Killing Ground

Chapter Nine

'I turn to the issue of organized and international crime. The international scene is developing with increasing pace and we cannot afford to get left behind. Borders are coming down, trade is expanding, financial markets and services are becoming integrated. In short, we are no longer an island protected by the sea from unwelcome influences…'

So, you got the message, sir, and about time. The Country Chief eased back in his chair. It was a chore of his work that he should attend the set-piece speeches of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. But he'd get a good lunch, and over lunch he'd have the opportunity to bend the ear of people who were useful to him, and he was out of London, and in spring the gardens at Bramshill College, which hosted senior men's courses, were rather fine.

'… We should be in no doubt that organized crime will exploit every opportunity, technological advance or weakness in order to expand. Organized crime, with its international links and quasicorporate structures, is responsible for flooding the streets with dangerous drugs, undermining financial systems, and, by the sheer financial muscle it has available, it is a real threat to the integrity and effectiveness of the rule of law and is becoming ever more complex and sophisticated…'

Good to have you on board, sir. The Country Chief looked out of the window, at the view of the daffodils and crocuses in flowered islands in the lawns, and around the lecture room. The guy from the National Criminal Intelligence Service was listening, and impassive. That was the guy who had told Ray, a year back, that there was no Sicilian La Cosa Nostra problem in little old UK. About time they grew up and joined the real world.

'… There is the question of the role, where appropriate, of the Security Service, and the future involvement of the Security Service in matters which have historically been the responsibility of the police. There is great strength in exploiting fully the experience, methods, powers and potential of different agencies in tackling common problems. The challenge is how to take advantage of diversity without creating confusion…'

Hey, come to Washington, sir. Come and see the 'confusion' when the FBI and the CIA and the DEA and the ATF and the Revenue and the Customs get their noses onto the same scent. Come and see the catfight when the agencies get to hunt the same target. He knew the guy from MI5, a languid dick of a guy, sitting a row behind the NCIS man. Always looking for new territory. Take my advice, sir, keep the bastards at arm's length.

'… Time is not on our side. I do not think our current structures allow us to punch at our full weight and the status quo will not serve us well in the next century. Our European and, indeed, world partners will run out of patience if we do not evolve a one-stop- shop approach to their involvement with us. I hope we will develop an appropriate mechanism to do justice to this formidable challenge. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.'

Spoken like a man, sir, because patience was certainly wearing thin. Put bluntly, and Ray liked to speak his mind, he thought he found in little old theme-park UK a quite stunning complacency. He could have pointed to specialized police units that were starved of resources, to the Customs and Excise investigators who were driven by the culture of statistics, to the financial institutions in the City who blandly ignored the matter of dirty money. He applauded politely.

Time for coffee.

He was in the queue and talking banalities with a man from Drugs Squad.

'Morning, Ray.'

The guy from S06 was beside him.

'You were looking for a word. How you doing?'

'Coffee's usually pretty revolting. Let's walk and talk.'

The Country Chief, good ears, caught the snap in the voice of the detective superintendent.

'You go without, please yourself. I'm taking coffee.'

So he stayed in the queue, made his point, had his cup filled, balanced it on the saucer and walked to the door. The detective superintendent was ahead of him. They went across the wide hallway and out onto the driveway where the chauffeurs waited with their bullshit cars. He liked to say that DEA had a 'blue-collar' mentality, and chauffeur-driven black cars didn't fit the work ethic he believed in. They walked on the lawns and skirted the daffodil clumps and the crocus carpets.

'Nice time of year. So what can I do for you?'

The detective superintendent was smiling, but malevolent. 'Just something that crossed my desk. You have an agent called Axel Moen on your staff-'

'Wrong.'

'I beg your pardon?' The smile had shifted, the face had hardened.

'Put in one-syllables,' the Country Chief spoke slowly as if to an idiot child, emphasizing while his mind ratcheted, 'I do not have anyone of that name on my staff.

Does that settle your problem?'

'An agent with DEA accreditation named Axel Moen.'

'We have around twenty-five hundred special agents, can't know all of them.'

He never lied. He could divert, interrupt, head off, but he would not lie. He knew, from his deputy who had been to Lyon, that quite the most memorable twenty minutes of the Europol conference had been when Garcia, FBI out of Moscow, had put down the Brit from S06. The man's throat was tightening, and the veins were up on his forehead.

'Did you know that a special agent, Axel Moen, travelled down to Devon a bit more than two weeks ago?' 'Maybe I did.'

'Where's he out of?'

'Is that your business?'

'Don't fuck me around.'

'If it's your business, he's out of Rome.'

'Working with your facilities?'

'Maybe.'

'With your knowledge?'

'Maybe. I'd kind of like to catch the next lecture.' The Country Chief threw the dregs from his cup down onto the grass. The lawns around them, between the islands of daffodils and the carpets of crocuses, had just been given their first cut. The dew damp flecked his shoes. 'What's your concern?'

'He went to the home of a young girl, a schoolteacher.'

