Giancarlo saw the man.
The kids with the balloons were in front of the man. A couple with a pram were behind the man. A woman in a fur coat and carrying a posy of flowers was beside the man.
Giancarlo saw an old man. The man had turned to face the bus, as if to satisfy himself that it had indeed stopped. Giancarlo saw an old man, a pudgy and weathered face below a flat cap, a jowled chin and throat above a rough cloth jacket.
Giancarlo saw an old man crossing a road at his leisure. The face of the old man leaped in Giancarlo's mind. There was a face in front of the bus. There was a face in a photograph that had been computer-enhanced, aged from twenty years before. The face was gone behind the shoulder of the driver. Giancarlo squirmed to see past the shoulder.
He saw the face of the man a last time, and the man was smiling down at one of the children holding a balloon. Giancarlo matched the face, smiling, with the face, smiling at a wedding reception, of the photograph.
His wife abandoned. Other passengers pushed aside. The driver shouted at. The I/D
card shoved into the driver's face. The doors slowly hissing open. The man reaching the far pavement . . .
Giancarlo jumped from the bus. He cannoned into a couple, in love, hand in hand. He did not look back at his wife, at the shock on her face. The lights changed. The bus pulled forward. Giancarlo ran behind the bus. The horns of the following cars blasted anger at him, brakes squealed. The man was walking away on the far pavement.
Giancarlo had no telephone. The leader of the squadra mobile surveillance team carried a mobile telephone at all times, but mobile telephones were expensive, a rationed item.
His personal radio was on the charger at the Questura, he was off duty, and his pistol was locked behind the armoury door in the Questura. There was a telephone pager on his belt, which only carried incoming messages. He ran forward, reached the far pavement. Because of the anger of the horns, and the brakes' screams, because of the abuse shouted at him through open windows, Giancarlo was for a critical moment of time a centre of attention.
In that moment of time, the man stood and faced a shop window.
Giancarlo, among his own, was venerated for experience and professionalism. For the teaching of surveillance tactics to new recruits to the teams he was often used. If a young recruit had run across a street, through traffic, become the target of horns and insults, become a centre of attention, then Giancarlo would patiently have explained the error of the young recruit. He would have talked to the young recruit about the requirement to merge and blend. He did not know whether he had shown out, whether he was busted, and he did not see the picciotto, a swarthy and heavy-set youth, who protected the back of Mario Ruggerio. In the flush of excitement, experience and professionalism gone, he had displayed the rashness of a young recruit. He stood stock-still. He watched the back of the old man move on, a slow walk, up the Via Sammartino and then turn into the Via Turrisi Colonna. He did not know whether he had shown out.
There was a bar.
Giancarlo ran into the bar. There was a payphone on the counter. A woman talked on the payphone.
Maybe she talked with her sister in Agrigento, maybe with her mother in Misilmeri, maybe with her daughter in Partinico . . . Giancarlo snatched the telephone. He terminated her call. She howled her protest at him and he flapped his I/D in her face. He was scrabbling in his pocket for a token for the telephone. He was bawling at her for silence, and he fed the gettone and dialled his control. He did not see the swarthy and heavy-set youth sidle across the bar towards him. Again, for a critical moment of time, Giancarlo made himself the centre of attention. The bar's customers, the men, the women, the staff, the matriarch at the cash till, sided with the wronged woman. The screaming was in his ears. With his body he tried to block their hands from reaching the telephone.
His control answered.
His name, his location, the name of his target.
The pain caught him. The pain was in Giancarlo's back and then seeping to his stomach. He said again his name and his location and the name of his target. The questions from his control beat at him, but his concentration and ability to respond to the questions were destroyed by the pain. Which way was the target going? What was the target wearing? Was the target alone? Was the target in a vehicle or on foot? He said again his name and his location and the name of his target, and his voice was weaker and the pain was more acute. He dropped the phone, and the phone swung loose on its reinforced cable. He turned. He looked into the eyes of a swarthy and heavy-set youth.
