Assignment - Palermo

by Edward S. Aarons

  “No, no!” Gabriella cried. “The poor thing—he is maddened, it is not natural, not his fault—”

  Before he could check her, she slipped ahead with Joey Milan. They moved with perfect timing around the stallion, who backed, eyes rolling huge and wild. The great animal pawed the turf suspiciously. A light gleamed high in the black castle wall, and Durell thought he heard a man shout in alarm. Astonished, he watched the slight figure of the circus girl and the little jockey circle the enraged animal.

  The stallion suddenly reared toward Gabriella; but with a single, lithe leap she was on his back. O’Malley swore in horror. Durell lifted his gun again and aimed at the animal’s head, and Gabriella cried out, “No, Cajun! No!”

  With her weight upon him, the stallion lost interest in the others. He bucked and reared, and it seemed as if Gabriella must surely be thrown and trampled under his hooves. Somehow she hung on. Joey Milan slipped like a shadow under the great, black animal and tried for his head, talking in soothing, rapid Italian, in a manner Durell had not heard him use before. The animal backed away, distracted, pawing restlessly. His tail swished high in the air. Gabriella’s small fists remained tightly knotted in the animal’s great mane. Her voice, too, was soft and lulling, like Joey’s. The great horse suddenly shuddered, bucked, sunfished, and tried to turn and bite her. Joey scrambled out of the way, then darted in again. Step by step they edged the beast toward the stone stalls in the castle wall across the court. It was plain that the animal had been tormented or enraged, or perhaps simply allowed to develop a congenital feeling against people. But Gabriella and Joey were no strangers to horses. The great beast trembled, tossed his head, and backed into his stall. For another moment Gabriella clung to his broad back while Joey distracted him. Then, as smoothly as flowing water, she slid down and shut the stall door. At the same moment, Joey Milan slipped free.

  The stallion was now safely penned.

  O’Malley caught the running girl and held her in his arms. She laughed and said, “Oh, what a pity, such a beautiful horse!” She kissed him on the cheek and turned to Durell then. “Someone surely heard us and will look for us now.”

  “How much of this place can you remember?”

  “I remember this place well now.” Her long hair flowed over her shoulders, and her eyes gleamed with triumph. “What a magnificent animal! And Joey! Did you see him? Who would have thought he understood horses this way!”

  More lights shone in the castle’s windows. A man shouted. Durell heard the dim thud of distant feet.

  “Gabriella, in which room did you have your interview with Zio? Can you recall that, too?”

  “It was on the other side.” She frowned in the gloom. “Near this place. We walked to a room that had windows that opened on a sheer cliff.”

  “The other side,” Durell said. “Come on.”

  The courtyard was walled with high, delicate arches. They ran to a flagged parapet, turned right, and hugged the fortress wall. Gabriella’s memory was correct. To the left, just beyond a ruined stone balustrade, was a sharp drop into the river gorge that looped around from the bridge. Durell paused to stare at the high wall of the ancient castle, which seemed to push them outward.

  “Joey, was there any rope in the horse stalls?”

  “I think so.”

  “Run back and get it.”

  While they waited Durell saw a buttress that had crumbled somewhat and offered footing a third of the way up. He pried loose a square block that was not too heavy, and when Joey returned with the rope, he tied the rock securely to the end of the line.

  There was no alarm here yet. Durell clambered up the buttress, then heaved the rock and its attached line up and over the slanting roof tiles. His first attempt failed and the rock came down with the rope snaking after it. He tried again. This time it looped around an old chimney. He tugged hard, and it did not yield.

  “All right, Gabriella. Up you go.”

  “What can we do on the roof?”

  “It’s our only way in.”

  They heard a distant, echoing shot. The guards were shooting at shadows. Durell turned sharply. “Bruno?”

  “Yo.”

  “Lift her up as high as you can, for starters.”

  “Yo.”

