Which was virtually what they got, and at breakfast time, from the unshaven, red-eyed but uncomplaining FBI agent. John Vincent Palma was listed in the FBI criminal computer as a known capo in the New York Genovese Family. There was a failure to convict on a manslaughter charge in 1972; in 1975 an extortion conviction drew a three-year penitentiary sentence. There was another unproven charge of transporting a girl across a State line for the purposes of prostitution. He was married, with two children, lived in Waterbury, as listed on the hotel registration form, and was a respected benefactor of the local Catholic church. None of the Russian names had ever been linked with him. The three wired photographs showed a heavy – although not plump – smooth-faced man, jaw tight in two of them to support the cigar jutting from the corner of his mouth.
‘We’ve got a time frame in which to work,’ reminded Cowley. Talma’s booked for a further three nights, from now. Makes him due out Saturday. Sure, he can extend, but they must be working to some sort of schedule.’
Which they clearly were.
That morning, Palma left the hotel alone and strolled without apparent direction or hurry around the curve of the inner harbour, towards the main thoroughfare of the city. At the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele he took two espressos at the pavement table of a cafe before disappearing inside to use the wall-mounted telephone: the surveillance squad were certain of two separate calls, but there might have been a third. The man took another coffee further along the Corso, after which he set off towards the centre of the town before turning on to narrower streets. At the via Candelai he went into a restaurant to which the three Russians had already been followed, by an independent team of watchers: both teams were at once replaced. Two men from the second group went inside to eat and arrived in time to witness Palma shake hands with Zimin and all four men touch glasses in what was clearly another celebration toast. They managed three more obvious toasts working their way through three bottles of Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi: the pedestrian-minded Amasov ate veal again, but the others divided between lamb and liver.
They separated after lunch. Zimin and Zavorin practically retraced the route of the American that morning, lingering on the waterfront and appearing to read the harbour notices.
Amasov went with Palma to a car-hire facility off the via Roma, where they rented the largest Fiat model available. Palma put down an American Express card for security but paid in advance for four days’ hire in cash. Five of the undercover police cars brought in on the overnight ferry had matching engine capacity, but all were supercharged.
That night the four ate at a seafood restaurant on the harbour edge. Amasov left most of his fish stew.
At the conference to review the day’s developments, Cowley pointed out the duration of the car hire supported his time-frame suggestion. Patton added the fact that they had hired a car at all meant they intended travelling out of town, and guessed Amasov to be the intended driver. There was general agreement the meandering walks around the city were more to kill time than evade any possible surveillance, although Palma’s call from a public, untraceable telephone was an obvious precaution.
‘Force of habit more than suspicion,’ judged Patton. ‘These guys think they’re as free as the wind.’
The number of the hire car was circulated to all motorised units in the special squad, but withheld from general distribution to island forces.
‘We know who they are: what they look like,’ declared Melega. ‘They’re trapped: there’s no way they can possibly escape.’
That night Cowley drank more than he had for a long time, although he still did not get badly drunk. At an early stage he said to Danilov: ‘Nervous?’
‘Yes.’
‘Melega’s right. We’ve got them.’
‘Not yet.’
‘It’s been good, working with you again.’
Danilov, who had not drunk as much, was curious at the maudlin tone. ‘It’s a long way from being over yet.’
‘But then it will be,’ said Cowley, even more enigmatically. He was still drinking, with the willing Patton, when Danilov went to bed.
They were later to decide the following day’s surveillance – and with it the whole operation – might well have been wrecked but for the helicopters. It began smoothly enough. The Mafia group left the President Hotel just before ten and set off eastwards along the coast road, with Amasov at the wheel of the Fiat. Within fifteen minutes of their departure, there were four cars alternating the pursuit, with Melega, Danilov and the three Americans staying well behind and out of sight in the fifth, one of the vehicles brought over from the mainland specifically to act as the command car through its complete range of radio and telephone equipment. From it Melega ordered six more cars on to the road, but with instructions to remain behind them until summoned to replace the closer police vehicles before they became suspiciously noticeable. Just outside Termini one of the immediate surveillance cars radioed back that the group had stopped for coffee. Melega immediately halted their vehicle and made his first change, switching one of the rear cars with one in front.
