Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [74]
“I see,” De Angelis said. “What sort of impression did he make on you?”
“He seemed an eccentric to us, and he spoke about his past in, well, an unrepentant tone. It included a spell in the Foreign Legion.”
“He told you the truth, though not the whole truth. We were already keeping an eye on him, at least to some extent. We have so many such cases...First of all, Ardenti wasn’t his real name, but he had a legitimate French passport. He started reappearing in Italy from time to time a few years ago, and was tentatively identified as a Captain Arcoveggi, sentenced to death in absentia in 1945. Collaboration with the SS. He sent some people to Dachau. They were keeping an eye on him in France, too. He was tried for fraud there, and just managed to get off. We have an idea—but only an idea, mind you—that Ardenti at one point was calling himself Fassotti, that he’s the Fassotti that a small industrialist in Peschiera Borromeo filed a complaint against last year. This Fassotti—or Ardenti—had convinced the industrialist that the treasure of Dongo, the legendary Fascist gold reserve, was still lying at the bottom of Lake Como. Fassotti claimed to have identified the spot, and said all he needed was a few tens of millions of lire for a couple of divers and a power boat. Once he had the money, he vanished. Now you confirm that he had a kind of mania about treasures.”
“And this Rakosky?”
“We checked. A Vladimir Rakosky was registered at the Principe e Savoia. French passport. Distinguished-looking gentleman. It matches the description the clerk here gave us. Alitalia says his name appears on the passenger list for the first flight to Paris this morning. IVe alerted Interpol. Annunziata, anything come in from Paris?”
“Nothing so far, sir.”
“And that’s it. So Colonel Ardenti, or whatever his name is, arrived in Milan four days ago. We don’t know what he did the first three, but yesterday at two he presumably saw Rakosky at the hotel, didn’t tell him about going to see you—which is interesting—then last night he came here, probably with the same Rakosky and another man, and after that your guess is as good as mine. Even if they didn’t kill him, they certainly searched his room. What were they looking for? In his jacket...which reminds me, if he went out, it was in shirtsleeves, because the jacket with his passport in the pocket is still here. But that doesn’t make things any easier, because the old man says the colonel was stretched out on the bed in his jacket, unless k was a different jacket. God, I feel like I’m in a loony bin. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, in his jacket we found plenty of money, too much money. So it wasn’t money they were looking for. And you gentlemen have given me the only lead. You say the colonel had some documents. What did they look like?”
“He was carrying a brown briefcase,” Belbo said.
“It looked more red to me,” I said.
“Brown,” Belbo insisted. “But I could be wrong.”
“Red or brown,” De Angelis said, “it’s not here now. Last night’s visitors must have taken it. The briefcase is what we have to concentrate on. If you ask me, Ardenti wasn’t trying to publish a book at all. He had probably come up with something he could blackmail Rakosky with, and talking about a publishing contract was a way of applying pressure. That would have been more his style. From there, any number of hypotheses are possible.