The Absolution (22 page)

“And so it proved. Paolo fed back certain titbits of information suggesting the Historic Compromise was all a plot on behalf of the moderates; some judicious leaks from within the Christian Democrats reinforced the illusion, and within a remarkably short space of time we were in the fortuitous position of having an agent at the heart of a terrorist organisation which was now dedicated to exactly the same tactical objectives as ourselves.”

“A terrorist organisation as your asset?” she said ironically. “What could possibly go wrong?”

He nodded. “The problem, of course, was that there was now absolutely nothing restraining Paolo from pursuing his own right-wing agenda. Every action he carried out, no matter how barbaric, had the effect of impressing his supposed masters in Moscow with his brutality, his Red Brigades colleagues with his ideological purity, and Langley with his usefulness as a double agent. Effectively, Bob and I had lost control of the situation. Paolo did what he chose. The rest of us were just along for the ride.”

“And Daniele's kidnap?”

“The first we knew of that was when we read about it in the press.”

“So that's why you feel guilty about Daniele. Without you, his mutilation would never have happened.”

He inclined his head.

“And how does this relate to my dad? Where does he come into the picture?”

“After the Red Brigades assassinated Aldo Moro, it was clear to me that Paolo had to be stopped at any cost.” He shrugged. “A cynic might say that we had achieved our objective: with its principal architect dead, the Historic Compromise soon died as well. But I swear that if Paolo was ever given a direct order to do such a thing, it came from Moscow, not us. In any case, we made a concerted effort to round them up – all of them, even Paolo. But somehow he got wind of it and slipped back into the old Gladio network from which he'd come. There were plenty of right-wing Italian border officials, secret service officers and so on eager to help him. He was spirited away; first to Argentina, I believe, and later to Japan.

“But he didn't lie low for long – as I said, terror was a kind of addiction for him; and while both America and Russia might have been satisfied now the power-sharing proposal was dead, for Paolo and the other fascists that had only ever been a stepping stone. At some point he returned and resumed his former activities within Gladio. Only now he suited himself as to whether he claimed his atrocities in the name of the Brigate Rosse or some right-wing terror group.”

“And then Andreotti revealed Gladio's existence.”

Gilroy nodded. “A setback for them. But, as your father discovered, not one that they intended to be derailed by. They quickly found ways to regroup, either by infiltrating existing Masonic fraternities or by setting up their own illegal ones. I was aware it was happening, even before your father wrote that memorandum – I'd been trying to track Paolo ever since he'd returned to Italy – but his report was the first time I realised that they were operating a lodge at Camp Darby.”

“So when he came to you . . .”

“What I told you – that I simply thanked him and passed the report up the line – was a lie, Holly,” he said quietly.

“I knew it.”

He held up a hand. “Wait. I think this is where you have perhaps jumped to a wrong conclusion. When you raised it, I thought – forgive me – that it would be better for all concerned if we were able to leave the past well alone. It was selfish of me – I was prioritising my own feelings of guilt over your right to know the truth.” He hesitated. “The fact is, I asked your father to see what else he could find out.”

She stared at him. “You
recruited
him? You sent him back into that nest of vipers . . .?”

“I'm sorry,” he said simply. “It was a misjudgement. You must understand – what he was describing had Paolo's fingerprints all over it: exactly the same organisational structure as the Red Brigades, only with Masonic lodges instead of revolutionary cells. And there was no one else I could use.”

She thought a moment. “What exactly did he do?”

“The gladiators already believed that, as a NATO officer, your father must be sympathetic to their ideology. I thought that if he appeared sufficiently enthusiastic, he could get close to the ringleaders, along with whichever Italian or NATO officers were abetting them. Then we'd go in and roll them all up in one swoop – not just Paolo, but the entire network.”

“He would have gone back to Mr Boccardo, the neighbour who first alerted him. He'd have asked him to get them both inside the group.”

Gilroy nodded. “He was getting results – we spoke about it on the telephone, guardedly of course, but he sounded positive. He hinted that he'd been able to keep some kind of record – names, dates, details: all the small stuff that allows a case officer to piece together what's really going on.
Unfortunately, before he could deliver it to me, he suffered that stroke.”

“In his report, he mentioned someone called Caesar.”

“Yes. I'm guessing that was Paolo himself. Or an invention of Paolo's, to make it seem as if he was in touch with some higher and even more powerful authority. If anyone questioned his orders, all he had to do was say that Caesar agreed.”

