Two Women in Rome Page 11

  He nodded. ‘And you mustn’t leave without paying tribute to Shelley and Keats.’

  Shelley’s stone was set into the ground, but Keats’ was upright. Both recorded shockingly brief existences but, for Lottie, Keats’ possessed an extra poignancy. Still, if during their lives the reputations of these wild and gifted men had been shredded or ignored, in death they rode high.

  Unlike Nina, she reflected with new-minted loyalty, who also had had a life, a reputation, a talent.

  On the way out, Lottie stopped to donate money and caught sight of a figure ducking behind a tree. He was shaven headed and wore a leather jacket. Something about his quick and practised movement attracted her suspicion.

  ‘Paul, I think we’re being watched.’

  Paul glanced in the direction of her pointing finger. ‘I’m not going to say you’ve been reading too many thrillers.’

  Lottie shoved a note into the collection box. Looking round as they left the cemetery, she again caught sight of the man standing behind a tombstone. Definitely, he was watching them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rome

  15 March 1978

  I’M BACK IN ROME.

  I have mixed feelings. And nightmares.

  I have been away since last autumn and the habit of being in the city has weakened.

  I know now that I wish to bring order into my life. Things have changed and, sometimes, I don’t recognise myself.

  Rex and I slotted back into the long-established routines. To my surprise, he demanded to know where I had been. Home?

  That was a breach. Rex should not have asked the question.

  I told him it was none of his business, that I had been owed a break, and he snorted that it had been months. He told me in no uncertain terms to get back on it.

  I’m not sure he has forgiven me, but that doesn’t matter.

  At a guess, Rex hailed from an English public school, a minor one that has never produced a prime minister. He has the face of a young Renaissance blood. Search the crowd in Perugino’s Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter, and there is Rex, with flowing hair and handsome features, observing proceedings – which is what Rex does. Listening, gathering, collating.

  I tease him sometimes about the Perugino.

  It was safe, neutral territory.

  He’s an employee of the Vatican City but, of course, he would never tell me which office. That was how it worked, with information kept to the absolute minimum.

  His persona is Catholic. Obviously. Hence the meetings in the church. (The rendezvous were varied, though. Some in shops or a safe house or a tourist site. Habit was – and is – the enemy.) Having observed him for several years, he has never betrayed any sign of religious commitment. No making of the sign of the cross, no dipping of fingers into holy water. I always meant to tell him.

  The Palacrino connection was an important potential source for us and he required regular updates.

  We rendezvoused at the church.

  The chapel is tiny and almost always deserted. I made my report and told him I was successful in getting invited to Carlo and Paola Palacrino’s dinners, where the guests were a mixture of local landowners, a lawyer or two and a sprinkling of the military, including General Rasella.

  The general was a top target. Virulently right wing. Known to be close to the centre of power. Sexually voracious. I had gone to work with flattery and by maintaining an air of aloofness, which I calculated would intrigue him. Quite quickly, he’d determined to have me in his bed.

  He had pursued me back to Rome and insisted that we meet for a drink. He suggested a bar in the Via Veneto, which is the craziest place to choose if you don’t want to be spotted and you have a wife. I took it he had an arrangement with said wife.

  I arrived early to see the general huddled up with a well-known right-wing American journalist who has lived in Rome for years and was well past his prime. The journo was drunk and his lips spittle flecked. In a superbly cut suit, which set him apart from most men in the bar, the general was well on his way too.

  I hovered within earshot for as long as prudent, pretending to be searching in my bag. I caught fragments of a discussion about what they called ‘The Stay Behind Army’, which had run training bases in Sardinia and the Abruzzi mountains for some years.

  Rumours of this secret army, backed by the CIA under the control of NATO Intelligence, have been circulating for some time. Almost certainly, our masters back home would know about it, but I filed it away for Rex, before pasting a smile on to my lips and greeting the general, going about the task of charming him witless.

  First Rex wanted to know if I was well and that there had been no trouble. Then he and I set about assembling what jigsaw pieces we had trawled from the information seabed over the past few weeks.

  Much of it had been obtained by snooping, eavesdropping and, once at the Palacrinos, by leaving a recording device running while my hosts and the general had a late-night drink. Also, Carlo and Paola Palacrino sometimes forgot I was there when airing their views.

  CP and PP discuss the well-known secret that the CIA secretly monitors the peccadillos of the Italian elite to gain a hold over them. A couple of their acquaintances are terrified at what scandalous beans might be spilt.

  CP and PP agreed that the dossier is now vast and that microphones have also been secretly installed in the Vatican and the Prime Minister’s palace.

  They are adamantly anti left-wing and believe ex-Prime Minister Moro should not do a deal to power share with socialists.

  CP and PP are apprehensive at the growing power of ‘ordinary people’. They discussed this at length with General R.

  General R is concerned with ‘internal subversion’, i.e. a socialist working class whose motive is to seize political power for the communists.

  In the recording, General R also confirmed the existence of an ultra-secret army, nicknamed the ‘Stay Behind Army’. Also known as the Gladio. Allegedly backed by NATO and endorsed by US generals and the CIA. Its mission is to combat a Russian invasion or a Communist government.

