I am blundering in darkness, 'Gianni, I look for any light, however faint. Please, where now is Giuseppe Ruggerio?'
Axel sat in his room.
He heard the widow, the Signora Nasello, moving on the floor below, and he heard her television. The smell of her cooking came into his room.
Axel sat on the bed in his room.
It was a long time since he had felt true fear, but the memory stayed clean. It was back to his fifteenth year, when he had been with his grandfather out on the water of Eagle Harbour, out from Ephraim and towards the distant shape of Chambers Island, and the storm had come fast out of the mist. Gone after the muskie with his grandfather, trolling big spoons from an open boat. The landmass of the Peninsula State Park, and the lighthouse on the Eagle Bluff, had disappeared, so quick. No sight of land, the white wave-caps above grey, cold water . . . The boat pitching, the bilges filled, the spray coming into the boat, the engine failing. He had felt, in his fifteenth year, a true fear then. His grandfather had spent thirty minutes, seemed an eternity, working at the outboard with the cowling off, and had regained the power. Cold, soaked, frightened, his grandfather had brought him back to the jetty at Ephraim, and not remarked on it...
He had not felt fear in La Paz, not when they had hit the firefight on the estancia airstrip. He had not felt fear when he had been called in by the big guys in Washington and told, serious and heavy, that a video of him arriving at the Grand Jury hearing to testify had been picked up in a house search down in Colombia's city of Cali . . .
Axel sat on the bed in his room and, with a handkerchief, he wiped each moving part of his dismantled pistol.
He felt the fear because he was alone. The guys in La Paz, the guys in New York, the guys at Headquarters and the guys on the Via Sardegna would have, he reckoned, bet money that Axel Moen didn't know true fear - they would have bet their shirts and their salaries. The bastards didn't know . . . Couldn't call 'Vanni, he had bad-mouthed 'Vanni.
Couldn't call 'Vanni to tell him that he understood the story of the general who wanted the comfort of having his arm held because he had pissed all over that story. Couldn't call 'Vanni to tell him that he might be under surveillance, and might not, couldn't tell him that he had shit fear because a middle-aged man on the far side of the street had changed caps and then stood in a window and eyed ladies' clothes. He was too goddam proud to be laughed at, as 'Vanni would have laughed at him. The fear held him . . .
When he had reassembled the pistol he cleared the magazines and let the bullet shells lie on the coverlet of the bed, and then he began carefully to reload the magazines.
She would have understood. If she had been beside him, sitting with him on the bed, he could have told her. He could have said, slow, to her, that he apologized for the bullshit he had given her about being strong. He could have said that it was the tactic to use smart talk to toughen her, and he could have held her hand and talked to her of his fear. He could have kissed her forehead and her eyes and talked about his fear and his loneliness. She'd know the agony of fear. She would be in the villa, and maybe sitting on her bed, and maybe her fingers ran on the face of the watch against the skin of her wrist. The world seemed to him, to Axel, to close around him, as the darkness had closed on him when he had come back from the terrace behind the duomo, when he had made all the clever moves that the instructors predicted would be used by a target under surveillance in a floating box, when he had failed to confirm the tail ... He saw her face.
She was in the garden behind the bungalow, and on the cliff near to her home. She was by the river in Rome. She was on the pavement in Palermo and bleeding. She was on the beach and dressing. He saw the frightened bravery on her face. He wanted to be sick. He felt, never before, that he despised himself. She should not have been asked . .
. She might be on the patio in the darkness or in her room, alone. She might be with the family, living the lie. She would have the fear, as he had the fear. He shivered.
He reloaded the pistol with the filled magazine, and he pocketed the other magazines. The guys would be at the airport. He could not be at the airport as he had been instructed, because, maybe, he had a tail on him. He thought he knew why they came.
'Is this the way you normally do business?'
'Don't bad-mouth me.'
'Your man said we'd be met.'
'I heard it, like you heard it.'
'Well, where's the welcoming delegation. Where is he?'
'I don't know.'
