Numero Zero (16 page)

“Or perhaps it's just your tendency to see conspiracies everywhere, so you put two and two together to make five.”

“Me? Look at the court cases, it is all there, provided you're able to find your way around the archives. The trouble is, facts get lost between one piece of news and another. Take the story about Peteano. In May 1972, near Gorizia, the police are informed that a Fiat Five Hundred with two bullet holes in the windshield has been abandoned on a certain road. Three policemen arrive; they try to open the hood and are blown up. For some time it's thought to be the work of the Red Brigades, but years later someone by the name of Vincenzo Vinciguerra appears on the scene. And listen to this: after his involvement in other mysterious affairs, he manages to avoid arrest and escapes to Spain, where he is sheltered by the international anticommunist network Aginter Press. Here he makes contact with another right-wing terrorist, Stefano Delle Chiaie, joins the Avanguardia Nazionale, then disappears to Chile and Argentina, but in 1978 he decides, magnanimously, that all this struggle against the state made no sense and he gives himself up in Italy. Note that he didn't repent, he still thought he'd been right to do what he had done up until then, and so, I ask you, why did he give himself up? I'd say out of a need for publicity. There are murderers who return to the scene of the crime, serial killers who send evidence to the police because they want to be caught, otherwise they will not end up on the front page, and so Vinciguerra starts spewing out confession after confession. He accepts responsibility for the explosion at Peteano and points his finger at the security forces who had protected him. Only in 1984 does an investigating judge, Felice Casson, discover that the explosive used at Peteano came from a Gladio arms depot, and most intriguing of all, the existence of that depot was revealed to him—I'll give you a thousand guesses—by Andreotti, who therefore knew and had kept his mouth shut. A police expert (who also happened to be a member of the far-right Ordine Nuovo) had reported that the explosive was identical to that used by the Red Brigades, but Casson established that the explosive was C-4 supplied to NATO forces. In short, a fine web of intrigue, but as you can see, regardless of whether it was NATO or the Red Brigades, Gladio was implicated. Except that the investigations also show that Ordine Nuovo had been working with the Italian military secret service. And you understand that if a military secret service has three policemen blown up, it won't be out of any dislike for the police but to direct the blame at far-left extremists. To make a long story short, after investigations and counterinvestigations, Vinciguerra is sentenced to life in prison, from where he continues to make revelations over the strategy of tension they were conducting. He talks about the bombing of the Bologna railway station (you see how there are links between one bombing and another, it's not just my imagination), and he says that the massacre at Piazza Fontana in 1969 had been planned to force the then prime minister, Mariano Rumor, to declare a state of emergency. He also adds, and I'll read it to you: ‘You can't go into hiding without money. You can't go into hiding without support. I could choose the path that others followed, of finding support elsewhere, perhaps in Argentina through the secret services. I could also choose the path of crime. But I have no wish to work with the secret services nor to play the criminal. So to regain my freedom I had only one choice. To give myself up. And this is what I've done.' Obviously it's the logic of an exhibitionist lunatic, but a lunatic who has reliable information. And so this is my story, reconstructed almost in its entirety: the shadow of Mussolini, who is taken for dead, wholly dominates Italian events from 1945 until, I'd say, now. And his real death unleashes the most terrible period in this country's history, involving stay-behind, the CIA, NATO, Gladio, the P2, the Mafia, the secret services, the military top command, prime ministers such as Andreotti and presidents like Cossiga, and naturally a good part of the far-left terrorist organizations, duly infiltrated and manipulated. Not to mention that Moro was kidnapped and assassinated because he knew something and would have talked. And if you want to, you can add lesser criminal cases that have no apparent political relevance . . .”

“Yes, the Beast of Via San Gregorio, the Soap Maker of Correggio, the Monster of the Via Salaria . . .”

