make the most of it, and the outcome might well determine the fate of the present government. Is that clear enough, or would you like me to draw you a cartoon version?’
Alberto decided to let him have that one. He nodded submissively and sat down again.
‘I completely understand and share your concern, dottore, but may I remind you that what you rightly term the cock-and- bull story about nerve gas did not originate from SISMI, but from certain elements within the army who were desperate to explain the fact that the victim found in that alpine tunnel had been reported killed following an explosion on board a military flight over the Adriatic.’
‘So they knew who he was?’ Belardinelli shot back.
‘They knew who he was.’
‘Despite the fact that the carabinieri had listed the body as unidentified.’
‘I was able to help them.’
‘And how did you know?’
Alberto sighed regretfully.
‘The answer to that question would involve one of the breaches of security that I alluded to earlier. Let us just say that through various channels and resources available to my department, I was provisionally able to identify the body as being that of one Lieutenant Leonardo Ferrero.’
‘But instead of communicating this information to the carabinieri in Bolzano, you invoked the national security emergency clause and ordered them to seize the body and effects from the hospital and transfer them to Rome.’
Alberto shrugged.
‘It was perhaps a little precipitate, but it seemed the best course of action at that juncture.’
Belardinelli shook his head incredulously.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘So the body is that of an army lieutenant named Ferrero. Which regiment?’
‘The Alpini.’
‘And how did he die?’
This was the moment that Alberto had been building up to. He stood up and glanced around the room, as though worried about being overheard.
‘It was indeed the result of a misadventure, although not at the time nor in the manner of the version retailed to you by sources in the armed forces. The actual facts are very different. You must realize, first of all, that military mores were very different at the epoch of which we are speaking than is the case now. For example…’
‘We haven’t time for a lecture on military history, colonnello. Kindly restrict yourself to the facts.’
‘Very good. It appears that Lieutenant Ferrero and a number of his fellow junior officers were participating in a form of initiation ritual that was quite usual at the time. Those concerned spent a weekend or even longer on furlough in the military battlegrounds where so many members of their regiment had given their lives during the Great War. As you have reminded me that time is short, I shall not describe in detail the various ordeals which they were required to undergo in order to become “blood brothers” of our glorious dead. Suffice it to say that they were extremely arduous and painful. Unfortunately Lieutenant Ferrero must have suffered from some undiagnosed physical condition which rendered the initiation rites fatal.’
‘Why did those with him not simply report what had happened and have the body recovered then and there?’
‘The others naturally reported the tragedy to the colonel in charge of the detachment of the regiment in Verona on their return. Rightly or wrongly, he decided against disclosing the truth about Ferrero’s death, since that would have meant revealing the nature of the activities involved. Given the unstable political situation at the time, he feared that this would be seized upon by left-wing propagandists in an attempt to further discredit the armed forces. His initial idea was to recover the body and say that Ferrero had died during a training accident, but a few days later a military flight from Verona to Trieste happened to go down with all hands over the Adriatic. The colonel arranged for Lieutenant Ferrero’s name to be included on the list of those missing.’
Belardinelli caught the eye of the older aide, who was now checking the walls for cracks.
‘He’s good, isn’t he?’
‘Very,’ the other man responded.
It was impossible to tell whether this was intended as a compliment.
‘What about Ferrero’s family?’ Belardinelli asked Alberto.
‘His father is now dead. His mother is suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home. There are two sisters, but of course they believe that their brother died in that plane crash thirty years ago.’
‘And where is the corpse at present?’
‘In the morgue of a military hospital here in Rome.’
Alberto gestured deferentially.
‘I didn’t feel it appropriate to take any further action until we had spoken, dottore.’
Belardinelli strode over to the desk, switched off the tape recorder and gestured to his two aides to get moving.
‘Have it cremated,’ he told Alberto. ‘At once. Under a false name. Dispose of the ashes yourself.’
At the door, he turned again.
‘This man from the Viminale.’
‘Zen?’
‘Yes. If you get a chance, bury him too. Do you understand?’
Alberto nodded complaisantly. ‘Of course, dottore. Of course.’
XIII
Well, thought Claudia, this is different. Difference was of course why one came here in the first place, but still.
‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘I’d be delighted.’
The man smiled in a gracious, deferential way, but there was a look in his eye… A good ten years younger than me, she thought as he walked off towards the stairs. Just like Leonardo. Ten years meant a lot more back then, of course. But still.
Claudia turned back and tried to apply herself to her game. Venetian, he’d said, when she queried the name. ‘ Venessiani gran signori.’ He certainly seemed to have all the qualities of a gentleman, but the interesting kind who knows exactly when to stop behaving like one. ‘ Veronesi tuti mati,’ the dialect rhyme concluded. People from Verona had the reputation of being a bit crazy, and Claudia felt in the mood to do something crazy.
But that was another reason why one went abroad. Campione wasn’t strictly speaking abroad, of course, but its ambiguous status made it still more fascinating. The place was an exception to every rule, a case apart. And afterwards one took the ferry back to Lugano, just around the peninsula and across the lake, and alighted at the stop a few steps from the Grand Hotel Lugubre Magnifique, as she always thought of it, so reassuringly Swiss, sedate and safe.
She and Gaetano had come here at least once a year back in the early days, and always, as now, in the off- season. She would never forget the sense of excitement and occasion, and above all the way Gaetano changed when they were there, becoming even more ardent and edgy, as though he were one of the serious gamblers the casino had attracted then, men who thought nothing of hazarding a million lire — a lifetime’s wages for many people in those days — on a night’s play.
In reality, though, Gaetano had spent little time at the tables.
‘Why do you bother coming if you’re not going to play?’ she’d asked once.
‘I’m visiting my bankers,’ he’d replied with an oblique smile.
He’d been at Campione before and during the war, when, according to him, it had been a notorious base for espionage, money laundering and shady unaccredited diplomats on various inadmissible missions.
But as long as she and her husband made a few token appearances together in the sala dei giocatori, it had been perfectly in order for her to return there without him, and her presence was accepted without the slightest comment by the staff and the other players. In a way it was like going to church. There were certain forms that had
