Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  The professor used a big lectern that took his weight as he leaned forward on it, and the voice came from deep in the whiskered beard, pebbles churning in a mixer.

  'If you've toned your muscles, if you can swing a pickaxe, if you've journeyed to Sicily, then take a hack at a piece of ground. You may have to go looking a while first to find ground that's not rock. Find it and hack - chance is you'll dig up an arrowhead or a sword blade or the iron of a spear tip, or maybe a bayonet or a mortar round or a rifle's cartridge case - the weapons of repression and torture. Imagine you live there, when you hold whatever you've dug in your hand. When your history is one of dispossession, expropriation, incarceration, execution, then that sort of colours your personality, sort of shapes an attitude: each new conqueror moulded the Sicilian view of life. The lesson dinned by history into the modern generations tells them trust is a luxury to be kept tight round the family, that the greatest virtue is silence, that you wait as long as it takes for the opportunity of revenge, then, by God, you dish it out. While Europe was civilizing itself a hundred years ago, down there on the rock, close to Africa, they were brigands and bandits. Not our problem, an Italian problem, until . . .'

  Dwight Smythe remembered him now, like it was yesterday, and the recruits hadn't coughed, or sniggered, or fidgeted, but had sat rapt as if the old academic was telling them the reality of DEA work.

  'For protection, the brigands and bandits formed a secret society. Rules, hierarchy, organization, discipline, but relevant only to Italy, running contraband cigarettes, fleecing an extortion racket dry, until - strange, I think, the way the little moments in our existence, the two-cent moments have their day - until a Turkish gentleman named Musullulu got to share a prison cell in Italy with the Sicilian gangster Pietro Vernengo.

  They talked for two years. Those two years, in that cell, '78 and '79, they changed the face of society, they put you men in work. The drugs trade, the misery trade began in that cell, two men and their talk . . .'

  So clear to Dwight Smythe, the professor's words. Beside him Axel Moen sat quiet and still, eyes closed. Dwight knew the current statistics - a Federal Anti-Narcotics budget of $13.2 billion, of which the DEA took $757 million and said it was inadequate.

  'The Turk talked heroin. The Turk could bring unprocessed morphine base into Sicily, via the Balkans. Good morphine base to make good heroin. In 1979, the Italians opened the cell door and Mr Musullulu went his way, never been seen by a law enforcement agent since, and Signor Vernengo went back to Sicily and told the guys what was on offer. Don't ever think that because they didn't get grades at school the Sicilian peasants are dumb. For killing and conspiracy they are the best and the brightest, for moving money and for spreading the cloy of corruption they are the best and the brightest. They saw the window, they jumped through it. They had more heroin, more morphine base, coming onto that heap of rock than they knew what to do with, and they had the market. The market was the USA, they went international. The money flowed. They had dollar bills up their ears, mouths, nostrils, every orifice they owned.

  So you've heard of the Colombians and the Yakuza out of Japan and the Chinese Triads, but first on the scene was La Cosa Nostra of Sicily. The people I've just mentioned, the cartels and the Yakuza and the Triads, they're hard people but they've never been fool enough to mix it with the Sicilians. It's difficult to believe, but off that piece of rock stuck out between Europe and Africa come the big boys of organized crime, and what everyone's thrown at them just seems to bounce back. You see, gentlemen, ladies, down there it's a war of survival, as it has been through history, a bad place to be on the losing side, it's a war to the death . . .'

  It's what the professor had said at a cold, early morning session in the lecture hall at Quantico, with snow flaking against the windows, what Dwight Smythe recalled. He felt a sense of raw anger. The next week, nine years back, the professor had lectured on the marijuana crop out of Mexico, and the week after he had given over the hour session to the coca-leaf production of Bolivia and Peru, and the final week of the course had been concerned with opium production in the triangle of Burma and Laos and Thailand. Dwight Smythe felt the sense of raw anger because the professor had seemed only a diversion from the main matter of the induction course. Sitting in the car beside the younger man with the blond pony-tail of hair shafted down under the collar of his windcheater, Dwight Smythe knew reality. He was far from the office accounts that he managed on the fifth floor of the embassy, far from the duty rosters and leave charts he so meticulously prepared, far from the filing system he was proud of and the maintenance of the computer systems ... He was with reality. The anger spat in him as he turned towards Axel Moen.

