In a mind-boggling interview, one of the founders of the Red Brigades, Alberto Franceschini, among the very first to have been arrested, was appalled at the thought that, acting in good faith, he had been spurred on by someone else for other motives. And Vinciguerra stated that Avanguardia Nazionale had been given the task of distributing Maoist manifestoes to increase fear about pro-Chinese activities.
One of the commanders of Gladio, General Inzerilli, had no hesitation in saying that arms deposits were kept at police stations and that members of Gladio could help themselves by showing half of a one-thousand-lire note as a sign of recognition, like in a cheap spy story. It ended, of course, with the killing of Aldo Moro, and secret service agents were spotted in Via Fani at the time of the kidnapping, one of them claiming he was in that area for lunch with a friend, though it was nine in the morning.
William Colby, the former head of the CIA, denied everything, but other CIA agents, appearing full face, spoke of documents that gave details about payments made by the organization to people involved in terrorist attacks — five thousand dollars a month, for example, to General Miceli.
As the television documentary outlined, all was hearsay, on the basis of which no one could be convicted, but it was quite enough to trouble public opinion.
Maia and I were bewildered. The revelations went far beyond Braggadocio’s wildest fantasies. “Of course,” said Maia, “he himself told you that all this news had been circulating for some time, it had just been wiped from the collective memory. All that needed to be done was go through the newspaper archives and put the pieces of the mosaic back together. I too read the newspapers, not just when I was a student but when I was working on celebrity romance stories, and, as you might guess, I discussed these things, except that I would also forget them, as if one new revelation canceled out the other. All you have to do is bring it out. Braggadocio did it, and the BBC has done it.”
“Yes, but Braggadocio probably added something of his own, like the story about Mussolini, or the killing of John Paul I.”
“All right, he was a crank, he saw conspiracies everywhere, but the problem remains the same.”
“God in heaven!” I said. “A few days ago someone killed Braggadocio for fear that this news would get out, and now, with the documentary, millions of people will know about it!”
“My love,” said Maia, “lucky for you! Let’s assume there really was someone, whether the phantom ‘they’ or the reclusive nutcase, afraid that people might once again remember those events, or that some minor detail might reemerge that perhaps even we who watched the program had failed to notice, something that might still cause trouble for some group or individual... Well, after this program, neither ‘they’ nor the nutcase have any reason whatever for getting rid of you or Simei. If you two decided tomorrow to go and tip off the newspapers about what Braggadocio had confided in you, they’d look at you as if you were two cranks, repeating what you’ve seen on TV.”
“But perhaps someone fears we might talk about what the BBC didn’t say, about Mussolini, about John Paul I.”
“Fine. Imagine telling them the story about Mussolini. It was fairly improbable when Braggadocio spun it, no proof, just off-the-wall conjectures. They’d say you were overexcited, carried away by the BBC program, let your personal fantasies run wild. In fact, you’d be playing their game. See, they’ll say, from now on every schemer is going to come up with something new. And the spreading of these revelations will lead to the suspicion that even those told by the BBC were the result of journalistic speculation, or of delirium, like the conspiracy theories that the Americans didn’t really go to the Moon or that the Pentagon is trying to hush up the existence of UFOs. This television program makes all other revelations entirely pointless and ridiculous, because, as you know, la réalité dépasse la fiction, and so, now, no one’s able to invent anything.”
“So I’m free?”
“Who was it said the truth shall set you free? This truth will make every other revelation seem like a lie. In the end, the BBC has done a great service. As of tomorrow, you can go around saying that the pope slits the throats of babies and eats them, or that Mother Teresa of Calcutta was the one who put the bomb on the Munich train, and people will say, ‘Oh, really? Interesting,’ and they’ll turn around and get on with what they were doing. I’ll bet you anything that tomorrow’s newspapers won’t even mention this program. Nothing can upset us any longer in this country. We’ve seen the barbarian invasions, the sack of Rome, the slaughter of Senigallia, six hundred thousand killed in the Great War and the inferno of the Second, so no one’s going to care about a few hundred people it’s taken forty years to blow up. Corruption in the secret services? That’s a joke compared with the Borgia family. We’ve always been a people of daggers and poison. We’re immune: whenever they tell us some new story or other, we say we’ve heard worse, and claim it’s false. If the United States, half of Europe’s secret services, and our government and the newspapers have all lied, why shouldn’t the BBC have also lied? The only serious concern for decent citizens is how to avoid paying taxes, and those in charge can do what they like — they always have their snouts in the same trough. Amen. See, two months with Simei and I’ve become just as sly as everyone else.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“First, calm down. Tomorrow I’ll go to the bank and quietly cash Vimercate’s check, and you can draw out whatever you have, if you’ve got any.”
“I’ve been saving since April, so I also have two months’ salary, around ten million lire, plus the twelve that Simei gave me the other day. I’m rich.”
“Wonderful. I’ve also put something aside. We’ll take the lot and run.”
“Run? Aren’t we now saying we can wander around with nothing to fear?”
“Yes, but do you really want to live in this country, where everything will continue as it always has, where you go to a pizzeria and worry whether the person at the next table might be a secret agent, or might be about to murder another magistrate, setting off the bomb as you’re walking past?”
“But where do we go? You’ve seen, heard how the same things were happening throughout Europe, from Sweden to Portugal. Do you want to end up in Turkey among the Grey Wolves, or in America, if they let you in, where they kill presidents and where maybe the Mafia has infiltrated the CIA? The world’s a nightmare, my love. I’d like to get off, but they tell me we can’t, we’re on an express train.”
“Darling, we’ll look for a country with no secrets and where everything is done in the open. In Central and South America you’ll find plenty. Nothing’s hidden, you know who belongs to which drug cartel, who runs the bands of revolutionaries. You sit in a restaurant, a group of friends passes and introduces you to the man in charge of arms smuggling, all neatly shaved and perfumed, dressed in a starched white shirt that hangs loose from his trousers, the waiters address him reverently with señor here and señor there, and the chief of the Guardia Civil goes across to pay his respects. They are countries that hold no mysteries, everything is done in the open, the police demand to be bribed as a matter of right, the government and the underworld coexist by constitutional decree, the banks make their living through money laundering, and you’ll be in trouble if you don’t have other money of doubtful provenance, they’ll cancel your residency permit. And they kill, but only each other, they leave tourists in peace. We could find work on a newspaper or in a publishing house. I have friends who work down there in the celebrity romance magazines — a good, honest job, now I come to think of it, the articles are trash but everyone knows it, and they find them amusing. And those celebrities whose intimate secrets you’re about to reveal have already revealed them the day before on television. It takes only a week to learn Spanish, and then we can find our South Sea island, my Tusitala.”