The Second Life of Inspector Canessa

by Roberto Perrone

  ‘And what would a different perspective be in this situation? You don’t think it’s unlucky for two gas pipes to have blown up so close to us? And that they’re worried about more of them bursting, so AMGA’s people will be roaming around, and come to check up here too? And why are the police involved?’

  Federzoni made everyone some coffee. He was tall and greying, and he didn’t look like a man who was active on the front line. But the planning division still thought of him as their best field commander: a cunning strategist, smart, even cruel at times, despite his professorial demeanour and affability.

  He grazed her shoulder, sending another shiver down her spine. He always had that effect on her. ‘Put it this way: the pipes could’ve burst right beneath us, and they would’ve come in the middle of the night, like they did with our neighbours. How would we carry all that stuff in our pyjamas?’ He pointed to the chest with the secret compartment that held their arsenal.

  Perfetti poured himself a coffee, and flung a snide comment her way. ‘Especially you, in that little thing you wear – if you even do.’

  Esposito laughed, and even Federzoni smirked. Good oldfashioned sexism, just as in any military enclosure.

  Amelia didn’t bat an eyelash. ‘So why the police?’

  ‘They need to check that there aren’t any other leaks in the area – it’s routine. And it can be problematic if they have to evacuate a building in a hurry. Not everyone’s happy to leave. Would you be?’ he asked Gennaro.

  ‘Fuck no.’

  ‘See? It’s okay, don’t worry. They’re scheduled to come in tomorrow, expecting three students. I won’t be here, you’ll be studying for your exams; they’ll check the kitchen and boiler and then they’ll leave.’ He picked up a biscuit and chucked it over at Gennaro, who caught it, whooped like a monkey and settled back onto the couch.

  Amelia tugged at the curtain again. ‘If you say so…’ She focused on one of the gas company vans parked just beneath them. ‘What if it’s a trap? They come in with the excuse of a gas leak check and they round us up without firing a single bullet.’ This time, Federzoni burst out laughing, and the others joined in.

  ‘Am I that amusing?’ The Czarina felt insulted.

  ‘Amelia, Amelia, there’s no cop smart enough to plan something that complex, with all these actors and in this setting, without someone noticing that something was off. Not in Italy. Come on, have some coffee.’

  ‘I don’t like it, anyway. I don’t like it at all.’ Amelia looked out of the window one more time before she sat down again.

  Ivan Repetto saw the curtain move, and wondered which of the four terrorists was becoming curious, or worse, suspicious. He was sitting inside the AMGA van that wasn’t an AMGA van. It was a Carabinieri surveillance van, equipped with all the recent tech: listening devices, cameras, videocameras. Repetto zoomed in with the Canon he was using, waited for the sliver of face to appear again, and took the shot. The woman.

  ‘I think they’re becoming suspicious. They’ve noticed something’s off.’

  Canessa smiled at Repetto’s worrying. ‘They’re just concerned about the whole mess. It’s to be expected. They’re not fans of complication, but they haven’t figured it out. They’d have moved if that were the case.’

  Annibale was sitting at the back, reading some papers and chewing on a Toscano. It wasn’t lit, but the entire van stank with it all the same. None of the three Carabinieri in working overalls dared protest. They were surprised he wasn’t smoking already, and they knew that if they irritated him, he’d definitely light his cigar.

  It was one of the first supergrasses, the first fruit of the new law the general had pushed for, who’d revealed the existence and location of the safe house. After a couple of stakeouts, led personally by Canessa – he didn’t want someone else to ruin it by getting caught or leaking info – he’d found out it was currently occupied and who was inside: a hit squad composed of some of the most wanted and most dangerous terrorists around. He’d recognised two of them almost immediately: Adelmo Federzoni and Amelia Ferri.

