The Death of an Irish Consul

by Bartholomew Gill

  The cigars were Nicaraguan, the wrapper leaf colorado maduro, the smoke a light blue, the taste sharp—pleasingly bitter, mellowing. McGarr was beginning to enjoy this assignment. “A good drink, a pleasant smoke, and scintillating company,” he observed to O’Shaughnessy.

  The Garda superintendent’s light blue eyes were merry as he surveyed the guests from his eminence.

  And that was not all he saw, for when the Cummingses, now surrounded by bobbies, and the McGarrs and O’Shaughnessy left the Italian embassy, pausing on the veranda to bid their final adieus to their host and hostess, the tall policeman, looking over the heads of the other departing guests, saw Foster. He was standing in the shadow of a doorway across the street. There was nothing he could do but pull on McGarr’s sleeve and gesture in the direction of the wide black man. The walkway down was crowded with people, the semicircular drive now blocked by waiting limousines.

  With Cummings and his wife pausing on the top stair of the embassy, however, Foster might have had a perfect shot at him. The distance was, say, seventy-five yards through an iron fence, the driveway gates of which were open. In the confusion which was sure to follow such an assassination, Foster’s escape would have been assured.

  McGarr wondered why Foster let the opportunity slip.

  His thoughts ceased, however, when Noreen grasped his hand in the dark of the back seat of the Bentley. As he had expected, the moment Cummings approached his limousine and the policemen became free to chase after Foster, if they chose, a small car pulled up in front of the building across the street, Foster hopped in, and it pulled away. The rear lights of the vehicle had been disconnected so that the license number was obscured in the darkness. In any case, the car had most probably been stolen.

  Their rooms at the Carlton were at once as sumptuous and ugly as only a decorator with a perfect understanding of upper-middle-class British taste could devise. Individually, all the items in the room—a squat dresser made from fine-grained Honduran mahogany polished to a mirror sheen; an imitation rococo mirror that matched a mantelpiece on which several twentieth-century casts of Victorian reproductions of eighteenth-century ceramic figurines in sickly pastels had been placed—were so gauche as to be nearly laughable, but in all the room looked solid, and that, after all, was the effect intended.

  McGarr phoned the lobby and learned that the kitchen had not yet closed. To test its fare, he ordered the soup du jour. When that turned out to be a pleasant potage velouté aux huitres, they ordered salade Niçoise, moules à la marinière, and a bottle of very dry Schloss Johannisberger. If the soup had been lackluster, McGarr would have ordered meat.

  Noreen slipped into a beige dressing gown, and they ate leisurely.

  Much later, McGarr found himself awake, wishing the soup had been lackluster. He got out of bed and went out into the other room of the suite. There he read the newspapers, English and Irish, until dawn.

  He then woke Noreen. They were to accompany Cummings, who had a final briefing in Whitehall that morning, to Heathrow, Milan, and Florence aboard airplanes, and to Siena aboard a train.

  Cummings’s wife and most of the other Italians who had been present at the embassy party had left aboard an IRI jet the night before. They were to be special guests of the Ricasoli family in their palazzo in the Piazza del Campo, where the Palio was run.

  Before they left the hotel, McGarr received a call from Gallup. “Just did a little checking on Rattei, if only to keep my own information up to date, Peter. ENI’s financial situation is a lot tighter than I imagined. His Scottish driling has turned out to be sixty-five percent more costly than his engineers estimated. He had floated other loans based on prospective Scottish returns. When he needed additional funds to cover the increased costs, he had to hunt high and low and finally managed to convince the Russians to underwrite several heavy short-term, high-interest loans as a part of that deal.”

  “So?”

  “So he has to win that court case against Tartan and there are no two ways about it. If the decision goes against him, Tartan can claim triple damages and erect more wells with the proceeds.”

  “Which gives Rattei a motive.”

  “Especially Rattei, I’d say. He’s—proud. You know, hyperbolically so.”

  McGarr thanked Gallup, and Noreen and he left for the airport.

