White Suicide: One Man, One Death, Two Lives

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

A nondescript building in via Brunetti,

a street behind Piazza del Popolo, Rome, Italy.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 06:40.

I don’t believe it! Who the hell did this? I’m never going to make the market, let alone make any cash. Fucking vandals!

Antonio Spiriticchio, dressed in his work clothes and a rumpled red smock, rubbed his stubbled chin and walked around his Ford Transit van kicking each of the four slashed tyres in turn. He shook his head in disbelief. For years he’d been selling flowers from his Ford van on the corner opposite the Olivetti Bar, where via Fani crosses via Stresa, in the well-heeled residential district of Monte Mario and Camilluccia in Rome.

Just my luck…

It was a beautiful, bright early spring morning and it would have been a good day for selling flowers, but since the owner of the swanky Olivetti Bar had gone bankrupt, business had not been so good. There was no way he was going to get from home, all the way across to the right bank of the Tiber to the flower market, and then up to the crossroads where he had sold flowers for years. Today was going to make him as much money as last week’s dead blooms. Worse, he had to find 600,000 lire for four new tyres.

Antonio Spiriticchio needed a good day, and with money so tight, life had not been easy at home. He groaned and booted one of the tyres again. He looked up at the cloudless sky. He had always said the sun married in spring, and honeymooned in Rome.

Today the sun was very much in love. Dammit.

CHAPTER 2

No. 79, via del Forte Trionfale,

the Camilluccia district, Rome, Italy.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 07:45.

Aldo Moro woke up with a start at the shrill sound of the alarm clock. President of the Christian Democracy (CD) party, twice prime minister of Italy, he was an influential and powerful political figure. He silenced the alarm, his bloodhound-like eyelids drooping. Every tissue of muscle, blood and water that constituted his ageing frame felt very used. Very second-hand. Even his mind ached.

Do you think every sixty-one-year-old man feels this bad in the morning? he grumbled aloud to Eleonora, his beloved wife of thirty-three years.

"No, caro, only Italian politicians, it’s part of their job to look haggard. Imagine how few votes you’d get if people believed that you had a cushy life. She glanced at him. Don’t fall asleep again, Aldo. Today is the day you’ve worked so hard for. Now, go and shave while I put your clothes out."

Moro felt warmed by the tenderness of her voice. He swung his legs out from between the sheets, scratched his distended stomach and smoothed down his luxurious shock of white hair.

Please be careful with the tie, nothing exuberant today. Parliament will expect more from me. Moro had a love of silk neckties and usually selected his own.

"Alright, caro, how about the dark grey suit, the one with the waistcoat?" she asked, as she drew back the heavy brocade curtains to let the sunlight flood in. He blinked and his wife shivered involuntarily.

Are you alright? Moro caught her troubled expression as she drew on her robe tightly.

"Yes, caro. I just remembered something Julius Caesar said: ‘It is the bright day that brings forth the adder.’"

What’s that supposed to mean?

Just look where you tread today, Aldo. Now hurry into the bathroom, she said, clapping her hands. He shook his head from side to side, more in affection than exasperation about women in general before closing the bathroom door.

Standing as erect as his weariness would allow, he felt the scalding jets of water pinprick his poor circulation into life. Moro grinned sheepishly to himself. He was a proud southern man, one who had never been hollowed by conceit. Not even his enemies – and there were many – would have levelled the crosshairs of self-importance at him. But alone, wet and naked, he allowed his adrenaline to massage his vanity. He had been prime minister of Italy twice: from 1963–1968 and recently from 1973–1974. Now, perhaps even more influential, he was president of the Italy’s ruling Christian Democracy party and the de facto Head of State.

Today was the culmination of his life’s political work. The ‘Compromesso Storico’, the plan to bring Italy’s Communist Party (PCI) into a governing alliance with his Christian Democracy party in order to promote national stability in these troubled times, was finally to be signed at 10:00 this morning.

Parliament’s business for the day, Thursday, 16th March 1978, was public knowledge, but only he fully grasped what had gone into ensuring that it had actually reached Parliament.

It had been he, and he alone, who had brokered this deal between Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party, the largest and most powerful Communist party in Western Europe. No one else had danced, sung and acted as he had through the long and sometimes operatic set-changes that were Italian politics. Italy, his Italy, would be the first Western alliance country to treat with ‘Eurocommunism’, an ideal that promised to eschew closed-door excesses, and to be acceptable and independent, and sport the fresh smile of liberalism. ‘Eurocommunists’ did not wear the dour, craggy and bearded expressions of those who hailed from the cold steppes of the USSR.

