The deal was concluded. The papers would go to the lawyers for fine analysis, then the bank in New York would move the money, then the operations manager would move on site. Peppino said when he would next be in New York… dinner… yes, dinner, and he thanked them.
Peppino looked up at the clock on the wall, cursed. Angela was never punctual, and they were to be at the opera. As a trustee it was necessary for him to be at a first night of the Politeama's spring programme.
He called to the outer room, to his secretary. She should telephone Angela. She should remind Angela at what time she should drive into the city, what time she should be in the Piazza Castelnuovo. A wry smile, cool, on his face. No excuse for Angela not to come, because he gave her everything, the brooch of diamonds that she would wear that evening, and he had given her the little English mouse to watch the children.
Charley carried the baby, easily, as if it were her own. She came off the patio as Angela was putting down the telephone.
Charley said, 'Please, Angela, I would like to go for a walk later.'
'Where?'
Down to the Saracen tower beside the harbour. 'Just into the town.'
'Why?'
To press the panic pulse button for a test transmission. 'Because I haven't been in the town. It would be nice to walk by the sea.'
'When?'
Told to send the transmission in an hour and ten minutes. 'I thought it would be nice in an hour or so.'
'Can't you go now?'
The time was fixed by Axel Moen. 'It's too hot now. I think it would be nicer in an hour.'
'Some other time. I have to go with Peppino to the opera. I have to leave in less than two hours. Another time.'
They would be waiting for the signal to be sent in an hour and ten minutes, waiting with their earphones, twisting the receiver's dials to the UHF frequency. 'I'll be here when you go out.'
'Charley, the children, and Mauro, they have to be fed, they have to be bathed, they have to be put to bed.'
'I can do all that, don't you worry. I'll take piccolo Mario and Francesca and baby Mauro with me. They'll like to walk when it's not so hot. You don't have to worry about them, it's what I've come for, to help you.'
Charley tried to smile away the unhappiness of Angela Ruggerio. She did not know the cause of the sadness. She was not the woman Charley had known in Rome, the woman who laughed and talked and lay on the beach without the top to her bikini. She did not recognize the new woman.
'Perhaps…'
'You should have a rest. Lie down. Don't think about the children, that's for me, that's why I'm here.' Here to send panic-pulse transmissions, here to spy, here to break open a family's life and to smash the parts…
They were beyond the height to which the shepherds brought the Hocks and herds.
From Monte Cuccio they could see, direct line of sight, to Monte Castellacio and on to Monte Gallo, and when they turned away from the swaying antennae and looked down the scree slope, and on past the track's limit where the jeep had been left, there was the ridge line of yellow-grey rock that lay above Monreale. One more set of antennae, on that ridge, and they would have made the boosted microwave link from Mondello to the aerial on the roof of the carabineri barracks.
'Vanni Crespo asked, gulping air, panting, 'It's good?'
The technician pouted. 'If a signal is transmitted, on the frequency you have given me, from Mondello, then it will be received in Monreale.'
He scrambled down the scree slope, slipping and falling, and when he was on his feet, 'Vanni ran for the jeep.
Anxiety furrowed the wide forehead of Mario Ruggerio. His fingers tapped restlessly at the keys of the Casio calculator.
The figures, the lire totals, were worse than they had been a year ago.
Losses, that column, stood at forty billion a month, the calculation for income was down 17 per cent on the previous year and these were the balance-sheet figures that were held in his mind. His estimate of outgoings was up by 21 per cent. Each time he played the figures onto the calculator's screen the answer came the same, and unwelcome.
He sat at his table in the drab room on the first floor of the house in the Capo district.
The figures were estimates, given him by an accountant from Palermo.
He wrote occasional words, with figures beside the words that he ringed. He had written 'decline in public works expenditure': the new Government in Rome no longer poured money into the Sicilian infrastructure for roads and dams and the administration offices for the island. He had written 'legal fees', and the estimate was that four thousand Men of Honour, from the members of the cupola to the sotto capi and the consiglieri and the capodecini and right down to the level of the picciotti, were in custody and must receive the best legal representation – if they did not receive the best, and if their families were not supported then there was the chance of men taking the foul option of joining the bastard pentiti. He had written 'asset seizure', and the figure for the previous twelve months stood, in his careful hand, at 3,600 billion for the state's sequestration of property and bonds and accounts, and the calculator, purring through fast additions and multiplications and divisions and subtractions, told him that 'asset seizure' was already up in the first months of the year by 28 per cent. He had written
'narcotics', and there the figure was down because the habits of addicts had changed to the more recent creation of chemically based tablets, and the organization did not have control of the supply of such products as the LSD and amphetamine range. He had written 'co-operation', the payment each year to politicians and policemen and magistrates and the revenue investigators, and the figure alongside the word was five hundred billion. He thought the words and the figures were the result of three years of drift. The drift had begun with the capture of Salvatore Riina, and had continued while others had scratched eyes and killed in their attempts to succeed him as capo di tutti capi. When he had control, full control of the organization, then the drift would be halted.
He lit his cigar, and coughed, and he held the flame of his lighter against the sheet of paper on which he had written the words and the figures. He coughed again, deeper in his throat, and tried to lift the phlegm.
Axel saw her.
He sat on the warm concrete of the pier and he looked across the curve of the bay towards the dun tower that was, he guessed, four hundred metres from him.
He saw her, and in his mind she was Codename Helen. She had no other identification. He stripped her, as he gazed across the bay at her, of personality and of humanity. She was the Confidential Informant that he used.
Axel sat with his legs casually dangling over the edge of the pier and the water lapped below his feet. Around him were small fishing boats and men working at the repair of their nets and at the tuning of boats' engines. He ignored their solemn faces, walnut-coloured from salt spray and the sun's strength. He watched her.
The small boy ran ahead of her the moment they were across the road and she released his hand. A small girl clutched the side of the pram that Codename Helen pushed. There was a bright awning on the pram to shelter a baby from the brilliance of the late afternoon light. It was so normal. It was what Axel might have seen beside any bay on the island, on any esplanade above the gold of any beach. A hired help, a nanny and a child-minder, pushed a pram and escorted two small children. He had good eyesight, no need of spectacles, and he could see her face as a whitened blur. He had reckoned that binoculars could draw attention to himself; without binoculars he could not see the detail of her face, did not know whether she was calm or whether she was stressed.