BOOKS / Martyr to the Mafia: Assassinated Sicilian judge Giovanni Falcone, scourge of the mafiosi for 25 years, has left a remarkable guide to their mysterious world

'AT CERTAIN moments, these mafiosi seem to me the only rational beings in a world populated by madmen.' Giovanni Falcone had considerable respect for the organisation which assassinated him with a 1,200lb bomb near Palermo in May of this year. Cosa Nostra - tightly structured, rigidly governed, rooted in fundamental values - contrasts all too sharply with the present battered and corrupt Italian state.

Falcone, ex-Palermo superjudge and Director of Penal Affairs in Rome, now hailed in Italy as a martyr and a hero, was caught between these two unequal adversaries almost as soon as he began his investigations into the Mafia, 25 years ago: 'I was venturing into what was virtually virgin territory under crossfire from friends and enemies alike . . .'

Falcone has left behind a book, Men of Honour, delivered as if in his own words but actually the result of 20 interviews he gave to French journalist Marcelle Padovani. It is perhaps the most accurate guide to Cosa Nostra that exists. With an astonishing 400,000 hardback copies sold in Italy to date, no one there can now return to the old refrain of 'Mafia? What Mafia?' Falcone's aim was to provide facts and banish myths: 'I believe that the current power of the Mafia is directly related to our ignorance and our under-estimation of it.' Even in the hurriedly translated English version of the book, the dignity of his account survives.

His discoveries are no less fascinating for their lack of sensationalism. Step by step, Falcone assembles a comprehensive picture of an almost intractably complex criminal phenomenon. In the true Falcone manner, everything is backed up by evidence - rigorously truthful, he was never given to hypotheses he could not prove. The internal structure of Cosa Nostra, the extent of its power-base, its traditions, language and methods of violence are all mapped out with quiet clarity and surprising brevity.

Explaining not only how the organisation remains so strong, but how a whole society is complicit in accepting it, he declares that the mafia is an 'expression of a need for order' in an island that has repeatedly been conquered by foreign powers, and where the people have come to reject all forms of authority apart from the local and familial.

Falcone's understanding of Cosa Nostra leapt forward in 1984, when he began to have unprecedented success in encouraging mafiosi to turn state witness. With their own reasons for being disillusioned with the Mafia, they saw that here, finally, was someone worth confessing to, someone who could achieve results. Many of these pentiti (repentants) refused to deal with anyone else. The supergrass Antonino Calderone declared: 'I collaborated with him because he was a man of honour' - the ultimate Mafia accolade, and an epithet usually strictly confined to their ranks. But Falcone had grown up in the same neighbourhood of Palermo as many of these men, and had as a child 'breathed the air of the Mafia with every breath'. The pentiti trusted him, he explained, because 'they are being heard by someone who has, in one way, lived through similar experiences to their own.'

This also made him able to interpret the compressed language of Cosa Nostra, whose metaphors and double meanings are illustrated in the chapter on 'Messages and Messengers.' Veiled warnings - 'You work too hard; you should rest' - were frequent. When Antonino Calderone's brother Guiseppe was leaving a meeting, he was warned of his own death by a few bars from an opera whistled by another mafioso: the unsung words were: 'Shoot, or disappear. Otherwise, others will shoot against you . . .' In 1986, Falcone was interviewing Michele Greco, the boss of bosses, when Greco issued a coded warning by comparing him to Maradona: 'Invincible on the field, unless someone trips him up.' Falcone's own deceptively simple style occasionally borrows from this code, and echoes the ability of the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia to touch on a single point to reveal the whole.

The evidence the pentiti gave Falcone led to the famous Palermo maxi-trial of 1987-88, which put 465 mafiosi in the dock, and placed all their lives equally in danger. Falcone fought to gain proper state protection for the pentiti and their families, but nevertheless one ex-mafioso, Salvatore Contorno, lost 35 relatives and another, Tommaso Buscetta, lost 10. A law has only now been passed, accelerated by Falcone's murder, to pledge help for both mafiosi and members of the public who risk their lives by providing information.

