paused in front of a shop window. He had appeared to study the contents of the shop window. An old practice, one that his father would have known, was to use a shop window as a mirror. He had seen a man come at desperate speed through the traffic lanes, then reach the pavement and stop. The man, stopped, had stared up the street towards him. If the man had had a radio he would already have used it, if the man had had a mobile telephone he would not have run through the traffic lanes, if the man had carried a firearm he would not have stopped. In the reflections of the window he had seen the picciotto, a good boy, behind the man. He had known he was recognized and he had known the man panicked. He had realized it was a chance recognition and not a part of a comprehensive surveillance. He had made a small gesture, a single movement of his index finger, a cutting motion. He had walked away.
He had turned the corner…
It was two hours later. Mario Ruggerio sat in the darkened room on the first floor in the Capo district. His feet ached, his lungs heaved, the ashtray was filled with the stubbed ends of his cigarillos. The two picciotti who had been ahead of him on the Via Sammartino had made a brutal pace for him, up to the Piazza Lolli, one pocketing the cap he had been wearing, across the Via Vito la Mancia, one taking his jacket and folding it on his arm so that the material could not be seen, past the Mercato delle Pulci, hurrying him along as if he were an old uncle out with two impatient nephews. He had slipped away from them behind the duomo. Even when he gasped for breath, when exhaustion bled him and he swayed on his feet, he would not have considered allowing picciotti to take him to his safe house. The sweat ran on his face and on his back and on his stomach. He smoked. He held the photograph of the child he loved.
Charley sat on the patio.
The sun had gone down and only a feeble layer of light fell on the seascape ahead of her. The family had gone down to the town. She had lost the loneliness that had hurt her in Palermo. She felt, sitting in the comfortable chair on the patio, a supreme confidence.
The villa was her place. The family would be walking on the esplanade, under the trees, patrolling like the caged bears she had seen in zoos, where they would be seen… It was the time of waiting. She was in control, she felt her power. The power was the watch on her wrist. She sat with her legs apart, and the cool of the evening air made feather strokes on her thighs. She was at the centre of the world of Axel Moen and the people who directed Axel Moen. She had power over Giuseppe Ruggerio and over the brother.
She watched the last of the sunlight flee the smooth surface of the sea. Because of her control and her power it would be her story that would be told, the story of Codename Helen.
In the grey light, on the patio, an arrogance tripped in Charley's mind.
The tail was locked on 'Vanni Crespo. Three bars in Monreale. The tail watched him drink alone in a bar near the duomo, in a second bar near the empty market stands, in a third bar high in the old town. The tail watched and followed where 'Vanni Crespo led.
Through the window of the pizzeria he saw 'Vanni. 'Vanni was going slowly, confused.
He was lit by a street lamp, and his face was flushed, and his hair hung on his forehead in careless strands, and he lurched to a stop beside the window and was struggling to find the cigarette packet in his pocket. Axel turned away. There was nowhere in the pizzeria for him to hide. He turned away and hoped that his face was not seen, but he heard the whip of the door opening and then the slam of it shutting and he heard the shuffle of the feet and then the scrape of the chair opposite him.
'Vanni sat in front of Axel, and he swayed on the chair before his elbows thudded down on the table.
'I find the American hero…'
'You pissed up or something?'
'I find the American hero who comes to Sicily to achieve what we cannot.'
'You're drunk.'
'We Italians are pathetic, we cannot wipe our own arses, but the American hero comes to do it for us.'
'Go fuck yourself.'
'You know what happened today because we had shit luck, what happened…?'
'We don't break procedure,' Axel hissed across the table.
Two young men, carrying their crash helmets, were at the counter of the pizzeria and asking for the list of sauces.
The hand in which Axel held his fork was gripped in ' Vanni's fists. 'We had surveillance people in the Capo, that's a shit place, to target the bastard. The surveillance was called off, nothing seen. One of the team, on a bus, sees the bastard.
Off duty, no communications. We are pathetic Italians, we do not have the money to give out, sweets and chocolates, mobile telephones. Not carrying his personal radio, off duty, no sidearm. He tries to use the telephone in a bar. The bastard would have had a guy behind him, back marker. The message was incomplete, that's the shit luck. No profile and no description, no clothes, before he was stabbed to death. The bastard's gone. It's cold.'
At the bar the boys with the crash helmets studied the list of pizza sauces.
'Get the hell out of here.'
'He was in our hand. We snatched. We lost him. Isn't that shit luck?'
'Go and sleep with your woman.'
'I drink, I don't weep. The man was dead on the floor with the crap and the cigarettes and the spit and his blood. Tardelli came down, he wept, he doesn't drink. He asked me-'
'Get some water down you, some aspirin, get to your bed.'
'He's isolated, he's got the stink of failure. He has nothing, nothing to hope for. He begged…'
The boys with the crash helmets had seen nothing on the list of sauces that they wanted. They pushed their way out of the door, into the street.
'What did he beg?'
'Offer him something to hold to. I said it was not my gift to give. His mind is blocked, too much work, too tired, he cannot see the obvious, not followed the line of the family, as we have. He wanted me to share with him the detail of your agent.'
'Bullshit.'
'Your agent of small importance. He wanted the crumbs off your table. 'All I want is someone to hold my arm and walk with me.' But that's the usual sort of shit talk in Palermo when a man is isolated, that's not the talk to impress an American hero.'
'I don't share.'
'With Italians? Of course not. I tell you, Axel, what I saw. I saw a body on the floor, I saw the blood, I saw the fucking crowd of people. I saw her, I saw Codename Helen, I saw her body and her blood. I drink, I don't weep. Enjoy your meal.'
The fists released Axel's hand that held the fork. The table rocked as 'Vanni levered himself to his feet. Axel watched him go.. . He did not see her on the floor of the bar, but she was clear in his mind, and she was hanging from the nails on the back of the door of the hut at the estancia airstrip… He pushed the plate away from him. He lit a cigarette and he dropped the match on the plate, into the pizza sauce.
The tail learned the name of the woman who owned the house, and late into the night the tail watched the light burn in the upper room.
'What are my options, Ray? What do I chew on?'
The voice boomed back, metallic, from the speaker. Dwight Smythe leaned over the Country Chief's desk and twisted the volume dial. The Country Chief was scribbling headlines.
'Could you wait out, Herb? Could you let me have a minute?'
'Have two – I fancy it's better we get this right, now.'
It had been a bad bloody Monday for Ray. He had been called, two hours' notice, to New Scotland Yard for late morning coffee with biscuits and a hard-going session. He had sat with Dwight, he had been faced by the commander (S06) and the assistant commissioner (SO) and the detective superintendent who was a cat with cream, and there'd been a young guy there who'd not spoken. He'd had a heavy time and they'd done their work on Mario Ruggerio (worse than the worst) and they'd a profile on Charlotte Parsons (Codename Helen). He'd broken, he'd said he needed to talk to Headquarters, and back at the embassy he'd sat on his hands waiting for Herb to show up in his office from the beltway drag into Washington. It had to be Herb he spoke to because it was Herb who had authorized the operation.