‘Sightseeing?’ queried Smith.
‘These guys don’t waste time on scenery and ancient monuments,’ said Patton.
The cavalcade resumed after thirty minutes, continuing eastwards. At once Melega began a rapid conversation in Italian, swivelling and then ducking in his front seat to make it easier to look upwards. Within minutes, without explanation, he pointed and said: ‘There!’
The helicopter was painted an orange yellow. The side doors were open and it was flying so low, parallel to the coastline, they could clearly see the crew. Patton and Smith looked, horrified, at one another: Patton shrugged, to Cowley. Melega saw the gesture and smiled, unoffended. There was a babble of incoming Italian on the radio, then abruptly a more blurred reception overlaid with the engine noise of the helicopter. The machine was briefly lost from sight, far ahead, and then soared into view again, climbing high before banking out to sea and completing its turn westwards to go back towards Palermo.
‘Wasn’t that …?’ began Cowley dubiously, but Melega raised his hand, stopping the American to listen to another incoming report.
The Italian gave a satisfied head movement. Turning to the rear, he said: ‘They’ve gone off the coastal highway, inland. The mountain road is good, but we couldn’t sustain a pursuit all the way across to Catania without being picked up. And certainly not if they went off the main road, to any of the villages.’
‘So how we going to do it?’ demanded Patton.
‘Call off all the vehicles, until we might need them,’ said Melega simply. ‘The new pursuit car radioed the number of the Fiat to the helicopter they were meant to see: it’s an air-sea rescue machine, by the way. The colour was essential for the real observer machine, as a marker. The climb you saw was directly level with the Fiat, identifying it for the helicopter you can’t see – and which is flying overhead too high for them to see or hear, either.’ He gave another satisfied smile. ‘Not far in from the coast there’s a little town called Sciara. The restaurant is very good there.’
They did not go there in the antennae-festooned command car, transferring instead at Imerese into two ordinary-looking vehicles to arrive separately at Sciara, where they attempted to eat, but with little appetite, eel and mullet and grouper: no-one drank anything but mineral water. Patton’s hand kept straying beneath the concealment of the table to the Smith and Wesson on his hip: the man had manoeuvred the seating with his back to a wall, which Danilov thought ridiculous. None of them – apart from Melega – relaxed, each feeling cut off and inadequate without access to the radio telephone and their constant monitor. Melega promised there were other helicopters to airlift them as well as carabinieri anywhere in the mountains a meeting with the Sicilian Mafia might be seen from existing, spy-in-the-sky surveillance, but no-one was reassured. Patton’s stomach began to echo, audibly: he apologised for an ulcerous condition.
Melega had a disjointed conversation on
a handset driving back towards the coast, but did not get a full account until he talked from the command car. ‘Villalba,’ he announced. ‘It’s about seventy kilometres inland: maybe a little more.’ He looked up from a map. ‘We risked one car: a policeman and policewoman, supposedly lost tourists needing re-direction. Palma and the Russians drank in the only bar but didn’t eat. They didn’t meet anyone, while my two were in the bar. The helicopter saw Palma and the Russians walk to a farmhouse on the outskirts of the village. From the condition of the ground and the outhouses, it looks deserted. The four of them walked around but didn’t go inside. They’re on their way back this way.’
‘A reconnaissance,’ Smith decided.
‘Which it always had to be,’ said Melega.
‘A small village?’ prompted Cowley, anticipating the problem from his earlier posting in Rome.
‘Everybody will know everybody else,’ confirmed Melega. ‘We can’t do anything in advance. The two who did go in say the place stinks Mafia. If we go anywhere near it again, in advance, nothing will happen.’
