Blood and Rage_ A Cultural History of Terrorism - Michael Burleigh [136]
Although many Italians were thoroughly demoralised by these killings, crucial arrests and the incentives available to terrorists who turned state’s evidence began to grind the Red Brigades down, while increasing the paranoia of people already living in a permanent state of alert watchfulness. The 1980 arrest of Patrizio Peci was especially significant as he had led the Turin Red Brigades column and belonged to its Direzione Strategica. According to his autobiography, dramatically entitled I, the Vile One, Peci was born in 1953, the son of a builder in Ripatransone, a small town in the Marche that claims the narrowest street in the world. They moved to the larger town of San Benedetto del Tronto when Peci was nine. He had an uneventful childhood, although he preferred playing cards on the beach to going to school. As a young adult, he worked as a waiter in seaside hotels, although he had joined Lotta Continua while still at school, prompted by a dispute between fishermen and the owners of their boats. Soon he was beating up his teachers, the action which attracted the Red Brigades’ notice. In 1974 they recruited him and sent him to work in a factory in Milan. Whereas he had received 180,000 lire per month as a waiter, he now got 200,000 monthly expenses as a Red Brigades logistician, on top of free accommodation, utility bills, clothing and equipment. There was also an annual holiday in a property owned by the organisation. No wonder his girlfriend, María Rosaria Roppolo, threatened to kill herself if she could not join too.18
Peci reflected a lot on a job in which ‘like any job’ people acquired proficiency. His first task, as part of the Turin column, was to wash and dry two thousand million-lire banknotes, the proceeds of the Costa kidnapping. After the column leader, Fiore, was captured, Peci took his place. He killed his first victim on 22 April 1977, a foreman at Fiat in Turin. He thought of this in terms of doling out justice to exploiters of the proletariat: ‘In technical terms, to kill someone is a lot easier than wounding them - but from the human point of view it is the exact opposite.’ Actually, things were more complicated than that. Peci liked guns, reaching out for his .38 Special on the bedside table first thing each morning: ‘It gave me a feeling of power and security. It was my good friend. I was more jealous towards it than towards a woman.’19 But there was also the vomiting of his caffelatte and rolls on the morning of his first kill, with adrenaline contributing to a night of intermittent sleep. It was like the night before an exam. Deep sleep came after the job was done. This was how he regarded Antonio Munari, his first victim:
This is a man who’s doing well, he goes home for lunch while the workers remain at the canteen. He has a nice car given to him by Fiat, lives in a beautiful place, in a residential suburb, possibly also given to him by Fiat, while the workers, on the other hand… What struck me most of all was the fact that he would go home to eat, while the workers probably ate disgusting food in the canteen, then he’d come back, happy and well fed, and make them work like dogs … I was there for an act of justice. Hit one to educate one hundred. I had no hesitation.20
In 1978 Peci tried to wound a man, who promptly died of a heart attack. Violence became more difficult when he and his victim exchanged words, breaking down the ‘target