Killing Ground

Chapter Fourteen

She rang the bell.

She hadn't telephoned ahead, hadn't called to be certain he would be in his apartment.

Charley kept her finger on the button. She could hear the shrill baying of the bell behind the door. There was no response, no shout from Benny that he was coming, no slither of footsteps from behind the door. She had her finger a long time on the bell and she swore under her breath.

When the door beside Benny's scraped open, bolts drawn back and locks turned, she took her finger from the bell button. The couple coming through the door beside Benny's were elderly and dressed for Sunday. The man wore a suit and the woman wore black with a dark-grey headscarf over her hair. They eyed her, they seemed to indicate to her that it was not appropriate to make so great a noise on a Sunday morning, then looked away. It was Palermo. They did not ask if they could be of help, they did not tell her if they knew where Benny was. It was Palermo, and they minded their own affairs, did not involve themselves. The man in his suit performed the ritual of locking the door behind him, two keys. Not easy to gauge their wealth. His suit was poor and his watch looked ordinary and his shirt was well washed. Her dress and coat were tired and the scarf on her hair was frayed at the hems and her brooch was very simple. It was Palermo, they made a fortress of their home, guarded their possessions, however meagre, and they hurried to commune with their God and carried their Bibles and their prayer-books. Her finger was off the bell's button, the couple were going, slow and unsure, down the formal staircase, and again Charley cursed. She cursed Benny for not being there when she came for him. She had not considered that he might not be there, and waiting.

Sunday morning… Peppino going with Angela and the children to Mass, not to the church nearest the villa in Mondello, but to their regular church beside the Giardino Inglese. She had begged a lift, she had said that she would wander in Palermo and made a joke that Sunday morning was the safest morning to be alone on the streets. She had left them, as they had mingled outside their church with the professionistici and the wives in their finery and the children in their smart best. Now she cursed Benny Rizzo because he was not in his apartment, not available to her. Perhaps he had gone to his mother, perhaps he had gone to deliver a photocopier, perhaps he had gone to a talk-shop meeting. She felt raw annoyance, and she stamped her way down the staircase and out into the sunshine. She could not see him, and she wondered if he was there, and if Axel Moen watched her.

Sunday morning… She walked aimlessly. She was on the pavement of the Via della Liberta. The heat was rising. The sun was bright. The street was taped off as the long-distance runners prepared for their race. They were slapping their bodies, or jogging nervously at the thought of pain, and some were checking that they had brought the silver foil to wrap around themselves after the exhaustion and dehydration of the run. The pavements were her own. A few responded to the tolling church bells and hurried past her. She went by shuttered restaurants and darkened shops, past the strident monuments of cavalier men posturing on rampant horses, past the deserted market of the Borgo Vecchio with the empty, skeletal frames of the stalls. She had no map with her, she did not know where she was going. She passed the shadowed alleyways that led into an old quarter, and the modern blocks of the new buildings on the harbour front, and she saw the towering hulks of the waiting car ferries. She was so alone. She had not considered that Benny would not be there, waiting, available. She stared at the prison, the ochre walls in which weeds grew, the guards with the rifles on the walkway above the wall, at the high, small windows from which underpants and socks hung to dry, at the patrolling military truck in which the soldiers carried rifles, where Peppino would be taken and where Angela would go with small Mario and Francesca and the baby at visiting times. She had needed him, needed Benny, and she despised him.

Sunday morning… Charley walked without purpose. She went by cats that glowered at her, then ripped at the rubbish bags, past packs of dogs that slunk from her.

She lingered outside the Teatro Massimo, where the walls were boarded against the vandals and the weather, where pigeon dirt and vehicle fumes had stained the walls in equal measure. She stood under the trees beside the derelict building and looked at the horses that were harnessed to the carrozzi, and she thought of the picket line of decent people at Brightlingsea and of how they would have responded to the dismal horses hooked to the empty tourist carriages. There was a lovely roan-and-white horse with its head down in passive acceptance. She was at the Quattro Canti. It was where Benny should have brought her. Shit, it wasn't much. Shit, all the fuss in the guidebook. Shit, the statues were grimed, fume-polluted, crumbling. So alone, so miserable, so lost…

She swore again because he was not with her, was not available.

She was on Via Mariano Stabile. The church was a red-stone building. She heard the singing of the hymn, familiar. She did not go to church at home, nor did her father and nor did her mother. The red of the church was so out of place in the grey and ochre of Palermo. She did not go to church at home because there she was never alone and miserable and lost. She crossed the street to the church. She stood outside the opened iron gates. It was so bloody unfair that she was alone and miserable and lost.

The words were faint, feeble. A reedy chorus.

Then sings my soul, my saviour come to me,

How great Thou art, how great Thou art.

She was drawn to the door. She walked into the grey light of the church, broken only where the sun was against the many-coloured glass of the window. The door slammed shut behind her and faces turned to notice her, then looked away. She stood at the back.

She saw the plaques remembering the long-dead. The organ rose in a crescendo, not matched by the scattered voices.

Then I shall bow in humble adoration, and then proclaim, My God, how great Thou art… Then sings my soul, my saviour come to me, How great Thou art, how great Thou art.

It was the end of the service. A woman came and spoke to her, in piping English.

Was she new to Palermo? Had she mistaken the time of Sunday worship? She was most welcome whether or not she could sing – but could she sing? Would she like coffee?

Charley hoped so much to be wanted, loved, and she said she would like coffee. She went with other ladies, dressed as they would be for church in Exeter or Plymouth or Kingsbridge, up into the living room of the clergyman's apartment beside the church.

