The Matarese Circle (39 page)

“Most of the risks are reduced to the minimum,” said Antonia. “Even the delivery runs are made in such a way that the merchandise can be abandoned at a moment’s notice. At least, that’s what I gathered from the other girls.”

“ ‘Most of the risks …’ ” repeated Scofield. “ ‘Reduced to a minimum?’ ”

“Not all, of course, but a great many. It is very well organized. Each step has a means to escape built in.”

“Organized? Escape?…”
Organized!
That was
it.
Minimum risks, maximum returns! It
was
the pattern, the
entire
pattern. It went back to the beginning … to the concept
itself.
“Antonia, tell me, where did the contacts come from? How did they reach the Brigades in the first place?”

“The Brigades make a great deal of money from narcotics. The drug market is its main source of income.”

“But how did it start? When?”

“A few years ago, when the Brigades began to expand.”

“It didn’t just
happen. How
did it happen?”

“I can only tell you what I heard. A man came to the leaders—several were in jail. He told them to find him when they got out on the streets again. He could lead them to large sources of money that could be made without the heavy risks involved in robbery and kidnapping.”

“In other words,” said Scofield, thinking rapidly as he spoke, “he offered to finance them in a major way with minor effort. Teams of two people going out for three or four weeks—and returning with something like nine million lire. Seventy thousand dollars for a month’s work. Minimum risk, maximum return. Very few personnel involved.”

“Yes. In the beginning, the contacts came from him, that man. They in turn led to others. As you say, it does not take many people and they bring in large amounts of money.”

“So the Brigades can concentrate on their true calling,” completed Bray sardonically. “The disruption of the social order. In a single word, terrorism.” He got up from the bed. “That man who came to see the leaders in jail. Did he stay in touch with them?”

She frowned. “Again, I can only tell you what I heard. He was never seen after the second meeting.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t. Every negotiation always five times removed from the source.… A geometric progression, no single line to retrace. That’s how they do it.”

“Who?”

“The Matarese.”

Antonia stared at him. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s the only explanation. Serious dealers in narcotics wouldn’t
touch
maniacs like the Brigades. It’s a controlled situation, a charade mounted to finance terrorism, so the Matarese can continue to finance the guns and the killing. In Italy it’s the Red Brigades; in Germany, Baader-Meinhof; in Lebanon, the PLO; in my country, the Minutemen and the Weathermen, the Ku Klux Klan and the JDL and all the godamn fools who blew up banks and laboratories and embassies. Each financed differently, secretly. All pawns for the Matarese—maniacal pawns, and that’s the scary thing. The longer they’re fed the bigger they grow the more damage they do.” He reached for her hand, aware that he had done so only after they had touched.

“You are convinced, aren’t you? That it’s happening.”

“Now more than ever. You just showed me how one small part of the whole is manipulated. I knew—or thought I knew—it was
being
manipulated but I didn’t know how. Now I do and it doesn’t take much imagination to think of variations. It’s a guerrilla war with a thousand battlegrounds, none of them defined.”

Antonia lifted his hand, as though reassuring herself it was there, freely given; and then her dark brown eyes shifted to his, suddenly questioning. “You talk as if it were new to you, this war. Surely that’s not so. You’re an intelligence officer.…”

“I was,” corrected Bray. “Not anymore.”

“That doesn’t change what you know. You said to me only a moment ago that certain things must be accepted, that courts and
avvocati
had no place, that one killed in
order not to be killed oneself. Is this war so different now?”

“More than I can explain,” answered Scofield, glancing up at the white wall. “We were professionals and there were rules—most of them our own, most harsh, but there
were
rules and we abided by them. We knew what we were doing, nothing was pointless. I guess you could say we knew when to stop.” He turned back to her. “These are wild animals, let loose in the streets. They have no rules. They don’t know when to stop, and those who are financing them never want them to learn. Don’t fool yourself, they’re capable of paralyzing governments.…”

Bray caught himself, his voice trailing off. He heard his own words and they astonished him.
He had said it.
In a single phrase he had said it! It was there all the time and neither he nor Taleniekov had seen it! They had approached it, circled it, used words that came close to defining it, but they had never clearly faced it.