  General R dropped hints that something big might be happening but did not elaborate.

  Rex’s chair scraped over the chapel floor.

  Did all this seem fanciful? After all, it was 1978 and politics should be less aggressive. Subtler and more conciliatory. Rex and I chewed it over. When I eavesdropped in the bar in the Via Veneto, the general and the washed-up American journalist had referred to the 1970 attempted coup by the secret army.

  The coup had been aborted when Soviet ships were spotted cruising in the Mediterranean and NATO and Washington realised that crucial intelligence had been leaked to the Soviets.

  This was Cold-War politics.

  I reminded Rex that I found out about the Soviet ships when I scoped Bari.

  It was one of my small triumphs.

  17 March 1978

  SOMETHING BIG HAS HAPPENED.

  Yesterday, Aldo Moro, President of the National Council of Christian Democrats and ex-Prime Minister, was kidnapped.

  Communists, fascists, right-wing or wild-card paramilitaries?

  Rex let drop a rare bit of information, which, doubtless, he got from The Office back home. Apparently, no intelligence chatter had been picked up beforehand, which suggests that the perpetrators were ‘clean skins’. However, there was no doubting it had been a professional operation, which suggests there were ‘sleepers’ in the population, lying low until called into action.

  Aldo Moro had been about to do a deal with the Communist Party. Therefore, the question must be: why would a communist or socialist bite off the hand that offered a share of power unless it was to split the Left? NB: Non-militant left-wingers are appalled.

  Shouldn’t the question be looked at from another angle? What if it was the right wing, disguised as left wing, wishing to discredit the left wing?

  What if it had been American backed, which would account for the fact the operation had been efficient and clearly well
funded?

  Whoever has taken Moro will probably kill him.

  What a troubled country Italy is at present. Angry, doubting, divided, however much we wished otherwise. Countries go through these upheavals, but the past decades here have been sobering.

  The neo-fascists and right-wingers hate the left and are protected by the security services, and many of those who turned to Leninist politics have talked themselves into advocating armed uprisings.

  18 March 1978

  THE RED BRIGADES HAVE TODAY ISSUED A COMMUNIQUÉ, PLUS a photograph of the captured Moro, claiming full responsibility for his abduction.

  I relay to Rex the snippets of opinion (facts are hard to come by) that I gather when out and about.

  The Red Brigades acted on their own. The Red Brigades are being manipulated by Russia. The Red Brigades have been infiltrated by the CIA. The Red Brigades are actually a bunch of fascists who wish to provoke anti-communist feeling by blaming it on them.

  Take your pick.

  The authorities have put up roadblocks around the city and are carrying out house searches for the kidnapped ex-prime minister. Soldiers in full battledress patrol the streets. The sirens scream day and night.

  I was stopped on the way back to the Via della Luce from dinner in the Campo Marzio.

  The policeman who manhandled me to one side, shouted: ‘What the f*** are you doing out? A woman on her own.’

  He left a bruise on my arm.

  For the record

  On 4 January, in Cassino, the boss of the Fiat security services was killed. Leftists?

  7 January, in Rome, two militants of the Italian Social Movement were killed by far leftists.

  On 20 January, in Florence, a policeman was killed by Marxist-Leninists.

  On 7 February, in Prato, a notary was killed by leftists.

  On 14 February, in Rome, a judge was killed by the Red Brigades.

  On 10 March, in Turin, a marshal was killed by the Red Brigades.

  There is also a vague rumour that a seventeen-year-old girl was found murdered in a cellar in the Vatican City. Her name had been linked with a well-known cardinal.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LOTTIE NOTED THAT THE WINDOW BLIND HAD BEEN DRAWN down over the majolica at Gabriele’s workshop when she turned up for their appointment.

  On entering, she was greeted with the same odour of ink and glue, the same obvious order and control – tools precisely positioned, books neatly stacked. She spotted two early treatises of Galileo and Isaac Newton and a fancy edition of Euripides’ tragedies. A folio-sized book, bound in damaged brown Morocco leather, rested on a foam-rubber book support on the workbench. The display easel stood in the corner covered by a cloth.

  It was an unusual place, almost a cave, in which were sequestered riches for the mind and for the senses. Yet when she thought about it, Gabriele Ricci displayed no discernible joy or excitement in his work, nor any sense of pleasure in preserving the endangered.

  He emerged from the back room and they exchanged greetings.

  ‘My colleague, Paul Cursor from the Medieval department, will be here in a minute,’ said Lottie, ‘but before he arrives … Valerio Gianni, our director, was wondering if you and … your wife – or partner? – could join a few of us from the archive for dinner?’

  Lottie caught a flash of irritation and something else she could not place. ‘How kind. Thank you. It will just be me as I live alone.’

  ‘Then Mirella from the director’s office will contact you.’ She gestured to the folio on the book support. ‘That looks interesting.’

  ‘Late-eighteenth century. Maps of the Rome you never normally see. The city is riddled with tunnels, catacombs and underground passages.’ Gabriele pulled on a pair of gloves and turned a page, and Lottie noted that he handled it as gently as a new-born baby. ‘It’s another dimension to this city. If your stomach is up to it, and you’re not afraid of the contents of sewers, you can read about them. There’re also fascinating analyses of what the ancient Romans liked to eat and what they got rid of.’