  The girl went up easily, hand over hand, as if doing her tightrope act in the Vanini circus. O’Malley ground his teeth audibly. She paused, her body taut and leaning far out over the abyss as she braced her feet against the wall. Then she suddenly vanished over the eave, clinging for an instant to a gargoyle drain. A moment later she tugged at the rope as a signal for them to follow.

  Bruno hesitated. “It won’t hold me.”

  “Go ahead,” Durell urged.

  The big man climbed up laboriously, inch by inch. But he made it. Joey Milan went next, then O’Malley. The yelling and the wild shots came nearer now. Fortunately the roof was not as tightly pitched as it was in other parts of the building. Durell climbed up last.

  They stood together near the massive Norman chimney.

  The drop into the river gorge was dizzying.

  “That way,” Gabriella said, pointing.

  Bruno rumbled, “I feel sick up here. I can’t walk this roof.”

  “You’ve got to, you clod!” O’Malley snapped.

  “I ain’t no tightrope walker, Frankie.”

  “Hang on to my belt,” Durell suggested.

  The girl ran ahead, like a small cat, along the arch of the roof. At the end there was a narrow path of stone slabs atop a fine Moorish arch, built of stone the color of pale red wine. Some of the arches had crumbled, and there was a gap or two between the pediment slabs.

  Bruno shuddered. “I’ll never make it.”

  Durell said, “Tie the rope around him, O’Malley.”

  “I weigh too much. If I slip, I’ll only pull all of you down with me.”

  “We’ll take that chance.”

  It was slow, perilous going. Halfway across they paused and froze in the moonlight while armed men ran across the paving under the arches. If any had chanced to look up, they would have been as helpless as clay pigeons in a target gallery atop the pediment. But the hunters ran on out of sight.

  At the end of the archway the castle roof was flat. There was a low stone coping and some pointed crenellations, which hid them from sight. Bruno gasped and sat down with relief.

  “Now what?” O’Malley asked.

  “This is the tower, the old keep of the castle,” Gabriella explained. “The room where I saw Zio was in his personal apartment. There were stairs, I recall, but I don’t see them now.” She looked about, puzzled; her long hair was blown by the mountain wind. “The opening is gone.”

  Durell searched the stone floor of the tower roof. After a moment he found a square of cement that had been set into the roof flagstones. He pried at it with his fingers, but there was no grip on the heavy mass of concrete. It did not yield.

  “Bruno?”

  Bruno tried, too. Nothing happened. The big man grunted, heaved, sweated, and tugged. “It’s sealed from the inside,” he said.

  “Then we go down the inner wall,” Durell said.

  There was a drop of three stories down the side of the tower to the next roof. Durell leaned over and studied it in the tricky moonlight. Gabriella flattened on her stomach beside him and looked down with him. “That is Zio’s window,” she said.

  It was fifteen feet below the edge of the roof. Too far to climb down. Durell got up. “The rope, Joey.” Milan looked stricken. “I left it tied to the chimney back there. I didn’t think—”

  More shouting came from below. The enemy had found the penned horses. Durell felt a desperate urgency. It was impossible to retreat along the top of the arches. They had come to the end of the way, trapped high above the complex, sprawling roofs.

  Gabriella spoke suddenly. “Give me your trouser belts.” She laughed elfishly at their startled faces. “I am a circus performer, remember? I have strong teeth for performing hig
h-wire acts, hanging by my teeth—”

  “No!” O’Malley exploded. “The belts won’t be long enough. I won’t let you. Besides, you use a special mouth bit, don’t you?”

  “I will use a buckle instead.”

  “You’ll kill yourself,” O’Malley said angrily.

  She turned to Durell. “Cajun, I can and must get into that window. It won’t be locked or barred at this height. Who could get into it? Kronin would not expect us this way. And Zio is in there. I know it.”

  “What about the rest of us, even if you make it?” “I will find something, a hanging, a drapery, to toss up. You can follow me down that way.”

  Durell did not hesitate. They were lost if they stayed here much longer. “All right.”

  O’Malley sweated. “Cajun, you’re crazy to let Gabriella try—”

  “She’s got to. Give me your belt.”

