Medusa - 9 (24 page)

Zen nodded. ‘Times change,’ he said. ‘In this case, it’s quite possible that our interests may ultimately coincide.’

Brandelli poured them both more tea.

‘You astonish me,
dottore
. And at my age it’s very unusual to be astonished. Anyway, here we go. The year was 1973. I then worked for
L’Unità
and had already developed something of a reputation for investigative journalism thanks to various pieces which had won me the highest award in the profession, namely a number of death threats. One day I received yet another anonymous phone message. This time the caller claimed to have information to pass on regarding an affair of the highest national importance and wanted to arrange a suitable place and time for us to meet. It had to be in Verona, at the weekend and in the evening. He was very insistent about that.’

‘And you assumed that this was the set-up for an actual assassination, as opposed to the usual string of vague menaces and veiled threats.’

‘Precisely. Verona was a notorious hotbed of neo-Fascism at the time, and indeed since, so my only surprise was that the hit-man or his employers hadn’t realized this. Nevertheless, I couldn’t risk turning the caller down out of hand and possibly losing a scoop, so I set up an assignation at a pizzeria in Piazza Bra. I did not of course go there myself, but I enlisted the help of some of the Veronese
compagni
to keep an eye on the venue and let me know what happened. They reported that a young man had duly shown up at the agreed time. He had looked extremely nervous and preoccupied, had waited for about half an hour, looking up whenever anyone entered. When he left, a team of them followed discreetly. His destination turned out to be a local army barracks.’

Zen put down his tea cup and lit another cigarette.

‘At which point you were no doubt reminded of the method they use to catch man-killing tigers in India,’ he said. ‘They tether a goat to a stake, and then when the tiger comes to eat the goat, the hunters emerge from the undergrowth and shoot it.’

Brandelli beamed.

‘Our minds obviously work along similar lines, Dottor Zen. My contact was the goat, I was the tiger, and since I had not taken the bait that evening the hunters had not shown themselves. But a few days later the man called again. I apologized for having missed our first appointment and we made another. It was a matter of the greatest urgency, he said, a vital and shocking disclosure that would horrify the public.’

Brandelli shrugged.

‘There was still a risk, of course, but the man’s tone of voice convinced me that he was either a trained actor or telling the truth. Besides, risk is part and parcel of the trade that I had chosen. At any event, we met. And the first thing he said, once we had exchanged the agreed code words, was that he was an army officer acting under orders.’

Zen looked up sharply.

‘And you believed him?’

‘I believed him. His manner was that of a dutiful subordinate carrying out a task without regard for his personal feelings or opinions. He displayed no discernible political animus or involvement whatsoever. On the contrary, he remained completely detached throughout. His role was simply that of the go-between, the messenger, executing the orders that he had been given.’

Zen raised his eyebrows.

‘He then proceeded to reveal the existence within the armed forces of a parallel entity consisting of selected officers organized into four-man groups. Only one man in each group had access to the next level of command, and none of them to any other groups.’

‘The classic cell structure, in other words.’

‘Indeed. An invention of the Bolsheviks. My informant claimed that the superior officer who had sent him was a member of one of these cells, but had lately grown disillusioned and now felt that it was his duty to bring the true purpose of the conspiracy to the attention of the public before it could be put into effect. Since he was closely watched at all times, he was doing so through an intermediary.’

‘And the purpose was?’

‘Nothing less than the overthrow of the elected government and the imposition of a military dictatorship.’

Zen laughed.

‘You must have thought you’d won the lottery!’

‘It’s easy to laugh now,’ Brandelli retorted testily. ‘For that matter, it seemed pretty far-fetched to me even at the time. But there was so much we didn’t know about back then. We didn’t know about the CIA-funded stay-behind Gladio terrorist operation, for example, to be activated in the event of the Communists coming to power. Nor about Licio Gelli’s P2 organization, specifically intended to provide support and personnel in the event of a right-wing coup. And in which, lest we forget, the
onorevole
Silvio Berlusconi was enrolled with the membership number 1168.’

Zen gave a chastened nod.

