Malavita (5 page)

Still ten minutes till the lunch bell. Belle was getting impatient – she wanted to see Warren. He was the only one she could complain to, he who had long since given up complaining himself about this curse they lived under. She went back into the main building and sat down on the ground, opposite the classroom where her brother was having a history lesson.

Since early childhood, Warren had had an annoying habit of picking and choosing his educational options. By carefully planning for his adult life he had made a certain number of choices, making it possible, in his view, to concentrate only on essentials. For him the only two subjects which deserved a little of his attention were history and geography. The first was out of respect for his origins, the second in order to defend his territory. He had always felt the need to understand how the world worked, and how it had been organized before he was born. Even back in Newark he had been curious about his background, his descent, the history of his history. Where had his family come from and why had it left Europe? How had America become the United States? Why did his Australian cousins have that weird accent? How come the Chinese had built Chinatowns all over the world? Why had the Russians now got their own Mafia? The more answers he could get, the better he would be able to run the empire he intended to reconquer. Other subjects? What other subjects? Grammar was for lawyers, maths was for accountants and gym was for bodyguards.

The year's curriculum included, amongst other things, a brief overview of international relations before the Second World War, and the main events of the War itself throughout Europe. That morning the teacher had described the rise of fascism in Italy and the way in which Mussolini had seized power.

“The march on Rome took place in 1922, and Mussolini took over the government. In 1924, after the assassination of the socialist Matteotti, he became dictator. He installed a totalitarian state in Italy and, dreaming of a colonial empire built on the model of ancient Rome, sent troops off to conquer Ethiopia. When France and Great Britain condemned his African invasions, he drew closer to the German Führer. He supported Franco's troops during the Spanish Civil War. He met with no more opposition until the end of the War. At the same time, in France . . .”

History continued its march under the bored eyes of twenty pupils more interested in thoughts of the Friday lunch of fried fish. It was even warmer than the day before, one of those days when summer seems to have come early. Concerned with historical accuracy, Warren raised his hand.

“And what do you make of Operation Striptease?”

The word “striptease” at this unexpected moment made the class sit up, wide awake now. All saw it as a splendid and timely intervention – they expected no less from the little new boy who had managed to control boys three times his size.

“What do you mean?”

“You said that Mussolini met with no opposition until the end of the War. What about Operation Striptease?”

The lunch bell rang, but everybody miraculously remained seated. Mr Morvan had no objection to learning something on his own subject from a pupil, and asked Warren to carry on.

“I think I'm right in saying that the Americans planned to land in Sicily by 1943. At the time the CIA knew that the only anti-fascist force in the country was the Mafia. The boss was Don Calogero Vizzini, and he had sworn to kill the
Duce
. The Americans wanted him to take charge of the landings, but to get that to happen they had to get into Lucky Luciano's good books, and he had just been sentenced to fifty years for tax evasion in the toughest prison in the United States.”

Warren knew perfectly well what happened next, but he pretended to search his memory. Mr Morvan urged him on; he was both intrigued and amused. Warren wondered if he hadn't gone too far.

“They got him out of prison, put him in the uniform of a US army lieutenant and took him to Sicily in a submarine, with some Secret Service people. There they met Don Calò, who agreed to prepare the ground for landings three months from then.”

He had hardly finished talking; several of his classmates rushed out, others asked questions, thrilled that a gangster could have played a part in helping the Allies. Warren claimed not to know any more; he may have had an interest in obscure corners of American history, but he preferred to pass over certain details in silence. When the boys asked him what had become of Luciano, Warren heard another question: could a criminal end up in the history books?

“If you're interested, there are plenty of Internet sites that tell the whole story,” he said, as he left the classroom.

Mr Morvan called him back, and waited until the room was empty.

“Is that your father?”

“What do you mean, my father?”

Warren had almost shouted. What on earth had made him talk about the exploits of Luciano himself, his greatest idol after Capone? How many times had Quintiliani exhorted them to avoid sensitive subjects, whatever the circumstances? They had been expressly forbidden to mention the Mafia, or its American affiliate that originated in Sicily, the Cosa Nostra. Just for the sake of showing off in class, Warren had probably condemned his family to take to the road again only a month after their arrival.

“I gather your father's a writer, and he's come to Cholong to work on a book about the Second World War? Did he tell you all this?”

The boy grabbed the lifeline that was being held out; his father had saved his bacon. A father who didn't know a single date, not those of the Second World War any more than his children's birthdays, a father who would be incapable of drawing a map of Sicily, or even of being able to say why Luciano was called Lucky. But his status as a self-proclaimed author had pulled his son out of an awkward moment.

“He tells me some things, but I don't remember it all.”

“What became of Luciano after that?”

Warren realized that there was no escape.

“He started the great heroin pipeline that still pours into the United States.”

*

At the beginning of the afternoon Maggie began gathering her strength to embark on preparations for the barbecue to which Fred had invited the whole neighbourhood.
What better way to get to know them, eh, Maggie? To blend in, get accepted?
She was forced to agree – going out to meet the neighbours would spare them a lot of mistrust and create a good atmosphere. But all the same she was suspicious that what her husband really wanted was to live out his new fantasy in public – the fantasy of being a writer.

“Maggie!” He yelled again from the end of the veranda. “Are you making me that tea, yes or no?”

With his elbows resting on either side of his Brother 900, his chin on his crossed fingers, Fred was pondering the mysteries of the semicolon. He knew about the period and the comma, but the semicolon? How could a sentence both come to an end and carry on at the same time? It was creating a blockage in his mind, this idea of an end that could continue, or an interrupted continuity, or the opposite, or something between the two, who knew? Was there anything in life that corresponded to this idea? Blind fear of death mingling with metaphysical hope? What else? A good cup of tea would have helped him to think. Against all probability, Maggie had decided to humour his demand, but only because she wanted to sneak a look at the pages that he had been covering all day. On the whole Fred's crazes never lasted long and usually vanished as fast as they had appeared; this performance he was enacting to himself was different. Fred decided to try out a semicolon.