  He fastened them together, using Joey’s and Bruno’s as well, tested its strength, and gave the length of leather to Gabriella, who said quietly, “Bruno, you are the strongest, so you will hold the end.”

  “I’ll be with him,” Durell said.

  She gave him the end of the belt at once. Then she took the end buckle in her mouth, tested it, and nodded. “Keep it tight at all times, please. You must keep me from striking the wall if I spin about, so you must extend your arms over the edge. I will need both hands to open the window, you see.”

  As she slid over the edge of the parapet O’Malley said thinly, “It’s all my fault. I should never have gone to her and asked for help. If she falls, if anything happens to her—”

  “Shut up,” Durell said.

  “Two gets you ten I don’t walk out of here.”

  Durell looked at him sharply. “I thought you were worried about Gabriella, not yourself.”

  “I am. I’m going to see that she gets away all right, not matter what it costs. Two to ten. You’ll see.” Gabriella lowered herself, and suddenly her weight came down hard on Durell’s extended forearm. He lay flat on the roof, with Bruno beside him to steady his quivering muscles. Gabriella was small, but her long career with the Vaninis had given her a solid musculature. Her head was tossed back, and her teeth gleamed as she bit hard on the belt buckle. Her upturned face was white and strained. Her words were muffled as she spoke.

  “Pay it out.”

  Bruno and Joey edged the leather between Durell’s grip. Once they came to a smooth stretch of cowhide, and it started to slip, and the girl jolted downward a foot or two before they checked her. Her arms went out wide, and she spun like a small doll, her body arched, her legs splayed for balance. It was a long way down. She lifted her arms and clung to the belt to steady herself for a heart-stopping moment, getting a better grip on the buckle with her teeth.

  An eternity passed as they continued to ease her down to the level of the window.

  There was a setback below the edge of the tower roof, and the window was perhaps two feet in from where Durell could look down. His wound was on fire with the pain and strain of supporting her weight. His body was bathed in cold sweat as Gabriella reached with both hands, hanging by her teeth, to explore the narrow casement. She spun away, whirling, and Durell felt the strain in his spine. Then she worked out again and checked herself with her hand on the frame. He could not see what she was doing under the lip of the parapet. Another eternity passed.

  He heard a faint click.

  She swung out, looking up. Her face was dead white, distorted by the mouth grip on the belt. Her arms waved. Far below, the cold stones waited for her if she fell.

  She pushed herself farther out with one leg, then let her weight carry her in toward the window. There was a thin crash of breaking glass, a splintering of wood. She appeared again, a long cut showing on her cheek, the blood like a thin black ribbon across her mouth.

  O’Malley cursed. Durell glanced at him. The man was crying. There came another wrenching swing, and the girl vanished, feet first.

  The strain on the belt ended abruptly.

  She was inside.

  24

  THEY followed one by one after she had thrown up a long, knotted length of drapery, which Bruno fastened to the parapet. Durell was the first down and he stood still at the strange sight that met his eyes.

  Everything in the big, square tower room was dark and somber. The girl knelt beside a huge Spanish tester bed with carved posts and a dusty red canopy embroidered with tarnished gilt. There were heavy, carved chests, tall straight-backed chairs with faded tapestry covers, a wealth of dull gold in a shining candelabrum. A single taper guttered beside the bed, where the girl knelt.

  The smell of incredible age and illness filled the cold stone room, like that of a musty crypt.

  Gabriella was crying.

  Propped up on dark pillows, the old man’s face, like death’s head, turned to regard her. His shock of white hair only added to the skeletal effect. She held his long thin hand, which seemed transparent in the candlelight, and kissed it and let her tears fall upon it.

  “Zio, Zio,” she murmured.