Giancarlo swayed. The pain forced his eyes shut. He reached for the source of the pain in his back. He found the hardness of the knife's handle, and the wetness. When his knees gave, when he could no longer see the swarthy and heavy-set youth, when the telephone swung beyond his reach, when the screaming burst from grotesquely blurred mouths around him, Giancarlo realized, puzzled, that he could no longer remember the questions that control had asked of him.
The pain was a spasm through his body.
A square had been made.
The bar was at the centre of the square. The north of the square was the Via Giacomo Cusmano, the south was the Via Principe di Villafranca, the west was the Via Dante, and the east was the gardens of the Villa Trabia.
A hundred men with guns, with flak vests, quartered the square. They were from the DIA, and there were two sections of the ROS, and there was the stand-by team of the Guardia di Finanze, and there were men from the squadra mobile. The cordon around the square was given to the military, Jeeps at street corners, soldiers with NATO rifles.
They did not know what the man, Giancarlo's target, looked like, they did not know how he was dressed, they did not know in which direction he had gone, they did not know whether he walked or whether he went by car.
The bar was emptied but for the owner and the matriarch who guarded her cash till.
The body was on the floor. In the back of the body was a short-bladed, double-edged knife. The owner of the bar, facing a wall, his wrists handcuffed in the small of his back, had seen nothing. Perhaps the customers had seen something? The matriarch had seen nothing. The customers were all strangers to her and she knew none of them.
A car brought the wife of Giancarlo to the bar, and a young priest had run from the church on Via Terrasanta. The photographers from the newspapers and the cameramen from the RAI crowded the pavement.
The maresciallo elbowed a way through for the magistrate and Pasquale bullocked him into the bar, into the crush that circled the body. There were some who had come from family gatherings and wore their suits, some had come from the tennis courts, some from their seats in the football stadium, some from their sleep. Beside their shoes and sneakers and sandals was the body and the blood. The magistrate saw the face, bleak, of 'Vanni Crespo, and pushed towards him.
'It was shit luck,' 'Vanni Crespo said. 'We were so close . . .'
The tail had watched the car of 'Vanni Crespo, the carabiniere Alfetta, from the barracks at Monreale to the bar on Via Sam- martino. The tail was locked on 'Vanni Crespo.
' He brought me lemons, 'Vanni. I had fish for my meal on Friday. They are not supposed to do my shopping, my boys, but they prefer to do it than to take me to the market, so they break the rule, they bought fresh mullet for me. He had brought me lemons and made .1 joke of it. I had one of his lemons with my mullet. He was the I 'est of men.'
'It was shit luck,' 'Vanni growled. 'He was on the bus with his wife. He saw Ruggerio.
He got off the bus. He ran through the traffic. That's the decision. You wait and you lose the target. You run and you alert the target. You've ten seconds, five seconds, to make the decision and you live by it and you die by it.'
The lemon was most sharp in the taste.'
'He would have shown out when he ran. Ruggerio would have had a back marker. He had to go to the bar for communication. The back marker would have followed him.
You need the luck and all you get is the shit.'
&nbs
p; 'There are six more of his lemons in my kitchen . . . Do you believe in luck, 'Vanni?'
He saw the tears well at the eyes of the magistrate. He took out his handkerchief. He did not care who saw him. In the crowd in the bar, he wiped the running tears from the magistrate's face. 'I believe in nothing.'
'Do you believe your agent of small importance will be lucky?'
He remembered her, as he had seen her, the last look back from the side of the road before he had dropped down into the car. The last look, across the pavement, and between the trees, and across the sand, and she had stood against the brightness of the sea, and the sun had caught the white of her body skin as her towel had slipped. In the bar, with the corpse, with the soft whimpering of the widow, with the crowd, with the smell of cigarettes and cold coffee, he remembered her.
'I am sorry, dottore, I cannot share with you because it is not in my gift.'
He drove a way through the crowd in the bar, pushed through the crowd on the pavement and the street. A good man had had ten seconds, five seconds, to make a decision and the result of the decision was a mistake, and the result of a mistake was to lie dead on the dirty floor of a bar that was lit by flashlights. He went to his car, walked leaden in the dusk light.
