Cry Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  When one of the pigs let out a squeal, Cangio’s heart stopped dead for an instant.

  ‘You’ll breathe until the general arrives,’ the man said slowly. ‘If I see more than one car coming up the valley, you’re dead and I take to the woods. Here, catch!’

  He threw the phone to Cangio. ‘Call him,’ he said. ‘One wrong word and it’ll be your last.’

  FORTY-SIX

  19 September – 13.29

  The general’s phone trilled a military march.

  President Pignatti moved away, leaving him alone to answer it.

  Cangio sounded frightened. He didn’t say much more than he’d said the first time. He was up at Corrado Formisano’s farm. There was something Cangio wanted him to see. It was the bit at the end of the conversation that was puzzling. Cangio had reminded him of their meeting in Rome the week before, and then he had said something very odd.

  Come the way you always do.

  That day in Rome they had spoken of many things. The fact that he had many men under his command, men who would follow him blindly into any situation, risking their lives to obey his orders. Was that what Cangio meant?

  Bring your men?

  Had he found some evidence linking Corrado Formisano to the ’Ndrangheta? Something he wanted General Corsini to see before he made it public?

  That conversation told him something else, too.

  Cangio was all alone up there.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  19 September – 13.31

  Raniero was seething.

  The ranger hadn’t been lying. He had spoken with General Corsini. Raniero was caught in a trap, and he knew it. The corpse of Zì Luigi wouldn’t go away. If he killed the ranger, too, and the carabinieri arrested him, he’d be going down for life. But he couldn’t let the ranger live.

  Beads of sweat erupted on his forehead, a river of the stuff flowing down his side beneath his armpits making a wet rag of his best linen shirt.

  Why the fuck had it happened? You chose the time, you chose the place, then you discovered that both the time and the place were wrong. He’d sewn himself up by killing Zì Luigi at the farm. Could he ever have imagined that some idiot of a park ranger would choose that day to feed the pigs?

  Even worse was the thought of Don Michele. What would the don say when he heard that Raniero had fucked up the operation, just like Zì Luigi and Corrado? He corrected himself. He’d fucked it up worse than the two of them put together! What had Don Michele said? We need to get this ship on course, Raniero. You answer to me, and no one else. If he went to prison, he’d end up eating fish bones, just like Corrado. Or worse.

  There was only one thing that was to his advantage: the farm was on top of the mountain. You could see the road right down into the valley. If a posse came charging up the road, he could take to the woods. By the time the cops reached the farmhouse he’d be long gone. And what would they find when they got there? Two dead bodies. One with a gun in his hand, the other holding a knife. It would take two minutes to rig the scene. Where was the proof that he had ever been up there? The cops wouldn’t think of looking for a third man. Why should they? It would look like an open-and-shut case. A park ranger had tried it on with the ’Ndrangheta and lost. General Corsini would make sense of it. He’d write Cangio off as a silly fucker who had tried to grab the glory before the sheriff arrived.

  A silly fucker who’d got what was coming to him!

  But if the general came on his own, it would be a different story.

  He could rub the bastard out, and Don Michè would see things in a different light. A dangerous enemy taken out of play. OK, there’d be a heavy military presence in the area for a while, more cops and carabinieri, but the dust would soon clear. How long would the coppers be able to occupy the territory? If the clan laid low, took care of business with the bankers and politicians, they’d be ready to move into top gear once the pressure eased off. And what use would an army be without the Legend to guide it?

  Cangio groaned and pulled him back to reality.

  The kid was more useful alive than dead. Raniero grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up. The ranger’s eyes snapped open with fright. He didn’t say a word, but Raniero knew what he was thinking.

  What happens now?

  ‘I’m gonna be generous,’ Raniero said. ‘Give you a choice. Left or right – which is it to be?’

  Cangio looked puzzled.

  Raniero kicked him in the ribs. ‘Left or right?’ he said again with a burst of impatience. ‘I haven’t got all fucking day!’

  Sebastiano Cangio opened his mouth to speak, closed it quickly as blood ran out of his nose, coughed, spat, then stared up at him.

  ‘What choice?’ he managed to say.

  ‘We need to be ready to greet the general. Left or right?’

  ‘Left or right … what?’

  Raniero sniffed. ‘Tomorrow’s coming. You just missed the ferry.’

  He pushed his pistol into Cangio’s right thigh and fired.

  The ranger went out like a lightbulb popping.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  19 September – 14.19

  General Corsini drove carefully up the single-track road. He couldn’t risk running into the drainage ditch that ran beside it; he had no way of explaining what he was doing up there on his own.

  The road seemed to go on forever, twisting and turning, hardly seeming to gain in altitude, until he suddenly found himself on the ridge and an open gate in a dry-stone wall appeared ahead of him.

  He braked hard, managed not to stall the engine.

  There was a rundown farmhouse, a barn, a flagged courtyard between them. Sitting in the middle of the courtyard, on a white plastic chair, was Sebastiano Cangio. His face was barely recognizable. Blood was streaming from a wound in his thigh. The ranger moved his head – maybe he had heard the car – and General Corsini knew that he was still alive.

