Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  'It was just an opportunity, you know, the right chance at the right time.'

  'I took a telephone call for you. The caller said he was the chaplain of the Anglican church. You were later coming back than I thought. And you had to take the bus into Palermo, and then you would have had a long walk to the cathedral. I was worried, Charley, that you would be late for the start of the tour/

  'No, no, I was there in time/

  'Because we offer you so little, I thought it was good for you to have friends. In the book I found the telephone number of the Anglican church. I wanted to be certain they would wait for you. I spoke to the chaplain, to tell him that you were coming, that they should wait for you. I am glad, Charley, that you were not late for the tour.'

  She had broken the rule. She had pushed, pestered, persisted. With the broken rule came the broken cover. She passed the last of the shirts from the basket and the pegs to hang it from. She could not read the face of Angela Ruggerio. They walked back to the kitchen.

  The army colonel said that a new brigade of troops would be in Palermo within forty-eight hours, probably a paratroop unit.

  'To do what? To direct the traffic?' It would be the Chief Prosecutor's last post before retirement. He had cracked a mould with his appointment. Before he had taken the post it had been given, for many years, to an outsider. It had been his great pride, that he, a Palermitan, had won the appointment.

  The squadra mobile colonel said that four new teams of trained surveillance officers would be transferred from the mainland within the week.

  'Excellent. Then we will know which dogs foul which pavements.' He felt a great weariness, an engulfing impatience, and a dripping flow of shame. He had shown no love for Rocco Tardelli and less support. He had laughed behind his hand at the man, and sneered at the man.

  The deputy mayor said that the Minister of Justice would come himself to the funeral, and had telephoned his instructions that all resources should be diverted to this investigation.

  'More resources. What generosity. We may have more flowers and a bigger choir in the cathedral.' The Chief Prosecutor threw down his pen at the papers in front of him.

  'And we have to do something. It is required of us that we do something.'

  The deputy mayor said that, in an hour, he would make a televised statement, a strong denunciation.

  'Which will have a quite extraordinary impact upon the Men of Honour. Perhaps they will fart when they see you.'

  The colonel of the squadra mobile said that every possible associate of Mario Ruggerio would, that night, be watched.

  'But we don't know who are his associates. If we had known, he would have been incarcerated this year, last year, ten years ago.'

  The army colonel said that each soldier under his command in Palermo was out now on patrol in every quarter of the city.

  'Your soldiers are ignorant and untrained conscripts, and we cannot even tell them what is the appearance of Mario Ruggerio. Probably they would stop the cars and help him across the street.'

  'I think you take a very negative attitude,' the deputy mayor said.

  He had come to this meeting, down the great corridor on the third floor of the Palazzo di Giustizia, the place they called the Palace of Poisons. He had passed the office of Rocco Tardelli. He had recognized the guard. The guard was dust-covered and his face was blood-smeared. He thought the guard had the look of a woman who will not leave the mortuary where a still-born baby lies. From behind the door was the sound of the violation of the office of Rocco Tardelli. He had come to the meeting and he had heard the gestures that would be made.

  'Do you know what happens at this moment? Do you know the reality of what happens? In the apartment of my dead colleague, and in the office of my dead colleague, there are now artisans working with oxyacetyline cutters so that the personal safes at his home, at his workplace, may be opened. For each safe he kept only one set of keys, and the keys were on his person and his person is bits. We have not found his keys in the Via della Croci. He had only one set of keys because he did not trust those with whom he worked. He employed no secretary, no aide, no staff. He did not trust us.

  That is the kernel of my problem, that a brave man could not trust his colleagues.

  Maybe in one of his safes will be his description of an avenue of enquiry that he did not share because he had no trust. And Mario Ruggerio will laugh at our gestures and celebrate and walk in freedom. Yes, my attitude is negative.'

  From a distance, the tail watched the house and the closed street and the parked cars and the carabineri with their guns and flak vests and balaclava masks. The arrival at the house was reported.

