Sunday night–Monday morning, July 23–24, 2006

BALISTRERI SHUT HIMSELF IN his office alone for the night. He thought again of Marius Hagi’s words: A lightning war requires soldiers and allies, Balistreri. They used me and I used them. We gave each other a helping hand.

Somewhere along the line, Marius Hagi had met Manfredi, one of those allies. Had it been a chance meeting? Highly unlikely. Someone had brought them together. Someone who knew them both very well and knew their hatred and their desire for revenge. Hagi wanted revenge against the Catholic circles that had turned Alina against him. Manfredi hated the young women who had humiliated him.

First Linda, then Elisa: he had desecrated them, but he hadn’t killed them.

So he and Hagi had chosen their first victim. A young woman, Samantha Rossi: perfect for Manfredi and even more meaningful for Hagi, as she was the daughter of Anna Rossi, who had alienated Alina from him. But that wasn’t enough. There were other personal enemies: Linda Nardi, the source of all Manfredi’s misery. Michele Balistreri, who had caused Manfredi’s mother’s suicide and let Elisa’s real killer go free. Their destinies had been entwined from then on.

Corvu had been his usual efficient self. He had mobilized the right contacts and had a photocopy of the minister of the interior’s appointments register for Sunday, July 11, 1982.

It showed that Count Tommaso dei Banchi di Aglieno had entered the ministry at six fifty and come out at seven thirty five, as Balistreri knew twenty-four years ago—nothing new there.

But it was another signature in that register that Balistreri wanted to check. The signature that countersigned the times—that of a young ministry assistant in 1982, Captain Antonio Pasquali.

He leafed through Pasquali’s calendar, the one Antonella had given him containing the dates and a few cryptic notes in English.

The meaning of these notes was opaque, but of course Pasquali had made them for himself. He was marking down what the voice told him to do.

It was a perfect plan, one that only Manfredi’s card to Linda had rendered null and void. But for Manfredi, the terrorizing of Linda Nardi and Balistreri’s eternal remorse were indispensable, worth much more than the murdered and disfigured girls.

Nonetheless, Balistreri recognized something else in that plan, something grandiose, which had to do with a philosophy of life—an authentic personal signature.

Everything had been expertly planned, brought together, and carried out. Hagi’s vendetta against the Catholic world that had taken Alina from him and Manfredi’s against women had been ably inserted into a much wider plan to destabilize democracy in Italy. A plan that took advantage of the growing racism toward the Roma and Romanians, and of the Italians’ fear of the barbarity coming from Eastern Europe. Young girls raped, tortured, and killed, as always by the Roma in the travelers’ camps, up to the point where the people would turn and attack them. And then the police wouldn’t have been enough—the army would have been needed. And, along with help from the friendly part of the secret intelligence service, a new strong political leader would emerge, who wasn’t involved in the catastrophe and was incorruptible. A man of honor.

Everything had been corralled in the service of this plan.

ENT’s nightclubs and arcades were used to launder money of dubious provenance; the purse of the secret inteeligence service’s rogue element that financed the whole operation, and unfortunately became caught up in it thanks to the lighter Nadia took from Bella Blu; the accomplices who became superfluous or dangerous—Belhrouz, Colajacono, Pasquali, and Ajello—abused, and their guts torn out. Accusers from the beginning—like Giovanna Sordi, Valerio Bona, Father Paul—forced into suicide or silenced. And the necessary sacrificial victims—Samantha, Nadia, Selina, Ornella—slaughtered without mercy. Accidental obstacles, like Camarà, eliminated immediately.

The most atrocious part of the vendetta had been reserved for the two greatest enemies, Linda Nardi and Michele Balistreri, who had ruined Manfredi’s life when he was still a teenager. And also the unscrupulous use of the Romanians, Hagi and the others, and the exploitation of the Roma and the travelers’ camps; fodder that was indispensable for extending the plan beyond the limits of personal vendetta and developing it against the whole democratic political class, both government and opposition, and the Vatican, too.

The effects had been seen: crimes rightly or wrongly attributed to the Roma, camps like Casilino 900 roiling the emotions of Italians, hostile graffiti on the walls, the growing number of public statements that confused the Roma and the Romanians, the growing tension with the government in Bucharest, and the Vatican as the sole defender of the rights of people who were under siege.

Pasquali had been working to effect change in Rome’s city council. But above him there was someone who was aiming higher, much higher: if a famous Italian journalist had been attacked, tortured, and killed in her own home near St. Peter’s and the murder had been attributed to the Roma by means of the false evidence planted by Manfredi, the situation in Italy would have exploded. With the secret intelligence service’s help, a witch-hunt would have been set in motion. There would have been calls for ethnic cleansing, a diplomatic crisis with Romania, and increased tension with the European Community that would call upon the Italian government to arrest and put on trial any Italians who attacked Roma and Romanians.

At that point, Italian democracy would have teetered on the edge of the abyss, and somebody wanted to push it. If Italy hadn’t obeyed, it would have been kicked out of the European Community. If it had obeyed, Italians would have taken to the streets to topple the government. And the Vatican, marginalized, would have kept quiet.

In either scenario, the head of the special team was certain a solution had been waiting in the wings: a strong man with an impeccable image who would have arrived to put things right.

Balistreri recognized the absolute conviction of someone’s rights and the wrongs they suffered, the use of the lives of others as if they were pawns in a game, the defense of one’s honor as an absolute right. Balistreri recognized the style; in the end it was his own adolescent point of departure.

There remained one last aspect of Hagi and Manfredi’s vendetta: Who really killed Elisa Sordi? In their absurd and twisted logic, this person was the true culprit of all their troubles and couldn’t remain unpunished. Hagi and Manfredi had died without knowing the name that Balistreri had just barely glimpsed when he’d attacked Linda Nardi.

Now that everything was clear and he had all the answers, he wondered what the young Balistreri would have done.

A shot in the back of the skull. But then his accomplices would have taken revenge. They would have slaughtered Angelo, Linda, me, Alberto and his family, Corvu, Piccolo, Mastroianni.

He wondered what the adult Balistreri would do.

Charges and an arrest. A well-organized trial, a just sentence. Same outcome as above. Or rather, worse, because with the support the man had it would be difficult to have him found guilty.

He racked his brains the whole night. The count would have thought the same as he did, not like the cardinal. He wouldn’t wait for divine justice. But where was the happy medium between the two?