The tail followed the Alfetta driven by 'Vanni Crespo. The tail was delayed by the military cordon around the square of streets after the Alfetta had been waved through, but it was of no consequence. The tail was linked by radio to a second car and to motorcyclists who waited outside the cordon. As if a chain held the tail to the Alfetta . .
.
When he had heard the explosion of the car horns, and then heard the insults shouted, Mario Ruggerio had paused in front of a shop window. He had appeared to study the contents of the shop window. An old practice, one that his father would have known, was to use a shop window as a mirror. He had seen a man come at desperate speed through the traffic lanes, then reach the pavement and stop. The man, stopped, had stared up the street towards him. If the man had had a radio he would already have used it, if the man had had a mobile telephone he would not have run through the traffic lanes, if the man had carried a firearm he would not have stopped. In the reflections of the window he had seen the picciotto, a good boy, behind the man. He had known he was recognized and he had known the man panicked. He had realized it was a chance recognition and not a part of a comprehensive surveillance. He had made a small gesture, a single movement of his index finger, a cutting motion. He had walked away.
He had turned the corner . . .
It was two hours later. Mario Ruggerio sat in the darkened room on the first floor in the Capo district. His feet ached, his lungs heaved, the ashtray was filled with the stubbed ends of his cigarillos. The two picciotti who had been ahead of him on the Via Sammartino had made a brutal pace for him, up to the Piazza Lolli, one pocketing the cap he had been wearing, across the Via Vito la Mancia, one taking his jacket and folding it on his arm so that the material could not be seen, past the Mercato delle Pulci, hurrying him along as if he were an old uncle out with two impatient nephews. He had slipped away from them behind the duomo. Even when he gasped for breath, when exhaustion bled him and he swayed on his feet, he would not have considered allowing picciotti to take him to his safe house. The sweat ran on his face and on his back and on his stomach. He smoked. He held the photograph of the child he loved.
Charley sat on the patio.
The sun had gone down and only a feeble layer of light fell on the seascape ahead of her. The family had gone down to the town. She had lost the loneliness that had hurt her in Palermo. She felt, sitting in the comfortable chair on the patio, a supreme confidence.
The villa was her place. The family would be walking on the esplanade, under the trees, patrolling like the caged bears she had seen in zoos, where they would be seen ... It was the time of waiting. She was in control, she felt her power. The power was the watch on her wrist. She sat with her legs apart, and the cool of the evening air made feather strokes on her thighs. She was at the centre of the world of Axel Moen and the people who directed Axel Moen. She had power over Giuseppe Ruggerio and over the brother.
She watched the last of the sunlight flee the smooth surface of the sea. Because of her control and her power it would be her story that would be told, the story of Codename Helen.
In the grey light, on the patio, an arrogance tripped in Charley's mind.
The tail was locked on 'Vanni Crespo. Three bars in Monreale. The tail watched him drink alone in a bar near the duomo, in a second bar near the empty market stands, in a third bar high in the old town. The tail watched and followed where 'Vanni Crespo led.
Through the window of the pizzeria he saw 'Vanni. 'Vanni was going slowly, confused.
He was lit by a street lamp, and his face was flushed, and his hair hung on his forehead in careless strands, and he lurched to a stop beside the window and was struggling to find the cigarette packet in his pocket. Axel turned away. There was nowhere in the pizzeria for him to hide. He turned away and hoped that his face was not seen, but he heard the whip of the door opening and then the slam of it shutting and he heard the shuffle of the feet and then the scrape of the chair opposite him.
'Vanni sat in front of Axel, and he swayed on the chair before his elbows thudded down on the table.
'I find the American hero . . .'
'You pissed up or something?'
'I find the American hero who comes to Sicily to achieve what we cannot.'
'You're drunk.'
'We Italians are pathetic, we cannot wipe our own arses, but the American hero comes to do it for us.'
'Go fuck yourself.'
