Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  He saw it for himself, and was satisfied. Tano told him, with detail, that most times when the magistrate came away from Ucciardione he was driven up the Via delle Croci.

  He passed no comment. Standing at the back of the van he could look down the street to the walls of the prison . . . His opinion, there would be a week of ferocious denunciation, a week of demonstrations in the streets, a week of politicians queuing to enter television studios, and then the silence would fall. For a week, he could live with the clamour . . . His opinion, a signal would be sent through Sicily and Italy, and the signal would be read by his people in Germany and France, the signal would reach New York and London, and the signal would travel to Cali and Medellfn and to Tokyo and to Hong Kong, to Moscow and Grozny. It was necessary that it was understood, by means of the signal, that a new power ruled in Palermo.

  He asked Franco where should be the celebration for his family - in Palermo, in the country, in a hotel or a restaurant or a villa . . . ?

  The telephone bleeped in the inside pocket of Carmine's jacket.

  He said, dry, 'It'll be the death of you, that thing, as it has been the death of many.'

  Carmine listened. The call was a few seconds in length and coded. The city was divided into numbered squares for the code, and principal buildings or landmarks inside the squares had been allocated separate numbers, and the name of the American in the code was a single letter of the alphabet.

  'Or the life of me, or the life of you,' Carmine said.

  Now Mario Ruggerio checked again with Tano as to the hour in the night when the delivery van would be driven away and replaced among the parked vehicles by the car in the garage that had been taken from Sciacca.

  Carmine hurried, in the few seconds' length of the coded call he had heard the urgency of the tail. He waddled, his short and thick legs striding quickly, towards where his car was parked.

  In the garden outside the sweat had run on him. Inside the cathedral it seemed to freeze on his back. Dwight had followed the Englishman through the low arched door, and maybe six times in the last five minutes he had glanced down at his watch. They stood at the back and the Englishman leafed through the pages of a guidebook he'd bought, as if to hold the cover it was necessary to do the tourist thing.

  He could see Axel Moen. He had been there before them. Dwight Smythe could see the back of Axel Moen and there was light on his hair that fell below his shoulder line.

  There was a tremor in the Englishman's voice, like he was frightened, like they both were . . .

  'Do you know, this pile was started by an Englishman. He was archbishop here. He was Gualtiero Offamiglio, which is Walter of the Mill. Do you know, he started putting this lot together exactly 810 years ago? Think on it. I mean, what sort of journey was it from England to here, 810 years ago? Forget the building, just getting here was incredible—'

  'Can you leave it?'

  'I was only saying that it was—'

  'I was saying, cut the shit.'

  He was supposed to push paper and balance a budget and keep the leave charts tidy.

  He wasn't supposed to stand with the sweat freezing on his back and on his gut to watch an agent meet with an informer. Dwight Smythe liked church, but he liked church that was simple. He went with his wife each Sunday to a Baptist place up in London's Highgate, where the middle classes of the Anglo- African community came, where they sang loud to lift a low roof. The cathedral wasn't his place. The Baptist church that he knew was a place of safety and light - and, hell, here it was danger, it was grey darkness. He watched Axel Moen's back. Up ahead of Axel Moen, where the light pierced from high windows and made a many-coloured tapestry of cones, was a group of tourists. Further ahead of Axel Moen, young unseen voices, was a choir practising.

  The Englishman whispered, 'I think that's her.' He made a small gesture. Dwight Smythe followed the line of the pointed finger. There was a young woman walking slowly down the central aisle. At times the light shafted down on her and lit the fairness of her hair in green and blue and red and white, but mostly her hair was in grey gloom.

  She went down the aisle slowly and looked around her. He thought she played a part, did it well, a foreigner in the aisle of the cathedral and looking around her with awe, like there wasn't danger in the place. She wore a white blouse that was cut away on her shoulders. Her shoulders were red from the sun, as if they had already been burned and not yet been tanned. She wore old faded jeans. She was going down the aisle towards where Axel Moen sat. He would not have seen her yet.

