to see his grandfather's office, where he'd been a paramount king round the Corleone and Prizzi area. He told me, they were at the airport, they were getting the flight out, his grandfather made the confession. He was a teenager, he wasn't a priest in the box, he was a kid. The confession was corruption. His grandfather had been bought, he was paid for petrol coupons, for food coupons, for lorry permits. What was at home, back in Wisconsin, the farm, the land, the home, the orchards, was from corrupt money. All that he believed in, clung to, was corrupt. He went looking for another rock. The new rock was DEA, but it could have been FBI or Secret Service or Customs. He went looking for a rock that he wouldn't be washed off. For most men, for me, it is a rotten job and a fun job. I work the hours and I drink and I screw. For him it is a rock. If he were to lose that rock, to slip from it, then I do not think he could survive. He told me, and I understood the obsession. I understand more. When he was told to quit, walk out on his agent in place, abandon his agent, you'd have thought he would kick and that he would fight. He did not, he accepted the verdict of the rock. There is nothing else in his world. You say there is a posting to Lagos waiting for him – a seriously awful place – but you will hear no complaint from him, he will go, that is the way he stays with the rock. Everything I know of him, it is very sad.'
'More like it's obscene,' Dwight Smythe said.
'You don't mind me saying so, but obsessionalists, crusaders, they're juveniles, they don't have a place any more,' Harry Compton said.
'If that's what you want to believe…'
His shoulder was shaken. Axel Moen opened his eyes. The lying bastards, Dwight Smythe and Harry Compton were all warmth and concern. Yes, he'd slept well. He thought that the warmth and the concern were shit.
He went to the basin and sluiced cold water on his face and on his hands and his arms.
He thought 'Vanni Crespo tried to be gentle and sincere. 'Vanni told him that, while he had slept, the magistrate had been killed. A bomb had killed him. The magistrate with whom he had not shared Codename Helen was dead. He took a cup of water and swilled it in his mouth and spat it out. He looked around him a last time, his eyes soaked in the bare room, and he knew that he would never see his friend's room again.
Time to quit.
They went down the corridor and out of the living quarters of the barracks.
They stopped at the communications room, waited in the corridor. He saw 'Vanni Crespo lean over the technician, and smack his hand with emphasis on the work table, and in front of the technician was the second of the CSS 900 two-channel receivers.
He thought of her. He thought of his love for her. The Englishman carried his own receiver, and he would have no love for her.
They went out into the falling sunshine of the late afternoon to the cars.
She broke the rule. The rule had been set by Axel Moen. Axel Moen had quit.
'Angela, why-?'
'Why what?'
'Why did you make an issue-?'
'An issue of what?'
'Angela, why did you insist-?'
The rule set by Axel Moen was that she should never question, never pester, never persist. They stood beside the washing-line and Charley held the washed clothes that would hang on the line overnight, and the pegs, and passed them to Angela.
'Insist on what?'
'Angela, why did you demand that I come with you tonight?'
'I have small children.' 'Yes/
'I have a nanny/
'Yes.'
'I have a family occasion to attend, and my husband would like our children to be with us. If the children are with us, then so, too, should be their nanny.'
'Yes.'
The strain was off the face of Angela Ruggerio. Her smile was sweetness. To Charley, there was a strength in the face of Angela Ruggerio. But the smile of sweetness was not open. The smile was enigmatic, the smile was a fraud.
'You confuse me, Charley.'
'I'm sorry, I don't mean to.'
'In pain, Charley, in depression, I asked Peppino to bring you back to me. Everything that I ask for is given me by Peppino. But you have no life here, you have no happiness, you are a servant. But you do not complain. That is my confusion.'
'It was just an opportunity, you know, the right chance at the right time.'
'I took a telephone call for you. The caller said he was the chaplain of the Anglican church. You were later coming back than I thought. And you had to take the bus into Palermo, and then you would have had a long walk to the cathedral. I was worried, Charley, that you would be late for the start of the tour/
'No, no, I was there in time/
'Because we offer you so little, I thought it was good for you to have friends. In the book I found the telephone number of the Anglican church. I wanted to be certain they would wait for you. I spoke to the chaplain, to tell him that you were coming, that they should wait for you. I am glad, Charley, that you were not late for the tour.'
She had broken the rule. She had pushed, pestered, persisted. With the broken rule came the broken cover. She passed the last of the shirts from the basket and the pegs to hang it from. She could not read the face of Angela Ruggerio. They walked back to the kitchen.
The army colonel said that a new brigade of troops would be in Palermo within forty-eight hours, probably a paratroop unit.
'To do what? To direct the traffic?' It would be the Chief Prosecutor's last post before retirement. He had cracked a mould with his appointment. Before he had taken the post it had been given, for many years, to an outsider. It had been his great pride, that he, a Palermitan, had won the appointment.
The squadra mobile colonel said that four new teams of trained surveillance officers would be transferred from the mainland within the week.
'Excellent. Then we will know which dogs foul which pavements.' He felt a great weariness, an engulfing impatience, and a dripping flow of shame. He had shown no love for Rocco Tardelli and less support. He had laughed behind his hand at the man, and sneered at the man.
The deputy mayor said that the Minister of Justice would come himself to the funeral, and had telephoned his instructions that all resources should be diverted to this investigation.
'More resources. What generosity. We may have more flowers and a bigger choir in the cathedral.' The Chief Prosecutor threw down his pen at the papers in front of him.
'And we have to do something. It is required of us that we do something.'
The deputy mayor said that, in an hour, he would make a televised statement, a strong denunciation.
'Which will have a quite extraordinary impact upon the Men of Honour. Perhaps they will fart when they see you.'
The colonel of the squadra mobile said that every possible associate of Mario Ruggerio would, that night, be watched.
'But we don't know who are his associates. If we had known, he would have been incarcerated this year, last year, ten years ago.'
The army colonel said that each soldier under his command in Palermo was out now on patrol in every quarter of the city.
'Your soldiers are ignorant and untrained conscripts, and we cannot even tell them what is the appearance of Mario Ruggerio. Probably they would stop the cars and help him across the street.'
'I think you take a very negative attitude,' the deputy mayor said.
He had come to this meeting, down the great corridor on the third floor of the Palazzo di Giustizia, the place they called the Palace of Poisons. He had passed the office of Rocco Tardelli. He had recognized the guard. The guard was dust-covered and his face was blood-smeared. He thought the guard had the look of a woman who will