In the bleak aftermath of the Second World War, Moro had dreamed of uniting the two parties. Not even the Americans, who had long viewed Moro’s ideals – and the man himself – as an enemy, had been able to scupper this alliance, try as they might. America’s Cold War credo held that the Italian Communist party was, ‘at all costs’, to be kept out of any Italian government. Unwanted, ill-advised and dogmatic interventions by the Americans had only helped Moro’s cause; only two months ago, on 12th January 1978, President Carter’s spokesman announced that: ‘The US State Department would like to see the Communists hold less power, not more,’ and on the 6th February 1978, US NATO Commander General Alexander Haig stated: ‘Highly sensitive military information within the framework of the NATO Alliance would be endangered if the Communists gained power in Italy.’ A few days later, Henry Kissinger had leaked falsehoods that Moro himself was in the eye of the storm of the ‘Lockheed Aircraft Bribes’ scandal. In fact, Moro was expecting to read his name again in connection with the bribes, paid by Lockheed, this very morning.

To hell with Carter and the damned Americans. Today is my day, he said aloud as the water ran like a waterfall over his thickset body.

CHAPTER 3

No. 79, via del Forte Trionfale,

the Camilluccia district, Rome, Italy.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 08:55.

"C iao , Papà!" shouted Giovanni Moro.

Aldo Moro waved at his son, who hurriedly kickstarted his motorcycle. Despite being twenty years old, Giovanni was terrified of dentists and that was why he was running late.

Sunlight fingered its way through the surrounding green of the pine trees in the driveway and Moro, usually a punctual man, was an apprehensive five minutes early. He detected a complacency in his security detail. Sighing, he tossed his grey homburg onto the back seat of his dark blue Fiat 130 and climbed in.

He tapped an affectionate Buongiorno on the left shoulder of Domenico Ricci, his driver. Ricci, a plainclothes paramilitary officer in the Carabinieri, was forty-three and had been with Moro since he was twenty-five, when Moro had formed his first government in 1964. He was of peasant stock, as were all of Moro’s five-man squad. They all felt safe protecting him, and the old Italian saying that ‘no one ever touches the truly mighty’ was lore. Besides, if anyone did try, there were three police bodyguards, with an arsenal of Italian machine guns – Beretta M12s – locked in the boot of the cream-coloured Alfa Romeo Alfetta escort car, which always followed Moro’s larger dark blue Fiat 130 saloon.

Oreste Leonardi sat beside Ricci. Known to his colleagues as ‘Judo’, he was also Carabinieri paramilitary. Leonardi had headed up Moro’s security for fifteen years and was known as ‘The President’s Shadow’. Muscular and dependable, but at fifty-two early retirement had its attractions.

Let’s go, announced Moro impatiently.

Leonardi and Ricci looked at each other and nodded blankly at their boss. Both men disliked Moro’s official Fiat 130 saloon and cursed it daily. They – and neither man had ever quite worked out who ‘they’ were – had taken far too long with the manufacture of Moro’s new and bulletproof car; Leonardi had been informed there were ‘inexplicable delays’. How was a man supposed to guard one of the great post-war Western leaders if he didn’t have the right equipment? And this regular Fiat 130 simply wasn’t up to the demands of the job in today’s troubled Italy.

More than three weeks had gone by since Leonardi had filed a report of suspicious activities outside the Moro family home, activities that had followed a warning issued by the Red Brigades terrorists: ‘Our No. 1 Enemy is the personnel of the Christian Democracy party…’ Yet no one seemed to care apart from him, Ricci and of course Signora Moro.

Leonardi steeled himself with the knowledge that it was only a twenty-minute drive to parliament, and behind him was the unmarked Alfa Romeo escort car, driven by Giulio Rivera. His walkie-talkie continued to crackle. He switched it off and lowered the window.

Giulio, Giulio, Leonardi shouted, my walkie-talkie isn’t working. Santa Chiara as usual. OK?

"Si, Judo," Rivera replied.

