Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  They were two scorpions, as if in a ring, watching each other.

  No love, no trust existed between these two. Each had sent men the day before to sit on the high ground above the farm building, and to look down over the ripening fields and over the flocks of grazing sheep and the herds of browsing goats, to check the security arrangements. Neither Mario Ruggerio nor the man from Catania feared intervention by the carabineri or by the squadra mobile, but they feared the trap and the trick that might be sprung by the other. The man from Catania had come first, driven in a Mercedes and with a following car of minders. Mario Ruggerio had deemed it right that the other should come first and then wait ... He had made his statement, he had come with two BMW cars filled with his own men but had driven himself in an old Autobianchi, a poor man's car, a peasant's wheels.

  Outside the building the two groups of armed men stood apart. All would have known that if it came to war between the two families, then they must make, and fast, the decision as to whether to stand and fight in loyalty or to attempt to switch sides. If it were war, it would be to the death. It was said - and the minders who stood apart from each other would have heard it - that a thousand men in the defeated factions had died when Riina had killed his way to supreme power. There was no tolerance for a loser ...

  Some carried machine-pistols, some were armed with automatic assault rifles, some slipped their hands nervously inside bulging jackets as if for reassurance. There was no place inside the organization for shared control.

  They talked, the two scorpions manoeuvring in the ring for advantage, across a bare board table. Ruggerio spoke of his view of the future, and the view was of increased international dealing in the world of legitimate finance. The man from Catania gave his opinion, and his opinion was that the organization should draw in the reach of its tentacles and make a concentration of effort on the island. They talked in fast bursts of dialect-accented words, and they smoked through the long silences.

  In the silences were soft smiles. In the silences they smiled compliments and felicitations to each other, and both sought to decide whether it would be necessary, in order to achieve supremacy, to fight. In the matter of body language, of assessing strength, Mario Ruggerio was an artist. It was his quality, through his cold and clear-blue and darting eyes, to recognize weakness. In the ring, it was not the time for the scorpion to strike. He thought that the chin of the man from Catania displayed weakness.

  Outside the farm building, Mario Ruggerio watched the three cars head away for the long drive back to Catania. His own men watched him for a sign. Franco saw it, and Tano and Carmine. They saw Mario Ruggerio watch the dust clouds billow on the track from the wheels of the cars, and they saw him spit into the mud, and they knew that a man had refused to take second place and that a man was condemned.

  The tourists came by bus up the hairpin road from the city to the cathedral of Monreale.

  They brought to the duomo voices that bayed excitement in the languages of French and German and Japanese and English. They came with their blinkered eyes and closed minds to the cathedral and monastery for Benedictine monks built nine centuries before by the Norman king William the Good, and they clucked their pleasure as they stood at his sarcophagus, and gazed up at the gold of his mosaics and walked through his cloisters, and marvelled at the site he had chosen with such acuity above Palermo.

  When they returned to their buses to drive away from Monreale, the French tourists and the Germans and the Japanese and the English and the Americans knew only of the past, had learned nothing of the present. No guide had told them of the ownership by La Cosa Nostra of the water they had sipped, of the ristorante they had eaten in, of the souvenir trade in religious relics they had boosted. No guide had told them of the priests who had offered hiding places to men of La Cosa Nostra on the run, or of the priests who had perjured themselves in court in offering alibi evidence, or of the priests who had permitted the super-latitanti to use their mobile telephones, or of the priests who said that La Cosa Nostra killed far fewer of God's children than the modern abortionists. No guide had told them of the new carabineri barracks in the town that were the base of the Reparto Operativo Speciale, or shown them the plaque on the wall of the barracks of the polizia municipale in memory of d'Aleo killed by mafiosi and of the plaque in the principal piazza in memory of Vice-Questore Basile killed by mafiosi. The tourists surfeited on history and did not know and did not care to know of present times.

  He had the top floor of a widow's house.

