‘It was always on the cards it would be a blow-out,’ said the world-weary Barclay Smith. ‘How many of these things ever come up with a result? One in ten? One in twenty? Like Caesar said, we came, we tried, we fucked up, so let’s call it a day.’
Cowley refused to, immediately. Danilov argued against it as well, both accepting they were clutching at straws because there was nothing else to clutch at, anywhere. Danilov finally got his hair cut and bought three new shirts. He considered another jacket but decided to save the money: he’d already converted his lire advance into $200, and thought he could accumulate the complete bribe for the Tatarovo apartment from incidental expenses. He saw a watch he would have liked to buy to replace the one which rarely worked, but ignored that purchase for the same reason.
It was the next Wednesday that an excited Colonel Melega announced rumours from two independent sources in Palermo – like the Moscow tape, insufficient when separate but intriguing when put together – of a forthcoming meeting of Mafia leaders. A third source, from Catania, confusingly suggested it would be between Sicilian and American dons, with no mention of Russians. Two of the informants put the timing within the next seven days.
On the Thursday, the priority cable to the Rome embassy from the Paris DEA office reported a Maksim Zimin and an Ivan Zavorin transferring from an incoming Moscow flight to an Alitalia service. The alert was so prompt there was still an hour before the Alitalia plane landed at Fiumicino. By the time it did, Colonel Melega had established the Russians were booked for their second transfer connection, still confidently under their own names and with only a ninety-minute stopover, on the local flight from Rome to Palermo. When it took off, six of the new passengers were members of Melega’s anti-Mafia squad, the two Russians already secretly photographed and identified from the immigration documents they had surrendered in Rome and upon which both were described as company directors.
Melega, Cowley and Danilov and the other two Americans were already in Palermo airport even before the Rome departure, flown in by one of the helicopters. Thirty additional Carabinieri had also been airlifted in: the rest of the hurriedly mobilised squad were crossing to the island by naval patrol boats, bringing a variety of unmarked cars all fitted with Sicilian, not Roman, registrations.
‘Here we go!’ sighed Cowley, watching the passengers file off the internal flight. In a brief moment of professional satisfaction he forgot his personal destruction was moving inexorably closer. He soon remembered.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
It was not until the two Russians eventually collected their much transferred luggage that the watching policemen realised there was a third, clearly an underling from the way the cases were casually handed to him to carry. In the delay of disembarkation Melega had already collected the passenger list: the obvious third name was Boris Amasov. The Italian was embarrassed the identification had not been made earlier, from the Alitalia arrival in Rome: everyone else in the group felt it should have already been realised, too, but there was no spoken comment.
It was difficult for Danilov to defer to the authority of Colonel Melega, although he knew the Italian had to command an Italian operation, with the rest of them allowed as little more than observers: he suspected the Americans were nervous, too, of their complete dependency. Melega flurried about in constant movement and conversation, juggling – sometimes literally – between landlines and mobile telephones and various subordinate commanders ensuring the surveillance remained absolute, but the rest of the group fell virtually silent, speaking only to make necessary contributions: neither Smith nor Patton attempted the wise-cracking cynicism Danilov had come to regard as endemic among American law enforcement officers.
They didn’t form part of the motorised observation: Melega maintained contact from their radio car. When the Italian announced the Russians had booked into the President Hotel, on the via Francesco Crispi, Cowley snorted a laugh and said: ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘What?’ demanded Danilov.
‘The American capo di tutti capi, Lucky Luciano, always stayed at that hotel when he came to Sicily, after being deported to Italy from America after the war. He re-formed from there the Mafia that Mussolini had crushed!’
‘They’re treating it like a pilgrimage!’ declared Danilov, more interested in practicality than history.
‘And re-forming the Mafia into something even bigger,’ said Cowley.
‘Much bigger,’ announced Melega, two hours later. By then they had booked into the Politeama Palace on the Piazza Ruggero Settimo, further back from the seafront than the Mafia hotel, in which Melega had installed four officers purporting to be tourists. Melega made the declaration the moment he returned from a contact meeting with them.
‘What?’ demanded Patton.
Melega, enjoying centre stage, read unnecessarily from a slip of paper. ‘John Vincent Palma. Born April, 1943. Given address Waterbury, Connecticut.’
‘Go on,’ encouraged Cowley.
‘He booked into the President Hotel three days ago,’ said Melega. ‘Reservation is for four more nights. Tonight he had dinner with Maksim Zimin, Ivan Zavorin and Boris Amasov: pasta, with veal to follow. With four flasks of Chianti. At this moment they’re toasting each other in grappa.’
His voice distant, Patton mused: ‘The rumour from Catania was that it was to be an American-Sicilian meeting.’
‘Now Russia completes the chain…’ said Danilov.
‘… to create the world-spanning connection we all hoped and pretended wasn’t going to happen,’ concluded Cowley. To Barclay Smith he said: ‘I don’t want any leaks now, with open-line telephone calls between here and Rome. Take one of the helicopters back to Rome. Now. I want the name of John Vincent Palma run through every record ever kept in America since the Puritans waded ashore and got met by the Indians. Photographs wired, if they’re available. Let’s cross-check the name against the Russian ones we have, as well. By tomorrow morning I want to know more about John Vincent Palma than he knows about himself.’
Which was virtually what they got, and at breakfast time, from the unshaven, red-eyed but uncomplaining FBI agent. John Vincent Palma was listed in the FBI criminal computer as a known capo in the New York Genovese Family. There was a failure to convict on a manslaughter charge in 1972; in 1975 an extortion conviction drew a three-year penitentiary sentence. There was another unproven charge of transporting a girl across a State line for the purposes of prostitution. He was married, with two children, lived in Waterbury, as listed on the hotel registration form, and was a respected benefactor of the local Catholic church. None of the Russian names had ever been linked with him. The three wired photographs showed a heavy – although not plump – smooth-faced man, jaw tight in two of them to support the cigar jutting from the corner of his mouth.
‘We’ve got a time frame in which to work,’ reminded Cowley. Talma’s booked for a further three nights, from now. Makes him due out Saturday. Sure, he can extend, but they must be working to some sort of schedule.’