'Did I?'
'You must have, because they rang to say there was an escorted tour of the cathedral this afternoon – they hoped you would come. Three o'clock.'
She didn't think. Charley said, 'Can't, not then. The children have to be picked up.'
She saw the puzzled frown of Angela, the confusion. There was no make-up on Angela's face, she did not use cosmetics until the evening, until Peppino came home.
Without make-up, Angela's face was easier to read because the worry lines and the frown lines were sharper. The talk, the confessional, beside the washing-line had not been referred to again, as if it had never happened. Angela stared at her.
T think you should go. I will do the children. It is good that you should make friends here, Charley. When you came to Rome you were a child, you were from school. You have come back, you are a woman, you have a job. I worry for you, Charley. I say, and I do not understand why does a young woman come back here, leave her home and leave her job, to do the work of a child. Why? You have eyes, you have ears and senses, you know what sort of family we are. We are not a house of happiness. Each day, every day you are here, I wait for you to come to me to say that you wish to go home. Why are you here? What have we to offer you, Charley?'
Charley tried to laugh. 'Right, culture beckons. God, I'll have to catch up on the guidebook. It's very kind of you, Angela, to get the children.'
She went into the bedrooms. It was an escape, making the beds. He had said that she should never relax, never be complacent with her security. When she had finished the bed in small Mario's room she sat on it, and she held tight at her wrist so that her fist enveloped the watch… At the end of the service in the Anglican church on Mariano Stabile, the chaplain had listed the forthcoming activities of the parish – a jumble sale, a bring-and-buy sale, choir practice, an outing to the Valle dei Templi at Agrigento – but no mention of a visit with a guide to the cathedral in Palermo. She understood. She took the broom and began, methodically, to sweep the floor of small Mario's room.
The wind came off the sea. The hot air of the wind blew hard through the coils of the razor wire topping the walls, and it howled in the watchtowers, and it eddied over the compound where the helicopter waited. Salvatore Ruggerio, in prison uniform, was handcuffed to a carabiniere soldier before the barred gate to the compound was unlocked. Under the terms of Article 41 II (1992) he was subject to 'harsh prison regime'. He must wear uniform for the flight, he must be handcuffed at all times. He had made a droll joke as the handcuff was snapped on his wrist. Did they think he was going to run away? Did they think that over the sea he would open the hatch door and jump? Did they think he intended to jump into the sea and then walk away over the sea?
They had all laughed with him, the carabineri and the prison staff, because it was always wise to laugh at the humour of a 'harsh regime' prisoner. The safety of themselves, of their families, could not be guaranteed if they made an enemy of a 'harsh regime' prisoner such as Salvatore Ruggerio. And he joked more with them. He said to them that, for certain, the judges would find him innocent of the charges laid against him, murder and extortion and intimidation, and that he was confident of release. Other charges of which he had been convicted, murder and extortion and intimidation, would be set aside. He would be disappointed not to meet with them again. They had all laughed at his joke… He walked slowly, his own pace, across the compound, and the young carabiniere handcuffed to him did not hurry the brother of Mario Ruggerio. He was pasty, pale-faced from eight years in the cells. A prison official walked behind him, carrying his small suitcase that held his clothes for the court appearance. He was already sentenced to life imprisonment; when he was tried again in the bunker of Ucciardione he could expect only further life sentences. As was right for a man of his age, he was helped up into the military helicopter. The handcuff on his wrist was now shackled to the iron frame of the cot seat. He listened with indifference as the loader recited the emergency landing procedures, and the procedures if they splashed down over water. Ear baffles were carefully slipped onto his head. They would fly from the island prison of Asinara, across Sardinia to the airforce base at Cagliari, refuel there, then take the long haul of three hundred kilometres over the sea to Palermo, and he would sleep.
They had come from the garage. In the garage was the car taken from outside an apartment block in Sciacca. The car was now fitted with new registration plates, and the bomb was laid on the back seat of the car and was covered by a rug.
They had come from the garage, and they stood on the junction of the narrow Via delle Croci, where it was crossed by the Via Ventura. It was important to Mario Ruggerio that he should see the place for himself. He walked round the delivery van that kept the space on the Via delle Croci.
He saw it for himself, and was satisfied. Tano told him, with detail, that most times when the magistrate came away from Ucciardione he was driven up the Via delle Croci.
He passed no comment. Standing at the back of the van he could look down the street to the walls of the prison… His opinion, there would be a week of ferocious denunciation, a week of demonstrations in the streets, a week of politicians queuing to enter television studios, and then the silence would fall. For a week, he could live with the clamour… His opinion, a signal would be sent through Sicily and Italy, and the signal would be read by his people in Germany and France, the signal would reach New York and London, and the signal would travel to Cali and Medellfn and to Tokyo and to Hong Kong, to Moscow and Grozny. It was necessary that it was understood, by means of the signal, that a new power ruled in Palermo.
He asked Franco where should be the celebration for his family – in Palermo, in the country, in a hotel or a restaurant or a villa.. .?
The telephone bleeped in the inside pocket of Carmine's jacket.
He said, dry, 'It'll be the death of you, that thing, as it has been the death of many.'
Carmine listened. The call was a few seconds in length and coded. The city was divided into numbered squares for the code, and principal buildings or landmarks inside the squares had been allocated separate numbers, and the name of the American in the code was a single letter of the alphabet.
'Or the life of me, or the life of you,' Carmine said.
Now Mario Ruggerio checked again with Tano as to the hour in the night when the delivery van would be driven away and replaced among the parked vehicles by the car in the garage that had been taken from Sciacca.
Carmine hurried, in the few seconds' length of the coded call he had heard the urgency of the tail. He waddled, his short and thick legs striding quickly, towards where his car was parked.
In the garden outside the sweat had run on him. Inside the cathedral it seemed to freeze on his back. Dwight had followed the Englishman through the low arched door, and maybe six times in the last five minutes he had glanced down at his watch. They stood at the back and the Englishman leafed through the pages of a guidebook he'd bought, as if to hold the cover it was necessary to do the tourist thing.
He could see Axel Moen. He had been there before them. Dwight Smythe could see the back of Axel Moen and there was light on his hair that fell below his shoulder line.
There was a tremor in the Englishman's voice, like he was frightened, like they both were…
'Do you know, this pile was started by an Englishman. He was archbishop here. He was Gualtiero Offamiglio, which is Walter of the Mill. Do you know, he started putting this lot together exactly 810 years ago? Think on it. I mean, what sort of journey was it from England to here, 810 years ago? Forget the building, just getting here was incredible-'
'Can you leave it?'
'I was only saying that it was-'
'I was saying, cut the shit.'
He was supposed to push paper and balance a budget and keep the leave charts tidy.
He wasn't supposed to stand with the sweat freezing on his back and on his gut to watch an agent meet with an informer. Dwight Smythe liked church, but he liked church that was simple. He went with his wife each Sunday to a Baptist place up in London's Highgate, where the middle classes of the Anglo- African community came, where they sang loud to lift a low roof. The cathedral wasn't his place. The Baptist church that he knew was a place of safety and light – and, hell, here it was danger, it was grey darkness. He watched Axel Moen's back. Up ahead of Axel Moen, where the light pierced from high windows and made a many-coloured tapestry of cones, was a group of tourists. Further ahead of Axel Moen, young unseen voices, was a choir practising.
The Englishman whispered, 'I think that's her.' He made a small gesture. Dwight Smythe followed the line of the pointed finger. There was a young woman walking slowly down the central aisle. At times the light shafted
