Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  'It's the only one I've got,' Charley said.

  'You want a watch? I have four watches, four of Peppino's presents. I will find you—'

  'Doesn't matter, but thank you.'

  'It is so vulgar, you have to have another watch.'

  Charley blurted, 'It was a gift, from someone I admired. I do not want to wear another watch.'

  She felt the weight of the watch on her wrist, clumsy and awkward, dulled steel on her skin. Angela's eyes danced brightly in front of her, but her face was a mask.

  'I only try to be helpful, Charley. You wear what you want to wear.'

  'I need to get some lipstick on. Excuse me.'

  She was going to the door of the kitchen.

  Angela said, conversational, 'It is a very bad day for all of us, Charley. It is the day when a good man was murdered. He would have made a mistake. Of course, I do not know what was his mistake. Maybe he made the mistake of trying to work alone.

  Maybe he made the mistake of trying to swim against the currents in the sea. Maybe he made the mistake of trying to push too hard ... With your complexion, Charley, I think a pink, quite soft, would be nice, for your mouth ... It is most dangerous, as the poor man found, to make mistakes here.'

  She said that she had a pink lipstick, crushed pink, quite soft. She made a play at smiling. She felt the sinking dead weight in her stomach. She went back into her bedroom. She sat on the bed and she scratched in her mind for the code call, sat so still until she was certain of it. Her finger was on the button of the watch on her wrist. She wondered who would listen if Axel had quit. She wondered how quickly he would come, come running as Axel had come. She'd find him, one day, afterwards, she'd find him and he would give her back her own watch, the gold watch that was her father's present to her, but she would never wear that watch. She would find Axel Moen, somewhere, and he could give her back the gold watch. She would not wear it. She would wear, until the day she died, God help her, the watch of vulgar dulled steel that was cold on her wrist.

  She pressed the button. She made the signal.

  His legs jerked up.

  It was as if a shock charged through his body. The shock was the bleeping pattern of the tone call in Harry Compton's ear. Because the inductor was deep in his ear the pattern of the call seemed to ring in every recess of his skull.

  He gulped. He was struggling for concentration. There was a call, simultaneous, for the last passengers for the flight to Milan. The sounds merged . . . They were through into Departures. They'd gone through the passport check. 'Vanni Crespo's I/D had taken them all through, and the balaclava brigade behind them. The shops and the bar were on the wrong side of the door, and they were scattered on benches. There were two empty seats between Harry Compton and Axel Moen, who sat close to the Italian, and Dwight Smythe was away from them and by the glass floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the apron.

  'The call - the call went/ he stammered.

  The Italian jackknifed off the bench and came to him.

  'What was the call?'

  He was supposed to be a trained operative. He reckoned himself among the best and among the brightest of the young intake into S06. He reckoned himself shit-hot on close-up surveillance and the art of gutting a balance sheet. He squeezed his eyes shut and he tried to find the concentration. He could have said when the flight would leave for Milan, what gate it would board through, and the time it would arrive at Milan . . .

  'I'm trying—'

  'What was the signal?'

  The Italian was close to him, spurting garlic breath and whisky breath and cigarette breath at him. Harry Compton jabbered, 'I'm sorry, I didn't get the pattern, there was so much other . . .'

  Dwight Smythe had sidled close and stood awkward, like he didn't know how he should intervene, what he should say. Axel Moen was blank-faced, staring at the ceiling. The Italian had his hands locked onto Harry Compton's head and his fingernail was digging into Harry Compton's ear. The Italian, with his nail, was gouging the damn thing from the ear. It came again. Harry Compton flung his head back and he pushed the Italian away, and he had the palm of his hand over his ear, and his head sank down between his knees. He heard the second transmission of the signal. He described the rhythm, gave the pattern of the tone call, the pauses, the short blasts and the long blasts that cried inside his skull. The Italian crouched beside him.

  'It's Stand-by alert. Holy Mother, she sends the Stand-by alert,' 'Vanni Crespo murmured.

  Another bleeping between them, and 'Vanni was scrabbling in his pocket.

  Axel Moen said, total calmness, 'Today he has killed the man who investigated him.