'Did he?'

'She had received an invitation to go and work for a Sicilian family/

'Had she?'

'Her parents say that your man, Axel Moen, pressured her into accepting that invitation.'

'Do they?'

'The man who has offered her employment has just travelled to the UK under false documentation.'

'Has he?'

'You want it, you'll get it. We reckon you are running some sort of anti-mafia job. We reckon you have trawled round for someone to do the sharp end for you, and you've got your sticky fingers on some poor girl.'

'Do you?'

'You have taken it upon yourselves, you arrogant bloody people, to pressurize and then send a small-town girl to Palermo for some bloody operation you've dreamed up.

Who've you cleared it with?'

'Among your crowd, I don't have to.'

'You are running some naive youngster, filled with crap no doubt, down in Palermo.

So help me, I'll see you-'

'Should have listened to what your fat cat said. Your world partners will run out of patience. Maybe they already have.'

He remembered what Dwight Smythe had said. The words rang in his mind. 'He elbows into a small and unsuspecting life, a young woman's life, and puts together a web to trap her, and does it cold.' He remembered what he himself had said: 'And maybe we should all clap our hands and sing our hymns and get on our knees and thank God that He didn't give us the problem.' He looked into the flushed anger of the Englishman's face.

'Have you thought through the consequences? Do you take responsibility for the consequences?'

'It's something you shouldn't get your noses into.'

'That's shit, that's not an answer.'

'It's the answer you're getting, so back off.'

The Country Chief walked away. He went back into the hall and gave his cup and saucer to a waitress.

He didn't have the heart for the session from the Italian attache on preventative measures being taken by the Banco d'ltalia concerning disclosure, nor for lunch, nor for the afternoon session when they would be 'entertained' by the police colonel from St Petersburg. He felt bad, and he wanted to get the hell out. He felt bad because he had said himself that it was a good plan, a plan that might just work. He had justified, himself, the use of a pressured innocent. He took his coat from the cloakroom. The poor goddam kid…

She had stayed in the villa the day before, fussed over by Angela, lain in the sun while the gardener worked around her, but she had argued that morning with Angela. Yes, she was quite fit enough to take small Mario to school and Francesca to kindergarten. Yes, she was quite able to do the day's shopping. Yes, she would be able to walk the children to school and kindergarten, and do the shopping, before the threatened rain came.

Shouldn't make a bloody drama out of a bloody crisis.

She walked the children, with the baby in the pram, down from the villa and into Mondello. All her childhood, the star who was the centre of attention, she had learned to milk a crisis. Perhaps it had been her going to Rome for the summer of 1992, perhaps it had been leaving home and living lonely at college, but the thought of draining sympathy from others now disgusted her. She could reflect, viciously, that her father had whined drama out of t he redundancy crisis, made a growth industry from it. Her mother complained drama out of the cash-flow crisis. God, it was why she had gone away. She thought, cruelly, that her parents fed off drama, drank off crisis.

Shut up, Charley, close it down. What was drama to Axel Moen, what was his definition of crisis? And where was he? Wrap it, Charley, forget it…

She dropped small Mario at the school gate, bent down so that the child could kiss her. He ran, as he did each morning, through the playground to his friends and was engulfed by them. He was a happy and sweet little boy. If the plan worked, Axel's plan, then the drama would hit the child, the crisis would come with the arrest of the child's father and the child's uncle. She wondered who would play with the child at school the morning after the arrest of his father and his uncle, and the thought hurt deep. So considerate of those children, lying little bitch that she was, Charley acknowledged the growing strength each day of the sun, and she adjusted the parasol over the pram to keep baby Mauro in shade and she had Francesca walk in the shadow of her body. The forecast on Radio Uno had claimed there would be rain later, then promised clear weather for the rest of the week. In a couple of days it would be warm enough to lie on the beach, and go into the sea, and get some of the bloody sun onto the white of her legs and onto her arms and shoulders, and onto the bruises and scabs. Put it on the list, Charley, sun lotion. The children would like it, going to the beach. She left Francesca at the kindergarten.

Through the shopping list. Tomatoes, cucumber, salami, non-fat milk, potatoes and oranges, apples… She ticked each item on her list. There was a farmacia on the road below the piazza, near to the Saracen tower.

She wondered if the habit of coming each morning with the children and the baby to the piazza and the shops and the school and the kindergarten meant she was now recognized. The old man who sat on his chair under the black umbrella that protected the ice blocks around his fish, he nodded gravely to her, and she flashed him her smile.

Angela only bought fish on Friday mornings, and then from a shop. Charley promised herself, if Angela were out for lunch one day, if Charley had the responsibility to make a hot meal for the children, then she'd buy fish from the old man with the black umbrella. She was on her way to the farmacia for the sun lotion when she saw the photograph.

On the newspaper stall, on the front page of the Giornale di Sicilia, in colour, was the photograph.

The photograph leapt at Charley, caught at her throat. She stood numbed in front of the newspaper stall.