She wanted so much to please and to be welcomed… She was told that they were the remnants of a great English society that had been based in Palermo, they were the nannies who had married Sicilians and stayed, they were the artists who had fallen for the light over the mountains and on the sea and stayed, they had come to teach the English language and stayed… She was a plaything, exciting because she was new.

She fled. They wanted her name and her telephone number and her address. She could not lie to them. They wanted to know whether she would sing with the choir, whether she would come to the barn-dance evening, whether she could help with the flowers. If she stayed she would lie. She left them bewildered, confused, she fled out into the bright sun of the street.

Alone, miserable, lost, she went to the bus stop on the Via della Liberta that would take her back to the villa at Mondello, and she cursed Benny for not being available.

In the car, beside her husband, Angela had withdrawn into the web of her mind.

She wore a fine dress of respectful green, chosen by her husband, and a coat of fox pelts, chosen by her husband. She wore discreet jewellery at her throat and round her wrists and on her fingers, chosen by her husband. Her husband liked the coat of fox pelts and she wore it as if it were a badge of submission. The air-conditioner blew cool air over her. Her face was hidden from him by the dark glasses, chosen by her husband, that protected her eyes from the sun's glare that glittered up from the road. The children were in the back of the car, and the baby was corralled in the special seat, and they were quiet, subdued, as if they caught her mood. In the web of her mind were cascading thoughts…

She loathed Sicily. After Mass they had been to an apartment along the Via della Liberta, near their own apartment in the Giardino Inglese, and they had drunk aperitifs of Cinzano and nibbled at canapes, and her husband had murmured that their host was useful as a contact in business, and deference was shown her by the other wives. .. She had magnificence around her, status, ever more lavish presents brought from abroad.. . She loathed the half-truths of the people and the double-talk of their coded whispers.

She was a prisoner… She had asked, quietly, if they could go to their own apartment in the Giardino Inglese, just to visit, not important, to collect clothes and more toys, and her husband had dismissed the suggestion. She had wondered if his woman was there. .. She could not leave him. Her upbringing, her schooling, her rearing all served to prevent her leaving her husband. Her upbringing was the influence of her father, Catholic, conservative and working in the diplomatic section of the Vatican. Her schooling was the work of nuns. Her rearing was the effort of her mother to whom divorce was unthinkable and separation was disaster and marriage was for the extent of life. No court in Sicily would give her custody of the children if she left… If her husband recognized her unhappiness, driving the fast route to Mondello, if he cared for her unhappiness, he gave no sign to her. Only once had the mask cracked on his face, the morning he had been called down to the EUR to meet with the magistrate and the investigators of the Servizio Centrale Operativo, only that one morning had the bastard man crumpled – and he had come back, and he had laughed off the ignorance of the magistrate, and the matter was never talked of again. She did not know the detail of his involvement, she was the Sicilian wife kept quiet and beautiful under the weight of presents. She believed now that her husband's involvement was total, and she could not leave. The wife of Leoluca Bagarella had tried to leave, and it was said that she was dead, it was said in the Giornale di Sicilia that her way out was to have taken her life.. . He stroked her hand, a small and unimportant gesture to him, as if he patted the paw of a prized pedigree dog, and he smiled in his confidence… Angela detested her husband.

If it were not for the brother, the stumbling, fat little snail of a man, then her husband would be nothing more than another criminal on the streets of the island she loathed. It made her sick, physically sick, when the rough hands of the brother touched the smooth skin of her piccolo Mario, when he slipped through a back door early in the morning or late in the night and touched her son and played on the floor with her son…

Angela smiled at her husband, and he could not see her eyes.

The tail was on 'Vanni Crespo.

Before, the tail had been successful only sporadically, but Carmine had directed more men, more picciotti, to the tail.

The tail could now report each day on the pattern of the life of 'Vanni Crespo. They knew the clothes he would wear, casual or formal or the builder's overalls. They knew the cars he would use, the Alfetta, the Fiat 127, the builder's van. By trial, by error, Carmine had dictated what resources were necessary to cover the movements of 'Vanni Crespo. Each end of the main road leading from the carabineri barracks at Monreale was watched that Sunday morning by a car and by two youths on motorcycles.

The previous evening, it had been reported to Carmine, 'Vanni Crespo had driven the builder's van to meet with a woman in a lay-by on the road between Trapani and Erice, and the previous afternoon he had used the Fiat 127 and called on the home of a colleague living in Altofonte, and the previous morning he had been in the Alfetta to the barracks at Bagheria.

Carmine had learned the patience of Mario Ruggerio. Each time he met with the men who drove the cars and the picciotti with the motorcycles, he repeated the description – weight near to 80 kilos, height near to 185 centimetres, fair skin, gold hair – of the American man taken to see the magistrate, Tardelli.

Two cars, three motorcycles, changing position as they went, followed the Fiat 127 from the barracks at Monreale down the fast road, Route 186, towards Palermo.

'I said to him, "It is a sad game to play when there is no trust." I said that to him.'

'He told you that it was not personal.'

'I suggested to him that he had put "an agent of small importance" close to Mario Ruggerio.'

'Which he did not care to confirm.'

'I remarked to him that I would not wish it to lie on my conscience, the danger to that agent, unless the life of the agent was held to be of no importance.'

'He did not debate semantics with you,' 'Vanni said. 'May I tell you, dottore, what he asked me when we came out of your place in the Palazzo? He asked why you pissed on him. I said you were anxious that you might not have a free hole in your diary for his funeral and for his agent's funeral. They're earnest people, the Americans, he found it difficult to register the humour of what I said.'

"Vanni, please, I need help.'