  'You know that's her?'

  'There was a picture in her home. I saw the picture.' There was a hoarseness in the Englishman's voice. 'How's she going to be when she gets told?'

  'Get her out tonight?'

  'Too right, straight on the freedom bird.'

  'Is she stupid?'

  'Not what I hear.'

  'If she's not stupid, she might just kiss you when she hears it's finished.'

  They watched. She went down the aisle. She went past the line of wooden seats on which Axel Moen sat. She was good. She did not give a sign of recognizing him, but she would have seen the pony-tail of hair on his shoulders. She faced the altar and genuflected and crossed herself, and then she slipped into the row of chairs in front of Axel Moen. Maybe he said something to her, but she gave no sign of it. She sat for a full minute on her chair, as if in contemplation. He wondered what was the future of Axel Moen. Could be the slot they'd made in Lagos, and it could be there was no future -

  could be that he was headed for that place in Wisconsin and hooking trebles into small fish . . . She stood. She went forward and she tagged with the tourist group. She was goddam good.

  The maresciallo was bent over the street map, the map was spread over the table. Under the map were the used plates from their lunch, and their cups and their guns. The chase-car driver lay on the floor beside the cooker and slept, and the passenger of the chase car sat on a hard chair and his head was on his chest and his eyes were closed.

  Pasquale studied the manual of the Beretta, tried to learn each working part, and the words and the diagrams seemed to bounce back from the tiredness of his mind.

  His eyes never left the map. There was a cruel coldness in the abrupt voice of the maresciallo. 'I regret, Pasquale, as a result of your assessment, you are not considered suitable for this work.'

  The boy was staring at him, gaping mouth, in shock. 'Why? . . . Why?'

  'For the most obvious of reasons, inefficiency.'

  The boy was peering at him, blinking his eyes fast. 'When? When do I leave?'

  'There is a replacement tomorrow. You go when the replacement is available.'

  The boy was trying to hold back tears. 'Did Dr Tardelli not speak for me?'

  'It was Dr Tardelli who said you were not fitted for the work.'

  He might have punched the boy Pasquale, might have kicked the boy. The maresciallo wrote from the map the name of each street they would use on the journey to Mondello.

  Carmine was in the traffic on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, jammed. The city was closing down for the siesta. The tail called him again on his mobile and gave him the code digits and the code letter. Carmine was in the traffic, locked.

  Axel went forward. A full five minutes he had left her with the group around the guide.

  He had waited until the guide was criticizing a woman for wanting to take flash photographs. In the moment of distraction he went forward and he took her arm, where it was narrow at the elbow below the sleeve of her blouse and he squeezed her arm, and she didn't turn. He stood behind Charley.

  The tourists were German. The guide spoke in German.

  'There is still, as you see, enough of the original Norman carving to impress - it is the shame of the building that too much of the craftsmen's work of the twelfth century was destroyed by the barbarians of the Gothic period . . .'

  Axel murmured into her hair. 'We speak Italian, these people won't understand Italian.' 'OK.'

&nb
sp; They moved with the group. '. . . Both the portals that you see and the doors are from the fifteenth century. In the desecration of the interior it is remarkable they survived.

  The building is a hybrid, each generation and each imperial conqueror came with his own desire for immortality, and achieved only historic vandalism.' The tourists tittered.

  'I don't mess with you, kid. I don't play with you. I always gave it you straight.'

  'What do you need to say?'

  'It's not easy, what I've to say ... I respect you . . .'

  'Say it, what you want to say.'

  There was an advance-course instructor at Quantico. He didn't get the rookies, he worked with the guys who operated in danger. The instructor was said to be, on the use of agents, super-Grade A, shit-hot. Axel Moen had done the week's course before he'd shipped down to La Paz. The instructor said that when you handled agents, then you lost your moral virginity. The instructor said that an agent was an item without human value, the agent was just a means to an end, the agent was a coded cipher, the agent was never a person . . . An agent had died, crucified on the back of a door . .. An agent stood in the dark shadow of the cathedral of Palermo . . . Christ, the goddam instructor at Quantico would never have run an agent himself, never felt the dependency and the trust, and never known the dirtiness.