  'What right do you have, what God-given right do you have to play Christ with that kid, to involve her?'

  As if he hadn't heard, as if the accusation were not important, Axel Moen, beside him, glanced down at his watch, like it was time to go to work.

  'You're a mafia specialist - sorry, forgive me, I apologize, a La Cosa Nostra specialist - and you're not making, what I hear, a good job of winning.

  Aren't you ever fed to the teeth that you don't ever get to win?'

  The chill air with the salt tang came into the cab of the Cherokee Jeep, then the door slammed shut on Dwight Smythe. He watched the hunched shoulders of Axel Moen glide away, no sound against the throb of the heater, towards the little wrought-iron gate and the path leading to the door of the bungalow over which the porch light shone. He watched the shoulders and the resolute stride through the gate and up the path and past the scooter parked in the driveway, and he thought of the preacher of his childhood talking of the Death Angel who came on the unsuspecting with destruction and darkness, and he thought it was wrong to involve an ordinary young woman, just wrong.

  Wrong to break, without warning, into a life.

  'So sorry to trouble you, I hope it's not inconvenient . . .'

  He could smile. When it was necessary, Axel Moen had a fine, wide smile that cut his face. He smiled at the older man who stood In the lit doorway.

  'My name's Axel Moen, I've come down from our embassy in London, it's to see Miss Charlotte Parsons. I surely hope it's not inconvenient . . .'

  He could charm. When it was asked of him, he could charm sufficient to bring down a barrier. He kept walking. There had been no gesture for him to enter the bungalow, no invitation, but he kept walking and David Parsons stepped aside. The frown was on the man's forehead, confusion.

  'You're wondering, Mr Parsons, at my name. It's Norwegian. I here's a fair few of Norwegian stock where I come from, that'sthe north-eastern corner of Wisconsin. They were farmers, they came over around a hundred years ago. I'd like to see your daughter, please, it's a private matter.'

  He could deflect. When it was important to him, Axel Moen knew how to batter aside the doubts and queries and seem to give an answer where a different question had been asked. The question would have been, what was his business? But the question was not put. It was a small hall, recently decorated but not by a professional, and he noted that the paper pattern did not match where the strips were joined, and the paint had run on the woodwork. He had a cold eye. It was a detached observer's eye. The eye of a man who gave nothing. He saw the small hall table with the telephone on it, and above the table was a framed photograph of the young woman in academic gown and with a mortarboard worn rakishly. The angle of the mortarboard and the cheekiness of the grin in the college graduation photograph rather pleased him, he had hoped to find an independent spirit. He towered over the man, he dominated him in the narrow width of the hallway. It was what he had to do and what he was good at, flashing a smile, breathing charm, and dominating. He was good, also, at making the fast judgement on the spine of a man, and he judged this one, pullover with the buttons undone and wearing yesterday's clean shirt and frayed carpet slippers, as a coward.

  'She's having her tea.'

  'It won't take too many minutes,' Axel said. He was good, as well, at playin
g the bully. The man backed away from him and shuffled towards the opened door at the end of the hall. There was a television on and a local news bulletin dealing with the day of a small place and a small town and small people. The man had no fight to stand his ground and ask the questions and demand the answers. The man went in through the door, into the kitchen area. Axel had broken into the sanctum of a family, fractured a mealtime, and he felt no guilt. The man muttered to his wife, at the stove, moving pans, that it was an American who had come to see Charley, and the wife had boldness and challenge in her gaze. Axel ignored the man and the man's wife. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen. The young woman was sitting at the table. She had a half slice of bread, margarine smeared on it, in her hand and halfway to her mouth. She quizzed him, a strong, firm glance. She wore a full- length denim skirt and a shapeless sweater with the sleeves stretched down over her wrists and no cosmetics and her hair was held up with a band so that it came from the back of her head as a pig's tail. She neither cowered like her father nor challenged like her mother, she met Axel's eye. In front of her, beside the plate with the bread slices and the mug of tea, was a torn-open envelope and beside it were the two sheets of a handwritten letter.

  'Miss Charlotte Parsons?'

  'Yes.'

  'I'd be grateful if I could speak to you, a private matter.'

  'These are my parents.'

  'It would be easier in private, if you wouldn't mind . . .'

  'Who are you?'

  'I am Axel Moen, from the American embassy.'

  'I've no business with your embassy, private or not.'

  'It would be better, private.'

