Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  The technician shouted after him, 'But it's confusing - please, listen to me. Three Immediate Alert signals, then a pause, two minutes, then Stand Down, then two Immediate Alert—'

  'Vanni ran. 'Vanni didn't stop to listen.

  The technician stood in the door to the operations area. He shouted a last time, 'Pause one minute, then Stand-by code, and again Immediate Alert. I don't understand.'

  'Vanni had run faster, fourteen years younger, the length of the Via Carini towards the knot of sightseers and firemen and policemen, towards the bullet-spattered cars of the general and the general's wife, of the single ragazzo who had guarded him. Of course, then, as he had run the dark, sun-less length of the Via Carini, he had known he was too late to intervene, to do anything, to be other than helpless. It was a scar on the soul of 'Vanni Crespo that he had stood, panting and helpless, beside the cars and the blood pools, too late to intervene. He did not even know what she looked like, the Codename Helen, tall, thin, fair, short, fat, dark, did not know. As he ran the length of the corridor, slower than he had run the length of the Via Carini, he prayed to his God, soundless, that he would not again be too late to intervene.

  He burst, a fool stammering, into the rest room. The men of the Response Squad stared at him through the smoke haze, looked up at him from their magazines and their card games.

  'Now, hurry, you bastards. Immediate Alert. We have - God, I hope we have -

  Ruggerio. We have a location for Mario Ruggerio. Mondello. Please move. It's Ruggerio.'

  There was the gathering of the weapons. There was the stampede out of the ready room. There was the thunder of boots in the corridor. There was the roar of the cars'

  engines.

  'Vanni, in the back seat of the second car, three more behind him, yelled into his telephone, 'Don't tell me what I should have done,

  I have priorities. I have to respond to the signal. The priority is to move. You are at the duomo? The piazza in front of the duomo, by the camera shop. Two minutes and I am there, a green Alfetta. If you are not there, I don't wait.'

  The convoy of cars swerved through the gates of the Monreale barracks. Two boys up the road, astride motorcycles, were held back by a uniformed carabiniere soldier.

  They were not interested, there was no builder's van in the convoy. The scream of the tyres hung in the afternoon air.

  Not necessary, but the excitement raced in 'Vanni, forty-two years old and like a child with the anticipation of a favoured present. 'It's an open line, Dr Tardelli, not secure. Our mutual interest, we have a location... You should clear your desk for the rest of the afternoon because I hope to bring our friend as a guest to you. Please make yourself available.'

  The American was running, reaching the camera shop. The second car slowed, and behind it the rest of the convoy hit their brakes. 'Vanni had the door open and he caught at Axel's arm and pulled him inside, and Axel's jerked body tangled with the cable lead that linked 'Vanni's headset to the communications console beside the driver's knee.

  'Still transmitting, confused but transmitting from Mondello. I have these hooligans, and I also have a helicopter coming . . .'

  'Vanni hugged Axel.

  Of the squadra mobile surveillance team working the Capo district, II It was the turn of Giancarlo to report in person to the investigating magistrate, Dr Rocco Tardelli. He was not even asked to sit down. He stood in the room at the Palazzo di Giustizia, and held tight in his hand was the plastic bag of vegetables he had bought along with three lemons. He explained that, in the previous twenty-four hours, the three shifts had seen nothing of Mario Ruggerio, and the man seemed hardly to hear him.

  'I regret very much that as yet, dottore, we have no trace, but there is still time, and we have to hope that tomorrow, or the day after, is different.'

  He had expected a head sunk in disappointment, and an exhortation to greater vigilance, but the magistrate merely shrugged. Giancarlo believed it possible that he had interrupted the preparations for the celebration of a birthday because one of the ragazzi was at the table beside the draped curtains and was cleaning glasses and another of the ragazzi, while Giancarlo spoke, carried in two bottles of champagne.

  He believed, with his talk of failure, he intruded.

  The helicopter came over her.