And Dwight Smythe, again, looked around him. It had been the last flight of the evening into Punta Raisi Airport from Rome. The passengers had gone, gone with their baggage. Policemen watched them, and check-in girls, and porters. They stood in the middle of the Arrivals hall. Harry Compton wouldn't have admitted it, not willingly, wild horses to drag it from him, but he was frightened. Because he was actually frightened, he sneered at the American.
Dwight Smythe, honest, said, 'It's kind of threatening, isn't it? It's just an airport, it's just like any other goddam airport, but you feel sort of sick in the gut. I mean, it's a place you've heard about, read about, seen on the TV, and you're here and your greeter doesn't show and you're kind of scared... When I was at Quantico, where we train, years back, there was a professor who talked to us, Public Affairs, he said, "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." I just push paper, don't aim to get onto the battleground, it's why I'm scared.'
'Thanks.'
'One more thing, but it's worth saying. You gave your evaluation of that kid -
"brilliant, stubborn, tough" - but that doesn't justify what was asked of her. This war's going nowhere, it can't be won. Sending her was a gesture, and that's not right, gestures are lousy. You scared?'
He hesitated. He nodded.
Harry Compton was frightened because he had spent six hours the previous evening, gone on until the street outside the S06 office was quiet, in their library. He had gutted what they had in their library, the files that were headlined 'Mafia/Sicily', and then he had driven over to New Scotland Yard and kicked the doziness out of the night duty man in Organized Crime (International) and read more. He had taken in the statistics of product, volume, profit of La Cosa Nostra - and the figures of homicide, bombings, extortion cases - and the photographs of the Most Wanted - and the assessments and intelligence digests.
The night duty man must have warmed to him, had seemed pleased to talk, to break the boredom of the empty hours. The night duty man had coughed through a life story.
Northern Ireland as liaison with the local force for Anti-Terrorist, a stress-created breakdown and shipped out to a desk job. Handling informers, the twilight people in the Provo ranks who were turned, had built the stress. Running 'players' with a future of torture, and then a bullet in the skull, had bred the breakdown. 'They get dependent on you, you're not supposed to, but you get involved with them, you put them in place and you use them and you manipulate them. They lead bloody boring lives and they're there for one moment in time that matters. You've put them there for that one moment; if they can't handle the one moment of something that's important then they're dead.'
He thought he was sharp, he hoped to make the grade through night study for the business management degree, and he had realized, when he had finished with the files, that he was going into water where he would be out of his depth .. . Christ, miserable Miss Mavis inquisitive Finch, counter clerk in the bank on the Fulham Road who had filed the disclosure report on the cash deposit of Giles bloody Blake, had pitched him in . . . He'd gone back home to Fliss, some God-awful hour, and she'd sulked and said it was her mother's anniversary he'd be missing . . .
Dwight Smythe grinned. 'Maybe we get to share a room tonight, maybe we leave the light on . . .'
The American tried again on the mobile telephone. It was the fourth time since they had landed that he had tapped the numbers for Axel Moen's telephone, the fourth time the cal
l had not been answered.
'So what's to do?'
Dwight Smythe flashed his teeth. 'Ride into town, get that big room with the bright light, and wait. You got anything else to suggest?'
They took a taxi into Palermo.
The journalist from Berlin waved his bank note for 20,000 lire at the steward. He thought the bar of La Stampa Estera to be the most dismal drinking hole that he knew, a heavy and darkened room and company to match. But they should know, the journalists who worked the Rome beat, the reality of the strength of La Cosa Nostra. He bought his second round of drinks, and none of those he entertained complained and demanded the right to buy. They drank what he bought, and he believed they mocked him. He was not proud of himself for coming to such a place and seeking the input of fellow trade hacks, but his story was littered, so far, with cavities and loose ends. He needed their assessments. Was the corruption in central government so widespread? Was there indeed a third tier of bankers and politicians, generals and secret servicemen, who protected the principals of the organization? Was a victory in Sicily possible? What was the lifestyle of the capo di tutti capi and how did he evade arrest? They mocked him, and they drank the Scotch he bought and the beers.
