Antonio Pallante was no workaday, hireling killer; he belonged to the fevered race of political assassins who act alone. In solitude, Antonio Pallante nursed an obsession. The target of his hatred and his plans was suave, astute Palmiro Togliatti, boss of Italy's Communist Party.
A swarthy, black-haired law student of 25, Antonio Pallante lived in Catania in Sicily, an ancient hotbed of violence. Communism, he decided, was the enemy of Italy, and Togliatti was the head and heart of Italian Communism. "I could not bear the thought that he, an Italian, attended meetings of the Cominform," explained Pallante later. Being obsessed, he did not realize that Communism would exploit the martyrdom of Togliatti.
Pallante got some money from his father, a retired forester, saying that he needed it for examination fees at the University of Catania. For 3,500 lire (about $6) he bought a .38 pistol and five cartridges. Then he took a train to Rome, and there rented a room in a cheap boardinghouse. He went to the Monte Citorio Palace, where Italy's Parliament meets, and asked for a visitor's card from a Sicilian delegate, Francisco Turnaturi. (Later Turnaturi denied that he knew Pallante. "When he insisted he came from Randazzo, a place where I had many votes, I did what we all might have done; I gave him a card," explained the deputy.)
"Worst Possible Thing." One morning last week, while a hot sun beat down on Rome for the first time in weeks, Pallante sat in the visitors' gallery and watched Palmiro Togliatti. After a while the Sicilian went outside and lurked in the narrow, cobblestoned Via della Missione. Shortly before noon, he saw his prey coming out— Togliatti and Leonilda Iotti, full-bosomed, warm-eyed secretary to the Red parliamentary bloc. Togliatti & friend were bound for a gelateria and a cooling dish of ice cream. They paid no heed to the young man in the ill-fitting blue suit.