The two other bodyguards, Raffaelle Iozzino and Francesco Zizzi, both young, and with swarthy southern features, looked at Leonardi from the Alfa Romeo. It was Zizzi’s first day on the prestigious Moro detail and everything was unfamiliar. But Iozzino knew that whichever one of Moro’s four offices he would attend, the day would begin with twenty minutes of private worship at the Church of Santa Chiara.

The church, a modern brick confection, was only four minutes’ drive away from the pine and cypress trees of Moro’s courtyard. As with Moro’s prayers, the route from his home to the church had barely changed in fifteen years. Both drivers, Moro’s Ricci and the Alfetta’s Rivera, could have driven them blindfolded; and except for the closure of the ritzy Olivetti Bar, the scenery never seemed to change.

CHAPTER 4

Crossroads of via Fani and via Stresa,

the Camilluccia district, Rome, Italy.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 08:58.

Spiriticchio had begun the task of buying four new tyres when three cars parked adjacent to his corner ‘patch’ at the STOP signs on via Fani and via Stresa.

On the via Stresa side of the intersection, a blue Fiat 128 was parked. A slender young woman who wore faded jeans, with long hair which fell either side of her large round glasses, sat beside a tall man, who wore a green Loden coat. Together they talked as the car ticked over in neutral. Fifty metres behind was Mario Moretti, the leader of the Red Brigades, who sat in a white Fiat 128 Estate car on fake diplomatic number plates.

On the via Fani side of the intersection, a white Mini Minor Estate car was also parked. Opposite Spiriticchio’s ‘patch’, beside the unkempt flower pots of the closed Olivetti Bar, stood four men, two of whom had alighted, at about 08:40, from a fourth car, a dark blue saloon, a four door Fiat 132, which was parked against the oncoming traffic flow.

Each of the four men at the intersection were dressed in Alitalia uniforms. They wore braided caps and carried Alitalia flight bags. One held his cap in his hand, while the youngest fidgeted with his collar; it could have been an excess of starch or even a flurry of pre-flight nerves? None of the four men appeared out of the ordinary.

Further down the via Fani, the news vendor’s son sat on a stool beside the kiosk and read a football comic. He too was unaware of a Honda motorbike and yet another car, a white Fiat 128 saloon, in which two other men sat.

No one, not even the couple who were walking their dog took any heed of the eleven strangers, multiple stolen cars and one motorcycle in their midst. Unbeknownst to all, the telephone lines in the immediate area had been cut, and several trucks were spread out, their engines idling, all ready to run interference and block the main arterial roads should any Carabinieri reinforcements arrive. The only person to look up when Aldo Moro’s modest motorcade sped down the via Fani was the news vendor’s son, momentarily glancing up from his football comic.

CHAPTER 5

Crossroads of via Fani and via Stresa,

the Camilluccia district, Rome, Italy.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 09:03.

From the first second, when the woman with the large round glasses slammed her blue Fiat 128 into reverse and drove straight across the via Fani and via Stresa junction and crashed into the bonnet of Moro’s oncoming Fiat 130, the entire – precision – operation took less than 180 seconds. Moretti’s white Fiat 128 Estate rammed Moro’s car from behind and blocked the Alfa Romeo Alfetta with its three bodyguards.

The woman and the man in the green Loden coat, leaped out of their car spraying bullets at Moro’s driver. Ricci and Leonardi were killed instantly. Fourteen bullet holes peppered their bodies. They died slumped across each other. The submachine pistol shots were an immaculately rehearsed crossfire drill; other than an insignificant thigh wound – from a ricochet – Moro was unharmed.

Two of the ‘pilots’ executed the three bodyguards in the unmarked Alfetta using the same methods. Rivera died whilst the new man Zizzi was mortally wounded. Iozzino was able to draw his pistol and fire off two rounds, blindly. The Honda motorcycle pulled up alongside the Alfetta, and the rider calmly put a bullet in the back of Iozzino’s skull; he later died in hospital.

In the hurricane of lead coming from the Italian FNAB-43 and Beretta M12 weapons, the two other ‘pilots’ grabbed Aldo Moro – their timing was also split second rehearsed – and rammed him into the footwell of the waiting dark blue, four-door, Fiat 132 saloon parked in front of the Olivetti Bar.

