Killing Ground

Chapter Seventeen

A delivery van was moved. In its place, on the junction of the Via delle Croci and the Via Ventura, a car was parked. In the back of the car, hidden beneath a tartan rug, was a wooden tea chest.

The city woke, the city shimmered. The pall of the night mist hung on the city and would disintegrate under the climbing sun. The pollution haze would come to the city choking from the exhaust fumes of cars. Another day had started in the cruel history of the city.. .

Salvatore, the brother of Mario Ruggerio, stood respectfully in front of the governor of Ucciardione Prison and said, that day, he must speak in private with the magistrate, Dottore Rocco Tardelli.

… Through that cruel history, the Palermitans had learned when catastrophe would strike. Nothing tangible to place a hand on, nothing to see with their eyes, but a sense that was personal to the people of that city allowed them to know when catastrophe was close…

The men of Mario Ruggerio were in place. Tano watched the parked car and the mobile telephone was in his hand. Franco sat in the warmth of the sunshine on a bench and held an opened newspaper and observed the soldiers who protected the apartment and the two cars parked against the kerb. Carmine leaned against the door of the bar where he had clear sight of the entrance gates used by magistrates when they came to Ucciardione Prison.

… The men of the city hurried to their work, or they lounged on the street corners and they waited. The women of the city washed the nightclothes or went early to the market and were anxious to be home where they could wait. There was a quiet about the city as there always was when a man was isolated, had been through history when disaster edged near…

Using an old razor so that he would not risk cutting his jowled throat, Mario Ruggerio shaved carefully at the basin of the small room on the first floor in the Capo district and, as of habit, washed in cold water.

… The normality of the city was a superficial thing. Deep in their hearts, deep in their veins, deep in their minds, the people of the city knew that catastrophe was close, disaster was near, and they waited. It was a city of killing and violent death, as it had been since the time of the Romans and the Vandals, through the time of the Normans and Moors and the Spanish, over the time of the Fascists, now in the time of La Cosa Nostra. A shivering excitement that morning held the city in thrall…

The governor of Ucciardione Prison relayed the message of Salvatore Ruggerio that he requested a visit, that day, from the magistrate, Dottore Rocco Tardelli.

… The people of the city did not know the place or the time or the target, but the instinct of history was with them, and the inevitability. They understood when a servant of the state was ridiculed, isolated. They waited…

The boy, Pasquale, took the bus to work on the last day that he would act as bodyguard to the 'walking corpse'.

… The fascination with death, the majesty of murder, gripped the lifeblood of the city. A stranger would not have seen it. But the people of the city knew and watched, waited…

'So what do we have?'

'We have the same as last night,' Harry Compton said.

'Can we recapitulate? Can you fly it by me again?'

Harry Compton thought Dwight Smythe talked like a bureaucrat, like they were at a meeting high up in his embassy, or on the fifth floor of S06. All bureaucrats liked to

'recapitulate', gave them time to think. His feet were still sore because the shoes he'd brought were too lightweight for the pounding of pavements and cobbles he'd put in the evening before. He felt an irritation. He stood by the window, and Dwight Smythe was on the bed, and they hadn't yet taken their breakfast.

'He has a box tail on him. It's professional. If I hadn't done it myself, I wouldn't have seen it. The one place that a box tail can be seen is from far behind. You have to be behind the back marker, that's the only place you get a chance to see it. There were four men on the box and there was a control in charge. They're not using radios, which makes the professionalism more critical – it's hand signs. He acted like he wasn't certain of the tail, and he was governed by not showing out, which is right. He took them a hell of a dance, we walked half round the city and back again. He did running, he did stopping, he did sitting. He had the box on him for four hours, till he gave up, till he went to his car. They had their own wheels, I saw that. Your man, after four hours… who wouldn't? He looked broken up to me, but I told you that last night.'

'He's not taking his calls.' Dwight Smythe had a notebook open on the bed. 'I called three times last night.'

'You told me.'

'I called twice this morning. Our people in Rome, they talk about a guy called 'Vanni Crespo, can't reach him.'

'And you told me that last night.'

'I can't abide sneering, and I didn't sleep last night, so cut it out. She was with me all last night, that kid. Christ, there's nothing to her…'

Harry Compton said, sincere, 'What I thought, I'd never seen anyone look so vulnerable. You saw the body language, I saw it – she told him to go jump. In her position, God, that is big talk.'

'Went past us like we didn't exist. I don't know what to do.'