  She could have backed off then, but she did not. He pulled his shoulders back, consciously, to fill the kitchen doorway. He held her with his eyes. They talked on the courses about body language and eye-to-eye contact. The body language was domination and the eye contact was authority. She could have said that it was in front of her parents or not at all . . . She pushed her chair back, scraped it over the vinyl floor of mock terracotta tiles. She stood her full height, then as an afterthought she stuffed the half slice of bread and margarine into her mouth, then she swigged at her mug of tea, then she wiped the sleeve of her sweater across her lips. She was moving from the table.

  Axel said, 'You received a letter, Miss Parsons, please bring it with you.'

  She rocked, quick, fast. Her eyes blinked. She swayed, but she did as he asked her because he had the domination and authority. She picked up the letter and the torn-open envelope and she walked past her mother and father, her own person. She went past him as if he did not exist, and her face was set. She led into the living room and snapped on the light in the standard lamp and cleared the morning paper off the sofa, waved for him to sit. She took the chair beside the fire. She held the letter and the envelope tight in her hands. He tried to judge her, to measure whether it was bravado, whether it was an inner toughness.

  'Well?'

  'You are Charlotte Eunice Parsons, teacher?'

  'Yes.'

  'You are twenty-three years old?'

  'How's that of interest to the American embassy?'

  'I'm asking the questions, Miss Parsons. Please answer them.' 'I am twenty-three years old. Do you need to know that I have a mole on my backside, and an appendix scar?'

  'In the summer of 1992 you worked for eleven weeks as a home help and child-minder in Rome for the family of Giuseppe Ruggerio?'

  'I don't see the importance—'

  'Yes or no?'

  'Yes.'

  'This afternoon you have received a letter from that family inviting you to return?'

  'Who the hell are you?'

  Out of the hip pocket of his trousers, he took the squashed wallet. He flipped it open, exposed the identification badge in gold-veneer metal of the Drug Enforcement Administration, thumb half covering the title of Special Agent, fingers masking the rampant eagle.

  'My name is Axel Moen, DEA. I work out of Rome.'

  'You've come from Rome?'

  'Don't interrupt me, Miss Parsons. I'm sorry, where can I smoke?'

  'Sort your answer out. What on earth are you doing here, prying and poking. Come on.'

  But a small grin was on her face. She marched him back out into the hall, and grabbed a heavy coat off a hook, and then through a darkened dining room. She unlocked the doors, and let him into the garden. The kitchen lights washed half of the patio, but she led him beyond the light and onto the paving slabs outside a garden shed. She turned to face him, looked up at him, and the flash of the match caught her face.

  'Prying and poking, so what the hell's your answer?'

  'I work out of Rome - you should listen to what I say. I work in liaison with the Italian agencies. I work against the Sicilian-based organization La Cosa Nostra. You were employed by Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio to look after their son at the time their daughter was born. They have written you to say that two months ago they were

  "blessed" with the birth of a second son, Mauro - just listen - and they have asked you to return to them to do the same work as four years ago. They live now in Palermo.'

  He threw down the cigarette, half smoked. His foot was moving to stamp on it, but she crouched and picked it up and handed it back to him. He stubbed out the cigarette on the ribbed sole of his shoe, then placed the dead end in the matchbox.

  'They live now in Palermo. How do I know? Giuseppe Ruggerio is sporadically under surveillance. There are not the resources, such is the scale of criminality in Sicily, for the surveillance to be full time. From time to time he is targeted. Tailed, wire-tapped, mail watch, electronic stuff, it's routine. It's a trawl. The letter showed up.

  Angela Ruggerio posted it. The letter was intercepted, copied, resealed and went back into the postal service. In Rome I was shown the copy. The letter was tracked from Palermo to Milan, international sorting, Milan to London, London down here. We took that trouble to ensure the timing of my journey, so that I should get here after you received the letter, before you responded. This is my idea, Miss Parsons, I have initiated this. I want you to go to Palermo and take up that offer.'

  She laughed in his face. He didn't think the laugh was affectation.

  'Ridiculous . . .'

  'Go back to Palermo and work for Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio.'

  'I've a job, I'm in full-time work. Before, that was just a fill-in between school and college. It's just, well, it's idiotic. It's a joke.'

  '1 want you to accept the invitation and travel to Palermo.'

