Killing Ground (38 page)

The pulse tone travelled from the antennae on Monte Gallo to the antennae on Monte Castellacio to the antennae on Monte Cuccio and on to the antennae that waited for the UHF signal. It travelled clear, sharp.

His mind was a wreckage of scrambled thoughts because, Christ, it was actually happening . . .

He had come out of the cloister and gone to a stall and bought a carton of juice and taken it to one of the solid seats on the wide and shaded balcony garden at the back of the duomo, where the wisteria hung in flower from high walls, where the vista reached down the valley to Palermo and the sea.

The pulse tone, carried from the CSS 900 crystal-controlled two-channel receiver and into the cordless induction earpiece, beat in Axel's skull. His hand shook, tightened on the carton, spilled the juice from the plastic straw onto his shirt and his trousers. The pulse tone hammered its coded rhythm in the confines of the bone of his skull.

It was what they taught at the camp in Laurel, Maryland. 'Christ, it is actually happening.' They taught the guys of the Secret Service, the bullet-catcher guys, that they'd freeze, that they'd lose the power of action because, Christ, it was actually happening. When the headcase had gotten himself up close to the President, gotten his shots off, there was the photograph of one of the Secret Service guys with his arms splayed out and holding his hardware up to the skies, useless and rooted. The guy would have gone through every training simulation that could be thrown up by the Secret Service firearms instructors at the camp in Laurel, and the refreshers, and what he'd done, when the moment came, was shout, 'Christ, it's actually happening.'

For a moment Axel was useless and rooted.

It was the Immediate Alert code, played a second and then a third time. Shit. He was scuffling with his hands down in the bag at his feet, and the carton was on the ground and spreading juice on his trainers. He had the mobile telephone and he was belting through the numbers. He switched the goddam thing off, couldn't concentrate on the numbers. Axel needed 'Vanni Crespo. Axel needed 'Vanni Crespo because he could receive a pulse tone on the CSS 900 receiver, but didn't carry with him the electronics for location of the signal. Shit. The goddam number was engaged, was whining engaged.

Christ, it was actually happening, and he was behaving like a goddam fool, like he'd freaked. He sat still. He cleared the failed call from his telephone. 'Vanni had the back-up. They would be calling 'Vanni from the communications area, why the goddam number was engaged, they would be identifying the origin location of the pulse tone, and 'Vanni would call him and he must wait to be called. Shit. He had panicked and he felt sour with himself. He waited. He wondered where she was, how she was, and it was goddam hard to wait to be called.

He snatched the paper with the co-ordinates from the technician. The technician said that he'd not heard the initial signal first hand, been out of the operations area and refilling the coffee machine, but the light on the equipment had alerted him. The technician apologized for the time it had taken him to replay the tape- recording of the pulse tone and then to check with the code system, but the code system was in the floor safe, and the technician had had to recall the correct combination for the lock... 'Vanni snatched the paper from the technician and was running for the door and the corridor.

The technician shouted after him, 'But it's confusing - please, listen to me. Three Immediate Alert signals, then a pause, two minutes, then Stand Down, then two Immediate Alert—'

'Vanni ran. 'Vanni didn't stop to listen.

The technician stood in the door to the operations area. He shouted a last time, 'Pause one minute, then Stand-by code, and again Immediate Alert. I don't understand.'

'Vanni had run faster, fourteen years younger, the length of the Via Carini towards the knot of sightseers and firemen and policemen, towards the bullet-spattered cars of the general and the general's wife, of the single ragazzo who had guarded him. Of course, then, as he had run the dark, sun-less length of the Via Carini, he had known he was too late to intervene, to do anything, to be other than helpless. It was a scar on the soul of 'Vanni Crespo that he had stood, panting and helpless, beside the cars and the blood pools, too late to intervene. He did not even know what she looked like, the Codename Helen, tall, thin, fair, short, fat, dark, did not know. As he ran the length of the corridor, slower than he had run the length of the Via Carini, he prayed to his God, soundless, that he would not again be too late to intervene.

