Killing Ground

… Through that cruel history, the Palermitans had learned when catastrophe would strike. Nothing tangible to place a hand on, nothing to see with their eyes, but a sense that was personal to the people of that city allowed them to know when catastrophe was close…

The men of Mario Ruggerio were in place. Tano watched the parked car and the mobile telephone was in his hand. Franco sat in the warmth of the sunshine on a bench and held an opened newspaper and observed the soldiers who protected the apartment and the two cars parked against the kerb. Carmine leaned against the door of the bar where he had clear sight of the entrance gates used by magistrates when they came to Ucciardione Prison.

… The men of the city hurried to their work, or they lounged on the street corners and they waited. The women of the city washed the nightclothes or went early to the market and were anxious to be home where they could wait. There was a quiet about the city as there always was when a man was isolated, had been through history when disaster edged near…

Using an old razor so that he would not risk cutting his jowled throat, Mario Ruggerio shaved carefully at the basin of the small room on the first floor in the Capo district and, as of habit, washed in cold water.

… The normality of the city was a superficial thing. Deep in their hearts, deep in their veins, deep in their minds, the people of the city knew that catastrophe was close, disaster was near, and they waited. It was a city of killing and violent death, as it had been since the time of the Romans and the Vandals, through the time of the Normans and Moors and the Spanish, over the time of the Fascists, now in the time of La Cosa Nostra. A shivering excitement that morning held the city in thrall…

The governor of Ucciardione Prison relayed the message of Salvatore Ruggerio that he requested a visit, that day, from the magistrate, Dottore Rocco Tardelli.

… The people of the city did not know the place or the time or the target, but the instinct of history was with them, and the inevitability. They understood when a servant of the state was ridiculed, isolated. They waited…

The boy, Pasquale, took the bus to work on the last day that he would act as bodyguard to the 'walking corpse'.

… The fascination with death, the majesty of murder, gripped the lifeblood of the city. A stranger would not have seen it. But the people of the city knew and watched, waited…

'So what do we have?'

'We have the same as last night,' Harry Compton said.

'Can we recapitulate? Can you fly it by me again?'

Harry Compton thought Dwight Smythe talked like a bureaucrat, like they were at a meeting high up in his embassy, or on the fifth floor of S06. All bureaucrats liked to

'recapitulate', gave them time to think. His feet were still sore because the shoes he'd brought were too lightweight for the pounding of pavements and cobbles he'd put in the evening before. He felt an irritation. He stood by the window, and Dwight Smythe was on the bed, and they hadn't yet taken their breakfast.

'He has a box tail on him. It's professional. If I hadn't done it myself, I wouldn't have seen it. The one place that a box tail can be seen is from far behind. You have to be behind the back marker, that's the only place you get a chance to see it. There were four men on the box and there was a control in charge. They're not using radios, which makes the professionalism more critical – it's hand signs. He acted like he wasn't certain of the tail, and he was governed by not showing out, which is right. He took them a hell of a dance, we walked half round the city and back again. He did running, he did stopping, he did sitting. He had the box on him for four hours, till he gave up, till he went to his car. They had their own wheels, I saw that. Your man, after four hours… who wouldn't? He looked broken up to me, but I told you that last night.'

'He's not taking his calls.' Dwight Smythe had a notebook open on the bed. 'I called three times last night.'

'You told me.'

'I called twice this morning. Our people in Rome, they talk about a guy called 'Vanni Crespo, can't reach him.'

'And you told me that last night.'

'I can't abide sneering, and I didn't sleep last night, so cut it out. She was with me all last night, that kid. Christ, there's nothing to her…'

Harry Compton said, sincere, 'What I thought, I'd never seen anyone look so vulnerable. You saw the body language, I saw it – she told him to go jump. In her position, God, that is big talk.'

'Went past us like we didn't exist. I don't know what to do.'

Harry Compton said, 'Nothing you can do – because it is a total and complete and comprehensive fuck-up.'

'You've a helpful way with words.'

'She's a bitch.'

'She's an obstinate goddam bitch.'

'She's gone out of control.'

'You lose control of an agent and you're walking in shit.'

'What are we supposed to do?'

'I am ordered out,' Axel Moen said.

'What am I supposed to do?'

'She's yours, you're welcome.'

'You taking it bad?'

'What the fuck do you think?'

'Vanni said, 'I think, Mr American, that you have broken a primary rule.'

'Don't patronize me.'

'There is a primary rule in the handling of undercover operatives.'

'You want your teeth down your throat?'

'The primary rule is that you do not have emotional involvement.'

'I don't tell you again.'

'You don't go soft on an agent, the primary rule – you pick them up and you drop them, it is a throw-away society. You don't get to be gentle with agents.'

Axel hit his friend. With a closed fist he hit 'Vanni Crespo. He hit him a little to the right of the mouth and he split 'Vanni Crespo's lip. He covered his face with his left, like he'd been taught as a kid in the gymnasium at Ephraim, and he hit his friend again, and 'Vanni Crespo tried to smother him. He kicked hard, like he'd learned as a kid in the school yard at Ephraim, and his friend went down. He fell on his friend, and he was raining the blows on 'Vanni Crespo's face. He was held, he sobbed, he was hugged. He lay on the rock-strewn ground under the orange trees and 'Vanni Crespo, his friend, held him. He shook, convulsed, in the arms of 'Vanni Crespo.

'Vanni Crespo said, 'It was deserved. I have the guilt, I began it. I had the letter, I opened the letter, I brought the letter to you. I first saw the chance. You hit me, you kick me, that is nothing, I should burn for what I did…'

Muffled words, words said against the cloth of 'Vanni Crespo's shirt. 'It's an act, so hard, so tough, playing at manipulating innocents – it's a fucking show.'

'I went last night with Tardelli. He is desperate, he is alone, he pleads for someone to take his arm. He has found Giuseppe Ruggerio. He saw her. He wanted the villa searched for anything that linked it with Mario Ruggerio. I rejected him, I said it would compromise an operation that I could not share with him. He saw her, your Charley, and he understood. I isolated him, and he did not complain – and for that, too, I should burn…'

'Do I have the right to ask you to forgive me?'

'Vanni held him. He thought his breath would still smell from the whisky he had put down the night before. He thought his body would still smell from the sweat he had made with the woman from Trapani in the back of her car the night before.

'It is what they do to us. It is what happens to us when we fight a war against filth. It is how we become when we go down into the gutter to hunt them. When you fight and you do not believe that you can win…'

'Are you going to walk away, 'Vanni, as I am?'

'If I could, but I cannot. She is as much mine as she is yours. Not while she is still in place.'

'Vanni stood. His friend reached down into the plastic bag and took out the sketch pad. For a moment 'Vanni saw the drawings of the cloister columns, and then Axel's hands were ripping the images into small shreds of paper. 'Vanni watched the destruction of Axel Moen's cover. His friend had climbed from the bathroom window of the little apartment, and over the slates, and had lost the tail, and had needed him through the night, and he had been with his woman. His friend had sat in the orange grove, in the valley below Monreale, through the whole of the night, his friend had needed him and not called him, and he had been making sweat with his woman… He thought of Axel Moen, alone in the orange grove through the night hours, and holding the pistol, and waiting for the dawn before calling him, he thought of the misery of his friend. He took the plastic bag from his friend. He pulled his friend to his feet. They walked between the orange trees. The fruit was ripening. They left the torn pages of the sketch pad behind them. It was a place of quiet and beauty, where Axel Moen had waited through the night. They went towards the cars. The men at the cars wore the deep-blue coats of the ROS team that bulged over their vests and the skin-tight balaclavas that were slashed at their mouths and their eyes.