The Traitor (The Carnivia Trilogy) (14 page)

By the time they’d been through baggage reclaim, most of the group were toting golf bags. Master sergeants, she guessed, getting in some seaside R&R.

She rented a car from Sixt and drove to a climbing shop she’d found on the internet. Everything was pre-booked, but she lingered for a chat with the heavily tattooed and dreadlocked young owner, knowing from experience she’d learn more from him than any guidebook. Sure enough, he spent a good half hour telling her about the island’s best climbing areas. It confirmed what she’d hoped: her destination was well away from the spots usually favoured by recreational climbers.

From there she drove south along the coast towards the small town of Bosa. The road, she knew, had been built only a decade or so ago; in the seventies and eighties, when the Gladio network used this area as a training ground, it had been accessible only by boat. Even now, it was one of the most spectacular drives she’d ever made. On one side craggy, jagged mountains soared vertically into the shimmering sky; on the other, they fell away into the sparkling sea. Her car felt tiny and insignificant, sandwiched between the immense masses of rock and water. There were no buildings, no farms or crops; no side roads to towns or villages even. A couple of coaches passed her, coming in the opposite direction, but otherwise the road was eerily quiet, her only companions a few mouflons, wild brown sheep with extravagant curly horns, nibbling the scrub on seemingly inaccessible ledges.

She felt, deep down in her soul, a sharp tug of love for this sea, this sky. Did people back in America feel this way about the landscapes of the US? She imagined they must do. But a part of her was now as deeply Italian as it was possible for someone not actually born here to be.

Eventually she saw a rusted chain-link fence next to a small turning, and pulled off the road. Even though she’d seen no one, she parked behind a rock, out of sight.

Getting out, she discovered that it was very still and very hot. The turning was little more than a track, zig-zagging down the side of the mountain towards the sea, two hundred feet below. If there were any guards or surveillance devices, she couldn’t spot them.

Fifty yards from the track, she hammered an iron peg into the ground, then clipped a rope to it. She’d brought a simple friction hitch to slow her descent, along with climbing shoes and kneepads. Although the US Army insisted on helmets and gloves when abseiling, Holly, like most real mountaineers, disliked them: the gloves because they increased the likelihood of getting your fingers caught in the friction hitch, and the helmet because it impaired upward vision.

As she cleared a small overhang, the base came into view below her. It wasn’t much to look at: no more than half a dozen windswept concrete buildings, so ugly they could only be military. Everything seemed derelict. She abseiled another hundred feet before reaching a ledge. There she waited, making sure no one was around.

Satisfied, she dropped the last fifty feet. A second fence bore a warning that this was a military zone and that trespassing, photography and mapmaking were forbidden under the Italian penal code. A smaller, more recent sign warned that it was also in danger of collapse. A graphic of a snarling guard dog needed no explanation. But there were large rusty gaps in the chain-link and what looked like rabbit holes pocking the ground on either side. If there had ever been dogs here, they’d long since departed.

She’d read online that the site was still officially used by the Italian Intelligence Agency as an observation post – observing what, she wondered? – but if so, she couldn’t see any signs of it.

She walked to the nearest building and peered through the broken window. It contained twenty or so bunk beds. But the mattresses and everything else combustible had long since been burnt, only the iron frames and charred bedsprings remaining, strewn across the floor.

She moved on to the next hut. This one looked more promising. Old papers and bottles were scattered around, as if it had been vacated in a hurry. In the middle was the burnt-out carcass of a billiard table.

She went inside. On one side of the table was a small metal plaque. “To the men of Gladio, with my warmest admiration, Giulio Andreotti.” Well, at least she was in the right place. She wondered at the personal gift of appreciation from the same prime minister who’d subsequently revealed the network’s existence. It was surprising the departing gladiators hadn’t ripped the plaque off in disgust. Or had leaving it here for others to see been the more pointed comment?

In a room at the back her heart quickened when she spotted a small safe. But there was nothing inside, only some charred fragments. The Gladio clear-up, if that was what had happened here, had been thorough.

Or perhaps, she thought, the clear-up had been carried out later, by the Italian security services, when they were handed the site as an observation post.

She checked the other huts, but the story was the same. In the former mess hut even the empty wine bottles had been smashed, the broken glass crunching like gravel under her feet.