  She was a tall and elegant woman and wore the traditional black of mourning, but she told Axel Moen that it was six years since her husband, the surveyor, had died. She led him around the apartment - a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom -

  and in each room her fingers seemed to brush the surfaces for imaginary dust. He used his actual name with her, and he showed her the doctored passport that had come from the resources section back in Washington along with the wrist-watch, and he told her that he was a lecturer at the university in Madison and that his subject- matter was archaeology. She was polite, but she had no interest in digging through the past. The widow, his view, was a fine woman with education and dignity, but she had no complaint when he paid her three months' rental in advance with dollar bills. He thought they might, the dollar bills, go to Switzerland or they might go to a tin under her bed, but sure as hell they would not go onto a tax return form. She treated the payment as if it were a necessary moment of vulgarity and continued the tour of the apartment. She showed him how the shower worked, told him when the water pressure would be high, she took him to a small balcony that looked out over the town and the valley beyond and then to the mountains, and it would be his responsibility to water the potted plants. She gave him the keys of the outer door to the street and of the inner door to the apartment. Perhaps because he wore jeans and an old check shirt, perhaps because he wore his hair long in a pony-tail, she remarked coolly that she expected a

  'guest' in her home to be quiet in the evenings, that she should not be disturbed, as she was a light sleeper. She was Signora Nasello. She closed the apartment door behind her.

  She left him.

  He had sat alone in the chair by the open doors to the balcony, alone with his thoughts, before 'Vanni Crespo came.

  They hugged. Their lips brushed the other's cheeks.

  They were as kids, as blood brothers.

  'It's good?'

  'Looks fine.'

  'Not easy to find, a place in Monreale . . .'

  'You did well.'

  He was short of friends. Friendship did not come welcome to Axel Moen. Friendship was giving . . .

  'You are the spirit of generosity, Mr Moen.'

  Not many others, in Italian law enforcement or in the DEA's place on Via Sardegna, cared to goad Axel Moen. Not many others cared to tease or taunt him.

  He had learned from his childhood to exist without friends. After the death of his mother, when his father had gone abroad, at the age of eight he had gone to live for five catastrophic months with his mother's parents. They were from the south end of the state, close to Stoughton. They were big in the Lutheran church and ran a hardware store and had forgotten how to win the love of an abandoned child. Five months of screaming confrontation, and beatings, and Axel had been sent on the bus, like preserved cod going to market, like a bale of dried tobacco leaf going to the factory, away up north to his father's father and the 'foreign Jezebel'. There had been no friends at the small farm between Ephraim and Sister Bay. In the tight-bound Norwegian community, his grandfather and his grandfather's second wife were shunned. He was a child living as an outcast. He had learned to live without a friend on the bus taking him to and from the school in Sturgeon Bay, and without a friend to make the long journey with down to Green Bay to see the Packers play. Vincenzina, from far-away Sicily, dark and Catholic, treated as a medieval witch and a danger and a threat, existed alone and taught the young Axel how to ignore isolation. He had learne
d, alone, to sail a boat and fish and walk with the dog as his company. And Vincenzina had never mastered fully the English language and they had talked an Italian of the Sicilian dialect at home in the farmhouse. They had been, forced to be, their own people. Axel had little trust in friendship.

  'Vanni took a Beretta pistol from his waist, and two filled magazines of 9mm bullets from his trouser pocket. He passed them to Axel.

  'It's good. I'm an archaeologist. I'm digging for antiquities. I teach at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I'm over for the summer semester. You'd better believe it.'

  Axel grinned, and 'Vanni was laughing with him.

