Killing Ground (31 page)

Snails, crawling in their slime, on the move . . . The leader of the surveillance team of the squadra mobile had read the reports of each of the teams working the Capo district, pitifully brief reports. He took those reports to the apartment of the magistrate. Three days gone, seven days remaining, nothing seen that related to Mario Ruggerio. The magistrate smiled his thanks, seemed to expect nothing else, as if he realized that only ten days of surveillance with only three teams of men, only three men to a team, made the task impossible. What surprised the leader of the surveillance team, there was a brightness in the gloom of the room that the magistrate had made his workplace. The brightness was from flowers. He knew, everyone knew, that the magistrate's wife had gone north with the children, but the flowers were a woman's choice. The flowers were on the magistrate's desk, right beside the computer. He told the magistrate that his men were the best, that they were all committed, but that the time and resources given them were inadequate. When he left the magistrate, he went through to the kitchen where the bodyguards smoked and played cards and endlessly read the newspapers' sports pages and drank coffee, he asked after his friend, the maresciallo. But his friend was away on a course. There was nothing more to keep him in the apartment. He left the guards and the lonely and isolated man. He hurried through the splattering rain to the Capo district and his own shift. It would be a bastard, wandering through the labyrinth of alleys in the rain.

It was three years since Peppino Ruggerio had needed to drive to Castellammare del Golfo. Then to eat a meal with his brother and to meet with a foreigner, today to take lunch with his brother and to meet with a foreigner. It was the Spanish language that Mario had needed three years before, and again today . . . There was a direct route from Palermo to Castellammare del Golfo, on the autostrada to Trapani, and there was the country way. His choice, today, was to use the remote road, narrow and winding, that went south of Monte Cuccio and north of Monte Saraceno.

The clouds had gathered from early morning, darkening and spreading from the west. The rain had hit the car as he approached Montelepre. Not until he had driven his big car out through the villa's high gates had he made the snap decision to go to Montelepre on his way to Castellammare del Golfo. He came as a pilgrim to Montelepre, the town hanging, as if on crampons, from the rock face. He came today to Montelepre to see the birth place and the living place of Salvatore Giuliano. It was right that he should come to Montelepre as a pilgrim and consider and learn the lessons of the life of the bandit, and of the death. Nothing changed in Sicily. The lessons remained, as apposite now to Peppino and his brother as they had been nearly half a century before to Salvatore Giuliano. He came in humility, as a pilgrim, that he might better learn the lessons.

Peppino parked his car outside the Pizzeria Giuliano at the top of the town, where the roofs were merged with the cold rain cloud. He looked around him. He was huddled under the drop of his raincoat, which he had draped over his head and his shoulders.

The rain bounced from the cobbles and spattered his shoes and the legs of his suit trousers.

There was no money in the town, no opportunity, no work. The rainwater gushed down the steep alleys around the Chiesa Madre, and the terraced homes faced with cracked ochre plaster seemed to crumble before his eyes. A lesson: there had been money in the town when Salvatore Giuliano, the bandit, had lived here, but with his death it was gone. A lesson: Salvatore Giuliano had been hunted by many thousands of carabineri and troops from the regular army, and it was said he was responsible for the killing of more than four hundred men, and he had been destroyed when his usefulness had expired. He did not know where in the town Giuliano had lived, did not know in which piazza Giuliano had organized the firing squads that executed men for

'disrespect of the poor'. A lesson: Giuliano had been the master tactician, the expert in the art of guerrilla warfare, and he had been an angel to the poor of the town, and he had been the handsome idol of the young women, and nothing could have saved him. A lesson: far from home, abandoned by those who claimed to be his friends, in Castelvetrano to the south, the cheek of Giuliano had been kissed by the Judas-man Gaspare Pisciotta. A lesson: a man who had been a king was shot to death as a dog in a gutter. Peppino stood in the high streets of Montelepre and the rain ran in his shoes and wet his socks and soaked the trouser legs at his ankles. It was important to him to learn the lessons. Power ended when usefulness expired. A man climbed fast, reached beyond himself, and fell fast. Trust was a kiss, and a kiss was followed by a bullet. He felt the better for it, felt as though the lessons learned by a pilgrim made him wise and more cautious.

