Killing Ground (61 page)

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.'

'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.'