Harry Compton said, 'Nothing you can do – because it is a total and complete and comprehensive fuck-up.'

'You've a helpful way with words.'

'She's a bitch.'

'She's an obstinate goddam bitch.'

'She's gone out of control.'

'You lose control of an agent and you're walking in shit.'

'What are we supposed to do?'

'I am ordered out,' Axel Moen said.

'What am I supposed to do?'

'She's yours, you're welcome.'

'You taking it bad?'

'What the fuck do you think?'

'Vanni said, 'I think, Mr American, that you have broken a primary rule.'

'Don't patronize me.'

'There is a primary rule in the handling of undercover operatives.'

'You want your teeth down your throat?'

'The primary rule is that you do not have emotional involvement.'

'I don't tell you again.'

'You don't go soft on an agent, the primary rule – you pick them up and you drop them, it is a throw-away society. You don't get to be gentle with agents.'

Axel hit his friend. With a closed fist he hit 'Vanni Crespo. He hit him a little to the right of the mouth and he split 'Vanni Crespo's lip. He covered his face with his left, like he'd been taught as a kid in the gymnasium at Ephraim, and he hit his friend again, and 'Vanni Crespo tried to smother him. He kicked hard, like he'd learned as a kid in the school yard at Ephraim, and his friend went down. He fell on his friend, and he was raining the blows on 'Vanni Crespo's face. He was held, he sobbed, he was hugged. He lay on the rock-strewn ground under the orange trees and 'Vanni Crespo, his friend, held him. He shook, convulsed, in the arms of 'Vanni Crespo.

'Vanni Crespo said, 'It was deserved. I have the guilt, I began it. I had the letter, I opened the letter, I brought the letter to you. I first saw the chance. You hit me, you kick me, that is nothing, I should burn for what I did…'

Muffled words, words said against the cloth of 'Vanni Crespo's shirt. 'It's an act, so hard, so tough, playing at manipulating innocents – it's a fucking show.'

'I went last night with Tardelli. He is desperate, he is alone, he pleads for someone to take his arm. He has found Giuseppe Ruggerio. He saw her. He wanted the villa searched for anything that linked it with Mario Ruggerio. I rejected him, I said it would compromise an operation that I could not share with him. He saw her, your Charley, and he understood. I isolated him, and he did not complain – and for that, too, I should burn…'

'Do I have the right to ask you to forgive me?'

'Vanni held him. He thought his breath would still smell from the whisky he had put down the night before. He thought his body would still smell from the sweat he had made with the woman from Trapani in the back of her car the night before.

'It is what they do to us. It is what happens to us when we fight a war against filth. It is how we become when we go down into the gutter to hunt them. When you fight and you do not believe that you can win…'

'Are you going to walk away, 'Vanni, as I am?'

'If I could, but I cannot. She is as much mine as she is yours. Not while she is still in place.'

'Vanni stood. His friend reached down into the plastic bag and took out the sketch pad. For a moment 'Vanni saw the drawings of the cloister columns, and then Axel's hands were ripping the images into small shreds of paper. 'Vanni watched the destruction of Axel Moen's cover. His friend had climbed from the bathroom window of the little apartment, and over the slates, and had lost the tail, and had needed him through the night, and he had been with his woman. His friend had sat in the orange grove, in the valley below Monreale, through the whole of the night, his friend had needed him and not called him, and he had been making sweat with his woman… He thought of Axel Moen, alone in the orange grove through the night hours, and holding the pistol, and waiting for the dawn before calling him, he thought of the misery of his friend. He took the plastic bag from his friend. He pulled his friend to his feet. They walked between the orange trees. The fruit was ripening. They left the torn pages of the sketch pad behind them. It was a place of quiet and beauty, where Axel Moen had waited through the night. They went towards the cars. The men at the cars wore the deep-blue coats of the ROS team that bulged over their vests and the skin-tight balaclavas that were slashed at their mouths and their eyes.

'You'll keep her safe?'

'If I don't, then I should burn.'

Charley made the children ready for school and kindergarten.

That day, nothing said, nothing to guide her, an atmosphere of savage tension held the villa. She knew the atmosphere well. When her parents scrapped, when she was a child, they fought out of earshot so that their precious daughter would not learn the cause of the argument. She didn't know whether the atmosphere was important or whether it was trivial. When her parents rowed, out of her hearing, it was always something of mind-bending unimportance at the heart of the dispute – where they would go in the car the following Sunday, what they would be eating for supper, what shade of wallpaper was right for the spare bedroom. At home, the precious daughter thought the fighting was pitiful, and kept her distance. It was only an atmosphere, they had kept the cause of the argument from her.