Old men hurried past him, sheltering under black umbrellas, and they would have clapped when Salvatore Giuliano had stood in the piazza, and they would have spat when the news had come of his death like a dog in a gutter. A girl watched him. She had a young, plain face, she was fat at the ankles, she wore a cotton dress and had no coat against the rain. She stood outside an alimentari and held a plastic shopping bag. Her father would have told her, and her grandfather, of the fate of the man who climbed too fast, ended his usefulness, and was betrayed. Her mother would have told her, and her grandmother, of the beauty of the face of Salvatore Giuliano. He wondered if the girl dreamed of the bandit. When the rains were finished, when the evenings were hot, did she go to the cool grass under the olive trees, did she look for him? For her, did Salvatore Giuliano live, a fantasy between her thighs? Did she worship him, conjure him to her, an imagination in the hair of her belly, when she was alone in the darkness?

He laughed, in grimness, in privacy, as he looked at the young woman's face.

Ridiculous. OK for the Americans, OK for the Presley freaks ... Another lesson: after the Judas kiss and the death like a dog in the gutter, perhaps there was no memory other than the fantasy and imagination of a girl with fat ankles. He walked back to his car.

There was a last lesson to be found by the pilgrim in Montelepre: Gaspare Pisciotta, the trusted deputy of Giuliano, had betrayed him, had died in the medical room of the Ucciardione Prison in shrieking agony, poisoned by strychnine. It was important to learn the lessons of what had gone before.

He drove down the switchback road out of Montelepre, away from the rain-drenched homes and the legend of Salvatore Giuliano.

He went through Partinico, and on through Alcamo, where there had been the first refinery for Turkish poppy paste, and his brother's share of the wealth from the refinery in Alcamo had been the beginning of the cash cascade that had paid for an education at the university in Rome and the school of business management in Switzerland. Alcamo stank of sulphur fumes, said to have been released by the fractures caused by a minor earthquake. Money held in the cash-deposit markets in New York and London, good and long-term and steady-earning money, had come from the refinery in Alcamo.

He drove down towards the sea.

He would not have dared to ask his brother whether he ever hesitated to consider the lessons to be learned from the life and death of Salvatore Giuliano. Would not have asked Mario whether he had climbed too fast, whether his usefulness could expire, whether he feared the Judas kiss, whether he believed that death would come in the way that a dog was shot in the gutter. He had the same fear of his brother that infected all men who met Mario Ruggerio.

He took the road that bypassed the old town and the harbour.

Each time he was in his brother's company, Peppino guarded himself. He was held at the same distance as Carmine and Franco and Tano, and the other heads of families, and the affiliates. When his brother smiled or praised, then Peppino was the same as every other man and felt the warm flow of relief. When his brother glanced at him in savagery, then Peppino felt the same terror as every other man. He could not quantify the personality of his brother, could not determine the chemistry that made him, and every other man, flush with relief at a smile and cringe in fear at a criticism. His brother had control over him, over every other man. Peppino knew that he could never walk away from his brother.

He parked in a lay-by above the town. Below the crash barrier and the wilderness of wild yellow flowers was the sharp crescent of the harbour from which once, in the good times, the fishing fleet had sailed for the tuna grounds, but the tuna had been fished to near-extinction. In better times, the same boats had left the same quayside and gone to sea at night without lights and collected the floating bundles of Turkish opium paste dropped by merchant ships, but there were no longer refineries on the island. The small town, shrouded in rain mist from Peppino's vantage point, with its good times and better times, was solid in the heritage of the organization his brother would control. It was said that in a single decade, from 1900 to 1910, one hundred thousand immigrants had sailed from that small harbour to the promised land of America and made the bedrock of the associations that Mario now collaborated with. It was said of Castellammare del Golfo in the 1940s that four out of every five adult males had been in gaol. It was said in the 1950s, in the first great war between the families, that one of every three male adults had committed murder. Nothing was said of Castellammare del Golfo today, it was a town from which history had passed on. Peppino waited . . . Often he looked in the mirror in front of him, and he checked the side mirrors, and he saw no indication of surveillance.

