Assignment - Palermo

by Edward S. Aarons

  Pine needles spurted at her feet as he heard another shot. A third bullet splintered wood from the hut. She pressed deeper into the shadows. But there was no other place for her to go.

  Durell swung right and climbed the steep slope toward the shots. He wondered about the second man Jean had shot at. But he couldn’t stop now.

  The gray fedora showed briefly through the thick pines. He did not fire at it. The man was thirty yards away, still above him; his attention was focused on the girl. Durell was sure now that they meant to kill her. He climbed faster, his shoes digging into the slippery pine needles. At the last moment the other suddenly whirled, topcoat flapping in the wind, and fired at him. He did not feel the bullet pass his head except as a slight puff! that disturbed the sound of the breeze in the trees.

  He squeezed the trigger twice. The man lost his hat, threw up an arm, and fell, rolling over and over down the slope. At the same moment he heard a yelp of fear and another shot that was not Jean’s weapon. He spun back toward the gravel road in the trees. The boy was sprawled beside it, his rifle lost a few feet from his outstretched arm. His yellow hair looked pale in the sunlight. The second man was scrambling down after his gun.

  Durell shot him three times and watched the body tumble bonelessly down the slope toward the little beach far below.

  “Jean!” He knelt beside the youth. It was a shoulder wound, and the boy’s eyes flickered as Durell gently turned him over. Jean coughed, but there was no blood in his mouth.

  He looked blind for a moment, then asked, “Did you—did you give him the piqûre, dad?”

  “They’re both dead.”

  “And the young lady?”

  “All right, I think.” Durell watched the boy smile, “I must leave you for a moment. I have to get her.”

  “Je resterai ici.” Jean struggled up, holding his shoulder. Then he suddenly gulped, turned white, and fainted from the pain.

  Durell stood up and turned back up the slope to the little cabin where the girl had been hiding.

  She was gone.

  11

  “GABRIELLA!”

  The wind mocked him and snatched her name away. He saw her footsteps in the gravel around the cabin, running toward the body of the first man he’d shot. He followed cautiously until her trail was lost in the pines.

  “Gabriella!”

  He heard the shot; she was a better marksman than the hoodlums who had hunted her. The slug tore a rip in the sleeve of his coat. Quickly he put down his gun and held his hands out, palms upward.

  “Gabriella, don’t shoot again!”

  He could not see her, but he admired her presence of mind. When he went back to Jean, she had run from the cabin and snatched up the dead man’s weapon. She thought he was another of those after her. He felt a cold sweat as he walked steadily toward her and called out in English.

  “I’m a friend of O’Malley’s!”

  Her voice was thin but steady. “Stop where you are.”

  “I only want to talk with you.”

  “I don’t wish to talk to you or anyone. Stay away from me. The next time I shall shoot to kill.”

  He didn’t doubt she could keep her word. But he kept walking. He saw her now, slender and straight, as she stepped from behind a thick pine tree. He walked past the man who had worn the hat. He was quite dead. His face was just a face. He thought of Kronin, down in the cove on his boat, and knew there would be others.

  “I warn you ...” the girl called.

  He was near enough to see the desperation in her eyes. She breathed shallowly in her loose sweat shirt, but there was a hint of a fine body under the ragged garment, caressed by ripples of the Mediterranean wind. He halted.

  “Gabriella, where is O’Malley?”

  “Who are you? Why do you want to kill me?”

  “I don’t. I followed you to help you.”

  She bit her lip, and he decided he was close enough to risk it now. No time to argue with her fear. He made a quick grab for her gun, but the girl was almost too fast for him. She got it up and fired. The muzzle flame blasted past his ear as he caught her wrist and deflected her arm. The next moment he hooked a heel behind her foot and yanked her aside.