  Axel said it quick. 'It's over, finished, it's killed. The big cats say it's wound up. It's the time, their order, to abort.'

  No expression in her voice, a calmness. 'It's in place, it's happening, just have to be patient.'

  'Not me, not at my level. You've been brilliant. The fat cats want you gone. They want you on the flight out.'

  'Why?'

  'It should never have happened. You were pressured. Shouldn't have been asked, shouldn't have travelled.'

  'Not an answer.'

  'Put straight, the risk to your safety is too great, the danger to your person.'

  'And I've been through three levels of hell for nothing?'

  'It's not your fault, there's no blame attached to you. The opposite . . . It is finished because the fat cats made an order, but anyway it is not sustainable. I have watched you each day, I follow you, I'm a shadow to you. Not any more, I am under surveillance,

  'I think I have a tail. As much as them, I am the danger to you.'

  'Then fuck off away.'

  She'd turned. She looked into his face. He saw a blazed anger.

  Axel said, soft, 'At the main door there's an Afro-American, and there's an English guy. You go to them, they'll take you home.'

  As if she despised him, 'And you?'

  'I'm shipping out. I don't make the rules. I'm just a servant of government.' She hurt him. He could not think when he had been worse hurt. Like she stripped him, like she laughed at him. She seemed to him, as if in contempt of him, to be listening to the guide

  . . . The guide was talking about the tomb of Roger II, crowned in AD 1130, buried at Cefalu, followed by William the Bad, who was succeeded by William the Good, who funded Walter of the Mill to build the heap, who brought back the remains of Roger II .

  . . She listened, she ignored him. She left him dead.

  'The guys at the door, get on over to them.'

  She had the sweet smile. It was the mischief smile in the photograph at her home, and what he had seen on the cliff where she had taken him, it was the smile that the instructor on the agent course at Quantico would have warned against. It was the smile that he loved.

  'Listen for when I call. If you've quit, give the gear to someone else who'll listen.

  Make sure that somebody listens, if you've quit.'

  She was away from him. She intruded into the heart of the group, she was beside the guide.

  The helicopter arced over the city. Salvatore had woken. The new blocks of Palermo were laid out in a geometric shape below him, and the old districts made puzzle patterns. He did not believe it was within the power of his brother that he would ever again walk on the new streets and in the old districts. The old days, the days before Riina, the days when Luciano Liggio controlled the Court of Appeal and could achieve the quashing of sentences, were finished. Escape was against the ethic of La Cosa Nostra, to attempt to escape was to betray a man's dignity. The helicopter banked. He wondered where in the new streets and the old districts was his brother. It was said in the gaol at Asinara that his brother was now capo di tutti capi, and he had noted the new deference that was shown him by men who had previously grovelled to his fellow prisoners, Riina and Bagarella and Santapaola. He did not love his brother, but if his brother held the supreme power, then life in Asinara would be more easy. He saw the old ochre walls of Ucciardione Prison climb to meet him.

  Carmine came into the cathedral. He had left the car double-parked. He had run, hard as he could, the last two hundred metres. The tail was by the wall, in shadow. He squinted the length of the aisle. He saw the tourist group, he saw a girl who was younger than the other women of the group, he saw the guide, he saw the group moving further away from him, he saw the long fair hair of the American. The girl left the group, and he saw the radiance in her face, and he thought it was like so many of the bitches who had found their God . . . The American with the long hair was talking urgently to a tourist.

  The tourist had a camera and binoculars. He saw the American stand beside the tourist and talk with him.

  'Is that the contact?'

  And the tail admitted, stammered, that perhaps it was the contact, but he had had to come out to call, he could not call from inside the cathedral building. They watched the American.

  The last thing she heard, when she split from the group of tourists, was Axel's voice.

