The Salamander, page 8
24.00 ”
Telephoned duty-officer H.Q.
00.37 ”
Bandinelli telephoned. He wished pass by office for late night conference with two clients. He explained it as a police matter. He would not disturb me, but would use outer office for conference. Since my instructions referred only to custody of safe and contents, I had no authority to refuse him access to his own office. I agreed.
01.00 ”
Telephoned duty-officer. Asked him note Bandinelli’s request and my decision.
The entries ended at that point. I called the duty-officer myself. He confirmed the entries from his own log. Which left me with a vital question: had Bandinelli come to the office under duress, or had he come as an accomplice who was liquidated when his usefulness was ended? I was still puzzling over it when Steffi came back, cross-grained and unhappy.
The porter knew nothing, had seen no one. He worked strictly by the book and the terms of his contract, which stated that he would remain awake and on duty until midnight or until the cleaners left, whichever was the later. After that he might go to bed. All tenants had pass-keys to the front door. They had free access to their offices at any hour. Non-tenants were refused admission outside office hours unless they were identified as cleaners or contractors.
‘… So, in fact, Steffi, anyone with a pass-key could bring a whole army into the building after midnight, with no one any the wiser?’
‘That’s the size of it, Colonel.’
‘Where was Bandinelli when he telephoned at thirty-seven minutes after twelve?’
‘One way to find out, Colonel. Ring his house.’
I lifted the telephone again and called Bandinelli’s villa on the Cassia. The phone rang for a long while and then a very surly male answered:
‘Villa Bandinelli! Who is this?’
‘Carabinieri. We wish to speak to the Advocate.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘His wife then.’
‘The Signora is in Naples.’
‘Who are you?’
‘De Muro, Major-domo.’
‘Where can I find the Advocate?’
‘At this hour, God knows!’
‘What time did he go out?’
‘He hasn’t been home since yesterday morning. He telephoned in the evening to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner.’
‘No idea where he might be?’
‘None at all.’
‘Thank you. Good morning.’
He did not return the greeting. He hung up in my ear. Steffi grinned.
‘No luck?’
‘No. His wife’s away. He didn’t go home for dinner.’
‘Which helps your little fiction about an unidentified body.’
‘But it doesn’t tell me who did the killing and took the documents.’
‘Does it matter, Colonel?’
‘For God’s sake, Steffi! What sort of question is that?’
‘A very good one I thought, Colonel. Look! This is a professional job, neat, tranquil, simple as walking. Which do you want? The liquidators or the people who paid them? This is not police work, friend; it’s intelligence analysis, an exercise in pure reason. Start from the bottom and you’ll be wandering round the sewers six months from now. Start from the top and you halve the work and double your chances – believe me!’
‘I do believe you, Steffi. But sometime in the next three hours I have to face the Director. What do I offer him?’
‘Human sacrifice! …’ Steffi favoured me with a gallows grin. ‘So why don’t you pour me some coffee, Colonel, and let’s discuss the candidates.’
The Director’s apartment was the top floor of a sixteenth-century palace just off the Via della Scrofa. The revenues from the rest of the palace – dwellings and fashionable shops – would keep him in kingly state for a lifetime. His paintings, sculptures and objects of virtue were a fortune in themselves. His library was a minor treasure-house of rare editions, specialist studies and exotic poetry in a variety of languages. The Director was an exotic himself, resplendent in a brocaded dressing-gown, attended by a wiry Sicilian who was both butler and bodyguard. At six in the morning, grubby, unshaven and very unsure of myself, I was in no mood to appeciate the dramatic effect.
The Director offered me a cool welcome, and an English breakfast – tea, toast, scrambled eggs and marmalade. I asked for coffee and pastry. The Director conceded the point with a smile and then proceeded to make a few of his own.
‘You knew the Pantaleone papers were important, Colonel. Why did you not take immediate possession of them?’
‘I needed a judicial order. To get it, I would have had to appear against Bandinelli in the presence of a judge. I thought it unwise.’
‘So, you made an arrangement which resulted in the death of agent Calvi and of Bandinelli himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any excuses?’
