Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  Mario Ruggerio snored through the dark hours.

  The time of the change of the guards' shift . . . Pasquale hurried, flashing his I/D at the soldiers on the street and the sergeant who watched the main entrance of the block.

  Pasquale hurried because he was three minutes late for the start of his shift, and it was laid down that he should have been at the apartment a minimum of ten minutes before the shift of eight hours began. He was late for his shift because it had been the first night that his wife and the baby had been home, and he had lain beside her for three hours, awake and unable to sleep, ready to switch off the bleeped alarm the moment it sounded. The baby had been quiet in the cot at the end of the bed. His wife had lain still in the bed, buried in tiredness. He had not woken either his wife or his baby when he had slipped from under the single cotton sheet, dressed, gone on his toes from the bedroom.

  The door was opened. He saw the disciplined annoyance on the face of the maresciallo. Pasquale muttered about his baby, coming home, asleep now, and when he shrugged his apology he expected a softening of the maresciallo's anger, because the older man had children, adored children, would understand. There was a cold, whispered criticism, and he squirmed the response that it would not happen again.

  They knew where the polished floorboards of the hallway creaked. They avoided the loose boards. They went silently past the door behind which the magistrate slept.

  Sometimes they heard him cry out, and sometimes they heard him tossing, restless.

  In the seven weeks he had known the magistrate, Pasquale thought the saddest thing he had learned of the life of the man he protected was the going of Rocco Tardelli's wife and the taking of Rocco Tardelli's children. The maresciallo had told him. The day after the killing of Borsellino, the month after the murder of Falcone, Patrizia Tardelli shouting, 'Sicily is not worth a single drop of an honourable man's blood. Sicily is a place of vipers . . .' She had gone with her three children, as the maresciallo had told Pasquale, and the magistrate had not argued with her but had helped to carry their bags from the outer door to the car, and the ragazzi had hurried him away from the danger of the exposed pavement and not allowed him even to see the car disappear around the corner of the block. The maresciallo had said that afterwards, after they had gone, the magistrate had not wept but had gone to work. Pasquale thought it the saddest story he knew.

  In the kitchen, among the mess of the heavy vests and the machine pistols, Pasquale filled the kettle in the sink where the magistrate's supper dishes had not yet been cleaned, and made the first coffee of the day. He poured the coffee for the maresciallo and himself. Later he would wash the dishes in the sink. They, the ragazzi, were not supposed to be the servants of the magistrate, or his messengers, or his cooks, nor would they ever be his true friends, but it would have seemed to each of them on the detail to be merciless to sit and watch as the magistrate washed his own dishes, prepared his food alone.

  Pasquale asked what was the schedule of the day.

  The maresciallo shrugged as if it were of no relevance.

  'To Ucciardione . . . ?'

  Again the shrug, as if it were of no importance whether they went again to the prison.

  The forehead of Pasquale wrinkled in puzzlement. It was what had confused him the night before, when he had sat in front of the late evening television after his wife had gone to their bed and the baby to the new cot. He did not understand.

  'The man who tries to be a pentito, he was very hard with him. All right, so we are not supposed to hear, to listen, but it is impossible not to hear what is said. "I can tell you where is Mario Ruggerio." Nothing happens. It is left. Why? Ruggerio is the biggest catch, Ruggerio is the target of Tardelli, Ruggerio is of international status. Am I very simple?'

  'Simple and naive and with much to learn.' There was a weariness in the expression of the maresciallo. He held the coffee cup in two hands, as if one hand on the cup might have shaken and spilled the coffee. 'There is a saying on the island, "A man warned is a man saved." Dr Tardelli was warned long ago, and he has ignored the warning. But, important, he has not only been warned by La Cosa Nostra, he has been warned also by those who should be his colleagues. He has the quality of honesty, and it is that honesty that humiliates his colleagues. There is no serious effort to attack the enemy, the colleagues stand and watch from safety, and they wait to see Tardelli fall on his arse.

  How many in the Palace of

  Justice make certain, Jesu, so certain, that an investigation into La Cosa Nostra never hits their desks? Too many. He is accused of the personality cult, of judicial communism, of denigrating the reputation of Sicily. He is accused by those who have ambition and vanity and envy, but who do not have honesty. Which judge can he trust, which prosecutor, which magistrate, which carabiniere, which police officer? Pasquale, can he trust you?'