  In a final call to Dublin from Heathrow, McGarr learned that a man had been taken off the plane that had carried the American basketball team the moment it had touched down in Moscow. Also, British customs reported that a Moses Foster had passed through Heathrow the day before. His passport documented a three-week stay in Russia.

  Also, during the night Enrico Rattei had left on a small ENI jet. The flight plan listed Florence as his destination.

  FIVE

  LIKE MANY Italian cities, Siena owed its train station to Mussolini. The style was Fascist modern, a sprawling granite structure with sweeping windows and a flat roof.

  As McGarr had expected, all the other passengers detrained at once. They rushed toward the central exit.

  The crowd was motley. In spite of slicked-down hair and Sunday clothes, the contadini couldn’t disguise their sunburned faces. Their wives’ leg muscles bulged in new hosiery. They carried string sacks filled with country gifts for Siena relatives—cheeses, a goose, rounds of sausage, fiasci of new wine.

  Dapper Florentines, by contrast, had draped their precisely tailored jackets on their shoulders. Men and women alike wore stylish sunglasses that wrapped around their faces. Used to city streets, their step was smooth, even jaunty, and they were most impatient at the door.

  When the crowd had cleared, Hughie Ward, dressed as a Jesuit, left his compartment and walked down the platform as far as the engine of the train, checking the cars for other passengers. Liam O’Shaughnessy made straight for the lobby, where he informed the waiting carabinieri that Cummings had arrived and then surveyed the bar. He returned shortly, walking very fast. Signaling to Ward, he ducked his head under the door of the train compartment and said to McGarr, “May I speak to you a moment, Peter?”

  Seven carabinieri, dressed in knee-cut boots of black leather to match thick waist and shoulder belts, had approached the train. Their white summer suits with red piping and white motorcycle helmets made them look very militant. Their sergeant piped on a shrill whistle and the carabinieri formed a wedge in front of the open train compartment door.

  Near the platform newspaper stand, McGarr saw two men watching the train. Nobody but Englishmen would wear shell cordovans in Italy in July.

  When Ward had reached them, O’Shaughnessy said, “He’s there. In the bar.”

  McGarr was puzzled.

  “The nigger—Foster, I mean.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Come see for yourself.”

  There, sitting at a table which at once placed his back to the wall and allowed him to watch the long bar and table area, was Foster. McGarr opened his pocket secretary and checked an SIS photo Cummings had given him. “You’re right, Liam.”

  “Shall we collar him? I don’t think he’s seen us as yet.” They were standing in back of the cigarette counter, looking between two cardboard displays. “You know—the carabinieri could lock him up for the duration of the Palio.”

  McGarr thought for a moment. Given Foster’s experience in covert operations, he would not have exposed himself like this unless he was sure of his position. Either Rattei or some other powerful figure was behind him, and the Italian police would not be able to hold him for long. Also, McGarr himself was not on indefinite holiday with Cummings; he was merely following a hunch, the expense of which he would have to justify to the commissioner of police and soon. McGarr had a week at most in Italy. If something were going to happen, he’d prefer that it be soon. “What do you think?” He glanced up at the tall Garda superintendent.

  “Did you see those two fellows near the newsstand?”

  McGarr nodded.

  “They were speaking English like
Englishmen when I passed,” said Ward.

  “I think they should take care of their own man themselves,” said O’Shaughnessy. He meant Cummings.

  McGarr looked at Ward, if only to let him believe that he had a part in their deliberations.

  Ward said, “We’re investigating two murders, not protecting Cummings’s life. Those carabinieri on the platform look capable enough to me. And then, we wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance to extradite him. We’ve got no real evidence against him, and he’s got a passport that says he was in Russia when the murders were committed.”

  “They’re the best,” McGarr admitted. He glanced back out at the train and thought briefly of Cummings. In spite of his occasional observance of class distinctions, he really wasn’t a bad sort. Certainly, he didn’t deserve to die. “Come on,” said McGarr, “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  They pushed into the bar, and McGarr ordered three white wines. He stopped the waiter, who was passing, and told him to take another of whatever Foster was drinking to him. He placed a thousand-lire bill on the tray. “Immediataménte, per favore.”