'You know what happened today because we had shit luck, what happened . . . ?'
'We don't break procedure,' Axel hissed across the table.
Two young men, carrying their crash helmets, were at the counter of the pizzeria and asking for the list of sauces.
The hand in which Axel held his fork was gripped in ' Vanni's fists. 'We had surveillance people in the Capo, that's a shit place, to target the bastard. The surveillance was called off, nothing seen. One of the team, on a bus, sees the bastard.
Off duty, no communications. We are pathetic Italians, we do not have the money to give out, sweets and chocolates, mobile telephones. Not carrying his personal radio, off duty, no sidearm. He tries to use the telephone in a bar. The bastard would have had a guy behind him, back marker. The message was incomplete, that's the shit luck. No profile and no description, no clothes, before he was stabbed to death. The bastard's gone. It's cold.'
At the bar the boys with the crash helmets studied the list of pizza sauces.
'Get the hell out of here.'
'He was in our hand. We snatched. We lost him. Isn't that shit luck?'
'Go and sleep with your woman.'
'I drink, I don't weep. The man was dead on the floor with the crap and the cigarettes and the spit and his blood. Tardelli came down, he wept, he doesn't drink. He asked me—'
'Get some water down you, some aspirin, get to your bed.'
'He's isolated, he's got the stink of failure. He has nothing, nothing to hope for. He begged . . .'
The boys with the crash helmets had seen nothing on the list of sauces that they wanted. They pushed their way out of the door, into the street.
'What did he beg?'
'Offer him something to hold to. I said it was not my gift to give. His mind is blocked, too much work, too tired, he cannot see the obvious, not followed the line of the family, as we have. He wanted me to share with him the detail of your agent.'
'Bullshit.'
'Your agent of small importance. He wanted the crumbs off your table. "All I want is someone to hold my arm and walk with me." But that's the usual sort of shit talk in Palermo when a man is isolated, that's not the talk to impress an American hero.'
'I don't share.'
'With Italians? Of course not. I tell you, Axel, what I saw. I saw a body on the floor, I saw the
blood, I saw the fucking crowd of people. I saw her, I saw Codename Helen, I saw her body and her blood. I drink, I don't weep. Enjoy your meal.'
The fists released Axel's hand that held the fork. The table rocked as 'Vanni levered himself to his feet. Axel watched him go . . . He did not see her on the floor of the bar, but she was clear in his mind, and she was hanging from the nails on the back of the door of the hut at the estancia airstrip ... He pushed the plate away from him. He lit a cigarette and he dropped the match on the plate, into the pizza sauce.
The tail learned the name of the woman who owned the house, and late into the night the tail watched the light burn in the upper room.
'What are my options, Ray? What do I chew on?'
The voice boomed back, metallic, from the speaker. Dwight Smythe leaned over the Country Chief's desk and twisted the volume dial. The Country Chief was scribbling headlines.
'Could you wait out, Herb? Could you let me have a minute?'
'Have two - I fancy it's better we get this right, now.'
It had been a bad bloody Monday for Ray. He had been called, two hours' notice, to New Scotland Yard for late morning coffee with biscuits and a hard-going session. He had sat with Dwight, he had been faced by the commander (S06) and the assistant commissioner (SO) and the detective superintendent who was a cat with cream, and there'd been a young guy there who'd not spoken. He'd had a heavy time and they'd done their work on Mario Ruggerio (worse than the worst) and they'd a profile on Charlotte Parsons (Codename Helen). He'd broken, he'd said he needed to talk to Headquarters, and back at the embassy he'd sat on his hands waiting for Herb to show up in his office from the beltway drag into Washington. It had to be Herb he spoke to because it was Herb who had authorized the operation.
'Got it together ... I'm not happy, Herb. I feel I'm pushing in over Bill's space.'
'Forget Bill, he'll do as he's damn well told. I get the feeling this isn't a time for standing on ceremony. Hell, I've fourteen situations going in Colombia, I've eight in Peru. I've situations running in
Killing Ground Page 38
