Dominique Manotti: Escape

IS RED TERRORISM MAKING A GRAND COMEBACK?

Former Red Brigades leader killed in failed bank heist in Milan.

Friends of Carlo’s, maybe? The introductory paragraph leaps out at him:

Red Brigades veteran Carlo Fedeli, who escaped from of prison three weeks ago, was shot dead yesterday outside the Piemonte-Sardegna bank at 10 Via Del Battifolle, Milan during an attempted raid…

His vision blurred by tears, he sits doubled up, breathless. His sense of rejection, of betrayal by Carlo is so powerful that he has completely erased all memory of him. It returns with a vengeance. ‘ You’ll have to keep a low profile … Take care of yourself.’ You didn’t forsake me, you went to war, and you were trying to protect me. But I thought you were ditching me, I didn’t trust you, I’m the one who’s a traitor. I’m ashamed of myself . When he regains his breath, he continues reading.

Yesterday, Friday 3 March, at around 3 p.m., Via Del Battifolle in Milan, a security van drew up outside the Piemonte-Sardegna bank. Two armed security guards, Massimo Gasparini and Fredo Albrizio, alighted and entered the bank, where they were scheduled to spend no more than two minutes. They are professionals. The times of their stop-offs change every day as a precaution, but on this occasion, they were anticipated. As they entered the bank, two vans positioned themselves on the driveway entrances on either side of the façade, blocking the section of pavement outside the bank from view. The two guards emerged, one carrying two bags, the other with his hand on his holster. Carlo Fedeli leapt out of the right-hand van, brandishing a gun, and yelled at the armed guard to put his hands up, while his two accomplices burst out of the other van and snatched the bags. At that moment, by the most extraordinary coincidence, two carabinieri came out of the bank, where one of them, a regular customer at the branch, had just paid in some cheques. Everything happened very fast. The two carabinieri went for their guns. Carlo Fedeli turned towards them, aiming his gun. A shot rang out, perhaps fired by one of the security guards or by Fedeli’s accomplices. Fearing for his life, Brigadier Lucio Renzi then fired, killing Carlo Fedeli outright. Realising that the operation had failed, Fedeli’s two accomplices fled, covering themselves with a burst of gunfire and killing one of the carabinieri , Giorgio Barbieri, aged twenty-eight, married, father of two children aged three and one, as well as one of the security guards — Nino Gasparini, also married and father of a five-year-old little girl. Then they made off, probably using one or two motorbikes for their getaway. Both vans were stolen. They are being examined by the forensics team, so far yielding no results.

The police have not yet identified the fugitives, but they have a reliable lead.

Supposing it isn’t true? A stupid reaction. Filippo adopts an air of indifference, rises and goes to buy two other papers from the nearby kiosk. He returns to his table and opens out the papers. The same story is there in black and white. In one of the papers, there is even a double-page spread with a photo showing the three bodies covered with tarpaulins, pools of blood on the pavement. So it is true. No getting away from it. Now he can wallow in his misery, his eyes glued to the photo. A few tears. Memories. The long conversations, friendship, admiration even, for that man who was such a good talker. From listening to him all the time, I ended up thinking that the story he was telling was my story too, in a way. I feel gutted, it’s like a big hole in my life . Then, like an electric shock, Carlo’s words suddenly come back to him with clarity: ‘My escape will be in the news, I think. And they’ll be looking for you, because you broke out with me. You’ll have to keep a low profile for a while, until things settle down.’ There had been a long silence, and then Carlo had said, ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ Of course not, at that point, he didn’t understand, and now he feels guilty. Those words weigh heavily on him. ‘My escape will be in the news.’ Why ‘his’ escape? It was mine too, wasn’t it? I must find papers that talk about ‘our’ escape, that’s vital. Where can I get hold of them? Filippo folds his newspapers, puts them in his bag, pays for his coffee, and sets off in search of the public library.