‘No excuse. An explanation. I was trying to scare Bandinelli into further revelations. I thought the security risk was minimal. In the event, I was wrong.’
‘Who else knows the facts at this moment?’
‘Only SID. We had the bodies out and the place cleaned up by four this morning. We’re in a holding situation for a few days at least.’
‘But we don’t know who has the Pantaleone papers?’
‘No.’
‘So, let’s guess, Colonel. Local group or foreign?’
‘Local, I think.’
‘Right wing or Left?’
‘Right.’
‘Why?’
‘The Left have a lot of dirt they haven’t published yet. The Right have a lot of dirt they want to bury – I think last night was a funeral party.’
‘You don’t convince me, Colonel.’
‘I’m not trying to convince you, sir. I’m telling you what I believe. If you’re thinking of Woodpecker and his network, forget him. I had him pulled in at four this morning. I worked on him myself, for nearly two hours, before I came to see you. I know what his brief is. Assassination is not part of it. Besides, he’s been under constant surveillance and he doesn’t have the resources or contacts to set up a job like this in half a day. Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Bandinelli was on the Right wing. He served Pantaleone. He could have sold out to a successor….’
‘And been killed for his pains?’
‘That, too.’
‘Name me a possible successor.’
‘Major-General Marcantonio Leporello.’
For the first time, the Director was shaken and he showed it. He set down his tea-cup with a clatter and sat a long moment staring at me with bleak and hostile eyes. Then he said, quietly:
‘I presume you have evidence in support, Colonel?’
‘Some. I interviewed the General yesterday at the Hassler Hotel.’
‘You what?’
‘I interviewed Leporello.’
‘In spite of my orders that no action was to be taken with that subject?’
‘Yes, sir,’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘That he was under surveillance by a foreign network who had tipped him as political candidate for the Right.’
‘What else?’
‘The whereabouts of the Pantaleone papers.’
‘Oh … !’
‘And the fact that I was acting against direct orders.’
‘And what was his reaction to that?’
‘He promised to keep the interview secret – and he offered me a job on his own staff.’
‘I’m tempted to make you immediately available, Matucci.’
‘That’s your privilege, sir – and, even from the point of view of the Service, it mightn’t be a bad idea.’
‘You’re bargaining with me, Matucci. I don’t like that.’
‘And you’re threatening me, sir. I don’t like that either.’
‘You disobey orders and that’s dangerous.’
‘It was a risk. I took it. I think it paid dividends.’
‘It gave you a convenient suspect, nothing more.’
‘Something more.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve identified the Salamander.’
That brought him up short. He held a piece of buttered toast half-way between the plate and his thin lips. Then he popped it into his mouth and chewed on it pensively. Finally, he said:
‘And do you propose to tell me who he is?’
‘Yes, sir. If I’m still in the Service at nine o’clock this morning, I’ll be keeping an appointment with him. He’s the Cavaliere Bruno Manzini. He tells me, and I hope to confirm it from the records, that he is the bastard brother of General Pantaleone.’
‘First Leporello, now Manzini. Leporello is your military superior. Manzini is one of the most powerful financiers in Italy. You’re flying very high, my friend.’
‘And you can shoot me down now, if you choose.’
‘I mightn’t need to do it. Whoever killed Calvi, could as easily kill you.’
‘I know.’
‘So, if I let you go on?’
‘I want a free hand, and access to the Leporello file.’
‘Can I trust you, Matucci?’
‘You can, but you’d rather not.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘With reservations, yes.’
‘What reservations?’
‘You’re the Director. I know what you are commissioned to do. What I don’t know is how you interpret your commission and to what secret ends you direct the activities of SID.’
‘Do you have any right to know?’
‘Legally, I suppose not. I’m a serving officer, I do as I’m told … basta! Personally? That’s another matter. If you’d asked me the same question a week ago, I’d have given you a nice, complaisant answer: bless me father, lead me in the way of salvation and look after my pension rights! This morning, it’s different. I’m middle-aged and tired and I haven’t had a shave and I lost a good lad because I didn’t think straight. So, I don’t want to be manipulated any more. I want to know where I’m being directed and why – and if I don’t like it, I’ll resign my job with you and go back to desk duty or police work.’
