was ignored. He heard the man say that he had been able to come earlier than he had expected, so he had come. He was from the team that guarded the mayor, and the mayor had flown to Rome. Pasquale thought the circle was again joined, as it had not been when he was a part of the team. The maresciallo stood in the outer door to the yard and the replacement came to him and held up his hand for the maresciallo to smack with his own, as if an old and dear friendship was renewed.
'Am I needed? Am I wanted?' Pasquale felt the depth of humiliation.
The maresciallo looked over the shoulder of the replacement. 'I think the cars are full. Take a bus, Pasquale, to the Questura and they will find you something to do.'
Pasquale bit at his lip. He went to the lead car and he took from the floor his machine-gun, with the magazines, and his vest. He gave them to the replacement. He was not thanked. The replacement to the team would have been told that there was a boy who was inefficient, whose inefficiency endangered them all. The replacement had a hard face. There was no fear in the face. Pasquale wondered whether the replacement had a wife, had children, wondered whether the replacement had volunteered to travel with the 'walking corpse'.
He walked away. Behind him was laughter, as if an old story was told from old times.
He went out through the gates of the yard. He walked past the policemen and the soldiers who guarded the gates. He walked under the walls of Ucciardione Prison. He saw a heavy- built man with slicked oiled hair leaning against the door of the bar on the far side of the street who talked into a mobile telephone.
He turned into the Via delle Croci. He passed a young woman. She wore a shapeless grey skirt. She stood with her mother. She waved a handkerchief. She shouted at the wall and at the cell block behind the wall. He wondered if it were her lover or her husband or her brother who was held in the cell block. He passed a cat that gnawed at bones from a rubbish bag. He passed a woman who was bent under the weight of her shopping bags, and two businessmen who walked arm in arm and who both talked and did not listen to the other. He passed the flower stall. He heard, away behind him, the starting of the siren wail. He walked on the pavement of the Via delle Croci, beside the tight line of parked cars and vans and motorcycles.
He did not turn. He did not wish to see the car of the magistrate and the chase car. He could not shut out from his mind the sirens' call.
He heard, behind him, the scream of the tyres as the cars turned into the Via delle Croci.
He passed a man. The man had the face of a peasant from the fields, the clothes of a businessman from the office. The man tapped the numbers of a mobile telephone.
The cars came from behind Pasquale.
The replacement was in the passenger seat of the magistrate's car, was in Pasquale's seat. There was the back of the maresciallo's head, there was the screen at the back window, there was the chase car, and he saw the tension on the old, worn faces of the driver and the passenger. He saw the cars accelerating away from him and they would have seen him on the pavement, all of the bastards would have seen him, and there had been no wave, no kindness.
Pasquale saw the flash.
In the moment after the flash there was the flying debris.
Pasquale saw the flying debris break against the magistrate's car and toss it.
The magistrate's car was lifted. It was thrown clear across the road and over the parked cars and vans and motorcycles, over the pavement. The magistrate's car hammered into a wall.
There was the thunder roar and the spurting dust cloud, and then the crash of the debris landing and the fall of glass in shards. The chase car was stopped in the centre of the road and then the dust cloud claimed it.
He had no telephone. His mind was a flywheel. He must telephone.
He had passed a man with a telephone.
He turned. There was no man with a peasant's face, with the clothes of the office.
He understood. The pistol was in the holster strapped across his chest. He had walked past the man who had detonated the bomb. He had seen the man, he had had the power to stop the man, and the man was gone. He shook. The whimper was in his throat. The silence was around him. He wanted to howl to the world his acknowledgement of failure. His body trembled.
Pasquale walked forward.
He went by the chase car and he heard the screaming of the driver into the car's radio.
He stepped over the debris of the disintegrated car. He walked past the magistrate's car that rested, shattered, upside down, and he did not look to see the magistrate, nor did he look for the body of the maresciallo, nor did he look for the face of the replacement.
He went by the fire and the smoke. He was not a part of it, he did not belong to the team.
He thought he knew why he had been dismissed from the team. The tears streamed on the face of Pasquale. He walked towards his home. He walked briskly, did not bother to wipe the tears from his cheeks, did not bother to stop for apologies when he cannoned into an old dumpy man who stopped to light a cigarillo. He hurried to his wife and to his baby because he knew why he had been dismissed from the team.
Some saw the white heat of the flash, and some heard the thunder roar of the detonation, and some saw the smoke climb above the rooftops of the city, and some heard of the killing when the lunchtime programmes of the RAI were interrupted.
The city learned of the bomb.
There would be, in the city, a manifestation of shock and a wailing of despair, and there would be, also, a charge of raw excitement. The excitement would, as through the history of the city, overwhelm the sensations of shock and despair.
The city knew the story. A man had been ridiculed and isolated and destroyed. The story was written through the history of Palermo.
At the newspaper stand, where the Via delle Croci met the Piazza Crispi, Mario Ruggerio had stood with Franco. He had watched. He had seen the blue lights and he had heard the sirens. He had seen the flash of light and he had heard the thunder roar.
He had watched until the grey-yellow dust cloud had masked the street. He had made no comment. He had gone on his way. On the Via Constantino Nigra, a young man who wept had buffeted against him and hurried on. They came in a cavalcade of noise past him, the fire engines and the ambulances and the cars of the carabineri and the squadra mobile and the vigili urbani and the polizia municipale, and if he noticed them he gave no clue of it to Franco. Franco told him of the arrangements made for that evening, for celebration… Near to the Villa Trabia, he looked for a bench that was empty and he sat upon it. He sent Franco to get him a coffee from the stall.
His power was absolute. His authority was confirmed. He was the new capo di tutti capi. Across the continents of the world, that night, a thousand million people would see on their television screens the evidence of his power and of his authority…
Tano came. He told Tano that he was pleased. He smiled at Tano, and he gripped Tano's hand, and he saw the pleasure ripple over Tano's face.
Carmine came and whispered congratulations in his ear. Carmine told him that the American was now hidden at the barracks in Monreale. He felt the flush of invincibility. He gave his instructions.
Franco and Tano and Carmine were around the short and pasty-faced old man who sat in the heat of the sun. He gave them his opinion. There would be a week of denunciation and of demonstrations in the street, there would be a month of demands for more powerful legislation against the organization, and normality would return.
They competed to agree with him.
He said he was tired. He said that he wished to rest before the celebrations of the evening. He should be refreshed for the evening when he would receive the congratulations of his family, when he gathered his family, his strength, around him.
He believed himself invulnerable.
'Get him out tonight.'
'Put him on the plane this evening.'
'Vanni said, 'We have to clear his apartment, get his things. We can have him ready for the late flight.'
Axel slept. He lay on the bed in the barracks room, and above him was the portrait of the general, and beside him was the photograph of the teenage girl. He was sprawled on the bed. They moved around him, and they drank 'Vanni Crespo's whisky.
'Like, sure as hell, to go with him, but I can't,' Dwight said.