  'That is insane.'

  'Insane? Really? A judge in Calabria is arrested, mafia collusion. The head of the squadra mobile is arrested, mafia association. What is your price, Pasquale, if your wife is threatened or your baby? If a prime minister can be bought, what is the price of a young policeman with a wife and baby? Everywhere is the contamination of the bastards. The former head of International Affairs of the American Justice Department is charged with working for the Colombians. In Germany it is reported that new levels of corruption in public life have been reached. Maybe he trusts us because we ride with him, because we would die with him. He does not trust his colleagues.'

  'Tell me.'

  'Each time he offers protection to a pentito he has to be certain of the genuineness of the man. He may be dealing with a "placed" man, he may be sitting opposite a liar. If he diverts resources, the weight of an investigation, in the direction of a "placed" man or a liar, then he will be weakened. If he is weakened, then he is isolated. If he is isolated, then he is dead. It is necessary for him to go one short step at a time because he walks through a mine field. Heh, what would you prefer, boy? Would you prefer to be directing traffic in Milan?'

  The coffee Pasquale drank was cold. He stood. He took off his jacket, and rolled up his sleeves, and ran hot water into the sink, and started to wash the magistrate's dishes.

  Past two in the morning . . . The night duty manager reflected his annoyance at being called by the porter from his office and his catnap. He studied the computer screen.

  'Difficult to help you, Sergeant. That's nearly a week ago. We've had 827 guests through since that night. All right, the date you want . . . 391 guests in residence. Bear with me. Are you sure this cannot wait till the morning?'

  But Harry Compton, after another evening beavering at the solicitor's files and archives, had chosen to visit the hotel in Portman Square on his way home. It was what was called, a bullshit expression, a 'window of opportunity'. In the morning he would be back at the solicitor's papers, so, definitely, it could not wait.

  'Well, of the 391 residents, twenty-one declared Italian passports. Wait again, I'll check the details . . .'

  The fingers flitted over the computer's keys.

  'You said, "resident in Palermo". No, can't help. Of the Italian passport holders that night, none declared residency in Palermo. You're being economical. Could you tell me why Fraud Squad is here at this wretched hour?'

  He felt the blow, like a punch. He swore under his breath.

  'Are you sure?'

  'That's what I said, friend - none lists residence in Palermo, Sicily.'

  'What about the dinner bill? Table twelve in the restaurant, did one of them sign?'

  'No can help. That's a restaurant matter. The restaurant's closed, has been cleared for ninety minutes. Have to come back in the morning.'

  'Get it open.'

  'I beg your pardon.'

  Harry Compton, detective sergeant in S06, reckoned he loathed the languid little creep across the reception counter. 'I said, get it open.'

  They went into the dim-lit restaurant. A sous waiter was found, smoking, in the kitchen. The key
s were produced. A drawer was opened. The receipts and order bills were taken from the drawer. There had been eighty-three diners on the evening that concerned him. He took the bundle of receipts and order bills to a table and asked to be brought a beer . . .

  It was near the bottom of the pile, sod's law, the sheet of paper for table twelve, the printout sheet with the illegible signature and the digits of the room number of the resident. He gulped the beer.

  He strode with the sheet of paper back to the reception desk and trilled the bell hard for the night duty manager.

  'Room 338, I want that gentleman's card.'

  'Are you entitled to that information?'

  'I am - and I am also entitled to report to Public Health that a dirty little creature was smoking in your kitchen.'

  The bill was printed out for him, with the check-in card carrying the personal details of the guest who had occupied room 338. It was an afterthought. Should have been routine, but he was so goddam tired. The night duty manager was disappearing back to his office.

  'Oh, and I require a list of the telephone numbers called from that room. Yes, now, please.'

  'Did you go back, where you were before?'

  'I did.'

  'Never worth it, going back. It seems unimportant, what was once special.'

  'I walked from the block along past the tennis club and into Piazza Fleming. It was the way that I used to take small Mario to the school bus.'

  'Going back is time wasted, sentimental.'

  'If you have any other criticisms to make, could we do them in a job lot and get them over with, Mr Moen? It gets to be tedious, your criticism.'