The Director drank the last of his tea and dabbed at his lips with a linen napkin. He pushed back his chair, walked to the window and stood a long time looking out at the tumbled roof-tops of Rome, gold and umber and crimson in the early light. When he turned, the light was at his back and the contours of his face were in shadow. He began to talk, quietly at first, then with mounting passion and eloquence.
‘You are a presumptuous fellow, Colonel. Yet, I can forgive you, because I, also, presume too much and too often. I presume on wealth and family and myself as a product of all the alliances and misalliances of our history. In a way, I am yesterday’s man; but then Italy is yesterday’s country as well as today’s. We build our houses on tombs. We build our prosperity on ruins and papal monuments and the genius of our ancient dead. Our law is an idiot confusion of Justinian, the Codex Canonicus, Napoleon, Mussolini and the founding fathers of the United States. Our nobility is a hodge-podge of ancient families and the last upstarts ennobled by the House of Savoy. In politics, we are Marxists, Monarchists, Socialists, Liberals, Fascists, Christian Democrats – opportunists all! We have the best business men and the worst bureaucrats in the world. We’re a nation of anti-clericals and we’ve manipulated the Catholic Church for centuries. We shout federal republican democracy – yet every province is a separate continent. A man’s country is whatever miserable village he was born in… Now you, my dear Colonel, demand that I should tell you to what I am committed and to what end I direct the Defence Information Service… Let me turn the question then and ask you where you would walk if you were in my shoes – as you may be one day if you are cool enough and clever enough and understand the price to be paid? … No answer? Then, here is mine. Our problems will not be solved by an election, by a coalition of parties, by the victory of one system over another. We are Mediterranean men, Colonel. We are, whether we like it or not, a mongrel breed of Greek and Latin and Phoenician and Arab and Iberian Celt and Viking and Visigoth and the Huns of Attila. We live, as we have lived for centuries, in a precarious balance of tribal and family interests. When the balance tips, ever so slightly, we are plunged into disorder and civil strife. When the strife becomes too bloody for us all, we cry halt and beg to be delivered – by the Church, by a personal saviour – or, most pathetically of all, by politicians and bureaucrats who are as bloodied and confused as we are ourselves. The Spaniards and the Greeks and the Portuguese turned to dictators. The Arabs threw out the Colonial powers and replaced them with local autocrats. We Italians have tried one dictator and made a shambles of democracy. Now, we don’t know what we want. Me? I don’t know what the people want. I can’t even judge what they will tolerate. So, I manipulate information and situations to hold things in balance as long as I can. I don’t want dictatorship. I don’t want Marxism. I’m sure the kind of democracy we have is too unstable to last. But, come one or the other, I’ll try to make it as tolerable as I can. Politics is the art of the possible. Mediterranean politics is the art of the impossible and I understand it better than most. You’re worried about Leporello, but you have no evidence against him and I’m not going to antagonize him just at a moment when we may need him. You’re worried about your Salamander, who, I confess, makes no sense to me at all just now. You want a free investigation? I’ll give it to you, but, understand me, Matucci, when I move, in whatever gambit, I am king on the board and you are a pawn. Take it or leave it.’
I gave him the answer without a second’s hesitation.
‘I’ll take it. And I’ll give you an honest report. If I don’t like what you do, I’ll argue it face to face. If we don’t agree, I’ll fight you; but I’ll do it in the open.’
‘It’s a rash promise, Matucci. I won’t hold you to it. If ever you fight me, you’ll have to lie like a whore and cheat like a card-sharp, just to save your skin… By the way, you can’t meet Manzini looking like that. My valet will show you to the guest-room and find you a razor and a clean shirt.’
At eight o’clock on the same spring morning, with an hour to kill before my meeting with Manzini, I rejoined old Stefanelli as he strolled whistling down the Spanish Steps. The sun was bright; the air was crisp; every tread of the staircase blossomed with girls. I had been up all night, but I felt miraculously refreshed and I could see the sap rising even in Steffi’s withered trunk.