In colour, in the photograph…

An old woman with thick legs held in bulging stockings wore the widow's clothes of black. She sat on a small household chair and her arms were held out and her head was raised as if she screamed anguish. Behind her was a priest, behind the priest was a crowd of watching men and women and children, behind the crowd were the tall and wide symmetrical lines of the close-set windows and narrow balconies. In front of her was the motorcycle that tilted on its stand. In front of the motorcycle with the red fuel tank and the eagle's head was the body. In the foreground of the photograph, in colour, was the head of the body. Blood was spread on the ground from the mouth and throat of the head of the body.

She rocked on her feet. The eyes of the woman behind the counter of the newspaper stall glinted at her.

It was a young head. She had not seen the bloodied head before. The head had been hidden from her by the helmet with the dark visor. A young and thin-faced head that was topped with a wild mat of close-curled hair was clear in the photograph. Charley knew the motorcycle. When the boot had lashed her, when she had loosed the strap to her handbag, when the glove had groped for her necklace, her face had looked up at the motorcycle.

Her words, Charley had said to Giuseppe Ruggerio, 'Just wish I'd been able to scratch his eyes out or kick him in the bloody balls.'

Her words, said to show that she was the big brave kid, 'I mean leave him something to remember me by.'

She turned away. She thought that if she stayed to look at the photograph, in colour, she would vomit on the street in front of the newspaper stall. It was the motorcycle she remembered, definite. Charley walked past the old man who sold the fish from under his black umbrella. She pushed the pram to the pier where the fishermen worked on their nets and at their boats. She stared out over the water. Such peace. As if it were a place for poets, a place for lovers. Scattered cloud shadows of turquoise on rippled water. Christ, she understood. The power of life and the power of death was around her.

Axel had told her of the power. No poets around her, no lovers. Men were around her who would kill a boy, cut his throat, leave him with his motorcycle outside the block where his mother lived, and go to eat their dinner.

She murmured, 'Don't worry, Axel Moen, I am learning. I am learning that there is no love, no kindness. Satisfied, you cold bastard? I am learning to be a lying bitch. I am learning to survive. That boy had, Axel Moen, quite a decent young face and probably where he came from there was no bloody chance of work or opportunity, what I've had.

So he's dead, and I am learning. I am learning that any bloody sentiment is just a luxury for tossers. My promise, I have forgotten the kindness of Angela Ruggerio and the love of small Mario and Francesca, I will stitch them up, do my best. It's what you wanted, right? You wanted me to learn to be a lying bitch. Satisfied?'

She pushed the pram to the farmada and she bought the sun lotion for the beach. She pushed the pram to a bar where there was a telephone and she rang Benedetto Rizzo and told him when she next had a free day, and she didn't speak of love and kindness.

Charley doubted that, until the day she died, she would forget the photograph in colour.

While the first drops of rain fell, she pushed the pram back up the hill to the villa.

As snails and slugs come out after rain has fallen and leave tacky and shining tracks on concrete paths that merge and cross and meander, so too moved the surveillance teams.

The man from Catania was first followed by a taxi driver as he went in search of a declaration of loyalty from his brothers. When the man from Catania journeyed on across his territory to gain the same declaration from his wife's brothers, he was watched by three picciotti on motorcycles. The driver of a bread-delivery van shadowed the man from Catania as he drove the big Mercedes, weighed down by the reinforced windows and by the armour plating inserted in the doors in his cousin's repair yard, reported on a meeting with his consigliere. A student from the medical school of the university watched the home of a capodecino in the Ognina district of the city to which the man from Catania came. All of them, the taxi driver and the picciotti and the driver of the bread-delivery van and the student, were paid by the man from Catania. All of them betrayed him and reported his movements to Tano, who belonged to Mario Ruggerio.

Slugs and snails, after rain has fallen, move from their cover, leave the slime of their tracks, ignore the hazard of poison pellets, crawl forward to kill the plants that have no defence.

Slugs, on their bellies, on the move… A woman who cleaned the living quarters in the carabineri barracks at Monreale had met with Carmine before her slow and laboured walk to work. Her husband's first cousin's son, from Gangi in the Madonie mountains, was held awaiting trial in Ucciardione Prison… Her security clearance to clean the living quarters of the barracks had not picked up the family connection, but the vetting had not been strict as her work did not give her access to sensitive areas of the building.

On her knees she scrubbed a floor. Two pairs of feet were in front of her, waiting for her to move her bucket of soaped water. When she looked up she saw the uniformed carabiniere officer and his colleague who was dressed in the clothes of a building artisan. With reluctance, she pulled the bucket to the side of the corridor. They passed her by, as if they did not notice her. She knew the names of all of those officers whose rooms she was not given access to, and the door of the room of Giovanni Crespo was locked to her. When she reached the end of the corridor, where the doors opened out on to the car park behind the barracks, she could see the small builder's van, washed in the driving rain, with the ladder tied to the roof frame and with the stepladder jutting up between the seats. The cleaning woman had a poor memory. In pencil, on a scrap of paper, she wrote the registration number of the van. Without the help of a good lawyer, her husband's cousin's son would spend the next eight years of his young life in Ucciardione Prison.