  It came in from the sea, a thunder of noise, and Charley caught at Francesca and lifted her from the water and held her close. She could see, very clearly, the figure in the open hatch door of the helicopter, the face covered by a mask with eyeslits, the legs dangling, the machine-gun that covered her. She held the child as if to protect her, and she did not realize that the plastic water- ring drifted away from her, driven by the rotor blades of the helicopter. She followed the curved flight of the helicopter that was painted in a livery of midnight blue with the big white lettering, CARABINIERE, across the cabin and broken by the opened hatch. She watched the helicopter go stationary, hovering, like one of the big hawks on the cliffs near her home. She looked for the prey of the helicopter.

  Oh, Christ. God, no . . .

  Through the water, across the wet sand, across to the tideline and to the towels laid on the plastic sheet. Small Mario stood alone and the sand was whipped around him.

  The helicopter edged on, was above the esplanade and the deep foliage of the pine trees that wavered as if a gale hit them. She carried Francesca, she tried to run through the water and was stumbling and pitching. The helicopter was facing her, a predator. The water splashed around her, and once she fell and the water was in her mouth and nose and Francesca was crying out loud. She ran towards small Mario. There was a loudspeaker shouting at them but she could not hear the words above the helicopter engine. She saw the couple who kissed, the boys who had the transistor, the couple who read magazines, and they all stood and they all, as if commanded, had their hands on their heads. She did not have her watch and she did not know how long she had been with Francesca in the water, how long she had left small Mario with his football on the sand. She burst from the water. Her feet gripped the wet sand and gave her speed. She could see the men who waited in the shadow of the trees.

  Beyond small Mario and the couples and the boys with the transistor that still shouted music, under the trees, were men and women still as statues and children clutching them and weeping, and men in black overalls and balaclavas holding stubbed guns. She saw Axel Moen . . .

  She reached small Mario. He held her wrist-watch limply in his hands. The boy gazed, frightened, at the helicopter, at the men with the guns.

  Charley took the watch, took it gently, from small Mario's hands. l;rom the shadows under the pine trees, from among the men with guns, Axel Moen gazed at her.

  Said quietly, as if she were back in the classroom of 2B and not wanting to drive a child to silence, 'What did you do with my watch?'

  Said distant and quavering, 'Poppa is in England. Poppa said it was one hour behind Sicily in England. I tried to make the time where Poppa is.'

  'You should have asked me. I would have made it the time where Poppa is.'

  'I tried the buttons, I could not make it work to Poppa's time.'

  She put Francesca down. Charley said to the boy, 'We have to go home. Please, Mario, fold up the towels.'

  She faced Axel Moen. She made small gestures. She reeled from the humiliation.

  She held the watch, she placed it on her wrist and snapped the clasp shut. She was too far from him to see the expression on his face, and the face was in shadow, but she thought that she saw his mind. She pointed to small Mario as he knelt and dutifully folded the towels. She had failed Axel Moen and the men with guns and the men who flew the helicopter. She crossed her hands, uncrossed them, crossed them again, it was over, it was finished. She took the big towel and started to rub dry the body of Francesca, and in her bikini she was shivering. She saw Axel Moen speak to a man beside him, and the man spoke into a radio. Charley wrapped the big towel around Francesca and dressed her under the towel. The helicopter came ove
rhead, flew out above the sea, then turned towards Monte Pellegrino and Palermo. When it was gone, when she could hear the boys' transistor again, when she had put the towel around her own body and was wriggling out of her bikini, she looked again towards the pine trees beyond the beach. They were no longer there. She shed the bikini top and the bikini bottom. She could not see the men with the guns and the balaclavas. She dragged on her pants and buttoned her skirt, and the towel fell from her as she lifted on her blouse. She could not see Axel Moen. The sun of the late afternoon caught at the skin of her arms and her shoulders, at the whiteness of her breasts . . . Hey, Charley, enough of the damn crawl. Hey, Charley, he was out there, and he was waiting, and he came running.

  'Come on, Mario, time for home, time for tea. Come on.'

  'What was it for, the helicopter?'

  Charley said, 'They have to do exercises, have to do practice and training. It keeps them busy. It's something to tell your mother, that you saw the carabineri on a training exercise. You won't learn to swim, you know, not by playing football'

  Hey, Charley, that's power. He came running.