  Annibale had been opposed to a direct attack, the usual raid. ‘If we go in all guns blazing, besides risking our own people, we might kill them. We – or I – need them alive for the most part, and I know we can make it. Imagine the consequences: a couple of them might talk, and then the whole edifice would crumble. We’d have the whole organisation in our hands.’ With the general’s approval, he’d got the green light for his plan from the relevant ministries. And so, despite Repetto’s universal pessimism, everything would go according to Canessa’s design.

  Annibale was confident. He knew it would work. He’d laid out every detail. A small team of eight trained and trusted men. They would go round knocking on neighbouring doors, getting people out quickly, then head to the terrorists’ flat. Repetto and himself first, the others on the stairs, ready to intervene. Canessa was sure that these members of the Red Brigades would not be armed. In their position he wouldn’t be either. They’d be calm, relaxed, prepared for something, sure, but without guns. It would just be a safety evacuation, wouldn’t take longer than a couple of hours, best course of action would be to cooperate. Everything would be over faster. Once the four were out on the landing, the team would spring into action. They’d bring them in as they were, no guns fired, no one wounded, no violence. Nothing more than a well-aimed kick, maybe a punch.

  Canessa had planned every detail. He’d wanted everyone to wear work shoes and gloves, to remove all watches and any sign of a life different from the one they were currently playing. They were gas workers. After they’d rehearsed, he’d personally checked every single agent. He’d even got them to perform some manual labour in the days leading up to the raid, to roughen their hands. If the terrorists were as good as he thought, they’d be cautious, and they’d notice every detail.

  ‘Everything will be fine.’ He smiled at Repetto, but the marshal’s hunch persisted.

  He wasn’t asleep. He was dozing, half-alert, in a state of vigilance that allowed his mind to wander a little. Annibale Canessa was always somehow in control, even if his mind was drifting elsewhere – like now, when his random thoughts started materialising around the form of a young blonde, the daughter of a stern colonel from the Guardia di Finanza. When he’d met her at an army officers’ dinner in Turin, she’d struck him as demure, but she’d soon shown herself to be surprisingly feral. Annibale wasn’t a regular at those sorts of military social events, but he did use them to scope out women, as Repetto put it. Where else could he do it? After the general, he was top of the terrorists’ list, so he couldn’t just wander around, hang out in public, looking for company and conversation. What other people his age did naturally was out of bounds to him. And so, every now and then, he’d respond to an official invitation to an event with colleagues in the armed forces, maybe some politician or representative of the Church. Women seemed to be attracted to him not only because of his looks, but because of the smell of danger emanating from him, the scent of steel and blood that followed him. These occasions furnished all of Annibale’s relationships, which were usually very short-lived since he lived on a knife-edge. Anything more complicated or requiring more effort than a fling would tip him over. It was impossible for him to have a true connection; he couldn’t give out his phone number, book a restaurant, take a walk on the beach, go to the cinema. He wasn’t like anyone else. He was someone who had to whisper, ‘I’ll call you’ at the end of his flings – usually in a hotel room with two Carabinieri guarding the door. And then he couldn’t.

  Maybe it would be different with the blonde, he thought, and he really wanted to believe it. He and Repetto were assigned to the general for some delicate operations. The second day, his mentor had called him and insisted he go to the party.

  When Canessa replied with his usual ‘Thank you, I’ll consider it’, the general had looked at him with ill-co
ncealed frustration.

  ‘Please go to this one, Canessa. Get your mind off things. That’s an order.’

  He was taken by her, literally. He’d worn his uniform, something he rarely did, a fact that both angered his colleagues and aroused their jealousy. As he wandered around a room full of ladies and officers who’d put too much effort into their outfits, he’d spotted the young woman and was struck by her appearance: she looked like a student in her knee-length tartan skirt and a blue cardigan over a white shirt with an embroidered collar. A convent girl? he wondered. She looked to be about seventeen (instead of twenty-one, as he found out later), so he decided to engage her in conversation and nothing else, to distract himself from a tedious evening of married women fawning over him. He was done with them, he’d told Repetto (who did not believe him, of course). He headed over to her.

