He had been released from Ucciardione Prison, down by the city's docks, on 15 June 1960, and he had not been arrested since. He was now aged sixty-two. He was governed by twin obsessions and they were the seeking of power and the avoidance of capture. Without freedom there was no power. To maintain that precious freedom he travelled the city in a series of commonplace vehicles. To any of the police officers of those agencies, the sight of him at the traffic lights or at a pedestrian crossing would have been of an old man, tired by long life, being driven by a son or a nephew… but he was, and he knew it so well, to all of the police officers of all of those agencies, the most wanted man in the city, the most hunted man on the island, I he most tracked man in the country, the most sought-after man on the continent of Europe. He believed himself to have achieved the primary position on what the Ministry of the Interior called the Special Programme of the Thirty Most Dangerous Criminals at l arge. The police officers of those agencies would have seen, at I he traffic lights or a pedestrian crossing, an old man who sat low In the passenger seat, a height of 5 feet 3 inches and a weight ol a couple of pounds less than 13 stones, unstyled and shorti-ropped and grey-flecked hair, a low peasant's forehead, roving and cautious eyes, jowls at his throat and nicotine-stained teeth, broad but bowed shoulders. They would not have known… Nor would they have seen the powerful, thickset fingers, with the nails cut back to the quick, because the hands were held down between his knees. They might have seen his eyes, and if the police officers of the agencies had met those eyes, then Mario Ruggerio's head would have ducked in respect to their uniforms and their position, but they would not have seen his hands, clasping and unclasping, stretching and clenching. He moved his fingers and thumbs, worked the joints, because his hands were still bruised and aching from the effort of strangulation, and the rheu- matism in his hands was always worse at the end of the wet months iof the Sicilian winter.