  He put down the telephone. He sat for a moment, very still.

  In the room with him were Pasquale and the driver of the chase car and the one who rode in the chase car with the machine-gun on his lap, and they had all been caught with the infection of his excitement. He sat for a moment with his head buried in his hands.

  They knew. He did not have to tell them.

  He said, 'You know, when Riina was caught, when he had been brought to the barracks, when he realized that he was not in the hands of his enemies but only of the state, he wanted to be told who was in charge. It was at that moment important to him to know that he spoke to the senior man, important to his dignity. Santapaolo, when he was held, he congratulated the arresting officer that he would be on TV that night, as if he would be famous for a day. Leoluca Bagarella, when he was trapped, was said to be in a condition of shock, as if punched on the end of the nose and stunned. I wanted to know how he would be, Mario Ruggerio. For an hour I have sat here and I have allowed myself the fantasy of considering how he would be when I walked into the interrogation room to confront him. It was my hour of vanity. Pasquale, I do not think we require the glasses, and I do not think we will be drinking champagne - would you, please, take them out because they remind me of one hour of vanity. It is hard not to believe that we snatch at stars . . . Right, I have work, you should leave me.'

  Pasquale carried the unused glasses through the armour-plated door of the magistrate's office, and the driver of the chase car followed him with the two bottles of champagne. He had not told his wife about the flowers, their rejection, but he would tell her of the bottles that were not opened and the glasses that were not dirtied. He felt an idiot because there was moist dew at his eyes. Perhaps the driver of the chase car saw the damp gleam in his eyes.

  'What do we do with the champagne?' Pasquale asked briskly.

  'Keep it for the funeral,' the driver of the chase car said, impassive.

  'What funeral?'

  'His, yours, ours.' There was a growled laugh from the driver of I lie chase car. The other men of the team were around the table in the corridor. They mocked Pasquale, as if he were an idiot for their sport.

  'What sort of shit is that?'

  Coolly, the driver of the chase car said, 'Don't you know anything? Don't you listen to the radio? Don't you have ears? Worry less about flowers and listen more. Once, in Palermo, there was a jeweller who sold fine stones and necklaces and watches from Switzerland, and he had a great fear of thieves, so he protected the window of his shop with armour-plated glass. One night a car drove slowly past the shop front, and half a magazine from a Kalashnikov assault rifle was fired at the window. High-velocity rounds. And the window was broken, but the car did not stop, nothing was taken. A few days later, from the same Kalashnikov, the same make of bullets, a mafioso who rode in his car that was fitted with armour-plated glass was shot dead. The attack on the jeweller's shop was merely to test whether the bullets of a Kalashnikov could pierce reinforced glass.'

  Pasquale stood holding the tray, and the glasses chimed as his hands trembled. He was the object of their sport.

  'If you listened to the radio . . . The capo in Catania was killed this afternoon by a bomb in a car that had been parked in a street and was detonated as he drove past. He was a rival for the supreme position sought by Ruggerio, but he was already isolated.

  That is what Tardelli says. Why a bomb? Why a huge explosion? Why something so public? Because that is not the way of La Cosa Nostra. Why was he not shot, or strangled, or disappeared with the lupara bianca into acid or into the bay or into concrete? Why a jeweller's shop?'

  Pasquale shook. He thought of his wife and of his baby and of the man behind the armour-plated door who was alone with his work. They were watching him from the table, amused.

  'Maybe, Pasquale, because you have his ear, because you bring him flowers, you should tell him to go back to his wife in Udine. Maybe you should request him to use his authority to have every parked car on every road in Palermo towed away. Maybe you should arrange, very quickly, for the arrest of Ruggerio. Maybe you should resign.'

  'You talk shit.'

  They were all laughing as Pasquale stumbled away down the corridor carrying the tray of clean glasses.

  'What did you expect?'

  'That she wouldn't be so goddam naive.'