They were alone in the sun-less room of the apartment. Out in the kitchen a radio played, and there were the distant voices of his ragazzi. He had apologized sincerely for interfering with the Sunday plans of the carabiniere officer, but that was the day in the week when he conducted his business within the confinement of the office in his apartment. He did not go to Mass on Sundays, did not take the bread and the wine of Communion, did not think it right to go to a church with his guards and their guns. He would go to church only for funerals and for occasional moments of stressed reflection when he could judge that a church would be emptied, but not on Sunday mornings. His wife would be in church for the Mass in Udine with his children, and he could tell himself that he did not care what man now stood and sat and knelt beside his wife.

'How may I help, dottore?'

'I grasp at straws. Mario Ruggerio has taken, with blood, the supreme position.'

'I read the digests from Intelligence.'

'Each new man, when he takes the supreme position, must demonstrate to the families that he has strength.'

'I know the history.'

'To demonstrate that strength he must attack the state, show that he has no fear of the state. It is now, 'Vanni, a time of extreme danger.' The carabiniere officer, without asking permission, had lit a cigarette, and the smoke from the cigarette watered his eyes. 'It is possible that I am the target, possible, that will demonstrate the strength, but there are many others.' The carabiniere officer was shifting in his seat, awkward, dragging at his cigarette. 'I take you into areas of confidence, 'Vanni, as I hope you will take me into your confidence. This morning I go to the Chief Prosecutor, by whom I will be criticized and taunted, with great politeness, concerning my efforts to capture Mario Ruggerio. I had a wretch who wished for the status of pentito. On the limited information he provided I was given meagre resources for a surveillance of the Capo district, a failure. I urged the wretch to give me more information, played on the psychology of his fear, and he hanged himself, a failure. I have spoken in the last hours with the DIA and with the squadra mobile and they have nothing for me, more failure.

All around me is the murmur of sneering laughter.'

'What do you want of me?'

'You run an agent of small importance, you collaborate with the American, you thought last week that the agent was close. We had champagne, iced, and we waited…

It was a blow to my stomach. Please, give me hope, more than a floating straw, 'Vanni, share with me the detail of your agent.'

'You embarrass me, dottore, but the gift is not mine to give.'

The carabiniere officer jackknifed to his feet. The magistrate saw the turmoil that he had made, and the officer bit at his lip. It was the true moment, and he recognized it clearly, of his isolation.

'Of course. Thank you, on a Sunday, for your time.'

Within fifteen minutes of the departure of the carabiniere officer, 'Vanni Crespo, his friend who would not share with him, Rocco Tardelli was on the move. The ragazzi were quiet around him, moodily silent in the cars. They read the signs of the isolation of a man. The signs were across the inside pages of the newspaper. The newspaper wrote that a prisoner in Ucciardione Prison had three times met with Magistrate Tardelli, and wrote that the prisoner had been told by his wife that she rejected his collaboration, and wrote that the prisoner in Ucciardione Prison had hanged himself, wrote that there should be restrictions on the activities of ambitious magistrates.

They crossed the city…

The Chief Prosecutor had glanced sharply at his watch, as if to indicate that he had guests to welcome shortly. He had given no indication that Rocco Tardelli should join his guests for lunch.

'You are an impediment, Rocco. You make a bad image. You disturb the equilibrium.

You make a problem for me. You fight a crusade, you bully your colleagues, you demand resources. Your crusade, your bullying, your resources, where do they take us?

They take us to a prisoner, harassed and threatened, driven to take his own life. Where do we go now? From which direction comes the next tragic disaster? I recommend, as a true friend, Rocco, that you should consider your position most carefully. You should consider your position and your future.'

He could go so easily. He could pass his files to a colleague, he could turn his back on the sniggered laughter and the poisoned barbs, he could be off the island by the evening car ferry or by the early afternoon flight. He could win the smiles and relief and thanks of his ragazzi. He could go so easily.

'What do you say, Rocco? What would be the best for all of us?' The smile beamed in his face as if to reassure him. 'Is it not time that new horizons beckoned you?'

He felt old and tired and frightened. The bell rang. The guests had come with flowers and with presents. Old, tired, frightened, and dressed in the clothes he wore for Sundays because he did not go to Mass and did not entertain. His Sunday clothes were crumpled trousers and a shirt that should have been washed and shoes that should have been polished. After he had been hustled through the door, down the flight of stairs, across the pavement and into his armour-protected car, after they had driven past the parked cars and vans and motorcycles, after they had come back to his home, he would eat alone in his room. That would be his Sunday, and the next Sunday, isolated. .. He had needed to know the detail, hold the comfort of it, of the agent in place…

He murmured, as he went to the door, 'I don't quit.'

Benny held the spray can.

The door was closed. The shutters were across the windows. The radio played inside.

He aimed. He squirted the spray can. His hand shook. The paint of the spray can was a brilliant red. The red was the colour of blood. The blood from the wounds of his father, the blood that had seeped and spilled on him. The word was forming on the door beside the black drainpipe. A dog barked at him. What she had said beat in his mind as the red paint formed the word… 'Is it good to be so ineffective that one is unnoticed?'

She made the strength for him as if she stood beside him, goaded him. 'Is it good to be only an irritation and ignored?' Goaded him because he was ineffective and an irritation and he helped with a newsletter and went to meetings and gummed envelopes. It was for his father. The word, dripping with the scarlet of blood, was on the door of the home of Rosario and Agata Ruggerio. It was madness. ASSASSINO.

For the love of Charley, for the nakedness of Charley over him, the word 'murderer' was in blood, his father's blood, on the door of the parents of Mario Ruggerio. The word was sprayed crudely.