  He has eliminated a threat to him. Perhaps it is the time of the crowning, the anointing with goddam oil. Perhaps it is the time he gathers his court, his goddam family . . .'

  'Vanni Crespo had the mobile phone out of his pocket, killed the bleep, pressed it at his ear, listened.

  '. . . If she is going away from the villa, if she is going outside the radius of transmission pick-up, if she doesn't know where she is being taken, then she is instructed to send a Stand-by alert. She is instructed to give us time to get there, to Mondello, because to tail her we have to track her.'

  'Vanni cut his call. 'It's from the villa - communications says it's from the villa. We may have very little time.'

  'I'm with you,' Dwight Smythe said. 'She is my responsibility.'

  'Fuck you,' Harry Compton hissed. 'My orders are to bring her home. If her neck's on the bloody line, I'm there.'

  'If she calls, I answer. I get to ride with you.' Deliberately, Axel Moen pushed up from his seat.

  Dwight Smythe snapped, 'No way.'

  Harry Compton snarled, 'You're off the pulse, friend.'

  'It's mine. She doesn't know your fucking names. She calls for me.'

  'We don't have time,' 'Vanni Crespo pleaded. 'You argue, you goddam women, you screw her up.'

  'You don't exist to her, nothing to her.'

  Harry Compton stood full square in front of Axel Moen. It was the moment he wondered if he would be hit, kicked. 'You go nowhere, we don't need you.'

  Dwight Smythe found courage, jabbed at Axel Moen's chest so that he pitched back into his seat. 'Your rock is DEA, you obey orders, otherwise you get washed off the rock.'

  'I'm obligated, I owe her.'

  'Vanni Crespo said, soft, 'It is only the Stand-by. I promise, if it is Immediate, then I'll be there, I'll care for her like she's mine. Trust me.'

  Axel Moen sat quite still. He was composed, and he locked his fingers and flexed them.

  Dwight Smythe hissed, 'You're identified, you've no place with this now.'

  Harry Compton whipped, 'You're just a liability to her, and always have been since you first walked in on her.'

  Axel Moen dropped his head. The fire was doused.

  'Vanni Crespo said, fast, 'I need the guys, I can't leave the guys with you. I'm trying to think on my fucking feet. I pulled rank to get the guys. If I leave them, then I have to call up, I have to explain, I have to start telling some bastard about an operation . . .

  "Who authorized it? Who do you report to? Wait out, I have to check ..." I don't have the time.'

  'It's a public place,' Axel Moen said. 'I'm comfortable. I sit here, I wait, I get on the plane. So get the hell out.'

  'Vanni Crespo held Axel's face in his hands. He kissed both his cheeks. Harry Compton nodded at him - he'd understand orders. Dwight Smythe shrugged - he'd appreciate responsibilities.

  They were gone. It was eighty-five seconds from the first call. It was sixty-one seconds from the second call. They went out of Departures. Harry Compton looked back once, through the glass, at the back of the head of the man, at the pony-tail of his hair. He thought the man belonged to yesterday, and he hurried to catch the Italian.

  Out in the night darkness they ran towards the cars.

  Peppino had the engine started and Angela was beside him and smoothing her dress straight so that she would not crease
it. Charley was fastening the seat-belts for the children. The gardener, at the bottom of the drive, was scraping open the gates.

  She did not know who would be there, whether they would be there. And she did not know if anyone listened . . .

  'I'm sorry, I've forgotten something.'

  No play at hiding his irritation, Peppino snapped, 'Please, Charley, already we are late.'

  'I won't be a second. Can I have the keys, please?'

  Angela said, 'I am sure it is something important - yes, Charley - or you would not ask.'

  She was given the keys. She ran back onto the patio and she unlocked the front door.

  She was out of their sight. She could do it there . . . Christ, but she had to bring something back to the car . . . She scurried for her room. She pulled open a drawer. On the top of the clothes in the drawer was a small handkerchief. She snatched it up. She stood, and she breathed hard.

  She remembered. Not Immediate Alert, and not Stand Down. She remembered the code. She did not know where they listened, or if anyone listened. Her finger wavered again on the button. She pressed hard, drove the back of the watch down on her wrist so that it hurt her. She made the pattern of the code for Stand-by.