  Axel had known Giovanni Crespo for a full two years. The first trip with Bill Hammond down to Palermo, called 'front-line acclimatization', they had been assigned the tall and angular-faced carabiniere captain as a guide. Bill had said, and believed it, that any Italian policeman should be treated as a security risk. Two days of whispering between the two Americans until the last night, when the big trip was winding down, and they had gone to ' Vanni's flat and 'Vanni and Bill had drunk themselves half-insensible on Jack Daniel's and Axel had sipped coffee. 'Vanni had been the first Italian Axel had met who said the sociologists and the apologists talked shit about La Cosa Nostra, that the bastards were simple criminals. He had known 'Vanni was worth the trust because it had been 'Vanni who had held the pistol at Riina's head. Salvatore Riina, capo di tutti capi, blocked off in a south Palermo street, and shitting himself and wetting himself, and lying in the gutter with ' Vanni's pistol at his temple as the handcuffs went on his wrists and the blanket went over his head. If a man held a pistol at Salvatore Riina's head, at the squat killer's temple, then Axel had a man who did not compromise. 'Vanni drank, 'Vanni screwed a prosecutor from Trapani and usually in the back of a car, 'Vanni talked too much and didn't know how to protect his back. They were different species, and their friendship was total.

  'She's here?'

  'She's here, and she's Codename Helen.'

  'That was mine, I thought of that one.'

  Between the knuckles of his fingers Axel caught a pinch of 'Vanni's cheek. 'She said,

  "That is really original - did a genius think up that one?" That's what she said.'

  Axel told 'Vanni the detail of the watch with the UHF panic tone, and he told him about the range of the pulse signal.

  'Vanni had the maps, large scale, of Mondello on the coast, and of the high points of Monte Gallo and Monte Castellacio and Monte Cuccio, and of Monreale. They marked, bold ink crosses, the high points on which the microwave boosters would be placed.

  'What have you told her?'

  'When she should use the signal - only at the time of a contact with Mario Ruggerio or at a time of risk to her personal safety.'

  'She accepts that?'

  'I think so.'

  'Think? Jesu, Axel, does she understand what she does, where she goes, with whom?'

  'I told her.'

  'Vanni said, soft, 'Is she capable of doing what is asked of her?'

  'What I told her, "Don't think I want someone like you down there, but I don't have the option." And I told her that if she gave cause for serious suspicion, then she would be killed, and I told her that after they'd killed her they'd go eat their dinner.'

  There was astonishment on 'Vanni's face, 'And she is just "ordinary", your word?'

  'She is ordinary and predictable.'

  'Don't you have a feeling for what you have pushed her towards - do you not have any goddam feeling?'

  Axel said quietly, 'It's her strength that she is ordinary. And what was lucky for me, she was bored. She saw her life stretched out, the tapestry of her life was insignificance and under-achievement and waste. She yearns to be recognized, she wants excitement . . .'

  'Don't you go fucking her, she might go to sleep.'

  They were in each other's arms. Together, crying in laughter. Holding each other and laughing in hysteria.

  'Vanni said, and the laughter dribbled at his mouth, 'You are a cold bastard, Axel Moen, and you are a cruel bastard. How close did you say you would be?'

  'I said that I would be close enough to respond.'

  'But that's shit, you know you cannot be, not all of the time.'

  'It's best for her to believe that, all the time, I am close enough to respond.'

  As if the laughter had served as a bonding, as if now there was no time for more laughter, they talked together into the night. They worked the detail of the exact locations of the microwave boosters, and where the receivers should be, and what were the codes that Codename Helen might use. They talked of the response team that must be made available, and with whom the information could be shared. Later,

  'Vanni would slip out of the apartment and then

  return with boxed fresh-cooked pizzas. They talked in urgency, into the night, as if a life was suspended from their fingers.

  She stood back. Piccolo Mario was frantically working open the bolts and locks of the door. Angela was in front of the mirror, and she touched her hair and then flicked with her nails to remove something unseen from the shoulders of her blouse. Francesca ran from her bedroom. Charley stood at the back of the hall.

  He was a little greyer at the temples. He was, perhaps, a few pounds heavier in weight. He was as she remembered him. He carried bags and flowers and gift-wrapped parcels. The wide smile on his face as he pecked a kiss at Angela's cheek and swung small Mario high in the air and crouched to cuddle Francesca.

  He came forward, across the hall, and he beamed pleasure at the sight of her. She held out her hand, shyly, and he took it and then lifted it and kissed it, and she blushed.