Snails, crawling in their slime, on the move… The leader of the surveillance team of the squadra mobile had read the reports of each of the teams working the Capo district, pitifully brief reports. He took those reports to the apartment of the magistrate. Three days gone, seven days remaining, nothing seen that related to Mario Ruggerio. The magistrate smiled his thanks, seemed to expect nothing else, as if he realized that only ten days of surveillance with only three teams of men, only three men to a team, made the task impossible. What surprised the leader of the surveillance team, there was a brightness in the gloom of the room that the magistrate had made his workplace. The brightness was from flowers. He knew, everyone knew, that the magistrate's wife had gone north with the children, but the flowers were a woman's choice. The flowers were on the magistrate's desk, right beside the computer. He told the magistrate that his men were the best, that they were all committed, but that the time and resources given them were inadequate. When he left the magistrate, he went through to the kitchen where the bodyguards smoked and played cards and endlessly read the newspapers' sports pages and drank coffee, he asked after his friend, the maresciallo. But his friend was away on a course. There was nothing more to keep him in the apartment. He left the guards and the lonely and isolated man. He hurried through the splattering rain to the Capo district and his own shift. It would be a bastard, wandering through the labyrinth of alleys in the rain.

It was three years since Peppino Ruggerio had needed to drive to Castellammare del Golfo. Then to eat a meal with his brother and to meet with a foreigner, today to take lunch with his brother and to meet with a foreigner. It was the Spanish language that Mario had needed three years before, and again today… There was a direct route from Palermo to Castellammare del Golfo, on the autostrada to Trapani, and there was the country way. His choice, today, was to use the remote road, narrow and winding, that went south of Monte Cuccio and north of Monte Saraceno.

The clouds had gathered from early morning, darkening and spreading from the west. The rain had hit the car as he approached Montelepre. Not until he had driven his big car out through the villa's high gates had he made the snap decision to go to Montelepre on his way to Castellammare del Golfo. He came as a pilgrim to Montelepre, the town hanging, as if on crampons, from the rock face. He came today to Montelepre to see the birth place and the living place of Salvatore Giuliano. It was right that he should come to Montelepre as a pilgrim and consider and learn the lessons of the life of the bandit, and of the death. Nothing changed in Sicily. The lessons remained, as apposite now to Peppino and his brother as they had been nearly half a century before to Salvatore Giuliano. He came in humility, as a pilgrim, that he might better learn the lessons.

Peppino parked his car outside the Pizzeria Giuliano at the top of the town, where the roofs were merged with the cold rain cloud. He looked around him. He was huddled under the drop of his raincoat, which he had draped over his head and his shoulders.

The rain bounced from the cobbles and spattered his shoes and the legs of his suit trousers.

There was no money in the town, no opportunity, no work. The rainwater gushed down the steep alleys around the Chiesa Madre, and the terraced homes faced with cracked ochre plaster seemed to crumble before his eyes. A lesson: there had been money in the town when Salvatore Giuliano, the bandit, had lived here, but with his death it was gone. A lesson: Salvatore Giuliano had been hunted by many thousands of carabineri and troops from the regular army, and it was said he was responsible for the killing of more than four hundred men, and he had been destroyed when his usefulness had expired. He did not know where in the town Giuliano had lived, did not know in which piazza Giuliano had organized the firing squads that executed men for

'disrespect of the poor'. A lesson: Giuliano had been the master tactician, the expert in the art of guerrilla warfare, and he had been an angel to the poor of the town, and he had been the handsome idol of the young women, and nothing could have saved him. A lesson: far from home, abandoned by those who claimed to be his friends, in Castelvetrano to the south, the cheek of Giuliano had been kissed by the Judas-man Gaspare Pisciotta. A lesson: a man who had been a king was shot to death as a dog in a gutter. Peppino stood in the high streets of Montelepre and the rain ran in his shoes and wet his socks and soaked the trouser legs at his ankles. It was important to him to learn the lessons. Power ended when usefulness expired. A man climbed fast, reached beyond himself, and fell fast. Trust was a kiss, and a kiss was followed by a bullet. He felt the better for it, felt as though the lessons learned by a pilgrim made him wise and more cautious.

Old men hurried past him, sheltering under black umbrellas, and they would have clapped when Salvatore Giuliano had stood in the piazza, and they would have spat when the news had come of his death like a dog in a gutter. A girl watched him. She had a young, plain face, she was fat at the ankles, she wore a cotton dress and had no coat against the rain. She stood outside an alimentari and held a plastic shopping bag. Her father would have told her, and her grandfather, of the fate of the man who climbed too fast, ended his usefulness, and was betrayed. Her mother would have told her, and her grandmother, of the beauty of the face of Salvatore Giuliano. He wondered if the girl dreamed of the bandit. When the rains were finished, when the evenings were hot, did she go to the cool grass under the olive trees, did she look for him? For her, did Salvatore Giuliano live, a fantasy between her thighs? Did she worship him, conjure him to her, an imagination in the hair of her belly, when she was alone in the darkness?

