The Fourth K by Mario Puzo
Here Yabril paused to sip at his coffee cup. Then he went on with a calm dignity: “I have devoted my life to revolution against the established order, the authority I despise. I will die believing what I have done is right. And as you know, there is no moral law that exists forever.”
Finally Yabril was exhausted and stretched back in his chair, arms appearing broken from the restraints. Kennedy had listened without any sign of disapproval. He did not make any counterargument. There was a long silence and finally Kennedy said, “I can’t argue morality—basically, I’ve done what you have done. And as you say, it is easier to do when one does not personally bloody his hands. But again as you say, I act from a core of social authority, not out of my own personal animosity.”
Yabril interrupted him. “That is not correct. Congress did not approve your actions; neither did your Cabinet officers. Essentially you acted as I did, on your own personal authority. You are my fellow terrorist.”
Kennedy said, “But the people of my country, the electorate, approve.”
“The mob,” Yabril said. “They always approve. They refuse to foresee the dangers of such actions. What you did was wrong politically and morally. You acted on a desire for personal vengeance.” Yabril smiled. “And I thought you would be above such an action. So much for morality.”
Kennedy was silent for a time as if giving careful consideration to his answer. Then he said, “I hope you’re wrong, time will tell. I want to thank you for speaking to me so frankly, especially since I understand you refused to cooperate in former interrogations. You know, of course, that the best law firm in the United States has been retained for you by the Sultan of Sherhaben and shortly they will be permitted to consult with you on your defense.”
Kennedy smiled and rose to leave the room. He was almost at the door when it swung open. Then as he was about to walk through it he heard Yabril’s voice. Yabril had struggled to his feet despite his restraints and fought to keep his balance. He was erect when he said, “Mr. President.” Kennedy turned to face him.
Yabril lifted his arms slowly, resting them crookedly under the nylon and wire jacket. “Mr. President,” he said again, “you do not deceive me. I know I will never see or talk to my lawyers.”
Christian had interposed his body between the two men and Jefferson was by Kennedy’s side.
Kennedy gave Yabril a cold smile. “You have my personal guarantee that you will see and talk to your lawyers,” he said, and walked out of the room.
At that moment Christian Klee felt an anguish close to nausea. He had always believed he knew Francis Kennedy but now he realized he did not. For in one clear moment he had seen a look of pure hatred on Kennedy’s face that was alien to everything in his character.
BOOK
V
CHAPTER
21
When Franco Sebbediccio was a little boy in Sicily he had chosen the side of law and order not only because it seemed the stronger side but because he loved the sweet consolation of living under strict rules of authority. The Mafia had been too impressionistic, the world of commerce too dicey, and so he had become a policeman and thirty years later was the head of the antiterrorist division of all Italy.
He now had under arrest the assassin of the Pope, a young Italian of good family named Armando Giangi, code-named Romeo. The code name irritated Sebbediccio intensely. Sebbediccio had incarcerated Romeo in the deepest cells of his Roman prison.
Under surveillance was Rita Fallicia, whose code name was Annee. She had been easy to track down because she had been a troublemaker since her teens, a firebrand at the university, a pugnacious leader of demonstrations and linked to the abduction of a leading banker of Milan.
The evidence had come flooding in. The safe houses had been cleaned by the terrorist cadres, but those poor bastards had no way of knowing the scientific resources of a national police organization. There was a towel with traces of semen that identified Romeo. One of the captured men had given evidence under severe interrogation. But Sebbediccio had not arrested Annee. She was to remain free.
Franco Sebbediccio worried that the trial of these guilty parties would glorify the Pope’s murder and that they would become heroes and spend their prison sentences without too much discomfort. Italy did not have a death penalty, so they could receive only life imprisonment, which was a joke. With all the reduction of time for good behavior and the different conditions for amnesties they would be set free at a comparatively young age.
It would have been different if Sebbediccio could have conducted the interrogation of Romeo in a more serious fashion. But because this scoundrel had killed a Pope, his rights had become a cause in the Western world. There were protesters and human rights groups from Scandinavia and England and even letters from America. All these proclaimed that the two murderers must be handled humanely, not subjected to torture, not ill treated in any way. And orders had come down from the top: Don’t disgrace Italian justice with anything that might offend the left-wing parties in Italy. Kid gloves.
But he, Franco Sebbediccio, would cut through all the nonsense and send a message to the terrorists. Franco Sebbediccio was determined that this Romeo, this Armando Giangi, would commit suicide.
• • •
Romeo had spent his months in prison weaving a romantic dream. Alone in his cell he had chosen to fall in love with the American girl, Dorothea. He remembered her waiting for him at the airport, the tender scar on her chin. In his reveries, she seemed so beautiful, so kind. He tried to remember their conversation that last night he spent with her in the Hamptons. Now in his memory, it seemed to him that she had loved him. That her every gesture had dared him to declare his desire so that she could show her love. He remembered how she sat, so gracefully, so invitingly. How her eyes stared at him, great dark pools of blue, her white skin suffused with blushes. And now he cursed his timidity. He had never touched that skin. He remembered the long slim legs and imposed them around his neck. He imagined the kisses he would rain on her hair, her eyes, the length of her lithe body.
