Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  They came to the old town, and they passed the Saracen tower.

  'To strangers and rivals he will display a psychopathic cruelty, but for his family he will have only a sickening sentimentality . . . Four years ago, in Rome, I met with his youngest brother. His brother was Giuseppe, he was a bright and alert businessman, a credit to the enterprise of the modern Italian - don't laugh, I checked, he actually paid his taxes in full. It was impossible to believe that he came from the same peasant stock as his eldest brother.'

  The maresciallo gave the whispered directions to the boy. They turned towards the hill over Mondello, went slowly up a narrow and cobbled street.

  'He attacked me, he criticized me for calling him to an interview at the SCO building.

  He said that he should not have been persecuted for his blood relationship. I apologized.

  I forgot him. The memory of him died in an unread file, forgotten. This morning I hear that he returned three years ago to Palermo. I hear that he lives in great affluence. He has a home that is a palace in the Giardino Inglese, he has a villa here.'

  They wove a way round a gaping hole where electricity men worked, they went past the high walls and the big gates and the leaping dogs.

  'He is connected in business with the wealthiest of the city, he is frequently abroad, he is a success. I could go to my peers, 'Vanni, I could again request resources for surveillance, I could beg and plead for resources, and I would again be criticized for the persecution of an innocent. I can come to you, 'Vanni, I can talk of an old friendship.'

  The maresciallo turned. His finger came fast from its resting place on the safety of his machine-gun, and pointed to the gates of the villa. There was wire on the top of the gates, and there was shattered glass set into the top of the wall beside the gates. Again the sharp hissed whisper of the maresciallo and the boy braked the car. Through bushes, between trees, over the gate and the wall was the roof of the villa and the upper windows.

  'I can ask for the team of the Reparto Operativo Speciale to move on this villa, no connection with me. I can ask it of you . . . Never have we found the banker of Mario Ruggerio, never have we known the link of Mario Ruggerio to the international situation. I think, perhaps, it was under my feet, beneath my eyes . . . You will do it for me?'

  'No.'

  'For friendship, 'Vanni, for the trust we have in each other.'

  'No, I cannot.'

  'Search it, turn it over, hunt for a notebook or a deposit book, an address book. I am in darkness. Please.'

  He caught the collar of the butcher's coat, and 'Vanni would not look into his face.

  'Vanni stared at the floor of the car. He said dully, 'I cannot - I would compromise an operation.'

  'What operation?'

  The maresciallo had heard the footfall first. He was twisted in his seat. He held the machine-gun just below the level of the door's window.

  'I told you that it was not in my gift to give . . .'

  The boy heard the footfall and his hands were rigid on the wheel and the gearstick.

  '. . . I am sorry, I cannot share it.'

  Tardelli turned. She walked past the car. She did not look into the car. She wore a cut-away blouse low on her shoulders and clean jeans. Her head was high, and her chin was out, and she walked with a brisk purpose. He saw the strength in her face and the boldness of her walk. She went to the gate ahead of them and she reached up to the bell.

  He saw no fear in her. She scratched at her back, removing an irritation. There was no weight to her, no size to her. She was 'an agent of small importance'. He slapped Pasquale, the boy, on the shoulder, and made the gesture. He looked away from her. As the gate opened, as a servant stood aside for her, the car powered away.

  'You know why we do not win, 'Vanni? You knew, and you did not mark it for me, you did not share. We cannot win when we fight harder against each other than we fight against them.'

  He slumped back in his seat. The darkness was around him.

  In the evening Salvatore received the visit of his mother. She came alone and she told him that his father suffered that day from the problem with his chest. He thought her more frail than when he had last seen her, but it was two years since she had been declared well enough to make the long journey to Asinara. He could not kiss his mother because he was a prisoner subject to a harsh regime, there was a screen of thick glass beween them. He asked about the health of his father and the health of his brother, Carmelo, and the health of his sister. He did not speak the name of his elder brother into the microphone that linked them, nor did he speak the name of his youngest brother. He told his mother that his own health was satisfactory. He showed no emotion, no misery

  - to have complained or to have wept would be to show a loss of dignity in the presence of the prison officials. From her handbag his mother took a handkerchief. She blew her nose into the handkerchief. She held the handkerchief, and her crabbed old fingers unwound the single sheet of cigarette paper. The cigarette paper was, for a short moment, revealed in the palm of her hand, close to the glass screen. He read the message. His mother crumpled the paper into her handkerchief, put her handkerchief back into her handbag. He told his mother that he hoped she would be able to visit him again soon, and that then his father might be well enough to come with her. Salvatore had been nine years old when he had first come to the damp and dark visiting rooms of Ucciardione to see his father. He had been sixteen years old when he had first come with his mother to the same rooms to see his elder brother. He had been nineteen years old when his mother had first come to visit him. He understood the workings of the prison, as if it were a home to him. After the termination of the visit, as he was escorted back to his cell, Salvatore Ruggerio requested a meeting with the governor. He walked with dignity to his cell, and men stood aside for him, and men ducked their heads in respect to him. At each step of the iron staircase, at each pace on the stone landings, he felt the power of his brother that settled on him. At his cell door he repeated the request, that he should meet with the governor. The door of the cell was locked behind him. He stood heavily on his bed. He could see between the bars of the cell. He looked at the lights of the city, and he remembered the message from his brother that had been shown him.

  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, Ma
rio 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.