A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial Read Free Page B

passport photo to the CIA every three years for this purpose.
    He checked his watch: 19:15, a quarter of an hour to go. Punctuality was an obligation in this fraternity, even in Italy, where time is a fluid rather than a solid. If your contact did not arrive within a few minutes of the agreed-upon time, you left. There was a fallback arrangement in such cases, usually a return meeting the next day at the same time. Massimo sipped his beer, scanned the crowd again, then turned and looked at the Duomo’s hundreds of lit spires and uncountable gargoyles and curlicues. He had seen them any number of times, but he still could not look at them without thinking of the thousands of men over five centuries who had strained to create them. When he turned back to the café, two men stood before him, smiling, apparently pleased at having caught him unawares. He cursed himself for his mental digression.
    The men offered their hands, and one introduced himself in Spanish as Bob. He was stout with a smile that seemed to rise from his rounded belly. As soon became clear, he was serious about his work, but he did not appear to be encumbered by its seriousness, and one might even have called him merry. He was, as Massimo had guessed, the chief of the local CIA office. Massimo would later decline to describe Bob’s companion, except to say that he apparently had no Spanish. In any case, Bob shifted the conversation to English, which the other man did understand, and explained that he needed help with a terrorist named Abu Omar. He did not linger over the details, nor would Massimo later. A spy prefers to share only that which is to his benefit, no more, and much of what he shares will not be true. This presents a conundrum for those who would understand espionage: Trust spies not at all, and one learns nothing. Trust them too much, and one might as well have learned nothing. It is probable that Massimo, who told his story to Guido Olimpio of Corriere della Sera , Italy’s largest newspaper, aggrandized many and fabricated some of the details about his involvement with Bob. But he was verifiably honest about some of his work, and it is certain that something very like what he described occurred.
    The three spies concluded their business in the café and left. They had work to do.
    MASSIMO LEFT MILAN early the next morning for a city in whose police station he sometimes worked. When he arrived at the station, he gave his magnetized ID card to a guard, who scanned it and waved him inside. It was early, and the office was empty. He seated himself at a desk, turned on a computer, and glanced at the summary of news bulletins that greeted officers at the start of the day—nothing interesting this morning. Then he navigated through the computer network, entering passwords as needed, and came to the files he intended to steal. The office had safeguards to prevent the theft of data. For example, the computer on which he was working was offline so that documents could not be uploaded to the Internet, and to get printouts past the guards at the exit required signatures and stamps from superiors. But there were loopholes, and by exploiting one of these, Massimo was able to transfer the files to a computer with an Internet connection and upload them to an e-mail account. Then he shut down the computers and the rest of the day went about his regular duties, a model officer of the law. When he got back to Milan, he downloaded the files, whose subject was Abu Omar, and passed them to Bob.
    Bob had also asked Massimo to establish a few prepaid mobile phone accounts that would not be traceable to “our men.” For this task Massimo turned to a man at a phone company whom he had paid regularly over the years. The man arranged the accounts, and Massimo gave their subscription cards to Bob. As he got to know Bob a little, he learned that he led with pats rather than prods, that he made people feel as if they were one of his band, not merely under his dominion.