The Last Supper (37 page)

The murder/suicide of Roberto Calvi turned out better than its perpetrators could have dreamed, coming close to being the perfect crime, at least for the first 20 years. In Italy almost everyone was convinced from the start that Calvi had been ‘suicided’ and the symbolic elements of his death were seen as sending an eloquent message to any of his associates who might have been tempted to ‘squeal’. A crime dismissed as suicide by the British police, and cursorily investigated, was read as murder by the Italian public, with all the intimidatory power of a high-profile mafia assassination.

Some of the scenographic elements of Calvi’s death were almost certainly the product of chance, but they were interpreted nevertheless as part of a carefully staged drama rich in symbolic messages. The name of Blackfriars Bridge could not have been more appropriate for the public punishment of ‘God’s banker’, evoking at once his connection with Roman Catholicism and with freemasonry. And the manner of his death – by hanging – bore the hallmark of a state execution, as perhaps indeed it was. The bricks in his pockets completed the symbolic ingredients of a pitiless masonic rite.

Blackfriars Bridge, designed by the Scottish architect Joseph Cubitt, was completed in 1869, carrying traffic into the City across its five wrought-iron arches. It was named after a large Dominican monastery situated near the City end. An order of mendicant friars founded in the early thirteenth century
to combat heresy, the Dominicans were known as Black Friars for the black capes they wore over their white habits. The name perfectly encapsulated one part of Calvi’s professional identity: his relationship with the Vatican. But it also contained masonic overtones that could have alluded to his troubling membership of P2. A British ‘Blackfriars’ lodge is listed as number 3,722 in the ‘List of Lodges Masonic’, the official register of European freemasonry.
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And though most masons are more likely to be seen in a blue apron than a black hood, the name evokes popular cultural stereotypes of freemasonry. Mino Pecorelli chose a photograph of a figure wearing a black hood over the red robes of a cardinal to illustrate his
Osservatore Politico
article on ‘The Grand Vatican Lodge’.

One of the most striking aspects of freemasonry is its fierce devotion to secrecy and some commentators have seen elements of masonic ritual in Calvi’s death that could have referred to the threatened breach of his masonic oath of silence. The First Degree initiation ceremony contains a blood-curdling commitment to maintain the organization’s secrets: ‘These several points I solemnly swear to observe, without evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on the violation of any of them, than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the root, and buried in the sand of the sea at low water mark, or a cable’s length from the shore, where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours.’
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The noose around Calvi’s neck could recall the ‘cable tow’ placed around a candidate’s neck during the First Degree initiation ceremony and if his tongue wasn’t buried on the seashore, the tide was certainly ebbing and flowing past his body on that tragic summer morning. Calvi was a man who had built his career on secrets, had achieved wealth and power through membership of a secret society, and who, at the last, was attempting to save his career and his bank by threatening to spill those very same secrets. The ‘Emulation First Degree
Ritual’ can be bought in any respectable masonic bookshop and stresses over and again the good mason’s commitment to secrecy. The most bloodthirsty parts of the oath are coyly concealed behind the initial letters of each word. The relevant passage concludes reassuringly: ‘The inclusion of such a penalty is unnecessary, for the Obligation you have taken this evening is binding on you for so long as you shall live.’
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Observers have seen another potential level of meaning in the location of Calvi’s death. Now painted blood red, in 1982 Blackfriars Bridge bore the pale blue and white livery of the Argentine national flag: a possible reference to the Falklands war, which had ended four days before Calvi’s death, and to the Ambrosiano’s role in funding Argentina’s arms purchases? Or perhaps just the blue and white of a masonic apron?

If these interpretations were really to hold true, to amount to more than just a fortunate coincidence from the point of view of Calvi’s killers, one would have to assume that they had deliberately arranged for his death to be enacted under that particular bridge. It is difficult to believe, however, that the scaffolding, which had been erected five weeks earlier as part of regular maintenance work on the Thames river bank, had been specially placed there as part of an international murder plot. And it would be hard anyway to stage a death by hanging without having recourse to a noose. The bricks and stones in Calvi’s pockets, with their masonic association, do appear to constitute a deliberate symbolic message rather than a necessary part of the mechanics of his death. They might make practical sense if they were intended to make his body sink, but it seems highly unlikely that they were anything but an awkward encumbrance for a hanging and it is inconceivable that Calvi would have thrust a half brick on top of his own genitals, however suicidal his mood.