  Canessa came up behind her as she was getting herself a drink from the buffet. Her name was Giuseppina, and she turned out to be a bit special, placing him immediately and catching him off guard. Without turning round, she said, ‘You’re better looking than they say. Are you also better at fucking?’

  Twenty minutes later they were in the storage room between the wine bottles, crates of food and waiters coming and going. They’d moved, or rather, she’d dragged him behind the crates and fallen to her knees in front of him.

  ‘I wanted to taste you. I like you, but now that I know what you taste like, I expect more from you,’ she whispered when she got back to her feet. He just stood there, trousers round his ankles.

  They started seeing each other, their sessions increasingly passionate. Canessa was intoxicated by her alchemy of innocence and perversion, and he borrowed a friend’s flat for a while. One night he took her dancing at the Murazzi, overturning the established order of his existence. It was packed with people, some of whom would have taken him down had they realised who he was, but Annibale was disguised in a studded leather jacket, jeans, and fake reading glasses. In her tight leather trousers and black shirt (no bra underneath), Giuseppina ground against him to the rhythm of the pulsing strobes. Annibale floated off into a world far removed from his own, happy, guard down. Mostly.

  She gave him a sly smile and slipped her hand into his trousers, holding his penis; her other hand found the Beretta 925B, still an unofficial release, stuck into his belt. Slowly she removed both hands and whispered, ‘You’re harder than your gun.’

  Five minutes later they were in the toilets, he was taking her from behind and she was growling like an animal.

  Annibale was positive he’d planned every last detail of the raid, and he closed his eyes, letting his mind flip through the images of the last night he’d spent with her. They’d started out along the Po, and moved on to a flat next to the Grande Madre…

  The sound of the door slamming open dragged him out of his filthy dreams. He grabbed a gun from the table in front of him and aimed it at whoever had just walked in.

  A colonel.

  His first thought, to be honest, was that it might be Giuseppina’s father, coming to settle the score with the man who had taken his daughter (and how!). But he wasn’t a Carabiniere. He belonged to the Guardia di Finanza.

  ‘Who the fuck are you, you idiot? Why the fuck are you in uniform? If they see you, this all goes tits up!’

  Repetto had actually fallen asleep next to Canessa, and now he was trying to figure what was going on in front of him. Was Canessa shouting and pointing a gun at a superior officer?

  Without losing his calm, the newcomer shut the van door behind him, removed his hat and sat down on one of the benches. He was tall and almost entirely bald except for a ring of hair crowning his shiny skull.

  ‘Put your weapon down, Captain. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear what you just said. I understand the delicacy of this situation.’

  Canessa lowered his gun but didn’t retract his attitude. ‘Politeness doesn’t alter the facts: you have no authorisation to be here, this operation has been planned for months, and you risk blowing our cover with that uniform of yours.’

  The colonel attempted a smile. ‘You’re not the only one who knows how to follow procedure, you know. I made sure no one saw me come in here. Calm down.’

  ‘Fantastic. That means you can leave the same way you came.’

  Canessa stood up. The other man did the same, much more slowly, and still smirking. They faced off. Canessa clenched his right fist.

  ‘What? You’re going to punch a superior officer? Don’t be stupid.’

  Annibale realised that this man wasn’t one of those ambitious careerists who knew nothing about the trenches, the sweat and fear of the battlefield. He was rumbled. He also had eyes in the back of his head: he saw things it seemed he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘So what?’ he asked, changing his angle. ‘Are you here to supervise? Right. Make yourself comfortable. It’ll all be over in a couple of hours.’

  ‘I’m sure it will, but not in the way you think.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘We’re moving in now.’

  At that, Repetto also stood up and moved threateningly towards the colonel. ‘Excuse my wading in, but it’s only a couple more hours. What’s the rush?’

  Canessa added, ‘Not to mention that a sudden raid will put the lives of my men at risk.’