She dressed the children. She washed their faces. The children were sullen with her.

Peppino was on the patio with work papers and the baby was beside him and sleeping in the pram, and Angela was in the kitchen. She collected the books from the children's rooms for their schoolbags.

She went into the kitchen. She told Angela that she was ready to go to school. She made a smile for her face and acted dumb ignorance as though she had not sensed an atmosphere, and Angela nodded distantly, like the children and the school were irrelevant to her.

There was no criticism. 'Angela, sorry… there's no shopping list.' It was said in innocence.

'I forgot the shopping list? I am guilty of forgetting the shopping list?' There was a cold, mocking savagery from Angela. 'Can't you do the shopping for yourself? You live with us, you eat with us. Is it beyond you to decide what we should eat for lunch?'

And Charley smiled again with sweetness. Wasted because Angela's back was to her.

'I think I know what we need. I'll see you.'

The children hadn't kissed their mother. Francesca was snivelling. Small Mario, crossing the hall, kicked viciously at his new toy car and cannoned it over the marble flooring. Charley wondered whether it would work again, and she thought the car cost more than she was paid for a week's work – spoiled little bastard. She took Francesca's hand. She didn't care that the child held back and snivelled. She yanked Francesca after her, and small Mario trailed after them. It would take more than the bloody children snivelling and sulking to destroy Charley's sense of calm. Again and again it had played in her mind, the taunting of Axel Moen. Like it was her anthem. 'Listen for when I call.

If you've quit, give the gear to someone else who'll listen. Make sure that somebody listens, if you've quit.' Like it was her chorus.

She walked onto the patio. 'Just off to school,' Charley said brightly. 'I'll take the baby.'

Peppino looked up from his papers, balance sheets and projection graphs and account statements. 'Did Angela tell you about this evening?'

'Didn't say anything about this evening.'

'We are out this evening. We will be taking Francesca and Mario. Please, this evening you will look after Mauro?'

'No problem.'

She walked down the path to the gate. The 'lechie' bastard opened it for her. She thought it strange that Angela had not said the family were out that evening. She walked towards the town. She wondered if Axel Moen had already quit, and she wondered who watched her. So calm, because it was now her story, alone, that was played.

The maresciallo had been called by the magistrate. They had spoken in his office.

He came back into the kitchen.

They watched the maresciallo as he took the street map from the table. Dark eyes that were sombre, without lustre, never left him as he studied the web patterns of the street map.

At the sink, Pasquale rinsed the coffee cups and the plates on which they had eaten bread. There was no liquid soap to put in the bowl. They had finished the liquid soap the evening before and none of them had written on the list that was fastened on a magnetic clip to the refrigerator door that it needed replacing. Pasquale did not remark on the absence of liquid soap. It would be the last time that he should wash, as the junior member of the team, the cups and plates and the knives and spoons, and they could find for themselves that the liquid soap was finished. He had told his wife, in the night, when their baby slept, summoned the courage, and she had stood behind him and nursed his head. He had held the bottle of beer in his fists, and with a quiet flatness he had told her that he was rejected, and she had nursed his head against the breasts that suckled their baby. He'd thought she'd wanted to cry in happiness, and she had said nothing. He had held the beer, not drunk from the bottle, and he had told her that he had been betrayed by the magistrate to whom she had sent flowers. He'd thought she'd wanted to kiss him in welling relief, and she had not.

He was already isolated from the team. He was not a part of the team of the older ragazzi that morning. They did not share with him the gaunt black humour that was their own. Nor did they laugh at him. It was not necessary for Pasquale to wash the cups and plates and the knives and spoons, and because they now ignored him they would not have told him to do the job.

The maresciallo said they were going to Ucciardione Prison, and he told them what route they would be using, and Pasquale laid the washed cups and plates and the knives and spoons in neat piles on the draining board beside the sink. He hated them all, he hated the maresciallo who rejected him, and the magistrate who betrayed him, and the older men who ignored him. He hated them. A cup slid from the draining board and, frantic, Pasquale tried to catch it. It fell to the floor, and the handle broke clear, and the cup was cracked, and a chip came free. The maresciallo seemed not to see and went on with the intoning of the route they would use, and the men at the table did not look at him. He knelt on the linoleum floor and picked up the pieces of the cup and put them in the rubbish bin under the sink. He was rejected and betrayed and ignored.

