The Traitor (The Carnivia Trilogy) (19 page)

“Because it’s still going on,” Holly said. “I don’t understand the how or why, but when I went to Sardinia, I saw soldiers training civilians in the use of firearms and explosives. I think in one form or another, Gladio must still be active. I think after they were exposed, they quietly regrouped under the banner of various Masonic lodges, and they’ve been carrying out assassinations and corrupting people ever since.”

“And no one knows about it?” Flavio said sceptically. “A massive, organised attempt by a foreign power to control Italian politics through violence, dating back over twenty-five years, linked to one of the biggest scandals in Italian political history, and
nobody knows
?”

“Cassandre was researching that period on his computer,” Kat pointed out. “Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

Flavio made a small sound, an involuntary
pfff
of disbelief.

Kat fixed him with a look, willing him to understand.
This matters to Holly. And if it matters to Holly, it matters to me.

“All right then,” Flavio said with a sigh. “A conspiracy stretching back to the 1990s and beyond. The
dietrologia
to end all
dietrologie
. Assuming there could be a grain of truth in it, what are you going to do next?”

“I’m going to see what I can dig up on Gilroy’s time in the CIA,” Holly said. “I’ll start with what happened to Daniele. One of the Red Brigades gang that kidnapped him is still in prison. She may talk to me. If not, I’ll find someone else. And then, when I’ve got some evidence, I’m going to bring it to you, so that you can open a formal investigation into the attempt to kill my father.”

“
L
A
M
ESSA
È
finita: andate in pace
,” the priest intoned.

“
Rendiamo grazie a Dio
,” the congregation murmured in response. As the choir’s voices soared into the “
Panis angelicus
”, Ian Gilroy bowed his head. He rarely knelt these days. His knees were getting too fragile for that. But he genuflected in unison with those on either side of him as the priests and choir filed out.

Unlike the other worshippers, though, he remained seated as the basilica emptied. These moments after Sunday Mass, when St Mark’s was closed to tourists, were one of the few times when the great building was almost peaceful. He looked up, drinking in the Romanesque beauty of the great arches. Above his head, gilded mosaics lined the interiors of the five great cupolas, more Islamic than Roman, that surmounted the roof. The Arabic influences were no coincidence: the Venetians had always been acutely conscious of their city’s strategic importance as a bridge between East and West.

A few minutes after the congregation had departed, he saw the man he was waiting for.

“Monsignor,” he murmured.

“I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.” Father Calergi sat down next to him.

“Not at all. You have some news from our Masonic friends?”

Father Calergi nodded. “The Carabinieri are still investigating Cassandre’s death, despite AISI’s involvement. They suspect it must be connected to Count Tignelli and his plans. A view I have done nothing to disabuse them of, incidentally.”

“Do I take it that the Curia is becoming concerned?”

“Those of us with Rome’s interests at heart certainly have no wish to see Count Tignelli succeed, let me put it that way.”

Gilroy gave him a sideways glance. “And yet you only come to me now, after the Vatican itself is safely out of the picture and the banker silenced. A cynic might question your timing.”

The priest let that pass. “Can we take it that America shares our concerns?”

Gilroy thought. “Tell your people… that America is keeping a close watch on the situation. And that we will take a view on events as they unfold.”

Father Calergi turned his head to look at him. “What terrible game are you playing?” he said quietly.

“No game, Father. But things are complicated just now. Timing will be everything. I need to know exactly what the Carabinieri have discovered, and what they intend to do about it. Can you find that out for me?”

“Of course. I’ll make some enquiries.”

“Good.” That was the advantage of dealing with priests, Gilroy reflected: to them, the Sabbath was just another working day.

The two men spoke for several more minutes before leaving by separate exits. Outside, Gilroy took out his cell phone and dialled. There was another matter that could be dealt with today, for that matter.

“Public Affairs,” a voice replied. “First Lieutenant Breedon speaking.”

“Mike, it’s Ian Gilroy. From the Education Centre on base?”