  ‘Your men will run no such risk,’ the officer calmly objected as he slid an envelope bearing the stamp of the Minister for the Interior out of his jacket pocket. He handed it to Canessa, who held it out so that he and Repetto could both read it. The minister and the commander general had signed written orders stating that Operation Arpione was now under the command of Colonel Marco Baccini and his team.

  ‘Your team?’ Canessa hissed.

  Baccini was amused by his anger.

  ‘You’re not the only Carabiniere in Italy, and you’re not the only one capable of running this sort of operation. I’m sure you’re aware of the GIS.’

  ‘The Special Intervention Group. But it’s not been activated y—’

  ‘That is where you’re wrong, Captain,’ Baccini cut him off, clearly enjoying himself, ‘because in a van parked just out of sight are nine of its best assets. As I said, you’re not the only one in the country tracking down terrorists.’ The officer looked at his watch and did up his coat. ‘Well, this conversation has lasted long enough. You’re out of this, Captain. Don’t do anything rash. Think of your career.’

  Annibale stood rooted to the spot, orders still in hand. Furious but powerless. As the colonel opened the van door, he blocked him.

  ‘Why?’

  The officer flashed him a smile. ‘Because the State needs a win, and it needs it now.’

  They watched him disappear into the night.

  Repetto had to struggle to keep Canessa from chasing Colonel Baccini. The captain was furious, and Repetto knew him well: in that state, he might well do something incredibly stupid. He lunged for the sat phone and tried to get in touch with the general: no luck. Canessa just kept staring outside at a street made even darker by the absence of the moon and the intentional dimming of the lights. It had all been meticulously planned, and for what? He was frustrated. He didn’t understand and he wanted to leave – to see who made up this special team, to find out if they were prepared. But his sense of duty held him back. He might blow their cover if he suddenly ran outside, no matter who they were. It had already been incredible risky for the colonel to show himself.

  Several minutes had gone by, however, and nothing had moved. No light in the terrorists’ flat. From up there, the men sliding along the walls towards the door of the building were practically invisible. Baccini was almost certainly leading them, though they were all wearing black trousers, turtlenecks and bulletproof vests. Every man had an automatic in his holster and a short assault rifle in hand.

  Canessa squinte
d. ‘Those are Uzi.’ Repetto nodded.

  ‘The latest model, too. Is that the one assigned in the GIS?’

  It was strange. Even Repetto was confused. The whole situation was starting to look skewed. Confirmation arrived in the shape of Baccini’s gun, revealed by a cone of light.

  ‘Annibale, that’s a—’

  ‘—Makarov PB 6P9, with silencer, eight rounds. Definitely not standard issue,’ Canessa confirmed.

  ‘You use the Walther, though.’

  ‘Yes, but never in official operations. It’s just backup. No, there’s something wrong here. Those aren’t Carabinieri.’

  ‘Who are they, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I know is that this reeks of a conspiracy. This “colonel” has shafted us.’ And before Repetto could stop him, he’d grabbed the Beretta and launched himself out of the van, running towards the door that had just swallowed the men in black.

  *

  Gennaro Esposito got up every night at least twice to take a piss. Three, if you counted the times the Czarina’s moans woke him up. He’d started worrying. Not about the bitch, but his own bladder.

  It can’t be my prostate. I’m too young for that. He’d even seen a doctor from the Workers’ Aid. ‘Definitely not your prostate,’ he’d confirmed with a smile, making Gennaro’s day. ‘But there’s too much salt in your diet, and that’s not good. You should eat less in the evenings.’ Gennaro, however, never got enough food during the day. The evenings were his big moment. There was never time for lunch. Everyone was always rushing around at lunch, especially up there, in the north. Everyone always bustled around in the north: if you took more than a minute at the bar to enjoy your espresso – which you couldn’t, because they were bad at making them – there was always someone behind you, huffing, and you had to down it and let them through. What’s the rush?