  “Mille grazie, signor.” The waiter turned to the bar and placed the order.

  When the waiter had placed the grappa in front of Foster and had explained from whom it had been sent, McGarr turned to him.

  Like a large black house cat smiling down into a saucer of milk, Foster lifted the thin glass and knocked the grappa back. It was vile stuff with a range of ketones—hallucinogens, other alcohol impurities that were poisons if taken in the proper amounts—that researchers knew nothing about. Not once did he look directly at the three policemen. He just stared down at the glass, which his fingers twisted on the tabletop.

  Now free of the worry of guarding Cummings, McGarr felt very tired when he got to the Excelsior Hotel near the park and the Medici fortezza. Italian beds are much too soft. McGarr and Noreen did not awake until the sun had passed over the hotel and shone directly through the chinks in the heavy window blind.

  This McGarr raised and looked out over Siena. Down below him was the city’s Stadio, in the distance the Duomo and Campanile with its horizontal green stripes of Prato marble imposed on white Carrara. Farther still was the Mangia Tower of the town hall, which dominated the cityscape. It rose over the brown roofs to a height of a hundred meters and shimmered in the heat, which McGarr knew would become oppressive by the time the Palio began at 3:00 that afternoon. He checked his watch. It was 1:45.

  Below him, two Sienese, with red, green, and white bandanas wrapped about their shoulders, were talking.

  One said, “To be honest, I wish our contrada had another symbol.”

  “That’s heresy. Don’t talk nonsense.”

  “Whenever we win, we’re forced to eat goose. I detest goose. I ask you, is this the sort of weather in which it is appropriate to eat goose? It’s downright unhealthy to eat goose in this weather.”

  “We’re not going to win anyhow, and you know it,” said the other.

  “Some other symbol—the giraffe, the dragon, the caterpillar, the owl, the forest, the panther, the eagle—would be better than ours. Then we could eat something light like veal. Goose? The grease disgusts me.”

  “Don’t talk so much, you’re making me hot. We’re not going to win, everybody knows that.”

  “You shouldn’t say such a thing, somebody might hear you.” The man looked up at the hotel, and McGarr stepped away from the window.

  McGarr, Noreen, Liam O’Shaughnessy, and Bernie McKeon walked from the hotel toward the Piazzo del Campo where the Palio was staged. Noreen wore a spanking linen suit with a wide-brimmed hat to match. People turned to watch her go by. Hers was not the sort of beauty that an Italian saw every day. The men wore short-sleeve shirts and light pants. McGarr and McKeon had on sandals and vented, soft caps. They looked like twins. Liam O’Shaughnessy wore a boater with a paisley band and woven shoes. It was quite obvious they were stranieri.

  The Sienese loved their city somewhat more than the automobile and had closed many of the city-center streets to traffic. Thus, the Irishmen had a pleasant stroll through the Palio crowd. They passed along the Piazza Matteotti onto the Via Pianigiani and then onto the Banchi di Sopra.

  Here, many people were standing in the shadow that the tall Palazzo Salimbeni made. The palace, which McGarr favored above all Siena’s others, now housed the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the oldest banking institution in Italy. The narrow arcades of the first and third floors balanced elegant three-mullioned windows on the second floor. A cornice with small arches ran along the roofline. A Sienese arch—a pointed arch containing a lower rounded one—capped the doorway. The entire facade of the structure was gray marble.

  Farther down the narrow and winding Banchi di Sopra, all the clothing shops, bookstores, art galleries, cafés, and smoke shops were crowded. McGarr’s fluent Italian and skill with thousand-lire notes got them a table for four in the back of the Ristorante Guido on Vicolo P. Pettinaio. As they sat, McGarr could hear the crowd in the Piazza del Campo cheering the horses of their contrade as the provacia, or final, of four tests of the Palio horses was run. The other three had been held earlier that week.