  'How long have we got?' Harry Compton fidgeted his fingers.

  'Enough time/ the Italian said.

  In London, of course, there were police undercover men and women. They'd be undercover in Vice or Organized Crime or with Drugs Squad. Harry Compton didn't know any of them. They'd have the full back-up. They'd have a chief superintendent wetting his smalls for them each night. They'd have support. He stood in the apartment.

  The man seemed to have no interest in the packing of his few effects. The bag was packed by the Italian and the Afro-American. The man, Axel Moen, had let them in, like he didn't care that they trampled through his life, and he'd gone to the table against the wall on the far side of the room from the window. The light came badly from the small ceiling bulb, and he sat in shadow and wrote. Harry Compton stood by the door beside the big policeman who wore the anorak of the carabineri, who held the machine-gun. He watched, he was an intruder present at the end of a dream, and he was responsible for the waking.

  The Italian collected the books on archaeology, Roman and Greek and Carthaginian antiquities, and the Afro-American took the clothes from the wardrobe and the chest and folded them and laid them with precision in the bag, and the man sat in shadow and wrote busily on a big notepad.

  The man hadn't spoken as they had driven from the barracks to the narrow street.

  They'd brought three cars, and they'd blocked off the street ahead of the house and before it. Harry Compton, stretching his mind, could not imagine what it would be like to live undercover, without back-up. The bag was packed, was zipped shut. The room was stripped of the presence of Axel Moen. The Afro-American was about to speak, probably he'd something asinine on his tongue about planes not waiting, but the Italian had touched his arm. Axel Moen, sitting in the shadow of the room, wrote his letter, and the Italian guarded his last rites as a vixen would have protected a cub.

  They'd get him out, Harry Compton thought, get him on the flight, get shot of the responsibility for him, and then he would make his pitch for the girl. There was fierce argument in the street below. There was a hammering cacophony of horns because the street was blocked by three cars and by armed men. Harry Compton's pitch about the girl would be that they should drive from the airport to the villa, wherever it was, and lift the girl out. If she wanted to go screaming, then she could go that way, if she wanted to go kicking, then she could kick, if she needed to be handcuffed, if she needed a strait-jacket, then he would oblige, if she argued, the way he felt, he'd tape her mouth.

  He could recognize the symptoms of fear. He was so bloody aggressive. They should get the man on the flight, they should get the girl out of the villa, they should close down on the place and turn their backs to it, fuck the hell out of it and go. The aggression came from the fear. The fear came from the growing dusk falling on the street, the guns that guarded them. And the man kept on with his writing, like there wasn't a hurry, like the flight would wait . . . She'd kill him, Fliss would, if he came back without a present for her, and she wouldn't understand, and he wouldn't tell her why he hadn't gone shopping, why he hadn't even bought anything for Miss Frobisher, wouldn't tell her of his fear . . .

  The notepaper, three sheets, was folded. There was shouting on the stairs, a woman's voice, shrill. The man, Axel Moen, in his own time, took an envelope from the drawer of the table, a
nd put the sheets of notepaper into the envelope. He slipped his hand into the breast pocket of his shirt and lifted out a small gold wrist-watch, a woman's watch, and placed it in the envelope with the sheets of notepaper. He licked the flap of the envelope and fastened it down. He wrote a name on the envelope, and there wasn't the light for Harry Compton to read the name, and he gave the envelope to Dwight Smythe.

  They went out through the door. They had stripped the room and taken the identity from it. The dream was gone. Harry Compton had killed the dream . . . The woman was at the bottom of the stairs and she shouted her abuse at the policeman who barred her, at them as they came down. He caught the drift. She screamed at them in a patois of English and Italian. She had taken a spy into her house. What would happen to her?

  They had endangered her. The whole street knew a spy had lived in her house. Who would protect her? She was not answered. She spat in the face of Axel Moen.