As his fellow judge and lifelong friend Paolo Borsellino, himself assassinated on 19 July, recounted after Falcone's death, political and judicial enemies began to close in on Falcone in the summer of 1988. They dismantled the anti-Mafia pool of judges, which he had designed to limit the exposure of individuals and unify investigations. There was a whispering campaign within the Palermo judiciary; people said he had been 'bewitched' by the Mafia. This was followed by humiliating defeats in court: he had to watch helplessly as his carefully constructed cases were fragmented and his work came to nothing. He was passed over for the job of chief investigating magistrate in Palermo and assigned to a case of common robbery. Tommaso Buscetta's warning rang in his ears: 'They will seek to destroy you both physically and professionally.'

No wonder he felt sympathy for the repentant mafiosi, who 'suddenly . . . found themselves having to confront an indifferent State on the one hand, and an organisation enraged by their betrayal on the other'. He had achieved too much, and he knew it: 'We came to the edge of the precipice, where no one had dared to go before, because any excuse not to see what was happening, to play it down, was valid.'

Falcone was further criticised over his apparent disinclination to investigate the explosive question of relationships between Cosa Nostra and the political establishment. Former supporters in the progressive left were less interested in his fight against the Mafia per se than in the political casualties amongst the ruling Christian Democrats that a full-scale investigation might lead to. For example, the head of the anti-Mafia party La Rete, Leoluca Orlando, a more emotional and less pragmatic character than Falcone, was increasingly disappointed by what he saw as Falcone's unwillingness to grasp the nettle.

But Falcone had not committed himself to a full-scale political investigation, or at least not openly, for one very good reason: 'I have always avoided taking initiatives that did not have a reasonable chance of success.' Although he does not say so, he knew that those involved would fast remove him if he got anywhere near them. His pentiti, aware of the value of not overreaching oneself, warned him off: 'There may be things that we cannot tell you . . . no one would believe us.' If this book is a guide to the Mafia, it is also a guide to what Marcelle Padovani in her introduction dubs 'the Falcone Method' - the practical rules for fighting the Mafia on the one hand and defending oneself from the State on the other.

Throughout the book, Falcone deliberately underplays the political question. Although he states (it is common knowledge) that the Mafia 'has for some time infiltrated itself into the structures of power', he remains at a canny distance from the assertion by finding a 20- year-old source for it. Even so, at the time of his death in May he was negotiating with certain Swiss banks to try to trace not only Mafia banking swindles but also the profits from the huge Milanese political bribery scandal uncovered this spring. It is widely assumed in Italy that the two are linked.

BY the time Men of Honour appeared in Italy, in November 1991, Falcone had for eight months been Director of Penal Affairs in Rome. He had been accused of cowardice when he decided to leave the Palermo Tribunal, or the 'Poison Palace' as it was by then known. In fact, clogged by weighty penal procedures, he felt that the most effective way forward was to work for judicial reform from Rome, where he was also involved in setting up a new Superprocura, a unified national body to coordinate the fight against Cosa Nostra.

What really set Giovanni Falcone apart, and gave him the symbolic value he has acquired since his death, was his confidence that the Mafia could actually be beaten: his life set a rare example of optimism in the midst of much hand-wringing and defeatism. Although his death dealt a body-blow to the State, his book contains a practical guide for the way forward. Never under-estimate the power of the Mafia, it says. Investigations must be unified, and co- ordinated at a national level. Investigators should work in teams, to avoid creating easy individual targets for both Mafia and State. Trials against organised crime need to be quicker and simpler. Pentiti must be respected and protected.

Some of these things are already going ahead, but it's a slow process. Although Falcone's replacement as Director of Penal Affairs has been named - she is Liliana Ferraro, a 48-year-old lawyer - the new Superprocura still has no head. The penal reforms are still awaiting final ratification. Ultimately, the almost superhuman courage and commitment which he took for granted in himself are in precious short supply. In May, Paolo Borsellino placed his hands on his friend's coffin and declared: 'Those who want to leave should do so, because this is our destiny.' Sciascia may have talked about 'the duty not to be afraid', but at least six magistrates have resigned from the Palermo Tribunal since July.

Borsellino, though, also talked with optimism of a 'flowering of initiative amongst citizens' who brought information to the police after the Falcone massacre. He sensed a new determination to break free from the weight of silence which surrounds and protects the Mafia. Despite the weak State, and the burden of fear, Falcone's message rings clear: 'There is something we can do.'

'Men of Honour: The Truth About the Mafia' is published tomorrow by 4th Estate at pounds 13.99.

(Photographs omitted)