The madness was done.

Benny dropped the can.

He stood in the narrow street, and he heard the sharp whistle behind him. A man watched him, and in the shadow under the peak of his cap the man held his fingers to his lips and whistled. The dog had come and taken the can in its mouth and the spray ran from its mouth as if its jaws bled, as his father had bled. He looked a last time at the work of his madness. He started to walk away. He should have run, but she would not have run. He should have charged, but she would not have, as if her nakedness that covered him gave him her protection. He heard the man whistle again, and he turned, twisted to look behind him, and the man pointed to him… She was not there, with him, guarding him…

When he started to run there were men already across the narrow road ahead of him.

When he stopped, when the fear locked his legs, when he turned, there were men already across the narrow road behind him. She had driven him to the point of madness.

The men closed on him, coming from ahead of him and from behind him… She was not there… He ran back down the road and past the blood-red paint. Turned, ran again, turned, and stumbled.

Benny fell.

He lay on the ground and waited for the men to reach him.

Mario Ruggerio had been early to Mass, mingling with the worshippers at a church on the Via Marqueda, swimming with the crowds. Most Sundays he used a different church, but the one on the Via Marqueda was the favourite among many, a great and gloomy vault of a building. He had laid a 10,000-lire note in the collection tray, nothing ostentatious, because the church was patronized by the unemployed and the destitute and the jobbing workers of the Capo district and of Via Bari and Via Trabia and Via Rossini, and he matched their best but shabby clothes. He would not have casually missed the celebration of Mass early on a Sunday morning, the Mass was important to him. There were few regrets in the life of Mario Ruggerio, but it was a continuing frustration to him that he could not sit and stand and kneel beside his wife, Michela, at the Mass, nor be with his children, Salvatore and Domenica. He assumed they were followed, watched. Whether he was in the church on the Via Marqueda, another humble and elderly man searching for a path closer to his God, or in any of the other churches that he used, he always thought hard at that time of his family.

It was now the middle of the day. The restaurants on the Via Volturno and the Via Cavour waited for the families to come, the bars on the Via Roma and the Corso Tukory were filled with talking men. The traffic clogged the streets, the pavements bustled with movement. Before the afternoon, before the time for sleeping came, it was good for Mario Ruggerio to be on the move.

In a bar Tano told him of the movement patterns of the magistrate, Rocco Tardelli.

Twelve men, he was told, now logged the routes used by the magistrate for his journeys from the apartment to the Palazzo di Giustizia, from the apartment to Ucciardione Prison, from the Palazzo to Ucciardione Prison, and the reverse routes. He listened, he asked few questions. Tano told him that there were only three streets that the two-car convoy could use when it left the apartment and when it returned to the apartment.

Tano gave the information. He coughed on his cigarillo, he swilled the dregs of the coffee, he gave the instruction that the bomb should be prepared, he said where it should be placed.

He moved on busily.

In the Piazza Castelnuovo, among the crowds gathered to watch the end of the fifteen-kilometre race, under the blare of the loudspeakers, he met with a businessman.

The businessman had never been convicted of criminal association, was not subject to investigation. The businessman told him that an investment broker from Paris had driven his car the previous Thursday to the sand dunes of the Pas de Calais and there hooked a length of rubber tubing to the exhaust and run the tube into the car and had been found dead the previous Friday. The investment broker had recommended the placing of $1 million in the construction of the tunnel beneath La Manica, and the tunnel between the English coast and the French coast had lost Mario Ruggerio that $1 million of investment. He listened without comment.

As he moved he was shadowed by three young men who stood back and apart from him.

In the Piazza Virgilio, sitting on a bench in the sunshine, an old man who talked with an old friend, he met with the cousin of a man from Prizzi. He had known the man from Prizzi all of his life. He had known the cousin as a youth, but the cousin now lived in Hamburg and had made the long journey specifically for twenty minutes of conversation on a bench in the warmth of the sun. With the cousin of the man from Prizzi he discussed, in close detail, the investment opportunities in the proposed construction of a business park in Leipzig, and the tax breaks that were possible, and afterwards he talked of the similar opportunities in the housing market at Dresden. He pledged, for investment in Leipzig and investment in Dresden, a minimum of $5 million. He noted the deference of the cousin of the man from Prizzi, as if it were known that he was now the power of La Cosa Nostra.

On his way again, walking fast, his escort ahead of him and behind him. He was to take a late lunch at an apartment on the Via Terrasanta with the physician who advised him on the remedy for the rheumatism in his hip, but before his lunch he had to meet with the consigliere from Messina for an explanation of that family's future options and their investment co-operation and the percentages of profit… and he was due also to meet with Carmine on the matter of a carabiniere officer and an American… and with a chemist from Amsterdam who promised facilities for the manufacture of the new range of benzodiazapines and barbiturates… and with Franco to confirm the detail of the pellegrinaggio to the grave of his brother, Cristoforo, the annual pilgrimage with his parents. It was his Sunday, the same every Sunday when the streets and parks and piazzas were crowded, it was his terra-terra routine, down-to-earth and basic, the rhythm of his life on the day the city rested.

He waited for the traffic lights on the junction to change. The cars swept by him, and down the column of cars was a bus. He lit another cigarillo.

When he was not tasked for duty, Giancarlo always came on a Sunday with his wife into Palermo. He met with the leader of his team, and the leader's wife, for the regal pomp and majesty of the celebration of Mass at the duomo, and then the four ate an early lunch in a ristorante on the Via Vittorio Emanuele, and the men tried not to talk of work and the women elbowed them viciously when they failed in their intention, and there was laughter, and after the early lunch they went home to sleep through the afternoon.