There was a brief pause while Holly’s boss placed him. “Yes, of course,” he said courteously. “How are you doing, sir?”

“I’m well, thank you, very well… I’m actually calling about Second Lieutenant Boland. As you probably know, I check in with her from time to time, and I just wondered whether you think she’s really up to returning to her duties. She still seems in a somewhat fragile state to me.”

There was a pause. “Sir, I haven’t had any contact with Second Lieutenant Boland,” Mike Breedon said. “And I wasn’t aware she was planning to return to work. Do you have a date for that? I should talk to the DHR, get things organised for her.”

“Do you know what,” Gilroy said, “I probably misunderstood. Either that or she took my advice and decided not to rush things after all.”

When he’d rung off he turned and looked up at the façade of St Mark’s. Despite its familiarity, it never ceased to amaze him. If the interior resembled a gilded mosque, the outside resembled a Moorish palace: Arab minarets atop fantastic Gothic tracery, the whole thing layered with many kinds of coloured stone; porphyry and malachite, amethyst and cornelian, like something from a fairytale.

And His kingdom shall have no end
, he thought wryly.

He gave an abrupt nod, almost as if he were saying goodbye.

“
A
S
-
SALAMU
ALAYKUM
,” a voice said across the empty classroom.

Tareq looked up. “
Wa alaykumu as-salam
,” he replied courteously to the figure who had just appeared in the doorway. Unobtrusively, he reached out and pressed the “CTRL” and “W” keys on his keyboard. A small window on his screen vanished, leaving only a larger window displaying a network-wiring diagram.

“Working on a Sunday?” The teacher came and looked over his shoulder.

“I observed
al-Juma’ah
on Friday. So now I’m catching up.”

“Yes, I saw you at mosque.” The teacher attended Friday prayers at a moderate mosque near his apartment. Tareq had been careful to sit where he couldn’t help but be noticed.

“We must all follow Allah’s laws,” he said piously.

The teacher nodded. “You know, you are an exceptional student. My brother has a recruitment consultancy for IT professionals. I’ll speak to him, if you like. If your work continues at this standard, he’ll be able to get you a good job after the course is finished.”

Tareq would like that very much indeed, since the teacher’s brother was the whole reason he’d come to Sicily in the first place. He’d come across two former students from the course talking about him in a chat room, and immediately seen how it might fit into his plans. “Thank you. That would be very kind.”

“You don’t mind travelling?”

“Not at all,” Tareq assured him.

“Good.” The teacher put his hand on Tareq’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to him tonight.”

When the teacher had left, Tareq waited a few minutes before bringing up the small window again.
How many bots?
he typed.

The Ghostnet user he was in communication with replied,
I’ll send u a shot.

Moments later, Tareq received a screenshot showing that the user had control of a network comprising almost half a million home computers. In each case the computers would appear to their owners to be completely normal, if a little slow. In reality, they had become slaves doing whatever the botmaster required, be it sending out spam or orchestrating denial-of-service attacks on a particular website.

How much?
Tareq typed.

$5,000 US a day.

What if I want to buy?

Why would u? It’s more cost-effective to rent.

I have my reasons.

I wouldn’t sell for less than $750,000. This is my livelihood we’re talking about.

$500K. You can always infect more.

That takes time. I don’t take shortcuts with my code.

Which is why I’m buying it. Do we have a deal at $650K? Final offer.

I accept bitcoins or Ven
.

Tareq emailed the funds immediately. The botnet he had just bought with the commander’s money wasn’t especially big. The Mariposa net, uncovered in 2009, had controlled over twelve million computers, while the Metulji net found in 2013 had infected about eighteen million. But while the code on which those botnets depended was amateur, the code behind this one was relatively well built. Amongst other things, it was polymorphic, which meant the virus would hide in a different place on each computer, making it extremely hard to detect.

Tareq would have preferred to build his own botnet from scratch rather than buy one and customise it, but there was much to do in a short space of time. Nor was this the only network he would purchase. He and his fellow hackers might be few in number, but by the time the battle started, he intended to command the biggest army in history.

