'When he comes, if he comes, to meet with his family, Mario Ruggerio, you activate the tone. The only other time that you use it is if you believe that your physical safety is endangered. Do you understand?'
'Where will you be?'
'Close enough to respond.' She saw the strength in his face, the bold build of his chin, the assurance of his mouth. She reflected that she was placing her life in that strength.
'You promise?'
'I promise. You have a good journey.'
She flared, enough of playing the small and pathetic girl. 'Wait a minute, Mr Axel bloody Moen, how often do we meet?'
Casual. 'Every so often.'
'That's not good enough. Where do we meet?'
'I'll find you.'
He walked away. She watched him go over the bridge, towards the fortress of Sant'Angelo. She felt the tight cold metal of the strap on her wrist.
Chapter Five
He had said, back in Devon, that she should travel from Rome to Palermo by train. He had explained, chill and staccato, that the most vulnerable time for an agent was in the sea-change hours of going from overt to covert. If she boarded a plane, he had said, a journey like Rome to Palermo, she would step over the gulf in an hour. Better, he'd said, to spread the transition time. Better to use a dozen hours and have the chance to reflect on the sea change and the gulf that was to be crossed.
Charley had taken the train from the terminii in the early evening, pushed her way with a rare aggression through the crowds on the concourse. She had booked the sleeper, a single berth, and not cared what it cost because the Ruggerios would pay for it. She had heaved her bag along the corridor and dumped it inside the little compartment of the snake-length train that was alongside those that would leave later for Vienna and Paris. She had chewed on a ham-and-tomato roll, revolting, and sipped from a bottle of mineral water, warm, and watched from the train as the dusk gathered on isolated farmhouses and avenues of high pines and a long, ruined viaduct from the dawn of history.
She had reflected, as Axel Moen had said she should.
She had considered the distance at which he kept himself. She knew nothing of what lay beneath the exterior of his face, beneath his clothes, nothing of his mind. She had not met before, ever, a person of such sealed privacy. She thought, and it perked her up, that he kept a distance as if he were a little afraid of her. So she wanted to believe that she was important to him, that she was the final piece that made the puzzle complete. It was good to feel that. And, alone in the train, the rumble of the wheels below her, rushing south, the darkness of the night beyond the window, she felt a sense of pride.
She had been chosen, she had been challenged, she was wanted. She had lain on the made bed and the glow of excitement had coursed in her. She was needed. She was important… She had slept, as if an arrogance and an ignorance had caught her.
She had slept through the shunting of the train onto the ferry at Villa S. Giovanni on the Calabrian coast and the docking of the ferry at Messina, slept a dead and dreamless sleep.
The knocking on the door woke Charley. She had slept in her T-shirt and her knickers. She was decent, but she wrapped the blanket around her as she unlocked the door and took the tray of coffee from the attendant. She closed the door and locked it again. She set the tray down and went to the window and released the blind. Charley saw Sicily.
The journalist from Berlin was awake early. He boasted a tidy mind. He believed it important, at the first sober oppportunity, to transfer the essentials of the interview from notebook to laptop memory. He had ordered an early call, before the pace of the city moved, because he had first to dissect the notes he had taken over dinner and two bottles of Marsala wine, and the notes would be a mess and scrawled in confusion. He had dined with the mayor of a small town on the west coast down from Palermo. He had anticipated a ringing cry for action against La Cosa Nostra from a man whose father had been killed because he had denounced an evil. Sitting on his bed in his pyjamas, the ache in his head, he had read back his notes.
'Quote Pirandello (paraphrase) – draw the distinction between the seeing and the being, the fiction and the reality – the fiction is police activity, ministers and policemen and magistrates on TV, prisoners paraded in front of cameras, the cry that the mafia is crumbling, FICTION. The mafia is not weakened, stronger than ever, REALITY. No serious commitment by the state against the mafia – think what it is like to be Sicilian, abandoned by central government, not supported, to be alone. No big victory is possible – white sheets on balconies after the killing of Falcone as an expression of public disgust, but the disgust is slipping, collective anger is gone. The thread of the mafia is woven through every institution, every part of life – always the stranger must realize that he does not know who he talks to – being a mafioso can mean a man belongs to the upper strata of society, does not mean that he is a crude killer. Nobody, NOBODY, knows the depth of mafia infiltration into public life. For the stranger, NEVER BE UNGUARDED…'
The Country Chief drove Axel Moen to Fiumicino for the first flight of the day going south to Palermo, and parked, and went with his man to check-in.
They walked together towards the centre of the concourse; there were a few minutes before the flight would be called. Should have talked in the car, but they hadn't, and it had been time lost, but the traffic had been heavy and the Country Chief had reckoned he needed all of his start-of-the-day concentration to keep himself from shunting with the bastards around him who were weaving and overtaking and braking. The Country Chief shouldn't have left the loose ends to the concourse.
'You OK?'
'I feel fine.'
'The archaeology…?'
'It'll do and it'll get better.'
'You get a shooter from 'Vanni?'
'Yes, 'Vanni says he'll fix me a shooter.'
Too old and too tired, and the Country Chief thought he played the part of the fussing mother well. 'It's shared with 'Vanni, only him.'
'Maybe it has to be shared with a magistrate. That guy, Rocco Tardelli, maybe we share with him. He's a good man.'
'He's a friend, useful, but don't… You know it hurts me, but you put ten Italian law-enforcement people in a room, and you share. If you share, you should trust. Do you know everything about them? Do you know which of them's wife's uncle's cousin is going after a construction contract to build a school and needs a favour from the local boss? So you trust none of them. That bugs me, the lack of trust, it makes for corrosive suspicion, but you cannot take the chance.'
'I know that, Bill.'
'Because it's her life.'
In front of him was the face of Axel Moen, a wall of granite, shielding whatever feelings the damned man had.
'I figured that.'
'You know what I want?'
'Keep it quick, Bill.'
'I want that bastard, I want Mario Ruggerio nailed, and I want it to be by our efforts.
Not a big co-operative, but by our efforts. If it's us that nails him, then I believe, what Headquarters says, we can swing the extradition business. I want him shipped Stateside, I want him put into Supermax. I want him to breathe the sweet air of Colorado. I want him in one of those concrete tombs. I want him to know that for sending over all that filth into our country there's a downside. I want…'
'I'll stay close, Bill.'
'Look after that kid, damn you, with your life.'
Axel shrugged and walked towards Departure.