Well, what did you expect after so long? Documentary evidence?
But even though she’d known it was a long shot, she couldn’t help feeling disappointed. She’d been hoping for something – anything – that told her the trail wasn’t completely cold.

Her ears caught the sound of an engine. Going outside, she saw a military truck coming down the track towards her.

Shit.

Quickly, she retreated back inside the hut. She watched through the window as the truck pulled up by the buildings and two soldiers in Italian uniforms climbed down, pulling out packets of cigarettes as they did so. Leaning against the truck’s side, they smoked and chatted in the sunshine. Then one of them walked straight towards the building she was hiding in.

She ducked her head back from the window and held her breath. A moment later, she heard the splash of urine against the wall. “They need to play him in position,” a voice said, suddenly very near; he was still chatting to his companion over his shoulder. She was close enough to smell the sharp reek of his urine. When he’d finished, the men got back in the truck and drove off.

A routine patrol, she guessed. Just one more pointless duty in a day filled with pointless duties, carrying out an order given by some panicked bureaucrat a decade or more ago and never rescinded.

She didn’t bother to climb back up her abseil rope but simply walked up the track, the sun blasting off the rock and crumbling tarmac onto her face. High above her, a griffin vulture swooped around the mountaintop and then, without apparently moving a wingtip, floated down to inspect her more closely.

Pausing to enjoy its magnificent five-foot wingspan, she thought,
Well, at least I saw
you
. So it wasn’t a completely wasted trip.

Something flashed in the corner of her vision. A windscreen, catching the sun, as a vehicle pulled off the coast road where it snaked round the same mountain, high above her. She could just make out that it was a Land Rover. Tourists, most likely, stopping to admire the view. She waited for them to set off again before she moved.

After she’d waited ten minutes, she realised they weren’t coming. Which meant that they’d stopped to take more pictures. Or…

Or they were watching her, waiting for her to move. If she hadn’t paused to look at the griffin vulture, she’d never have spotted them.

She drove back to the climbing shop, checking occasionally in her rear-view mirror to make sure she wasn’t being followed.

“Think I chose a bad route,” she said noncommittally to the owner. “Look, do you happen to have a map of the military installations here on Sardinia?”

The man gave her a look. “You mean, a map of the places we’re not allowed to map?”

“That’s the one.” Just as nautical maps showed seabed channels and underwater reefs, so climbers needed to know which parts of the mountains were off limits. If anyone had a map like that, it was likely to be him.

He considered. “As it happens, I do.”

He pulled out a cylinder of thick paper and unrolled it, weighing its corners down with coffee mugs to reveal a large-scale map of the island. Parts had been hatched with thick red lines. “If you’re worrying about DP, you’re right to.” He pointed to an area in the south-east with one heavily tattooed, muscular arm. “This region here, Quirra, is the largest weapons-testing facility in Europe. Leukaemia levels in the surrounding area are running at up to sixty-five per cent of the population. The shepherds had so many deformed lambs they couldn’t make a living, so they’ve all moved to other parts of the island.”

By “DP”, she realised, he meant “depleted uranium”, the residue of shells made from radioactive metals.

“But that’s not the only area they’ve contaminated.” He tapped the island’s north-east corner. “There was meant to be an EU scientific study into Lake Baratz, here. They found so much unexploded ordinance the scientists had to pull out for their own safety. The point is, the Italian government charges international weapons manufacturers a million dollars a day to use these mountains. That money goes straight to Rome. When our regional president managed to get a compensation fund of ten million euros, it was hailed as a great victory. But actually it was less than two weeks’ income for the people who run this place.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as if his anger at these manifold injustices had long since been exhausted.

“What about other bases?” she said, squinting sideways at the map.

“Take your pick. Down in the south you’ve got Decimomannu. The largest airport in Italy, and it doesn’t host a single civilian flight. And Capo Taluda.” He pointed again. “That’s where they test white phosphorus. This whole island’s just one big playground for the international military.”

“Any bases that have been closed or mothballed in, say, the last fifteen years?”

He considered. “There’s the old US–NATO base on the island of La Maddalena. That was closed about ten years ago.”

“What’s it used for now?”