When he came into the centre of Palermo on a Sunday, Giancarlo always took his wife on the bus – too many cars, too few parking places.

The bus was full. He and his wife stood, and they gripped tight the back of a seat. The bus pitched them when the driver braked, threw them when the driver accelerated. In the morning the leader of the team had told him, while they walked between the duomo and the ristorante, they started a new assignment on the Piazza Kalsa. Just that morsel of information… Maybe he would be in a car, maybe in a closed van, maybe, God willing, in a building with the video camera and the binoculars and a good chair – maybe there would be no market where they were staked out, and no lemons. The bus stopped sharply. He lurched into his wife. The driver had tried to beat the traffic lights, but had not squeezed through.

Giancarlo, standing in the aisle of the bus, looking over the shoulder of the driver, saw the family cross the road, and the children held balloons that bounced on lengths of string. When their own kids had been that age, little hooligans, he grinned, they had loved to carry balloons…

Giancarlo saw the man.

The kids with the balloons were in front of the man. A couple with a pram were behind the man. A woman in a fur coat and carrying a posy of flowers was beside the man.

Giancarlo saw an old man. The man had turned to face the bus, as if to satisfy himself that it had indeed stopped. Giancarlo saw an old man, a pudgy and weathered face below a flat cap, a jowled chin and throat above a rough cloth jacket.

Giancarlo saw an old man crossing a road at his leisure. The face of the old man leaped in Giancarlo's mind. There was a face in front of the bus. There was a face in a photograph that had been computer-enhanced, aged from twenty years before. The face was gone behind the shoulder of the driver. Giancarlo squirmed to see past the shoulder.

He saw the face of the man a last time, and the man was smiling down at one of the children holding a balloon. Giancarlo matched the face, smiling, with the face, smiling at a wedding reception, of the photograph.

His wife abandoned. Other passengers pushed aside. The driver shouted at. The I/D card shoved into the driver's face. The doors slowly hissing open. The man reaching the far pavement…

Giancarlo jumped from the bus. He cannoned into a couple, in love, hand in hand. He did not look back at his wife, at the shock on her face. The lights changed. The bus pulled forward. Giancarlo ran behind the bus. The horns of the following cars blasted anger at him, brakes squealed. The man was walking away on the far pavement.

Giancarlo had no telephone. The leader of the squadra mobile surveillance team carried a mobile telephone at all times, but mobile telephones were expensive, a rationed item.

His personal radio was on the charger at the Questura, he was off duty, and his pistol was locked behind the armoury door in the Questura. There was a telephone pager on his belt, which only carried incoming messages. He ran forward, reached the far pavement. Because of the anger of the horns, and the brakes' screams, because of the abuse shouted at him through open windows, Giancarlo was for a critical moment of time a centre of attention.

In that moment of time, the man stood and faced a shop window.

Giancarlo, among his own, was venerated for experience and professionalism. For the teaching of surveillance tactics to new recruits to the teams he was often used. If a young recruit had run across a street, through traffic, become the target of horns and insults, become a centre of attention, then Giancarlo would patiently have explained the error of the young recruit. He would have talked to the young recruit about the requirement to merge and blend. He did not know whether he had shown out, whether he was busted, and he did not see the picciotto, a swarthy and heavy-set youth, who protected the back of Mario Ruggerio. In the flush of excitement, experience and professionalism gone, he had displayed the rashness of a young recruit. He stood stock-still. He watched the back of the old man move on, a slow walk, up the Via Sammartino and then turn into the Via Turrisi Colonna. He did not know whether he had shown out.

There was a bar.

Giancarlo ran into the bar. There was a payphone on the counter. A woman talked on the payphone.

Maybe she talked with her sister in Agrigento, maybe with her mother in Misilmeri, maybe with her daughter in Partinico… Giancarlo snatched the telephone. He terminated her call. She howled her protest at him and he flapped his I/D in her face. He was scrabbling in his pocket for a token for the telephone. He was bawling at her for silence, and he fed the gettone and dialled his control. He did not see the swarthy and heavy-set youth sidle across the bar towards him. Again, for a critical moment of time, Giancarlo made himself the centre of attention. The bar's customers, the men, the women, the staff, the matriarch at the cash till, sided with the wronged woman. The screaming was in his ears. With his body he tried to block their hands from reaching the telephone.

His control answered.

His name, his location, the name of his target.

The pain caught him. The pain was in Giancarlo's back and then seeping to his stomach. He said again his name and his location and the name of his target. The questions from his control beat at him, but his concentration and ability to respond to the questions were destroyed by the pain. Which way was the target going? What was the target wearing? Was the target alone? Was the target in a vehicle or on foot? He said again his name and his location and the name of his target, and his voice was weaker and the pain was more acute. He dropped the phone, and the phone swung loose on its reinforced cable. He turned. He looked into the eyes of a swarthy and heavy-set youth.

Giancarlo swayed. The pain forced his eyes shut. He reached for the source of the pain in his back. He found the hardness of the knife's handle, and the wetness. When his knees gave, when he could no longer see the swarthy and heavy-set youth, when the telephone swung beyond his reach, when the screaming burst from grotesquely blurred mouths around him, Giancarlo realized, puzzled, that he could no longer remember the questions that control had asked of him.

The pain was a spasm through his body.

A square had been made.

The bar was at the centre of the square. The north of the square was the Via Giacomo Cusmano, the south was the Via Principe di Villafranca, the west was the Via Dante, and the east was the gardens of the Villa Trabia.