“
T
HANK
YOU
FOR
coming, Mr Speicher. May I offer you some coffee?”

The chairman of Banca Cattolica della Veneziana shook his head. “No, thank you. May I ask whether I am being questioned as an
indagato
?”

Flavio was wearing his lawyer’s robes, Kat her Carabinieri uniform, the whole interview designed to appear as formal as possible.

Flavio shook his head. “You are not an official suspect at this stage, no.”

“May I ask, then, what specific crime is being investigated here? In addition to the murder of my colleague, of course.”

Hugo Speicher spoke calmly, his intelligent brown eyes turning from one to the other. As Kat had predicted to Flavio, this was not a man who would panic easily. But they had concluded he was one of the very few people who might actually give them some insights into Cassandre’s death.

“He was courteous, urbane and bright,” she’d told Flavio. “But he also seemed to me to have a real distaste for Cassandre.”

“And our leverage?”

“The last thing any chairman wants is a scandal. And whatever Cassandre was up to, Speicher must know it could cause the mother of all stinks.”

Now Flavio nodded at Speicher. “We can have the Guardia di Finanza take apart your bank with a fine-tooth comb if we need to. But we’re hoping that won’t be necessary.”

The chairman considered. “And my cooperation, if I give it, will form part of the record?”

“Yes, if you wish it to.”

Speicher gave a long sigh and some of the stiffness went out of him. He looked suddenly, Kat thought, less like the figurehead of a financial institution and more like a very troubled man.

“Very well. I should warn you, though, that it’s quite technical. Most banking is, these days.” He gave a rueful smile. “Perhaps that’s where it all started to go wrong. Banks don’t lend money any more – we conjure with it. We make it vanish and reappear, we transmute it from one currency to another; we send it through the ether in search of tax loopholes and safe havens. And we use it as collateral in ever more complex speculations.”

Flavio reached for a legal pad to take notes. “Go on.”

“You’re aware, no doubt, that one of our shareholders is the Istituto per le Opere di Religione?” Speicher said. “That is, the Vatican Bank.”

Flavio nodded. “Yes.”

“It’s a small stake – no more than three per cent. But that figure probably understates the close nature of the relationship. A relationship that until recently was managed at our end by Alessandro Cassandre. He was very proud of the association. It seduced him, perhaps, into making some unwise decisions.” He reflected. “Or perhaps it was the other way round. Perhaps he was always corrupt, and simply saw in the IOR’s lax regulatory structure an opportunity to commit financial crimes.”

“What crimes, exactly?” Flavio asked quietly.

Speicher held up a hand. “I’ll come to that, I promise, but it will only make sense if I give you some background. You’ve probably read in the papers that, under Pope Francis, the IOR has been under considerable pressure to clean up its act – in other words, to conform to international standards on financial transparency, money laundering and so on.”

“I’ve read some of those reports,” Kat said. “It’s generally being seen as a big step forward.”

“It is. The problem is, there are some past… enterprises, let us call them, that the IOR finds itself somewhat reluctant to be transparent about. Not least of which was its enthusiasm, until very recently, for a controversial financial instrument called a credit default swap.”

Kat glanced at Flavio. They’d debated whether to have a financial specialist join them for this interview but had decided that until they knew exactly what they were dealing with, they’d try to keep this to themselves. Now she was wondering whether they’d miscalculated.

“Go on,” Flavio said. “But please understand that we don’t have any technical knowledge in this area.”

“I’ll try to keep it simple. Credit default swaps are essentially just an insurance policy against an institution or country being unable to pay its debts. For a tiny sovereign state like the Vatican, which is in the unusual position of having the euro as its currency but not actually being part of the eurozone, it wasn’t unreasonable to hold a certain number of euro swaps; particularly during the global recession, when it looked as if the Italian government might default on its debts, which would have caused the value of the euro to nosedive.