He himself had been a DEA man since the start. Bill Hammond was coming now, and the dates on the year's work planner behind him were the ever-present reminders, towards the day he dreaded most. He was headed for retirement, for the presentation of the carriage clock or the crystal sherry decanter, for the speeches, for the last photo opportunity of the handshake with the Director. Everybody loved a cop, nobody noticed a retired cop. He was headed for minding the grandkids. Over fourteen years of service he had gathered in the detail of the file biographies of, maybe, a couple of hundred agents – men and women he could evaluate and pass a judgement on. But he did not know the source of the drive force governing Axel Moen. OK, right, sure as hell, as his career wound towards that date on the year planner, he wanted to preside over a spectacular arrest operation and he wanted to have the Director on the telephone, personal, and he had given his authorization to the plan that was CODENAME HELEN and he had basked in an anticipation of glory, but…
But…
But the kid was now off the plane at Fiumicino. But the young woman was now through Immigration. But the kid was in a taxi and headed for central Rome.
But…
The kid, the young woman, was now the property of Axel Moen. And it was Bill Hammond who had authorized it, and Bill Hammond had put his goddam name on the recommendation document that had gone to Washington and onto Herb Rowell's desk.
And it was Bill Hammond who had given the big talk and enthused enough for Herb to kick it through the committee that rubber-stamped hard-point operations. And it was Bill Hammond who had pushed Herb to make the requisition order to the Engineering Research Facility. It was the responsibility of Bill Hammond that the kid, a young woman, was travelling in a taxi towards central Rome. Maybe it would be the glory, maybe it would lie on his conscience…
He was old, too old. He was tired, too tired… As the bag was dropped down on the floor, his eyes snapped open.
'Good flight, Axel?'
The shrug. 'Same as any other.'
'She's arrived, Miss Parsons?'
The glint of the eyes, tightening, narrowing. 'That, Bill, is a sloppy mistake.'
He was in the wrong. He blustered, 'For God's sake, Axel, where are we? We are swept, cleaned, hoovered. We can talk-'
'You make a beginner's mistake. You talk a name here, perhaps you get to talk it elsewhere. A beginner's mistake can get to be a habit.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I don't want to hear it again, that name.'
'I apologized… 'Vanni, he called her the uccello da richiamo, the decoy. We talked about the Trojan Horse. The horse had access. For 'Vanni, she's Codename Helen. Can you live with that?'
Axel, standing loosely, lit a cigarette. 'It'll do.'
'Where is she?'
'About checking in, I should think. You got my package?'
From the ring of keys on the chain at his belt, he unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk. He took out the padded bag. The bag had come with the cargo on a military flight to 6th Fleet from Engineering Research Facility at Quantico, then had been brought to Rome by a Navy courier from Naples.
'Thanks. I'll be getting on.'
Axel Moen held the package and seemed to stare at it for a moment, then dropped it into his small bag. He was turning away.
'Hey, Heather rang for you. Seems Defense Attache's a party on tonight. I said you wouldn't be able to go, I told Heather that.'
'Why'd you do that?'
The emphasis steeled his voice. 'Because, Axel, I assumed that Miss Codename Helen, described by you as 'ordinary' and 'predictable', might be stressed up, might need some care before she goes down there. Aren't you taking her to dinner?'
The shaken head. 'No.'
'Shouldn't you be taking her to dinner?'
Axel said, 'It's good for her to be alone. I can't hold her hand, in Palermo I can't nanny her. She's got to learn to be alone.'
It was as the memory had been, the memory she had guarded as a treasure, in privacy, for the last four years.
In the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, in front of the imperial tomb encased in glass, Charley could have shouted her delight. In the Piazza Popolo, surrounded by the rushing river of cars and vans and motorcycles, Charley could have screamed the news that she had returned.
A heady and excited delight caught at her, as a narcotic would have. It was to her, the solitary young woman walking the old streets and scuffing her toes on the uneven cobbles and skipping over the dog dirt and the refuse, an evening of triumph. Around her were the evening crowds of the beautiful people, beside her were the open shops of clothes and designed furniture, above her were the peeling ochre buildings. Like the renewal of a love affair. Like seeing, after long absence, a man standing and waiting for her, and running headlong to him, sprinting to jump towards him and his arms. It was one evening, it was so precious. She found again, as she had found them in the summer of 1992, the little courtyards off the Via della Dataria and the churches with the high doors off the Corso, the steps above Piazza Espagna where the Arab boys sold rubbish jewellery, the fountain of Bernini in Piazza Navona. She stood by the edifice to Vittorio Emanuele and looked the length of the wide street to the far-away, floodlit Colosseum.
It was Charley's heaven… For three hours she ran and walked and ambled through the streets of the centro storico, and knew happiness again. When she was tired, bruised feet aching, Charley had to kick herself because the impulse was to find the bus stop on the Corso, or the rank of yellow taxis, and head north for the apartment on Collina Fleming. She had thought, many times, that she saw a younger woman walking with Angela Ruggerio and carrying the shopping bags, a younger woman walking with Giuseppe Ruggerio and smiling up at him as he joked, a younger woman walking with small Mario Ruggerio and holding his hand and laughing with his love…
She took her dinner in a ristorante, a table to herself, and was served by grave-faced waiters a meal of pasta and lamb with spinach, and she drank all of the gassy water and most of a litre of wine, and she left a tip that was near to reckless and felt her self-esteem.
She strolled from the ristorante the few yards back to the hotel in which she had been booked, near to the river, off the Via della Scrofa, near to the Parliament. Outside the narrow door of the hotel, across the alleyway, a radio blared from an open workshop and a man in greasy vest and torn jeans repaired motorcycles. She looked at him, she caught his eye, she winked at him, as if it were her city. In Italian, her best, she asked the portiere at the reception for coffee in the morning and a copy of La Stampa, and with an impassive expression he had answered her in English that she would indeed have coffee and a newspaper, and she'd giggled like a child.
Her room was tiny and stifling hot. She switched on the TV, habit, scattered her clothes on the bed and the carpet, habit, went for a shower, habit. She let the lukewarm water sprinkle on her upturned face and wash away the dirt of the streets. She towelled herself hard. She would sleep naked in the sheets. She was alone, she was free, she controlled her destiny, and she bloody well was going to sleep naked and she looked, her opinion, bloody good naked. She was standing before the mirror, bloody good and. ..
In the mirror, behind what she thought was her bloody good nakedness, was the inverted television picture. A body in a street, a bustle of photographers pressing on the body and held back by the languid arm of a policeman. The trousers of the body were down at the ankles, the underpants were down at the knees, the groin was as naked as her body and bloodstained, the bare chest of the body was slashed by torture cuts, the mouth of the body bulged with the penis and the testicles cut from the groin. She held the towel now tight against her skin, as if to hide her nakedness from the eye of the mirror and the eye of the television. The commentary on the television said that the body was of a Tunisian man, a pusher of hard drugs, who had tried to trade in the streets behind the stazione centrale of Palermo.
Charley lay in bed. The alcohol had drained from her. She heard each shout, each siren, each roar of a