  He froze behind the steering wheel.

  Somebody had got to Cangio first.

  His eyes darted from the house to the barn, then back again.

  A man stepped out from behind a tree, a gun in his hand, and the windscreen exploded, covering him with shards of glass.

  Corsini threw himself flat across the passenger seat.

  There was another sharp crack and a bullet whistled above his head.

  ‘Get out of the car!’ a voice shouted. ‘Show me your hands.’

  Corsini opened the glovebox. His copy of Sun Tzu was there, together with the unmarked pistol he had ‘requisitioned’ from a seized arms haul. He unclipped the safety catch with his thumb and slipped the gun into the back of his Sam Browne belt.

  ‘I’m coming,’ he called. Then, head down, he edged out of the car, using the door as a shield.

  ‘Stand up,’ the man shouted, ‘or I’ll pepper the door.’

  Corsini peeped over the windowsill.

  A tall, slim figure in a stylish suit was standing in front of Cangio now, a black pistol held in both hands, his feet apart, sighting along the barrel.

  ‘Show me your gun and raise your hands.’

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ Corsini said, unclasping the holster flap, his fingers closing around the butt of his service pistol, holding it up in the air.

  ‘Throw it here. Nice and slow.’

  As the pistol slid across the yard and came to a halt, the man looked down for an instant. In the same instant, Cangio’s heavy work boot came up sharply between the man’s legs.

  A shot exploded from the killer’s gun, throwing up dirt ten feet to the general’s left. He grabbed the pistol from behind his back and took aim. The killer’s gun was pointing at the sky, his left hand holding the crotch of his trousers, his face contorted with pain. Corsini fired before the man had a chance to recover. Blood exploded from the target’s head in a bright red mist, then he rolled forward and fell on his face. Cangio didn’t see it happen. His eyes were closed, head lolling on his chest as he lost consciousness after the effort required to kick the man. />
  ‘Thank you, Cangio,’ Corsini murmured.

  He walked towards the man who was lying face down on the ground, fired another shot into the back of his head, gave the body a kick, retrieved his service pistol, and put it back in its holster.

  Then he turned to Sebastiano Cangio.

  FORTY-NINE

  19 September – 14.40

  The world seemed to shift in slow jerks.

  It was like a rolling back-cloth in a run-down theatre with ancient stage machinery being turned by hand. The general’s car was moving slowly out of sight, the corner of the farmhouse, too, while the woods and the mountaintop slowly began to appear.

  It took an eternity before Cangio realized what was happening.

  He was being shifted.

  Someone had tilted the chair on to its back legs, dragging it and him across the farmyard. His saw a blue sky spotted with clusters of cotton-wool cloud, then his eyes jammed shut with pain. His heels were dragging on the ground. At every bump on the worn flagstones, a shock went through his right leg. It was like being shot all over again, not just once but dozens of times.

  When he opened his eyes again there was no sky and he could smell the pigs, the sharp smell of acid. The cropped head and blue-tinted glasses of General Corsini bobbed in and out of sight. The general was taking him into the barn, out of the sun. General Corsini would lay him down to rest on the hay. Then he would call for help.

  The mafioso hadn’t managed to kill either of them.

  He remembered kicking the bastard in the balls. It had been a miracle. Corsini must have seized the opportunity to shoot him.

  ‘General, call your men,’ he murmured. ‘I’m losing blood.’

  General Corsini spoke behind his shoulder, his voice soft and gentle, reassuring. Just like the voice of the maths teacher at school – the one they called Mister Nobody.

  ‘Leave everything to me,’ General Corsini murmured.

  Cangio heard the grunting pigs, the bleating sheep. Then the chair stopped moving, dropping forward on to four legs again. His hands were untied, then two hands slid beneath his armpits and he felt himself being lifted, then dragged again. He cried out in pain, but Corsini didn’t stop. Suddenly, the general let him go and he hit the ground. Pain swelled up again in a red wave.

  ‘General …’

  He might have been talking a language that Corsini didn’t understand.

  ‘Please … I’m …’

  ‘Yes, I can see. You’re dying, Cangio,’ General Corsini said, his breath coming in gasps from the effort of shifting him. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, clapping the palms of his black leather gloves together, ‘but what can I do about it? It will all be over in a matter of minutes. An ’Ndrangheta safe house, bodies all over the place – goodness knows what the local police will make of it. Well, there is one thing they’ll soon find out. All three of you are … no, were, I should say, from Calabria. That fact alone explains a lot.’

  General Corsini turned away and strode out of the barn.

  FIFTY

  19 September – 14.41

  Alfredo Dandini pulled off the headset and grabbed the telephone.

  A voice answered at the second ring and gave a name and rank.

  ‘Awaiting orders, sir.’

  ‘Call out the fifth company. An emergency. How many men can you give me?’