He burst, a fool stammering, into the rest room. The men of the Response Squad stared at him through the smoke haze, looked up at him from their magazines and their card games.

'Now, hurry, you bastards. Immediate Alert. We have - God, I hope we have -

Ruggerio. We have a location for Mario Ruggerio. Mondello. Please move. It's Ruggerio.'

There was the gathering of the weapons. There was the stampede out of the ready room. There was the thunder of boots in the corridor. There was the roar of the cars'

engines.

'Vanni, in the back seat of the second car, three more behind him, yelled into his telephone, 'Don't tell me what I should have done,

I have priorities. I have to respond to the signal. The priority is to move. You are at the duomo? The piazza in front of the duomo, by the camera shop. Two minutes and I am there, a green Alfetta. If you are not there, I don't wait.'

The convoy of cars swerved through the gates of the Monreale barracks. Two boys up the road, astride motorcycles, were held back by a uniformed carabiniere soldier.

They were not interested, there was no builder's van in the convoy. The scream of the tyres hung in the afternoon air.

Not necessary, but the excitement raced in 'Vanni, forty-two years old and like a child with the anticipation of a favoured present. 'It's an open line, Dr Tardelli, not secure. Our mutual interest, we have a location... You should clear your desk for the rest of the afternoon because I hope to bring our friend as a guest to you. Please make yourself available.'

The American was running, reaching the camera shop. The second car slowed, and behind it the rest of the convoy hit their brakes. 'Vanni had the door open and he caught at Axel's arm and pulled him inside, and Axel's jerked body tangled with the cable lead that linked 'Vanni's headset to the communications console beside the driver's knee.

'Still transmitting, confused but transmitting from Mondello. I have these hooligans, and I also have a helicopter coming . . .'

'Vanni hugged Axel.

Of the squadra mobile surveillance team working the Capo district, II It was the turn of Giancarlo to report in person to the investigating magistrate, Dr Rocco Tardelli. He was not even asked to sit down. He stood in the room at the Palazzo di Giustizia, and held tight in his hand was the plastic bag of vegetables he had bought along with three lemons. He explained that, in the previous twenty-four hours, the three shifts had seen nothing of Mario Ruggerio, and the man seemed hardly to hear him.

'I regret very much that as yet, dottore, we have no trace, but there is still time, and we have to hope that tomorrow, or the day after, is different.'

He had expected a head sunk in disappointment, and an exhortation to greater vigilance, but the magistrate merely shrugged. Giancarlo believed it possible that he had interrupted the preparations for the celebration of a birthday because one of the ragazzi was at the table beside the draped curtains and was cleaning glasses and another of the ragazzi, while Giancarlo spoke, carried in two bottles of champagne.

He believed, with his talk of failure, he intruded.

The helicopter came over her.

It came in from the sea, a thunder of noise, and Charley caught at Francesca and lifted her from the water and held her close. She could see, very clearly, the figure in the open hatch door of the helicopter, the face covered by a mask with eyeslits, the legs dangling, the machine-gun that covered her. She held the child as if to protect her, and she did not realize that the plastic water- ring drifted away from her, driven by the rotor blades of the helicopter. She followed the curved flight of the helicopter that was painted in a livery of midnight blue with the big white lettering, CARABINIERE, across the cabin and broken by the opened hatch. She watched the helicopter go stationary, hovering, like one of the big hawks on the cliffs near her home. She looked for the prey of the helicopter.

Oh, Christ. God, no . . .

Through the water, across the wet sand, across to the tideline and to the towels laid on the plastic sheet. Small Mario stood alone and the sand was whipped around him.

The helicopter edged on, was above the esplanade and the deep foliage of the pine trees that wavered as if a gale hit them. She carried Francesca, she tried to run through the water and was stumbling and pitching. The helicopter was facing her, a predator. The water splashed around her, and once she fell and the water was in her mouth and nose and Francesca was crying out loud. She ran towards small Mario. There was a loudspeaker shouting at them but she could not hear the words above the helicopter engine. She saw the couple who kissed, the boys who had the transistor, the couple who read magazines, and they all stood and they all, as if commanded, had their hands on their heads. She did not have her watch and she did not know how long she had been with Francesca in the water, how long she had left small Mario with his football on the sand. She burst from the water. Her feet gripped the wet sand and gave her speed. She could see the men who waited in the shadow of the trees.

