He had expected a head sunk in disappointment, and an exhortation to greater vigilance, but the magistrate merely shrugged. Giancarlo believed it possible that he had interrupted the preparations for the celebration of a birthday because one of the ragazzi was at the table beside the draped curtains and was cleaning glasses and another of the ragazzi, while Giancarlo spoke, carried in two bottles of champagne.
He believed, with his talk of failure, he intruded.
The helicopter came over her.
It came in from the sea, a thunder of noise, and Charley caught at Francesca and lifted her from the water and held her close. She could see, very clearly, the figure in the open hatch door of the helicopter, the face covered by a mask with eyeslits, the legs dangling, the machine-gun that covered her. She held the child as if to protect her, and she did not realize that the plastic water- ring drifted away from her, driven by the rotor blades of the helicopter. She followed the curved flight of the helicopter that was painted in a livery of midnight blue with the big white lettering, CARABINIERE, across the cabin and broken by the opened hatch. She watched the helicopter go stationary, hovering, like one of the big hawks on the cliffs near her home. She looked for the prey of the helicopter.
Oh, Christ. God, no…
Through the water, across the wet sand, across to the tideline and to the towels laid on the plastic sheet. Small Mario stood alone and the sand was whipped around him.
The helicopter edged on, was above the esplanade and the deep foliage of the pine trees that wavered as if a gale hit them. She carried Francesca, she tried to run through the water and was stumbling and pitching. The helicopter was facing her, a predator. The water splashed around her, and once she fell and the water was in her mouth and nose and Francesca was crying out loud. She ran towards small Mario. There was a loudspeaker shouting at them but she could not hear the words above the helicopter engine. She saw the couple who kissed, the boys who had the transistor, the couple who read magazines, and they all stood and they all, as if commanded, had their hands on their heads. She did not have her watch and she did not know how long she had been with Francesca in the water, how long she had left small Mario with his football on the sand. She burst from the water. Her feet gripped the wet sand and gave her speed. She could see the men who waited in the shadow of the trees.
Beyond small Mario and the couples and the boys with the transistor that still shouted music, under the trees, were men and women still as statues and children clutching them and weeping, and men in black overalls and balaclavas holding stubbed guns. She saw Axel Moen…
She reached small Mario. He held her wrist-watch limply in his hands. The boy gazed, frightened, at the helicopter, at the men with the guns.
Charley took the watch, took it gently, from small Mario's hands. l; rom the shadows under the pine trees, from among the men with guns, Axel Moen gazed at her.
Said quietly, as if she were back in the classroom of 2B and not wanting to drive a child to silence, 'What did you do with my watch?'
Said distant and quavering, 'Poppa is in England. Poppa said it was one hour behind Sicily in England. I tried to make the time where Poppa is.'
'You should have asked me. I would have made it the time where Poppa is.'
'I tried the buttons, I could not make it work to Poppa's time.'
She put Francesca down. Charley said to the boy, 'We have to go home. Please, Mario, fold up the towels.'
She faced Axel Moen. She made small gestures. She reeled from the humiliation.
She held the watch, she placed it on her wrist and snapped the clasp shut. She was too far from him to see the expression on his face, and the face was in shadow, but she thought that she saw his mind. She pointed to small Mario as he knelt and dutifully folded the towels. She had failed Axel Moen and the men with guns and the men who flew the helicopter. She crossed her hands, uncrossed them, crossed them again, it was over, it was finished. She took the big towel and started to rub dry the body of Francesca, and in her bikini she was shivering. She saw Axel Moen speak to a man beside him, and the man spoke into a radio. Charley wrapped the big towel around Francesca and dressed her under the towel. The helicopter came overhead, flew out above the sea, then turned towards Monte Pellegrino and Palermo. When it was gone, when she could hear the boys' transistor again, when she had put the towel around her own body and was wriggling out of her bikini, she looked again towards the pine trees beyond the beach. They were no longer there. She shed the bikini top and the bikini bottom. She could not see the men with the guns and the balaclavas. She dragged on her pants and buttoned her skirt, and the towel fell from her as she lifted on her blouse. She could not see Axel Moen. The sun of the late afternoon caught at the skin of her arms and her shoulders, at the whiteness of her breasts… Hey, Charley, enough of the damn crawl. Hey, Charley, he was out there, and he was waiting, and he came running.
'Come on, Mario, time for home, time for tea. Come on.'
'What was it for, the helicopter?'
Charley said, 'They have to do exercises, have to do practice and training. It keeps them busy. It's something to tell your mother, that you saw the carabineri on a training exercise. You won't learn to swim, you know, not by playing football'
Hey, Charley, that's power. He came running.
He put down the telephone. He sat for a moment, very still.
In the room with him were Pasquale and the driver of the chase car and the one who rode in the chase car with the machine-gun on his lap, and they had all been caught with the infection of his excitement. He sat for a moment with his head buried in his hands.
They knew. He did not have to tell them.
He said, 'You know, when Riina was caught, when he had been brought to the barracks, when he realized that he was not in the hands of his enemies but only of the state, he wanted to be told who was in charge. It was at that moment important to him to know that he spoke to the senior man, important to his dignity. Santapaolo, when he was held, he congratulated the arresting officer that he would be on TV that night, as if he would be famous for a day. Leoluca Bagarella, when he was trapped, was said to be in a condition of shock, as if punched on the end of the nose and stunned. I wanted to know how he would be, Mario Ruggerio. For an hour I have sat here and I have allowed myself the fantasy of considering how he would be when I walked into the interrogation room to confront him. It was my hour of vanity. Pasquale, I do not think we require the glasses, and I do not think we will be drinking champagne – would you, please, take them out because they remind me of one hour of vanity. It is hard not to believe that we snatch at stars… Right, I have work, you should leave me.'
Pasquale carried the unused glasses through the armour-plated door of the magistrate's office, and the driver of the chase car followed him with the two bottles of champagne. He had not told his wife about the flowers, their rejection, but he would tell her of the bottles that were not opened and the glasses that were not dirtied. He felt an idiot because there was moist dew at his eyes. Perhaps the driver of the chase car saw the damp gleam in his eyes.
'What do we do with the champagne?' Pasquale asked briskly.
'Keep it for the funeral,' the driver of the chase car said, impassive.
'What funeral?'
'His, yours, ours.' There was a growled laugh from the driver of I lie chase car. The other men of the team were around the table in the corridor. They mocked Pasquale, as if he were an idiot for their sport.
'What sort of shit is that?'
Coolly, the driver of the chase car said, 'Don't you know anything? Don't you listen to the radio? Don't you have ears? Worry less about flowers and listen more. Once, in Palermo, there was a jeweller who sold fine stones and necklaces and watches from Switzerland, and he had a great fear of thieves, so he protected the window of his shop with armour-plated glass. One night a car drove slowly past the shop front, and half a magazine from a Kalashnikov assault rifle was fired at the window. High-velocity rounds. And the window was broken, but the car did not stop, nothing was taken. A few days later, from the same Kalashnikov, the same make of bullets, a mafioso who rode in his car that was fitted with armour-plated glass was shot dead. The attack on the jeweller's shop was merely to test whether the bullets of a Kalashnikov could pierce reinforced glass.'