The Octopus at the Vatican

# 5 - Alessa Lombardi stirs the mud

Winter 1977 - Milan

Young investigating journalist Alessa Lombardi was reading press cuttings. She felt so downcast that she was relieved to hear the library closing.

The story she was studying was deadly. How could this have happened? To what end? Who?

The next day she took a walk. In the midst of these articles, trials, invectives from all sides, multiple bombings since 1969, the truth could only come out of known facts. They were so fragmented. She would do better to think of the strategy used by the murderers and link it to similar past events.

The wave of blast murders had started on 12 December 1969. The explosion at the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura, on the Piazza Fontana in Milan had killed 17 and wounded 88 people. On that day, four identical attacks had taken place in Milan and in Rome. They were clearly linked. The economic and political capitals.

Alessa recalled the fire at the Reichstag in 1933, ordered by Hitler and apportioned to the communists in order to establish his dictatorship. The attacks of 12 December 1969 against 'capitalistic' targets were also under a fake banner, so that they would be attributed to the far left. This was the method of the Nazis everywhere: to exploit fear or, failing that, to create it. The security reflex of the population next called for fascist law and order.

The ingredients were there in 1969: mass arrests of left-wingers, defenestration of a suspect anarchist arrested by the police. A so-called suicide. The dead plead guilty and keep quiet.

A guilty anarchist would never commit suicide. To the contrary, he would have claimed the moral legitimacy of his armed fight against bourgeois totalitarianism.

Eight years of terror have gone by since 69, thought Alessa. And democracy didn't collapse. People are still under the spell after the twenty-five years of mussolinian dictatorship. All these small groups at both extremes! Impossible to find guilty parties in that lot, looking for a needle, etc. On the other hand, could deduction?

The far right. Crime wore its trademark, even when disguised as left-wing attacks. Neo-fascist factions don't have the intellectual acumen to set up a global scenario of destabilization. They are good murderers, but also very stupid.

Licio Gelli, for his part, has the capacity to be a sponsor. His past and current presentation are a good fit. He never leaves anything in writing, no evidence. He will never be directly implicated, he's too careful. He incites others. He has always remained unblemished even in the center of his thick web. So thick that no-one knows whether it really exists. Like black holes in the galaxy, it seems. One would only know about them through emanations on the periphery.

And Giulio Andreotti, the leader of the right-wing of the CD? Though perhaps not. He has the brains and the moral turpitude, but in the event of a fascist coup, the ultras would overflow on his right. And he knows it. Exit Andreotti. Same for the royalists, the fanatics would replace them. Like King Constantine of Greece in 1967, during the colonels' takeover. And like von Papen by Hitler in 1933.

One of these days, I'll throw a cat among the pigeons: Gelli could be the sponsor of the Piazza Fontana. Try it out and see their reaction. I search his past, sign under a pseudonym and get out.

She remembered an anecdote from the previous year. She couldn't find the cutting. It was short. A prosecutor who was working on the attacks had been mown down in the street. So, he had been close to finding the truth. End of the inquiry. The article referred to his widow. If she could find the headline, she could interview her.

She found it at last. It was in July 1976 in Rome. The victim was Vittorio Occorsio, a stand-in. -. . . he was looking into the links between a Neo-fascist group and the P2 lodge. . .