  But it was like trying to hold a wildcat in his bare hands. She was strong, in perfect condition, thanks to her acrobatic performances; she was as agile as any trained judo expert. She scrambled away, and he tackled her, and they tumbled down and over each other on the slope. Her nails raked his face. Her thick hair swung wildly, and he felt her firmness and at the same time knew the womanliness of her as he landed on top of her near the bottom of the slope. He let his weight rest on her and pinioned her arms above her head. He was panting.

  “Now listen, Gabriella. We have no time left. Do you want to get away or not?”

  “Who are you?” There were tears in her eyes. “You can kill me, but I’ll never take you to O’Malley!” “My name is Sam Durell,” he said tightly. “And you’ll take me to him and Joey Milan and Bruno as soon as we clean up around here.”

  “O’Malley mentioned you—”

  “He came to me, and I turned him down, but now I’ve changed my mind. We’ll talk on the way. Come along.”

  He pulled her to her feet. She made awkward feminine dabs at the pine needles on her clothes and tried to straighten her tangled hair. He went back and picked up the gun he’d taken from her, then retrieved his own. He threw the hoodlum’s gun far out over the steep slope into the sea below. Then he took her hand. “Hurry.”

  They found young Jean sitting up and holding his shoulder beside the second dead man. The girl looked in despair at the second body. Durell was grateful that the yellow villa nearby was not occupied. There had been no alarm.

  “Jean?”

  “I—I think I can return to my own boat,” the boy said. “Is the young lady all right?”

  “She’s fine, thank you.”

  “Do I call the agents—?”

  “Later. Take your time if you must.”

  He would have liked to go after Kronin then and there, but he couldn’t risk losing the girl, either by leaving her with the Frenchman or taking her to attack the other chartered boat. He urged the girl down to the cove where her beached sailboat waited. No one else was in sight.

  “Can you tow the boat back?” he asked Jean. “I won’t be coming back with you.”

  “She stays with you?” Jean had been admiring Gabriella from the first moment. “You have all the luck, dad.”

  Far out on the ruffled waters of the bay he saw a motor cruiser speed back toward the distant Riviera quai they had started from. It was Karl Kronin in retreat. But Durell knew that this was only a temporary victory. He would meet Kronin again. Next time Kronin would be far more dangerous.

  When he had helped Jean shove off and fix a towline to the sloop, he returned to the girl. “Let’s find O’Malley,” he said quietly. “And you can tell me why you’re so important that people want to kill you.”

  A road led from the deserted villa toward the trailer camp, a mile away. The girl was silent, her fine hands clenched in the pockets of her slacks. She had the clear olive skin of the Sicilian, but somewhere in her ancestry there was a hint of Norman conquerors,

  perhaps even a little Greek from ancient times. She had regained her composure. It did not surprise him, since her work as a trapeze artist kept her in daily touch with danger. Her nerves were good. And now that her fear was conquered, she spoke with a quiet, throaty accent he found enchanting.

  “But I am not important at all,” she explained. “Not to anyone. Oh, to my family, Pietro and Giovanni, in the circus. My cousins, I must explain. Otherwise, the Vanini family is almost died out except for Vecchio Zio.”

  “Who is he?”

  “ ‘Old Uncle,’ everyone calls him. He is in Sicily. You must understand, I have been with the circus all my life, bom in a tent, trained to the work and to the wandering existence. Always it has been a living from —how do you say?—hand to mouth.
But except for my work on the wire and with the horses, I am important to no one.”

  “O’Malley thinks otherwise. How did you meet?” “The circus was in Las Vegas, touring America. He came to our little performance for—kicks, is it? And he waited to see me. Julio, my nephew, tried to keep him away. But somehow—he has a charming personality, do you not think?—I went to dinner with him. He seemed nice. He looks like Frank Sinatra, do you know? And with the same first name. He said he was just back from Vietnam. He had much money and he let me gamble in his establishment—oh, not much, for fun, he said. I—I had never visited such a place before. Or eaten so well. We—we had a good time.” Her mouth curved in a small, reflective smile. “I like him very much, this man O’Malley.”