 … 
they’re capable of paralyzing governments
.…

When paralysis spreads, control is lost, all functions stop. A vacuum is created for a force
not
paralyzed to move into the host and assume control.

You will inherit the earth. You will have your own again.
Other words, spoken by a madman seventy years ago. Yet those words were not political; they were, in fact,
apolitical.
Nor did they apply to given borders, no single nation rising to ascendency. Instead, they were directed to a council, a group of men bound together by a common bond.

But those men were dead; who were they now? And what bound them together?
Now. Today.

“What is it?” asked Antonia, seeing the strained expression on his face.

“There
is
a timetable,” said Bray, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s being orchestrated. The terrorism escalates every month, as if on schedule. Blackburn, Yurievich … they
were
tests, probes for reaction at the highest levels. Winthrop raised alarms in those circles; he had to be silenced. It all fits.”

“And you’re talking to yourself. You hold my hand, but you’re talking to yourself.”

Scofield looked at her, struck by another thought. He
had heard two remarkable stories from two remarkable women, both tales rooted in violence as both women were tied to the violent world of Guillaume de Matarese. The dying Istrebiteli had said in Moscow that the answer might lie in Corsica. The answer did not, but the first clues to that answer did. Without Sophia Pastorine and Antonia Gravet, mistress and descendant, there was nothing; each in her own way had provided startling revelations. The enigma that was the Matarese remained still an enigma, but it was no longer inexplicable. It had form; it had purpose. Men bound together by some common cause, whose objective was to paralyze governments and assume control … 
to inherit the earth.

Therein lay the possibility of catastrophe: that same earth could be blown up in the process of being inherited.

“I’m talking to myself,” agreed Bray, “because I’ve changed my mind. I said I wanted you to help me, but you’ve gone through enough. There are others, I’ll find them.”

“I see.” Antonia pressed her elbows into the bed, raising herself. “Just like that, I’m no longer needed?”

“No.”

“Why was I considered at all?”

Scofield paused before replying; he wondered how she would accept the truth. “You were right before; it
was
one or the other. Enlisting you or killing you.”

Antonia winced. “But that is no longer true? It’s not necessary to kill me?”

“No. It’d be pointless. You won’t say anything. You weren’t lying; I know what you’ve lived through. You don’t want to go back; you were going to kill yourself rather than land in Marseilles. I believe you would have.”

“Then what’s to become of me?”

“I found you in hiding, I’ll send you back in hiding. I’ll give you money, and in the morning get you papers and a flight out of Rome to someplace very far away. I’ll write a couple of letters; you’ll give them to the people I tell you to. You’ll be fine.” Bray stopped for a moment. He could not help himself; he touched her swollen cheek and brushed aside a strand of hair. “You may even find another valley in a mountain, Antonia. As beautiful as the one you left, but with a difference. You won’t be a prisoner there. No one from this life will ever bother you again.”

“Including you, Brandon Scofield?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think you had better kill me.”

“What?”

“I will
not
leave! You cannot force me to, you cannot send me away because it is convenient … or
worse,
because you pity me!” Antonia’s dark Corsican eyes glistened again. “What
right
have you? Where were you when the terrible things were done? To
me,
not to
you.
Don’t make such decisions for me! Kill me first!”

“I don’t want to kill you—I don’t
have
to. You wanted to be free, Antonia. Take it. Don’t be a damn fool.”

“
You’re
the fool! I can help you in ways no one else could!”

“How? The courier’s whore?”

“If need be,
yes!
Why not?”

“For Christ’s sake,
why?
”

The girl was rigid; her answer was spoken quietly. “Because of things you said—”

“I know,” interrupted Scofield. “I told you to get angry.”