‘Like the wise man said,’ reminded Patton. ‘Life ain’t easy.’
He’d never thought it was, reflected Danilov.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The evening conference unanimously concluded the operation depended heavily upon helicopters: three more twin-rotored Chinooks with a carrying capacity of twenty men each were allocated overnight, making eight in all. Melega additionally increased their manpower by having a fifty-strong army unit seconded to them, completely to seal every route – even mountain tracks – leading to and from Villalba. The Italian agreed with Cowley that such a build-up on the island stretched the security risk beyond breaking point, so the unit and their helicopters were held at Reggio di Calabria, on the mainland just across the narrow Straits of Messina.
That night there was not a lot of drinking and no-one slept well: Danilov was up before seven, and when he got to the breakfast room he found Cowley already there. Smith and Patton arrived within minutes. No-one ordered anything but coffee.
‘It might not be today,’ said Smith.
‘But then again it might,’ said Patton.
‘I hope it is today,’ said the FBI man. ‘I want to get it over.’
‘I want to get it right,’ qualified Cowley, ‘It’s a bastard not being able to set up anything in advance: I want a wire in that farmhouse, listening to every goddamned word.’
‘Which we’re not going to get,’ deflated Danilov, realistically. He was still worried about exactly what they were going to get, even if they made the arrests. Would the Federal Prosecutor formulate a charge under the Russian criminal code to get the three extradited back to Moscow, or would he leave them to Italian jurisdiction and prosecution?
When Melega came in it was from the street, not from his upstairs room. ‘They’re already up,’ he announced. ‘According to my people, they’re not as relaxed as they were yesterday.’
‘Neither are we,’ said Patton.
‘What about the army unit?’ asked Cowley.
‘Not yet,’ said Melega. ‘They’re back up. We’ve got the power of arrest.’
‘Let’s go and exercise it,’ said Cowley decisively.
Their helicopter was a UH-ID Cobra, like the ones Danilov remembered from much criticised newsreels on Russian television of American gunships in the Vietnam war. He realised as the flight sergeant was checking their seat belts – which only crossed the lap and seemed totally inadequate – they were to fly with the side doors open, just like they had in Vietnam, too. He was instantly terrified, believing there was no way, despite the belt, he could avoid falling out if the machine tipped on its side to turn. Even when it did, immediately on take-off, and the centrifugal force kept him firmly on his seat, Danilov still felt uneasy: he saw Patton was gripping the underside of the bench, like he was.
The helicopter rose high enough for Danilov to pick out the coast road along which they had travelled the previous day. From the air it looked much straighter than it had from the back seat of a car. The sun was flaring off the sea, whitening it near the shoreline. There were far more boats dotted on the deeper, bluer water: much further out, probably beyond sight of land, three ponderous tankers wallowed in a follow-my-leader line. On the coast road the tight-together congestion of vehicles made it look as if they were all joined together, like some motorised snake.
Babbled Italian rose and fell in Danilov’s helmet, and from the frequent sound fade he guessed they were patched through to the surveillance cars on the ground. It was easy, airborne, to see the sharp inland turn of the road that cut across the island to Catania, and when Melega made hand signals, jerking his finger in a downward pointing gesture, Danilov guessed they were being shown the car they wanted taking the inland route.
The traffic thinned, making it easier to concentrate on the one vehicle to which he believed Melega to be pointing. Just as he began to do so the helicopter banked as well and dropped into a mountain valley, so that they lost sight of the inland road. They were still high enough for Danilov to isolate four more helicopters, all looking the same as the one in which they were flying, and he supposed they were all part of the carabinieri assault force. Then the other helicopters were lost among the mountains and Danilov realised they were going to land.
They did so in a swirl of dust and thrown-about undergrowth on a plateau cut into the side of a mountain. The dust-storm died with the whine of the engine. Danilov climbed gratefully out, stretching, aware of the cramp in his hands where he’d held the underside of his seat for so long.
