Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  He remembered the name of Giovanni Crespo, and there had been a photograph, which was blurred, of a white and tensed face, published in the Giornale di Sicilia, beside the blanket-covered head of Riina as the big man was driven away after his arrest from the carabineri barracks. The memory was dismissed. He considered what he had been told of an American, poorly dressed, unnamed, perhaps armed, admitted to the inner office of Tardelli. In his mind he turned over the information, analysed it, pondered it. If the Americans mounted an operation in Palermo, if an agent came to visit Tardelli, then he believed that only he could be the principal target.

  The water in the saucepan boiled around the trippa. The sauce made from boiled tomatoes bubbled in a second saucepan. He took a bottle of Peroni beer from the refrigerator. He was ready to eat. There were times that he yearned for the cooking of Michela, and to be surrounded by his family, and to sit the little boy, his nephew, who was a rascal and who was named after him, on his knee . . . So much to think of . . . He took the trippa from the saucepan and spooned the sauce of tomato over it. He poured his beer. He seemed to imagine that his wife, Michela, put the plate on the table in front of him. It was a compartment in his life. All his life was in sealed compartments, and that was his strength. He allowed three men, Carmine and Franco and Tano, to be close to him. It was what he had learned in his climb to power. There should always be three, because two men could agree, in secrecy, on conspiracy, never three. The three men competed with each other, in insecurity, for his favour. Carmine would look to the matter of the carabiniere officer, Giovanni Crespo, and the association with the American. Franco had already been given responsibility for the security of the meeting with the Colombian. Tano liaised with the expert in explosives. He divided them, and he ruled them. He must be strong.

  There was an old saying in Sicily that his father, Rosario, had told him: 'A man who makes himself a sheep will be eaten by the wolf.'

  The physician, elderly and elegant and expensively considerate, had examined Charley with soft and cool fingers, probed at her grazes and bruises, and told her with a distant smile on his lined face that her injuries, though painful, were superficial. He had congratulated her on the good fortune that her experience had not led to serious hurt. Charley thought of what it would have been like in England, waiting in Casualty or at the general practitioner's clinic. Bloody hideous it would have been. But she had been calmed by the physician. She lay on her bed.

  He knocked. Peppino was smiling sympathy at her from the door.

  'You are better now?'

  'I feel a bit of a fraud.'

  'Angela tells me that you were very brave.'

  'Just wish I'd been able to scratch his eyes out or kick him in the bloody balls. Sorry, I mean leave him something to remember me by.'

  Peppino chuckled with her. 'It would have been nice. I am so sorry that I could not come at once. Have you reported this matter to the police?'

  'I just couldn't face it.'

  'Of course. It happens all day and every day in Palermo. The beauty of our city, its heritage, is despoiled by such crime, and the police can do little. If you report to the police, then you invade the world of their bureaucracy. Believe me, they are not fast.'

  'But, for the insurance, shouldn't I have a chit from the police?'

  He sat on the end of the bed, friendly, kind but not familiar. 'What exactly did you lose?'

  'There was my purse. I'd spent most of what you gave me . . . You'd like to see?'

  She swung off the bed. She took the blouse and the mini-skirt from the bag. She held them in turn in front of her. She thought it was what she should do, what would be expected of her, what was expected of a spy. He nodded his approval.

  'When there is a special occasion, please, you will decorate it. What was in your bag?'

  'Not much. My purse and thirty or forty thousand, my lipstick and the powder compact and the eye stuff, some keys. There was my Visa card, but I can get that cancelled, and there was my diary with phone numbers and addresses.'

  'You see, Charley, these scum are only interested in cash, probably for drugs, and they are very impertinent. Many times, after they have taken the money they will dump the bag in a rubbish collector very close to the Questura. It is possible, I cannot say probable, that your bag will be found. And I would not wish you to be concerned about your card. Allow me to take care of it. Angela said there was a necklace.'