A hundred men with guns, with flak vests, quartered the square. They were from the DIA, and there were two sections of the ROS, and there was the stand-by team of the Guardia di Finanze, and there were men from the squadra mobile. The cordon around the square was given to the military, Jeeps at street corners, soldiers with NATO rifles.

They did not know what the man, Giancarlo's target, looked like, they did not know how he was dressed, they did not know in which direction he had gone, they did not know whether he walked or whether he went by car.

The bar was emptied but for the owner and the matriarch who guarded her cash till.

The body was on the floor. In the back of the body was a short-bladed, double-edged knife. The owner of the bar, facing a wall, his wrists handcuffed in the small of his back, had seen nothing. Perhaps the customers had seen something? The matriarch had seen nothing. The customers were all strangers to her and she knew none of them.

A car brought the wife of Giancarlo to the bar, and a young priest had run from the church on Via Terrasanta. The photographers from the newspapers and the cameramen from the RAI crowded the pavement.

The maresciallo elbowed a way through for the magistrate and Pasquale bullocked him into the bar, into the crush that circled the body. There were some who had come from family gatherings and wore their suits, some had come from the tennis courts, some from their seats in the football stadium, some from their sleep. Beside their shoes and sneakers and sandals was the body and the blood. The magistrate saw the face, bleak, of 'Vanni Crespo, and pushed towards him.

'It was shit luck,' 'Vanni Crespo said. 'We were so close…'

The tail had watched the car of 'Vanni Crespo, the carabiniere Alfetta, from the barracks at Monreale to the bar on Via Sam- martino. The tail was locked on 'Vanni Crespo.

' He brought me lemons, 'Vanni. I had fish for my meal on Friday. They are not supposed to do my shopping, my boys, but they prefer to do it than to take me to the market, so they break the rule, they bought fresh mullet for me. He had brought me lemons and made. 1 joke of it. I had one of his lemons with my mullet. He was the I 'est of men.'

'It was shit luck,' 'Vanni growled. 'He was on the bus with his wife. He saw Ruggerio.

He got off the bus. He ran through the traffic. That's the decision. You wait and you lose the target. You run and you alert the target. You've ten seconds, five seconds, to make the decision and you live by it and you die by it.'

The lemon was most sharp in the taste.'

'He would have shown out when he ran. Ruggerio would have had a back marker. He had to go to the bar for communication. The back marker would have followed him.

You need the luck and all you get is the shit.'

'There are six more of his lemons in my kitchen… Do you believe in luck, 'Vanni?'

He saw the tears well at the eyes of the magistrate. He took out his handkerchief. He did not care who saw him. In the crowd in the bar, he wiped the running tears from the magistrate's face. 'I believe in nothing.'

'Do you believe your agent of small importance will be lucky?'

He remembered her, as he had seen her, the last look back from the side of the road before he had dropped down into the car. The last look, across the pavement, and between the trees, and across the sand, and she had stood against the brightness of the sea, and the sun had caught the white of her body skin as her towel had slipped. In the bar, with the corpse, with the soft whimpering of the widow, with the crowd, with the smell of cigarettes and cold coffee, he remembered her.

'I am sorry, dottore, I cannot share with you because it is not in my gift.'

He drove a way through the crowd in the bar, pushed through the crowd on the pavement and the street. A good man had had ten seconds, five seconds, to make a decision and the result of the decision was a mistake, and the result of a mistake was to lie dead on the dirty floor of a bar that was lit by flashlights. He went to his car, walked leaden in the dusk light.

The tail followed the Alfetta driven by 'Vanni Crespo. The tail was delayed by the military cordon around the square of streets after the Alfetta had been waved through, but it was of no consequence. The tail was linked by radio to a second car and to motorcyclists who waited outside the cordon. As if a chain held the tail to the Alfetta .. .

When he had heard the explosion of the car horns, and then heard the insults shouted, Mario Ruggerio had paused in front of a shop window. He had appeared to study the contents of the shop window. An old practice, one that his father would have known, was to use a shop window as a mirror. He had seen a man come at desperate speed through the traffic lanes, then reach the pavement and stop. The man, stopped, had stared up the street towards him. If the man had had a radio he would already have used it, if the man had had a mobile telephone he would not have run through the traffic lanes, if the man had carried a firearm he would not have stopped. In the reflections of the window he had seen the picciotto, a good boy, behind the man. He had known he was recognized and he had known the man panicked. He had realized it was a chance recognition and not a part of a comprehensive surveillance. He had made a small gesture, a single movement of his index finger, a cutting motion. He had walked away.

He had turned the corner…

It was two hours later. Mario Ruggerio sat in the darkened room on the first floor in the Capo district. His feet ached, his lungs heaved, the ashtray was filled with the stubbed ends of his cigarillos. The two picciotti who had been ahead of him on the Via Sammartino had made a brutal pace for him, up to the Piazza Lolli, one pocketing the cap he had been wearing, across the Via Vito la Mancia, one taking his jacket and folding it on his arm so that the material could not be seen, past the Mercato delle Pulci, hurrying him along as if he were an old uncle out with two impatient nephews. He had slipped away from them behind the duomo. Even when he gasped for breath, when exhaustion bled him and he swayed on his feet, he would not have considered allowing picciotti to take him to his safe house. The sweat ran on his face and on his back and on his stomach. He smoked. He held the photograph of the child he loved.

Charley sat on the patio.

The sun had gone down and only a feeble layer of light fell on the seascape ahead of her. The family had gone down to the town. She had lost the loneliness that had hurt her in Palermo. She felt, sitting in the comfortable chair on the patio, a supreme confidence.