He stood by the sink. He interrupted the litany of the names of the streets and the piazzas. 'When is he coming?'

He saw the dagger glance of the maresciallo. 'Is who coming?'

'When is my replacement coming?'

'He is coming today.'

'When? Do I not have the right to know?'

'When he is available, that is when you are replaced. I apologize, I do not know when, today, he is available.'

The magistrate stood in the doorway. He held a briefcase across his stomach and his overcoat was draped loose on his shoulders. For a moment he was ignored by the maresciallo.

The route was detailed, which streets they would travel on, through which piazzas.

So difficult for Pasquale to hate the man who stood at the kitchen door, but the man had not spoken for him, and that was betrayal. There was such tiredness in the face of the man, there was no light in the eyes of the man. He caught the dulled eyes, and the man looked away. The route was confirmed. There was the clatter of the guns being armed.

The vests were thrown on. There was the thud of the feet down the staircase, and they passed a woman who climbed the staircase and carried a shopping bag from a boutique and bright flowers, and she gave them a glance of contempt.

They were in the sunshine on the pavement. The soldiers had their rifles readied.

The convoy pulled away. The sirens wailed, the tyres screamed on the corner. They went into the streets where there were, close- packed on either side, parked cars and parked vans and parked motorcycles. It was the day when Pasquale's replacement would be available. The maresciallo drove, and Pasquale was beside him with the machine-gun tight in his hands.

The prison was a part of the antiquity of Palermo.

The prison was a place of pain, torture, death, from the history of Palermo.

The walls of Ucciardione Prison, built by the Bourbons to impose their rule, were now covered with weeds in pretty flower, and the mortar crumbled in the joints between the stones. At the base of the walls the military trucks passed in continuous patrol, at the top of the walls the armed guards gazed down, listless, on the exercise yards. Beyond the exercise yards, spread out from the central building like the arms of an octopus, were the cell blocks. The cell blocks had failed to break the resistance of La Cosa Nostra.

The Men of Honour had been sent to the cell blocks by the officials of the king, and the officials of the Fascist Duce, and by the officials of the democratic state – and the officials through history had failed to break the spirit of La Cosa Nostra. It was the place of the Men of Honour, where they ruled and where they tortured and where they killed.

The cell blocks, that day, sweated under the brilliance of the sun.

There was a quiet, that day, in Ucciardione Prison, and word seeped along the corridors, and up iron staircases, and through locked doors, that Salvatore Ruggerio had requested a meeting with Rocco Tardelli, the magistrate who hunted his brother.

The men in the cells blocks waited.

The aircraft lifted. The journalist from Berlin sat rigid in his seat, and the aircraft banked over the beach at Ostia, and climbed, and turned again, and headed north. He thought he returned to the track towards civilization… champagne, yes, he would appreciate a glass of champagne. He thanked the Lufthansa girl… He could not remember when he had last felt such relief at the completion of an assignment. There were no headwinds, no turbulence pockets, it was a steady flight, and he tried to relax.

The problem, his difficulty, and it was a wound to his pride, he did not believe in the story he had written, it was his failure. When the champagne had been brought to him, he pulled down the table flap and laid his briefcase on it. He took his copy from the briefcase. He read back the story he carried home.

'There is the appearance of war on the island of Sicily. There are military road blocks, there are armed men guarding politicians and law-enforcement officials, there is talk of war. But, if there is combat, your correspondent has not found it.

'I remain unconvinced of the reality of conflict. It is possible there is only a delusion of war. My area of confusion, I could find no battle-lines and there is a complete absence of the traditional no-man's-land. There are military commanders and police chiefs who talk a good war, but I could not find, or touch, or feel, their alleged enemy.

'Your correspondent has reported from many of the world's darker corners. In Saigon I met with General William

Westmoreland; in Hanoi I was privileged to meet General Vo Nguyen Giap. I saw Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and General Norman Schwartzkopf in Riyadh. Yassir Arafat and George Habbash in Beirut. I drank coffee with the secessionist leader, in his Grozny bunker, as he was shelled by Russian tanks.

'Where is the enemy in Sicily? Does he exist? Is he a figment of Sicilian imagination, as they display their island trait of demanding uniqueness. The commander of La Cosa Nostra in Sicily, if indeed such a person exists, does not give news conferences or television interviews, nor does he issue war bulletins. For three weeks I have chased shadows. I remain in confusion.

