The Dark Chronicles

by Jeremy Duns

  There was a blur of movement and his free hand came round in a tight fist, aiming low, and I recognized the old commando move and made to counter it with my forearm. I caught it just in time, but in the meantime the blade continued its descent. I pushed back again. Beads of sweat dripped into my eyes, stinging them, and I tried to blink them away, to no avail. Barnes grunted again, and as the blade dropped another fraction of an inch I prepared myself for it to pierce into me. But then I realized with a flash of intuition what I had to do, and I abruptly relaxed my grip and jerked my head away sharply at the same moment, and the surprise and momentum were too much for him to correct and as his arm came down he lost his balance and the whole upper half of his body tipped over with it, and then I was looking down at the cluster of railing spikes emerging through the top of his head, the tips covered in some dark slimy mixture I didn’t want to think about. He moaned one last moan, and then his limbs went into a final spasm and he was still.

  I wiped the sweat from my eyes and breathed in deeply to calm myself. Then I called up to Sarah to make the last leap. She did it, making a much better landing than I had done, and then she climbed onto the tiled roof and I helped her over the railings and we walked down the steps into the courtyard. I asked her if she felt she could continue. She nodded, and we left the bodies of Bird Man and Barnes and staggered past the open-mouthed and horrified tourists down the remaining stairs until we reached the square. There was no sign of Severn and Zimotti, but I had no doubt they were coming.

  We stumbled through the crowd and into one of the side streets – but where to now? Hiring a car was out of the question, as their next step would be to contact all the rental places, so a description of anything we hired would immediately be sent to every police station in the country. The most anonymous form of travel, and I reckoned our best bet, was the train. A teenager on a bright red Vespa hurtled straight towards us, and I stepped out in front of him, putting my hand out officiously and yelling for him to stop. He slowed fractionally, and as he passed I yanked him by the collar and dragged him off the bike, hoisting myself into his place.

  ‘Get on!’ I called to Sarah. She hobbled over and clambered aboard, and I changed gears as the former owner shook his fists at our smoke. Needs must.

  XXIII

  I parked the Vespa in Piazza dei Cinquecento and we headed into the main hall of Termini railway station, past young people smoking and flirting and generally having the time of their lives. There was a swarm of people surrounding the ticket booth, to the extent that it wasn’t clear where one queue ended and the next began. I looked up at the departure board and saw that the next train to Turin was leaving in less than five minutes: the Tirreno, a fast service that stopped at Pisa and a few other places on the way. It was our only chance. We would just have to pay on board, or hope the train was so crowded that the conductor didn’t bother to check tickets.

  We rushed across to the platform and, to my relief, I saw that it was indeed crowded. Dozens of men were calling to each other as they tried to coordinate an effort to bring all the luggage onto the train. Some were pulling their suitcases tied together with string through the doors, while others were lifting them to their friends and squeezing them through the windows of the compartments.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Sarah. ‘Why are they taking suitcases to a religious festival?’

  She shook her head. ‘They’re not going to the festival – they’re heading north for work. The “economic miracle” has run out of steam down here.’

  We made our way through the throng and climbed onto the train, then walked along the corridors looking for seats. We squeezed past students strumming guitars, tourists consulting maps, a monsignor cutting open a garlic sausage, and everywhere these wild-eyed men in their threadbare suits trailing their suitcases behind them. Finally we found a compartment with a couple of spare seats, which was otherwise occupied by an elderly Mother Superior and a gaggle of young nuns excitedly exchanging gossip and unpacking sandwiches for the journey. A whistle blew and we were off.

  As the wheels started gathering pace, the tension within me faded a little. We had lost them. I turned to Sarah. She had circles under her eyes, and cuts and dirt were smeared across her cheeks. She looked much more fragile than when I had first met her in the embassy, but infinitely more beautiful. I leaned across and gently placed my hand against her cheek, and she gave a wan smile in return.