All around Spiriticchio’s flower ‘patch’ was death and ghostly silence. Stonework and cars were acned from the ninety-one bullets loosed off by the assassins. Spent brass casings and submachine gun magazines littered the ground. An Alitalia flight bag lay upended with one of the ‘pilot’s’ caps. Shallow rivers of gore found their own course through the carnage and debris of bodies and smashed cars.

Sheaves of unread newsprint from the back seat of Moro’s car fluttered across the streets like outsize butterflies. Both Moro’s briefcase and his grey homburg lay on the tarmac battleground like the destroyed totems of a nation that they were.

Only when someone noticed that the security detail’s new man, Zizzi, was still just about breathing was the alarm was sounded. Too late for Zizzi. Too late for Moro. And to no avail.

Apart from the coincidence of an ex-policeman eyewitness, who attempted to give chase, the kidnapping assassins getaway was as flawlessly executed as Moro’s abduction and the murder of all his five-man security detail.

The kidnapper’s dark blue Fiat 132 saloon, with Moro in its rear footwell, turned left at high speed off the via Fani and into via Stresa, followed by the other cars. A few hundred metres away all the getaway cars, and an ex-policeman pursuer, were caught by a red traffic light on a pedestrian crossing outside the Church of San Francesco.

For nearly as long as the entire operation took – less than three minutes, it was all over by 09:05.

Aldo Moro’s hard-fought coalition between his Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party could not, and would not, be signed at 10:00 that morning as had been planned. The historic pact could not, and would not, become enshrined in law without him.

At 10:00, Pietro Ingrao, president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, closed the parliamentary session, announcing that Aldo Moro had been kidnapped. Which meant that his formal DC/PCI coalition wouldn’t be inked by either party. Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, due to the emergency, would hastily pass a vote in the afternoon denying the Enrico Berlinguer’s Italian Communist Party any role in the new coalition Italian Government Andreotti would now form. The Americans also had the result they so desperately wanted: a communist-free NATO government.

The Red Brigades, and those to whom they ultimately answered, finally had their prize.

CHAPTER 6

No. 5, Largo Claudio Treves,

the Brera District, Milan, Italy.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 09:20.

Pietro Albassi wiped his hand across the mirror and looked at himself through rivulets of condensation. He had weathered the storms of big-city ageing well. His not-so-classical Sicilian features had survived Milan’s tension, bustle and grime. He tugged at his right eyelid to check just how far the tiredness went. It went all the way down to his soul. He’d been putting in too many hours of late. But this morning, he had no appointments, and decided to take some time off, a rare occurrence for him.

He was a hard-working, mid-level lawyer at Scampidi & Rusconi, a highly respected Milan law firm. Defending criminals was his forte. He liked his criminals more than his employer, a conundrum which rarely troubled him, for Scampidi & Rusconi redefined the meaning of autocratic it was, in truth, a tyrannical place to work. There had never been an Avvocato Rusconi, there had only ever been Dottore Enrico Scampidi.

In his mid-seventies, Dottore Scampidi had written not only The Bible, but the Italian Constitution as well, or so he believed. ‘Ask’ was not a word he ever used: tell, order, command and demand were his four rules. There wasn’t any spectrum of Italian business, political or religious life (and they were so intertwined as to be identical triplets) that Dottore Scampidi didn’t dominate as an éminence grise. Thankfully, Pietro and his secretary, Angelica, were left alone to ensure that even the truly guilty were set free. That was the high bar the dottore had set Avvocato Pietro Albassi on the first day of his employment, fresh from his years at UniMi, the renowned University of Milan.

Pietro soaped the shaving brush and studied his face, one that had been bred in adversity for adversity. The Sicilian world he had been born into was not one where love, or anything else for that matter, rights wrongs. And it showed. His forehead was prematurely lined, resembling a clenched fist. He had a weathered and olive-tanned complexion from the scorched earth that was his Sicilian DNA, and perhaps his age too; he still couldn’t believe he was going to be thirty-four in September. His black hair was as slick as a raven’s. Salt white flashes streaked lightly at his temples, like those of a badger, emphasising the depth of his lake-green eyes. He frowned. He rubbed the deep scar scalloped above his left eye where the American bullet – fired by a Sicilian – had struck him in the San Cipirello massacre, back in August 1950, one week before his sixth birthday. Apart from being the only survivor that day, the Parcae, the Sicilian Fates, had further blessed him, for they had led the wounded boy into the arms of the Salaviglia family who had nurtured him; he grew up as if he were a scion, not an orphan.