  The car doors slammed. They pulled away into the dusk. The dream was dead.

  From a distance, the tail watched as the men came out of the house. A description was given of the long-haired American. It was reported that he carried a travel bag.

  Charley asked, 'What should I wear?'

  Peppino lounged on the big chair in the living room. His papers were around him. He looked up and at the first moment there was annoyance at the distraction, and then the slow grin came to his face.

  'Whatever makes you feel good.'

  She was in control. She felt no fear. The darkness gathered outside the living-room windows and she saw the shadow shape of the gardener pass.

  'I'd want to wear the right thing - wouldn't want to get it wrong.'

  'If you would like it, I will come and help you choose what you should wear.'

  'Good.'

  She had the power over him. He stood. He glanced furtively towards the kitchen.

  Angela was in the kitchen with the children and their colouring books and their crayons. She had the power over them all. The power flushed in her . . . Axel Moen would have sworn at her, and warned her . . . The power was a narcotic in her. She led him into her room. He followed. He waited at the door. She drew the curtains of the window and then she crouched down at her chest of drawers and took out the blouse that he had paid for, and the drawer was left open and he would be able to see her neatly folded underwear . . . She did not care that Angela knew the lie, and she did not care that Axel Moen would have sworn and warned . . . She faced him, and she held the blouse of royal blue across her chest so that he could see the line of it and the cut of it, and swivelled with it and then tossed it on the bed. She sought control. She went to the wardrobe, and he drifted towards her. She heard the brush of his feet, coming closer to her. She took the skirt of bottle-green from the clip hanger in the wardrobe and she held it across her hips and stomach and thighs. She felt the warmth of his breath on the skin at her shoulders and she knew the scent of him. His fingers touched her and groped under her arms and towards her breasts. She demanded control. She lifted him, she collapsed him.

  'Sorry, Peppino, it's "curse" time - bad luck.'

  The tail was a motorcycle and a car. The motorcycle was ahead and the car followed.

  The pillion passenger on the motorcycle used a mobile phone to report that the convoy had taken the route to the Punta Raisi Airport.

  They took the ring road west of the city. At the junction with the autostrada, the convoy was flagged down for a road block. They had to slow for the driver of the lead car to wave his I/D at the soldiers and to point back to the two following cars. They slowed enough for Axel to see the illuminated turning to Mondello. He was sandwiched between 'Vanni Crespo and the Englishman, and the Englishman had the plastic bag between his feet. Dwight Smythe was in front, beside the driver. There was no talk in the car, so they heard each transmission on the radio between the driver of the lead car and their driver and the driver of the chase car. They accelerated through the road block, away from the sign to Mondello and into the long tunnel. Axel wondered where she was, what she did . . . He thought of her on the cliffs at her home, and he thought of her pushing the pram towards the Saracen tower, and he thought of her mocking him in the cathedral when the bright lights from the high windows had coned on her head . . .

  They'd said they were going to get her once he was on the flight, and 'Vanni hadn't bothered to argue it. They were going to get her and they were going to ship out with her, and 'Vanni had let it ride. He'd be in his own bed, in Rome, that night and it would be behind him, just as La Paz was behind him. Shit . . .

  The car rocked and swerved. The convoy cut inside a dawdling vehicle. Axel knew why the van went slowly at that place, over the viaduct of the autostrada. People went slowly over there because it was Capaci, and it was where the bomb had taken Falcone's life, went cautiously as if to remember and to stare. Axel saw, a flash moment, a weathered and disintegrating wreath on the guard rail of the viaduct. In a year's time there would be a wreath, rain-swept and sun-baked, in the Via delle Croci, and people would go past it slowly, and nothing would have fucking changed. As soon as they had moved him on, because the plan was killed, they were going to lift her out, and nothing would have fucking changed. There was the evening, there was still the evening before they went for her, and the old disciplines caught Axel Moen. He reached up into his ear, he prised into his ear with his finger nail. He took out the inductor earpiece. He wiped it on his handkerchief. He passed it to the Englishman. He couldn't remember the Englishman's name, and he had learned enough to know that the Englishman had killed his plan, had come snouting and interfering into his plan.