At the library, the entire national daily press from the past month is available free of charge, and there is hardly anyone around. Filippo quickly finds the papers from the week of their breakout, but he is in too much of an emotional state to remember the exact date. He takes the papers from the entire week and sits down at an isolated desk, his back to the public.

Almost immediately, he comes across the headline in La Stampa , ‘Former Red Brigades Leader Escapes.’ Below it, two photos, Carlo’s, and his own. Another electric shock. A photo of him, Filippo, on the front page of the newspaper. It makes no sense. He closes his eyes, runs his hands over the photo, looks at it again — it is still there, he’ll have to face it. He reads the caption, ‘Filippo Zuliani, common prisoner and Carlo Fedeli’s cellmate, key accomplice in a meticulously planned jailbreak.’

Accomplice in a meticulously planned jailbreak. This time, he feels sheer panic. The police are looking for the accomplices to the bank robbery, the cop killers, and they have a reliable lead. I am the reliable lead. A key accomplice in a meticulously planned jailbreak and unable to prove that I was walking alone in the mountains at the time of the bank robbery. Unable to prove that I wasn’t on the pavement outside that bank in Milan, where I’ve never set foot in my life. In a way, his story is my story. No, it’s not just partly my story, but one I’m in up to my neck. If the cops get their hands on me, I’m fucked. And my photo, right here in the paper. He runs his hand over his face. That was stupid, going to the barber’s. How come no one’s recognised me yet? An insane urge to run away. Resist it. Keep a low profile. Must put the newspapers back . Breaking out into an anxious sweat, his hands clammy, his back rigid, he walks over and puts the newspapers back on the shelves, checks that they are in precisely the right order, and makes his way to the exit. Nothing happens. He leaves. No one tries to stop him.

He wanders aimlessly through the streets, sits down on a bench and tries to muster his thoughts. Two dead. They’re going to pin two deaths on me. Two deaths including a carabiniere. Not me, not two deaths, it makes no sense. I’ll never last out. I’m not made of that stuff. Only one solution, run, vanish. ‘If things get too tough here in Italy, go over to France. Here, on this envelope, Lisa Biaggi, in Paris. Say I sent you and tell her what happened. She’ll help you .’ He’d forgotten all about her. He thrusts his hand in the bag and rummages around feverishly. The envelope with Lisa’s address is there, right at the bottom. Salvation.

5 March

Since learning of Carlo’s death from the papers, Lisa has shut herself up in her studio apartment. It is on the fourth floor of an ancient building in Rue de Belleville, at the far end of an overgrown courtyard garden. She sits there for hours in a state of shock, huddled in an armchair in front of the tall window of her living area, looking out over the trees. Overcome by grief she nibbles, drinks coffee, thinks, sleeps and gets up from the chair as little as possible.

It all began in the autumn of ’69 when she was a young rookie journalist at L’Unità, daily newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, then at the height of its powers. She was sent to Milan to report live from the Siemens factory where ‘something was happening’. She still feels emotional when she remembers her awe (the word is no exaggeration) on discovering the factory in ferment. At that time, people called it ‘in a state of revolution’, and for her and a few thousand people, that word meant something. She fell out with L’Unità , which rejected her articles and cut off her source of income, and met one of the workers, Carlo, a good-looker and a smooth talker. It was love, naturally. Had she fallen in love with him, or with that moment when young workers believed they were making history? The question made no sense, it was simply their life. She had followed Carlo into the Red Brigades. Years later Lisa was in France, sent by the organisation to meet a delegation of Palestinians. That was in 1980, and by then, hope had already died, and she was carrying on out of loyalty (to what? to whom? pointless questions? Loyalty to herself, to her past). While she was away, the police had surrounded their apartment in Milan, arrested Carlo and two other comrades and confiscated all their files. Carlo got a message to her via their lawyers that the police were actively looking for her, and that she should stay in France, at least for a while. At least for a while — and that had been seven years ago. Without seeing Carlo again, and without admitting to herself that the separation was permanent. Well now it is. Now he has been assassinated.