To see an enemy croak is much more agreeable than making a new friend; who needs new friends?

On reflection, he found the semicolon so unclear, so ambiguous, that he tried to remove the comma with his Tipp-Ex, without touching the period.

Then he heard Maggie's terrible scream.

He got up, knocking his chair over, and tore into the kitchen, where he found his wife standing, horrified, with the kettle in her hand, staring at a thick gush of water from the tap – a brown and muddy liquid, which spread a graveyard stink into the basin.

*

At five o'clock exactly, Maggie completed her list of salads and accompaniments for the barbecue. She only had the coleslaw left to do, and the tureen of ziti, without which no barbecue in Newark was worthy of the name. She stopped for a moment, feeling guilty, looked at her watch, and then glanced over towards the house at number 9, directly opposite theirs. An immobile figure stood silhouetted behind the first-floor window like a papier mâché
trompe l'œil
. She grabbed an aluminium container and filled it with marinated peppers, put a couple of balls of mozzarella in another, and the whole lot into a basket, along with a bottle of red wine, a country loaf, some paper napkins and some knives and forks. She left the house, crossed the road, made a discreet sign to the figure in the window, and went in by the garden entrance. The uninhabited ground floor smelt disused, not having been properly aired by the three new tenants who had moved in at the same time as the Blakes. There was a bedroom for each of them on the first floor, a bathroom with a shower cabinet, a useful laundry room with washer and dryer, and a very large sitting room, which was the centre of operations.

“You must be hungry, boys,” she said.

Lieutenants Richard Di Cicco and Vincent Caputo welcomed her with grateful smiles. Neatly dressed in grey suits and blue shirts, they hadn't spoken a single word for the last two hours. The living room, which was entirely given over to the surveillance of the Blake house, was equipped with a listening table, two pairs of 80/20 binoculars set on tripods, a separate telephone for communication with the United States, and several parabolic microphones of varying strength. There were also two armchairs, a camp bed and a trunk with a locked bolt, which contained a machine gun, a telescopic rifle and two hand guns. Richard, woken up by Maggie's arrival, had been sipping cold tea all afternoon, not thinking about anything, apart from his fiancée, who would now, given the time difference, just be arriving at her airfreight control office at Seattle airport. Vincent, on the other hand, had numbed his fingertips playing his video game. And yes, if it encouraged their visitor, yes, of course, they were hungry.

“What goodies have you got in that basket, Maggie?”

She pulled open the container with the peppers, which was on her knees. The boys were suddenly silent, overcome by foolish emotion. The smell of the garlic-laden olive oil on the peppers took them straight back to their native land. Maggie's gesture reminded them of their mothers. Di Cicco and Caputo clung on to such moments in order not to feel entirely orphaned by having accepted this overseas mission. For the last five years, they had had three weeks' rest and recuperation every two months, and the further they were from the next leave, the more miserable was the expression of homesickness in their faces. Di Cicco and Caputo had committed no crime, had done nothing to deserve such an exile and so little prospect of going home for good. To Maggie they were victims rather than spies snooping on her daily life, and she felt it was her duty to nurture them in the way that only a woman could.

“Marinated peppers just the way you like them, with plenty of garlic.”

Maggie took care of them as though they were her nearest and dearest, which in a sense they quite literally were; they were never more than thirty steps from the front door, and took it in shifts to watch over them at night. They knew the Blake family better than the Blake family knew themselves. One Blake could have secrets from another Blake, but not from Di Cicco and Caputo, and least of all from Quintiliani, their boss.

They shared the food out and ate in silence.

“Did Quintiliani tell you about the barbecue later?”

“Yes, he liked the idea – he may come by at the end of the evening.”

Unlike his agents, Quintiliani was constantly on the move. He went to and fro to Paris, made regular visits to Quantico, the headquarters of the FBI, and sometimes a quick trip to Sicily to coordinate anti-Mafia operations. The Blakes knew nothing about his movements – he would just appear and disappear at moments when they least expected it.

“We should have had a barbecue in Cagnes, got all those nosy people together and got rid of them once and for all,” said Di Cicco.

“Try and come too,” Maggie said. “I've made ziti
and Fred's in charge of the steaks and
salsiccia.
”

“You'll have a lot of people, the whole neighbourhood knows about it.”

“There'll always be enough for you two – you can count on me.”

“Is it still the same olive oil? Can you get it here?” Vincent asked, mopping up the pepper juices.

“I've still got a tin from the little Italian in Antibes.”

There was a short silence at the thought of the shop, La Rotonda, in the old town.

“If anyone had ever told me that one day I'd end up in a country where they eat cream,” said Richard.

“It's not that it's not good, I've got nothing against it, but my stomach isn't used to it,” his colleague added.

“In the restaurant yesterday they put it in the soup, then on the escalope and finally on the apple tart.”

“Not to mention the butter.”

“The butter!
Mannaggia la miseria!
” Vincent exclaimed.

“Butter's not natural, Maggie.”

“What do you mean?”

“The human body wasn't made to absorb such fatty substances. Just thinking of that stuff on my stomach lining makes me sweat.”

“Try the mozzarella instead of talking rubbish.”

Vincent helped himself, but continued on his theme.

“Butter impregnates the tissues, it blocks everything, it hardens, it forms a sediment, it turns your arteries into hockey sticks. Olive oil only touches on your insides and slides through, just leaving its scent.”

“Olive oil is in the Bible.”