The coffee, when it finally arrived, was one of the best Zen had ever had in Rome, where standards were notoriously variable. He turned away from the bar, savouring the velvety essence, and tore open the envelope. Inside was a piece of paper bearing the handwritten message: ‘Gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini, 15.00. Destroy this immediately.’ Zen shredded the note and distributed the fragments between two of the metal canisters serving as ashtrays and rubbish bins, but it was with a heavy heart that he walked out into the cold streets. There were messages that were in themselves messages, and in this case the news did not sound good.
The sun had come out by the time he reached the hanging gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini near the foot of Via Nazionale, and, hanging low in the sky at this time of year, its light was blinding. He climbed up the marble steps past the exposed brickwork of some Imperial Roman structure which, stripped of its marble finishing, looked much like the remains of a late-nineteenth-century factory.
The gardens themselves, some ten metres above street level, consisted of a maze of gravel paths curving between islands of lawn edged with stone verges and punctuated by headless antique statues and the bare trunks of ancient chestnuts, cypresses, palms and pines. There were sufficient evergreens to provide a verdant background, but in general the trees were oppressively overgrown for the setting, and much of the shrubbery had a faded, moth-eaten air about it.
In addition to the usual contingent of insomniac deadbeats and feral cats, the gardens were populated by a few local peo¬ ple walking their dogs and an alfresco ladies’ hairdressing salon. Here and there amongst the trees, about a dozen middle- aged women who knew exactly how much they were worth, down to the last lira, sat perched on folding plastic chairs being made reasonably presentable for a reasonable fee by much younger women who had brought all they needed for the job in bags and boxes. No licence, no rent or rates to pay; a no-frills service at a no-frills price.
Although the gardens were quite small, their intricate layout made them seem deceptively large, and it was some time before Zen made out the figure of his superior standing by the wall at the far end, looking out at the view over Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline to the Gianicolo and the line of hills on the north bank of the Tiber. Brugnoli looked smaller than Zen had remembered him from their one previous meeting. He was wearing a navy-blue cashmere coat worn open over a suit which managed to suggest by various almost imperceptible details of cut and fabric that it was not a mere garment but rather an ironic statement about such garments, but so expertly and expensively executed that most people would never notice the difference, still less that the joke — whose punch-line was of course the price tag — was on them. In short, this was not a business suit, but a ‘business suit’.
‘Good to see you,’ Brugnoli exclaimed as they shook hands. ‘So glad you could make it.’
He made it sound as though Zen had done him a personal favour by showing up. Unsure how to respond to this unfamiliar rhetoric, Zen opted for silence.
‘How are things going?’ Brugnoli continued, steering his subordinate down a side path well away from the nearest hairstylist and her client. ‘I trust your new position is satisfactory?’
‘Perfectly, thank you.’
‘And your private life? I hear you’ve moved to Lucca.’
‘Yes.’
‘Charming place. Couldn’t live there myself. Too quiet. But it suits you?’
‘It does.’
‘Good, good.’
He paused and looked round, then buttoned up his coat. They were in the shade of the great trees now.
‘I understand that you’ve been looking into this business about the body they found in that military tunnel.’
Zen nodded.
‘With what results?’
‘Well, I inspected the scene of the discovery with one of the Austrian cavers who found the body, and then talked briefly to a junior doctor at the hospital in Bolzano who had been present at the autopsy.’
‘What about the carabinieri? It’s their case, after all.’
‘I spoke to a Colonel Miccoli by telephone, and he expressed a willingness to meet me. When I went to the carabinieri headquarters in Bolzano, however, I was informed that he was unavailable.’
‘What about his colleagues? Were they cooperative?’
Zen hesitated.
‘They were correct,’ he said at last.
‘But not cordial?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Nor particularly forthcoming.’
‘No.’
‘No,’ Brugnoli repeated. ‘No, I don’t suppose they were.’
They walked in silence for some time.
‘We’re having a bit of a problem, you see,’ Brugnoli said at last, pausing to examine the bark of a giant palm tree.
‘A problem?’
‘With our friends in the parallel service. They’ve rather slammed the door in our faces, to be perfectly frank. No fine phrases, no specious evasions. Just bugger off. And this at a very high level. Very high indeed.’
They split up to pass a young mother trying to quiet a fractious child in a pushchair. He should be walking, thought Zen. These gardens must seem like the Brazilian rainforests to him. He wants to explore and conquer, subdue the native tribes and discover the lost treasure of El Dorado. But his mother is afraid he’ll fall over the parapet and dash his brains out on the pavement beneath. We no longer trust our children, and then wonder why they grow up untrustworthy.
‘Did they give a reason?’ he asked Brugnoli once they were out of earshot.
‘Oh yes. They weren’t polite, still less cordial, but to use your own telling phrase, they were correct. They gave a reason. They also enjoined on us in no uncertain terms not to divulge this reason to anyone below ministerial level. Nevertheless, I’m now going to tell you.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Zen interrupted. ‘I’m not sure that it would be appropriate for you to confide in me. I mean…’
Brugnoli laughed and moved on again, steering them away from an elderly man walking a dog and an alcoholic, passed out in the shrubbery.
‘What you mean is that you don’t want my confidences, dot ¬ tore. Fair enough, but I’m afraid you don’t have a choice. I’ll only give you the outline. That’s almost all they told us, for that matter. Briefly, they claim that the corpse which was found was that of a soldier who was accidentally killed during a military exercise.’
Brugnoli paused, but Zen made no comment.
‘The need for secrecy, according to la Difesa, is because the victim was a member of an elite special force drawn from within the army on a volunteer basis and modelled on the British SAS and the American Delta Force. Its very existence is officially denied, and no comments are ever made about its personnel, training or operations. Still less about any fatalities that result. The next of kin are of course informed, but even they are not always told the truth about what happened.’
Zen’s mobile started chirping. He checked the caller’s number and then switched the phone off with an apology to his superior.
‘At any rate,’ Brugnoli continued, ‘our sources — and I stress that they are at the very highest level — claim that the First World War tunnel where the body was found is regularly used as a training site for this unit. Tradition, esprit de corps, our glorious forefathers and all that. They further claim that due to an unfortunate set of circumstances the young man was killed. For obvious reasons, they don’t wish any of this to come to light, and have therefore taken the necessary steps to ensure that the matter remains secret.’
‘My informant at the hospital in Bolzano told me that the carabinieri raided the premises in force last week and took away the corpse, all personal effects, as well as the photographs and tape-recording of the preliminary post-mortem.’