“Not a lot. The base was turned into a fancy hotel. The rest of the island’s just a bird sanctuary. Though I did hear they use it for military exercises from time to time.”

“What kind of exercises?”

“Who knows. It’s pretty remote. Whatever they do up there, there wouldn’t be anyone else around to see it.”

She thought. “Any climbing?”

“Some. Bouldering on sea cliffs, mostly. But what with the contamination and everything, why would you want to go there?”

She flashed him a smile. “I like birds, I guess.”

O
NCE
AGAIN
V
ENICE
had dawned hot and humid. Kat had to share the
vaporetto
from the train station at Santa Lucia with a mass of tourists, who shuffled slowly around the deck at each stop like penguins instead of going down inside the boat to make room. Nor was her mood improved by the article she found on page four of
Il Gazzettino
, headed: “Night Swimmer Found Dead on Beach”. According to the unnamed reporter, a body “wearing goggles and partially undressed” had been found on the beach at the Lido. It was thought, the article went on to say, that the dead man might have decided to sleep outside in the hot weather, and fallen victim to muggers. Even before she saw the quote from Avvocato Marcello, reassuring tourists that Venice was generally a very safe place to visit “so long as sensible precautions are taken to avoid areas with a large itinerant population”, Kat had discerned the prosecutor’s fluttering hand, airily rewriting history.

On the next page, another article caught her eye.

NAPOLEON’S IMPERIAL SUITE REOPENS
AFTER €3M REFURBISHMENT

After a century of neglect, the Imperial Apartments of the Royal Palace, commissioned by the Emperor Bonaparte after the fall of the Venetian Republic, reopen this week following a €3m refurbishment.

The refurbishment of the rooms overlooking Piazza San Marco marks the completion of an ambitious programme of restoration for the Royal Palace. The project’s sponsors, who include the Tignelli fashion brand, will mark the occasion with a spectacular gala in the Imperial Ballroom on Monday night.

At Campo San Zaccaria, the operations room so efficiently set up by Bagnasco had just as efficiently been dismantled, the manpower already allocated to other investigations. Kat went and found Colonel Piola, still dealing with the paperwork from their previous case.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

He grimaced and stretched, glad to have the chance to lay down his files for a few minutes. “The usual. The lawyer representing the glassblowing family has come up with the ingenious explanation that they made the glass themselves and shipped it to China, before realising they couldn’t sell it there and returning it to Murano. A failed business venture, in other words, not an attempt to fleece Venice’s tourists. Oh, and the prosecution’s own expert says the Chinese fakes are probably better quality than the stuff the family was knocking out in any case. I wouldn’t be surprised if they drop the whole thing. You?”

She hesitated. The room was filled with Carabinieri officers tapping at their computers. “Can we do this somewhere else?”

They went to a small bar on Fondamenta de l’Osmarin. As well as coffee, Aldo ordered a
cornetto
, a croissant dusted with icing sugar. He was putting on a little weight, she noticed. She wondered if he was looking after himself now he and his wife had separated. She didn’t ask. Their personal lives were off limits to each other now.

“This is about your Freemasonry case, I take it,” he said, when they’d found a quiet corner.

“That’s the problem – it’s not my case any more, at least not officially.” She told him about Grimaldo’s intervention, the list Malli found on Cassandre’s computer, and the Masonic cards in his desk.

“May I see?”

She took out one of the cards and passed it to him. “I’ve seen this symbol before,” he said immediately.

“Where?”

“You recall that Romani case I dealt with a few years ago?” She nodded. It had been not long after she’d joined the Carabinieri. There had been a national panic about the number of gypsies coming into Italy, with the press full of scare stories about pickpockets and white babies being stolen to order. “The city council in their wisdom decided to put all the Romani in one place, the
campo nomadi
on Via Vallenari. Some wild rumour started doing the rounds, something about an Italian schoolgirl being dragged there against her will… We never found out who started it. But the upshot was that a mob of vigilantes went down to the camp, cut off the power, then set fire to the Romani caravans.” He shook his head. “Three gypsies died, including a bedridden old lady whose son was on a night shift at a local factory. No one was ever arrested. But I remember seeing that symbol sprayed on one of the burnt-out caravans.”