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the protagonists of Calvi’s last journey, and for another, by the autumn of 1983 he had shown himself capable of accurately predicting future events.
    In October 1982 Licio Gelli, the venerable master of the P2 masonic lodge, and Flavio Carboni, the man who guided Calvi on his journey to London, were both in prison in Switzerland awaiting possible extradition to Italy. Gelli had been arrested in Geneva on 13 September as he attempted to withdraw $55 million from the Union Bank of Switzerland. He was wanted by Milan magistrates who had discovered the P2 membership lists in a raid on his home and office on 17 March of the previous year. The 962 names were drawn from Italy’s business, political and military elite and constituted a secret state within the state. One thing in particular united them: hostilityto communism and a determination to thwart the electoral ambitions of the Italian Communist party (PCI). The finance police was well represented, with 37 members including the service’s overall commander.
    On 29 October 1982 Paoli informed his finance police handlers that a plan was underfoot to organize the escape of Gelli and Carboni from their Swiss prison. The operation would make use of helicopters and was likely to take place on a holiday and during a period of recreation when prisoners were allowed out of their cells to exercise. The subsequent extradition of Carboni to Italy did nothing to change the plan for Gelli’s rescue, Paoli informed the finance police the following month. His information does not appear to have been particularly welcome. Paoli claimed the tip-off was passed to prime minister Bettino Craxi who allegedly dismissed it as a pack of lies.
    On 9 September 1983, almost a year after Paoli predicted it would happen, Licio Gelli escaped from the maximum-security prison of Champ-Dollon. He was not sprung by helicopter but less dramatically smuggled out of prison by a guard whom he had suborned. He did use a helicopter later, however, to make good his escape from the south of France. ‘One evening the director of the prison accompanied me to my cell in the infirmary and told me that in Switzerland it was not a crime to escape from prison,’ Gelli recalled 22 years later. ‘One night, at midnight, I found all the doors open and I just went out. I didn’t pay anyone anything,’ he said, stretching credulity to the limit. ‘If it had been necessary to give anyone as much as a slap, I wouldn’t have left.’ 1 In reality Gelli was driven out of the prison hiding under a blanket in the back of a guard’s van. He left his pyjamas stuffed with paper tissues in his bed to simulate the presence of a body. An abandoned rope and hook, and a hole cut in the external wire fence, gave the impression that Gelli had escaped over the walls, while a hypodermic syringe and cotton-wool pad impregnated withether were left in his cell, hinting he might have been seized against his will. A helicopter pilot who flew him out of a small private airport near Annecy said he didn’t get a good view of the passenger’s face: Gelli kept his hand in front of it feigning toothache.
    The Swiss authorities had also been informed of the escape plan; their reaction, like Craxi’s, was that the information was totally unfounded.
    Craxi’s lack of enthusiasm for Paoli’s divinatory capabilities is understandable. One of the Italian politicians whom Gelli most admired, his Italian Socialist party (PSI) was in fierce competition with the PCI. As a left-wing party firmly rooted in the western camp, it was an ideal instrument for cold war anti-communist operations, contributed several of its leading members to P2, and was a major recipient of the Banco Ambrosiano’s largesse.
    Paoli’s first reference to the Calvi case was recorded by the finance police on 7 January 1983. The report is a curious blend of fact, error and distortion, but introduces for the first time a character who, investigators now believe, may have played a