  'He tried to snatch it, broke it. Just of sentimental importance, a present from my uncle.'

  She pointed to the thin chain that had lustre. The chain was on the table beside the book that she thought had been moved. And across the room was the chest containing her underwear that she thought had been taken out of the middle drawer and replaced.

  Maybe it was her imagination. Maybe it was a vicious lie of Axel bloody Moen.

  Maybe. She was the spy in their home.

  A frown, questioning, was on his forehead. 'You see, Charley, how greatly Angela depends on you. It is not easy for her here. It is a different culture from her life in Rome.

  It is impossible for her, in Sicilian society, to recreate the freedom of Rome. To her, your companionship is so important. Why I say that, very frankly, we hope you will not wish immediately to return to England.'

  'I didn't consider it - and God help the next low-life who tries anything.'

  He asked her to describe the handbag. He told her that he knew a man in the Questura and he would go directly to see the man and himself report the theft of the bag. For a moment his hand rested on the cleaned wound on her knee.

  'All of us, Charley, we admire your courage.'

  The detective superintendent winked across the table at Harry Compton, like it was going to amuse him. He cradled the telephone between his cheek and his shoulder to free his hands to light a cigarette.

  '. . . I quite appreciate you're a busy guy, Ray. When you've a moment ... I know how busy you DEA people keep yourselves. Won't take more than a moment, just something that's come up, needs clarification. I'll fit in with you. Down here at S06

  we're not that stretched, not like you are. Keep for a couple of days? I should think so .

  . . Oh, yes, the Bramshill conference would be excellent. I'll see you there. Very good of you, Ray, to get me on board your schedule. I appreciate that. See you then, Ray . . .'

  Chapter Nine

  'I turn to the issue of organized and international crime. The international scene is developing with increasing pace and we cannot afford to get left behind. Borders are coming down, trade is expanding, financial markets and services are becoming integrated. In short, we are no longer an island protected by the sea from unwelcome influences . . .'

  So, you got the message, sir, and about time. The Country Chief eased back in his chair. It was a chore of his work that he should attend the set-piece speeches of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. But he'd get a good lunch, and over lunch he'd have the opportunity to bend the ear of people who were useful to him, and he was out of London, and in spring the gardens at Bramshill College, which hosted senior men's courses, were rather fine.

  ' . . . We should be in no doubt that organized crime will exploit every opportunity, technological advance or weakness in order to expand. Organized crime, with its international links and quasi- corporate structures, is responsible for flooding the streets with dangerous drugs, undermining financial systems, and, by the sheer financial muscle it has available, it is a real threat to the integrity and effectiveness of the rule of law and is becoming ever more complex and sophisticated . . .'

  Good to have you on board, sir. The Country Chief looked out of the window, at the view of the daffodils and crocuses in flowered islands in the lawns, and around the lecture room. The guy from the National Criminal Intelligence Service was listening, and impassive. That was the guy who had told Ray, a year back, that there was no Sicilian La Cosa Nostra problem in little old UK. About time they grew up and joined the real world.

  '.
. . There is the question of the role, where appropriate, of the Security Service, and the future involvement of the Security Service in matters which have historically been the responsibility of the police. There is great strength in exploiting fully the experience, methods, powers and potential of different agencies in tackling common problems. The challenge is how to take advantage of diversity without creating confusion . . .'

  Hey, come to Washington, sir. Come and see the 'confusion' when the FBI and the CIA and the DEA and the ATF and the Revenue and the Customs get their noses onto the same scent. Come and see the catfight when the agencies get to hunt the same target. He knew the guy from MI5, a languid dick of a guy, sitting a row behind the NCIS man. Always looking for new territory. Take my advice, sir, keep the bastards at arm's length.

  '. . . Time is not on our side. I do not think our current structures allow us to punch at our full weight and the status quo will not serve us well in the next century. Our European and, indeed, world partners will run out of patience if we do not evolve a one-stop- shop approach to their involvement with us. I hope we will develop an appropriate mechanism to do justice to this formidable challenge. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.'