The villa was her place. The family would be walking on the esplanade, under the trees, patrolling like the caged bears she had seen in zoos, where they would be seen… It was the time of waiting. She was in control, she felt her power. The power was the watch on her wrist. She sat with her legs apart, and the cool of the evening air made feather strokes on her thighs. She was at the centre of the world of Axel Moen and the people who directed Axel Moen. She had power over Giuseppe Ruggerio and over the brother.

She watched the last of the sunlight flee the smooth surface of the sea. Because of her control and her power it would be her story that would be told, the story of Codename Helen.

In the grey light, on the patio, an arrogance tripped in Charley's mind.

The tail was locked on 'Vanni Crespo. Three bars in Monreale. The tail watched him drink alone in a bar near the duomo, in a second bar near the empty market stands, in a third bar high in the old town. The tail watched and followed where 'Vanni Crespo led.

Through the window of the pizzeria he saw 'Vanni. 'Vanni was going slowly, confused.

He was lit by a street lamp, and his face was flushed, and his hair hung on his forehead in careless strands, and he lurched to a stop beside the window and was struggling to find the cigarette packet in his pocket. Axel turned away. There was nowhere in the pizzeria for him to hide. He turned away and hoped that his face was not seen, but he heard the whip of the door opening and then the slam of it shutting and he heard the shuffle of the feet and then the scrape of the chair opposite him.

'Vanni sat in front of Axel, and he swayed on the chair before his elbows thudded down on the table.

'I find the American hero…'

'You pissed up or something?'

'I find the American hero who comes to Sicily to achieve what we cannot.'

'You're drunk.'

'We Italians are pathetic, we cannot wipe our own arses, but the American hero comes to do it for us.'

'Go fuck yourself.'

'You know what happened today because we had shit luck, what happened…?'

'We don't break procedure,' Axel hissed across the table.

Two young men, carrying their crash helmets, were at the counter of the pizzeria and asking for the list of sauces.

The hand in which Axel held his fork was gripped in ' Vanni's fists. 'We had surveillance people in the Capo, that's a shit place, to target the bastard. The surveillance was called off, nothing seen. One of the team, on a bus, sees the bastard.

Off duty, no communications. We are pathetic Italians, we do not have the money to give out, sweets and chocolates, mobile telephones. Not carrying his personal radio, off duty, no sidearm. He tries to use the telephone in a bar. The bastard would have had a guy behind him, back marker. The message was incomplete, that's the shit luck. No profile and no description, no clothes, before he was stabbed to death. The bastard's gone. It's cold.'

At the bar the boys with the crash helmets studied the list of pizza sauces.

'Get the hell out of here.'

'He was in our hand. We snatched. We lost him. Isn't that shit luck?'

'Go and sleep with your woman.'

'I drink, I don't weep. The man was dead on the floor with the crap and the cigarettes and the spit and his blood. Tardelli came down, he wept, he doesn't drink. He asked me-'

'Get some water down you, some aspirin, get to your bed.'

'He's isolated, he's got the stink of failure. He has nothing, nothing to hope for. He begged…'

The boys with the crash helmets had seen nothing on the list of sauces that they wanted. They pushed their way out of the door, into the street.

'What did he beg?'

'Offer him something to hold to. I said it was not my gift to give. His mind is blocked, too much work, too tired, he cannot see the obvious, not followed the line of the family, as we have. He wanted me to share with him the detail of your agent.'

'Bullshit.'

'Your agent of small importance. He wanted the crumbs off your table. "All I want is someone to hold my arm and walk with me." But that's the usual sort of shit talk in Palermo when a man is isolated, that's not the talk to impress an American hero.'

'I don't share.'

'With Italians? Of course not. I tell you, Axel, what I saw. I saw a body on the floor, I saw the blood, I saw the fucking crowd of people. I saw her, I saw Codename Helen, I saw her body and her blood. I drink, I don't weep. Enjoy your meal.'

The fists released Axel's hand that held the fork. The table rocked as 'Vanni levered himself to his feet. Axel watched him go.. . He did not see her on the floor of the bar, but she was clear in his mind, and she was hanging from the nails on the back of the door of the hut at the estancia airstrip… He pushed the plate away from him. He lit a cigarette and he dropped the match on the plate, into the pizza sauce.

The tail learned the name of the woman who owned the house, and late into the night the tail watched the light burn in the upper room.

'What are my options, Ray? What do I chew on?'

The voice boomed back, metallic, from the speaker. Dwight Smythe leaned over the Country Chief's desk and twisted the volume dial. The Country Chief was scribbling headlines.

'Could you wait out, Herb? Could you let me have a minute?'

'Have two – I fancy it's better we get this right, now.'

It had been a bad bloody Monday for Ray. He had been called, two hours' notice, to New Scotland Yard for late morning coffee with biscuits and a hard-going session. He had sat with Dwight, he had been faced by the commander (S06) and the assistant commissioner (SO) and the detective superintendent who was a cat with cream, and there'd been a young guy there who'd not spoken. He'd had a heavy time and they'd done their work on Mario Ruggerio (worse than the worst) and they'd a profile on Charlotte Parsons (Codename Helen). He'd broken, he'd said he needed to talk to Headquarters, and back at the embassy he'd sat on his hands waiting for Herb to show up in his office from the beltway drag into Washington. It had to be Herb he spoke to because it was Herb who had authorized the operation.

'Got it together… I'm not happy, Herb. I feel I'm pushing in over Bill's space.'

'Forget Bill, he'll do as he's damn well told. I get the feeling this isn't a time for standing on ceremony. Hell, I've fourteen situations going in Colombia, I've eight in Peru. I've situations running in

Bangkok, Moscow, Jamaica. I'm not getting an ulcer for one situation in Sicily. I want the options.'

