Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  Said dry, with a gentle smile, 'Of course you would expect that we have plans for the arrest of Ruggerio. What is the range of the operation from which the DEA believes it will taste success when we eat failure?'

  'This is what you'd call a courtesy call. We have a small range of facilities organized by our friend. 'Vanni is looking after our interest.' Axel shifted awkwardly in his chair.

  'I'd rather not be specific.'

  The smile widened, warmth flowed and there was a brightness in the magistrate's eyes. 'Do not be embarrassed - I am the same as you. I trust very few people. You would not expect me to tell you of the locations of the physical surveillance and the bugs and the cameras, where we watch for Ruggerio. You would not expect me to tell you what information I have from the pentiti. But it is a sad game to play when there is no trust.'

  'It's not personal.'

  'Why should it be? So, we are engaged in competition. You wish to achieve what we cannot. You wish to show the Italian people that the power of the United States of America is so great that they can succeed where we fail.' The smile was long gone, his eyes fixed on Axel. 'If you succeed where we fail, then I assume you would seek the extradition of Ruggerio, and fly him back in chains to your courts as you did with Badalamenti.'

  'We have charges to lay against Ruggerio. It would be a message because we'd lock him up till he was dead.'

  'There are many here who would appreciate such a situation, and the poison whispers would pass in these corridors that Tardelli, the seeker after glory, was humiliated. You have put an agent into Palermo?'

  What he'd heard, more prosecutions were blocked by the jealousies, the ambitions, the envy, of colleagues than by the efforts of La Cosa Nostra. The man yearned for a rope to be thrown him. Axel looked away. 'I'd rather not.'

  'My assumption, Signor Moen, you have put an agent of small importance into Palermo. I do not wish to insult you, but if it were an agent of big importance, then Bill himself would have come, but only you have travelled . . . Do you know of Tom Tripodi?'

  Axel scratched in his memory. 'Yes, didn't meet him, gone before I joined, I heard of him. Why?'

  'He was here in the summer of 1979, not too long ago for lessons to be remembered.

  He was the star agent from Washington, and he worked with Vice-Questore Boris Giuliano. He posed as a buyer of narcotics, he found himself an introduction to Badalamenti, who was then capo di tutti capi. For those who made the plans in Washington it would have seemed so simple. An agent in place to achieve what the Italians could not. So sad that there was disappointment, that Badalamenti did not bite.

  It ended with Tripodi running for his life, taken to the docks by Boris Giuliano, with escort cars, with a helicopter overhead. We paid a heavy price, maybe because of Tripodi and maybe not, on the twenty-first of July of that year. Some days, a few days, after Tripodi ran from Palermo, Vice-Questore Giuliano went to his usual bar for his usual coffee early in the morning, and he did not have the chance to reach for his gun.

  But, of course, Signor Moen, the danger to your agent, and to those who work with you, and to yourself, will have been carefully evaluated in Washington . . .'

  There was steel in the magistrate's eyes, there had been the rasp of sarcasm in his voice.

  Axel said brusquely, 'We have made an evaluation.'

  'I am very frank with you, Signor Moen, I do not have an agent in place. I do not have an agent close to Mario Ruggerio, nor do I try to put an agent in proximity to that man.

  I would not wish it to lie on my conscience, the danger to an agent. Unless your agent is scum, a creature of the gutter, whose life is held to be of small importance . . .'

  Axel stood. 'Thank you for your time. Bill wanted to be remembered to you. It was only a courtesy.'

  The magistrate was already at the papers on his desk as they closed the door on the inner office. God, and he wanted to be out of the goddam place, like it was a place where he could suffocate on foul air.

  The guards watched them go, and drew casually on their cigarettes and stopped the card game. Axel led, pounding down the corridor, past the policeman who had been instructed to bring them coffee. Didn't wait for the elevator, but skipped down the wide stairs.

  Out into the fresh air, the goddam building behind him. He turned his back on the great grey-white building, Fascist architecture and a crap symbol of the state's power.