  Spoken like a man, sir, because patience was certainly wearing thin. Put bluntly, and Ray liked to speak his mind, he thought he found in little old theme-park UK a quite stunning complacency. He could have pointed to specialized police units that were starved of resources, to the Customs and Excise investigators who were driven by the culture of statistics, to the financial institutions in the City who blandly ignored the matter of dirty money. He applauded politely.

  Time for coffee.

  He was in the queue and talking banalities with a man from Drugs Squad.

  'Morning, Ray.'

  The guy from S06 was beside him.

  'You were looking for a word. How you doing?'

  'Coffee's usually pretty revolting. Let's walk and talk.'

  The Country Chief, good ears, caught the snap in the voice of the detective superintendent.

  'You go without, please yourself. I'm taking coffee.'

  So he stayed in the queue, made his point, had his cup filled, balanced it on the saucer and walked to the door. The detective superintendent was ahead of him. They went across the wide hallway and out onto the driveway where the chauffeurs waited with their bullshit cars. He liked to say that DEA had a 'blue-collar' mentality, and chauffeur-driven black cars didn't fit the work ethic he believed in. They walked on the lawns and skirted the daffodil clumps and the crocus carpets.

  'Nice time of year. So what can I do for you?'

  The detective superintendent was smiling, but malevolent. 'Just something that crossed my desk. You have an agent called Axel Moen on your staff—'

  'Wrong.'

  'I beg your pardon?' The smile had shifted, the face had hardened.

  'Put in one-syllables,' the Country Chief spoke slowly as if to an idiot child, emphasizing while his mind ratcheted, 'I do not have anyone of that name on my staff.

  Does that settle your problem?'

  'An agent with DEA accreditation named Axel Moen.'

  'We have around twenty-five hundred special agents, can't know all of them.'

  He never lied. He could divert, interrupt, head off, but he would not lie. He knew, from his deputy who had been to Lyon, that quite the most memorable twenty minutes of the Europol conference had been when Garcia, FBI out of Moscow, had put down the Brit from S06. The man's throat was tightening, and the veins were up on his forehead.

  'Did you know that a special agent, Axel Moen, travelled down to Devon a bit more than two weeks ago?' 'Maybe I did.'

  'Where's he out of?'

  'Is that your business?'

  'Don't fuck me around.'

  'If it's your business, he's out of Rome.'

  'Working with your facilities?'

  'Maybe.'

  'With your knowledge?'

  'Maybe. I'd kind of like to catch the next lecture.' The Country Chief threw the dregs from his cup down onto the grass. The lawns around them, between the islands of daffodils and the carpets of crocuses, had just been given their first cut. The dew damp flecked his shoes. 'What's your concern?'

  'He went to the home of a young girl, a schoolteacher.'

  'Did he?'

  'She had received an invitation to go and work for a Sicilian family/

  'Had she?'

  'Her parents say that your man, Axel Moen, pressured her into accepting that invitation.'

  'Do they?'

  'The man who has offered her employment has just travelled to the UK under false documentation.'

  'Has he?'

  'You want it, you'll get it. We reckon you are running some sort of anti-mafia job. We reckon you have trawled round for someone to do the sharp end for you, and you've got your sticky fingers on some poor girl.'

  'Do you?'

  'You have taken it upon yourselves, you arrogant bloody people, to pressurize and then send a small-town girl to Palermo for some bloody operation you've dreamed up.

  Who've you cleared it with?'

  'Among your crowd, I don't have to.'

  'You are running some naive youngster, filled with crap no doubt, down in Palermo.

  So help me, I'll see you—'

  'Should have listened to what your fat cat said. Your world partners will run out of patience. Maybe they already have.'