'What is said: from this humble, poverty-ridden island are spewed the most sinister criminals of our time…'

He read no more. He returned his copy to the briefcase. He sipped his champagne.

They sat across a table.

'You are well, signore?'

'I am well. And you, dottore, you are well?'

'I thank you for your enquiry. Yes, I am well.'

The magistrate pushed across the table a packet of cigarettes. Salvatore Ruggerio, in Asmara and Ucciardione, would have as many cigarettes as he cared to smoke, but it was a gesture. The magistrate kept in his jacket pocket a packet of cigarettes, opened, with three taken out. To have passed Salvatore Ruggerio a full packet, unopened, would have offended his dignity, would have implied that he was short of cigarettes. It was necessary to maintain the dignity of the man. Salvatore Ruggerio lit a cigarette, and the smoke wafted over the table, and he pushed the packet back towards the magistrate.

'Your mother and father, they are well?'

It was a fascination to the magistrate, the calm politeness of these men. He was never aggressive with them, and he tried hard not to be arrogant towards them. They craved respect and he gave it them. And he made a rule, always, of asking a question to which he knew the answer. He knew that, for their age, the parents of Salvatore Ruggerio were well.

'I saw my mother last night, she seemed well.'

They were alone in the room. The maresciallo would be immediately outside the door with an officer of the prison staff. There were microphones built into the legs of the table, and their conversation would be recorded. Because he did not know the answer, he did not ask Salvatore Ruggerio why the meeting had been requested.

'And in two days you go on trial again?'

'They pluck fantasies from the skies. They bring new charges. What can a poor man do, dottore, an innocent man? They use old lies from the disgraced pentiti to persecute an old and poor and innocent man.'

There were some who threatened him. Sometimes he was warned. Did he take his guard to the toilet with him? He should. Was he concerned for his health? He should be.

Some had their friends and families send him funeral wreaths and photographs of coffins. He did not expect to be threatened by a man of the stature of Salvatore Ruggerio because to issue a threat would be beneath the dignity of a man who gave himself such importance. It was often his thought, why did such gifted men need to pursue criminality in order to find that craved dignity?

'Have you been recently to Prizzi, dottore?'

'Not recently.'

'You have not had the opportunity to see my parents' home?'

'I have not.'

'It is the humble home of old people who live in poverty.'

He did not know yet where the road of their conversation would lead. He shifted in his seat. It was hard for him, but he should not show impatience. He squirmed on his chair, and he felt the tickle of hair on his neck. His hair was too long, should have been trimmed, but it was a military operation to take him to a hairdresser, and the maresciallo would not permit a parrucchiere to be given access to the apartment. There was a woman in the offices of the squadra mobile who came occasionally to cut his hair, and then it was crudely done… He believed it valuable to talk with the brother of Mario Ruggerio. The body language was important, and the attitude. There were morsels to be gathered.

The magistrate had, between the time he had received the message from the governor and the departure for the prison, gutted the files he held on Mario Ruggerio and the family of Mario Ruggerio. He knew the material by heart, but he had again dug into the files. The father of Mario and Salvatore Ruggerio was a millionaire in American dollars, the man was crippled by rheumatism from his prison days and could afford the best treatment available on the island. The father of Salvatore and of Mario Ruggerio was neither humble nor living his last days in poverty. The magistrate had no need to score a cheap and small point.

'There are many in Prizzi who are humble and who live in poverty. It is the value of the family that is more important than material possessions.'

'I think you speak the truth, dottore.' The smile played on Salvatore's face. 'They tell me, dottore, that you are not blessed with a loving family.'

It was a barb. Always, inside the tracks of extreme politeness, they would try to ridicule him. The smile was obsequious. Probably they knew to the hour when his wife had left. Probably they knew the identity of the man with whom his wife slept.

Probably they knew which schools his children attended.

'We cannot choose our family, and the circumstances of the family. It must be, signore, a source of disappointment to your parents that Giuseppe does not live close to them.' He played a card, he sparred.

No expression. Salvatore stubbed the cigarette. 'In a flock there is always one sheep that looks for a greener field. The other sheep forget. Dottore, I have a small request.'

'Please.'

'My parents are old.'

'Yes.'

'My father has rheumatism. My mother is frail. The journey to Asinara is long and expensive. They are old, they live without money. Should I not receive freedom, it would be a most charitable gesture to them should I be transferred from Asinara to Palermo. It would bring a small joy to the last years of their lives.'