‘You’re right. I apologize.’

‘We didn’t know about any of that at the time, but what we did know was that the governance of this country was teetering on the brink during that whole decade. It seemed then, and continues to seem now, perfectly credible that certain people should have put in place a plan for bypassing the democratic process and seizing power in the name of “normalization” and “stability”. According to my informant, such a plan existed. Its code-name was Operation Medusa.’

At that moment Aurelio Zen did something that anyone familiar with him would have regarded as very uncharacteristic. Whatever his faults, Zen was not physically clumsy, yet now he kicked the low table in front of him hard enough to overturn the tea pot.

Luca Brandelli went out to the kitchenette, returning with a sponge to wipe up the spillage and brushing aside Zen’s apologies.

‘So what follow-up action did you decide on?’ Zen asked when order had been restored.

Brandelli sighed.

‘I was still not completely convinced that it wasn’t a set-up,’ he said at length. ‘Not to murder me, but to plant information which could later be shown to be false, thereby discrediting myself, the paper I wrote for, and by extension the entire progressive movement of that period. In short, anyone who tried thereafter to expose any conspiracy of the extreme right – and there were plenty of them, as we now know – would be laughed off stage and told to pull the other one. Nevertheless, I couldn’t be entirely sure. I therefore displayed a cautious interest and arranged another meeting a few weeks later, with the excuse that I had to go to Cuba to research a lengthy article on political organization under Castro. That happened to be true, but my real reason for not cancelling the trip was to give the other side, whoever they were, a cooling-off period to reconsider the situation. If they were genuine, I reasoned, then they would re-engage on my return. If it was a put-up job, they might well think that they had been rumbled and drop the whole thing.’

‘And what happened?’

‘On my return from Cuba, I learned of the plane crash over the Adriatic. The papers published photographs of the two victims, the pilot and the only passenger. The latter was identified as Lieutenant Leonardo Ferrero of the Alpine Regiment, attached to a unit stationed in Verona. I instantly recognized him as my informant in the Medusa affair.’

‘Which presumably convinced you of its reality.’

‘It certainly swung the balance of probability that way.’

There was a long silence.

‘I did what I could,’ Brandelli remarked with yet another sigh. ‘Through some of the PCI conscripts at the barracks where Ferrero had been stationed, I elicited the names of some men he had allegedly been close to. I wrote to them both, under the pretext of researching a general background article about “The Army Today”. Neither replied.’

‘What about the senior officer on whose orders Ferrero claimed to be acting?’

Brandelli threw up his hands.

‘It could have been anyone! Ferrero was a junior lieutenant. There were plenty of officers superior to him in the hierarchy. I assumed that if the person concerned still wanted to contact me, then he would do so. But I heard nothing.’

‘You mentioned that you were not convinced that Ferrero’s death was an accident. Perhaps his superior reached the same conclusion and decided to learn from an example.’

‘Exactly what I told myself at the time. So I left it at that, while keeping the file open in case I heard any other whispers about this Operation Medusa. That never happened, and of course I had more urgent and pressing matters to attend to.’

‘So assuming that this organization existed, the people concerned were either rank amateurs…’

‘Or consummate professionals. Yes.’

Zen nodded slowly, as if mulling all this over.

‘What about the two friends of Ferrero?’

‘What about them?’

‘They must have retired by now. Have you made any attempt to contact them? Perhaps they might be able to help close that file. And provide some material for your book.’

Luca Brandelli shrugged.

‘One was a man named Gabriele Passarini. He runs a second- hand bookshop here in Milan now. I met him for the first time as a result, perhaps five years ago. I was walking around through the centre of town when my eye was caught by a title that I’d been searching for in vain for ages. I went and bought it and the owner gave me his card. I recognized the name and asked him if he’d once been in the
Alpini
. He said he had. I then asked if he’d known someone called Leonardo Ferrero.’

‘And?’

Brandelli smiled.

‘He almost threw me out of the shop. No, he almost threw himself out. He was in a total panic. Amateurs, I thought, not professionals. But he wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t believe that even you,
dottore
, with the full panoply of the law behind you, could have got anything out of him.’

