When they returned to their buses to drive away from Monreale, the French tourists and the Germans and the Japanese and the English and the Americans knew only of the past, had learned nothing of the present. No guide had told them of the ownership by La Cosa Nostra of the water they had sipped, of the ristorante they had eaten in, of the souvenir trade in religious relics they had boosted. No guide had told them of the priests who had offered hiding places to men of La Cosa Nostra on the run, or of the priests who had perjured themselves in court in offering alibi evidence, or of the priests who had permitted the super-latitanti to use their mobile telephones, or of the priests who said that La Cosa Nostra killed far fewer of God's children than the modern abortionists. No guide had told them of the new carabineri barracks in the town that were the base of the Reparto Operativo Speciale, or shown them the plaque on the wall of the barracks of the polizia municipale in memory of d'Aleo killed by mafiosi and of the plaque in the principal piazza in memory of Vice-Questore Basile killed by mafiosi. The tourists surfeited on history and did not know and did not care to know of present times.
He had the top floor of a widow's house.
She was a tall and elegant woman and wore the traditional black of mourning, but she told Axel Moen that it was six years since her husband, the surveyor, had died. She led him around the apartment – a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom – and in each room her fingers seemed to brush the surfaces for imaginary dust. He used his actual name with her, and he showed her the doctored passport that had come from the resources section back in Washington along with the wrist-watch, and he told her that he was a lecturer at the university in Madison and that his subject- matter was archaeology. She was polite, but she had no interest in digging through the past. The widow, his view, was a fine woman with education and dignity, but she had no complaint when he paid her three months' rental in advance with dollar bills. He thought they might, the dollar bills, go to Switzerland or they might go to a tin under her bed, but sure as hell they would not go onto a tax return form. She treated the payment as if it were a necessary moment of vulgarity and continued the tour of the apartment. She showed him how the shower worked, told him when the water pressure would be high, she took him to a small balcony that looked out over the town and the valley beyond and then to the mountains, and it would be his responsibility to water the potted plants. She gave him the keys of the outer door to the street and of the inner door to the apartment. Perhaps because he wore jeans and an old check shirt, perhaps because he wore his hair long in a pony-tail, she remarked coolly that she expected a
'guest' in her home to be quiet in the evenings, that she should not be disturbed, as she was a light sleeper. She was Signora Nasello. She closed the apartment door behind her.
She left him.
He had sat alone in the chair by the open doors to the balcony, alone with his thoughts, before 'Vanni Crespo came.
They hugged. Their lips brushed the other's cheeks.
They were as kids, as blood brothers.
'It's good?'
'Looks fine.'
'Not easy to find, a place in Monreale…'
'You did well.'
He was short of friends. Friendship did not come welcome to Axel Moen. Friendship was giving…
'You are the spirit of generosity, Mr Moen.'
Not many others, in Italian law enforcement or in the DEA's place on Via Sardegna, cared to goad Axel Moen. Not many others cared to tease or taunt him.
He had learned from his childhood to exist without friends. After the death of his mother, when his father had gone abroad, at the age of eight he had gone to live for five catastrophic months with his mother's parents. They were from the south end of the state, close to Stoughton. They were big in the Lutheran church and ran a hardware store and had forgotten how to win the love of an abandoned child. Five months of screaming confrontation, and beatings, and Axel had been sent on the bus, like preserved cod going to market, like a bale of dried tobacco leaf going to the factory, away up north to his father's father and the 'foreign Jezebel'. There had been no friends at the small farm between Ephraim and Sister Bay. In the tight-bound Norwegian community, his grandfather and his grandfather's second wife were shunned. He was a child living as an outcast. He had learned to live without a friend on the bus taking him to and from the school in Sturgeon Bay, and without a friend to make the long journey with down to Green Bay to see the Packers play. Vincenzina, from far-away Sicily, dark and Catholic, treated as a medieval witch and a danger and a threat, existed alone and taught the young Axel how to ignore isolation. He had learned, alone, to sail a boat and fish and walk with the dog as his company. And Vincenzina had never mastered fully the English language and they had talked an Italian of the Sicilian dialect at home in the farmhouse. They had been, forced to be, their own people. Axel had little trust in friendship.
'Vanni took a Beretta pistol from his waist, and two filled magazines of 9mm bullets from his trouser pocket. He passed them to Axel.
'It's good. I'm an archaeologist. I'm digging for antiquities. I teach at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I'm over for the summer semester. You'd better believe it.'
Axel grinned, and 'Vanni was laughing with him.
Axel had known Giovanni Crespo for a full two years. The first trip with Bill Hammond down to Palermo, called 'front-line acclimatization', they had been assigned the tall and angular-faced carabiniere captain as a guide. Bill had said, and believed it, that any Italian policeman should be treated as a security risk. Two days of whispering between the two Americans until the last night, when the big trip was winding down, and they had gone to ' Vanni's flat and 'Vanni and Bill had drunk themselves half-insensible on Jack Daniel's and Axel had sipped coffee. 'Vanni had been the first Italian Axel had met who said the sociologists and the apologists talked shit about La Cosa Nostra, that the bastards were simple criminals. He had known 'Vanni was worth the trust because it had been 'Vanni who had held the pistol at Riina's head. Salvatore Riina, capo di tutti capi, blocked off in a south Palermo street, and shitting himself and wetting himself, and lying in the gutter with ' Vanni's pistol at his temple as the handcuffs went on his wrists and the blanket went over his head. If a man held a pistol at Salvatore Riina's head, at the squat killer's temple, then Axel had a man who did not compromise. 'Vanni drank, 'Vanni screwed a prosecutor from Trapani and usually in the back of a car, 'Vanni talked too much and didn't know how to protect his back. They were different species, and their friendship was total.
'She's here?'
'She's here, and she's Codename Helen.'
'That was mine, I thought of that one.'
Between the knuckles of his fingers Axel caught a pinch of 'Vanni's cheek. 'She said,
"That is really original – did a genius think up that one?" That's what she said.'
Axel told 'Vanni the detail of the watch with the UHF panic tone, and he told him about the range of the pulse signal.
'Vanni had the maps, large scale, of Mondello on the coast, and of the high points of Monte Gallo and Monte Castellacio and Monte Cuccio, and of Monreale. They marked, bold ink crosses, the high points on which the microwave boosters would be placed.
'What have you told her?'
'When she should use the signal – only at the time of a contact with Mario Ruggerio or at a time of risk to her personal safety.'
'She accepts that?'