Pietro’s left eye had a faint milk-hue and a permanently dilated pupil, evidence that he was 100 per cent blind in this eye. But it was a small burden after all that he had been given by the 14th Duke of Salaviglia after the massacre. Wounded and blinded, the duke had taken him away from the orphanage to grow up at Castello Bonnera, on their vast estates in the west of Sicily, with Victor, the duke’s only child. The duke had raised him and protected him, and taught him the ways of the world. He educated him and cared for him just as he had his son Victor. Being the same age, the boys became as inseparable as twins. Aged eighteen, the 14th Duke had astutely despatched Pietro north to Milan to study law. Victor remained in Sicily to live his preordained life as the future 15th Duke. Pietro knew that the west of Sicily was no place for a young, and orphaned, man to prosper.

He grabbed his robe and pulled it tightly around his athletic 6’1" body, and headed out to the kitchen for a cappuccino, and to catch the morning news. Same old, same old he suspected. These were the anni di piombo – the years of lead – so, which city had the terrorists struck this time?

He slid the kitchen door open, fired up his old Gaggia coffee machine, and smiled his open smile. This morning was to be a rare few hours where he could enjoy the company of his beloved wife, Ruxandra, with his mutt Enzo, now that their eight-year-old twins were at school. They could both relax and all would be tranquil at their home. He clicked on the radio.

Like all of Italy, and most of the free world, he could never have conceived of what he would hear.

CHAPTER 7

The Vatican State.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 09:40.

The view of the Piazza San Pietro from Alessandro Cuci’s office was superlative. Ignoring the looming presence of the largest church in the world, the Basilica San Pietro, it was the chemistry of the stone, and the artists who had built it, which gave it an unidentifiable something he could never quite come to terms with.

Cuci was the definition of a paradox; he was two truths that were forever in competition. He both despised and marvelled at his incredible view. So what if Caligula and Nero had turned the Piazza into their own personal circus ring? Did anyone really care that its central obelisk bore witness to St Peter’s crucifixion? No, of course not.

Cuci walked the tightrope between savagery and civilisation. He was feral and ice-blooded, yet also an extraordinarily civilised man. The atheist that he was, he saw no reason whatsoever why St Peter should have insisted on being crucified upside down. (Jesus Christ, right way up – St Peter, wrong way down. Martyrdom was martyrdom. Dead was dead. Surely?) All that did stir his stone heart were Michelangelo’s walls. The Holy See, the Universal Government of the Vatican City, all forty-nine hectares of it, with a population of 700 or so souls were all, in effect, that held him. Too true the old Roman saying, ‘Faith is made here and believed elsewhere’. The Holy See and the Vatican State were, he reminded himself, his personal fiefdom across the Tiber.

Cuci spoke seven languages fluently, and dressed the same each day: a single button, single-breasted shadow-blue tailored suit, each cut in three different weights of cloth for the changing seasons. His crisp white Egyptian cotton shirts – cutaway collars only – were made for him in Naples, as were his black silk knitted ties and black calfskin loafers. Nothing varied, not even his simple platinum cufflinks, or his platinum Patek Philippe Calatrava watch. Cuci had his own aesthetic and it never changed. His love of Russian literature didn’t change either; and on rare, dark days he would read the classics in Cyrillic as a sop.

Apart from a handful of chosen staff, no one had such a commanding and awe-inspiring view; not even Their Eminences, who lived in the old servants’ quarters of the Apostolic Palace. It was a panorama that invoked in all, save one Alessandro Cuci, a sense of humility, of one’s true position in His scheme of things. But at just forty-one years of age, it couldn’t intoxicate him the way a heady Tuscan wine did as he lay in his lover’s arms. The view, however, did make him feel as if he commanded the universe, and not just the Vatican’s Istituto per le Opere Esteriore, the Institute of External Affairs, the IEA.

During the six years that he had been its head, he had, in his Machiavellian way, turned the IEA into his own political machine, his own financial hub and subsequently an incomparable and altogether sinister powerbase.

There were more than 750 million Roman Catholics in the world, a goodly percentage of whom had a vote in the democratic world: no one from the slums of South America, to Capitol Hill, to the parliamentary offices in Rome, and all via his Vatican State, dared challenge the IEA’s wishes, silences or secrets.