‘He was that tough?’

‘Not tough. Terrified.’

Zen digested this for a moment.

‘Do you recall the name and address of the bookshop?’

Brandelli produced a business card from the file on his knees and handed it to Zen.

‘You can keep that. I don’t think I would be a welcome customer again.’

‘And what about the other friend of Ferrero’s? Have you tried to get in touch with him?’

Luca Brandelli smiled even more broadly.

‘I didn’t think it worth the trouble, not to mention the trouble it might cause. His name is Alberto Guerrazzi, and he is now a full colonel and divisional commander with the military secret intelligence service.’

Zen looked suitably impressed.

‘Which might seem to make them professionals rather than amateurs,’ he remarked.

Brandelli clapped his hands together.

‘Exactly! Everything contradicts itself. Frankly, I’ve given up any hope of ever finding out the truth in this matter.’

Zen rose stiffly from his perch at the edge of the sofa.

‘Have you really given up journalism entirely?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, supposing that I uncovered further information tending to confirm the existence of the Medusa conspiracy, would you be interested in writing a piece about it?’

Brandelli made a non-committal gesture.

‘That would depend entirely on the nature and the authenticity of the information.’

‘Of course. But in principle?’

‘In principle, yes.’

‘And could you get it published?’

Brandelli now looked distinctly dubious.

‘Why would you want me to do that? You’re a policeman. ’

‘As I said earlier, I’m operating off the record. Anyway, that’s no concern of yours. Any material I bring you will be genuine. What I need to know is whether you could get it published.’

Brandelli drew himself up with a certain hauteur.

‘My name may not be a household word these days, but I still have my contacts and a certain reputation in some quarters. If there is a story here, I will certainly write it up. I could certainly get it published in
Il Manifesto
. I might even be able to get it into
La Repubblica
. Subject to there being a documented story in the first place. But do you really think there is one?’

‘Do you?’

Brandelli made a tired, defeated grimace.

‘I would love there to be, of course. But no, I don’t really believe it. It’s all too long ago. Anyone who knew what really happened, assuming anything did, is either dead or covering their tracks. They’re not going to talk. And now that the new regime has successfully cowed the judiciary into a comatose state of inertia, there’s no one in a position to make them do so. So to be honest I don’t think there’s any chance that we’ll ever find out what happened to Leonardo Ferrero, or whether there really was a right-wing military conspiracy to take over the country back in the seventies. Anyway, that’s all history. And no one will care even if we do. Nowadays people think that history is what was on TV last night.’

Zen buttoned his coat against the chilly streets.

‘This is not just a question of setting the historical record straight. Certain high-ranking people in the government have taken a public line on this affair. If it turns out to be false, and you can arrange for the truth to be published, then the whole affair will be on TV not just tonight but tomorrow night and every night for the foreseeable future. Wouldn’t people be interested then? And wouldn’t you?’

Brandelli considered this.

‘Of course I would,’ he replied finally. ‘And maybe so would they.’

‘Never underestimate the power of the people,’ was Zen’s parting shot.

XV

Of the various transport choices available from Luca Brandelli’s fog-bound apartment building, Zen opted for the M3 underground line, the political kickbacks from whose construction had brought down the Socialist government of the city in the early nineties. It turned out to be efficient, cheap and clean, an irony which he did not fail to appreciate.

In the centre, the fog was dense and pervasive. The lines of jammed traffic seemed as permanent a fixture as the rows of five-storey buildings to either side. On the pavements, visibility varied from a few metres to zero. Zen had to trust to luck, intuition and a few directions from passers-by, one of whom sent him totally out of his way. It was only when he stopped to light a cigarette outside a shuttered shop, trying to work out whether he had been going round in circles, that he realized t he had reached his goal.
Chiuso per Lutto
, read a rather faded handwritten sign on the window behind a lattice of steel barriers designed to foil thieves while allowing potential customers to view a selection of the books that would be available for purchase when the proprietor returned to work after coming to terms with his grief.