Killing Ground (29 page)

'I listen.'

'An American came from Rome, an agent of the DEA, to see Tardelli. If he sees Tardelli, then it is connected with Ruggerio, so the threat increases.'

'Tell me.'

'There is a third factor, the maresciallo says. It is a time of great danger to Tardelli.

Ruggerio seeks to be the capo di tutti capi, he looks for absolute control. There is a rival in Agrigento, disappeared. There is a family in Catania, but they will be destroyed.

When, the maresciallo says, the control of Ruggerio is absolute, then he will demonstrate his new power with a strike against the heart of the state. It could be the life of Tardelli because that is the man who most threatens him . . . You wanted to know.'

'I asked . . .'

'Are you better for knowing?'

She loosed Pasquale's hand. She left him in the dim-lit room. He slept with his mind dulled to dreams. Later he would wake. Later he would find her sleeping beside him, and the baby asleep in the cot at the foot of the bed. Later he would shower and dress and strap onto his chest the pistol holster. Later he would go into the kitchen to make himself coffee to clear away the sleep taste from his mouth and he would find the small bunch of flowers on the table and he would read the note his wife had written. 'Please give them to him, and thank him for asking after me each day and after our baby. God keep you.' Later Pasquale would go to work.

The boy was sat in a chair.

His arms were tied tight behind his back and the rope chafed against his skin. The boy's ankles were strapped to the legs of the chair. The gag filled his mouth.

He did not understand . . . He was of the Brancaccio district. He came from the high blocks of crumbling apartments. He had never been employed, nor had his father ever been in work. He thieved to keep his family, stole the bags of the tourists.

He did not understand . . . He paid the pizzo each month to the Men of Honour in Brancaccio. He never failed to give them the percentage from what he took out of tourists' handbags.

He did not understand ... He had been told that one day, perhaps, he would be invited to join the ranks of the picciotti, that a final decision would be made when he had completed tasks set for him by the Men of Honour in Brancaccio.

He did not understand ... A task had been set for him. He had taken the handbag. He had brought the handbag to the address given him. A pistol had been pressed against his neck, he had been strapped to the chair. The handbag was now in front of him on a bare wooden table.

He did not understand . . . The money from the handbag was in a neat pile. Two men were looking carefully at the diary from the handbag. Their hands, which held the diary, passed it between them, were protected by transparent plastic gloves. They examined the diary with minute care.

The boy was condemned. They had not hooded him and they had not blindfolded him. He had seen their faces. He could not know whether they would strangle him or knife him or shoot him, whether they would put him in acid or in concrete or whether they would dump him, under cover of darkness, in an alley. They did not seem to notice that the piss ran hot on his thigh and he shivered without control. He did not understand

. . .

As a child, he had been told by his father, Rosario, an old saying of Sicily: 'The man who plays alone always wins.'

Any detail relevant to his personal security was passed to Mario Ruggerio. He alone would decide the importance of information. The message came by word of mouth to the apartment off the Via Crociferi. In conditions of secrecy the magistrate, Tardelli, had met Capitano Giovanni Crespo of the carabiniere ROS, and the capitano had brought with him an unnamed American. Alone in the apartment, in the kitchen, he heated up his favourite meal of trip-pa that he would take with a sauce of boiled tomato.

A woman had come to the apartment the day before he had moved in, and cleaned it, and filled the refrigerator with sufficient small and simple-to- prepare meals that would last him for a week. He would be gone after a week, and then the apartment would again be scrubbed clean. He could search in the far recesses of a huge memory. The recesses of his memory were compartmentalized, so the name of Giovanni Crespo, of the carabiniere ROS, was not obscured by the bank of information held on financial movements and cash investments and future strategy and opponents and affiliates. He could sweep aside his thoughts on the plans of an explosives expert, and on the matter of a handbag thief, and of a meeting with a Colombian who was skilled in the movement of refined cocaine to Europe, and of discussions with the new men from Russia.

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 . . .'

'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.