The Medici Conspiracy Read Online Free PDF

address his father as “voi,” the Italian equivalent of the French “vous.” In those days, the commander of the local Carabinieri would cuff children over the head if they were out on the streets too late, when they should have been home eating dinner with their parents. He studied law at Naples University but preferred law enforcement as a career and joined the Carabinieri when he was nineteen. In the nearly forty years between then and Operation Geryon, Conforti was involved in one tough assignment after another. He was in Sardinia in the late 1960s, the years of Sardinian banditry, during which time his wife and first daughter needed bodyguards. In 1969, he moved to Naples to become commander of the Poggioreale area, with its notorious Poggioreale prison. This area Conforti himself describes as “fetente,” fetid—nasty and stinking—a place where his wife had to lock herself and their daughter in their bedroom, with water and emergency medicines, refusing to come out until he arrived home. He was promoted to run the investigative unit in Naples, a critical time when the Camorra (the Naples region version of the Mafia) and the Sicilian Cosa Nostra were beginning to consolidate, as they began their foray into drugs. One of the main Mafia figures escaped from prison at that time and, as Conforti puts it, “Homicides just happened in repetition.” It was gang war. His successes there resulted in further promotion, this time to Giuliano, probably the most Camorra-infested area in the Naples hinterland, after which he was given command of the entire Naples area. He was moved to Rome in the late 1970s and given command of the operational unit there, at a time when terrorism was growing, in particular groups like the Red Brigade.
    Conforti has been involved in all the hard, intractable problems of Italian crime. He has learned the tricks of the trade, has spent long parts of his career working undercover, against the most formidable, well-equipped, determined, and organized criminals that Italy has produced. Despite the pressures on his wife and daughter early in his career, he and his wife had three more girls, and Conforti is now a grandfather five times over. Such
is his commitment to law enforcement, and the need to uphold Italy’s institutions, that it has rubbed off on two of his daughters, who are themselves magistrates and, moreover, are married to magistrates.
    In 1990, Conforti was given command of the Carabinieri Art Squad. He was charged with “reviving” it. The squad then consisted of just sixty men, who occupied the palazzo in Piazza Sant’Ignazio—and nowhere else. Within two years, Conforti had established a branch in Palermo, two years after that in Florence. Next, newly opened at the time of the Melfi theft and Operation Geryon, came Naples. Bari, Venice, and Turin lay in the future.
    Conforti himself had no special training in art. At his liceo, or high school, there had been a Professoressa Prete, an art teacher he always remembered because she wore a different hat every day and taught him that, in Italy, one is everywhere surrounded by art. So, for as long as he can remember, Conforti has loved Caravaggio as much as he has loved Beethoven and Chopin, the three artists he most admires.
    He learned early in his time in the Art Squad that though Italian art museums are well guarded, their archaeological treasures are the poor relation. They have less money spent on them and rank lower down in the government’s priorities. And so he took the theft at Melfi especially badly. There was only one aspect of the theft that gave him hope.
    Spectacular thefts, like the one at Melfi, are always carried out with an international angle. The Swiss number plate in this case proved it but I would have suspected an international angle anyway. There is no need to risk an armed robbery just for a local theft. When thieves steal important, high profile objects, they