He slammed his door shut, and he came towards her, and he held an envelope in his hand.
'Miss Parsons? I'm Dwight Smythe, from the embassy.'
She said that she knew who he was.
'This is kind of embarrassing. You know, when you mislay something, it's sort of upsetting. You've a lot on your mind. It went into a drawer, meant to deal with it, didn't.
I go back to Washington tomorrow and I was turning out my desk, and I found it. Well
. . .'
What had he found?
He bit at his lip. He handed her the envelope. Her name was written on it. She tore it open and the watch fell from it. She had wondered where the watch was, why it had not been returned, and she had told her father when she came home that she had lost the gold watch. He shifted, one foot to the other. The watch had stopped, but it was more than six months since he had taken it from her wrist. She put it on. She had to stretch the strap of it so that it would fit high on her wrist, above the big watch.
'He gave it me. I was to pass it to you. I feel pretty inadequate . . .'
She took the letter from the envelope. The gulls were screaming down on the stone beach. She read.
Dear Miss Parsons,
I take the chance, late, to express my feelings on what you have given us.
I don't have much time and in a few minutes I am being taken to the airport to quit on you, and I am afraid that even in better times I am a poor correspondent. I have never had the chance to tell you how very sincerely I admired your response to my request for help. I don't apologize for that request.
'It's unfortunate that you weren't told. I guess the idea was that you should be left alone. It was for your own safety. The decision was made up high that we shouldn't talk with you, bad enough for you having police here. I hear they've been called off. I can't justify it, you not being told, but the decision was to let you get back to your life.'
What was unfortunate?
He seemed to her to squirm. He wore a good coat, a city man's coat, and it would not be the cold that made him shiver. She had never asked questions, she had come home, she had argued for her job and won the argument. She had never talked, not even to her mother, of the Palermo spring. She had never spoken, not a single word, to the detectives who had come each night to her father's garage.
'We were at the airport when your first call came through. We left him there. I mean, it wasn't our problem. You were the problem. He was the second priority, after you.'
Where was he now? What was his posting?
She read on.
That I was brutish and rude to you, that I was a bully to you, is not anything that I am sorry for. In my judgement it was necessary to give you strength for the ordeal of living a lie with that family. That the strength you showed, the courage, went to waste is a matter of deep personal disappointment to me, you deserved better of us.
'He never made the flight. What we found out afterwards, a guy spoke to him at the airport. He was through in Departures. There was another passenger, heard something about a telephone call for him. He followed this guy out of Departures, going to take his call. He's not been seen again. I wouldn't want you to think that we haven't tried. We have moved mountains to get a lead on what happened to him. He went off the face of the earth. We all feel bad about it. In the Administration we take pride that we look after our people. It's the way, down in Sicily, people disappear like they never existed, and you run into silence like it's a wall.'
Evidence - hadn't there been evidence to show the fate of Axel Moen?
You should know, because in a short time you will be safe and at home, the reality of what was asked of you. The Drug
Enforcement Administration competes for federal funding. It was considered necessary to register a high-profile success, in Washington that way the funding goes up. The budget rules. Out of success comes further funding. In that respect, you were used, but that is the way of the world. If it had been possible to capture Mario Ruggerio, fly him to the States, indict him, convict him, lock him away, then the DEA's budget would have benefited. I don't apologize.
'What we know, there was a hell of a fight in a closed corridor at the airport. Two jerks were picked up in a routine road block late that night, they'd hired a taxi from the airport to a hospital when they were lifted. One had pretty severe testicular damage and the other was haemorrhaging bad in the stomach. Then there was the affiliate of Ruggerio who came late to the meal, had the closed eye and the face scratches. They were all focused on. They look at the floor or the ceiling, they don't talk. We think he fought to survive, and he lost. There was a carabiniere officer, the one who reached you, the one who worked with him, who took it hard and personal. He bounced them round the cells a bit, more than he should have, but the silence held. About a month ago they transferred the officer out, went up north, and the thing sort of lost steam. We just don't know.'
What had happened to Mario Ruggerio?
Nor do I apologize for using you, someone who has no professional training. I don't want to preach, and most certainly I do not wish to sound like a crusader. This is not work that can be sustained by salaries. The matter of organized crime is too important to the survival of our societies.
The prosecution of organized crime cannot be left only to paid agencies.
The people have to stand their corner. Simple people, people off the street, people who live next door, they have to stand and they have to be counted.
People like you, Miss Parsons.
'It didn't work out as we'd hoped. You should have been told, of course you should. I don't suppose it made the papers here, but then it's kind of routine, isn't it? It was because a magistrate had been killed, the Italians wanted to hang on to him. We pushed for the extradition but our charges weren't in the same league as the murder of a magistrate. We let it drop. It was a good result for us, we were only short of the cream .