She was silent, thinking it all through.

“So you see,” he said gently, “it isn't only Daniele I feel guilty about. It's you. I admit it: when I saw an opportunity to support your application for a transfer to Italy, I seized it. I wanted to make amends, as well as to see what sort of person Ted's daughter had become. I never imagined that we'd become friends as well.”

If we are friends.

What Gilroy had just told her had the ring of truth. No one, surely, could invent a story that fitted the facts so well, right down to the tiniest detail. And yet something made her hold back from saying that she believed him.

“No doubt you want more proof, Holly,” he said, reading her mind. “And believe me, I've been asking round all my contacts from those days, trying to find something – anything – that might convince you. But it's all too long ago. And I'm concerned that the more people I remind about activities they believed were safely hidden away a generation past, the more likely they are to decide that one or both of us would be better out of the picture.”

She thought. “You say my father kept some kind of record.”

“That's right, I believe he did.”

She said softly, “You want me to look for it, don't you? It isn't just to convince me. Even after all this time, you still want to know what happened.”

“I do, yes.”

She nodded slowly. “And I will. If those notes can be found, I'll find them. And then we'll know the truth.”

IN SICILY, TAREQ
was woken by the sound of his phone ringing. He reached for it immediately. Only a handful of people had this number, and none of them would use it except in an emergency.

When he glanced at the screen, he expected to see a caller ID starting with 00 218, the dialling code for Libya. But, oddly, there was no number on the screen. It didn't say “Blocked”, or “Unknown”: it was simply blank.

“Hello?” he answered hesitantly.

The voice that replied was also speaking English, but in a strangely mechanical monotone.

“You - need - to - move - immediately.”

It was a text-to-speech converter, he realised. The caller wasn't speaking, he was typing. “Who is this?”

“A - friend. You - have - been - betrayed.”

“The teacher? Was it him?”

There was a long pause. Tareq could hear the clicking of a keyboard. Then the voice said, “Those - who - recruited - you - are - in - the - pay - of - infidels. Do - you - have - an - escape - plan?”

Tareq's mind was racing with questions. The commander a traitor? Could it be true? But he knew that in this shadow war they were fighting, men could be turned
by many means, fair or foul. So he only said, “Yes. I have a plan.”

“Do - it.” There was a click, and the voice was gone.

SLEEP WAS IMPOSSIBLE
.

After several hours, Holly abandoned the attempt and got back in her car. In the pre-dawn darkness the Ponte della Libertà was deserted. The lights of Venice glowed through a faint sea-mist, a haze like tracing paper, through which she could just make out the skyline of Cannaregio.

She left the car at Tronchetto for the ten-minute walk to Calle Barbo. Venice at this hour was like an Escher labyrinth, eerily deserted: more than once she found her way blocked by a canal that had somehow turned a corner in front of her.

She pulled on the brass bell handle next to the lion's-head postbox. To her surprise the door opened almost immediately. Daniele was wearing his normal daytime garb: T-shirt, sneakers, jeans. In his hand was a fork.

“What do you want?” he said. “I was just having lunch.”

“Daniele, it's four o'clock in the morning.”

“Not in São Paulo,” he said reasonably.

“What does São Paulo have to do with it?”

“Nothing. I'm just illustrating that time is a man-made construct. I suppose you want to talk to me?”

“Well, I certainly haven't come all this way to listen to you talk about man-made constructs.”

“There's nothing to discuss, Holly. We're not together any more.”

“I know,” she said impatiently. “That doesn't mean we never speak to each other again.”

He hesitated. “You'd better come in, then.”

He took her to the vaulted old kitchen at the rear of Ca' Barbo. Although she knew that he was an excellent cook, capable of following complex recipes to the letter, today he was eating the simple cold pasta dish Venetians call
salsa aurora
: a sweet-and-sour mix of fried peppers, tomatoes, courgettes and slices of peach.

Watching him eat, she discovered she was hungry too, and reached for a fork. “I know you've always thought I was crazy to trust Ian Gilroy,” she told him between mouthfuls. “And if you'd asked me six hours ago, I'd have said you were probably right. But now I'm not so sure.”

She related her earlier conversation, and his face darkened.

