Killing Ground (57 page)

'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.

If you've quit, give the gear to someone else who'll listen. Make sure that somebody listens, if you've quit.' Like it was her chorus.

She walked onto the patio. 'Just off to school,' Charley said brightly. 'I'll take the baby.'

Peppino looked up from his papers, balance sheets and projection graphs and account statements. 'Did Angela tell you about this evening?'

'Didn't say anything about this evening.'

'We are out this evening. We will be taking Francesca and Mario. Please, this evening you will look after Mauro?'

'No problem.'

She walked down the path to the gate. The 'lechie' bastard opened it for her. She thought it strange that Angela had not said the family were out that evening. She walked towards the town. She wondered if Axel Moen had already quit, and she wondered who watched her. So calm, because it was now her story, alone, that was played.

The maresciallo had been called by the magistrate. They had spoken in his office.

He came back into the kitchen.

They watched the maresciallo as he took the street map from the table. Dark eyes that were sombre, without lustre, never left him as he studied the web patterns of the street map.

At the sink, Pasquale rinsed the coffee cups and the plates on which they had eaten bread. There was no liquid soap to put in the bowl. They had finished the liquid soap the evening before and none of them had written on the list that was fastened on a magnetic clip to the refrigerator door that it needed replacing. Pasquale did not remark on the absence of liquid soap. It would be the last time that he should wash, as the junior member of the team, the cups and plates and the knives and spoons, and they could find for themselves that the liquid soap was finished. He had told his wife, in the night, when their baby slept, summoned the courage, and she had stood behind him and nursed his head. He had held the bottle of beer in his fists, and with a quiet flatness he had told her that he was rejected, and she had nursed his head against the breasts that suckled their baby. He'd thought she'd wanted to cry in happiness, and she had said nothing. He had held the beer, not drunk from the bottle, and he had told her that he had been betrayed by the magistrate to whom she had sent flowers. He'd thought she'd wanted to kiss him in welling relief, and she had not.

He was already isolated from the team. He was not a part of the team of the older ragazzi that morning. They did not share with him the gaunt black humour that was their own. Nor did they laugh at him. It was not necessary for Pasquale to wash the cups and plates and the knives and spoons, and because they now ignored him they would not have told him to do the job.

The maresciallo said they were going to Ucciardione Prison, and he told them what route they would be using, and Pasquale laid the washed cups and plates and the knives and spoons in neat piles on the draining board beside the sink. He hated them all, he hated the maresciallo who rejected him, and the magistrate who betrayed him, and the older men who ignored him. He hated them. A cup slid from the draining board and, frantic, Pasquale tried to catch it. It fell to the floor, and the handle broke clear, and the cup was cracked, and a chip came free. The maresciallo seemed not to see and went on with the intoning of the route they would use, and the men at the table did not look at him. He knelt on the linoleum floor and picked up the pieces of the cup and put them in the rubbish bin under the sink. He was rejected and betrayed and ignored.

He stood by the sink. He interrupted the litany of the names of the streets and the piazzas. 'When is he coming?'

He saw the dagger glance of the maresciallo. 'Is who coming?'

'When is my replacement coming?'

'He is coming today.'

'When? Do I not have the right to know?'

'When he is available, that is when you are replaced. I apologize, I do not know when, today, he is available.'

The magistrate stood in the doorway. He held a briefcase across his stomach and his overcoat was draped loose on his shoulders. For a moment he was ignored by the maresciallo.

The route was detailed, which streets they would travel on, through which piazzas.

So difficult for Pasquale to hate the man who stood at the kitchen door, but the man had not spoken for him, and that was betrayal. There was such tiredness in the face of the man, there was no light in the eyes of the man. He caught the dulled eyes, and the man looked away. The route was confirmed. There was the clatter of the guns being armed.

The vests were thrown on. There was the thud of the feet down the staircase, and they passed a woman who climbed the staircase and carried a shopping bag from a boutique and bright flowers, and she gave them a glance of contempt.

They were in the sunshine on the pavement. The soldiers had their rifles readied.

The convoy pulled away. The sirens wailed, the tyres screamed on the corner. They went into the streets where there were, close- packed on either side, parked cars and parked vans and parked motorcycles. It was the day when Pasquale's replacement would be available. The maresciallo drove, and Pasquale was beside him with the machine-gun tight in his hands.