Franco drove the car that came alongside.

In the back seat and sitting low down, uncertain and insecure, was the Colombian who had made the long journey.

Tano was in a second car, with more men.

Franco made the gesture for Peppino to follow. He eased his car forward, nudged down the steep road after their brake lights. Franco and Tano would know the same thrill when praised by his brother, and the same hopeless fear when caught in the savage glance of his brother.

Close to the Norman castle, at the heart of the harbour's crescent, facing onto the small blue-painted boats that no longer fished for tuna, was a ristorante. On the door of the ristorante was the sign CHIUSO.

They went quickly from the cars, the rain beating on them, into the ristorante, and Peppino saw the way that the Colombian's eyes flickered around him in nervousness.

Carmine met them, and they walked straight through the empty interior, past the empty tables, to a back room. Peppino saw, dumped on the floor, the open box that housed the counter-measures receiver. The back room would have been swept the night before, and again that morning. Everywhere that Mario Ruggerio did business was cleaned first to his satisfaction.

His brother rose from the laid table. His brother smiled with kindness and friendship and held out his hand to the Colombian, and he gestured for the Colombian to sit and, himself, eased the chair back.

Peppino sat opposite Mario and the Colombian, from where he could lean forward and translate the Sicilian dialect into Spanish and the Spanish into the language Mario understood.

Because the Colombian, Vasquez, merely toyed with his food, Mario Ruggerio ate all that was in front of him. Tano never left the back room, Franco brought the food from the kitchen. Because the Colombian snatched at morsels, Mario ate slowly. Because the Colombian gulped the Marsala wine, Mario drank only water.

His demeanour was of respect, offering the warmth of hospitality, but he dominated.

Peppino watched and admired. The Colombian, Vasquez, had come to Sicily, made the long journey because the expertise of Mario Ruggerio was needed. Peppino felt a certain pride for his brother, who had never travelled outside the island. The questions he translated, spoken by Mario in a tone of unmistakable gentleness, were the snake's questions.

'From your journey, you are not too tired?'

The Colombian had flown from Bogota to Caracas, from Caracas to Sao Paolo, from Sao Paolo to Lisbon, from Lisbon to Vienna, from Vienna to Milan. He had driven from Milan to Genoa. He had sailed on the ferry from Genoa to Palermo.

'Is there such a great problem when you travel?'

There were many problems.

'What is the reason for the problems?'

The Americans were the problems.

'In what way are there problems from the Americans?'

Because the DEA were in Colombia.

So mildly, as if he was an old man who was confused, as if the Americans were not a problem that concerned him in Sicily, Mario Ruggerio shook his head in surprise.

'And I hear that there is crop destruction paid for by the Americans, is that so?'

The Americans were paying to have the fields of coca sprayed from the air.

'And I hear, also, that Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela has been arrested, is that true?'

He had been arrested.

'And his brother, Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, arrested?'

Both the brothers were under arrest.

'And Henry Loaiza Ceballos?'

He, too, had been arrested.

'And the treasurer of the cartel?'

He had surrendered.

'Were they careless? How is it possible for so many principals to be arrested?'

They had been arrested because they had used telephones, and the DEA had brought in interception technology.

A sad smile of sincere sympathy seemed to spread on Mario Ruggerio's face. He made a gesture with his hands that implied he himself would never have been careless and used a telephone. Peppino translated. He recognized the domination his brother achieved by making the Colombian confess to the weakness of his organization.

'You are disrupted?'

Business continued, with difficulty.

'What weight can you provide?'

They could provide five tonnes.

'Refined?'

It would be five tonnes refined.

'Where is delivery?'

The delivery would be on the European mainland.

'The price, what is the price?'