Cuci possessed two of the rare attributes a man of power must be endowed with: a position of true global influence while maintaining almost total invisibility. Out of sight, unphotographed, hidden from a world even as he shaped it. Members of the Curia whispered that the IEA had become God’s Left Hand. So much so that Cuci’s superior, the Cardinal Secretary of the Vatican State, trotted behind Cuci’s heels like a mute lapdog.

It was a historic day, with Moro being kidnapped. Cuci knew the truth, of course. And he was now set to become his own éminence grise in his own state, one that wasn’t confined to the Vatican. The thought delighted him, for he had just received the confirmation telephone call he had been waiting for: Licio Gelli had just telephoned him from the Hotel Excelsior, sixty metres from the US Embassy, where P2 members had been meeting in secret. Gelli was the Venerable Master of Propaganda Due, P2, aka the Frati Neri – the Black Friars – the most powerful fascist and clandestine Masonic Lodge in Italy – and counted the heads of all three Italian intelligence agencies as members. Gelli had confirmed to Cuci that, the most difficult part is done…

Beaming at the good news, he toyed with his goatee, and then fidgeted with his tie. He had two telephone calls to make following Gelli’s news.

* * *

"Pronto! "

"Ciao, Enrico. How’s the weather in Milan?" Cuci asked.

Why are you always concerned about the weather, Alessandro? It’s so English, Enrico Scampidi said. What’s the news?

Licio called to tell me what I already knew, replied Cuci, that the weather here in Rome is pleasant indeed.

OK, you win. Good news I take it. So, what do you require, Alessandro?

Cuci let a silence come between them. He’d known Dottore Enrico Scampidi for many years. A fellow P2 member, he was vehemently anti-communist down to his expensive bootstraps; it was all he had in common with the CIA. The dottore was a highly capable, snake-like Milan lawyer who held more secrets than the cemeteries in Italy, who was as infamous as he was renowned. A political and financial fixer who’d dodged all manner of scandals over decades with footwork so deft he made Fred Astaire look like a drunk. Cuci required a favour, but he didn’t want to be in Scampidi’s debt. However, he had no choice. He had to turn to the maestro.

Please Alessandro, I’m busy. What do you need? It must be important for you to call me at such a time.

I want a go-between.

Can’t the IEA find one? You know very well I’ll require a quid pro quo.

Of course. Cuci took a deep breath. In the meantime, here’s what’s needed, Enrico. A cut-out who can operate as a go-between amongst the following: the Red Brigades. Andreotti. The Communists. The Moro family. The Christian Democrats. The Press. The IEA. He – no women please – must have credibility with most, if not all, of them. He’ll report directly to you, and you’ll report back to me. A difficult request I appreciate.

That’s a tall order. Why do you want such a person?

To know what all the players are thinking, all of the time. I’m the one dealing with CIA in this joint operation, and I must be one step ahead of them.

That makes sense, replied Scampidi, matter-of-factly. "I’ll consider it and we’ll speak before lunch. Ciao." Scampidi ended the call without further ado. He didn’t like Alessandro Cuci, in fact he didn’t know anyone who did, but Scampidi held him, and his IEA, in very high esteem. Cuci was the most dangerous, ruthless man he’d ever met. And he’d met and worked with them all.

* * *

It was the middle of the night in Virginia, USA, but Cuci just couldn’t help himself. He dialled the US. His winter-grey eyes, like those of a husky, mean and unblinking, searched out the last four digits from his diary. Finally, the line crackled and echoed.

When are you returning to Rome? Cuci asked crisply.

There was a grunt and then a pause.

It’s 3.30 in the mornin’!

The voice, a weighty Lone Star drawl, was thick with sleep.

When are you returning to Rome? The weather is lovely here, Cuci repeated.

End of the week. Everythin’ OK? The question was calmly rhetorical, but the voice alert.

"Yes, tutto bene, and thanks to you, all went fine. Call me on my secure line when you get to Langley. There’s one detail I think we could finesse. Sleep well Judd."

Cuci replaced the receiver and smiled at his own impertinence. The call could easily have waited until a civilised hour, but he enjoyed waking one of the CIA’s most powerful station heads at an ungodly hour. All morning the echo of his late grandfather’s voice in the walled garden of his tumbleweed Umbrian palazzo had been ricocheting in his mind. As an only child – of an only child – and from a family with more pedigree than wealth, he had paid great attention when his grandfather cautioned him. And this morning he couldn’t shake off his Nonno’s nudging words: "Alessandro, the lemons always ripen before the cherries. If a fruit is going to go bad, it usually does so quickly."