“Ah, well, don't be sarcastic. Perhaps not the cases immediately after the war, but for the rest it's more convenient, as they say, to see just one story dominated by a single virtual figure who seemed to direct the traffic from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia, even though no one could see him. Skeletons can always appear at night,” he said, pointing to the silent hosts around us, “and perform their
danse macabre
. You know, there are more things in heaven and earth, etc. etc. But it's clear, once the Soviet threat was over, that Gladio was officially consigned to the attic, and both Cossiga and Andreotti talked about it to exorcise its ghost, to present it as something normal that happened with the approval of the authorities, of a community made up of patriots, like the Carbonari in bygone times. But is it really all over, or are certain diehard groups still working away in the shadows? I think there is more to come.”

He looked around, frowned: “But we'd better leave now, I don't like the look of that Japanese group coming in. Oriental spies are everywhere, and now that China's at it, they can understand all languages.”

As we left, I took a deep breath and asked him, “But you've checked it all out?”

“I've spoken to well-informed people and I've sought the advice of our colleague Lucidi. Perhaps you don't know he has links with the secret services.”

“I know, I know. But do you trust him?”

“They're people used to keeping their silence, don't worry. I need a few more days to gather other cast-iron evidence—cast-iron, I say—then I'll go to Simei and present him with the results of my investigation. Twelve installments for twelve zero issues.”

That evening, to forget about the bones at San Bernardino, I took Maia out for a candlelight dinner. I didn't of course mention Gladio, I avoided dishes that involved taking anything off the bone, and was slowly emerging from my afternoon ordeal.

16

B
RAGGADOCIO SPENT SEVERAL
days that week putting together his scoop and the whole of Thursday morning hunkered down with Simei in his office. They reemerged around eleven o'clock, with Simei commending him, “Check the information once again, thoroughly. I don't want any risks.”

“Don't worry,” replied Braggadocio, radiating high spirits and optimism. “This evening I'm meeting someone I can trust. I'll do one last check.”

Meanwhile the news team were all busily arranging the regular pages for the first zero issue: sports, Palatino's games, letters of denial, horoscopes, and death notices.

“No matter how much we invent,” said Costanza at one point, “I'll bet you we won't manage to fill even those twenty-four pages. We need more news.”

“All right,” said Simei. “Perhaps you can lend a hand, Colonna.”

“News doesn't need to be invented,” I said. “All you have to do is recycle it.”

“How?”

“People have short memories. Taking an absurd example, everyone should know that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the ides of March, but memories get muddled. Take a biography recently published in Britain that reexamines the whole story, and all you have to do is come up with a sensational headline, such as ‘Spectacular Discovery by Cambridge Historians: Julius Caesar really assassinated on Ides of March,' you retell the whole story, and turn it into a thoroughly enjoyable article. Now, the Caesar story is something of an exaggeration, I grant you, but if you talk about the Pio Albergo Trivulzio affair, here you can produce an article along the lines of the Banca Romana collapse. That happened at the end of the nineteenth century and has nothing to do with the present scandals, but one scandal leads to another, all you have to do is refer to rumors, and you've got the story of the Banca Romana business as if it happened yesterday. I bet Lucidi would know how to pull a good article out of it.”

“Excellent,” said Simei. “What is it, Cambria?”

“I see an agency report here, another statue of the Madonna crying in a village down south.”

“Terrific, you can turn that into a sensational story!”

“Superstitions all over again—”

“No! We're not a newsletter for the atheistic and rationalist crowd. People want miracles, not trendy skepticism. Writing about a miracle doesn't mean compromising ourselves by saying the newspaper believes it. We recount what's happened, or say that someone has witnessed it. Whether these Virgins actually cry is none of our business. Readers must draw their own conclusions, and if they're believers, they'll believe it. With a headline over several columns.”

Everyone worked away in great excitement. I passed Maia's desk, where she was concentrating on the death notices, and said, “And don't forget, ‘Family bereft—'”

“‘—and good friend Filiberto shares the grief of beloved Matilde and dearest children Mario and Serena,'” she replied.

“You have to keep up with the times—the new Italian names are Jessyka with a
y
or Samanta without the
h
, and even Sue Ellen, written ‘Sciuellen.'” I gave her a smile of encouragement and moved on.

I spent the evening at Maia's place, succeeding, as happened now and then, in making a cozy love nest out of that bleak den piled with precarious towers of books.