It would be a decision of the Justice Ministry. It was not in the power of the magistrate. There was a subcommittee. Salvatore Ruggerio, a 'harsh regime' prisoner, a murderer with sentences of life imprisonment that were accumulating, would know the procedures.

'If you, dottore were to speak on my behalf – for my parents.. .'

'I will see what is possible.'

The brother of Mario Ruggerio stood. He bobbed his head in respect. He went to the door. He turned at the door and looked at the magistrate and his face was impassive. He was gone through the door. He would be taken back to his cell.

The magistrate sat alone at the table. He did not understand. He had not known what would be asked of him, nor whether a warning threat would be offered him. It was ridiculous that Salvatore Ruggerio had requested a meeting to ask for a prison transfer, and he had come like an obedient dog. Perhaps the maresciallo, with his keen and suspicious nose, would have comprehended why he had been called to a meeting with no content. He did not have the nose of the maresciallo. He did not understand.

There was a football game alongside the parked cars in the yard. One goal was the piled coats of the ragazzi of Tardelli and the second goal was the piled coats of the men who guarded the governor of Ucciardione. It was a lunatic game, as if the ragazzi of Tardelli had a fever for victory. Alongside the parked cars, close to the bunker building, beneath the old walls of Ucciardione, the ragazzi of Tardelli tripped and elbowed and kicked their way to a victory, as if nothing else was of importance to them. Pasquale was not a part of the game. Pasquale was not given the bouncing and careering ball. Pasquale was an onlooker to the game.

There was a shout from the gate. The game stopped. The ball ran free.

A man walked from the gate towards the cars and the piled coats. He had a thin and pinched face. He had sparse grey hair. He had bent shoulders above a body that was without fat. The others of Tardelli's ragazzi went to him. He carried a small bag, and a dried smile cracked his face. The driver of the chase car embraced him. The passenger of the chase car thumped his shoulder. Pasquale watched the greeting given his replacement. Pasquale was ignored. He heard the man say that he had been able to come earlier than he had expected, so he had come. He was from the team that guarded the mayor, and the mayor had flown to Rome. Pasquale thought the circle was again joined, as it had not been when he was a part of the team. The maresciallo stood in the outer door to the yard and the replacement came to him and held up his hand for the maresciallo to smack with his own, as if an old and dear friendship was renewed.

'Am I needed? Am I wanted?' Pasquale felt the depth of humiliation.

The maresciallo looked over the shoulder of the replacement. 'I think the cars are full. Take a bus, Pasquale, to the Questura and they will find you something to do.'

Pasquale bit at his lip. He went to the lead car and he took from the floor his machine-gun, with the magazines, and his vest. He gave them to the replacement. He was not thanked. The replacement to the team would have been told that there was a boy who was inefficient, whose inefficiency endangered them all. The replacement had a hard face. There was no fear in the face. Pasquale wondered whether the replacement had a wife, had children, wondered whether the replacement had volunteered to travel with the 'walking corpse'.

He walked away. Behind him was laughter, as if an old story was told from old times.

He went out through the gates of the yard. He walked past the policemen and the soldiers who guarded the gates. He walked under the walls of Ucciardione Prison. He saw a heavy- built man with slicked oiled hair leaning against the door of the bar on the far side of the street who talked into a mobile telephone.

He turned into the Via delle Croci. He passed a young woman. She wore a shapeless grey skirt. She stood with her mother. She waved a handkerchief. She shouted at the wall and at the cell block behind the wall. He wondered if it were her lover or her husband or her brother who was held in the cell block. He passed a cat that gnawed at bones from a rubbish bag. He passed a woman who was bent under the weight of her shopping bags, and two businessmen who walked arm in arm and who both talked and did not listen to the other. He passed the flower stall. He heard, away behind him, the starting of the siren wail. He walked on the pavement of the Via delle Croci, beside the tight line of parked cars and vans and motorcycles.

He did not turn. He did not wish to see the car of the magistrate and the chase car. He could not shut out from his mind the sirens' call.

He heard, behind him, the scream of the tyres as the cars turned into the Via delle Croci.

He passed a man. The man had the face of a peasant from the fields, the clothes of a businessman from the office. The man tapped the numbers of a mobile telephone.

The cars came from behind Pasquale.

The replacement was in the passenger seat of the magistrate's car, was in Pasquale's seat. There was the back of the maresciallo's head, there was the screen at the back window, there was the chase car, and he saw the tension on the old, worn faces of the driver and the passenger. He saw the cars accelerating away from him and they would have seen him on the pavement, all of the bastards would have seen him, and there had been no wave, no kindness.

