Free The Last Supper by Philip Willan

the Banco Ambrosiano building in Milan’s Via Clerici, just round the corner from La Scala opera house, was sealed off with heavy bullet-proof glass doors. Armed receptionists checked the identity of visitors. Calvi went to great lengths to ensure the privacy of his professional activities, installing a variety of security devices in his office. An electronic field was supposed to prevent bugs from transmitting out of the room, a scrambler telephone was meant to thwart eavesdroppers, and he clung obsessively to his personal briefcase, stuffed with his most sensitive documents and ‘weighing a ton’, according to his Rome driver, Tito Tesauri. This obsession with secrecy may simply have been the result of a personal paranoia; but itcould also be a sign that his activities were more delicate and sensitive than those of a normal banker.
    From 1978 Calvi began to travel by bullet-proof Mercedes, hiring ten bodyguards to protect his seventh-floor apartment in Milan’s central Via Frua and between three and five to ensure his protection when he was in Rome. There were even guards on hand when he went on holiday to his country villa; usually three, who occupied a caravan in the garden. His fourth-floor flat in the centre of Rome had three alarm systems, including a panic button he carried with him in his pocket in the event of a kidnap attempt, and security cameras. He wouldn’t go to the cinema for security reasons. By the end of his career he was spending $1 million a year on his personal security.
    In his book
The Calvi Affair
, Larry Gurwin observed: ‘One can only conclude that Calvi, in spite of his successful career, was a man haunted by fears: fear of showing his emotions, fear of appearing unworldly, fear of divulging his secrets, fear for his physical safety.’ Calvi’s fascination with ‘secret power’ was illustrated by his admiration for
The Godfather
, Mario Puzo’s chronicle of life – and many deaths – in an American mafia family, where conflict and intrigue were the order of the day and a horse’s head left at the bottom of your bed was worth more than a thousand menacing words. A financier confided to Gurwin how Calvi had once recommended the book to him. ‘Do you know
The Godfather
?’ Calvi asked him. ‘It’s a masterpiece, because everything is in it.’ 4 One of Calvi’s lawyers reportedly exclaimed, during the banker’s trial for currency violations in 1981, that it was impossible to defend a man who had two brains. ‘Brain number one is good,’ said a stockbroker who knew Calvi well. ‘That’s the brain that has built up the Banco Ambrosiano into a big, solid, prosperous, well-run bank. Brain number two has no relation to the first. It’s the brain of a man afraid to look in the mirror in case his reflection should learn his secrets. Brain number two thinks the world is run by conspiracies.’ 5
    There was really only one source of relief for Calvi from the fear and stress generated by his work, and that was his family. Calvi acquired his ‘fluffy’ wife in 1952, five years after he joined the Ambrosiano. Clara Canetti was a vivacious brunette who was studying chemistry at the university of Bologna. She was engaged to someone else when Calvi first met her in the Adriatic resort of Rimini. Undeterred, he began an assiduous courtship. Little would stand in his way when he set his heart on gaining something. It was a characteristic that also applied in the professional sphere and it would earn him bitter enemies. Clara’s younger brother, Luciano, who was 12, opposed the relationship, but he was won round by the gift of two water-pistols.
    Clara has described their first meeting – on the beach of the Pensione Ariston where they were both staying – in an unpublished memoir. ‘He was very handsome: magnificent shoulders, nice legs, a Clark Gable-style moustache; he was rather forward and a bit presumptuous, I would say.’ The war veteran charmed her with tales of his experiences