Among the piles were many classical records, vinyl inherited from her grandparents. Sometimes we lay there for hours listening. That evening Maia put on Beethoven's Seventh, and she told me, her eyes brimming with tears, how ever since her adolescence, the second movement would make her cry. “It started when I was sixteen. I had no money, and thanks to someone I knew, I managed to slip into a concert without paying, except that I had no seat, so I squatted down on the steps in the upper balcony, and little by little I found myself almost lying down. The wood was hard, but I didn't feel a thing. And during the second movement I thought that's how I'd like to die, and burst into tears. I was crazy then, but I went on crying even after I'd grown up.”

I had never cried listening to music, but was moved by the fact that she did. After several minutes' silence, Maia said, “He was a fruitcake.” He who? But Schumann, of course, said Maia, as if I had become distracted. Her autism, as usual.

“Schumann a fruitcake?”

“Yes, loads of romantic outpouring, what you'd expect for that period, but all too cerebral. And by straining his brain he went mad. I can see why his wife fell in love with Brahms. Another temperament, other music, and a bon vivant. Mind you, I'm not saying Robert was bad, I'm sure he had talent, he wasn't one of those blusterers.”

“Which?”

“Like that bumptious Liszt, or the rambunctious Rachmaninoff. They wrote some terrible music, all stuff for effect, for making money, Concerto for Goons in C Major, things like that. If you look, you'll find none of their records in that pile. I dumped them. They'd have been better off as farm hands.”

“But who do you think is better than Liszt?”

“Satie, no?”

“But you don't cry over Satie, do you?”

“Of course not, he wouldn't have wanted it, I only cry over the second movement of the Seventh.” Then, after a moment's pause, “I also cry over some Chopin, since my adolescence. Not his concertos, of course.”

“Why not his concertos?”

“Because if you took him away from the piano and put him in front of an orchestra, he would have no idea where he was. He wrote piano parts for strings, brass, even drums. And then, have you seen that film with Cornel Wilde playing Chopin and splashing a drop of blood on the keyboard? What would have happened if he'd conducted an orchestra? He'd have splashed blood on the first violin.”

Maia never ceased to amaze me, even when I thought I knew her well. With her, I would have learned to appreciate music. Her way, in any case.

It was our last evening of happiness. Yesterday I woke late and didn't get to the office until late morning. As I entered, I could see men in uniform searching through Braggadocio's drawers and a plainclothesman questioning those present. Simei stood sallow-faced at the door of his office.

Cambria approached, speaking softly, as if he had some secret to tell: “They've killed Braggadocio.”

“What? Braggadocio? How?”

“A night watchman was returning home on his bike this morning at six and saw a body lying face-down, wounded in the back. At that hour it took him some time to find a bar that was open so he could telephone for an ambulance and the police. One stab wound, that's what the police doctor found right away, just one, but inflicted with force. No sign of the knife.”

“Where?”

“In an alleyway around Via Torino, what's it called . . . Via Bagnara, or Bagnera.”

The plainclothesman introduced himself. He was a police inspector and asked when I had last seen Braggadocio. “Here in the office, yesterday,” I replied, “like all my colleagues, I suspect. Then I think he went off alone, just before the others.”

He asked how I had spent my evening, as I imagine he'd done with the rest. I said I'd had supper with a friend and then gone straight to bed. Clearly I didn't have an alibi, but it seems none of those present had one either, and the inspector didn't seem overly concerned. It was just a routine question, as they say on TV cop shows.

He was more interested in whether Braggadocio had any enemies, whether he was pursuing dangerous inquiries. I was hardly about to tell him everything, not because there was anyone I was anxious to protect, but I was beginning to realize that if someone had bumped off Braggadocio, it had to do with his investigations. And I had the sudden feeling that if I'd shown even the smallest sign of knowing anything, I too might be worth getting rid of. I mustn't tell the police, I thought. Hadn't Braggadocio told me that everyone was implicated in his stories, including the Forestry Rangers? And though I'd regarded him as a crank until yesterday, his death now assured him a certain credibility.