  I glanced out of the window and caught sight of a clock in the station. It was coming up to noon, and the departure board had said that we were due to arrive in Turin at quarter past seven. But train timetables didn’t mean much in Italy these days, and anything could delay us. Even if we arrived bang on time, we would have only forty-five minutes to get to the cathedral, and I suspected we would have a welcoming committee to evade first – Zimotti would have furnished the local carabinieri with detailed descriptions of the two of us. And even if we made it out of the station and to the cathedral, I had no idea what sort of explosive they would use. From what I remembered, the two explosions in Milan had been simple detonators with sticks of dynamite – but my source for that information was the Service’s file, and that had also claimed that Arte come Terrore were responsible. And I had a feeling this would be on a much bigger scale than the bombs in Milan. If we did find the bomb in time, the church authorities might listen, but they wouldn’t have access to any bomb disposal experts of their own. About all we could hope for was that they would clear the area – but how long would that take at such a massive event?

  I wondered if I hadn’t just miscalculated horribly. Severn had told me I had got myself into something bigger than I understood, and I was starting to fear he’d been right. Well, we had several hours on this train. I decided to take the opportunity to have another look at the documents, and read them through thoroughly. I didn’t expect them to tell me how to defuse the bomb, but they might contain other clues as to what we were up against. I turned to Sarah and told her what I had in mind, and she unbuttoned the pocket of the overalls and handed the bundle across. The cover was torn from our climbing adventure, but the papers inside were untouched.

  I took them out and started reading, but after a few minutes the words began to swim in front of my eyes and my temples throbbed with pain. It was too bloody stuffy in the compartment. I asked Sarah to open the window, and it was then that I noticed the Mother Superior peering at me from beneath her wimple. I looked down at the documents and saw the seals exposed on the page. I doubted she could read them, but together with our overalls and bruised faces, her interest had certainly been piqued. I nudged Sarah again. ‘Leave that. Let’s go and see what they have to eat instead – I’m famished.’

  She nodded, and we left the compartment and walked down the corridor, through first class and into the restaurant car. It was shielded from the sunshine by heavy curtains, and was empty: we had only just left the station and it was still too early for lunch. We took a table, and I seated myself facing the glass doors we had come through. A waiter ambled over and I ordered two steaks, a bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water and a pack of cigarettes; he nodded and disappeared.

  I took out the bundle and placed it on the table. I decided to start from the other end, at the series of papers that came directly after the strategic document: I hadn’t looked at them yet. The first one I picked up was in Italian, and was dated 1 June 1959. A slightly faded letterhead read ‘Stato Maggiore della Difesa, Servizio Informazioni delle Forze Armate’ – the old name for military intelligence – and under that was the title ‘LE “FORZE SPECIALI” DEL SIFAR E L’OPERAZIONE “GLADIO”’: ‘The Special Forces of Military Intelligence and Operation “Gladio”’.

  The document was a briefing on the country’s stay-behind operation, and I was shocked at how advanced it was. It seemed it had been – and perhaps still was – linked to the Clandestine Planning Committee, which itself was affiliated to the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe. The base in Sardinia w
as mentioned at several points, and appeared to be used primarily as a training centre for the stay-behind army. In June 1959, this had been made up of forty cells: six for intelligence-gathering, ten for sabotage, six for propaganda, six for escape and evasion and twelve for conducting guerrilla warfare against the enemy. The guerrilla cells were described as having hundreds of units each.

  I placed the document to one side and turned to the next on the table. This was dated much earlier, from 1948, and seemed to be a formal agreement of cooperation between the Service and the network in the Netherlands. I started looking through the other papers: Germany, France, Spain, Portugal… every country in NATO was here, and even a few outside it. The file from Turkey was dated June 1951, and was signed by Templeton, Osborne and a Turkish name I recognized as Cousin Freddie’s. All the files related to the establishment of stay-behind networks, sometimes with British and sometimes with American support. I guessed the latter were providing most of the money behind it. The organization didn’t seem to have one overarching name: it was simply called Stay Behind in Britain, but was known as Glaive in France, Gladio in Italy, Kontrgerilla in Turkey, and so on.