  'What do I do with that?'

  'You put it in your head, and you listen. If you don't want to put it in your head, then you shouldn't have come. It's owed her.'

  He reached down, into the dark space between the Englishman's feet, and he felt with his fingers. He knew it well enough to find the switch from touch. He saw the glow of the light. The guy, reluctant, put it in his ear, and grimaced.

  "Vanni'll tell you the codes.'

  The Englishman bridled. 'I thought it was finished . . .'

  'When the lady stops singing, when you have her on board, then it's finished.'

  He wriggled in his seat, and then he was thrown against the Englishman, and the convoy careered past a slow-going lorry. He could see the guide lights of the airport runway over the driver's shoulder. He contorted himself and he slipped the harness of the holster from his chest, he didn't make a comment, he gave the holster with the Beretta 9mm pistol to 'Vanni. 'Vanni checked it and aimed it down between his shoes and cleared the bullet out of the breach, and he gave 'Vanni the spare magazine. The cars went fast into the airport.

  It was not the way of La Cosa Nostra to make a killing without the most thorough and careful preparation, but Carmine did not have the opportunity for thorough and careful preparation.

  In the hierarchy of La Cosa Nostra, where the confidences were exchanged, it was boasted that a mafioso under the control of Mario Ruggerio had never been arrested at a killing ground, but Carmine acted on the direct instruction of the capo di tutti capi and must improvise.

  He wore his best suit, from Paris, because he was invited that evening to a celebration of the family. Beside the door to Departures he met with the tail. Through the glass doors he saw them. They were at the check-in desk. Through the glass he saw the back of the target's head, the long hair caught tight with an elastic band, and he saw the men with him, and the guns.

  He squirmed. He did not know how it was possible to obey the instruction given him by Mario Ruggerio.

  She had towelled the children from their bath, now Charley dressed them.

  Angela had chosen the clothes they should wear, then gone to her bedroom.

  A floral dress for Francesca, and a long brushing of her jet- coloured hair, and a ribbon to go in her hair. A white shirt and a silk child's tie for small Mario and black trousers that Charley had ironed, and a comb run through
his slicked hair, and lace-up shoes that Charley had polished. She played firm with the children, so that they laughed, and she won them over as she could, no snivelling and no sulking, and she told them how angry she would be, breathing fire, real fire, if they dirtied their clothes before they left the villa. She bathed the baby, tickled the baby in the bath so that it gurgled happiness, and she dried the baby, and powdered its body, and buttoned on the nappy, and dressed the baby in a romper suit of burgundy-red.

  Charley showered.

  When she came out of the shower she took her towel and she dried the watch on her wrist, over which the water had cascaded.

  She went back down the corridor to her room and she wore only her dressing-gown.

  She passed Peppino and she dropped her eyes, and she thought she saw the bulge of him, and she had believed she had control of him. She sprayed herself with lotion. She dressed. The blouse of royal-blue and the short skirt of bottle-green. She stroked the brush on her hair.

  She went into the kitchen.

  Angela was beautiful. Angela wore a hugging dress of turquoise and the jewellery flashed at her throat. Angela was packing a shopping bag with spare nappies for the baby and a filled bottle . . . She remembered the old people who had come to dinner, Peppino's parents, peasants. Charley thought that Angela made herself beautiful so that she stood apart from those people, the peasants, so that she was separated from the brother . . . And there were books for Francesca and small Mario in the shopping bag.

  Angela looked up, saw her. 'You are lovely.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Very young, very explosive, very vital.'

  'If you say so.'

  'But, you spoil it . . .'

  'I do? How?'

  'You wear that watch. You are so feminine, so gamine, but the watch is for a workman or a diver under the sea or a soldier.'