A magazine writer from Rotterdam said, 'Never go down there, a played-out story.
Go to Sicily, and all you end with is confusion. What my people are interested in is the Tower at Pisa, after the last earthquake, whether it's going to fall on a bus-load of our tourists.'
A freelance writer from Lisbon said, 'I can't get a word in the paper about Sicily.
Haven't been down there for nine months. It's expensive. Anyway, the food in Palermo is revolting. Nothing changes. It is the most tedious story in Europe. Now the Brazilian who is playing for Juventus, the striker, that is a page lead . . .'
An agency lady from Paris said, 'The mafia? The mafia make my people go to sleep.
If I want anything in the paper, and I have to want it because I am paid by the line, then I write about fashion and I write about the new gearbox in the Ferrari.'
A super-stringer on retainer to a London daily said, 'Nobody is interested, nobody cares, Sicily might be another planet. It is where they make an art form of deception, an industry of misinformation. Do you think they will use your story? I doubt it, I think you chase fool's gold.'
An Italian woman under contract to nine evening newspapers in Japan said, 'There is no interest because the mafia story is not about real people. The judges, the policemen, the criminals, they are the characters of a cartoon strip. People we can understand, people we can believe in, they do not exist in Sicily . . .'
The telephone rang. They listened. When the telephone was on secure, and the voice strength was diminished, then the magistrate always shouted. It was past midnight, it was quiet in the kitchen. In deference to the magistrate's request they did not play the radio in the kitchen late at night. If they played the radio late at night then the cow from the next apartment, with the common wall, would come in the morning and rail against the magistrate that she could not sleep. It was as if the ragazzi believed their man had sufficient problems without adding the cow's complaints. They listened.
'. . . I do not believe it, 'Gianni . . . How is that possible? Why was I not told? . . . We all have a work load, 'Gianni, we are all buried under a work load . . . Yes, I have it, I have written it. Of course, I am grateful ... I told you, I look for any light, I do not know where I will find the light . . .'
There was a time of silence and then they heard the shuffle of his feet.
He came to the kitchen door. He wore his slippers and a robe over his pyjamas. There was a grey tiredness in his face, and his hair hung clumsily on his forehead. The maresciallo snapped his fingers at Pasquale.
Pasquale asked, 'Dottore, would you like juice, or coffee, or tea?'
The shaken head. Pasquale wondered if the magistrate had taken a pill. He had gone to his bedroom a good hour before. He could have taken a pill, he could have been deep in sleep. There were four of them round the table with their newspapers and their cards and the filled ashtray.
'Nothing, thank you. Maresciallo, please, I ask a favour of you. It is only a request because what I ask is outside the remit of your duties. What I ask is forbidden, you would be within your rights to tell me that what I ask is not possible.'
Pasquale watched the face of the maresciallo, and the face was impassive and gave no answer. They were not permitted to shop for the magistrate, and they did. They were not permitted to cook for him, or to clean the apartment.
'It is always the family, correct? I follow the family of Ruggerio and always it leads me into darkness. There has been a member of his family that I have missed - my own fault, I cannot justify my error: his youngest brother. The error is with me because, four years ago, I interviewed this brother in Rome. The youngest brother is Giuseppe Ruggerio, a businessman, he attacked me with what I believed to be justification. Was it his fault that his eldest brother was a mafioso? What more could he do than leave Sicily, make his own life away from the island? Was I not guilty of persecution? I believed him, erased him from my memory. I can make excuses. I can justify why I let the trail slip from me. But, the reality, I am humiliated. Now, I am told - I grovel because it was my error - the youngest brother is in Palermo. I have his address. I want confirmation that he is here. I ask you, maresciallo, to go and confirm for me that Giuseppe Ruggerio now lives in Palermo. It is always the family. Please . . .'
It was forbidden that the ragazzi should shop, cook, clean for the man they protected.
A more serious offence, to take active part in an investigation. Grim-faced, the maresciallo reached out and took a scrap of paper from the magistrate. Pasquale saw an address written in pencil on the scrap of paper. They faced the same danger as the man.