This was the best of Rome: the smell of dust and women and new bread and fresh violets ; the clatter of the gossips on their way to market, the honk of taxis, the solemn parade of tourists, pale from the mists of Denmark and High Germany; the tumble of cupolas and campaniles and russet roofs crowned with clothes-lines and television antennae. This was the fountain of youth that gave a man fantasies, put birds in his head and wings on his bunioned feet.
At the foot of the steps, we paused so that Steffi could buy himself a carnation for his button-hole, then we turned into Babington’s Tea Rooms, where Steffi had promised to buy Solimbene tea and English muffins. Solimbene was a pedant but an amiable one, who affected small eccentricities – velvet smoking jackets, fin-de-siècle cravats, gold fobseals and eyeglasses on a ribbon of watered silk. He also nourished a passion for red-headed women and English manners, though he had never in his life travelled further than Paris.
We found him enthroned in a corner of the tea-room, clasping the hand of a blonde waitress and pouring out his passion in execrable German. He let her go, reluctantly, and turned the flood of his eloquence on Steffi:
‘My dear colleague! My brother in arms and in art! I have revelations for you, Steffi mine! Revelations, mysteries and scandals. Don’t laugh! Your trade is horrible – blood and dust and excrement and clothing torn from the dead. Me? I live with fairy-tales – gryphons rampant and unicorns couchant, allocamels and lioncels and dancing dolphins and magical swords in disembodied hands… But, when you need a simple little fact, who finds it? Me! Solimbene, the herald! … Yes, my love, my dove, tea, muffins and English marmalade. Coffee is a madman’s drink. It produces dyspepsia and dries out the kidneys… Now, my friends, we begin with this.’ He laid the salamander card on the table and stabbed at it with a cake-fork.’… Which is not heraldry at all, but calligraphy, a monkish art. Even the crown is corrupted. However, notwithstanding, mutatis mutandis, I was prepared to accept an heraldic origin. Result? I found myself chasing salamanders across every escutcheon in Europe. Insanity! Total insanity! Finally, I reduced the number of possibles to five. Insanity again!’ He spread a set of glossy photographs on the table and annotated them. ‘These two families are extinct. The only survivor of this one is a monk in the Certosa of Florence. Which leaves us, my dear friends, with this last photograph. I found it listed in our files under “curiosa and exotica”. There is your salamander in the first and fourth quarterings; the supporters are lions rampant. It’s beautifully executed, as you can see. Only one problem: it is not a coat of arms at all. It is an artist’s conceit. It belongs to no known family.’
Stefanelli shrugged and spread his hands in a Levantine gesture.
‘So, it’s beautiful and it means nothing. Why show it to us?’
‘Oh, it does mean something, dear colleague. It means a great deal – fraud, fakery and scandals juicy as a beefsteak. How old are you, Steffi?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Come now, don’t be touchy. I’m doing you a favour.’
‘No favour, you’re being very well paid – provided the Colonel here authorizes the invoice. Now, let’s see the meat in the sandwich.’
The waitress came back with tea and muffins and Solimbene detained her again with compliments and cajolery. Then, when she whisked herself away, he began another comedy with notebook and eyeglasses and a new flourish of rhetoric.
‘In the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and ten, when Pius X was gloriously reigning, and you, dear Steffi, were still wet behind the ears, there lived not a stone’s throw from here a very notable lady of fashion, who called herself the Countess Salamandra. She entertained only the noble and the wealthy – among them a certain opera singer, who, as he left her house early one morning, was shot and killed, presumably, by a jealous rival. There was, of course, a scandal. The lady, assisted by some of her clients, fled the country and went to live in Nice. Police inquiries revealed that the Countess Salamandra was not a countess at all, but a young Scots lady named Anne Mackenzie, who, having fallen from grace in a noble bed, decided to enrich herself by the same means… How’s that for a prelude, Colonel? Will you authorize the invoice now? Or are you bored already?’