  He strode between the high pillars that were built to impress, through the parked and armour-reinforced cars that offered status.

  'What I cannot comprehend—'

  'What you cannot comprehend, Axel, is how small brother Giuseppe is not primary to Tardelli's investigations. I tell you, he works alone. He does not trust a staff. He works from early in the morning till too late in the night. He pushes paper until he is exhausted because he does not trust ... A long time ago he talked with little brother Giuseppe, in Rome, and was satisfied with what he was told. Think, how many metres of paper have crossed his desk since then? His mind is governed by priorities, and what he dismissed four, five years ago is low with priority. Of course he should target the family, every root of the family, but his mind is cluttered, his mind is tired, he has lost track of the distant root of the family. Do you complain that I don't help him? We are not the wonderful DEA, Axel, where colleagues are trusted, where work is shared. We are just pathetic Italians, yes? We are just food for your prejudices, yes?'

  He did not look back to see the troops on the flat roof with their machine-guns, he did not glance sideways to see the troops patrolling the outer fence, he went by the troops at the gate, ignoring them as they pushed the anti-bomb mirror on the pole under a car.

  'Vanni had to run to keep with him, and Axel pitched himself into the traffic flow, and the protest blasts of the horns beat in his ears. On the far side of the street, Axel swung round and he gripped 'Vanni's shirt front.

  'Why did he do that, why did he piss on me?'

  'Vanni was laughing. 'He goes to all the funerals. Maybe he is too busy to go to your funeral or the Codename Helen's funeral. Maybe he was telling you to be careful because he does not have a hole in his diary.'

  He thought of her, standing beside the Saracen tower, looking for him, alone, not finding him.

  Carrying the small bag, with a raincoat sagging from between the straps, Mario Ruggerio walked out of the Capo district.

  He came from behind the Palazzo di Giustizia. There was no expression on his face as he went past the building site backing onto the building where new offices were under construction for the sprouting kingdom of the magistrates and prosecutors. An old man with a small bag and a check cap on his head and a grey tweed jacket on his peasant's shoulders drew no interest from the soldiers of the bersagliere regiment on the roof, on the gates, beside the fence, on the pavement corners. In front of the Palazzo a policeman strutted importantly into the traffic flow and blew an imperious whistle-blast, stopped the cars and vans and allowed the old man and others to cross safely over the Via Goethe.

  He walked a full 750 metres along the Via Constantino Lascaris and the Via Giudita, and he did not turn his head to see the approach of sirens behind him. He walked until the breath was short in his lungs, until the tiredness was in his legs. The figures from the Casio calculator played in his mind, absorbed him. His concentration on the figures was broken only when he rested and faced a shop window, when he turned to watch the pavement behind him and the pavement across the street, when he checked to see if a car dawdled slowly after him. Near to the junction of the Via Giudita and the Via Giuglielmo il Buono, tucked away behind an apartment block, was the garage.

  At the entrance to the garage, by the high gates that were topped with wire, he turned again and checked again.

  The cousin of the owner of the garage had shared a cell in Ucciardione, four years before, with Salvatore Ruggerio. The cousin had received the protection of Salvatore Ruggerio. Four years later, in return for that protection, a debt was called in.

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bsp; The garage was a good place to meet. He went between the cars parked out in the forecourt and into the building that was alive with the music from a radio and the hiss of the welding burner and the clatter of spanners and the clamour of the panel-beating mallets. He carried his bag into a back office and the owner of the garage looked up, saw him and immediately cleared the papers from his desk and dusted the chair, as if an emperor had come. He was asked if he wished for coffee or for juice, and he shook his head. He sat on the cleaned chair, and waited.

  It was a good place for a meeting with Peppino. It was where Peppino had, for the last year, brought his car for servicing. He lit a cigar. He assumed that Peppino, though he denied it, was under sporadic surveillance.

  When Peppino came, they embraced.

  'You are well?'

  'Fine.'

  'A good journey?'

  'London was for me, for us, very good.'

  They talked the business. Peppino told his brother, close detail, down to each contractor's percentage, of the deal for the leisure complex at Orlando in Florida.