  The old man watched in silence as Durell came near. His wasted body scarcely made any shape at all under the black coverlet. But the eyes were as alert as a hawk’s, still intelligent and wary with the caution of age and adversity. Durell snapped a finger at Bruno, who went to check the big oaken door. Bruno tested it, found it locked and barred on the outside. Another door led to a primitive bath. It was empty. There was no other way out of the place. O’Malley hauled in the knotted drapery and closed the shattered casement window. A floodlight struck the wall out there a moment later,

  then passed on. Voices echoed curiously from the courtyard below. Joey Milan took up a post at the window. It was all done with speed and a fine economy of movement.

  The old man’s voice was thin but sure. “Who are these men, Gabriella?”

  “Do you know me, then?” she whispered.

  “I would know you at any time, my dearest.” He spoke in pure, limpid Italian. “You have never been far from my thoughts for all these years, child. Are you well? And are you happy?”

  “I am well, yes. But not happy.”

  “So you managed to come to me?”

  “Yes. It was very difficult.”

  “You must forgive me. I was a foolish old man and I pay for my mistakes. All that I have done in my long years has now been wasted.”

  “No, Zio,” she whispered.

  “Are these men here to kill me?”

  “They are my friends.”

  “I am waiting for someone to kill me.”

  “They have come to help.” She spoke earnestly. “You promised to protect me all my life, Zio. And you have, you have. Whenever I was troubled, I needed only to think of you and I felt better, I was happy. Then these men told me that you needed my help, and I see it was true.”

  “Gabriella, my child. ...”

  “What have they done to you?” she whispered. “What did they dare do to Vecchio Zio?”

  “I was old and foolish. All things pass. All life is transient. Hope and ambition and dreams—they go, as the days and the years fly by.”

  “You are still strong. Your name alone—”

  “Others speak in my name now, Gabriella, while I am kept here like an old and dying animal.”

  “You are a lion,” she said. “You will not die.” Durell approached the bed and stood beside the girl. He looked down gravely at the old face, the white mane of hair, the pale, intelligent eyes. Gently he lifted Gabriella’s cheek from Zio’s hand and drew her aside. Zio regarded him without fear, nodding a little. The candle sputtered and threw odd shadows in the room.

  “We do not have much time, Zio,” he said in gende Italian. “They know we are here. Your guards—”

  “They are not my people.”

  “How long have you been a prisoner here?”

  “Time has no meaning. Days and weeks, to be sure. I do not know. They feed me and give me such medicine as I need. They wish to k
eep me alive, I think, since only in that way am I useful to them.”

  “I understand. They speak for you to the Fratelli. Is it Kronin? Is he here? You must tell me.”

  “Kronin is a devil. He is Satan come to pay me for my sins. But only his people come up here to see me.” “Then, some of the men who are hunting us now can be trusted if you appeared?”

  “Perhaps. I do not know.”

  “Do you know what Kronin has been doing with your people? Do you know why we have come this long way to see you?”

  Gabriella said quickly, “We could not believe it was you, dear Zio, who gave these terrible orders, who turned the honorable Fratelli into a tool for the enemies of our country and Mr. Durell’s.”

  The old man’s eyes closed for a moment. His mouth worked silendy, and there was a faint movement under the coverlet as he sighed. “I see. Baron Uccelatti was mistaken to introduce that man Kronin to us. But the responsibility is mine. I am the chief. It is in my name that the men obey.” The hawk’s eyes opened and fixed Durell with a piercing stare. Anger overcame the regret and guilt he expressed. “Have they tried to harm Gabriella, to keep her from coming here?”

  “They tried to kill her,” Durell said.

  “And you saved her?”

  “I and these men with me.”

  “In America one thinks of the Fratelli as criminals. But we are not meant to be that. There is much to be done for our people in Sicily. We are not bandits, although history once forced us to be.” The old man paused. “Ah, well. It is not important now.”

  “It is important,” Durell said, “that you be released so you can appear to your people who are loyal to you and correct the damage that Kronin has done by giving orders in your name.”

  “It is impossible.”

  “We are here and we were told it would be impossible to get here.”

  “But you cannot escape now.”

  “We must try,” Durell said urgently.

  “Very well,” Zio said. “Help me out of bed.”