Telephoned duty-officer H.Q.
00.37 ”
Bandinelli telephoned. He wished pass by office for late night conference with two clients. He explained it as a police matter. He would not disturb me, but would use outer office for conference. Since my instructions referred only to custody of safe and contents, I had no authority to refuse him access to his own office. I agreed.
01.00 ”
Telephoned duty-officer. Asked him note Bandinelli’s request and my decision.
The entries ended at that point. I called the duty-officer myself. He confirmed the entries from his own log. Which left me with a vital question: had Bandinelli come to the office under duress, or had he come as an accomplice who was liquidated when his usefulness was ended? I was still puzzling over it when Steffi came back, cross-grained and unhappy.
The porter knew nothing, had seen no one. He worked strictly by the book and the terms of his contract, which stated that he would remain awake and on duty until midnight or until the cleaners left, whichever was the later. After that he might go to bed. All tenants had pass-keys to the front door. They had free access to their offices at any hour. Non-tenants were refused admission outside office hours unless they were identified as cleaners or contractors.
‘… So, in fact, Steffi, anyone with a pass-key could bring a whole army into the building after midnight, with no one any the wiser?’
‘That’s the size of it, Colonel.’
‘Where was Bandinelli when he telephoned at thirty-seven minutes after twelve?’
‘One way to find out, Colonel. Ring his house.’
I lifted the telephone again and called Bandinelli’s villa on the Cassia. The phone rang for a long while and then a very surly male answered:
‘Villa Bandinelli! Who is this?’
‘Carabinieri. We wish to speak to the Advocate.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘His wife then.’
‘The Signora is in Naples.’
‘Who are you?’
‘De Muro, Major-domo.’
‘Where can I find the Advocate?’
‘At this hour, God knows!’
‘What time did he go out?’
‘He hasn’t been home since yesterday morning. He telephoned in the evening to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner.’
‘No idea where he might be?’
‘None at all.’
‘Thank you. Good morning.’
He did not return the greeting. He hung up in my ear. Steffi grinned.
‘No luck?’
‘No. His wife’s away. He didn’t go home for dinner.’
‘Which helps your little fiction about an unidentified body.’
‘But it doesn’t tell me who did the killing and took the documents.’
‘Does it matter, Colonel?’
‘For God’s sake, Steffi! What sort of question is that?’
‘A very good one I thought, Colonel. Look! This is a professional job, neat, tranquil, simple as walking. Which do you want? The liquidators or the people who paid them? This is not police work, friend; it’s intelligence analysis, an exercise in pure reason. Start from the bottom and you’ll be wandering round the sewers six months from now. Start from the top and you halve the work and double your chances – believe me!’
‘I do believe you, Steffi. But sometime in the next three hours I have to face the Director. What do I offer him?’
‘Human sacrifice! …’ Steffi favoured me with a gallows grin. ‘So why don’t you pour me some coffee, Colonel, and let’s discuss the candidates.’
The Director’s apartment was the top floor of a sixteenth-century palace just off the Via della Scrofa. The revenues from the rest of the palace – dwellings and fashionable shops – would keep him in kingly state for a lifetime. His paintings, sculptures and objects of virtue were a fortune in themselves. His library was a minor treasure-house of rare editions, specialist studies and exotic poetry in a variety of languages. The Director was an exotic himself, resplendent in a brocaded dressing-gown, attended by a wiry Sicilian who was both butler and bodyguard. At six in the morning, grubby, unshaven and very unsure of myself, I was in no mood to appeciate the dramatic effect.
The Director offered me a cool welcome, and an English breakfast – tea, toast, scrambled eggs and marmalade. I asked for coffee and pastry. The Director conceded the point with a smile and then proceeded to make a few of his own.
‘You knew the Pantaleone papers were important, Colonel. Why did you not take immediate possession of them?’
‘I needed a judicial order. To get it, I would have had to appear against Bandinelli in the presence of a judge. I thought it unwise.’
‘So, you made an arrangement which resulted in the death of agent Calvi and of Bandinelli himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any excuses?’