  ‘Thirty-eight on duty, Supervisor. We could probably—’

  ‘Send a helicopter assault team … No, make that two aircraft, to this location. And a medical team. There’s a person bleeding to death.’ He read out the OS map coordinates of the farmhouse. ‘Call out the local carabinieri, tell them to close all roads leading up to the top of the mountain.’

  ‘I’ll need authorization …’

  ‘Cable the order to me. I’ll sign it.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Dandini’s temper snapped. ‘Are you deaf, Lieutenant? I want two helicopters on site inside ten minutes!’

  ‘The Legend … General Corsini, sir. He’s in Perugia, following the arrest of the terrorists in Spoleto. Shouldn’t he be told that a major operation is about to begin?’

  Dandini shook his head and blew out air.

  Another fan of the Legend, as he had been himself until the day they had summoned him to the Ministry of Justice and given him a job to do.

  ‘We are confident that you’ll lay out the lines of battle carefully, Dandini, certain that the general will respond as he has always done.’

  He had been charting General Corsini’s movements for months. Electronic bugs in his office, home and cars, a live tap on his telephones, listening in on his listeners, recording everything he said. He had set Corsini up that night in St Peter’s Square, warning him that an investigation was starting, inviting him to step into a trap, knowing how he would react. Arturo Corsini wasn’t interested in money or power. He wasn’t greedy or corrupt. The only thing that drove him was ambition, the desire to perpetuate the Legend that he had created of himself.

  ‘General Corsini will know soon enough,’ Dandini said. ‘If you find him up there, arrest him. If he’s left already, put out an all points alert.’

  Dandini heard the sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line.

  ‘The Legend, sir?’

  ‘The Legend, Lieutenant. General Corsini. I have a warrant for his arrest.’

  Two minutes later, the lieutenant called back. His voice was cold, professional now, the voice of a man who knew that the pecking order was changing.

  ‘They’re on their way, sir. Do you have any other orders?’

  Dandini hesitated, but only for an instant. ‘Prepare a press release giving details of the operation that’s under way – the time and place, the number of men, the number of vehicles and helicopters taking part. Objective? Let’s keep it vague for now. Search and recover, a large-scale operation of primary importance. Oh, yes …’ He paused briefly. ‘You can name me as commander and coordinator of the forces involved.’

  ‘And if they ask for the codename, sir?’

  Dandini thought for a moment. ‘Call it Operation Sun Tzu,’ he said.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Everyone has wondered what it must be like to die.

  Cangio found the reality strange, perplexing. There was no sudden drop into a deep, dark void. No upward surge towards a light that was welcoming and bright. He seemed to be slowly suffocating in a calm grey sea, where things lost shape and colours ceased to exist.

  The pain was gone. His arms and legs were somewhere else, his broken nose an irrelevance. If he had a body, he felt the pull of it no longer.

  The only sensations he would carry away with him was the stench of the pigsty and the sound of the pigs.

  Far away, a faint noise began to pulse and throb.

  Was it the beating of his heart, an engine running on one cylinder now, struggling to compensate for the lack of blood that was left in his veins?

  Yet the noise didn’t fade. It seemed to swell and grow. A regular, rhythmic beating coming closer and closer. Like the wings of some dark angel closing in on him, a word written on the flank of the creature in big white letters.

  Carabinieri …

  FIFTY-TWO

  Three weeks later

  Loredana had bought him a get-well present on eBay.

  She was living in the house with him now, playing the nurse. She had settled him in his chair beneath the beach umbrella in the garden before going off to work.

  ‘Got everything you need?’ she asked.

  He had his pills, his crutches, a phone, cigarettes and lighter, a book to read, a bottle of water, his Zeiss binoculars.

  ‘If there’s anything else, I’ll …’

  ‘Make a list,’ she said, and laughed.

  The list of names had appeared in all the newspapers. The list of names that Mayor Truini’s wife had left behind the day that Loredana caught her shoplifting. Loredana had pulled the list from her bag one day while Cangio was in the hospital, told him the s
tory of how she came to have it, and Cangio had passed it on to newly promoted Colonel Dandini when the officer came to visit him that afternoon. The carabinieri were amazed at how rich a lot of orphans, nuns and bedridden pensioners in town appeared to be. The bank manager, Ruggiero Franzetti, had been arrested …

  A light flashed on the other side of the valley.

  Cangio reached for Loredana’s get-well present, the powerful Zeiss binoculars, and a sharp pain ripped through his right thigh. He would walk again, the doctors said, but not for a month or two.

  He focused the glasses and caught another flash of light. Two of them, like the eyes of a wolf in the darkness of the woods that cloaked the mountainside.

  Somebody was spying on him.

  It was the third time in three days, and always in the same spot.

  It might be a warning. They could be showing themselves on purpose, sending him a message: We know where you are, cumparu. Why stay here? Why look for trouble?

  They had driven him out of Calabria; they weren’t going to drive him out of Umbria.

  He stared at the trees on the far side of the valley, close to where the wolves were living, daring whoever it was to come across and get him.

  The service pistol was tucked inside his shirt, the hammer cocked.

  He was ready for them …