And then Romeo dreamed of how she stood in the sunlight, draped in chains, staring at him in reproach and despair. He weaved fantasies of the future. She would serve only a short term in prison. She would be waiting for him. And he would be freed. By amnesty or by the trading of hostages, perhaps by pure Christian mercy. And then he would find her.
There were nights when he despaired and thought of Yabril’s treachery. The murder of Theresa Kennedy had never been in the plan, and he believed in his heart that he would never have consented to such an act. He felt a disgust for Yabril, for his own beliefs, for his own life. Sometimes he would weep quietly in the darkness. Then he would console himself and lose himself in his fantasies of Dorothea. It was false, he knew. It was a weakness, he knew, but he could not help himself.
• • •
Romeo in his bare cell received Franco Sebbediccio with a sardonic grin. He could see the hatred in this old man’s peasant eyes, could sense his bewilderment that a person from a good family who enjoyed a pleasant, luxurious life could become a revolutionary. He was also aware that Sebbediccio was frustrated that the international public watch restrained him from treating his prisoner as brutally as he might wish.
Sebbediccio had himself locked in with the prisoner, the two of them alone with two guards and an observer from the governor’s office watching but unable to hear from right outside the door. It was almost as if the burly older man were inviting some sort of attack. But Romeo knew that it was simply that the older man had confidence in the authority of his position. Romeo had a contempt for this kind of man, rooted in law and order, handcuffed by his beliefs and bourgeois moral standards. Therefore he was extremely surprised when Sebbediccio said to him casually, but in a very low voice, “Giangi, you are going to make life easier for everyone. You are going to commit suicide.”
Romeo laughed. “No, I’m not, I’ll be out of jail before you die of high blood pressure and ulcers. I’ll walk the
Sebbediccio said patiently, “I just wanted to let you know that you and your cadre are going to commit suicide. Two of my men were killed by your friends to intimidate me and my associates. Your suicides will be my answer.”
Romeo said, “I can’t please you. I’m enjoying life too much. And with all the world watching, you don’t dare to even give me a good kick in the ass.”
Sebbediccio gave him a benevolent smile. He had an ace in the hole.
Romeo’s father, who all his life had done nothing for humanity, had done something for his son. He had shot himself. A Knight of Malta, father of the murderer of the Pope, a man who had lived his whole life for his own selfish pleasure, he had unfathomably decided to don the mantle of guilt.
When Romeo’s newly widowed mother asked to visit her son in his prison cell and was refused, the newspapers took up her cause. The telling blow was struck by Romeo’s defense lawyer as he was interviewed on television. “For God’s sake, he just wants to see his mother.” Which struck a responsive chord not only in Italy but all over the Western world. Many newspapers gave it a front-page headline, quoting verbatim, “For God’s sake, he just wants to see his mother!”
Which was not strictly true: Romeo’s mother wanted to see him, he did not want to see her.
With pressure so great, the government was forced to allow Mother Giangi to visit her son. Which enraged Franco Sebbediccio, who had opposed this visit; he wanted to keep Romeo in seclusion, to keep him cut off from the outside world. What kind of a world was it that dared grant such kindness to the killer of a Pope? But the governor of the prison overrode him.
The governor had a palatial office and summoned Sebbediccio to it. He said, “My dear sir, I have my instructions, the visit is to be allowed. And not in his cell, where the conversation can be monitored, but in this office itself. With nobody within earshot, but recorded by cameras in the last five minutes of the hour—after all, the media must be allowed to profit.”
Sebbediccio said, “And for what reason is this allowed?”
The governor gave him the smile he usually reserved for the prisoners and the members of his staff who had become almost like the prisoners themselves. “For a son to see his widowed mother. What could be more sacred?”
Sebbediccio said harshly, “A man who murders the Pope? He has to see his mother?”
The governor shrugged. “Those far above us have decided. Reconcile yourself. Also, the defense lawyer insists that this office be swept for bugs, so don’t think you can plant electronic gear.”
“Ah,” Sebbediccio said, “and how is the lawyer going to do the debugging?”
“He will hire his own electronic specialists,” the governor said. “They will do their job in the lawyer’s presence immediately before the meeting.”
Sebbediccio said, “It is essential, it is vital that we hear that conversation between them.”
“Nonsense,” the governor said. “His mother is your typical rich Roman matron. She knows nothing and he would never confide anything of importance to her. This is just another silly episode in the quite ridiculous drama of our times. Don’t take it seriously.”