Beyond small Mario and the couples and the boys with the transistor that still shouted music, under the trees, were men and women still as statues and children clutching them and weeping, and men in black overalls and balaclavas holding stubbed guns. She saw Axel Moen . . .

She reached small Mario. He held her wrist-watch limply in his hands. The boy gazed, frightened, at the helicopter, at the men with the guns.

Charley took the watch, took it gently, from small Mario's hands. l;rom the shadows under the pine trees, from among the men with guns, Axel Moen gazed at her.

Said quietly, as if she were back in the classroom of 2B and not wanting to drive a child to silence, 'What did you do with my watch?'

Said distant and quavering, 'Poppa is in England. Poppa said it was one hour behind Sicily in England. I tried to make the time where Poppa is.'

'You should have asked me. I would have made it the time where Poppa is.'

'I tried the buttons, I could not make it work to Poppa's time.'

She put Francesca down. Charley said to the boy, 'We have to go home. Please, Mario, fold up the towels.'

She faced Axel Moen. She made small gestures. She reeled from the humiliation.

She held the watch, she placed it on her wrist and snapped the clasp shut. She was too far from him to see the expression on his face, and the face was in shadow, but she thought that she saw his mind. She pointed to small Mario as he knelt and dutifully folded the towels. She had failed Axel Moen and the men with guns and the men who flew the helicopter. She crossed her hands, uncrossed them, crossed them again, it was over, it was finished. She took the big towel and started to rub dry the body of Francesca, and in her bikini she was shivering. She saw Axel Moen speak to a man beside him, and the man spoke into a radio. Charley wrapped the big towel around Francesca and dressed her under the towel. The helicopter came overhead, flew out above the sea, then turned towards Monte Pellegrino and Palermo. When it was gone, when she could hear the boys' transistor again, when she had put the towel around her own body and was wriggling out of her bikini, she looked again towards the pine trees beyond the beach. They were no longer there. She shed the bikini top and the bikini bottom. She could not see the men with the guns and the balaclavas. She dragged on her pants and buttoned her skirt, and the towel fell from her as she lifted on her blouse. She could not see Axel Moen. The sun of the late afternoon caught at the skin of her arms and her shoulders, at the whiteness of her breasts . . . Hey, Charley, enough of the damn crawl. Hey, Charley, he was out there, and he was waiting, and he came running.

'Come on, Mario, time for home, time for tea. Come on.'

'What was it for, the helicopter?'

Charley said, 'They have to do exercises, have to do practice and training. It keeps them busy. It's something to tell your mother, that you saw the carabineri on a training exercise. You won't learn to swim, you know, not by playing football'

Hey, Charley, that's power. He came running.

He put down the telephone. He sat for a moment, very still.

In the room with him were Pasquale and the driver of the chase car and the one who rode in the chase car with the machine-gun on his lap, and they had all been caught with the infection of his excitement. He sat for a moment with his head buried in his hands.

They knew. He did not have to tell them.

He said, 'You know, when Riina was caught, when he had been brought to the barracks, when he realized that he was not in the hands of his enemies but only of the state, he wanted to be told who was in charge. It was at that moment important to him to know that he spoke to the senior man, important to his dignity. Santapaolo, when he was held, he congratulated the arresting officer that he would be on TV that night, as if he would be famous for a day. Leoluca Bagarella, when he was trapped, was said to be in a condition of shock, as if punched on the end of the nose and stunned. I wanted to know how he would be, Mario Ruggerio. For an hour I have sat here and I have allowed myself the fantasy of considering how he would be when I walked into the interrogation room to confront him. It was my hour of vanity. Pasquale, I do not think we require the glasses, and I do not think we will be drinking champagne - would you, please, take them out because they remind me of one hour of vanity. It is hard not to believe that we snatch at stars . . . Right, I have work, you should leave me.'