  If Charley annoyed him then, he did not show it. If she amused him, he did not show it. They were by the footbridge, high on the promenade above the water, across from the fortress of Sant'Angelo. She had been at the rendezvous on time and then she had waited. It had been ten minutes after she had come to the bridge that she had seen him, coming easily through a traffic flow, stopping, then skipping forward, confident. He'd told her that he had watched her through those ten minutes and he'd satisfied himself that she was not followed. He hadn't made a big deal of the fact that, his opinion, she might have been followed, just said it and unsettled her. She gazed down into the slow movement of the green-brown water below.

  'Are you going to ask me what I did last night?'

  'No.'

  So Charley did not tell Axel Moen about walking the streets of the centro storico and dousing herself in nostalgia. Nor did she tell him of sitting, anarchic and alone, in a ristorante and eating till her stomach bulged and drinking the best portion of a litre of house wine. She did not tell him that she had showered, walked naked from the bathroom and seen on the television the picture of a man's body in Palermo whose balls were in his mouth, and didn't tell that the night had been a long nightmare.

  'What did you do last night?'

  The dry voice, as if reciting from a catalogue. 'Went to a party.'

  'Could you have taken me?'

  'I had someone to go with.'

  He stood beside her. He held a padded paper bag in his hand. The labels had been pulled from it. She saw the great tree logs and the big branches, debris of the winter floods, now marooned against the piers of the bridge. She looked up at the fortress of Sant'Angelo. She had been round it, alone, in the summer of 1992, tramped the narrow corridors and climbed the worn steps and marvelled at the symmetry of its architects, so many centuries ago, in creating the perfect circular shape. It had been then a place of friendship.

  'I'm here, you're here, so what happens now?'

  'You're on board?'

  'Of course I'm bloody on board.'

  'You don't want to step off?'

  She stood her full height. He wasn't looking at her. He was gazing .iway, distant, towards the dome, misted and grey, of St Peter's. She took his arm, a fistful of the arm of his windcheater, and she jerked him round to face her.

  'For Christ's sake - I came, didn't I?'

  He seemed to hesitate, as if he were troubled. Then Axel launched. Terrorism, Charley, is spectacular. Terrorism makes headlines. You know about the bombs in the City of London, you know about ()klahoma City and the World Trade Center, and about hijackings. You know about the charisma of a Che Guevara or a Carlos or an Adams or a Meinhof because the ideology and profile of those people are plastered all over your television. They don't count. For al the resources we throw against them they are minor-league. But you, Charley, you don't know the name of an internationally relevant criminal. It's like HIV and cancer. HIV, the terrorist, gets the attention and the resources, while cancer, the crime boss, busies itself with the serious damage, but quietly. With an ideology only of greed, organized crime is the cancer that chews at our society, and it should be taken out at source with a knife. In the ideology of greed there is no mercy if an obstacle - you, Charley - gets in the way . . .'

  A small and weak grin. 'Is this your effort to scare me?'

  'When you're alone, when you're frightened, then you should know what you've gotten into. Down in Sicily, fair to assume, there's a hundred different programmes, slants, angles of an operation running. You are one in a hundred. That's your importance. You offer a one-in-a-hundred chance of, maybe, getting up alongside the target.

  You are Codename Helen, that is the name—'

  She snorted and the colour ran back into her face. She laughed at him. 'Helen? Helen of Troy? Trojan Horse and all that? That is really original - did a genius think up that one?'

  'It's what you are, Codename Helen.' He flushed.

  'What's inside the walls? Who's hiding in Troy?'

  'Don't play jokes, Charley, don't. There is a family in the town of Prizzi, that's inland from Palermo. It's a mean little place stuck on the rock. OK, Prizzi is the home of a contadino's family. The contadino is Rosario and he is now aged eighty-four. His wife is Agata, now aged eighty-three. Rosario and Agata have produced six children. The children are Mario, the eldest, sixty-two . . . Salvatore, sixty, in prison .. . Carmelo, fifty-nine, simple, lives with his parents . . . Cristoforo, would be fifty-seven, dead . . .