* * *

Judd Barings fisted his pillow and cussed in heavy Southern tones. The finest agents he’d ever worked with had been assigned to this operation, not men who couldn’t hit the ground with their own hats. Of course it’d gone to plan; CIA had used their best. Unbeknownst to Cuci, he’d stationed two agents, astride Vespas, on via Fani to be his eyes and ears.

What he didn’t want was a jumped-up, pint-sized wop telling him what he already knew. Christ, what the hell did Cuci think this operation was? It wasn’t exactly Martin Luther King. If this was a real big deal, he’d have been awake and in Italy. So, what was the purpose of the darned call? The first rule of any conspiracy, is y’all don’t ever talk about the conspiracy.

OK, the target was Aldo Moro, Italy’s Commie lovin’ head politico, but that was in itself no problem. He knew Texan businessmen with better personal security than Moro. Besides, this was not a coup. No, there really had been nothing to worry about.

Really, Alex? Barings grumbled, it’s yer Red Brigades that are going to kill him, y’all just keep to yer end o’ the deal.

Usually, neither the Cuci’s nor the Moro’s of this world caused Barings to lose one minute of sleep. The only thing that ever did was a pretty girl, and she had to be hotter than a June bride in a feather bed. And where he came from, they dressed in short skirts and purred husky bourbon breath too. Now partially awake, he began to recall in detail the conversation he’d had at Langley with CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner.

Turner had blown nonchalantly into a steaming mug of black coffee. His tone held contempt for anyone other than his superiors. In this case, there was only one such person. Number 39. President James Earl Carter Jr.

Judd, tell me about Alessandro Cuci.

Cuci thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow, sir.

Please, Judd, the Confederate drawl is hard enough, but your colloquialisms are beyond me.

Well sir, he sure has a high opinion of hisself. He’s as timid as Napoleon, has the hide of an armadillo, the blood of a polar bear, an’ lies like a tombstone. Barings’ deep Southern accent – part Texas, part Louisiana, part Alabama – sounded exaggerated in the Director’s seventh floor office. The man’s darned ruthless an’ dangerous, like an army of Texan fire ants. But more important, Mr Director, intel-wise Cuci could find a whisper in a whirlwind.

Turner knew why he instinctively liked Judd Barings. However garbled, he received accurate opinions from a highly skilled CIA field agent, not the usual blather.

"When I was appointed director last year, I took over from Director George H.W. Bush, who had, and still has, a strong anti-communist approach. Director Bush was a militant director, and he’d just started a policy of funding General Noriega down in Panama. Noriega’s a thug, and Bush showered him with money and support. The reason I’m telling you this, is that I’ve inherited just half of Bush’s allies, but I’m landed with all of his enemies. So, what I’m saying is that Cuci had better be good, I’ve got enough enemies out there already. You understand me?"

Sure do, Mr Director. Y’all want me to keep him on a tight leash?

Precisely, Judd. I’m not Director Bush. I’m US Navy, more of a ‘good hound-dog, good hound-dog’ man. He paused. So I always carry a big stick. The director’s brow creased with anxiety. Barings knew to remain silent. "This is one of those rare occasions when the US State Department agrees with a CIA report. Like the General Noriega anti-communist policy which Bush stuck me with, I’m now stuck with Cuci and the IEA. Let me remind you of what Director Bush said only last year: ‘We are making sufficiently alarmist assessments of Soviet might, and that no Communist is going to form any part of any government coalition in Italy, however small, because the Italian Communist Party poses a threat.’ Turner swigged his coffee before continuing. All this is according to the Bush CIA and US State Department. Director Bush was open about what had to happen to Moro. This is NATO Italy for Christ’s sakes! It’s not a mosquito-infested swamp with a ditch in it called Panama. Judd, you keep me closely informed on this operation.

The tape replayed with Barings now pop-eyed awake, and that ticked him off big time. He liked his sleep, and there was no slumbering, foxy redhead he could stir into life to help take his febrile mind back into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER 8

The Vatican State.

Thursday, 16th March 1978. 12:05.

The intercom buzzed. Cuci stabbed the flashing button. Who now?