But Sebbediccio did take it seriously. He considered it another mockery of justice, another example of scorn for authority. And he hoped Romeo might let something slip when he talked to his mother.
As head of the antiterrorist division for all Italy Sebbediccio had a great deal of power. The defense lawyer was already on the secret list of left-wing radicals who were put under surveillance. His phone was tapped, his mail intercepted and read before it was delivered. And so it was easy to find the electronic company the defense planned to use to sweep the governor’s office. Sebbediccio used a friend to set up an “accidental” meeting in a restaurant with the owner of the electronics company.
Even without the help of force, Franco Sebbediccio could be persuasive. It was a small electronics corporation, making a profit but by no means enjoying an overwhelming success. Sebbediccio pointed out that the antiterrorist division had great need of electronic sweeping equipment and personnel, that it could interpose security vetoes on the companies selected. In short that he, Sebbediccio, could make the company rich.
But there must be trust and profit on both sides. In this particular case, why should the electronics company care about the murderers of the Pope, why should it jeopardize its future prosperity over such an inconsequential matter as the recording of a meeting between the mother and son? Why could not the electronics company plant the bug as it was supposedly debugging the governor’s office? And who would be the wiser? And Sebbediccio himself would arrange to have the bug removed.
It was done in a very friendly way, but somewhere during the dinner Sebbediccio made it understood that if he was refused, the electronics company would run into a great deal of trouble in the coming years. Although he himself had no personal animosity, how could his government service possibly trust people who protected the murderer of the Pope?
It was all agreed and Sebbediccio let the other man pick up the check. He was certainly not going to pay for it out of his personal funds, and to be reimbursed on his expense voucher might lead to a paper trail years later. Besides, he was going to make the man rich.
The meeting between Armando “Romeo” Giangi and his mother was therefore fully recorded and heard only by Sebbediccio, and he was delighted with it. He took his time in removing the bug simply out of curiosity at what the snotty governor of the prison was really like, but there he got nothing.
Sebbediccio took the precaution of playing the tape in his home while his wife slept. None of his colleagues must know about it. He was not a bad man and he almost wept when Mother Giangi sobbed over her son, implored him to tell the truth that he had not really killed the Pope, that he was shielding a bad companion. Sebbediccio could hear the woman’s kisses as they rained down upon the face of her murderous son. Then the kissing and wailing stopped and the conversation became very interesting to Sebbediccio.
He heard Romeo’s voice attempting to calm his mother down. “I don’t understand why your husband killed himself,” Romeo said. He felt such disdain for the man, he could never acknowledge him as his father. “He didn’t care about his country or the world, and, forgive me, he didn’t even love his family. He lived a completely selfish and egocentric life. Why did he feel it necessary to shoot himself?”
The mother’s voice came hissing from the tape. “Out of vanity,” she said. “All his life your father was a vain man. Every day to his barber, once a week to his tailor. At the age of forty he took singing lessons. To sing where? And he spent a fortune to become a Knight of Malta and never a man so devoid of the Holy Spirit. On Easter he had a white suit made with the palm cross woven especially into the cloth. Oh, what a grand figure in Roman society. The parties, the balls, his appointment to cultural committees whose meetings he never attended. And the father of a son graduated from the university, he was proud of your brilliance. Oh, how he promenaded on the streets of Rome. I never saw a man so happy and so empty.” There was a pause on the tape. “After what you did, your father could never appear in Roman society again. That empty life was finished, and for that loss he killed himself. But he can rest easy. He looked beautiful in his coffin with his new Easter suit.”
Then came Romeo’s voice on the tape saying what delighted Sebbediccio. “My father never gave me anything in life, and by his suicide he stole my option. And death was my only escape.”
Sebbediccio listened to the rest of the tape in which Romeo let his mother persuade him to see a priest, and then when the TV cameras and reporters were let into the room Sebbediccio turned it off. He had seen the rest on TV. But he had what he wanted.
When Sebbediccio paid his next visit to Romeo, he was so delighted that when the jailer unlocked the cell he entered doing a li
“Giangi,” he said, “you are becoming even more famous. It is rumored that when we have a new Pope he may ask mercy for you. Show your gratitude, give me some of the information I need.”
Romeo said, “What an ape you are.”
Sebbediccio bowed and said, “That’s your last word, then?”
It was perfect. He had a recording that said Romeo was thinking of killing himself.
A week later the news was released to the world that the murderer of the Pope, Armando “Romeo” Giangi, had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.
In New York, Annee had mounted the mission. She was very conscious of the fact that she was the first woman chief of a First Hundred operational strike. She was determined she would not fail.
The two safe houses, apartments on New York’s East Side, had been stocked with food, weapons and other necessary material. The assault teams would arrive a week before the strike date, and she would order them to stay in their apartments until the final day. The escape routes had been set up for any survivors, through Mexico and Canada. She planned to remain in America for a few months, in still another safe house.