‘No excuse. An explanation. I was trying to scare Bandinelli into further revelations. I thought the security risk was minimal. In the event, I was wrong.’
‘Who else knows the facts at this moment?’
‘Only SID. We had the bodies out and the place cleaned up by four this morning. We’re in a holding situation for a few days at least.’
‘But we don’t know who has the Pantaleone papers?’
‘No.’
‘So, let’s guess, Colonel. Local group or foreign?’
‘Local, I think.’
‘Right wing or Left?’
‘Right.’
‘Why?’
‘The Left have a lot of dirt they haven’t published yet. The Right have a lot of dirt they want to bury – I think last night was a funeral party.’
‘You don’t convince me, Colonel.’
‘I’m not trying to convince you, sir. I’m telling you what I believe. If you’re thinking of Woodpecker and his network, forget him. I had him pulled in at four this morning. I worked on him myself, for nearly two hours, before I came to see you. I know what his brief is. Assassination is not part of it. Besides, he’s been under constant surveillance and he doesn’t have the resources or contacts to set up a job like this in half a day. Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Bandinelli was on the Right wing. He served Pantaleone. He could have sold out to a successor….’
‘And been killed for his pains?’
‘That, too.’
‘Name me a possible successor.’
‘Major-General Marcantonio Leporello.’
For the first time, the Director was shaken and he showed it. He set down his tea-cup with a clatter and sat a long moment staring at me with bleak and hostile eyes. Then he said, quietly:
‘I presume you have evidence in support, Colonel?’
‘Some. I interviewed the General yesterday at the Hassler Hotel.’
‘You what?’
‘I interviewed Leporello.’
‘In spite of my orders that no action was to be taken with that subject?’
‘Yes, sir,’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘That he was under surveillance by a foreign network who had tipped him as political candidate for the Right.’
‘What else?’
‘The whereabouts of the Pantaleone papers.’
‘Oh … !’
‘And the fact that I was acting against direct orders.’
‘And what was his reaction to that?’
‘He promised to keep the interview secret – and he offered me a job on his own staff.’
‘I’m tempted to make you immediately available, Matucci.’
‘That’s your privilege, sir – and, even from the point of view of the Service, it mightn’t be a bad idea.’
‘You’re bargaining with me, Matucci. I don’t like that.’
‘And you’re threatening me, sir. I don’t like that either.’
‘You disobey orders and that’s dangerous.’
‘It was a risk. I took it. I think it paid dividends.’
‘It gave you a convenient suspect, nothing more.’
‘Something more.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve identified the Salamander.’
That brought him up short. He held a piece of buttered toast half-way between the plate and his thin lips. Then he popped it into his mouth and chewed on it pensively. Finally, he said:
‘And do you propose to tell me who he is?’
‘Yes, sir. If I’m still in the Service at nine o’clock this morning, I’ll be keeping an appointment with him. He’s the Cavaliere Bruno Manzini. He tells me, and I hope to confirm it from the records, that he is the bastard brother of General Pantaleone.’
‘First Leporello, now Manzini. Leporello is your military superior. Manzini is one of the most powerful financiers in Italy. You’re flying very high, my friend.’
‘And you can shoot me down now, if you choose.’
‘I mightn’t need to do it. Whoever killed Calvi, could as easily kill you.’
‘I know.’
‘So, if I let you go on?’
‘I want a free hand, and access to the Leporello file.’
‘Can I trust you, Matucci?’
‘You can, but you’d rather not.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘With reservations, yes.’
‘What reservations?’
‘You’re the Director. I know what you are commissioned to do. What I don’t know is how you interpret your commission and to what secret ends you direct the activities of SID.’
‘Do you have any right to know?’
‘Legally, I suppose not. I’m a serving officer, I do as I’m told … basta! Personally? That’s another matter. If you’d asked me the same question a week ago, I’d have given you a nice, complaisant answer: bless me father, lead me in the way of salvation and look after my pension rights! This morning, it’s different. I’m middle-aged and tired and I haven’t had a shave and I lost a good lad because I didn’t think straight. So, I don’t want to be manipulated any more. I want to know where I’m being directed and why – and if I don’t like it, I’ll resign my job with you and go back to desk duty or police work.’
