parking area.
'Did I hear you right? Dog shit?'
'That's what I said,' Dwight Smythe intoned.
'And you, what did you call it? A 'difficulty'?'
'That's our opinion,' Harry Compton said.
'I wasn't happy, I had cold feet. Hear me through – the plan was brilliant. It's the sort of plan that comes along off the rainbow, and it just stands a chance. It stands a chance because Axel Moen is one hell of a fine operator. He's not you, Smythe, not you, Compton, not a blow-in, not a smart-ass who comes in on the big bird and thinks he knows the fucking game. Axel Moen is top of the tree. What does he get for being top of the tree? He gets a posting to a shit place like Lagos, and a bastard like me dresses Lagos up as a good slot.'
Harry Compton said, 'I don't think obscenities help. Our priority is to get Charlotte Parsons.'
'Where'd they dig you up from? A creche? A nursery? Training school? You don't ever name names. She's a code, she's Codename Helen. You don't throw names in Sicily. You work in Sicily, you have to be big, not a fucking ant. It's a sad damned day when people like you – and you, Smythe – get involved.'
'Has your agent been told that we are bringing Codename Helen home?'
A bitter smile crossed the Country Chief's face. 'You are a funny man, Compton, you make me laugh. You think I'm doing the crap work for you. I messaged him to meet you. You tell him his plan was shit and made a 'difficulty'. Tell him yourself.'
He thought he was followed, but he was unsure of it. He thought he was followed as he left the duomo in Monreale. As Axel walked away from the cloister he saw, on the other side of the street, a man of middle age and wire-thin build take off his cap and slip it into the hip pocket of his trousers, and a hundred metres further on, at the edge of the piazza, the man wore another cap of a different colour and a different material. A hundred metres further on, by the stalls that sold fish and meat, vegetables and fruit and flowers, the man had gazed into a shop window, studying women's clothes, and Axel had passed by him, and he had not seen him again. He could not be certain that he was followed. Maybe the man, forty- something, with the wire-thin build, had bought a new cap and was dissatisfied with it and put his old cap back on, and maybe he looked at women's underwear because that gave him a jerk-off thrill or because his wife's birthday was coming up, or maybe he followed the procedures of foot surveillance.
Axel breathed hard. In La Paz he had been followed, once, and he had hit the numbers of his mobile and called out the cavalry and two streets later he had walked on a wide pavement that was suddenly crawling with his own guys and with the Bolivian task-force people, and the tail had flaked away. He had no cavalry in Monreale. His training was in surveillance, not in counter-measure tactics. He breathed hard, deep. He assumed, if he was indeed followed, that they would use the technique of the 'floating box'. There would be men ahead of him, men behind him, men on the same side of the street and men on the opposite side of the street. But it was early in the afternoon, and the siesta hours had not started, and the pavements were full. If he ran, suddenly, tried to break out of the box, then he told them, put it up in neon lights, that he knew he was followed. His mind ratcheted, going fast, considering how he should act… His problem, on the busy streets, he could not identify the operators or the command operator of the floating box. He walked faster and slower, he lingered in front of shops and in front of stalls, he passed a tabaccaio, then turned sharply to retrace his steps and went inside and bought a throw-away lighter, and he could not confirm that he was the centrepiece of a floating box, nor confirm that his strained imagination merely goaded him. He walked on. He did not know. He made a long loop, and he came back to the garden terrace at the back of the duomo. He sat on a bench. From the terrace, among the flowers climbing on walls and under the wide shade of the trees, he could look down onto Palermo and the sea, where she had been. Axel did not know if he was watched.. .
'It is the thirteenth.'
'No, the ninth.'
'I do not wish to dispute with you, Mama, but it is the thirteenth.'
'You told me, it was fifteen years ago, that it was the ninth, it is what a mother remembers.'
'Mama, I promise you, it is the thirteenth.'
His father said, growl of the peasant's dialetto, 'Last year you said it was the eleventh, the year before it was the fourteenth, the year before that it was-'
'Papa, I assure you, you are mistaken.'
'No, Mario, it is you that are mistaken. Each year you make a different number and argue with your mother.'
At the start of the viaduct, where it climbed on columns of concrete to cross the river valley and carry the autostrada, No. 186, from Monreale by the high route over the mountains to Partinico, the car was parked on the hard shoulder. Each year they made the argument because each year Mario Ruggerio forgot the number he had given in 1981. The problem, for Mario Ruggerio, he did not know in which column of concrete was the body of his brother.
Franco was at the wheel of the parked car and had his head down in a newspaper.
Franco would not dare to snigger at the ritual dispute over which column of concrete carried the body of Cristoforo. There was a second car parked further back, and a third car stopped at the far end of the viaduct, near the sixtieth column or the sixty-first.
His mother held the lavish bunch of flowers. He could not tell his mother that he hazarded his security each year when he came to the viaduct and then argued over which column of concrete held Cristoforo's body. He could not lash his mother with his tongue because his mother had no fear of him. He could not tell his mother that he did not know in which column of concrete… His father always sided with his mother, as if his father wished to cut him to size. Did they want him to blow up the viaduct, drop it, then dynamite each column of concrete, then break each column with pneumatic drills?
Did they need to know so badly in which column was his brother, Cristoforo?
'I think you are correct, Mama. It is the ninth.'
His mother bobbed her head, satisfied. He loved two people in the world. He loved his small nephew who was named after him, and he loved his mother, loved them more than his own wife and his own children. And he could not spend the day standing in public view on the viaduct and arguing. His father would not let the matter go. His father had three reasons, he accepted, to be in a foul temper.
'You were wrong then, Mario? You accept that you were wrong?'
'Yes, Papa. I was wrong.'
'Cristoforo is in the ninth column?'
'The ninth, Papa.'
The first reason for the foul temper of his father. A young man, the son of a nuisance enemy, had daubed paint on the door of his father's house. The young man could not be adequately punished because the door of the house in Prizzi was covered by an unmanned police camera. If the young man disappeared or was found adequately punished, then the carabineri and the squadra mobile would be swarming through the home of Rosario and Agata Ruggerio and stressing them. The matter was dealt with, the camera would show the act, and the camera would show the contrition. The film from the camera was taken, a poor secret, each fourth night for examination. His father had wanted, personally, to slit the throat of the young man.
The second reason for the temper. The pilgrimage to the viaduct had been delayed for twenty-four hours, missing the exact anniversary of the entombment in concrete, because it had been necessary for Mario Ruggerio to review his security after the close call in the Via Sammartino, and that he would not discuss with his father. His father no longer understood, at eighty-four years of age, his son's life.
The third reason for the temper. It had been a long journey for his parents. He could not guarantee that they were not under surveillance. A bus to Caltanisetta, from the crowded market in Caltanisetta to the rail station, escorted by Carmine. The slow train to Palermo. Picked up by himself and Franco at the Stazione Centrale in Palermo and driven to the viaduct.
He walked back to the start of the viaduct. He counted. He strode towards his parents and the parked car. It was beneath his dignity to rush. He came to the ninth column of concrete. His brother had worked for the Corleonesi of Riina. His brother had been killed by the men of Inzerillo, and Inzerillo was dead from armour-piercing bullets, tested on a jewellery-shop window, in his car. The men who had acted on the orders of Inzerillo were in the bay, once the food for crabs. He had been told the same month, by the Corleonesi of Riina, that they had heard his
