On Axel's lap, shielded by his body from the fishermen who moved behind him on the pier from boat to boat, covered by his windcheater, was the equipment designated as CSS 900. The crystal-controlled two-channel receiver, the best and most sensitive that Headquarters could supply, had been stripped of its microphone capability and would receive only a tone pulse. In the canal of his right ear, buried from sight, was an induction earpiece, no cable necessary. The equipment, and the earpiece, were activated only when a tone pulse was transmitted. Protruding from under the windcheater, protected from view by his body, was the fully extended aerial of the receiver. He waited.
He thought that he saw her head drop and for a moment the whiteness of her face was gone, and he thought that she checked her watch and he wondered whether she had synchronized with the radio during the day, as he had done, as she should have. His eyes roved over the shoreline, sweeping inland from the tower that had been built by the Moors centuries before as a defensive position and across the piazza where the kids were gathered with their motorbikes and their Coke cans and up over the roofs towards the final line of villas set against the raw grey stone of the cliff. Later he would go, on another day, to see the villa. She was at an icecream counter, and he saw her hand a cone to the small boy and another to the little girl. She did not take an ice-cream for herself.
It was Axel Moen's life. His life was made of waiting for covert transmissions from Confidential Informants. There was, to him, sitting with his feet above the vivid colours of the water that was polluted by oil and above the floating plastic bags and fish carcases, nothing that was particular or special about the CI given the title of Codename Helen. His life and his work… Shit. He had no feelings for her that he could summon, was not concerned as to whether she was calm or whether she was stressed. Couldn't help himself, but his head jerked.
The pulse tone rang in his ear. So clear, three short blasts, so sharp. It cavorted through his head. There was little static, and the pulse tone was repeated. It beat within the confines of his skull bone. It came again, a final time, three short blasts.
The static was gone, the silence returned.
He thought she looked around her. He thought she looked for a sign. He saw her turning slowly and looking at the road and at the pavement and up into the town and out across the sea. It was good that she should be alone and good that she should know she was alone. He pushed down the aerial, lost it under the cover of his windcheater.
Axel stood. When he was standing he could see her better. She was going away, alone, with the children and with the pram. She stopped to cross the road, and when there was a gap in the traffic she hurried. He did not see her on the far side of the road because a lorry blocked his view of her.
He walked away.
'Vanni handed the second headset back to the technician. He leaned against the technician's chair as if a weakness sagged through his body. The grit and dust of the scree slope on Monte Cuccio was on his hands and on his face, and on the knees and seat of his jeans and on the chest and back of his shirt. He breathed deeply…
The signal had come so clearly, and he had said that it would be for her like a bell ringing from the darkness, like the light of a candle in the black of night. It might, just, offer success… He wondered where she was, their Codename Helen, whether she shivered in fear, whether she felt the chill of isolation… He wrote on a piece of paper the number of his mobile telephone and he told the technician, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand for emphasis, that he must be called every time that the frequency was used, night or day. The number was clipped to the banked equipment in front of the technician.
'You have that? Any hour – whether it is the triple pulse, short and repeated three times, whether it is the long pulse, repeated four times – at any hour, if that signal comes
…'
The technician, laconic, shrugged. 'Why not?'
His fists gripped the technician's shoulders, his fingers gouged at the technician's flesh. 'Don't piss on me. The early duty and the late duty and the night duty, whatever cornuto sits here, he calls me. If I am not obeyed, I will crack the bones in your spine.'
'You will be called.'
He loosed his hands. He shook. He had heard a bell ringing in the darkness. He felt the weakness because he believed, for the first time, that the plan might work. Not since they had turned
Baldassare di Maggio, not since di Maggio had told them where to look for Salvatore Riina, not for three years had a source been in place so close to the heart of the organization. They would kill her. If they found her, they would kill her.
One piece of paper… One telephone number scribbled on one piece of paper… The party spilled noisily through the offices. Of all the boxes taken out of the solicitor's premises, and all the plastic bags, one piece of paper had done the business, one telephone number on the back of a commercial property conveyancing draft had launched the party. The solicitor would have been checking a subordinate's work on the draft, and a telephone call would have come through, and he would have been given a number, and he would have jotted it on the back of the nearest sheet of paper. Trouble was, for the solicitor, the number was that of a small and discreet Zurich bank. Further trouble was, for the solicitor, that Swiss banks weren't what they had been. Cold feet in Cuckoo- clock-land, and the small and discreet Zurich bank had not been prepared to fight the recent Swiss legislation contained in Article 305 11 of the penal code which made its directors liable to prosecution if they shielded illegal funds. With the solicitor's name and account number on the top page of the evidence file, and the reckoning of what was stashed there of his clients' cash, the party had started.
Six packs of beer from the off-licence, and three bottles of wine, and a bottle of Scotch which was the detective superintendent's fast track to getting pissed up, and music from a transistor. They didn't come often, the good ones.
Harry was called.
Harry Compton was called out of the party area and into the administration office.
Miss Frobisher, and the place fell apart when she took her five weeks of leave, didn't drink and didn't approve, but she'd stayed put to answer the telephones. She would have read the secure transmission, and she scowled as she handed it to Harry.
TO: Det. Sgt. H. Compton, S06, London.
FROM: Alf Rogers, DLO, Rome.
Harry, Regards. Assuming they could find it, some nasty soul has been pulling your insignificant pecker. No trace in Milan on available records of BRUNO FIORI. The address provided in Via della Liberazione does not exist. That section of the street was pulled down six years ago for the construction of a municipal swimming pool. Details on hotel reg. were totally fictitious. Back to your gin/tonics. We, here, are involved in important work and don't need to be diverted from the necessary with duff info.
Luv, Alf.
Harry took the single sheet of paper to his desk, locked it away, went back to the party. The detective superintendent was into his joke repertoire and had an audience, and Harry didn't think he'd take it kindly if his punchline was interrupted. It would wait till the morning, till they crawled in with their headaches. He had a nose, that was his bloody trouble, and the nose was smelling something rotten, but it would be better talked about in the morning.