  The argument started back at the barracks. They hadn't fought in front of the ROS

  men, had held back their frustration at the failure until they were clear of the squad and alone. And the attitude of the men had been so predictable to 'Vanni Crespo. Into the cars on the beach front at Mondello, balaclavas pulled off, weapons made safe, another day and another fuck-up, and their talk in the car had been of football and the size of the breasts of the new PA to the colonello, and then about the next issue of boots to be given them. Another day and another fuck-up and nothing changed.

  'She's an amateur.'

  'Of course she's an amateur. Picked up on the cheap, fast little run in and out that doesn't cost the great DEA much. I know she's an amateur and cheap because the great DEA left it to you to run her, and you, Axel Moen, are insignificant.'

  'Not so goddam precious yourself. You were so naive. The signal was a mess -

  Immediate Alert, Stand Down, Stand-by, Immediate Alert. Didn't you think?'

  'I thought that she was an amateur. I thought she was in panic. She is not the wonderful Axel Moen, hero of the great DEA. She is a girl, she is untrained. It was reasonable to assume she'd be in panic. For the sake of Christ, Axel, think where you've put her, and what you've told her, and the job you've given her. That would make panic.'

  They were in a corridor. The argument had been whisper-hissed as the business of the corridor went on around them. 'Vanni took the American's shoulders in his fists, and caught the material of the windcheater, and shook his shoulders.

  'You make a good argument, 'Vanni, but it's flawed - she wouldn't begin to know how to panic.'

  But Axel Moen had let his head fall against 'Vanni's chest, and they hugged. They held each other and let the anger slip.

  Axel broke the hold. 'I'll see you around, some place.'

  'Take some food. Yes, stay close.'

  'Vanni called for an escort to take Axel Moen to the gate. He watched him go away down the corridor, carrying the bag with the two-channel receiver and the notes and drawings of the cloister columns of the duomo, watched him until he was gone through the door at the far end of the corridor. He could get away with it once, culling out the squad and not filing a report, in triplicate, on white and yellow and blue flimsies, only the once. He went, heavy-footed, to his room. Ridiculous, he was a senior officer, he had been in the force for twenty years and two months, and a single failed call-out was like a wound to him. He had been one of the chosen few who had hunted, first, and closed down, second, the terrorists of the Brigat
e Rosse, the scum kids of the middle-class affluents who claimed to kill for the proletariat. He had been especially chosen as the liaison officer to Carlos Alberto dalla Chiesa. He had been nine years in the wilderness of Genoa, murders, drugs, kidnapping. He had been five years now with the Reparto Operativo Speciale. And he had held his pistol against the neck of Riina.

  How many stake-outs, how many charges in a screaming car with the firearms oil in his nose, how many surveillance operations? He thought himself a cretin because this time, among so many, the failure had wounded him. In his room he lay on his bed. It was the habit that he kept to, twenty minutes each afternoon of catnapping. He lay on his bed with a cigarette lit and with the whisky glass on his stomach. When he had smoked the cigarette and drunk the whisky, he would set the alarm for twenty minutes ahead and sleep. Later, in the early evening, he would make the telephone call to his daughter in Genoa and talk about her school that he had never visited and her friends that he did not know. In the late evening, with the mobile phone in his pocket and the pistol in his waist, he would drive to Trapani and bounce the arse off the woman in the back of her car. But the call would mean little, and the sex would mean less, because he was wounded.

  He spiralled the smoke up towards the bland shade of his light, he gulped the whisky.

  They came more often, now, the doubts. They came to him most afternoons when he lay on his bed with his cigarette and his whisky, with the alarm set for twenty minutes of sleep. No doubts of ultimate victory when he had tracked the Brigate Rosse cells, no doubts when he had stood with controlled emotion in the congregation at the funeral of dalla Chiesa, none when he had investigated murders and trafficking and kidnapping in Genoa, and none when he had pressed the pistol down against the flesh of Riina. The doubts now were with him most afternoons. Unshared, unspoken, he doubted in ultimate victory, as if he beat against a wall and the wall did not break from the force of his blows. The arm was cut, the arm grew again. The heart was knifed, the heart healed.