  Maria, fifty-one, married and an alcoholic . . . the youngest, Giuseppe, forty-two, the big gap because old Rosario was called away between 1945 and 1954 to spend time in Ucciardione Prison. The name of that family from Prizzi is Ruggerio . . .'

  He flicked a cigarette from the Lucky Strike packet. She locked her eyes on the cupola of St Peter's, as if she thought the mist- shrouded image might strengthen her.

  'The family is mafiosi, down to the base of its spine, right to the bottom of the root of the weed. But nothing is as it seems. The family has played a long game, which is the style of La Cosa Nostra, to play long and patient. Giuseppe, bright child, was sent by his eldest brother away from Prizzi, out of Sicily, to university in Rome. On to a school of business management in Geneva. To an Italian bank in Buenos Aires. There were connections, favours were called in, work in Rome for one of those discreet little banks handling Vatican funds. Did he seem to you, Giuseppe, to be the son of a contadino?

  Did he tell you about a peasant family? Did he?'

  Charley had no answer. Her teeth ground at her bottom lip.

  'I said that the family could play a long game. Only a very few in Palermo, and none in Rome, would know that Giuseppe is the brother of Mario Ruggerio. I don't know how many hundreds of millions of dollars Mario Ruggerio is worth. I know what he needs. Mario Ruggerio needs a banker, a broker, an investment manager, in whom he can place absolute trust. It's all a matter of trust down there. Trust is held in the family.

  The family has the man to wash, rinse, spin and dry their money. The family is everything. The family meets, the family gathers, and the family does not feel the danger of betrayal. Then, and it's rare, the family makes a mistake. The mistake is a letter written by Angela to a former nanny/ child-minder - I have a friend down there, and you don't need his name, and you don't need his agency, and because it's the way in Sici
ly he does not share with colleagues what he learns - and he learned of the link between Giuseppe and Mario Ruggerio, and he started to run a sporadic surveillance on pretty little Giuseppe, and the jackpot bonus came up when he intercepted the letter, a mistake. I don't know how often that family meets, no idea. I know that the family will come together, that Mario Ruggerio will need, a deep need because he is Sicilian, to be in the bosom of his family. They all have it, the evil, heartless bastards, a syrup streak of sentimentality for the family. You're there, Charley, you're a part of the family, you're the little mouse that nobody notices, you're at the far end of the room, watching the kids and keeping them quiet, you're access . . .'

  She stared at the cupola of St Peter's. She thought it a place of sanctity and safety, and she could remember standing in the great square on a Sunday morning and feeling humbled by the love of 1 he pilgrims for the Holy Father, minuscule on the balcony.

  'A man from Agrigento has disappeared. He led one of the three principal families of La Cosa Nostra. It is assumed he is dead. There is a man from Catania, the power in the east of the island. There is Mario Ruggerio. They do not share power in Sicily, they fight for power with the delicacy of rats in a bucket. Mario Ruggerio is one stage away from the overall command of La Cosa Nostra. One step away from taking the title of capo di tutti capi. One killing away from becoming the most influential figure in international organized crime. The target of Codename Helen is Mario Ruggerio.'

  She felt weak, pitiful. 'Is it possible, listen to me, Christ, hear me, is it possible for one person, me, to change anything?'

  He said, 'If I didn't think so, I would not have come for you.'

  He took her hand. Without asking, and without explanation, he unhooked the fastening of her wrist-watch. The watch was gold. It was the most expensive thing that she owned. It had been given to her by her father, three weeks before he had known of his redundancy, for her twenty-first birthday. He dropped the gold watch, as if it were a bauble and worthless, into his trouser pocket. He still held her hand, a strong grip that was without affection. The envelope was laid on top of the stonework above the flowing river. He took from it a bigger watch, a man's watch, the sort of watch that young men wore, a scuba diver's watch. He told her to think of a story as to why she wore such a watch. He slipped it over the narrowness of her fist, onto the narrowness of her wrist. The strap was of cold expanding metal. He showed her, exactly and methodically, which buttons activated the watch's mechanism, and which button activated the panic tone . . . Christ... He told her the life of the cadmium battery in the watch. He told her the signals she should send. He told her the range of the signal of the panic tone. He told her that the UHF frequency would be monitored twenty-four hours a day in Palermo. He told her when she should make a test transmission. He let her hand drop.