  “He fell in love with you,” Durell stated.

  “I do not know. With O’Malley you never know. He says little of what is truly in his heart.”

  “But you saw him again?”

  “He insisted. Every night as long as we performed in Las Vegas. Julio, Giovanni—they were very disturbed. They want to keep me in the circus, of course. I do not blame them. Without me it would be nothing.” She made it a simple statement of fact. “It was a time of wonder for me, with O’Malley. My life has been very sheltered. There was much argument afterward about O’Malley. But—he was a member of the Fratelli della Notte. So they were afraid to object too loudly.” “Simply because he was a Brother?”

  “But that is natural,” she said.

  “And you? Are you in love with O’Malley?”

  “I do not know. I do not approve of myself in this fashion. It is disturbing. My life was uncomplicated until O’Malley interfered. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then, of course, I am not so free of guilt in my blood, either. Vecchio Zio, you see-” She paused and walked along with her head bowed in thought. “When I was just a little girl learning to be a bareback rider, they took me to see him. He sent for me. And when he sends for someone, you go. You obey. You do not deny him.”

  “Why not? He’s just your old uncle—”

  She looked shocked. “But I thought you knew. I thought O’Malley told you.”

  “We didn’t have time to work it out.”

  “Oh!” She put a hand to her mouth, appalled. “Then, I can say nothing more.”

  “Gabriella, this is no time to be silent. Someone wants your life, and you must be important in some way. Things are not as simple as you’d like them to be. You’re not a little girl now. Your life will never be simple or sheltered again.”

  She turned to him with tear-filled eyes. “Must it be so? You think I am callous because two men were just killed and I do not go all feminine and break down? I have seen much death and much killing. And I remember O’Malley and our week in Las Vegas with much tenderness. But I also remember Vecchio Zio, when I was such a child and they took me to see him. I know he has watched over me all my life. I have felt his presence everywhere, protecting me. But everything changed since I met O’Malley. Zio’s presence is gone. No, not gone. Changed. He no longer loves me.”

  Her manner was charming and simple. Durell said, “Because of the men I had to kill just now?”

  “Yes. And other things.” She halted again, and her face was anguished. “Do you not understand? O’Malley is as good as being a dead man now.”

  They were near the trailer camp. It was set in a narrow notch of the steep promontory. The colorful tents and aluminum trailers, with little national flags from Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and the Lowlands fluttering from television antennae and clothes lines, made it a minor United Nations in the sun of the Cote d’Azur. Durell could guess what O’Malley had done. He had rented a caravan and lost himself in the organized confusion of the campsite. It was a good place to hide. But Durell saw dangerous flaws in it. There was only one access road to the ochre-colored village on the Lower Corniche some miles away. The only other escape hatch had to be by boat.

  He paused. “Which trailer is O’Malley’s?”

  “I do not know. He said he would watch for me.” “We’ll wait here, then. In plain sight.”

  “Is that not dangerous? Those men—”

  “They’re gone. For the moment, anyway.”

  Durell was pleased that she showed no panic. He felt a quick admiration for her. She was a remarkable person, one of those rare individuals who make those around them feel happy and better simply by their presence. He listened to a thick quarrel in German, a song in French; he watched an incredible Swedish bikini walk toward the little trailer beach. Children played in the tidy camp streets.

  “Tell me about the time you were taken to Vecchio Zio as a child. What do you remember of it?”

  “Oh, it was such a strange place. Sicily is a poor land, but Zio lived like a feudal lord. There was a regular castle, as if in a fairy tale, you know? The men who escorted me were very respectful; but I was too young to know what Zio really meant to them.”

  “And just what was that?”