Again Ray paused. What they hated, the big men in Washington who'd made it to the floor with the pile carpets and the drinks cabinets and access to God, was getting bounced for a decision early on a Monday morning. It was a time when his own career could go down the drain, and his hopes of ever getting his feet on that carpet and his hands on the cabinet keys, but he reckoned there wasn't room for evasion. He plunged.

'At high-grade level, the British have Angst. They say, and I quote, "It is intolerable that a young woman should have been pressurized by the DEA, entrapped, and then persuaded to travel to Sicily as the central part of an American-sponsored anti-mafia operation," end quote. That's, my opinion, not the core of their hand-wringing. What's right up their nose, quote, "All DEA activities inside the UK are governed by procedures of liaison and we were not informed, prior to your inveigling Miss Parsons, of your intention to recruit her," end quote. And most important, they have the shits on this one. They see her dead, they see the paparazzi crawling over her, they see an almighty inquest on what an untrained innocent was doing there in a role central to an investigation, they see the blame hammering on their door…'

'I asked, what are the options?'

'Two, Herb. You can tell them to go jump, tell them they are small guys running small shows and suggest they stick to softball in the park.'

'We do good business with the Brits. My second option?'

'You can withdraw your sanction, Herb, close it down, you can pull her out. You can wind it up.'

'Ray, we've known each other a long time, too goddam long. I am not interested in the sensitivities of Bill Hammond. The plan isn't Bill's anyway. The plan belongs to that guy Axel Moen, and I do not care whether I massage his ego or whether I kick him.

Which side of the fence are you falling? I want it straight.'

He glanced up at the loudspeaker on the wall, beside the Green Ice operation photograph. Herb, front row, smiling, was always the bastard who turned up late and took the credit, and hacked off early to avoid the blame. Dwight Smythe, opposite him, made the quick gesture, a finger across the throat. He spoke into the microphone, he felt dirty.

'What I want to say, Herb, 1 don't give a fuck for the susceptibilities of the British.

They'll complain for a week, and after a week they'll be good as gold and looking for a candy hand-out. Myself, I'd ignore them.'

'I hear you. Right, thanks, I'll call Bill Hammond and tell.'

'Sorry, Herb, I'm not through. This kid is on a limb, this kid has no covert training.

She's been given the glamour treatment. She should never have been asked to go. I can take newspaper flak, I can handle an inquiry if she ends up dead. But I don't think I'd want that at my door. It's a precious thing, my self-respect. But, of course, Herb, if it goes sour, then it's on your desk that it lands because you authorized it.'

He thought he had rolled a hand-grenade across a pile carpet and the grenade might just bounce against the imitation antique of a drinks cabinet and it might just come to rest against a desk on a high floor of Headquarters. He winked, grim, at Dwight Smythe.

The voice boomed, 'Kill it.'

'I think that's a good decision, Herb.'

There was rain falling on the garden of the square that the embassy faced onto. The square was a goddam morgue, and the daffodils were flattened by the rainfall, and the crocus blooms were crushed. Dwight Smythe drove, and held his peace. Ray reflected.

He had bled his conscience over the telephone link. Maybe he was too old and too tired, too fucked-up, for the job. Maybe he had gone too soft for the work. If the work mattered, sure as Christ it mattered, then maybe it was worth hauling any kid, any innocent, off the street, then maybe pressure was justified, if the work mattered. ..

Axel Moen had been in his office, Axel Moen had treated Dwight Smythe like he was just the hired hand, Axel Moen hadn't gone hiding behind conscience, Axel Moen was a cold bastard, Axel Moen would believe the work mattered… They crossed central London, and Dwight Smythe parked outside the main doors of New Scotland Yard and threw the keys in an arc to a constable… Maybe he should feel comfortable because his back was protected, and Herb's back was safe, and the men waiting for them upstairs in the building could feel good because their backs were covered, and maybe he'd be offered a drink because all the big guys were protected and safe and covered, and in this fucking awful world that was what mattered. If it had been for the kid, the innocent, if it had been for protecting and saving and covering the kid, then he could have felt good, but it wasn't… They came out of the elevator and stamped along the corridor behind the constable escorting them. It was a bad bloody Monday.

'I talked with Washington. Washington say we abort.'

The AC (SO) said, 'Not next week, not next month. We'll send our own man.'

The commander (S06) said, 'The operation will be terminated immediately. For verification, you understand.'

The detective superintendent said, 'We'd like to be certain there's a degree of urgency.

So we know you haven't welshed.'

He was introduced to Harry Compton, who hadn't spoken, who had the thick file. He said that since it was a DEA operation into which there was now British input, gagged on 'intrusion', he would send his administrative officer, Dwight Smythe, to accompany Compton, gagged on 'hold his hand'.

The AC (SO) said, 'Very satisfactory, good co-operation.'

The commander (S06) asked, 'Not too early for a drop of the hard stuff, eh, Ray, and you, Mr Smythe? Ice, water?'

'Are you into this story, Mr Compton? Scotch, yes, stiff.'

'I am.'

'You've evaluated Charlotte Parsons, this innocent?'

He had intended to sneer, never could do it well, was a poor hand at sarcasm.

'Yes, I have. Your people chose well. I'd rate her as brilliant. Stubborn, tough. That's why I fear for her safety. What I've heard and learned, she is the type who will cling in there. And, sir, when you have a very strong personality placed in such position as she is, I would also fear for the safety of those around her.'

'Would you now? A hell of a shame she's coming home, don't you think, gentlemen? A shame we all needed to interfere…'