  Peppino spoke of the money that would be moved from Vienna to the account of Giles Blake in London and then invested with a merchant banker and a broker and a building contractor who needed the funds to complete seven storeys of a Manchester office block. He said what arrangements were made for the visit of the Colombian from Medellfn who managed onward shipments into Europe. And there were the Russians he would meet the week after in Zagreb.

  And Mario thought his brother spoke well. Only rarely did he interrupt. What was the commission for the clients of Giles Blake?

  Where would the meeting be with the Colombian? What percentage, down to a quarter of a point, would the Russians pay? He loved the younger man, so different from himself, and every phase of the differential had been planned by him, as though he had made and fashioned each stage of Peppino's life. He could smell the talc on Peppino's body, and the lotion on his face. The suit was the best, the shirt was the best, the tie was the best, and the shoes of his brother. The irony was not lost on Mario Ruggerio.

  Wealth and success clung to Peppino. Their parents lived in the old terraced house in Prizzi with Carmelo. Salvatore rotted in a cell in the prison at Asinara. Cristoforo was dead. Maria was cut off from them because the alcohol made her dangerous. His own wife, Michela, and his own children, Salvo and Domenica, were in Prizzi, where she looked after her mother. Only Peppino lived the good life.

  Nothing was written, everything was in their heads. He told Peppino of what the accountant had said, recited the figures of declining income and increasing outgoings.

  'You should not listen to him. If you were a small man, if you were concerned only with investments and product on the island, then this would be perhaps important. Your portfolio is international. You are better without him.'

  'There are some who say that I do not interest myself enough in the opportunities given by Sicily.'

  'I think in Catania they say that, where there is a small man - as the man in Agrigento was a small man . . .'

  It was, for Giuseppe Ruggerio, the confirmation of a death sentence. 'It is possible for a small man, as from Catania, to obstruct progress. If a tree falls in the wind and blocks a road, it is necessary to bring the saw, and to cut the tree, and to burn it.'

  'Burn it with fire.'

  They laughed, the chuckle of Peppino merging with the growled snigger of Mario Ruggerio. They laughed as the sentence of death was confirmed.

  And the smile stayed on the old and lined face. 'And how is my little angel?'

  'Piccolo Mario is the same as his uncle, a rascal.'

  'Francesca and the baby?'

  'Wonderful.'

  'I hope very much soon to see them. I have their photograph. I carry their photograph. I do not carry a photograph of my wife, nor of Salvo and Domenica, but I have with me the picture of Francesca and the birichino. The day you went to London, I was near to the Giardino Inglese, I saw the rascal. I have few enough pleasures. And Angela, how is your wife, how is the Roman lady?'

  'She survives.'

  He noted the coolness of the response. He shook his head. 'Not good, Peppino.

  Sometimes there is a problem if the wife of someone like yourself is not happy, sometimes there is an unnecessary problem.'

  Peppino said, 'In Rome we had a girl to help Angela with the children, an English girl. Angela became fond of her. I have brought her back, to the villa in Mondello, to make Angela happier.'

  The eyebrows of the old man lifted sharply, questioning. 'That is sensible?'

  'She is just a girl from the country. A simple girl, but she is company for Angela.'

  'You are sure of her?'

  'I think so.'

  'You should be certain. If she has the freedom of your home, there should not be doubt.'

  When Mario Ruggerio left, he walked from the garage to the corner of Via Giuglielmo il Buono and Via Normanini. He had the time to go into the tabaccaio and buy three packets of his cigars, and then the time, while he waited on the corner, to think of the small man from Catania, a tree that blocked the road and should be cut and burned, and more time to think of the family that he loved and the rascal boy who was named in respect of him. The Citroen BX came to the corner. The driver leaned across to push open the passenger door. He was driven away. A dentist had moved from Palermo to Turin and the apartment on Via Crociferi that was now vacated would be the safe house, for a week, used by Mario Ruggerio. At least he would sleep there, be free of the shit noise of the Capo district.

