of ‘industrialized countryside’. Busto Arsizio had once been a small market town on the fringes of the flood plain of the Ticino river, but the rural surroundings that had once given it a modest sense of identity had now been swallowed up by the ever-encroaching suburban sprawl of Milan.

  The apartment was on the top floor of a neo-Stalinist slab at the intersection of two streets whose ridged and pitted surface suggested that the tarmac had been poured directly over a lightly-rolled ploughed field. Zen rode up in a lift bristling with cryptic graffiti, rang the bell and presented his identification.

  ‘Is it about Gabriele?’ the woman demanded.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She started to shut the door.

  ‘I’ve already told you everything I know.’

  ‘We’ve never met before, signora.’

  ‘I mean your people. The police.’

  ‘Ah, they’ve been in touch already, have they?’ Zen continued smoothly.

  ‘Someone from the carabinieri. I told him I couldn’t help him.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  Zen nodded reassuringly.

  ‘Yes, of course. Those were the preliminary enquiries, at local level. I’m come from Rome to follow up. If you could just spare a few moments, it would be most helpful.’

  Paola Passarini reluctantly opened the door again, and Zen followed her into the open-plan living area. She was in her late forties, with a childlike elfin face attached to a bottom-heavy body whose exact proportions were obscured by a loose ankle- length dress. Her general appearance suggested that at a certain point she had decided to let herself go and the hell with it. But then there couldn’t be much worth keeping up appearances for in Busto Arsizio.

  ‘Would you like a coffee, some tea…?’

  Her voice trailed away.

  ‘
No, thank you.’

  ‘Do sit down. So you think that Gabriele’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘Kidnapped?’

  ‘That’s what the other man said.’

  Zen forced a smile.

  ‘Ah, yes, my colleague from the carabinieri. He was a low- level operative and was not fully briefed. I regret the error, signora. No, there’s been nothing that would point to a kidnapping. Nevertheless, we do have reason to believe that your brother’s life may be in danger. One of the men he served with in the army, many years ago, was recently killed in Campione d’Italia. A man named Nestore Soldani. A bomb was placed in his car. You may have seen the story on the news.’

  Paola Passarini gestured vaguely.

  ‘But what has this Soldani got to do with Gabriele? I’ve never heard him mention the name.’

  ‘The hunt for the killers has led to the discovery of certain facts that I cannot disclose at this point, as the investigation is still in progress. Broadly speaking, evidence has emerged that your brother may unwittingly have been a party to the affair behind Soldani’s killing. I must stress that there is no suggestion that Signor Passarini was involved in any way in the mur¬ der. On the contrary, we fear that he may become the next victim. The fact that he disappeared from his home and place of work on the day following Soldani’s death tends to substantiate this theory. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we locate him as soon as possible.’

  A mechanical series of bone-jarring bass chords shook the apartment.

  ‘Turn it down, Siro!’ Paola shouted.

  The aural assault continued unabated. She got to her feet and waddled off towards a hallway at the other end of the living area, opened a door and disappeared. A moment later, tranquillity was restored. Paola Passarini came back and sat down again without comment.

  ‘Have you heard from your brother since his disappearance?’ Zen asked her.