Pasquale saw the flash.

In the moment after the flash there was the flying debris.

Pasquale saw the flying debris break against the magistrate's car and toss it.

The magistrate's car was lifted. It was thrown clear across the road and over the parked cars and vans and motorcycles, over the pavement. The magistrate's car hammered into a wall.

There was the thunder roar and the spurting dust cloud, and then the crash of the debris landing and the fall of glass in shards. The chase car was stopped in the centre of the road and then the dust cloud claimed it.

He had no telephone. His mind was a flywheel. He must telephone.

He had passed a man with a telephone.

He turned. There was no man with a peasant's face, with the clothes of the office.

He understood. The pistol was in the holster strapped across his chest. He had walked past the man who had detonated the bomb. He had seen the man, he had had the power to stop the man, and the man was gone. He shook. The whimper was in his throat. The silence was around him. He wanted to howl to the world his acknowledgement of failure. His body trembled.

Pasquale walked forward.

He went by the chase car and he heard the screaming of the driver into the car's radio.

He stepped over the debris of the disintegrated car. He walked past the magistrate's car that rested, shattered, upside down, and he did not look to see the magistrate, nor did he look for the body of the maresciallo, nor did he look for the face of the replacement.

He went by the fire and the smoke. He was not a part of it, he did not belong to the team.

He thought he knew why he had been dismissed from the team. The tears streamed on the face of Pasquale. He walked towards his home. He walked briskly, did not bother to wipe the tears from his cheeks, did not bother to stop for apologies when he cannoned into an old dumpy man who stopped to light a cigarillo. He hurried to his wife and to his baby because he knew why he had been dismissed from the team.

Some saw the white heat of the flash, and some heard the thunder roar of the detonation, and some saw the smoke climb above the rooftops of the city, and some heard of the killing when the lunchtime programmes of the RAI were interrupted.

The city learned of the bomb.

There would be, in the city, a manifestation of shock and a wailing of despair, and there would be, also, a charge of raw excitement. The excitement would, as through the history of the city, overwhelm the sensations of shock and despair.

The city knew the story. A man had been ridiculed and isolated and destroyed. The story was written through the history of Palermo.

At the newspaper stand, where the Via delle Croci met the Piazza Crispi, Mario Ruggerio had stood with Franco. He had watched. He had seen the blue lights and he had heard the sirens. He had seen the flash of light and he had heard the thunder roar.

He had watched until the grey-yellow dust cloud had masked the street. He had made no comment. He had gone on his way. On the Via Constantino Nigra, a young man who wept had buffeted against him and hurried on. They came in a cavalcade of noise past him, the fire engines and the ambulances and the cars of the carabineri and the squadra mobile and the vigili urbani and the polizia municipale, and if he noticed them he gave no clue of it to Franco. Franco told him of the arrangements made for that evening, for celebration… Near to the Villa Trabia, he looked for a bench that was empty and he sat upon it. He sent Franco to get him a coffee from the stall.

His power was absolute. His authority was confirmed. He was the new capo di tutti capi. Across the continents of the world, that night, a thousand million people would see on their television screens the evidence of his power and of his authority…

Tano came. He told Tano that he was pleased. He smiled at Tano, and he gripped Tano's hand, and he saw the pleasure ripple over Tano's face.

Carmine came and whispered congratulations in his ear. Carmine told him that the American was now hidden at the barracks in Monreale. He felt the flush of invincibility. He gave his instructions.

Franco and Tano and Carmine were around the short and pasty-faced old man who sat in the heat of the sun. He gave them his opinion. There would be a week of denunciation and of demonstrations in the street, there would be a month of demands for more powerful legislation against the organization, and normality would return.

They competed to agree with him.

He said he was tired. He said that he wished to rest before the celebrations of the evening. He should be refreshed for the evening when he would receive the congratulations of his family, when he gathered his family, his strength, around him.

He believed himself invulnerable.

'Get him out tonight.'

'Put him on the plane this evening.'

'Vanni said, 'We have to clear his apartment, get his things. We can have him ready for the late flight.'

Axel slept. He lay on the bed in the barracks room, and above him was the portrait of the general, and beside him was the photograph of the teenage girl. He was sprawled on the bed. They moved around him, and they drank 'Vanni Crespo's whisky.

'Like, sure as hell, to go with him, but I can't,' Dwight said.