He laughed, in grimness, in privacy, as he looked at the young woman's face.

Ridiculous. OK for the Americans, OK for the Presley freaks… Another lesson: after the Judas kiss and the death like a dog in the gutter, perhaps there was no memory other than the fantasy and imagination of a girl with fat ankles. He walked back to his car.

There was a last lesson to be found by the pilgrim in Montelepre: Gaspare Pisciotta, the trusted deputy of Giuliano, had betrayed him, had died in the medical room of the Ucciardione Prison in shrieking agony, poisoned by strychnine. It was important to learn the lessons of what had gone before.

He drove down the switchback road out of Montelepre, away from the rain-drenched homes and the legend of Salvatore Giuliano.

He went through Partinico, and on through Alcamo, where there had been the first refinery for Turkish poppy paste, and his brother's share of the wealth from the refinery in Alcamo had been the beginning of the cash cascade that had paid for an education at the university in Rome and the school of business management in Switzerland. Alcamo stank of sulphur fumes, said to have been released by the fractures caused by a minor earthquake. Money held in the cash-deposit markets in New York and London, good and long-term and steady-earning money, had come from the refinery in Alcamo.

He drove down towards the sea.

He would not have dared to ask his brother whether he ever hesitated to consider the lessons to be learned from the life and death of Salvatore Giuliano. Would not have asked Mario whether he had climbed too fast, whether his usefulness could expire, whether he feared the Judas kiss, whether he believed that death would come in the way that a dog was shot in the gutter. He had the same fear of his brother that infected all men who met Mario Ruggerio.

He took the road that bypassed the old town and the harbour.

Each time he was in his brother's company, Peppino guarded himself. He was held at the same distance as Carmine and Franco and Tano, and the other heads of families, and the affiliates. When his brother smiled or praised, then Peppino was the same as every other man and felt the warm flow of relief. When his brother glanced at him in savagery, then Peppino felt the same terror as every other man. He could not quantify the personality of his brother, could not determine the chemistry that made him, and every other man, flush with relief at a smile and cringe in fear at a criticism. His brother had control over him, over every other man. Peppino knew that he could never walk away from his brother.

He parked in a lay-by above the town. Below the crash barrier and the wilderness of wild yellow flowers was the sharp crescent of the harbour from which once, in the good times, the fishing fleet had sailed for the tuna grounds, but the tuna had been fished to near-extinction. In better times, the same boats had left the same quayside and gone to sea at night without lights and collected the floating bundles of Turkish opium paste dropped by merchant ships, but there were no longer refineries on the island. The small town, shrouded in rain mist from Peppino's vantage point, with its good times and better times, was solid in the heritage of the organization his brother would control. It was said that in a single decade, from 1900 to 1910, one hundred thousand immigrants had sailed from that small harbour to the promised land of America and made the bedrock of the associations that Mario now collaborated with. It was said of Castellammare del Golfo in the 1940s that four out of every five adult males had been in gaol. It was said in the 1950s, in the first great war between the families, that one of every three male adults had committed murder. Nothing was said of Castellammare del Golfo today, it was a town from which history had passed on. Peppino waited… Often he looked in the mirror in front of him, and he checked the side mirrors, and he saw no indication of surveillance.

Franco drove the car that came alongside.

In the back seat and sitting low down, uncertain and insecure, was the Colombian who had made the long journey.

Tano was in a second car, with more men.

Franco made the gesture for Peppino to follow. He eased his car forward, nudged down the steep road after their brake lights. Franco and Tano would know the same thrill when praised by his brother, and the same hopeless fear when caught in the savage glance of his brother.

Close to the Norman castle, at the heart of the harbour's crescent, facing onto the small blue-painted boats that no longer fished for tuna, was a ristorante. On the door of the ristorante was the sign CHIUSO.

They went quickly from the cars, the rain beating on them, into the ristorante, and Peppino saw the way that the Colombian's eyes flickered around him in nervousness.

Carmine met them, and they walked straight through the empty interior, past the empty tables, to a back room. Peppino saw, dumped on the floor, the open box that housed the counter-measures receiver. The back room would have been swept the night before, and again that morning. Everywhere that Mario Ruggerio did business was cleaned first to his satisfaction.

His brother rose from the laid table. His brother smiled with kindness and friendship and held out his hand to the Colombian, and he gestured for the Colombian to sit and, himself, eased the chair back.

Peppino sat opposite Mario and the Colombian, from where he could lean forward and translate the Sicilian dialect into Spanish and the Spanish into the language Mario understood.

Because the Colombian, Vasquez, merely toyed with his food, Mario Ruggerio ate all that was in front of him. Tano never left the back room, Franco brought the food from the kitchen. Because the Colombian snatched at morsels, Mario ate slowly. Because the Colombian gulped the Marsala wine, Mario drank only water.

