‘In Homer’s time, Sicily was somewhere in Greece. Are you paying attention? In Aci Trezza there’s a hotel called I Ciclopi. Go into the bar and wait for me. If I haven’t contacted you by midday, go home. Don’t mention my name, don’t ask questions, don’t try to call me, just go home. And another thing. After what you’ve just told me, it’s possible that you may be followed. If you notice anyone following you, try to lose him. If you can’t, again, just go home. Above all, on no account bring a tail to our rendezvous. Do you understand?’
‘Of course, but why should I be followed? No one’s interested in me.’
‘I’m interested in you, cara, and they’re interested in me. Your little lunch in “the triangle of death” proved that beyond a doubt.’
‘But that was…’
‘Please just accept what I’m telling you. As far as they’re concerned, we’re a couple. They will therefore be watching you.’
‘This is like some stupid movie!’ Carla exclaimed dramatically, sounding like a character in just such a movie.
‘All the more reason not to be stupid ourselves,’ Corinna Nunziatella replied calmly. ‘A domani, cara.’
Six men sat around the metal table set up in the shade of the ancient carob and palm trees in the centre of the small square. On the table, painted green and chipped and flecked with rust, lay a chessboard. The six men were seated on folding chairs of a similar colour and condition. Only two of the men were actually playing, but the other four watched as though their lives depended on the result. So, to a lesser degree, did a larger group, about ten in all, who stood in a rough circle at a respectful distance from the players and their immediate entourage. Beyond them, cars lay as though abandoned in the empty street, ranks of shuttered houses kept their counsel, while above all Etna smouldered like a badly doused fire.
‘The queen,’ said the man playing White, placing his cigar in the ashtray to the right of the chessboard.
All the onlookers perked up, but for a long time no one spoke.
‘She’s exposed,’ the other player agreed at length.
‘But that pawn is only a few moves from queening itself,’ the first mused. ‘If I move against the queen, the pawn will have a chance to get through to the back file. What to do?’
‘Try the Sicilian Defence!’ said a voice from the surrounding crowd. Ironic but anonymous guffaws broke out all around, as though to protect the speaker against the possible consequences of this insolence.
The man at the table picked up his cigar and leaned back slowly, looking up at the shards of blue sky visible through the thickly massed leaves overhead. There was a terrible silence. The speaker exhaled an expanding galaxy of smoke.
‘We really must respond to the recent communication from our friends in Corleone before too long,’ he said. ‘Not to do so might appear discourteous.’
‘But how?’ asked his opponent, shifting a rook forward five squares and then instantly withdrawing his hand, so quickly that the piece might have moved by itself.
The man playing White did not even look at the board.
‘I think an invitation to lunch,’ he said.
‘They’d never come!’ burst out the voice in the crowd which had spoken before.
‘Not to Catania, of course. But if the invitation came from Messina…’
He glanced down at the table and took the threatening rook with a knight.
‘Then we’d have to give them something in return,’ remarked Black.
‘Precisely. We give them the judge.’
‘Nunziatella? She’s already been removed from the picture.’
‘From our point of view, yes. But she’s still investigating the Maresi business, which spills over in all sorts of ways into the interests of our Messina friends.’
There was a long silence.
‘If we do that, then the authorities will crack down on us,’ said Black.
‘No, they won’t,’ White replied. ‘No one will know it was us. As you pointed out, we have no reason to be interested in Nunziatella. Why should we stir up trouble when everything has been sorted out so nicely?’
‘In that case, they’ll go after Messina. And our friends there won’t like that.’
‘Who cares what they like? By then it will be too late. They’ve been getting a bit above themselves recently, anyhow.’
He took a long satisfied draw on his cigar, then glanced back at the board and moved his queen diagonally from one side to the other.
‘Check.’
The man playing Black looked at him in astonishment.
‘How do you do it, Don Gaspare?’
‘You like it?’ the cigar-smoker enquired coyly.
‘It’s beautiful!’
A frown came over his face.
‘But what about the Corleonesi?’
‘What about them?’
‘Well, supposing they come to this lunch…’
‘They’ll come all right! Now that Toto is in prison and Binu’s in deep hiding, they need allies. I happen to know that they’ve been flirting with our friends in Messina for some time. An invitation like that? They’ll cream in their pants!’
Another round of laughter from the onlookers.
‘All right, so they come,’ said Black. ‘What then?’
‘Then they go home again,’ the other man said, staring his opponent in the eyes, his voice brutally harsh. ‘Since there’s no railway to Corleone, we can’t offer them a free ride in a freight car. But to avoid appearing discourteous, we must return the favour somehow. Saverio!’
‘Si, capo,’ said the rogue voice in the crowd.
The man at the table paused to draw on his cigar.
‘We’ll need a lorry,’ he said at last. ‘Something big. Maybe one of those articulated jobs. We can’t be sure how many of them will show up, and we wouldn’t want them to be too cramped.’
More laughter.
‘Do you think you could you arrange that?’ the cigar-smoker concluded.
‘A couple of hours, capo,’ Saverio replied. ‘Would you be interested in a refrigerated lorry, by any chance?’
The man at the table stared down at the chessboard for so long it seemed that he had not heard the question, his attention devoted wholly to the game. Then a slow smile spread across his face. He swivelled in his chair and looked directly at the man who had spoken.
‘Refrigerated,’ he repeated.
‘A lot of them are,’ Saverio explained. ‘For vegetables and meat and so on. It wouldn’t be hard to get one, down on the autostrada.’
‘Refrigerated!’ the chess player said again, his smile broader than ever. ‘Saverio, you’re a genius.’
Saverio made a humbly submissive shrug and did not speak further. The cigar-smoker turned back to the table.
‘They give it to us hot, we give it to them cold!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.
The man playing Black moved a pawn forward to block the White queen’s threat to his king.
‘They’ll know it was us,’ he remarked in a neutral tone.
‘Of course they will!’ the other man exclaimed. ‘So will their erstwhile hosts in Messina. They’ll also know that their explanations and excuses will never be believed. So with the Corleonesi going nuclear west of the mountains and the Calabrians moving in from the east, our friends in Messina will finally be forced to ally with us or face a classic pincer attack on two fronts.’
Silence fell. At length the other chess player broke it with a sharp intake of breath through his rotten teeth.
‘How do you do it, Gaspare?’ he repeated wonderingly
