mobile phone, the most powerful motorbike, the most fashionable pedigree dog. Get it all, if you can! It won’t make you happy, but it may eventually bring you what you least desire but most need: the knowledge that happiness is an illusion.
Almost half a million Italians had passed over into those paradisiacal shadows during the Great War, with another million crippled for life, but the country had quickly recovered. Now, though, the Italians were dying out. The birth rate was amongst the lowest in the world, with the population predicted to decline by a third in the next fifty years. That meant the end of the extended family that had held the nation together for centuries. And when you looked at the coddled brats who were the end result of this genetic experiment in self-immolation, it was hard to argue that this was a case of pochi ma buoni. It was as if the Italians had collectively lost the will to live. The only reason that the population rate had remained roughly stable until now was the continual influx of illegal immigrants, who of course spawned like sardines. Italy had suffered countless invasions in the course of her long and chequered history, but never before had the nation’s very survival been dependent on the fecundity of the invaders. The ultimate invasion, the ultimate defeat.
But all that was still decades away, when he would be dead and buried. In the meantime, he was at peace with himself. He had done his duty, and that was all that anyone could do. There were even a few pleasures left in life, such as lunch. Alberto’s tongue explored his hefty rear molars, worrying away at a tuft of pork that had got jammed into a crevice. One ate well at Da Dante. Solid, rich Roman food, in a solid, rich Roman establishment on Via dei Gracchi, in the heart of solid, rich Roman Prati. Nice crowd, too, the right sort, even though these days most of them wouldn’t know who the Gracchi were. They could recite the names of a hundred characters from the latest movies and TV shows, but they wouldn’t have a clue about the Gracchi, particularly the kids. Half of them couldn’t remember 1975, let alone 175 BC. Some old dead guys, who cares? The arrogance of the young.
He knew who the Gracchi had been. Servants of the Latin people, and upholders of their rights against the corrupt and indolent landowners who had enriched themselves with war booty while leaving the soldiers who had fought those wars too poor to support their families. True, the Gracchi had broken the law, but only to defend a higher law and a nobler con¬ cept of the historic good of their city and country. They had willingly sacrificed their own interests, and indeed their lives, for the greater interest of the community and the nation as a whole. Which was all he had ever striven to do. To act for the greater long-term good of the people. Nothing for himself. No one could ever reproach him for that. And where laws had been broken, it had always and only been to keep a more important law intact.
One of his three mobiles rang. The encrypted line.
‘ Pronto.’
‘It’s Cazzola, capo.’
‘Hold.’
Alberto walked to the end of the block, then turned right into a quiet side street.
‘Well?’
‘I’m afraid we seem to have lost contact.’
‘You what?’
‘The target told his girlfriend yesterday that he had to go to Venice to sort out some problems with the family lawyer regarding his mother’s will.’
‘That sounds plausible. His family’s from Venice and his mother died recently.’
‘But he also told her that the police were sending him to Padua to report on the status of an on-going murder investigation. I checked with our friends in Padua. There are no murder cases underway there.’
Alberto heaved a rhetorical sigh.
‘Wonderful. So he’s realized that the apartment has been bugged and is using the equipment to feed us a pack of lies.’
‘Unless it’s a cover story he was feeding the girlfriend so that he can go off and visit his mistress somewhere.’
‘He doesn’t have a mistress.’
‘Oh.’
‘Congratulations, Cazzola. This is a major set-back. Not only are the bugs and phone tap now useless, but he now has confirmation of the importance of the operation.’
‘It’s not my fault, capo! I swear I did everything by the book.’
‘All right, all right. No point in worrying about that now. You’ve lost him. When and how?’
‘Well, it was the girlfriend’s birthday and they went out for lunch at a restaurant in the country. Before they left, he told her to drop him at the station in Lucca when they got back, so I waited there.’
‘Instead of which she drove him to an unknown destination.’
‘No, no, they came to the station, and I overheard him buying a ticket to Florence. I’d already monitored him telling the girlfriend that he was going to change there to the Eurostar for Venice…’
‘Get to the point, Cazzola! I’ve got an important appointment in fifteen minutes.’
‘Well, I followed, of course, taking a seat in the next carriage so as to prevent subsequent recognition, but with a good view of the target through the connecting door. All by the book.’
A pause.
‘Only when the train arrived at Santa Maria Novella, he wasn’t on it,’ Alberto commented wearily.
‘No. He got up to have a smoke while the train stopped at Pistoia and didn’t return to his original seat. I assumed that he’d taken another one, in the part of the carriage I couldn’t see from where I was sitting. I caught the next train back to Pistoia, but there was no sign of him there either.’
Alberto glanced at his watch. There was no time to get angry, and no point.
‘Don’t worry about it, Cazzola. He’ll show up sooner or later. Meanwhile, get on with the other items we discussed. Go and visit Passarini’s sister first. The usual procedure. Who knows, you might even run into our missing target. I have a feeling that our paths are converging. In which case, just make sure you get there first.’
He slammed the phone shut, returning to the boulevard and starting to walk briskly. That it should come to this, he thought. Here he was, an old man in an increasingly strange land, facing the supreme crisis of his career and at the mercy of a dolt who wouldn’t be worth wasting a bullet on when the time came. But there was no question of using the good people, except for information gathering and logistical support. For the dirty work, he had only himself and the faithful but incompetent Cazzola to depend on.
Too bad he couldn’t have this Aurelio Zen on his side. He’d checked him out on the database as soon as that carabinieri colonel in Bolzano had reported Zen’s involvement with the case. He sounded like a good man. A bit younger than him, but essentially the same generation, the sort who understood. They’d stopped making them after ’68. Had a reputation for going his own way and using irregular methods, but there was nothing wrong with that as long as the cause was just. No reported political affiliations. There had been some sort of fuss when an operative named Lessi had tried to implicate Zen in the death of one of his colleagues down in Sicily, but nothing had come of it. Reportedly Lessi had always been regarded as a bit of a loose cannon on deck and had disappeared from view after being forcibly retired, much to everyone’s relief.
Anyway, Zen was of no real importance, Alberto reminded himself. The key to the whole affair remained Gabriele Passarini, the one remaining member of the original Medusa cell besides himself. Once he had been taken care of, the police could sniff and snoop around to their hearts’ content. He would then retire to his house here in Prati, close the shutters, ignore the news and relax, conscious of a job well done and a life well spent.
He turned his thoughts to his imminent meeting with some people from the Ministry of Defence that had been requested, in terms that amounted to an order, ‘to clarify the situation’. In other words, to ensure that their arses would be covered if anything went wrong. Alberto hadn’t felt it appropriate to refuse, but he had cited reasons of security for changing the venue from the Ministry itself to Forte Boccea, the headquarters of the military intelligence service.
They had in turn declined that option, obviously not wanting to give Alberto home advantage any more than he wanted to play away at their ground. The result had been a compromise, in the form of a largely disused barracks and training camp in the heart of Prati, just a few minutes from Alberto’s home. The detour from the restaurant where he had eaten lunch had added ten minutes, and Cazzola’s call another five, but he would still be just in time.
He had given the meeting a considerable amount of thought, to the point of debating whether or not to wear