His demeanour was of respect, offering the warmth of hospitality, but he dominated.

Peppino watched and admired. The Colombian, Vasquez, had come to Sicily, made the long journey because the expertise of Mario Ruggerio was needed. Peppino felt a certain pride for his brother, who had never travelled outside the island. The questions he translated, spoken by Mario in a tone of unmistakable gentleness, were the snake's questions.

'From your journey, you are not too tired?'

The Colombian had flown from Bogota to Caracas, from Caracas to Sao Paolo, from Sao Paolo to Lisbon, from Lisbon to Vienna, from Vienna to Milan. He had driven from Milan to Genoa. He had sailed on the ferry from Genoa to Palermo.

'Is there such a great problem when you travel?'

There were many problems.

'What is the reason for the problems?'

The Americans were the problems.

'In what way are there problems from the Americans?'

Because the DEA were in Colombia.

So mildly, as if he was an old man who was confused, as if the Americans were not a problem that concerned him in Sicily, Mario Ruggerio shook his head in surprise.

'And I hear that there is crop destruction paid for by the Americans, is that so?'

The Americans were paying to have the fields of coca sprayed from the air.

'And I hear, also, that Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela has been arrested, is that true?'

He had been arrested.

'And his brother, Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, arrested?'

Both the brothers were under arrest.

'And Henry Loaiza Ceballos?'

He, too, had been arrested.

'And the treasurer of the cartel?'

He had surrendered.

'Were they careless? How is it possible for so many principals to be arrested?'

They had been arrested because they had used telephones, and the DEA had brought in interception technology.

A sad smile of sincere sympathy seemed to spread on Mario Ruggerio's face. He made a gesture with his hands that implied he himself would never have been careless and used a telephone. Peppino translated. He recognized the domination his brother achieved by making the Colombian confess to the weakness of his organization.

'You are disrupted?'

Business continued, with difficulty.

'What weight can you provide?'

They could provide five tonnes.

'Refined?'

It would be five tonnes refined.

'Where is delivery?'

The delivery would be on the European mainland.

'The price, what is the price?'

The price was $6,000 a kilo.

He had taken, as he had asked the question, as Peppino had translated the question and the answer, his Casio calculator from his pocket. His finger, for a brief moment, hovered over the 'on' switch. He listened to Peppino's translated answer. He was laughing. He put the calculator back in his pocket. His rough hand was on the Colombian's arm, squeezing it as he chuckled.

'I hope you have a good journey home. Before you go home I hope you will find someone else to do business with, and I hope you enjoyed our humble hospitality.

There was a dear friend in Agrigento with whom you might have made a deal, but he has disappeared. There is another dear friend in Catania, but I hear he has lost the stomach for such trading. Of course, if you have a vest to deflect the bullets, if you have a tank to travel in, you could go to Moscow. You know that if you do business with me, then it is honest business. There are others in many countries who would like what you have on offer, but you would have to be confident that you would not be cheated. If you do business with me, then there is no possibility of deception.'

What was the price he could offer?

The Casio calculator was back on the table. The screen lit. Mario's thick fingers were off the Colombian's arm and tapping the keys.

'Four thousand per kilo. Do you take it or do you leave it?'

The figure was acceptable.

'Four thousand per kilo, delivery over six months, through Rotterdam and Hamburg docks. You can do that?'

That, too, was acceptable.

'I pay on delivery. You understand that I cannot pay for what is not delivered past Customs at Hamburg and Rotterdam?'

That was understood.

'How do you wish to be paid? I can send you heroin, refined or unrefined, for distribution in the North American market. I can make available aircraft, 707s, a Lear executive, whatever, that you can sell on. I can pay through cash transfers, or in stocks or government bonds, whichever currency. How do you wish it?'

The Colombian, Vasquez, wished it in cash, invested and cleaned in Europe.

'For cash, invested and managed in Europe by ourselves in proxy lor you, we charge commission of 10 per cent of profits. Do you wish to use our facilities?'

The offer was accepted.

Peppino did not need the calculator. His mind made the calcu-lations. For five tonnes of cocaine, refined and delivered through the docks at Hamburg and Rotterdam, the Colombians would be paid the sum of $20 million. Five tonnes of cocaine would be sold on to the dealers and pushers and peddlers for a minimum of $45 million. When the dealers and pushers and peddlers released it on the streets of London and Frankfurt and Barcelona and Paris it would be worth $70 million. Initial profit, for minimum risk, was $25 million, and the little bastard, the Colombian, would have known that the old man beside him was perhaps the one individual boss in Europe in whose word he could place trust. Plus $20 million for investment, a profit margin of perhaps 8 per cent a year for total safety. A further income of $1.6 million… There had been no raised voices, no vulgar bartering. It had been, Peppino thought, a demonstration of mastery and control. The deal was closed with a handshake, the Colombian's small-boned fist wrapped tight in

Mario Ruggerio's broad fingers. The number of a post-office box on the island of Grand Cayman was given for further communication.