. . The one downside, the Italians couldn't indict the brother, the banker. He had to walk free. You win some and you lose some. Actually the Brits lost as well, I heard afterwards - the brother had a money-washing scam at this end, but they couldn't produce evidence that would have satisfied a court. Because Ruggerio's brother walked free the decision was taken to cut off contact with you. We did something quite clever.
My suggestion, actually. We had a word slipped into their net that one of the affiliates was the leakage point, just dropped the word, and that jerk had an accident in gaol, fell down some steps, fell a long way. It seems there are ways down there that messages can be sent. When a guy of the status of Ruggerio is lifted there there's going to be a hell of a serious inquest in the organization, and when the answer to the inquest shows up then the organization goes looking for blood. We had the word sent that the affiliate, and we named him, had given the carabineri the location where Ruggerio would be. It wasn't playing clean, but we don't lose sleep over that, it had a purpose. It was making a shield for you because we felt responsible.'
Would he go on searching for Axel Moen?
I have to tell you, and it is the one area that hurts me, in itself the capture of Mario Ruggerio would make only a small difference in this war. If we had taken him, then he would have been replaced, if we had locked him up, then another would have filled his shoes. But it is necessary to fight them.
If the simple people don't fight them, then they have won. If they win, we have betrayed a generation not yet born.
'Not me - I'm not in that sort of scene. I'm going back to Washington for budget analysis. We have a powerful amount of computer software going in and my new job is to oversee the costings. No disrespect, but that's the way forward. What you were asked to do was just Stone Age. It's computers that are going to bury these people. Sorry, Moen isn't forgotten, it's that fewer work hours are devoted to it. He treated you badly.
You should put him out of your mind. We ran a study on the operation, of course. He may be in concrete, he may have gone into acid and been flushed down a se
wer, he may have been weighted down and gone into the bay, but he knew what he had gotten himself into. He knew the dangers. But he had no call to involve you, that was wrong.
There's a tighter rein on Rome now. You know how it all started? Of course, you don't.
You should know. Last December, the week before Christmas, there was a traffic accident in Palermo, a minor shunt. A uniformed, low-grade cop took the details. Held up in the queue behind the shunt was a carabiniere officer, an undercover man. The shunt involved a Seven series BMW - it's always amusing when a big BMW gets a shunt. The officer listened, and he heard the name of Giuseppe Ruggerio, and he knew that name. It was that much of a chance. He dug, he made the link with the name. Hear me, there's a bagful of agencies that would have been interested to know that Giuseppe Ruggerio was living in Palermo, but he didn't share. He went his own way, he came to us, to Axel Moen. The carabiniere officer should have shared you, and did not. We should have shared you, and did not. You were just part of a selfish little game, you were a figure that was moved across a board. It shouldn't have been asked of you.
Maybe you don't want to hear that, it's not your problem. What you should think, it was a good result.'
Would he leave her? Would he, please, get the fuck out?
That's heavy sort of writing, Miss Parsons, but it is what I believe. I thank you for your courage. I value what you gave me, more than you can understand. I wish you well in your future.
May your God watch over you.
Faithfully,
Axel Moen
'I appreciate you feel sore, us losing your letter. That's a very pretty watch. You should trash the other one, put it all behind you. You got the cheque?'
The cheque had reached her, had been cleared, was in her account.
'You shouldn't take offence at the time it took. You were very patient. The problem with any sort of money order that comes out of federal funds - well, you know how things are. Has to go through a jungle of committees, and there's a joker on each of them who wants to have his say. If it's not impertinent, what are you going to do with the money?'
She was starting next week at Edinburgh University. She was joining the law school.
The teaching was just to fill in the time, relief work. She had chosen Edinburgh because it was about as far from the south Devon coast as she could get. The course was for four years, commercial law. It was not impertinent of him to ask - she thought that a course in commercial law would open doors for her, provide good opportunities. Would he, please, pass her thanks to the committees who had authorized the payment to her?
'That's, if you don't mind my saying so, a very positive step. I don't think there's anything more. Good evening, miss.'
She watched him drive into the distance and the lights of the Jeep speared up the hill of the lane.
She left her schoolbooks on the front doorstep, under the porch.
She rode her scooter away from the bungalow. She took the coast route. The night was close around her.
She went to the place above the cliffs. She could not see in the darkness if the peregrine perched on its rock. She heard the crash of the waves below her . . . He had come back to her. The children made a circle and held hands and they danced around an old man with clear blue eyes. He was with her. The children danced faster and the old man spun with them until he fell. She had no more need for the power he had given her, nor for the story he had made for her, nor for the lie he had fashioned for her. He watched her and he willed her to do it. Charley took the watch from her wrist, felt the cold weight of it . . .
He was there, he listened, he waited.
She threw the watch, with her love, into the night, into the emptiness beyond the cliff, into the void above the sea.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Killing Ground Page 51