  There were also files on individual Stay Behind officers, including one on Zimotti. It seemed that in the war he had been a member of La Decima, the elite commando frogman unit. After the Italian armistice in 1943, he and about 20,000 other men from the unit had continued to fight in the north of the country on the Axis side, under the command of Valerio Borghese, ‘The Black Prince’. They had become infamous for their brutal acts against the partisans, including summary executions, torture and the burning down of villages with a strong partisan presence. In 1945, he was one of the many La Decima members arrested by partisans, but had been one of the lucky few who had been saved from reprisals and taken to safety by the Allies. The Black Prince himself had been rescued by the Americans, but Zimotti owed his life to the British: to William Osborne, in fact, who had been in charge of his case in England before he had eventually returned to Italy.

  There was a file on Severn, too. Back in ’51, he had felt Osborne was misusing him as a chauffeur, but his trip to Istanbul had merely been his indoctrination into Stay Behind. And just as the Turkish network had been controlled by Templeton, with Cousin Freddie as the local liaison, Severn was now the Service’s Stay Behind commander in Italy, working in conjunction with Zimotti. I couldn’t see a file for Osborne, but I guessed he was very senior in the whole set-up, if not in charge of it outright.

  All of which was very interesting, but there was nothing here I could take to Haggard. Just because Zimotti and others had been fascists during the war did not prove that they had subverted the original networks in any way. The strategy proposal arguing the benefits of false-flag attacks on churches and football stadia was extreme, but it was, after all, merely a proposal. Many such documents were written, but the operations mentioned within them didn’t always come to fruition. My throat suddenly felt dry. Had I got completely the wrong end of the stick? Were these simply documents about the original stay-behind networks, kept in the Station safe for perfectly innocent reasons?

  The train swayed as it rounded a bend in the track, and I grabbed at the papers to stop them from slipping off the table. My thumb caught hold of one I didn’t recognize. I tidied the stack, waited for the train to settle and then picked it up again. It was in English. I read it through, then placed it back in the pile and handed the whole lot back to Sarah, who replaced it in her pocket.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ she asked.

  I nodded. The last document had been dated 1962, and bore the NATO seal. Its distribution list included senior members of French, German, Italian and British intelligence, including Osborne. And it was nothing short of a manifesto, laying out in detail the justification for resurrecting the original stay-behind networks as an ‘anticipatory mechanism’ – in short, instead of waiting for Moscow to invade or for the Communists to come to power democratically, to attack the citizens of their own countries and frame Moscow and others as a means of frightening the electorate and imposing strict law and order. It made it clear that national governments had not been informed of the operation – instead, it seemed, one politician in each country, usually a minister of defence, had been indoctrinated into the plan. I hadn’t been wrong, after all. The conspiracy was real, and here was the proof.

  I quickly explained the situation to Sarah, and she asked me what I planned to do.

  ‘Let’s start by getting to Turin and stopping whatever they have planned there,’ I said. ‘Presuming we manage that, I suggest that the minute it’s over you call the Home Secretary, and then take the first flight to London you can.’

  The waiter arrived with our meal, and we started eating. I hardly noticed it – the dossier had left a sour taste in my mouth that I couldn’t seem to banish and my mind was too preoccupied. I opened the pack of cigarettes and lit one from the book of matches on the table.

  ‘But what will you do?’ Sarah asked, finally. ‘If I go to Whitehall?’