The Colombian was led away.

Mario lit his cigar and coughed. Peppino made the equation. His brother's deal would make a profit of $25 million, plus the commission on the investment, and his brother had no requirement for the money. There was no luxury that he sought, no means to spend the money. The money was the symbol of power. As if to tease Peppino, because Peppino wore a good suit and a good shirt and a good tie, his brother spat phlegm onto the floor and laughed.

Then, like it was an afterthought, something that could so easily have slipped his mind, Mario bent towards the floor and lifted a supermarket shopping bag from beside his feet, put it on the table, pushed it towards Peppino and tipped a handbag from it.

Each stitch of the handbag had been sliced, each panel of the handbag had been cut open. With the handbag were a purse and keys and cosmetics and a credit card and a diary, and tied to the strap was a thin cardigan.

'She is what you called her, a simple girl, but it is necessary always to be careful.'

Peppino took the autostrada back to Palermo. When he saw the road sign for Montelepre he slowed and he looked up towards the mountains. He could not see the town that was built against a rock fall because the rain cloud was too low. What always astonished him about his elder brother was his capacity to merge the broad frame of strategy with the minutiae of close detail, the strategy of a deal with a profit margin of $25 million, along with investment commission, and the detail of a hired help's handbag. He had gone that morning to Montelepre, stood in the rain and walked on the cramped streets, to search for lessons. He accelerated when he was past the turning. His brother had learned all the lessons that could be taught.

The journalist from Berlin had to run to keep alongside her, and her small floral-print umbrella covered only her head and shoulders. The rain ran on his head and his neck.

To the journalist it was quite ludicrous that he should have to conduct what he regarded as an important interview on the street and in the rain with the woman who claimed to have founded the first of Palermo's groups for anti-mafia education. He had waited a week for the interview. Three limes it had been postponed. She was a finely built middle-aged woman, dressed well, and she constantly covered with a slipping scarf the jewellery at her throat. While she talked, while she gave him his interview, she was incessantly yelling into a mobile telephone. The journalist from Berlin was a respected correspondent of his newspaper, he was a veteran of the Russian invasion of Chechenia and of the Gulf War and of Beirut. Palermo defeated him. He could not see the mafia, could not touch it, could not feel it. The woman he had waited to interview did not help him to see, touch, feel. A passing car's tyres carved through a rain lake and drenched his trousers.

'… I founded the anti-mafia group in this city at the time of Falcone's maxi-processo in 1986. I believed the trial of four hundred mafia men would make a turning-point. I was a systems manager with Fiat in the north, but I gave up my job, very well paid, to return to Palermo. I have big support in some of the most hard suburbs of deprivation, I am particularly well known in Brancaccio. My car, my Audi, I can leave it in Brancaccio and it will not be destroyed… I accept that the mafia offers more to young people than the state offers, but it is possible to go forward through education, through the school environment… I have to accept also that progress is very slow, and the culture of the mafia is very strong, but a sense of duty drives me to continue… I can take you to Brancaccio next week, and you may sit with me while I meet mothers of young boys who may be exposed to the contamination of the mafia, that would be most interesting for you… I beg your pardon? Do the criminals regard us as a threat to their way of life? Of course we are a threat to them, through the policy of education and group meetings… If I am a threat, why am I not silenced? I think you are impertinent, I think you are not truly interested…'

Charley sat on the patio.

The rain of the day had gone, its legacy fresher and keener air. The light came low and settled as a creeping, blood-red rug on the water of the bay. It should have been a vision for her to marvel at, it should have been a place where she sat and enjoyed a vista of magnificence, but she was alone and she could not find beauty in the sun's fall across the crescent bay. She had given the children their meal, they were in their rooms. Later she would read to them. Angela had taken the baby to the main bedroom. Most of the day Angela had been in the bedroom. Perhaps company enough for her was the sleeping baby and the pill bottles. The joy of the Roman summer had been in the company of Angela Ruggerio, and the woman was now withdrawn, as if overwhelmed.

One reference only, fleeting, to the great bloody god of family, and nothing to follow it.

Sitting in the fresher and keener air, turning the reality in her mind and twisting it, Axel Moen's concept of a visit to the villa by Mario Ruggerio seemed to her to be laughable.

She murmured, 'Sold a bum steer, Charley, sold shop-soiled goods.' Her fingers rested on the button of the wrist-watch. Would he hear her? Would he be running? Such a small action, to press the fast code onto the button. The sun, far out and blood-red on the bay, was losing strength. So bloody alone…

The car came.

The gates were opened.

The car came forward. The gates were slammed shut, a gaol's gates closing.

The car came up the drive and stopped.

Peppino was home. He was half across the patio when he saw her alone and in the shadow. He stopped, he turned, and the smile spread on his face.

'Charley, on your own – you are better?'