Melega carried a bundled-up map. He laid it out on the ground, bringing them all down in a crouch. ‘We are here!’ he announced, pointing to an ochre-shaded area.
A thread of river – the Gangi – was marked on the map, and a village or town described as Alimena, but Danilov couldn’t see any evidence of either from where they’d landed: in every direction the mountains were scorched brown and lifeless by the sun, with little green even in the deeper valley below. The only sound, now the helicopter was quiet, was the dry, scratching clatter of cicadas.
‘One of our other helicopters made a high pass over Villalba just after we got airborne from Palermo,’ resumed Melega. ‘There were two cars already outside the farmhouse: I’m guessing the people Palma and the others have come to meet are already there, waiting. I’m not risking another overflight. I’ve called the army in, from Reggio. They’re not going to fly in formation, to avoid attracting attention.’
‘Who’s going to notice eight platoon-carrying Chinooks anyway?’ tried the wisecracking Patton: Danilov decided it was nervousness.
Melega ignored the remark, going back to his map. ‘Once the Fiat has taken the Villalba turning, there will be road blocks here … here … and here. The Villalba road will be completely cut and on either side of it the Catania route will be blocked. We’ll use the cleared section of the Catania highway to land at least one of the army machines. Another army group, with some carabinieri, will close the road on the other side of Villalba, towards Mussomeli. I’m going to enclose Villalba itself completely. The army will come in right behind us.’
‘So where do we get the signal they’re in the farmhouse together?’ said Smith.
‘It took precisely twenty-five minutes for them to get to Villalba yesterday, from the moment of turning off,’ reminded Melega. ‘I’m assuming they won’t stop at the cafe today. We’re going in thirty-five minutes after they’ve left the main road.’
‘In a fleet of helicopters making more noise than cats screwing on a tin roof!’ openly protested Patton.
‘I’ve talked about it, with the pilot. If we co-ordinate it correctly, we’ll be on the ground two minutes from the moment our approach first becomes audible.’
‘What happens if it’s co-ordinated incorrectly?’ persisted the DEA agent.
‘It won’t be,’ insisted the Italian.
‘We should have talked more about this last night,’ said
Cowley, in quiet despair.
The sun was beating down on Danilov’s back. He could feel the sweat forming irritating pathways and he shrugged against them, slipping out of his jacket. He looked up, to meet Cowley’s direct stare. Neither had to give any facial reaction to show their uncertainty.
Danilov’s action in taking off his jacket attracted Melega’s attention. Looking at the Russian, although not directly into his face, Melega said: ‘You are not armed?’
‘No.’ Danilov rarely carried the pistol he was authorised to hold in Moscow, and it had never once occurred to him to bring it on this roundabout journey through airport check-points. Danilov regularly underwent shooting practice – usually attaining a higher than average score – but he had never once fired a weapon in the course of duty. He’d drawn it a few times, making an arrest, but only for effect, which had fortunately always worked.
‘Neither am I,’ admitted Cowley, who wished he had drawn something from the embassy in Rome.
Melega collected two pistols from the helicopter, offering one to each man. Cowley accepted his more comfortably than Danilov, who hefted the unaccustomed weapon in his hand, examining it intently. A Beretta, he saw: lighter than the Russian standard-issue Makarov or Stetchkin. The safety catch slipped smoothly in and out of lock, a simple thumb action. He made sure the gun was secured before easing it into the waistband of his trousers, in the middle, bum-crease part of his back, where he’d seen Cowley casually put his. The first of many things, he thought: the first helicopter journey and the first time he would enter a situation in which shooting would be inevitable. Remember to take the safety catch off, he told himself. His stomach churned, rumbling like Patton’s had earlier. Did he have an ulcerous condition? Or was he just frightened? Frightened, he accepted honestly.
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