If the circumstances of Calvi’s death were rich in masonic symbolism, his relationship to freemasonry in London is much less clear. Italian reporting on the Calvi affair is full of tales
of the enormously powerful Grand Mother Lodge in London, a source of the international financial power of Calvi, Gelli and Ortolani and a natural port of call for Calvi in a time of difficulty. It is still not clear, however, who Calvi’s masonic contacts were, if any. As well as being a member of P2 – which he publicly denied to the last – Calvi was a member of Gelli’s World Organization of Masonic Thought and Assistance. When questioned by the P2 Commission he admitted membership of a secret foreign lodge but refused to divulge its identity. It has been variously suggested that he was a member of the City Lodge no. 901, of the Royal Alpha Lodge no. 16, or of the Navy Lodge no. 2612 – in which Prince Philip has been a dormant member for many years. Martin Short, in his book
Inside the Brotherhood
, claims Calvi visited a London lodge in which the banker Peter De Savary was treasurer and where a member of the British royal family also belonged.
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Calvi certainly knew De Savary. The two men had discussed a possible merger of their Bahamas banks, Calvi’s BAOL and De Savary’s Artoc Bank and Trust, and Calvi hoped the connection would lead to an infusion of desperately needed fresh funds as a result of De Savary’s ties to the Arab banking world. Calvi and his wife had stayed at the St James’ Club in London, which was owned by De Savary, and De Savary told police he had been in contact with Calvi at about the time of his disappearance from Italy and was expecting to see him in a few weeks in the Bahamas.

The United Grand Lodge of England, which one would think ought to know, still professes ignorance as to Calvi’s masonic contacts in London. John Hamill, the Grand Lodge’s urbane and patient spokesman, told me he was certain Calvi had never been a member of a London lodge. ‘We computerized membership in the mid 1980s and we ran a check. He was certainly not a member of a lodge under the United Grand Lodge in London. He could have visited London lodges as a guest.’ Gelli and Ortolani, too, were not members of a London
lodge but could have been invited as guests. There are around 400 lodges in the City and more than 1,500 in London as a whole, so checking visitors’ books would have been a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, Hamill said. ‘We did quite a bit of checking at the time of the P2 affair and drew blanks all round.’ What he could say, Hamill made clear, was that Peter De Savary’s name did not appear in the UGLE’s membership registry, that the Alpha Lodge was the Grand Master’s private lodge, met about three times a year for dinner and did not accept visitors, and that he knew from personal experience that Calvi had not been a member of the Navy Lodge. It was extremely unlikely Calvi had attended the City 901 Lodge, he added, since that was frequented by small businessmen rather than high-flying international bankers. ‘I checked the register and the nearest thing to a financier was an insurance salesman,’ he told me.
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One definite international masonic connection Calvi appears to have had is to masonic lodges in the Bahamas. Among his personal papers was a handwritten note in English with a calendar of meetings at the Lodge of Unity no. 8760 and the Royal Victoria Lodge no. 443, plus a simple hand-drawn map showing how to reach the masonic temple in Bay Street, Nassau. ‘If he did visit it was purely as a guest,’ Hamill told me, and the Bahamas lodges had no particular corresponding relationship with UGLE lodges in London. Hamill remains sceptical of the masonic interpretations of Calvi’s death. ‘There are freemasons who will see masonic symbolism in the proverbial two flies climbing up a wall,’ he said. ‘I have a wide masonic acquaintance in London and have yet to come across someone who actually met him.’ It is of course possible that neither Calvi, Gelli, nor Ortolani had any London masonic connection at all, but used such a mystifying claim as part of their bluff.