  Axel lit a second cigarette. The wind was on his face and cutting into the thin material of his windcheater. She was small now, huddled inside the shape of her coat and her arms were clamped across her chest as if to hold in the warmth.

  'What do they call you, people who know you?'

  ' I get called Charley.'

  'Don't think, Charley, that I would have bothered to haul myself over here if this were not an important investigation, don't think I take kindly to wasted time. We get opportunities, maybe they come convenient, maybe they don't. Maybe we can handle the opportunities ourselves, maybe we need to pull in help from outside. We want you in the home of Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio.'

  The bitterness hissed in her voice, and the contempt. 'As a spy?'

  'The opportunity we have, through you, is one of access.'

  'They treated me as one of their family.'

  'Giuseppe Ruggerio is a careful, clever bastard. You should take up that offer and work for Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio/

  'Go to hell. Bugger off and bloody get out of here.'

  He flicked the cigarette into the middle of the dark grass. He started to turn away.

  'Please yourself, I don't beg. You care to live here, you care to spend the rest of your life living here, you care to cross over to the other side of the street when there's something you could do, please yourself. I thought that maybe you had some balls. Pity is that I was wrong.'

  'You are, Mr Axel bloody Mo
en, a total shit.'

  'Big words, but you're short of big action. You want to rot here, then that's your problem. Don't talk about this conversation. If you talk about it, you might be responsible for hurting people.'

  A small voice. She wouldn't be able to see his face, see the flicker of satisfaction.

  She asked, 'Why do you need access to Giuseppe's and Angela's home?'

  No sarcasm, and no laugh, and no bullshit, Axel said, 'You get on board and you get told, so think on it. And think also on whether, for the rest of your life, you want to remember crossing over the road to avoid responsibility. Good night, Miss Parsons.

  When you've had a chance to think on it, I'll make the contact again. Don't worry, I can see myself out.'

  He walked away, back through the darkened dining room, and past the open door to the kitchen, and through the hall. He looked a last time at the photograph of Charley Parsons on the wall above the table with the telephone. He liked the cockiness and cheekiness in her graduation photograph. He let himself out through the front door.

  Sometimes he used a driver, most times Mario Ruggerio drove himself. Whether he drove himself, or whether he rode with the driver, he used a mass-produced, factory-production-line saloon car. There was nothing flamboyant, nothing ostentatious, in the life of Mario Ruggerio, nothing to draw attention to him. That evening, if a car of the carabineri or the squadra mobile or the polizia stradale or the polizia municipale or the Guardia di Finanze or the Direzione Investigativa Anti-Mafia had passed the Citroen BX that carried him as passenger, nothing would have seemed remarkable to the police officers of those agencies. He had been released from Ucciardione Prison, down by the city's docks, on 15 June 1960, and he had not been arrested since. He was now aged sixty-two. He was governed by twin obsessions and they were the seeking of power and the avoidance of capture. Without freedom there was no power. To maintain that precious freedom he travelled the city in a series of commonplace vehicles. To any of the police officers of those agencies, the sight of him at the traffic lights or at a pedestrian crossing would have been of an old man, tired by long life, being driven by a son or a nephew . . . but he was, and he knew it so well, to all of the police officers of all of those agencies, the most wanted man in the city, the most hunted man on the island, I he most tracked man in the country, the most sought-after man on the continent of Europe. He believed himself to have achieved the primary position on what the Ministry of the Interior called the Special Programme of the Thirty Most Dangerous Criminals at l arge. The police officers of those agencies would have seen, at I he traffic lights or a pedestrian crossing, an old man who sat low In the passenger seat, a height of 5 feet 3 inches and a weight ol a couple of pounds less than 13 stones, unstyled and short- i-ropped and grey-flecked hair, a low peasant's forehead, roving and cautious eyes, jowls at his throat and nicotine-stained teeth, broad but bowed shoulders. They would not have known . . . Nor would they have seen the powerful, thickset fingers, with the nails cut back to the quick, because the hands were held down between his knees. They might have seen his eyes, and if the police officers of the agencies had met those eyes, then Mario Ruggerio's head would have ducked in respect to their uniforms and their position, but they would not have seen his hands, clasping and unclasping, stretching and clenching. He moved his fingers and thumbs, worked the joints, because his hands were still bruised and aching from the effort of strangulation, and the rheu- matism in his hands was always worse at the end of the wet months iof the Sicilian winter.