  I took a draught of the cigarette – the nicotine pushed deep into my chest and warmed it. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, which was the truth. I hadn’t made up my mind if I wanted to enter the lion’s den of London again. Back in Sardinia I had been confident that Haggard would be able to deal with Osborne and the rest of his cabal if I could show him proof of what they were up to. Now I knew just how far-reaching the conspiracy was, I wasn’t so sure. They had secret armies in every NATO country preparing to commit atrocities to stop the Communists. If they couldn’t kill me, they would do everything in their power to prove to Haggard and everyone else that I was a Soviet agent. As I was one, they would probably succeed in that – and nobody in London would listen to the allegations of a traitor. Sarah had a much better chance of persuading Haggard without me. ‘I might try to head for Switzerland,’ I said. ‘It all depends—’

  I froze. Just visible through the glass doors of the carriage was the blue trouser-leg of a man. The conductor? Or Zimotti? I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray. It was Zimotti, and as he stepped inside the carriage I saw Severn standing directly behind him. They must have boarded at the last moment and been combing through the train looking for us. Zimotti’s eyes met mine, and then he cried out and they started heading towards us.

  I took Sarah by the arm and we started running down the restaurant car, crashing through the doors. To the left was a corridor leading to passenger compartments; straight ahead, the kitchens. On an impulse, I dived ahead. The place was tiny, and thick with steam. White-coated cooks and stewards scattered in alarm as a shot rang out, racing to a door at the far end of the room. I turned to see Severn and Zimotti right behind me. Sarah leapt towards Severn, trying to scratch at his eyes, and as he lifted his gun again I ran forward to help her. But Zimotti had seen what I was planning, and he picked me up and hurled me against one of the workbenches. Behind them I saw a line of steel cauldrons, and he lifted me by my shirt and pushed my head towards one of the vats. It was open, bubbling with boiling water, and I felt a blanket of steam engulfing me and lashed out blindly, trying to reposition myself, but he had a firm grip and the heat was becoming more intense as he pushed my face closer to the surface of the water. I remembered glimpsing saucepans and ladles hanging from the ceiling when I’d come in, and I reached up to try to grab one, but came away empty-handed. I kicked behind me desperately, and one of my legs caught Zimotti in the chest. He reeled back, screaming and cursing me in Italian, and I ducked down as he ran towards me in a rage, grabbing him by the legs and lifting him so he flew over the bench.

  There was a dreadful scream as he plunged headfirst into the boiling cauldron. Without even thinking, I grabbed him by his collar and lifted him out. His entire face was burned, a surface of red sores. I tried to push him back down but he was already reaching out for me, and I lunged for the surface of the workbench. There was a knife there, and I managed to pick it up. As he came towards me, I held the knife firm with both
hands as it pushed into his chest. He crumpled to the floor, and his cries of agony sputtered into groans, and then whispers, and then silence.

  I made my way through the steam trying to find Sarah and Severn. They were still over by the door, and as I approached them my chest clenched. He was aiming a gun directly at her head.

  ‘Tell me!’ he was screaming at her. ‘Did you screw the bastard? Did you screw him?’

  She didn’t answer him, and he let out a howl at the realization. He was about to press down the trigger and I leapt towards him with the knife. He saw me and moved to avoid it but he was a fraction too late and the blade glanced across his jaw, and he lost balance and started falling. The gun fell from his hands and Sarah jumped down and grabbed it, then stood again. Her eyes were hard and cold, but her hand was shaking as she brought the gun up and aimed it straight at her husband.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ I yelled.

  Severn looked up from the floor, the right side of his face soaked in blood and a strange smile on his lips. ‘You didn’t read it,’ he said, and I realized he was talking to me. ‘You don’t know…’ He wiped his hand with blood, and cocked his head at Sarah dismissively. ‘Enjoy her while she lasts. It won’t be long.’ His mouth twisted into a grimace, either of hatred or pain, I couldn’t tell, and then the shot rang out and there was a small red dot in his forehead. The blood oozed slowly from it and mixed with the blood from the knife wound, and his eyes were like glass.

  Sarah had dropped to the floor, and I stepped forward and gently took the gun from her hands. It was a Browning, and it was still hot. I put it on safety and shoved it into my waistband. She looked up at me dully.

  ‘You understand?’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t let him… I couldn’t let him own me any more.’