  'So wonderful that you could come, Charley. You are very welcome in our small home.'

  She stammered, 'It's lovely to be here . . . thank you.'

  The man who washed money, whose brother was one killing away from becoming the most influential figure in international organized crime, let her hand drop. She was there, she had been told, because the family had made a 'mistake'. Angela and small Mario and Francesca, as if according to a ritual on his return, and she remembered the ritual, were opening their presents, discarding to the floor the ribbons and the bright paper.

  'And you have been in Rome, Charley?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why did you go to Rome?'

  She blurted, 'For nostalgia . . . because I had been so happy there . . . because it was the best time of my life. It was an opportunity.' She felt confident because she thought she had lied well.

  A brooch of diamonds for Angela, an electronic game for small Mario, a soft toy for Francesca . . .

  'I missed the direct flight, had to change in Milan - delay, of course - fog, of course.

  You should not have stayed up for me, not until so late.'

  Charley instinctively glanced down at her watch. The watch was heavy on her wrist.

  She glanced at the watch and the button on her watch. She slipped away. She should not intrude. She went to her room. In her bed Charley pressed the watch against her breast and felt the hardness of it, and she wondered where he was, where Axel Moen waited.

  Chapter Six

  He had been up early.

  He had seen Signora Nasello, through a ground-floor door, in her kitchen and wearing a bright dressing-gown, as if in the privacy of her home she did not need to clothe herself in widow's black. In a bar he had taken a coffee and a pastry, and he had gone to the meeting place.

  He had not shaved. He was dressed in old jeans and an old shirt, and his hair was gathered back into an elastic band.

  Axel waited at the meeting place and gripped a plastic bag close against his thigh, and the Beretta pistol was under his shirt and held by the waist of his trousers. He was off the main street that led down to the piazza and the cathedral. He was high in the town and close to the rock face of the dominating mountain. He stood beside the stall of a man who sold vegetables, and while he waited the housewives came and bartered for beans and artichokes and
lemons and oranges and potatoes and shrugged and made to walk away and turned back to give the man their money and to take the bags in return.

  The van came from behind him. It was poor procedure on Axel's part that he did not see the approach of the van. He was jolted by 'Vanni Crespo's sharp whistle. It was a builder's van, the sort that would be used by an artisan working alone, small and dirty and rust-flaked. The door was opened for him, and he slid inside and his feet had to find space between a plastic bucket and paint pots, and he needed to duck to avoid the stepladder that jutted from the back of the van out between the front seats. He held the bag on his lap.

  'You like it?'

  'Taxed, I assume?' Axel grinned.

  'Taxed, even insured. Did you sleep well?'

  'I slept all right.'

  'Did you dream?'

  'No.'

  'You didn't dream of her, of Codename Helen, not of her?'

  Axel shook his shoulders. 'You play CIs, you use them, and when you have finished with them, then you pack them off back where they came from, end of story.'

  'And you did not dream of Ruggerio?'

  'No.' Axel, quite hard, punched his fist into the side of the Italian's chest. 'Hey, big boy, ugly boy, this woman from Trapani, does she have to go with you in the back of this heap?'

  'She has, I thank the Virgin, her own car.'

  They lapsed to quiet. They had come to a four-lane road below the town. He felt the keen thrill of pleasure, like he was dosed on ephedrine, like it was when the adrenalin coursed. The adult life of Axel Moen was divided, sharply, between the good times and the bad times. There were no grey shade compromises.

  The university at Madison was bad times, no friends and no tolerance of student life, and finding what he rated as juvenile kids, and working alone to get the grades that were necessary. The city Police Department was good times, interesting from the start and better when he'd made detective status and gone to the surveillance team. A Drug Enforcement Administration investigation in Madison that used him as liaison and included him on a covert stake-out, that was good times. Taking the jump, quitting Madison and going to the DEA, joining the recruits at Quantico and being told he had an attitude problem and struggling to stay with the flow, that was bad times.