“There’s something else. You said that all around the world, people who believe in causes—many not wisely, many with anger and defiance—are being manipulated by others, encouraged to violence and murder. Well, I’ve seen something of causes. Not all are unwise, and not all believers are animals. There are those of us who want to change this unfair world, and it is our right to try! And no one has the right to turn us into whores and killers. You call these manipulators the Matarese. I say they are richer, more powerful, but no better than the Brigades, who kill children and make liars and murderers out of people like me! I
will
help you. I will
not
be sent away!”

Bray studied her face. “You’re all alike,” he said. “You can’t stop making speeches.”

Antonia smiled; it was a wry smile, engaging yet shy. “Most of the time, they’re all we have.” The smile disappeared, replaced by a sadness Scofield was not sure he understood. “There’s another thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You. I’ve watched you. You are a man with so much sorrow. It’s as clear on your face as the marks on my body. But I can remember when I was happy. Can you?”

“The question’s not relevant.”

“It is to me.”

“Why?”

“I could say you saved my life and that would be enough, but that life wasn’t worth much. You’ve given me something else: a reason to leave the hills. I never thought anyone could ever do that for me. You offered me freedom just now but you’re too late. I already have it, you gave it to me. I am breathing again. So you’re important to me. I would like you to remember when you were happy.”

“Is this the courier’s … woman speaking?”

“She is not a whore. She never was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It is permitted. And if that is the gift you want, take it. I would like to think there are others.”

Bray suddenly ached. The ingenuousness of her offer moved him, pained him. She was hurt and he had hurt her again and he knew why. He was afraid; he preferred whores; he did not want to go to bed with anyone he cared about—it was better not to remember a face or recall a voice. It was far better to remain deep within the earth; he had been there so long. And now this woman wanted to pull him out and he was afraid.

“You learn the things I teach you, that’ll be gift enough.”

“Then you’ll let me stay?”

“You just said there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

“I meant that.”

“I know you did. If I thought otherwise I’d be on the telephone to one of the best counterfeiters in Rome.”

“Why
are
we in Rome? Will you tell me now?”

Bray did not answer for a moment; then he nodded. “Why not? To find what’s left of a family named Scozzi.”

“Is it one of the names my grandmother gave you?”

“The first. They were from Rome.”

“They’re still from Rome,” said Antonia, as if commenting on the weather. “At least a branch of the family, and not far outside of Rome.”

Amazed, Scofield looked at her. “How do you know?”

“The Red Brigades. They kidnapped a nephew of the Scozzi-Paravacinis from an estate near Tivoli. His index
finger was cut off and sent to the family along with the ransom demand.”

Scofield remembered the newspaper stories; the young man had been released, but Bray did not recall the name Scozzi, only Paravacini. However, he recalled something else: no ransom had ever been paid. The negotiations had been intense, a young life in balance. But there’d been a breakdown, a defection, a nephew released by a frightened kidnapper, several Brigatisti subsequently killed, led into an ambush by the defector.

Had the Red Brigades been taught a lesson by one of their unseen sponsors?

“Were you involved?” he asked. “In
any
way?”

“No. I was at the camp in Medicina.”

“Did you overhear anything?”

“A great deal. The talk was mainly about traitors and how to kill them in brutal ways to make examples of them. The leaders always talked like that. With the Scozzi-Paravacini kidnapping it was very important to them. The traitor had been bribed by the Fascists.”

“What do you mean by ‘Fascists’?”

“A banker who represented the Scozzis years ago. The Paravacini interests authorized payment.”

“How did he reach him?”

“With a large sum of money there are ways. Nobody really knows.”

Bray got up from the bed. “I won’t ask you how you’re feeling, but are you up to getting out of here?”

“Of course,” she replied, wincing as she swung her long legs over the side of the bed. The pain struck her; a sharp intake of breath followed. She remained still for a moment; Scofield held her shoulders.

Again he could not help himself; he touched her face. “The forty-eight hours are over,” he said softly. “I’ll cable Taleniekov in Helsinki.”