  “I can never forget him.” Gabriella smiled softly. “He was so terrifying, so incredibly old. An old man with fearful flashing eyes, sitting in a big black chair like a throne, in a room with stone walls and a stone floor. They pushed me into the room and backed out and closed the door, and I was alone with him. He called me to come closer. It was the longest walk I ever remember, across a big carpet. I remember his hands— so white, the fingers like bones, and he had a big ring of black stone on his middle finger. It was a very old ring, older than Vecchio Zio. He asked me if I was afraid of him, and I said no, he was my uncle, and why should I be afraid of my uncle? He said I was a good child and he loved me and I was the last of the true blood line and many things I did not understand then. He said he would watch over me always and see that my life was happy and undisturbed. He showed me jewels in a carved box and silk and velvet dresses, and asked if I would like to live with him. A circus life, like gypsies, he said, was not fit for me, and that I must come and live with him.”

  “And you refused?”

  “I burst into tears. I did not want to leave the Vanini family. And I did not want to live in that gloomy castle with that pale old man.”

  “Was he angry?”

  “Oh, no. But disappointed. If I ever needed anything I was to come and ask for it, and he would give it to me at once.”

  “Did you ever see Vecchio Zio again?”

  “No.”

  “You never asked for his help in anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then, you don’t even know if he’s still alive. If he were, you wouldn’t be in such danger now, would you?” She traced a pattern in the soft sand with her toe. “He is alive. I think sometimes he will never die, because he is the Eldest Brother of the Fratelli della Notte.”

  Durell saw O’Malley plod down the camp street toward them. O’Malley looked thin, his straw hair in a cowlick. He wore a nylon shirt of dark blue, flapping about his hips, and khaki slacks. Behind him, like a patient water buffalo, was Bruno Brutelli, scowling in the sun. Nearby, like a military flanker, came Joey Milan, thin and ratty and suspicious.

  “Gabriella, you made it!” O’Malley looked at Durell. “You’re pretty good, Cajun. How’d you make it here?” “You left some unfinished business in Switzerland.” Durell put on his sunglasses. “You left a man named Dugalef, and I put a hole in him. You don’t have to worry about Amos Rand any more. Dugalef killed him.” O’Malley scowled. “Rand was a foul-up. I’m not sorry. But what about your Colonel Mignon? Did he—?”

  “He’s dead, too.”

  O’Malley regarded him blandly. “And you think I chickened out, huh? But I thought it all over. This Kronin scares me, I admit. And I mean to save my own skin now. I’m in too deep to back out now, but I figured I’m more concerned about Gabriella than anything else. So maybe, I thought, I’d be better off working my way out of this alone. I still think I’m right about that.” He kissed the girl. She stood remotely, a faint
blush under her olive skin. “You look upset, Gabe. How did the Cajun find you?”

  “He saved my life.” She told O’Malley in simple words what had just happened, and her eyes searched his gaunt face as if looking for something she desperately needed and was not sure she could find. “I believe Durell will help you. But what you asked me over the telephone, O’Malley—I cannot do it. You made an enemy of Zio, and I will not help you against him.” “Baby, I’m not against him. It’s Kronin. And now Kronin is after you, too, thanks to my stupidity and to the Cajun coming into it.”

  “You disobeyed and now you are in trouble,” she said adamantly. “They will never forget or forgive you.”

  “Gabriella—”

  “Let’s get to the trailer,” Durell suggested. He felt

  uneasy in the open. “Gabriella, you should hear O’Malley out, at least.”

  She hesitated. Then she accepted his advice, where she had refused O’Malley’s.

  O’Malley did not like it.

  12

  THE trailer was a converted Renault truck, furnished with minimum economy. Joey Milan stood outside on guard while Brutelli headed at once to the small gas stove, where he had some pots simmering. Bruno’s bulk was surprisingly deft in the narrow cooking area. He was chopping basil and had a shelf of herbs ready for a pasta he was preparing, together with a pungent chunk of fresh Tellegio cheese. Coffee simmered on a propane burner, and a bottle of Stravei vermouth stood on a shelf with bourbon and Scotch. O’Malley poured bourbon for Durell and Stravei for the girl.

  “You both need something,” O’Malley said.