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– whose name derived from the “ gladio ”, or short sword, carried by Roman centurions for close-quarter combat – were very far from being the disciplined army-in-waiting the prime minister had described. Instead, they had used their training, and their NATO-supplied explosives, to intervene violently in Italian politics, part of a coordinated“strategy of tension” that they hoped would lead to the public demanding tighter security measures from the government. Over the years, many atrocities of the turbulent seventies and eighties – the so-called anni di piombo , or “Years of Lead” – had been shown to be the work of gladiators; although even today, forty years later, actual convictions were still rare.
    From what she could glean from his memorandum, it seemed her father’s role in all this had only been incidental. Most of the gladiators’ practical training, he wrote, had taken place at Capo Marrargiu, a remote corner of Sardinia, with NATO personnel at Camp Darby only contributing theoretical knowledge in such matters as secure communications and tactics. Even so, she thought she could discern, behind the bland, official tone of his report, a sense of unease at what he’d been ordered to take part in.
    It was not for those of us at Camp Darby to question how the network was being disbanded, any more than it had been our place to express opinions about arming those whose ideology might be fervently anti-communist but whose practices, professionalism and sense of honour were sometimes demonstrably at odds with that of the US Army.
    If she was to find any direct evidence linking the memorandum to his stroke, she realised, she wouldn’t do so from her parents’ house in Florida, five thousand miles away.
    Despite what had happened to her when she was last in Italy, it was time to go back to the country she still thought of as home. She logged into the Delta Airlines page and booked herself a flight.
    That done, she noticed a story in her newsfeed: “Carnivia Creator Steps Back”. Reading the article prompted mixed feelings in her. She was one of the few people who could claim to know Daniele Barbo well, having had a brief affair with him that she’d only ended after her ordeal in the underground cave complex at Longare. She doubted they’d ever resume that relationship now. She found him fascinating, but he was both too difficult and too vulnerable for someone who was still damaged herself. And whilst like everyone else she marvelled at the obsessiveness that had enabled him to create an exact 3D digital replica of Venice, she’d always found Carnivia itself somewhat creepy. She knew her Venetian friend, Kat Tapo, disagreed, considering that Daniele’s much-vaunted encryption technology was simply the modern-day equivalent of the masks her ancestors had worn to gamble, gossip, or conduct liaisons. But Holly was made of more puritan stock.
    She was curious, though, as to what had prompted Daniele’s announcement. She clicked on a few links and found no shortage of speculation. Many were calling it the most spectacular abdication since Dong Nyugen had taken his game Flappy Bird offline after receiving hostile comments about the gameplay, even though at the time it was the most popular game in the world. The general consensus was that Barbo must have suffered some kind of breakdown.
    The suggestion that he had genuinely become interested in wedding seating plans was, of course, dismissed by most as a rather strange joke.
    Holly knew better: Daniele didn’t do jokes. She kept digging. Eventually she came across a post written by a young mathematics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, headed:
    Holy c**p – Daniele Barbo thinks he can solve P=NP
    P=NP, the professor explained, was one of the most important mathematical problems of the computer age, as well as one of the six remaining unsolved Millennium Prize