tweed.
The material of his suit had the same roughness as the wild beard splaying from his chin and cheeks. In the lecture room, with his maps and his pointer, he taught the recruits the rudimentaries of the countries that would fill their files, the societies they would interact with, the criminal conspiracies they would confront. And he did it well, which was why he was remembered.
'The Government of Italy, for a hundred years, has been stupid enough to kick with an unprotected toe against the rock that is Sicily. My advice, if you've set your mind on kicking rocks with a bare toe, is go and find one that's not granite or flint. Sicily is hard mineral, and the toe gets to be bloodied, bruised. That rock is a meeting point, where Africa comes to Europe, different cultures, different values. The rock, granite or flint, has been shaped by history. Sicily is where the conquerors liked to come. You name him, he's been there – Moors and Normans and Bourbons, and before them the Greeks and the Romans and the Carthaginians and the Vandals. Government in Rome is just seen as another freebooter, the latest, come to cream off more than his share.'
The professor used a big lectern that took his weight as he leaned forward on it, and the voice came from deep in the whiskered beard, pebbles churning in a mixer.
'If you've toned your muscles, if you can swing a pickaxe, if you've journeyed to Sicily, then take a hack at a piece of ground. You may have to go looking a while first to find ground that's not rock. Find it and hack – chance is you'll dig up an arrowhead or a sword blade or the iron of a spear tip, or maybe a bayonet or a mortar round or a rifle's cartridge case – the weapons of repression and torture. Imagine you live there, when you hold whatever you've dug in your hand. When your history is one of dispossession, expropriation, incarceration, execution, then that sort of colours your personality, sort of shapes an attitude: each new conqueror moulded the Sicilian view of life. The lesson dinned by history into the modern generations tells them trust is a luxury to be kept tight round the family, that the greatest virtue is silence, that you wait as long as it takes for the opportunity of revenge, then, by God, you dish it out. While Europe was civilizing itself a hundred years ago, down there on the rock, close to Africa, they were brigands and bandits. Not our problem, an Italian problem, until…'
Dwight Smythe remembered him now, like it was yesterday, and the recruits hadn't coughed, or sniggered, or fidgeted, but had sat rapt as if the old academic was telling them the reality of DEA work.
'For protection, the brigands and bandits formed a secret society. Rules, hierarchy, organization, discipline, but relevant only to Italy, running contraband cigarettes, fleecing an extortion racket dry, until – strange, I think, the way the little moments in our existence, the two-cent moments have their day – until a Turkish gentleman named Musullulu got to share a prison cell in Italy with the Sicilian gangster Pietro Vernengo.
They talked for two years. Those two years, in that cell, '78 and '79, they changed the face of society, they put you men in work. The drugs trade, the misery trade began in that cell, two men and their talk…'
So clear to Dwight Smythe, the professor's words. Beside him Axel Moen sat quiet and still, eyes closed. Dwight knew the current statistics – a Federal Anti-Narcotics budget of $13.2 billion, of which the DEA took $757 million and said it was inadequate.
'The Turk talked heroin. The Turk could bring unprocessed morphine base into Sicily, via the Balkans. Good morphine base to make good heroin. In 1979, the Italians opened the cell door and Mr Musullulu went his way, never been seen by a law enforcement agent since, and Signor Vernengo went back to Sicily and told the guys what was on offer. Don't ever think that because they didn't get grades at school the Sicilian peasants are dumb. For killing and conspiracy they are the best and the brightest, for moving money and for spreading the cloy of corruption they are the best and the brightest. They saw the window, they jumped through it. They had more heroin, more morphine base, coming onto that heap of rock than they knew what to do with, and they had the market. The market was the USA, they went international. The money flowed. They had dollar bills up their ears, mouths, nostrils, every orifice they owned.
