234
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
few trim-looking women in their thirties, exuding propriety, and some
long-haired young men would come late in the afternoon. They had the
brisk but hesitant appearance of employees, probably from Gianelli's
publishing house. A woman who lived on the floor below, who insisted
that she always minded her own business, said that she had seen a blonde
woman, probably in her twenties, quite bosomy but chicly dressed, several
times in the evening. The foreign-looking visitor had a nervous walk,
like a tic, she added. Robins and Hastings decided, at least for the time
being, that there wasn't much to go on here.
In
the meantime, the Bureau, as the FBI is familiarly known, was in
touch with the Italian interior police, which had a long file on Gianelli.
He was a member of a wealthy and prominent Italian family with large
banking and industrial interests, and had himself set up a publishing house
that had strong international connections, particularly with the Soviet
Union and the East European Communist countries, which he visited
frequently. But as was not uncommon in rich Italian families, especially
aristocratic ones with old money, Gianelli was the black sheep, the radi–
cal who went in for revolutionary causes and movements. As a boy, he
had been moody and obstinate. At the age of twenty, Gianelli became a
Communist, but not a passive one, like other rich young men who had
nothing to do. He became an activist. He plunged into the vast network
of Communist activities with a desperate finality, putting his mind, his
money, and his body into the vanguard of the "revolution." But he
soon tired of the legal work of the Party, of what went on on the
political surface. He began to be drawn to the illegal, underground
groups, attached to the Communists but partially independent, with
close connections to the KGB, who believed in more direct action.
Soon, however, he gravitated toward independent terrorist groups who
collaborated not only with the unofficial sections of the official
Communists but with a number of revolutionary sects and even with
right-wing terrorists.
Nothing was dangerous enough for Algie, as he became known in
the terrorist underground, though some of the radical terrorists, who re–
garded him as a political slummer, called him the Cow because he was
milked so often. He funded the toughest German and Italian ultra-Red
gangs and became a friend of the most notorious hit men. One of his
closest friends was Arbuto, the famous Arab terrorist. Algie was jailed a
few times, but the charges were always vague and unproven. His name
appeared in newspaper accounts of bombings and assassinations, but usu–
ally as someone with remote connections to the petty conspirators who
had been arrested or were still being hunted by the police. It was not
clear whether he was protected by his wealth or whether he was too
cautious or too shrewd to be in on the actual bombings or shootings.