I have Dottore Scampidi for you, announced Angelo, Cuci’s PA, with more trepidation than normal. The telephone lines had been fizzing red-hot since the Moro news had broken two hours ago. Angelo’s end of shift – he was one of two PAs – was still six, dauntingly long, hours away. He clicked the call straight through.

The weather has cleared up in Milan before you ask, chuckled Scampidi impishly, before continuing. I’ve given your request quite some thought, Alessandro. I’ve circled the globe and I’ve found a good solution. Right at my front door too.

I’m listening, Cuci replied eagerly; he’d been waiting for Scampidi’s call.

For what you require, I decided to look outside all the normal channels. So, no P2 associates, no law-enforcement officers, no politicians, no priests, no bankers. What you need is an ingenue and a virgin. No one we’ve ever used before. I’ve a lawyer in mind. Better still, he works for me.

Go on, interrupted Cuci.

His name is Pietro Albassi. Sicilian by birth and lives here in Milan where he went to university. He’s in his mid-thirties, married with two young children, twins, and he’s worked for me since he graduated. Scampidi let a beat pass. "Here’s the main reason why I like him for this role. Albassi is a criminal lawyer – he’s a worker, thorough, skilled and the only criminal lawyer in my office. About two years ago he defended two Red Brigades brigatisti after a shooting in Turin. Both were as guilty as the original sin, but on a corkscrew-like technicality Albassi got them both off. Of all the parties you need information from, the Red Brigades are going to be the hardest. Albassi has an ‘in’, as well as their trust, after the Turin verdict. The Red Brigades believe Albassi can feed 5,000 with two fish and a handful of grissini."

Anything else I should know, Enrico? What about his personality? Weak points? Strong points? Cuci asked in measured tones as he wrote copious notes. Much hinged on the intel this person was going to relay to his fellow Freemason.

Albassi was born an orphan in 1944. His mother died in childbirth. Father unknown, rumoured to have been a US soldier. The Salaviglia family raised him as their own, until the 14th Duke sent him north to university here in Milan. Again, all on Salaviglia’s lire.

What would the Salaviglias be doing with a Sicilian orphan?

You know of the family, Alessandro. They believe they’re responsible for anything and everything that happens on their lands. Been like that for centuries. Don’t forget, the Salaviglias were in Sicily when the Normans invaded in the eleventh century. Albassi was shot in the San Cipirello massacre back in 1950 when he was a child, which explains his scar, and the fact he’s blind in his left eye. There’s no part of the west of Sicily the Salaviglia’s don’t rule over, so looking after him after he was shot would have been a debt of honour. Also, Albassi is the same age as the old duke’s only child, Victor – the next, and the 15th Duke. They grew up together on the Bonnera estates, concluded Scampidi.

"The Salaviglias have held all the real power in Sicily for centuries, Enrico, replied Cuci. In 1810, King Ferdinand decreed that any boar-poacher caught in the forests around his Ficuzza hunting lodge, would have both their hands amputated – on the spot – by his soldiers. Most died of shock straight away. The Salaviglia’s far larger estates bordered the king’s, and the wily duke, I forget which one, immediately pronounced that any paesano who hunted on Salaviglia lands got to keep not only the boar – but their hands too – and were able to feed their families. So, for the sake of some wild boar, the entire west of Sicily became forever a loyal Salaviglia dominion. Not even the Mafia dare go near their estates. They’re sovereign. Cuci, a mine of historical knowledge, finished by saying, O, you are a lucky man, Albassi, to have had the Salaviglias as guardians, and I like lucky men, Enrico. Bravo." Cuci paused. Other than his wife and children what are Albassi’s weaknesses? Mistresses? Boys? Girls? Drugs? Hookers? Gambling? Everyone has skeletons.

No, happily married by all accounts. He’s a loner, but well liked here. He’s not social. Doesn’t travel. He’s clever, diligent and has an instinct, a feel, too. I witnessed that in the Turin case. He persuaded me to take it pro bono, only because of the legal twist in the case. I suspect he is apolitical too.

OK, so, who will he liaise with at Christian Democracy? Andreotti is already on side and he’s not going to let up on Moro now, so much for his party loyalty.

"Good. That makes my Christian Democracy contact Tina Anselmi an excellent pick. Andreotti promoted her to Health Minister five days ago and she has his