  She breathed again, deep, to swallow the trembling in her arms. She switched off the light and she locked the patio door behind her, and she went to the car. She was barely into the car when Peppino drove away. She sagged down into the seat and manoeuvred the carrycot onto her lap. They drove out through the opened gates. She did not try to look out of the back window to see if they were followed, if anyone had listened. She reached forward and passed the keys of the villa to Peppino. They came out of the narrow street that led to the piazza and swung onto the road that ran along the beach.

  They passed the Saracen tower . . .

  'Well, Charley,' Peppino asked, cutting, 'what had you forgotten?'

  She said, felt the feebleness of it, 'I'd forgotten my handkerchief.'

  There was the tinkle of Angela's laughter. 'You see, I was right. I said that it would be something important.' 'Herb? It's Bill Hammond . . . Yes, I'm in the office, I'm in Rome.

  Herb, would you go to secure . . . You OK now? . . . The Codename Helen thing, they've just gone to Stand-by . . . Yes, it's a hell of a scene down there today. He was a good guy, Tardelli, he was the best guy. They don't deserve people like that down there.

  They hung him out to dry - but that's history . . . We got the Stand-by, that's the one below Immediate. I thought you'd want to know . . . What? Come again? . . . Yes, the procedure's in place. If they get the fat cat, then I send the wings down from Naples, I throw my weight on the extradition business, we go fast-track - that's if . . . Yes, yes, Axel Moen is obeying the order you issued. He's at the airport, Palermo, waiting on his flight.. . No, no, didn't seem sore, sounded fine. Dwight and some English jerk with a crowd of Italians are out on the hunt ... I'm kind of excited, Herb, and I wanted to share it . . . Yes, of course, I'll stay in touch. What you got, meetings all afternoon? You Washington people, Herb, you don't strain yourselves - that's meant as a joke . . . You'll hear the moment after I hear, but right now it sounds good. Herb, when I call next I may not be on secure. I'm going out to the airport to meet Axel off his flight . . .'

  Chapter Nineteen

  No flash overtakings, no hammering on the horn when he was behind a lorry. Peppino drove with caution. He had the power in the big car to go fast. No blinking of the headlights when he was behind a tractor. Peppino didn't talk. Charley thought she read him.

  There were soldiers at a checkpoint on the ring road, and more soldiers and another checkpoint at the cramped little town of Altofonte, and after they had weaved through the narrowed streets and bumped on the rough cobbles and then climbed there was a third checkpoint. Each time, as he was waved down by the flashing torch, Peppino lowered the window and produced his documents and was a study in politeness. Each time at the checkpoints she saw the young soldiers and their guns and their drab and ill-fitting uniforms. They made a show of checking the papers and they shone lights around the interior of the car, over Angela's face and the children's and over Charley as she held the carrycot on her lap. She reckoned most of them were not from the island, strangers, as she was. She thought that Peppino drove steadily so that he could be certain he did not attract attention, and he was gracious in his courtesy to the soldiers each time he was gestured forward.

  After the third checkpoint, Charley turned and looked back through the rear window and she could see the lights of cars that followed them away, and far in the distance and far below were the patterns of lights that were the city. Peppino had the radio on. The RAI station played solemn music, German classical music, and she thought it would be a mark of sympathy for the magistrate who had been killed. She did not know whether they were followed, and she did not know who might follow. She could not press the button, send the tone signals for the Stand-by alert because she feared that a transmission would interfere with the radio in the car. She must take it on trust that they followed, that someone was close by.

  She held the carrycot tightly, and the hand of Francesca was on her elbow and gripped it.

  She remembered the road.

  It was the road along which Benny had driven her. They skirted the lit homes of Piana degli Albanesi where, Benny had told her, a Greek itinerant population had settled five hundred years before. So much going on in her mind but she remembered that bloody useless, bloody irrelevant, morsel of information. The headlights of Peppino's car, and the lights of the cars behind him, wafted on the road bends across tended, rich fields and found the same opaque flowers and the same horses. He meant nothing to her, he had been used, he had been available. She thought that now he would be sitting alone in his small room and writing tracts for his pamphlets, or he would be at a meeting and spewing words. He meant nothing to her because he was ineffective. She sat in the back of the car with the children and she thought that Benny Rizzo was a loser. It was she, Codename Helen, who held the power. They climbed. A few times, not often, the rock outcrops were close enough to the road for her to see the harshness of them. It was what she had come for, it was where she wished to be, it was her story.

