brother was buried in wet concrete during the construction of the viaduct. The Corleonesi had killed Inzerillo. Mario Ruggerio, with his own hands, with rests to regain his strength, had strangled the four men who had taken Inzerillo's orders. He had only the word of the Corleonesi that Cristoforo's body was in one of the viaduct's columns of concrete. In truth, the cadaver of Cristoforo could be anywhere… It would distress his mother, whom he loved, should he raise a doubt about the ultimate resting place of her favourite son.
'Here, Mama, the ninth column…'
He looked over the edge of the parapet, leaned forward so that he could see the great weather-stained column of concrete. He had thought, and never said so to his father and mother, that his brother had been an idiot to have associated with the Corleonesi of Riina.
His father grumbled, 'But there are two columns, one for each side. Is it the ninth column on the left, or the ninth column on the right?'
'On the right, Papa, the ninth column on the right.'
His mother held the flowers over the parapet. They had cost 50,000 lire at the stall beside the entrance to the Stazione Centrale. He held his mother's arm. She crossed herself. She let the flowers slip from her hand, and they fell far down past the column of concrete and broke apart, scattered, when they hit the rocks of the riverbank.
He still held his mother's arm, to propel her back to the car where Franco waited. His father trailed behind, refusing to be hurried. The ritual was done. He opened the door for his mother, and Franco had the engine running. He helped his father into the car after his mother. It would be bad for the dignity of Mario Ruggerio to scurry, but he went fast to the front passenger door of the car. They powered away. He turned to his mother. It was a question that would not have been appropriate while they mourned the dead Cristoforo.
'Have you had notification of when Salvatore is brought to Ucciardione for the court? When does he come? I would wish you to take a personal message from me to Salvatore…'
'Gianni, I would not have called you if it were not important.. . It is not good enough, my friend, please… Please do not just tell me that he no longer lives on the Collina Fleming. Where does he live? Another place in Rome, in Milan, in Frankfurt or Zurich, where? I think, 'Gianni, I have not much time, how could you understand because you are not in Palermo?… I know, I know, we said there was no connection… I know, I know, he attacked because he was persecuted without cause for the blood relationship.
I am blundering in darkness, 'Gianni, I look for any light, however faint. Please, where now is Giuseppe Ruggerio?'
Axel sat in his room.
He heard the widow, the Signora Nasello, moving on the floor below, and he heard her television. The smell of her cooking came into his room.
Axel sat on the bed in his room.
It was a long time since he had felt true fear, but the memory stayed clean. It was back to his fifteenth year, when he had been with his grandfather out on the water of Eagle Harbour, out from Ephraim and towards the distant shape of Chambers Island, and the storm had come fast out of the mist. Gone after the muskie with his grandfather, trolling big spoons from an open boat. The landmass of the Peninsula State Park, and the lighthouse on the Eagle Bluff, had disappeared, so quick. No sight of land, the white wave-caps above grey, cold water. .. The boat pitching, the bilges filled, the spray coming into the boat, the engine failing. He had felt, in his fifteenth year, a true fear then. His grandfather had spent thirty minutes, seemed an eternity, working at the outboard with the cowling off, and had regained the power. Cold, soaked, frightened, his grandfather had brought him back to the jetty at Ephraim, and not remarked on it…
He had not felt fear in La Paz, not when they had hit the firefight on the estancia airstrip. He had not felt fear when he had been called in by the big guys in Washington and told, serious and heavy, that a video of him arriving at the Grand Jury hearing to testify had been picked up in a house search down in Colombia's city of Cali…
Axel sat on the bed in his room and, with a handkerchief, he wiped each moving part of his dismantled pistol.
He felt the fear because he was alone. The guys in La Paz, the guys in New York, the guys at Headquarters and the guys on the Via Sardegna would have, he reckoned, bet money that Axel Moen didn't know true fear – they would have bet their shirts and their salaries. The bastards didn't know… Couldn't call 'Vanni, he had bad-mouthed 'Vanni.
Couldn't call 'Vanni to tell him that he understood the story of the general who wanted the comfort of having his arm held because he had pissed all over that story. Couldn't call 'Vanni to tell him that he might be under surveillance, and might not, couldn't tell him that he had shit fear because a middle-aged man on the far side of the street had changed caps and then stood in a window and eyed ladies' clothes. He was too goddam proud to be laughed at, as 'Vanni would have laughed at him. The fear held him…
When he had reassembled the pistol he cleared the magazines and let the bullet shells lie on the coverlet of the bed, and then he began carefully to reload the magazines.
She would have understood. If she had been beside him, sitting with him on the bed, he could have told her. He could have said, slow, to her, that he apologized for the bullshit he had given her about being strong. He could have said that it was the tactic to use smart talk to toughen her, and he could have held her hand and talked to her of his fear. He could have kissed her forehead and her eyes and talked about his fear and his loneliness. She'd know the agony of fear. She would be in the villa, and maybe sitting on her bed, and maybe her fingers ran on the face of the watch against the skin of her wrist. The world seemed to him, to Axel, to close around him, as the darkness had closed on him when he had come back from the terrace behind the duomo, when he had made all the clever moves that the instructors predicted would be used by a target under surveillance in a floating box, when he had failed to confirm the tail… He saw her face.
She was in the garden behind the bungalow, and on the cliff near to her home. She was by the river in Rome. She was on the pavement in Palermo and bleeding. She was on the beach and dressing. He saw the frightened bravery on her face. He wanted to be sick. He felt, never before, that he despised himself. She should not have been asked.. . She might be on the patio in the darkness or in her room, alone. She might be with the family, living the lie. She would have the fear, as he had the fear. He shivered.
He reloaded the pistol with the filled magazine, and he pocketed the other magazines. The guys would be at the airport. He could not be at the airport as he had been instructed, because, maybe, he had a tail on him. He thought he knew why they came.
'Is this the way you normally do business?'
'Don't bad-mouth me.'
'Your man said we'd be met.'
'I heard it, like you heard it.'
'Well, where's the welcoming delegation. Where is he?'
'I don't know.'
And Dwight Smythe, again, looked around him. It had been the last flight of the evening into Punta Raisi Airport from Rome. The passengers had gone, gone with their baggage. Policemen watched them, and check-in girls, and porters. They stood in the middle of the Arrivals hall. Harry Compton wouldn't have admitted it, not willingly, wild horses to drag it from him, but he was frightened. Because he was actually frightened, he sneered at the American.
Dwight Smythe, honest, said, 'It's kind of threatening, isn't it? It's just an airport, it's just like any other goddam airport, but you feel sort of sick in the gut. I mean, it's a place you've heard about, read about, seen on the TV, and you're here and your greeter doesn't show and you're kind of scared… When I was at Quantico, where we train, years back, there was a professor who talked to us, Public Affairs, he said, '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.' I just push paper, don't aim to get onto the battleground, it's why I'm scared.'
'Thanks.'
'One more thing, but it's worth saying. You gave your evaluation of that kid -
'brilliant, stubborn, tough' – but that doesn't justify what was asked of her. This war's going nowhere, it can't be won. Sending her was a gesture, and that's not right, gestures are lousy. You scared?'
He hesitated. He nodded.
Harry Compton was frightened because he had spent six hours the previous evening, gone on until the street