  He could not sleep. He stood at the window. Behind him was the bed and the sound of his wife's rhythmic snoring - he had not told her. In front of him were the lights of Catania, and out at sea were the lights of the approaching car ferry from Reggio. He could not talk about such matters with his wife. Never in thirty-two years of marriage had he talked of such matters, so she did not know of his fear, and she slept and snored.

  Alone, unshared, was the fear. Because of the fear, the loaded pistol was on the table beside his bed and the assault rifle was on the rug under the bed. Because of the fear, his son had come from his own home and now slept in the adjoining room. The fear had held him since he had come away from the meeting in the Madonie mountains with Mario Ruggerio. Other than his son, he did not know now in whom he could place his faith. It would come to war, war to the death, between his family and the family of Mario Ruggerio, and each man of his family, in his home and his bed, would now be making the decision as to which side he would fight on. He knew the way of Mario Ruggerio. It was the way that Mario Ruggerio had climbed. From among his own family of men there would be one who was targeted by the bastards of Mario Ruggerio, targeted and twisted and turned and bent to compliance. One of his own family of men would lead him to death, and he did not know which one. The fear, in the night, ate at him.

  'I don't want Pietro Aglieri, I don't want Provenzano or Salvatore Minore, I don't want Mariano Troia. You see them, you light a cigarette for them, and you offer them gum, but you don't show out.'

  A weak and nervous ripple of laughter played in his office. Rocco Tardelli believed that each man on a surveillance team should be in at the briefing. He reeled off the names of the super-latitanti and grinned humbly. They would have thought him an idiot. They stood in front of his desk, seven and not nine of them because one was on holiday and one claimed illness. He turned over the photograph on his desk, showed it them.

  'I want him. I want Mario Ruggerio. Aglieri, Provenzano, Minore, Troia are men of yesterday, gone, spent. Ruggerio is the man of tomorrow. There are insufficient of you.

  We have no more cameras than before. We do not know where to put audio devices.

  The photograph is twenty years old, but it has been through the computer. I do not know now if Ruggerio has a moustache, I do not know whether he routinely wears spectacles, I do not know whether he has dyed his hair. You are going into the Capo district, which is the most criminally aware sector of Palerm
o, I believe, more so than Brancaccio or Ciaculli. The prospect of your maintaining a cover for ten days is minimal, and you know that better than me. The information I have is that Ruggerio took an almond cake in the bar in the street between the Via Sant'Agostino and the Piazza Beati Paoli which caused him to shit, but that was a year ago.'

  The men of the squadra mobile surveillance team laughed at the magistrate, which was the intention of Rocco Tardelli. The surveillance teams, whether from the ROS or the DIA or the Guardia di Finanze or the squadra mobile, were in his opinion the cream.

  They looked so awful, quite beyond salvation - they were like street thieves and like beggars and like pimps for whores and like narcotics pushers. They looked like the filth of the city. But his maresciallo knew them all, and had sworn on the loyalty of each of them. He wanted them to laugh at him. He needed them to reckon that what was asked of them was idiot's work. Others would have lectured them, others would have minimized the problems. Rocco Tardelli challenged them.

  'And, of course, you should know that you are not alone in hunting Ruggerio. Every agency has a plan for his capture. You know, even a foreigner has come to me, as a matter of courtesy, to inform me that he is on the ground and hunting il bruto. You are considered to have the least chance, you are at the bottom of the priority heap, you are assigned to an obsessional and neurotic and vain investigator. You are given to me.'

  They gazed at him. The time of laughter was over.

  He said quietly, 'If he is there - if - I know you will find him. Thank you.'

  Peppino had come home the night before, late.

  When she made breakfast for Francesca and small Mario, while she heated the milk for baby Mauro's bottle, Charley had heard the sounds of the love-making from the main bedroom of the villa. Tried to concentrate on what measure of cereal for the children, and what temperature the milk should be heated to, and she had heard the groaned whisper of the bed. It was eight months since she had had sex, been screwed by the creep in the caravan who'd come over her stomach before he was even inside her .. .