  For an aperitif, they drank a special fennel-base liqueur which the waiter, whom the maître d’ had apprised of McGarr’s benevolence, recommended. It was a house specialty, made for them in the country, he said. Tangy and tart, the liqueur pleased the Irishmen so much that they placed themselves in the waiter’s care for the duration of their repast.

  He then placed hot bread and two fiasci of full-bodied Chianti on the table. Antipasto was a selection of Tuscan sausages—finocchina, chingiale, salsiccia di fegato, and the blood sausage that was a Sienese specialty. The pasta course was gnocchi verdi, tiny green dumplings made with spinach and cottage cheese and served with melted butter and grated cheese. Finally, the waiter brought out the entree with enormous pride. As McGarr had expected, it was another Sienese dish, buristo suino. It was a rich pork casserole flavored with raisins and pine nuts. A platter heaped with copate (wafers made of honey and nuts), riciarelli (sweet, diamond-shaped almond biscuits), and fruit was served with pots of bitter espresso and glasses of plum brandy. One dipped the cookies in the brandy before biting.

  It was Bernie McKeon’s first heavy meal in Italy, and he hadn’t, like the others, merely tasted a little of everything. Now he was slightly green. Looking from the cool depths of the Ristorante Guido out onto the bright, granite-block street of the Banchi di Sopra, he said, “I can’t predict what’s going to happen to me when I hit that street. I might collapse.”

  McGarr poured him a glass of chilled acqua minerale and the sergeant felt somewhat better.

  They had timed it just right. Their diplomatic passes allowed them to weave through the crowd until they reached the entrance to the Palazzo Ricasoli.

  There, McGarr stopped suddenly and turned around. He had thought for a moment he had recognized somebody behind him. It was a woman who had looked surprisingly like Hitchcock’s wife, the person McGarr had met briefly in the sitting room of the house in St. John’s Wood. Thin, with high cheekbones and a crooked nose, this woman in the crowd turned her back to McGarr and began to walk away. They were only twenty feet or so apart from each other, but the gap quickly filled with revelers. McGarr had, however, gotten a glimpse of her ankle, which was very thin. Also, like Mrs. Hitchcock’s, the woman’s hair was blondish, having been tinted from gray in a manner that would not seem artificial.

  On a wide balcony of the Palazzo Ricasoli, the view of the Piazza del Campo was spectacular. After shaking hands with essentially the same guests who had been present at the party in the Italian embassy in London, McGarr looked out over the expanse of the piazza. It was a great mass of people bounded by the race track, which ran the circumference of the piazza. On this, Sienese clay had been placed and large barriers had been erected to keep the horses, which were ridden bareback, from charging into the crowd.

  The Piazza del Campo itself is on
e of the sublime creations of Italy’s Risorgimento. The Sienese made use of the existing landscape—the bases of the three intersecting hills on which Siena itself is built—and constructed the piazza in the shape of an inverted shell. In 1347, they paved the piazza with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern, divided into nine sections by means of longitudinal strips of white marble.

  Directly opposite the town hall is the Gaia fountain, built in the early fifteenth century. Its proportions clearly herald the coming Renaissance styles, but it is the town hall and Mangia Tower that dominate the piazza and give it its visual strength. These are undoubtedly the most elegant examples of Tuscan gothic architecture.

  McGarr admired most the balance of delicate three-mullioned windows on the middle floors of the building with Sienese archways on the ground floor and the crenellated roofline. This building was grand, surveying the expanse of the piazza that now contained close to one hundred thousand people, or so Il Conde, Enna Ricasoli’s aged father, now told him. Built beginning in 1288 of red brick, now a light brown, the town hall had been designed to conform to the shell-like configurations of the square so that its three wings faced, like a triptych, different directions. The Mangia Tower to its right rose into a gray stone and crenellated belfry that matched the stone first floor of the town hall. In all, the piazza was exquisite.

  McGarr and Noreen had spent two spring holidays in Siena some years before. Then, during the afternoons, they would sip Campari and bitters in the sun at one of the sidewalk cafés, read, and watch the genti pass by.