So you've heard of the Colombians and the Yakuza out of Japan and the Chinese Triads, but first on the scene was La Cosa Nostra of Sicily. The people I've just mentioned, the cartels and the Yakuza and the Triads, they're hard people but they've never been fool enough to mix it with the Sicilians. It's difficult to believe, but off that piece of rock stuck out between Europe and Africa come the big boys of organized crime, and what everyone's thrown at them just seems to bounce back. You see, gentlemen, ladies, down there it's a war of survival, as it has been through history, a bad place to be on the losing side, it's a war to the death…'
It's what the professor had said at a cold, early morning session in the lecture hall at Quantico, with snow flaking against the windows, what Dwight Smythe recalled. He felt a sense of raw anger. The next week, nine years back, the professor had lectured on the marijuana crop out of Mexico, and the week after he had given over the hour session to the coca-leaf production of Bolivia and Peru, and the final week of the course had been concerned with opium production in the triangle of Burma and Laos and Thailand. Dwight Smythe felt the sense of raw anger because the professor had seemed only a diversion from the main matter of the induction course. Sitting in the car beside the younger man with the blond pony-tail of hair shafted down under the collar of his windcheater, Dwight Smythe knew reality. He was far from the office accounts that he managed on the fifth floor of the embassy, far from the duty rosters and leave charts he so meticulously prepared, far from the filing system he was proud of and the maintenance of the computer systems… He was with reality. The anger spat in him as he turned towards Axel Moen.
'What right do you have, what God-given right do you have to play Christ with that kid, to involve her?'
As if he hadn't heard, as if the accusation were not important, Axel Moen, beside him, glanced down at his watch, like it was time to go to work.
'You're a mafia specialist – sorry, forgive me, I apologize, a La Cosa Nostra specialist – and you're not making, what I hear, a good job of winning.
Aren't you ever fed to the teeth that you don't ever get to win?'
The chill air with the salt tang came into the cab of the Cherokee Jeep, then the door slammed shut on Dwight Smythe. He watched the hunched shoulders of Axel Moen glide away, no sound against the throb of the heater, towards the little wrought-iron gate and the path leading to the door of the bungalow over which the porch light shone. He watched the shoulders and the resolute stride through the gate and up the path and past the scooter parked in the driveway, and he thought of the preacher of his childhood talking of the Death Angel who came on the unsuspecting with destruction and darkness, and he thought it was wrong to involve an ordinary young woman, just wrong.
Wrong to break, without warning, into a life.
'So sorry to trouble you, I hope it's not inconvenient…'
He could smile. When it was necessary, Axel Moen had a fine, wide smile that cut his face. He smiled at the older man who stood In the lit doorway.
'My name's Axel Moen, I've come down from our embassy in London, it's to see Miss Charlotte Parsons. I surely hope it's not inconvenient…'
He could charm. When it was asked of him, he could charm sufficient to bring down a barrier. He kept walking. There had been no gesture for him to enter the bungalow, no invitation, but he kept walking and David Parsons stepped aside. The frown was on the man's forehead, confusion.
'You're wondering, Mr Parsons, at my name. It's Norwegian. I here's a fair few of Norwegian stock where I come from, that'sthe north-eastern corner of Wisconsin. They were farmers, they came over around a hundred years ago. I'd like to see your daughter, please, it's a private matter.'
He could deflect. When it was important to him, Axel Moen knew how to batter aside the doubts and queries and seem to give an answer where a different question had been asked. The question would have been, what was his business? But the question was not put. It was a small hall, recently decorated but not by a professional, and he noted that the paper pattern did not match where the strips were joined, and the paint had run on the woodwork. He had a cold eye. It was a detached observer's eye. The eye of a man who gave nothing. He saw the small hall table with the telephone on it, and above the table was a framed photograph of the young woman in academic gown and with a mortarboard worn rakishly. The angle of the mortarboard and the cheekiness of the grin in the college graduation photograph rather pleased him, he had hoped to find an independent spirit. He towered over the man, he dominated him in the narrow width of the hallway. It was what he had to do and what he was good at, flashing a smile, breathing charm, and dominating. He was good, also, at making the fast judgement on the spine of a man, and he judged this one, pullover with the buttons undone and wearing yesterday's clean shirt and frayed carpet slippers, as a coward.
'She's having her tea.'