The Director drank the last of his tea and dabbed at his lips with a linen napkin. He pushed back his chair, walked to the window and stood a long time looking out at the tumbled roof-tops of Rome, gold and umber and crimson in the early light. When he turned, the light was at his back and the contours of his face were in shadow. He began to talk, quietly at first, then with mounting passion and eloquence.
‘You are a presumptuous fellow, Colonel. Yet, I can forgive you, because I, also, presume too much and too often. I presume on wealth and family and myself as a product of all the alliances and misalliances of our history. In a way, I am yesterday’s man; but then Italy is yesterday’s country as well as today’s. We build our houses on tombs. We build our prosperity on ruins and papal monuments and the genius of our ancient dead. Our law is an idiot confusion of Justinian, the Codex Canonicus, Napoleon, Mussolini and the founding fathers of the United States. Our nobility is a hodge-podge of ancient families and the last upstarts ennobled by the House of Savoy. In politics, we are Marxists, Monarchists, Socialists, Liberals, Fascists, Christian Democrats – opportunists all! We have the best business men and the worst bureaucrats in the world. We’re a nation of anti-clericals and we’ve manipulated the Catholic Church for centuries. We shout federal republican democracy – yet every province is a separate continent. A man’s country is whatever miserable village he was born in… Now you, my dear Colonel, demand that I should tell you to what I am committed and to what end I direct the Defence Information Service… Let me turn the question then and ask you where you would walk if you were in my shoes – as you may be one day if you are cool enough and clever enough and understand the price to be paid? … No answer? Then, here is mine. Our problems will not be solved by an election, by a coalition of parties, by the victory of one system over another. We are Mediterranean men, Colonel. We are, whether we like it or not, a mongrel breed of Greek and Latin and Phoenician and Arab and Iberian Celt and Viking and Visigoth and the Huns of Attila. We live, as we have lived for centuries, in a precarious balance of tribal and family interests. When the balance tips, ever so slightly, we are plunged into disorder and civil strife. When the strife becomes too bloody for us all, we cry halt and beg to be delivered – by the Church, by a personal saviour – or, most pathetically of all, by politicians and bureaucrats who are as bloodied and confused as we are ourselves. The Spaniards and the Greeks and the Portuguese turned to dictators. The Arabs threw out the Colonial powers and replaced them with local autocrats. We Italians have tried one dictator and made a shambles of democracy. Now, we don’t know what we want. Me? I don’t know what the people want. I can’t even judge what they will tolerate. So, I manipulate information and situations to hold things in balance as long as I can. I don’t want dictatorship. I don’t want Marxism. I’m sure the kind of democracy we have is too unstable to last. But, come one or the other, I’ll try to make it as tolerable as I can. Politics is the art of the possible. Mediterranean politics is the art of the impossible and I understand it better than most. You’re worried about Leporello, but you have no evidence against him and I’m not going to antagonize him just at a moment when we may need him. You’re worried about your Salamander, who, I confess, makes no sense to me at all just now. You want a free investigation? I’ll give it to you, but, understand me, Matucci, when I move, in whatever gambit, I am king on the board and you are a pawn. Take it or leave it.’
I gave him the answer without a second’s hesitation.
‘I’ll take it. And I’ll give you an honest report. If I don’t like what you do, I’ll argue it face to face. If we don’t agree, I’ll fight you; but I’ll do it in the open.’
‘It’s a rash promise, Matucci. I won’t hold you to it. If ever you fight me, you’ll have to lie like a whore and cheat like a card-sharp, just to save your skin… By the way, you can’t meet Manzini looking like that. My valet will show you to the guest-room and find you a razor and a clean shirt.’
At eight o’clock on the same spring morning, with an hour to kill before my meeting with Manzini, I rejoined old Stefanelli as he strolled whistling down the Spanish Steps. The sun was bright; the air was crisp; every tread of the staircase blossomed with girls. I had been up all night, but I felt miraculously refreshed and I could see the sap rising even in Steffi’s withered trunk.