Pragmatic readers may dismiss the masonic symbolism in the staging of Calvi’s death, but a series of threatening
messages the banker appears to have received before his death could give them pause for thought. The most extraordinary of these was a postcard of Blackfriars Bridge that was found in a secret drawer of a cupboard in the Calvis’ country home at Drezzo and which had presumably been received by Calvi before he left Italy. It was found by Anna Calvi when she was going through her father’s papers in around 1984 and handed to her uncle Leone for safekeeping or delivery to the Milan magistrates. Leone Calvi has denied such a postcard was found and the original, unfortunately, has now been lost. Anna described the episode in evidence to Milan magistrates in 1994 and confirmed it again at the Rome murder trial. ‘In the drawer there was a colour postcard of Blackfriars Bridge, I can’t remember whether it had been sent or not,’ Anna told the prosecutor. Attached to it with a paperclip was a business card bearing an Italian name and a handwritten message: ‘Who does it should expect it.’ Anna added: ‘I remember well that the business card was with the postcard and that what struck me then was the association with the photograph of the bridge. We didn’t attach too much importance to the thing because it seemed strange that someone should make such grave threats and attach their own visiting card.’

In the evidence filed at the Calvi murder trial is a photocopy of a handwritten note which reads: ‘From the manual of the Young Marmots: “WHO DOES IT SHOULD EXPECT IT” G.M.’ On the same sheet of paper there is a photocopy of a business card in the name of Dr Emanuele Dubini, the president of the Association of Italian Joint Stock Companies. It would certainly be very strange if someone had sent a threatening message to Calvi before his death and associated it with a photograph of Blackfriars Bridge and his own visiting card. The connection may have been made by Calvi himself, rather than the sender, but the three items appear to have been found together by Anna as she was going through her father’s papers.

Dubini was the epitome of vagueness when I visited him in his central Milan home to ask him about this episode. He could remember nothing about it, he told me, and it was hard to object, since he had reached the ripe age of 97. He had known Pope Paul VI as archbishop of Milan, and after he became pope used to visit him in the Vatican twice a year to brief him on the state of Italian industry. He had also known Archbishop Marcinkus, he told me, and Calvi as well, though he hadn’t cared for him. He had even known Licio Gelli, he said, but not well.

During his career Dubini had represented Pirelli in the association of northern industrialists and moved on to represent Italian business globally as president of the Association of Italian Joint Stock Companies, a role in which he had been succeeded by Roberto Calvi. He had had good relations with the Americans, he recalled, visiting Washington twice a year to talk to the State Department’s Italian experts. ‘They knew more about our affairs than we did ourselves,’ he told me.

Dubini was open about his dislike of Calvi. Whether he had sent him a threatening message attached to his official business card – an act of extraordinary imprudence – it wasn’t really possible to say, as Dubini appeared to have no recollection of the matter. He did seem to have operated in international finance at a level where Roberto Calvi must – at the end – have constituted a strategic challenge, but it was impossible to get a clear word from him on exactly what he had done.
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To make real sense, the threatening message with the postcard of Blackfriars Bridge had to be sent before Calvi’s death – and it appears that he had indeed received it and filed it away in his secret drawer – and after 10 May, the date the scaffolding was erected under the bridge, making Calvi’s method of death technically possible. Blackfriars Bridge, like many London bridges, has chains hanging underneath its arches to facilitate the mooring of boats. Calvi could conceivably have been left hanging from these permanent chains, but the
operation would have been considerably more difficult than the one that made use of the conveniently placed builders’ scaffolding.

Calvi lived the last period of his life in a climate of intense fear, and another cryptic message evoking potential enemies and a fateful bridge was sent to him at the Banco Ambrosiano, arriving after his departure from Italy. Again the message was in postcard form. It was delivered by the bank to Calvi’s lawyers after his death and by them to the Carabinieri in Milan for investigation in June 1985. This time the postcards were actually two and they represented the same scene: the Chapel of San Michele at Novacella near Bressanone in the South Tyrol; a reference to Calvi’s former friend Michele Sindona perhaps? Both postcards were addressed in black felt pen to the ‘Illustrious President of the Banco AmBrosiano, RoBerto Calvi’. Every ‘B’ in the address, including in the middle of words, was capitalized, strengthening the impression that the writer wanted to send a cryptic message. The message side of the postcards bore the letters Mi, for Milan, and an illegible signature, both in red felt pen. One of them seemed particularly significant because it was dated by hand 15 June 82 – two days before Calvi’s death – and bore an Italian stamp evoking
Il Gioco del Ponte
(The Game of the Bridge), a traditional Pisan game recalling feats of arms from the Middle Ages and now played as a kind of tug-of-war in reverse.