“But this is what he does,” he said. “Gilroy's genius, I realised many years ago, is that he tells stories. Brilliant, shiny stories that somehow seem to offer you whatever it is that you most want in the world. In your case, he knows you want to believe him, because the alternative is just so unthinkable.”

The speech was so unlike Daniele that she only looked at him, wondering.

“I saw him throw his magic dust into my father's eyes,” he explained. “I'm not saying it was easy for my parents after my kidnap. But, somehow, every conversation seemed to begin, ‘Ian Gilroy says . . .' or ‘Ian agrees . . .' And after my father died, Gilroy was left as the principal trustee of the Foundation. He'd convinced my father it was the only way to prevent me from selling off his art collection. But if that lever hadn't been available to him, he would have found some other lie. I'm sure of it.”

“I heard you accuse him of it once. He asked me to wait behind a screen at his house, when you came to speak to him. He wanted me to hear how unreasonable you were being.”

“It was him who pushed us together, wasn't it?” he said sadly. “You and me . . . that was always part of his plan.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I made my own decision about that. One I don't regret, by the way. The point is, I've been trying to figure out if there's any way of proving whether or not Gilroy's version of events is correct. And it seems to me you're the only person who might be able to help.”

“Me? How?”

“It all comes down to your kidnap. If Paolo
was
the mastermind, as both Gilroy and Tataro claim, then perhaps you saw something to corroborate their version of events?”

He shook his head. “You know I don't remember anything about the kidnap. Not after the first few days, anyway.”

“Which in itself is strange, don't you think? I looked up memory loss due to psychological trauma on the internet. It's almost always temporary.”

“Believe me, my parents tried everything. I was dragged from doctor to doctor for years. Most decided it was linked to my . . .” He hesitated. “My other condition.”

“But that's another thing,” she said. “When I spoke to Carole Tataro, she told me she used to play number games with you. She said that you seemed a little strange, vulnerable even, but not autistic.”

“My parents believed the same thing. That the kidnap somehow triggered, or at any rate worsened, whatever was wrong with me.”

“But don't you see the implication?” she persisted. “If what you have is actually not high-functioning autism at all but some trauma-induced condition that closely mirrors it . . . True
autism is incurable. But a condition which mimics its symptoms might, in theory, be reversible. There are papers describing children brought up in Eastern-bloc orphanages, for example, who appeared to display autistic behaviours but who grew up to be indistinguishable from other kids.”

“Some of them,” he corrected. “Those who were taken out of that environment young enough. I read those papers too. But even if that were once applicable to me, it isn't relevant now.”

“I've been doing some research. There's a relatively new technique called EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. No one seems to know exactly why or how EMDR works. But studies have shown that, when combined with hypnosis, it's the most effective treatment for post-traumatic amnesia there is.” She hesitated. “I already spoke to Father Uriel,” she said, naming the psychiatrist who'd treated both herself and Daniele in the past. “He's familiar with it.”

“I'd like to help, really. But I don't have time for this right now.” He ran his hand through his hair and for the first time she saw how exhausted he was. “There have been . . . problems. With Carnivia. A kind of virus. I'm getting to the bottom of it, but it's difficult.”

In fact, he was understating the scale of the clean-up he and the other administrators had been undertaking. He had written a piece of software that would remove the worm, but it was an operation that had to be carried out on an individual basis, user by user. And more users were being infected all the time. It was a race between the virus and the wizards; one they were currently losing.

“If there's at least a chance that your condition could be cured, wouldn't you want to take it?”

“Why would I want to be like other people? I'm happy the way I am.”

“You wouldn't be like other people,” she insisted. “You'd still be Daniele – still brilliant, still strange. Who knows, perhaps you'd simply be more you. Perhaps you'd be capable of even greater things than you already are.”

He was silent a moment. The idea that treatment might actually unlock his abilities rather than stifle them was one he hadn't considered before. And it was true what that professor at MIT had written: his best work appeared to be behind him. He needed to do something different if he was to get a different result.

Sensing his hesitation, she added, “Daniele, it would mean a lot to me if you would at least try this. I have to find out what happened to my dad, and at the moment I'm getting nowhere.”

There were many people, she knew, who thought that Daniele Barbo was impervious to such emotional appeals. But she had never believed that to be the case. His emotions might be different from other people's, but they existed nevertheless.

“All right,” he said at last. “I'll try. I suppose I've got nothing to lose.”