'She's not your responsibility, she's mine. It's me that has to stay,' Harry Compton said.

'You just joined the game late. It's our show. I stay.'

'No way I move out, not while she's here.'

'Then he goes alone on the flight.'

'He doesn't go with me.'

'Vanni Crespo refilled the glasses.

Axel slept as if he had found peace. His breathing was monotonous, regular. He slept still, like he did not dream, like the weight was shed. There was youth again on his face…

Dwight Smythe said, soft, 'You'd be kind of frightened to wake him.'

Harry Compton said, 'When I saw the tail on him, and saw him try to wriggle off the tail, then I bled for him.'

'But he's a dinosaur, his time's gone. These things should be done with computers.'

'Shouldn't be done with people, not real people like that girl.'

'It got out of hand.'

'It was your crowd-'

'Vanni snapped. 'It is not the time to argue. In the Via delle Croci they are searching for pieces. They look for pieces of bodies. It is necessary to have pieces of bodies to put into coffins. But then they are only Italian bodies. No other foreigner that I have known has tried harder to help us. No other foreigner has realized more the need for co-operation. But you come and you argue and you criticize. You interfere. Now you are frightened because now you understand the responsibility you have prized from Axel Moen.'

Axel slept.

'She doesn't come.'

'If she doesn't come, then I don't.'

The argument hissed through the villa.

'It is for the family. You have to come.'

'She comes or I don't.'

Charley sat in the living room and she watched the television. It was live from the Via delle Croci, shaking images. The argument was on the patio and in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Angela would walk away, from the patio or from the kitchen or from the bedroom, and cross the living room, and then Peppino would follow her, and the argument would resume when they believed they were beyond her hearing. She listened to the argument, merged with the frantic commentary of the television.

'She cannot come – you know she cannot come.'

'Then the children don't come.'

'The children have to come, it is the family.'

'I don't and the children don't.'

There was no weeping from Angela. Angela had been sitting in front of the television with Peppino when Charley had come back from the town with the shopping.

Charley had first, before she had understood, tried to tell Angela what she had bought, but Angela had waved at the screen… She remembered the afternoon they had sat, in shock, in front of the screen in the apartment in Rome, the death of the magistrate Borsellino… Then Peppino had come into the living room and made a remark about what clothes the children should wear that evening, and the argument was born. Angela was cold, in control, brittle-voiced. When she walked away from him, back to the patio, to the kitchen, to their bedroom, Peppino followed. Charley thought that Angela had chosen the ground for war with care.

'You will go yourself. Alone, you will go to your family.'

'You have to be there, the children have to be there.'

'And what would he say? If I am not there, and my children are not there, what would he say?'

'It is a gathering of the whole family.'

'Are you afraid of him? Are you afraid of what he would say?'

She sat in front of the television. Piccolo Mario knelt on the floor and, a miracle of God, the battery-powered car still worked. Francesca, on her lap, made a family of her dolls. The images of the television were sometimes soft-focus, sometimes zooming to close-up scenes, sometimes in wild and uncontrolled panning. There was nothing new for the television cameras. The scene was the same. There was the broken car, upside down, there was the following car stopped in the centre of the street, there was the wreckage of cars parked at the side of the street, and there was the milling mass of uniformed men. .. She thought Angela must hate her husband, sincere hatred, to taunt him so to his face.

'It is not her place to be with my family.'

'Then I don't go, and the children don't go, and you have to find the courage to tell him that you cannot discipline your wife… and what will he tell you? Knock her about a bit, Peppino. Give her your hand, Peppino, across her face. Are you frightened of her, Peppino? She comes, I come, my children come, and then that creature can touch our son.'

'Why?'

'It is a normal family party, Peppino, yes? Just an ordinary family party?' Her voice was rising. The sarcasm was rampant, as if she knew that she was heard. 'Of course, in respect of Rocco Tardelli, many normal and ordinary family parties tonight would be postponed. It is natural that a bambinaia should accompany the children to a normal and ordinary family party… and it would give me someone to talk with so that I do not vomit at the table.'

He came to the door.

Charley watched the television.

Peppino said, 'Charley, Angela would like you to accompany us this evening to a family gathering. Please, you will come?'

'You sure?'

'Quite sure.'

'I'd be delighted.' She did not, at that moment, know why Angela Ruggerio had chosen to make her part of a battleground in war. Her fingers brushed against the watch on her wrist. She wondered if he had gone yet, if he had quit. She wondered who would listen to her call.

'Thank you.'