On her own so that she could better think of reality, and cure herself of the danger of complacency, and better live the lie. 'Been a long day, just sitting quietly.'

'Where is Angela?'

The villa was in darkness. Angela was in her room and maybe she was weeping, and maybe she was at the pills. 'Having a little rest.'

'I have some good news for you.'

Good news might be that there was a ticket for a flight, that she was being sent home, that she was returning to a room in a bungalow, to a classroom in a school. 'What's that?'

As if he played with her, as if he mocked her. He laid his briefcase on the patio table.

He went to the doors and switched on the patio light. The light on the patio made the night fall around her. He opened the briefcase. Smiling such sweetness.

'I told you there was a small possibility that your handbag might be dumped. We are very lucky. It was left near the Questura. Damaged, but containing your possessions.'

So close to her, his waist and his groin beside her head and her shoulders. He took her handbag and her cardigan from the briefcase, and each panel of the bag had been cut, and he said that the thief must have searched for a hidden compartment and something more valuable, and he put the handbag on the table. He gave her the keys and the lipstick and the powder box, and the credit card, and the diary, and he said that thieves were interested only in cash, and he gave her the purse, empty.

Peppino said, 'I am really so sorry, Charley, for your experience.'

She blurted, 'He's dead. The boy who robbed me, he's dead.'

His eyes narrowed. She saw the tension in his body. 'How can you know that?'

Axel Moen would have kicked her. Axel Moen would have slapped her. For a moment she had played the clever bitch. She had come out into the shadows of the patio, into the keener and fresher air, to clear her mind, and bloody waded in with two feet. She hesitated. 'I'm being silly. There was a photograph in the paper. A boy was dead in the street in Brancaccio.'

Soothing. 'But you did not see his face, you said he wore a helmet.'

Retreating. 'I thought I recognized the bike…'

'They are scum, Charley. They live on drugs to give them the courage to rob young girls and old women. They steal many bags in a day to feed their revolting habit.

Perhaps, before he had stolen from you, or afterwards, he thieved from a young girl or an old woman whose father or sons had influence. They lead a very dangerous life. You know, Charley, once there were some young boys, not aged more than sixteen years, and they stole the bag of a woman who was married to a mafioso. This criminal identified the boys and had them strangled and had their bodies left in a well. You are a caring person, but you should not concern yourself with the life or death of such scum.'

'Maybe I was wrong about the motorcycle. I am very grateful to you for taking so much trouble.'

His stomach and his groin rested against her shoulder. Always the smile on his face.

He took another handbag of soft leather from his briefcase and laid it in front of her.

'But you have no handbag. I took the liberty, Charley, to replace your handbag.

Please, open it. You see, I remember also that your necklace was broken. I cannot replace its sentimental importance to you, but I do my poor best.'

Angela stood in the doorway, and her hair was dishevelled from sleep, and the blouse hung loose from the waist of her skirt, and she was barefoot. Angela watched.

Inside the handbag was a thin jewellery box. Charley opened the box. The necklace of gold shimmered. She took the necklace in her fingers, felt the weight of the gold links. As she lifted it and draped it at her throat Peppino, so gentle, took it and fastened it, cold against her skin.

Angela turned away.

'Thank you,' Charley said. 'You are very kind to me.'

Peppino asked her to excuse him. He said that he was away early in the morning, that he must pack his bag.

She sat under the patio light, alone, and gazed out over the darkness. God, she wanted so much to be loved and to be held…

TO: D/S Harry Compton, S06. FROM:

Alf Rogers, DLO, Rome.

GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO, Apt 9, Giardino Inglese 43, Palermo, interesting because the heroes of the carabineri do not have files on him, Guardia di Finanze likewise, BUT a lady from SCO no doubt fancies my body.

RUGGERIO is a financial fixer, listed by SCO as living at Via Vincenzo Tiberio, Rome. No criminal history. (Unsurprised that locals have lost him

– workload, long lunches and inadequate resources to track movement, cannot cope.) BUT, BUT if we talk about same joker, he is younger brother of MARIO RUGGERIO (Grade A mafia fugitive). Because I am overworked, underpaid, reliant only on my considerable charm, difficult for me to learn more. DEA/FBI (Rome), underemployed and overpaid, have big dollar resources hence greater access than me – do I check with them for more GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO information?

Two pints, please, in Ferret and Firkin.

Luv, Alf.

Harry Compton stood over Miss Frobisher as she typed the reply for transmission to Rome. She oozed her disapproval, as if in the days of her youth, the days of carrier pigeons, certain standards prevailed in communications. And he didn't care what she thought and ignored her curled upper lip because the excitement ran with him.

TO: Alfred Rogers, DLO, British Embassy, Via XX Settembre, Rome.

FROM: D/S Harry Compton, S06.

Two half pints coming your way. We concerned about use of your body with lady from SCO – could lead to Post-coital Stress Disorder and her requirement for counselling. Do not, repeat NOT, share our interest in GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO with Yankee cousins, nor with locals.

Bestest, Harry.