Because they rode with him and walked with him they were as exposed to risk as he was. Pasquale understood why the maresciallo took the scrap of paper and lifted his coat from the draining board, and checked his pistol and went out of the kitchen. They walked with death, together.
Chapter Sixteen
The great wooden horse figure was being towed by men in modern dress into a farmyard, and the men carried firearms and were swarthy-faced, hard-weathered-faced, and from the pockets of their trousers and their jackets and their anoraks spilled American dollar bills, and there were dollar bills in the mud and ignored, and they started to search the interior of the wooden horse figure, clambered into the hatch door in the horse figure's belly, and she was far to the back of the interior, and the torches of the men found her, and she screamed, and he heard the sirens . . .
The first sirens of the day had woken Harry Compton.
He'd slept rotten. Not the fault of the bed in the hotel room that he'd tossed half the night. He'd tossed, he'd put the light back on in the small hours and he'd tried to win some sleep by reading the file he had accumulated on Charlotte Parsons, Codename Helen, and he'd dreamed.
He thought he might have slept a little over three hours. He had thrust himself out of the bed and walked over the scattered bedclothes, and gone to the window and pushed back the shutters. He had seen the two cars powering along the street with the lights on the roofs and the sirens blasting. He'd seen the guns, he'd seen the guards, he had seen the slumped figure in the back of the lead car.
They'd met for breakfast.
At home, Fliss left him alone for breakfast. If she sat with him they argued. He took his breakfast alone in the kitchen at home, a snatched apple and a piece of toasted bread smeared with honey, and coffee. The American didn't seem to want to talk, which suited Harry Compton. The American had eggs and sausage and bacon cooked to extinction. They'd talk after breakfast, that seemed to be the deal. It was the American's problem that they hadn't been met, for the American to sort out, and for the American to argue that the mission of Codename Helen was dead in the water, aborted . . . There were mostly tourists in the breakfast room. There were couples from Britain
and Germany and they wore bright clothes that were ridiculous for their age and their eyes were on their food and their guidebooks. Breakfast would be inclusive, so they were eating big, like the American, and they were gutting the guidebooks so that they would seem intelligent each time they were dumped off the bus and marched to the next antiquity. He was contemptuous of tourists because his mortgage was £67,000, monthly repayments hovering at £350 a month, and if the baby came then they would need a bigger place, bigger mortgage, bigger monthly drain. Most summers he went with Fliss for two weeks to her aunt's cottage in the Lakes, and most summers after a week there he was yearning to get back to S06 work. Harry Compton had told his wife that he'd be gone forty-eight hours, that he wouldn't be getting to see anything ... He chewed on the bread roll, not fresh that morning, and the coffee was cold . . .
The man came from behind him.
The hand of the man brushed across the table and bounced the small basket that contained the bread rolls.
He had his back to the entrance of the breakfast room, hadn't seen the man come.
The hand was tanned and it had fair hairs growing on it. The hand scooped up Dwight Smythe's room key from beside the basket of bread rolls.
He was half out of his chair, the protest was in his throat, and he saw the American's face, impassive except that the big lips moved nervously.
'Leave it, Harry,' the American growled, water on shingle. Dwight Smythe, no fuss, laid down his fork and rested his hand loose on Harry Compton's arm.
He subsided back onto his chair. The man walked on, slipped the key to Dwight Smythe's room into his trouser pocket. The man was dressed casually, a check shirt and jeans, and he carried a plastic bag that was weighted, and the top of a sketch pad protruded from the top of the bag. The man wore a long pony-tail of fair hair, held close to his neck by a red plastic band. He was, to Harry Compton, like a drop-out, like a druggie. The man went to the end of the breakfast room and he was looking around him as if for a friend, as if to find someone he was due to meet. The man turned, the man had failed to find his friend, and he came back past them. Harry Compton saw the man's face. He saw drawn lines, as if the man were scarred with anxiety. He saw the man's waist and the bulge below where the shirt was tucked into the trouser belt. The man was gone past him.
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