  He remembered what Dwight Smythe had said. The words rang in his mind. 'He elbows into a small and unsuspecting life, a young woman's life, and puts together a web to trap her, and does it cold.' He remembered what he himself had said: 'And maybe we should all clap our hands and sing our hymns and get on our knees and thank God that He didn't give us the problem.' He looked into the flushed anger of the Englishman's face.

  'Have you thought through the consequences? Do you take responsibility for the consequences?'

  'It's something you shouldn't get your noses into.'

  'That's shit, that's not an answer.'

  'It's the answer you're getting, so back off.'

  The Country Chief walked away. He went back into the hall and gave his cup and saucer to a waitress.

  He didn't have the heart for the session from the Italian attache on preventative measures being taken by the Banco d'ltalia concerning disclosure, nor for lunch, nor for the afternoon session when they would be 'entertained' by the police colonel from St Petersburg. He felt bad, and he wanted to get the hell out. He felt bad because he had said himself that it was a good plan, a plan that might just work. He had justified, himself, the use of a pressured innocent. He took his coat from the cloakroom. The poor goddam kid . . .

  She had stayed in the villa the day before, fussed over by Angela, lain in the sun while the gardener worked around her, but she had argued that morning with Angela. Yes, she was quite fit enough to take small Mario to school and Francesca to kindergarten. Yes, she was quite able to do the day's shopping. Yes, she would be able to walk the children to school and kindergarten, and do the shopping, before the threatened rain came.

  Shouldn't make a bloody drama out of a bloody crisis.

  She walked the children, with the baby in the pram, down from the villa and into Mondello. All her childhood, the star who was the centre of attention, she had learned to milk a crisis. Perhaps it had been her going to Rome for the summer of 1992, perhaps it had been leaving home and living lonely at college, but the thought of draining sympathy from others now disgusted her. She could reflect, viciously, that her father had whined drama out of t he redundancy crisis, made a growth industry from it. Her mother complained drama out of the cash-flow crisis. God, it was why she had gone away. She thought, cruelly, that her parents fed off drama, drank off crisis.

  Shut up, Charley, close it down. What was drama to Axel Moen, what was his definition of crisis? And where was he? Wrap it, Charley, forget it . . .

  She dropped small Mario at the school gate, bent down so that the child could kiss he
r. He ran, as he did each morning, through the playground to his friends and was engulfed by them. He was a happy and sweet little boy. If the plan worked, Axel's plan, then the drama would hit the child, the crisis would come with the arrest of the child's father and the child's uncle. She wondered who would play with the child at school the morning after the arrest of his father and his uncle, and the thought hurt deep. So considerate of those children, lying little bitch that she was, Charley acknowledged the growing strength each day of the sun, and she adjusted the parasol over the pram to keep baby Mauro in shade and she had Francesca walk in the shadow of her body. The forecast on Radio Uno had claimed there would be rain later, then promised clear weather for the rest of the week. In a couple of days it would be warm enough to lie on the beach, and go into the sea, and get some of the bloody sun onto the white of her legs and onto her arms and shoulders, and onto the bruises and scabs. Put it on the list, Charley, sun lotion. The children would like it, going to the beach. She left Francesca at the kindergarten.

  Through the shopping list. Tomatoes, cucumber, salami, non-fat milk, potatoes and oranges, apples . . . She ticked each item on her list. There was a farmacia on the road below the piazza, near to the Saracen tower.

  She wondered if the habit of coming each morning with the children and the baby to the piazza and the shops and the school and the kindergarten meant she was now recognized. The old man who sat on his chair under the black umbrella that protected the ice blocks around his fish, he nodded gravely to her, and she flashed him her smile.

  Angela only bought fish on Friday mornings, and then from a shop. Charley promised herself, if Angela were out for lunch one day, if Charley had the responsibility to make a hot meal for the children, then she'd buy fish from the old man with the black umbrella. She was on her way to the farmacia for the sun lotion when she saw the photograph.