This was the best of Rome: the smell of dust and women and new bread and fresh violets ; the clatter of the gossips on their way to market, the honk of taxis, the solemn parade of tourists, pale from the mists of Denmark and High Germany; the tumble of cupolas and campaniles and russet roofs crowned with clothes-lines and television antennae. This was the fountain of youth that gave a man fantasies, put birds in his head and wings on his bunioned feet.
At the foot of the steps, we paused so that Steffi could buy himself a carnation for his button-hole, then we turned into Babington’s Tea Rooms, where Steffi had promised to buy Solimbene tea and English muffins. Solimbene was a pedant but an amiable one, who affected small eccentricities – velvet smoking jackets, fin-de-siècle cravats, gold fobseals and eyeglasses on a ribbon of watered silk. He also nourished a passion for red-headed women and English manners, though he had never in his life travelled further than Paris.
We found him enthroned in a corner of the tea-room, clasping the hand of a blonde waitress and pouring out his passion in execrable German. He let her go, reluctantly, and turned the flood of his eloquence on Steffi:
‘My dear colleague! My brother in arms and in art! I have revelations for you, Steffi mine! Revelations, mysteries and scandals. Don’t laugh! Your trade is horrible – blood and dust and excrement and clothing torn from the dead. Me? I live with fairy-tales – gryphons rampant and unicorns couchant, allocamels and lioncels and dancing dolphins and magical swords in disembodied hands… But, when you need a simple little fact, who finds it? Me! Solimbene, the herald! … Yes, my love, my dove, tea, muffins and English marmalade. Coffee is a madman’s drink. It produces dyspepsia and dries out the kidneys… Now, my friends, we begin with this.’ He laid the salamander card on the table and stabbed at it with a cake-fork.’… Which is not heraldry at all, but calligraphy, a monkish art. Even the crown is corrupted. However, notwithstanding, mutatis mutandis, I was prepared to accept an heraldic origin. Result? I found myself chasing salamanders across every escutcheon in Europe. Insanity! Total insanity! Finally, I reduced the number of possibles to five. Insanity again!’ He spread a set of glossy photographs on the table and annotated them. ‘These two families are extinct. The only survivor of this one is a monk in the Certosa of Florence. Which leaves us, my dear friends, with this last photograph. I found it listed in our files under “curiosa and exotica”. There is your salamander in the first and fourth quarterings; the supporters are lions rampant. It’s beautifully executed, as you can see. Only one problem: it is not a coat of arms at all. It is an artist’s conceit. It belongs to no known family.’
Stefanelli shrugged and spread his hands in a Levantine gesture.
‘So, it’s beautiful and it means nothing. Why show it to us?’
‘Oh, it does mean something, dear colleague. It means a great deal – fraud, fakery and scandals juicy as a beefsteak. How old are you, Steffi?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Come now, don’t be touchy. I’m doing you a favour.’
‘No favour, you’re being very well paid – provided the Colonel here authorizes the invoice. Now, let’s see the meat in the sandwich.’
The waitress came back with tea and muffins and Solimbene detained her again with compliments and cajolery. Then, when she whisked herself away, he began another comedy with notebook and eyeglasses and a new flourish of rhetoric.
‘In the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and ten, when Pius X was gloriously reigning, and you, dear Steffi, were still wet behind the ears, there lived not a stone’s throw from here a very notable lady of fashion, who called herself the Countess Salamandra. She entertained only the noble and the wealthy – among them a certain opera singer, who, as he left her house early one morning, was shot and killed, presumably, by a jealous rival. There was, of course, a scandal. The lady, assisted by some of her clients, fled the country and went to live in Nice. Police inquiries revealed that the Countess Salamandra was not a countess at all, but a young Scots lady named Anne Mackenzie, who, having fallen from grace in a noble bed, decided to enrich herself by the same means… How’s that for a prelude, Colonel? Will you authorize the invoice now? Or are you bored already?’
