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.
'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.