  Axel was speaking harsh conversational German. She thought that he talked in German, had chosen one of the group to speak with, in case he was followed, in case he had been watched, as if to draw a tail from her. She learned. She walked up the aisle towards the low-set door through which the sunshine pierced the gloom. They were at the door - God, they were so bloody obvious - the black American and the Englishman.

  The black American took half a stride towards her but the Englishman caught his arm.

  She looked through them, she went past them.

  What she had wanted, more than anything she had ever wanted, was to be held and loved by Axel Moen . .. and the bastard walked out on her. She was alone. It would be a fantasy for her to be held and loved by the bastard, have the buttons undone and the zip pulled down by the bastard, only a dream. The bastard . . .

  The sun hit Charley's face. Just a little bit of a girl, was she? Could be given the big talk, could she? Could be pitched in, could she? Change of plan. Could be aborted, could she? The brightness of the sun burst on her eyes. Charley walked. The anger consumed her. The target of the anger was Axel Moen who quit on her, and the Afro-American, and the Englishman who looked scared fit to piss . . .

  Charley walked fast down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.

  They were pathetic.

  She strode down the Via Marqueda and over the Piazza Verdi and onto the Via Ruggero Settima. She was going to the room of Benny Rizzo. She would use him because he was available. Going to his room to unbutton and unzip, use him as a substitute because he was available. She went into the street behind the Piazza Castelnuovo, and past the closed gates of the school where he taught. She pushed her way into the building and she scrambled fast up the stairs. At the landing, outside his door, were two black plastic rubbish bags, filled. She pressed the bell. She heard no sound from inside. She kept her finger on the bell. She needed him. He did not have a death threat because he was ineffective. He was not killed as his father had been because he was not noticed. The bell shrilled behind the door.

  'He is not here.'

  An old woman came up the stairs. It was the woman she had seen going to church.

  'Not back from school?'

  'Not coming back, gone.' The woman put down her shopping bags and was searching her handbag for the key to her door.r />
  'What do you mean?'

  'Did he not tell you?' The slyness was on her face. 'Not tell you that he was taking the ferry for Naples? You do not believe me?'

  The old woman bent and her claw nails tore at the tops of the black plastic bags. The rubbish was revealed, the pamphlets and the sheets from the photocopier, and the books. Charley saw the poster, crumpled, a pool of blood on the street and the slogan caption 'Basta!'. She was alone . . . She heard the laughter of the old woman ... It would be her story, hers alone, that would be told . . . She ran back down the stairs.

  They drove into the yard at the back of the police station. The magistrate looked around the cars parked in the yard. The boy, Pasquale, had driven badly, and the maresciallo had cursed him. He looked for the familiar face. The boy had been told, and the boy would believe he was betrayed, the boy would not understand that he was saved. For one more day only the boy would have to travel past the endless ranks of parked cars and parked vans and parked motorcycles. He did not expect to be thanked by the boy because the boy would never be told that he was saved. At the far end of the yard was a butcher's delivery vehicle. He saw 'Vanni. 'Vanni jumped out of the vehicle and came quickly across the yard. He was dressed as a butcher. He stank as a butcher. 'Vanni slipped down into the car, beside the magistrate.

  'Thank you for coming, 'Vanni. I talk while we go.'

  'Whatever, please . . .'

  Out on the street, and the chase car had dropped back, and the light was off the roof, they went slowly. Perhaps the boy had forgotten how to drive as a normal motorist, but they burst a junction when they should have given way, and twice the boy missed his gears, and the curse of the maresciallo was in the boy's ear. Maybe, one day, the kind and good boy, Pasquale, would understand what had been done for him . . . They travelled on the road round the crescent of the beach.

  'One may be intelligent, and at the same time display stupidity. One can see everything, and at the same time be blind. One can be supreme in complicated analysis, and at the same time lose the obvious. I hunt Mario Ruggerio, and I have been stupid, blind, I have missed the obvious. The family will be the core of his life.'