  ‘Oyster shells, I imagine?’

  ‘Yes. Analysis of their excreta tells us they liked to eat local produce. They also threw away a lot of jewellery, probably by mistake, and sent curses down the latrine.’

  He turned back to the folio. ‘These old maps help conservationists and developers map the risk of collapse in the city. As you can imagine, that is ever a worry for their profits.’ He sounded very dry. ‘Look up where the Espatriati is and you will see that an old street runs under it… Romans like to build on top of other layers. In the war, people hid there.’

  She bent over to study it and noticed a pink-tinged stain at the bottom right-hand corner.

  ‘Not blood this time.’ Gabriele was at her elbow. ‘Wine. At a guess, someone looked through the book holding a glass.’

  ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ said Lottie.

  He traced the shadowy stain. ‘They tried to blot it. But you almost never obliterate the traces.’

  Lottie eased upright. ‘Did you feel the vocation for books from early on?’

  ‘A vocation?’ He seemed startled by the term. ‘Yes and no. I had to study hard for the qualifications. I learned to give heart and soul to the work, to … if you like … interview my books and papers, to understand them and their secrets and what makes them what they are.’

  ‘But you don’t love them, I think.’

  The words left her lips and she knew she had trespassed. Of course she had.

  For a moment, he looked furious. Then he relaxed. ‘If I want to know about you … I give you room to speak, and I listen. I find out where you have come from, who you live with, your thoughts. It’s impossible to achieve that crucial and meaningful level of knowledge without studying you. It’s the same with the books and the work on them. I need to live closely to them. I must breathe them in, I have to interrogate their pages for the evidence of their past lives, I must observe them as honestly as I am able. Only then can I repair them. Would you still maintain I don’t love them?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Unforgivable.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t be.’

  At that moment, Paul Cursor arrived and the subject was dropped.

  The introductions made, Gabriele moved over to the easel and eased off the covering. The painting shimmered into their respective visions.

  Lottie noted that she had clenched her fists.

  Gabriele turned around to face them.

  There was a moment of anticipation.

  ‘It is a modern copy or, rather, a pastiche,’ he said.

  ‘Oh …’ said Lottie. She and Paul exchanged glances.

  ‘But with a curious twist. The paints are post-war but, interestingly, the parchment is late medieval. The artistry is beautiful and accurate for the period and, if paint analysis wasn’t available, one could almost be taken in.’ He pointed to the initials in the bottom left-hand corner. ‘But for this. Artists of that era did not sign their work.’

  Lottie ran over in her mind what might have been – the fanfare and the negotiations – without too much regret. Harder to let go was the pleasure of handling, of being close to, an artefact so precious and rare.

  Paul bent over the painting. ‘The initials are E and K.’ He looked up at Gabriele. ‘Any idea?’

  There was a pause. A long one. Gabriele shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘But the parchment?’ Paul persisted.

  ‘That’s the easier puzzle to solve. It comes from a stash that the trade knows about. When the Allies bombed Rome in July nineteen forty-three, the Basilica Papale di San Lorenzo fuori le mura where some medieval scribes had worked were badly damaged. The cache was discovered in a cellar in a sealed metal chest. News of it leaked out and libraries, etc., fought to get hold of some for repairs. But the black market moved in and forgers got their hands on a quantity. They couldn’t believe their luck.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘Who knows how many forgeries are
circulating as a result.’

  Lottie stood in front of The Annunciation, narrowing her eyes until the painting filled her vision.

  She peered closer.

  The background – an example of the travel landscape so beloved of the medieval painter in which small figures appeared more than once – lured her into its vista of mysterious, dreaming rocks and mountain slopes, the wild lushness a counterpoint to the order and colour of the garden that framed the girl below. It was then she noticed what she had previously missed … the woman and the monk had been portrayed for a third time. Here rendered tiny, their figures partly obscured by the misty chiaroscuro, they were approaching the summit and almost on a par with the golden sun.

  The painted parchment reverberated with their urgency and fear. Sucked into their flight, she felt the mountain stones punish her feet, the dry heave of oxygen-starved lungs, a terror of falling.

  Both men were looking at her. ‘OK?’ asked Paul.

  She stepped back. ‘Yes. Of course.’

  It came to her in a flash. The flat surfaces and stylised images of the painting – projecting serenity – were deceptive. Painted into them was turbulence and unhappiness.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ asked Gabriele.

  ‘Not in a direct sense,’ she replied. ‘Only I think the painter was unhappy. It’s a beautiful work but there’s an uneasy element running through it. Perhaps it’s the Virgin’s unease?’

  Gabriele looked away, but not before she noticed that he seemed shaken.

  ‘Thank you for letting me look at it,’ he said after a pause. ‘The painter is very skilled and knowledgeable about the period. I know we all hoped it was genuine.’

  While Gabriele packed up the painting, Lottie and Paul took the opportunity to examine the volumes on the shelves. They lighted on the Euripides, a rare edition printed in Venice, and were discussing the typeface when someone came through the door.