Killing Ground Read Online Free PDF Page B

are my parents.'
    'It would be easier in private, if you wouldn't mind . . .'
    'Who are you?'
    'I am Axel Moen, from the American embassy.'
    'I've no business with your embassy, private or not.'
    'It would be better, private.'
    She could have backed off then, but she did not. He pulled his shoulders back, consciously, to fill the kitchen doorway. He held her with his eyes. They talked on the courses about body language and eye-to-eye contact. The body language was domination and the eye contact was authority. She could have said that it was in front of her parents or not at all . . . She pushed her chair back, scraped it over the vinyl floor of mock terracotta tiles. She stood her full height, then as an afterthought she stuffed the half slice of bread and margarine into her mouth, then she swigged at her mug of tea, then she wiped the sleeve of her sweater across her lips. She was moving from the table.
    Axel said, 'You received a letter, Miss Parsons, please bring it with you.'
    She rocked, quick, fast. Her eyes blinked. She swayed, but she did as he asked her because he had the domination and authority. She picked up the letter and the torn-open envelope and she walked past her mother and father, her own person. She went past him as if he did not exist, and her face was set. She led into the living room and snapped on the light in the standard lamp and cleared the morning paper off the sofa, waved for him to sit. She took the chair beside the fire. She held the letter and the envelope tight in her hands. He tried to judge her, to measure whether it was bravado, whether it was an inner toughness.
    'Well?'
    'You are Charlotte Eunice Parsons, teacher?'
    'Yes.'
    'You are twenty-three years old?'
    'How's that of interest to the American embassy?'
    'I'm asking the questions, Miss Parsons. Please answer them.' 'I am twenty-three years old. Do you need to know that I have a mole on my backside, and an appendix scar?'
    'In the summer of 1992 you worked for eleven weeks as a home help and child-minder in Rome for the family of Giuseppe Ruggerio?'
    'I don't see the importance—'
    'Yes or no?'
    'Yes.'
    'This afternoon you have received a letter from that family inviting you to return?'
    'Who the hell are you?'
    Out of the hip pocket of his trousers, he took the squashed wallet. He flipped it open, exposed the identification badge in gold-veneer metal of the Drug Enforcement Administration, thumb half covering the title of Special Agent, fingers masking the rampant eagle.
    'My name is Axel Moen, DEA. I work out of Rome.'
    'You've come from Rome?'
    'Don't interrupt me, Miss Parsons. I'm sorry, where can I smoke?'
    'Sort your answer out. What on earth are you doing here, prying and poking. Come on.'
    But a small grin was on her face. She marched him back out into the hall, and grabbed a heavy coat off a hook, and then through a darkened dining room. She unlocked the doors, and let him into the garden. The kitchen lights washed half of the patio, but she led him beyond the light and onto the paving slabs outside a garden shed. She turned to face him, looked up at him, and the flash of the match caught her face.
    'Prying and poking, so what the hell's your answer?'
    'I work out of Rome - you should listen to what I say. I work in liaison with the Italian agencies. I work against the Sicilian-based organization La Cosa Nostra. You were employed by Giuseppe and Angela Ruggerio to look after their son at the time their daughter was born. They have written you to say that two months ago they were
    "blessed" with the birth of a second son, Mauro - just listen - and they have asked you to return to them to do the same work as four years ago. They live now in Palermo.'
    He threw down the cigarette, half smoked. His foot was moving to stamp on it, but she crouched and picked it up and handed it back to him. He stubbed out the cigarette on the ribbed sole of his shoe, then placed the dead end in the matchbox.
    'They live now in Palermo. How do I