  Once, a car passed them, swerved by them at speed, and she saw the backs of the heads of men in the car . . . She took it on trust that she was followed, that there were men close by, men who would listen.

  And Angela knew. Angela who was silent and who sat upright and so still and who gazed unmoving into the cones of glare thrown forward by the headlights, she knew . .

  . Charley saw the sign for

  Corleone and the car slowed and the lights caught at a flock of goats that meandered in the road. And Axel Moen had told her that if she aroused serious suspicion then she would be killed - and the men who killed her, afterwards, would eat their meal and think nothing of it. She felt the strength flow in her.

  At the airport of Punta Raisi . . .

  In a door that should have been locked, a key turned.

  Along a corridor that should have been lit, a light was switched off.

  Outside the door of Departures, in shadow, an officer of the Guardia di Finanze passed his I/D card to a man, and was promised that his co-operation would not be forgotten.

  In the cockpit of an aircraft, fuelled and waiting for passengers to board, a technician reported a malfunction in the avionics and called for a delay of the flight until the fault was repaired.

  Axel Moen sat alone, apart from the other passengers, and waited.

  One car was up ahead, and one car was close behind the target, and the third car held back.

  Harry Compton thought they did it well. It was his training and he didn't find a fault.

  Three times now the car up ahead of the target and the car tailing the target had exchanged positions. He was in the car that held back. It was plenty of miles since he had last seen, clearly, the target car, been close enough to read the registration, and it was plenty of minutes since he
had last seen the tail lights of the target car. 'Vanni Crespo was in the front passenger seat and he had a cable earpiece hooked in, and Harry Compton was in the back with the American.

  So calm in the car, unreal.

  It was like an exercise, like routine. It was the quiet in the car that unnerved him.

  They said, back home, he thought it was on his assessment file, that he was good at stress handling. Christ, true shit, he had never known hard stress. Easier if the radio had been blasting, if there had been static howl and frantic shouts, but 'Vanni Crespo had the earpiece hooked in and he would whisper to the driver and sometimes they'd slow and sometimes they'd accelerate, but he was not a part of it and it was unreal. The American shivered beside him. The American had the stress bad. It was the American who pulled Harry Compton back from reckoning that it was all unreal.

  There had been nothing, no signal, coming into his head, hitting the curves of his skull. Each kilometre or so, regular as a church clock, 'Vanni Crespo turned and looked back at him and queried with his eyes, and each kilometre he shook his head. Nothing, no signal, and each kilometre or so the American cursed, because he had the stress bad.

  Must have been another kilometre gone, because 'Vanni Crespo turned and he shook his head again and the American cursed. He laid his hand on the American's and felt the shiver.

  'You reckon it's a bum?' the American murmured.

  'She's there, she's followed. Can't say that—'

  'She's not called you up?'

  'She's not.'

  'Why wouldn't she?'

  'Don't know, maybe it's not possible. How the hell do I know?'

  'I reckon it's a bum.'

  'If that's what you want to think . . .'

  'What I want is a piss.'

  'Not in my pocket.'

  There was always one of them, Harry Compton thought, sure as hell there was always one man in a surveillance job or on a tail job who had the stress bad and who needed to jabber. They had only been in position three minutes, all sweating and all tensed up and all on the adrenalin edge, when the gates to the villa drive had been opened and the big car had pulled out. He'd seen her then, in the light thrown by a street lamp, sat in the back of the big car and looking straight ahead, and he'd seen her chin jutted out like it was set in a way of defiance. His eyes had lingered on her for three, four seconds. He'd thought she'd looked, no lie, just bloody magnificent. There had been a woman in the front, just seen the flash of her, classily dressed. There had been the man driving. It was his talent to be sharp on recognition and the profile of the head had registered, the sighting such a damn long time ago in the hotel restaurant on Portman Square . . . He had seen the woman and the man who drove, but it was the jutting chin of the girl that captured him. They'd made it by three minutes, and the stress had built from that time.