The Tactful Servant

Francesco Costantini was only an unschooled village boy from Viterbo when he went to Rome at the age of 14 and landed a job as office boy in the U.S. Embassy. His budding career in the world of diplomacy nearly ended three years later when he was fired for getting into a fight. But Francesco was a resilient boy. Soon afterward he landed another job in the British embassy and from there went on to change, in his modest way, the course of history. Last week, having long since retired as one of the most successful spies in history, 62-year-old Francesco Costantini told his story for the benefit of readers of Milan's weekly Candido.

Smoke in the Cellar. "Compared to the open, cordial, jovial Americans," he wrote of the momentous changeover in his early life, "the British were standoffish and haughty. I never learned to like them." He did learn to imitate their cool, diplomatic ways. As the years rolled by and Victor Emmanuel's monarchy gave way to Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, the village boy became a perfect embodiment of that superdiplomat--the diplomatic gentleman's gentleman. As a tactful and understanding embassy servant he was entrusted with all sorts of delicate missions by the well-born young Britons of His Majesty's Foreign Service. He got them theater tickets, arranged discreet assignations, and even took over some of their official functions.

One of these necessary jobs at the embassy was the ritual burning of each day's decoded dispatches. At first the attache in charge carefully supervised Francesco's performance of this daily chore, but after a time (and after Francesco had thoughtfully filled the furnace with damp paper to ensure the production of clouds of steamy smoke that stung diplomatic eyes) the attache let him go it alone. Francesco burned a few of the papers and took the rest (for a small fee) to the Italian military intelligence. "I was certainly not qualified," he writes modestly, "to select the material, all of which seemed to me absolutely incomprehensible." But by choosing a few dispatches at random each day, he proved a great help to Italian strategy. "It was," he declared, "child's play."

Encouraged by his success at the furnace and by the Italian authorities, Francesco tried even bolder schemes. He took wax impressions of embassy keys, pilfered papers from the ambassador's safe, had them photographed and securely back in place before anyone noticed. Once, on duty as night custodian of the building, he removed an entire 24-volume set of official British code books, took them over to his Italian contact, smoked and drank in nervous anxiety for seven hours while they were being photographed, and had them back safe in the morning. That, Costantini did admit, "was a bad moment," but it had a telling effect on Fascist policy. After that. Benito Mussolini's breakfasts were made pleasanter by the fact that he could read reports from Whitehall to Rome often before British Ambassador Sir Eric Drummond himself had seen them.

On Nov. 18, 1935 the League of Nations imposed its sanctions against Italy, but, thanks to Costantini, the Italian dictator knew that they were largely a bluff. When the British home fleet came steaming into the Mediterranean, set on frightening the Duce, Mussolini's fear was considerably abated by the fact that he knew from Admiralty orders that the fleet had every intention of going peaceably home again.

Retirement in Triumph. Costantini's greatest coup was brought off in 1936, when he copped a copy of a highly confidential report of the British government, which declared that "no vital British interests exist in Ethiopia which would impose on His Majesty's government the necessity to resist by force the Italian occupation." Mussolini ordered the report printed in his official Giornale d'ltalia. There was consternation in Whitehall. But Whitehall's new vigilance did not uncover Costantini himself, who stayed on in the embassy, unsuspected, performing his tasks for another year before retiring to the lumber business.

"Out of my risky activity," he lamented last week, "I gained no fortune, no material or even moral recognition." According to Britain's Foreign Office, however, Costantini's work did not go unsung. Without revealing details, a Whitehall spokesman admitted last week that "the whole security system of these [diplomatic] missions has been reconstructed" as a result of his activities. Now a breeder of tropical fish, Costantini modestly admits: "I was an inexpert spy, but I was smarter than the English."

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