Murder By Suicide
Frascati, Italy. 11 March 2040.
Parvaneh Peykan lived and died for poetry. That love was how we kidnapped the scumbag so easily.
She had come out of a poetry reading at the Duke of York’s pub in Brighton. Dead chuffed, she was, and a little worse for drink. That lot cannot hold it – they do not get the practice. This one had been reading her own verses, and they had gone down a treat among the pinkos.
We waited till she had moved away from the people she had come out of the pub with, an independent woman striding off on her own, then I came up behind her, called her name and waved a book of her poems. I asked her if she’d be kind enough to autograph it. She agreed, of course, and when all her attention was on writing the curlicues of her name, the other agents came and crowded around with feigned interest. As soon as Carlo brought up the white van, we bundled her in, before she realised what was going on. None of those arty types from the pub had cars of their own, so we were well away before anyone raised the alarm. A few days later, we were back home in Italy and she was back home in Iran, in slightly less comfortable surroundings, no doubt.
What do you mean, what had she done? She was a dissident, wasn’t she? Blimey, a Muslim fundamentalist Iran was bad enough; a secular Iran was unthinkable. Look at all the trouble Turkey has caused us. In return for the poet, we got the ayatollahs’ backing for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Plus the regime leant on its Shia buddies in Iraq next door, where there was a war going on, to release the Italian soldiers or journalists who fell into their hands from time to time. It was a good deal, and it seemed like a job well done. But some of our team had not been careful.
There had been a lot of waiting around before we got the green light to act, and Brighton had plenty to offer spooks with time on their hands. Myself, I paid cash for all my amusements. You see, I was too young and impulsive to be trusted with a company credit card. But talk about “intelligence”: some of the older hands flashed their plastic around like magic wands, and left an electronic trail that reeked right up into the nostrils of certain British bloodhound geeks, one in particular. Ah, you know, it was all such a long time ago. That is why I remember it so clearly.
It was a rank bad period for the fatherland, really rough. Looking back, they called it the “Italian Spring”, because it lasted just three months. On April 11, the day the elections came up with the wrong result, Bernardo Provenzano was taken into custody. He was the head honcho of the Sicilian Mafia, and he had been on the run for forty years. No, “run” is the wrong word. He had spent most of those years sitting in various farmhouses near his home town, running his empire with written instructions carried to their targets by human couriers. For him to be arrested suddenly like that was shocking. And it was just the start. He was followed by politicians, bankers, football officials, footballers themselves even, TV presenters, showgirls, clairvoyants, pretenders to the throne, businessmen. It really seemed, during those months, that any of the pillars of national life could be called to account for some trivial, perfectly run-of-the-mill piece of corruption or skulduggery.
In the middle of all this, the English police were investigating the kidnapping and disappearance of a dismal Persian poet. We tried to put them off, but this time it did not work. So much for allies. They roped in this computer type, Michael Adams, name I’ll never forget. He had recently uncovered a neat – no, classical – American operation which infiltrated a mobile phone company and used it to monitor British bigwigs, the Prime Minister and all. The Brits were furious with the Yanks when it came to light, and our American colleagues were furious with Mr. Adams, which came in very handy for us because his next trick was to look at unusual spending patterns at Brighton hotels around the time of the poet’s kidnapping. Well, the names on the company credit cards ended up on the pages of the British press. They were not the real names, of course, but even the man on the Clapham omnibus could sense that they were sort of Italian.
A week later, I was back in Brighton, with a different team. We used a range of safe houses, with a little help from our friends, and paid for everything in cash. We kept Mr. Adams under close watch, too close in my case. It turned out he had a girlfriend, one of those willowy English types, hair rinsed platinum by the rain, cheeks whipped red by the wind – nothing special but they have an exotic allure for us, I am sure you know what I mean – and since the two of them were not united in Holy Matrimony, I decided to offer her a little Latin loving. But the crazy bitch pretended not to be interested, and that is when Michael Adams’ fate became more personal than strictly professional. Let’s put it like this: I wanted him out of the way.
Now, there are things you have to do for your country, all well and good. But if you start to do them for yourself, then you need to think about how you are going to answer for them to your God. And that can be uncomfortable.
The operation itself was simple and clean. We found him home alone one night and relieved him of his loneliness. Took him up to the cliffs and smashed his head in. Cranial trauma, as after a long fall. No, not me personally. I wanted to be the one so much that I could not trust myself to do it properly. Just as well. Beachy Head, that was the name of the place. We had to heave the body over the cliff. We did, but I stumbled. I really thought I was going over; it did not seem so bad. Angelo grabbed my coat and held me back.
Beachy Head was a traditional spot for suicides. The sea used to wash away the fallen bodies, but recently the crumbling cliff face had built up a platform of rubble at the bottom. That is where they found Adams the next day. Our persuaders managed to get it covered as suicide by the papers, before anyone looked at it too carefully. Gambling debts, blackmail by prostitutes, depression, drugs, anything to make it believable in the public mind and unbelievable to those who knew him closely. Yeah, that is the point. That is the way we operate. Anyone tempted to emulate misdemeanours like Mr. Adams’ has to know how slippery is the slope they are embarking on. We sacrifice one life to save others. We are good guys really.
Yeah, it worked, usually does, even though Michael Adams got a few glowing obituaries. Someone even called him a national hero. If that was so, he was soon a forgotten one. Back home, nobody wanted to look into it very closely. British business, not ours. Besides, the Italian Spring was well and truly over. Are you a football man? Well, on 9 July 2006, against all the odds, we triumphed in the World Cup, and people realised the system worked after all; it was best not tampered with.
My career got a boost, for a while, though I never got another crack at the girl. And frankly, I started having qualms about how far God wanted me to do the things my country asked of me. My superiors noticed that. And even in Italy, the Church was a declining power. Although it was basically back to business as usual, that business now involved more Mammon and less Pope. But, with God’s help, I have survived over the decades. Adapted and survived.
Well, thanks again for the coffee, Mr, er, Satrapi. I won’t drink it just yet, if you do not mind. I will let it grow cold – prefer it that way. No, no ice thanks, that would dilute the taste. I will drink it after you leave. Thank you for calling on me. Have a safe journey.
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