In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

by Jack Higgins

  I felt a sudden rush of affection for her, shook my head and smiled. “Don’t say it, Rosa, not if you’re truly afraid of him.”

  “But I am,” she said, her face white. “He can be cruel, oh, so cruel, Stacey. You couldn’t imagine.”

  “Tell me about it when I return, when it doesn’t matter any more.” I opened the door and kissed her as a woman should be kissed, moulding her ripeness into me. “I survive all things, Rosa Solazzo, especially the Hoffers of this world.”

  After she had gone, I buckled on my belt with the Smith and Wesson in its spring holster and adjusted my beret. The man who stared out at me from the mirror was a stranger, someone from before the Hole. What then was he doing here? It was quite a thought, but the wrong time to be asking questions like that and I left and went down to join the others.

  The cruising speed of the Cessna 401 is up to two hundred and sixty-one miles per hour which meant that we could expect to be over the target in twenty minutes. We delayed take-off for an hour because the night was still too bright for Burke’s liking, but the overcast promised by the met forecast didn’t materialise and he reluctantly gave the word to go at one A.M.

  Verda had logged an internal flight to Gela with the authorities at Punta Raisi, just in case questions were asked, which meant flying through the great divide anyway. A minor divergence would take him into the area of the drop and within minutes he could be back on course again.

  Including the training Burke had given us in the Congo, I had jumped nine times in all, so this would make ten – a nice round number. I had never particularly enjoyed the experience. A paratrooper is a clumsy creature, hampered by the requirements of his calling. The X type parachute weighs twenty-eight pounds and the reserve chute around twenty-four. A fair weight to start with. Add to that a supply bag carrying anything up to a hundred pounds and it’s hardly surprising that the only movement possible is downwards.

  Even removing the passenger seats from the interior gave us barely enough room to manoeuvre with all that equipment. Burke had rigged a static line of his own devising and he and Verda had carefully removed the Airstair door which was fine as long as no one fell out before we got there.

  A lot of things were going through my head as I squatted on the floor in line as the Cessna lifted smoothly into the air. The die was cast now, we were on our way – no turning back and I still wasn’t certain about anything, except that everyone in sight seemed to be lying to me, including Rosa.

  For some unaccountable reason that one hurt and when I analysed my feelings, I realised with a shock that I had liked her. Really liked her. She had guts and her own special brand of integrity and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her final appearance in my room had been completely personal. She had come to say goodbye because she wanted to and not because Hoffer or anyone else had pressured her.

  We were flying at eight thousand feet now and the view was certainly spectacular. Chains of mountains, peaks and ridges, white in the moonlight, the valleys between dark with shadow.

  The journey passed completely without incident and was so short that it was something of a shock when the red light Verda had rigged blinked rapidly several times. When I looked out of the window I could see the jagged peak of Monte Cammarata, the western slope, and then, as we slanted down, the dark, saucer-shaped plateau which was the dropping zone, the waterfall next to it bright in the moonlight, a clear marker.

  Verda swung into the wind and turned, coming in so close to the rocky precipice that lifted to the summit about the plateau that the heart moved inside me. We got a brief idea of what it was going to be like and then he swung the Cessna into the void.

  As he turned to come in again, Burke, who was the lead man, stood up and slipped on to the static line. Piet followed suit, then Legrande and I brought up the rear. My stomach was hollow, mouth dry and I shuffled forward with the others, caught in a nightmare of suspense.

  The red light blinked once, then twice, the Cessna rocked in some kind of turbulence and Burke went out through the door. Piet must have been right on top of him, Legrande hard on his heels.

  And then it was my turn. The wind howled past the gaping doorway. Only a madman could venture out there, I told myself, and fell headfirst, somersaulting.

  I released the supply bag I had been clutching tightly in my arms and it fell to swing twenty feet below on the end of a line clipped to my waist. And I was swinging, too, beneath the dark khaki umbrella, the most beautiful sight in the world at that moment.

  When you jump at eight hundred feet, it takes exactly thirty seconds to hit the deck which doesn’t give you long to sort yourself out. That close to the rock face there were down-draughts and I started to oscillate. As usual, once you were out in the open, the light didn’t seem anything like as good. I caught a brief glimpse of one chute then another like dark thistle-down, drifting into the shadows beside the waterfall and then I was moving in fast myself.

  The trouble with a night-drop is that usually you can’t see the ground which accounts for the high proportion of broken limbs on that type of operation, people being caught by surprise and landing too stiffly.

  That was one thing I liked about the supply bag dangling down there at the end of a twenty foot line. Unless you are oscillating alarmingly, the bag hits the deck first with a solid thump, warning you to get ready.

  I just made it in time. The supply bag thudded into the ground and I followed a split second later, rolling into a patch of surprisingly springy turf. I rolled again and came to rest, a shoulder of rock nudging me in the ribs.

  I lay there, winded, and someone came close and leaned over me. There was the gleam of steel and I got my hand up just in time, the Smith and Wesson ready.

  “I was only going to cut your line,” Piet Jaeger said.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t my throat you were aiming for?”

  “Another time,” he said. “When you aren’t so useful. When we don’t need you any more.”

  He sounded as if he meant it and sliced through my belt line and pulled my supply bag clear. I struggled out of my harness and got rid of the chute. Now that I was down, the light seemed much better and I could see Burke and Legrande approaching carrying their chutes and supply bags. The Frenchman was limping, but it turned out to be nothing serious. In his case, his oscillation had been so great that he had hit the ground before his supply bag when unprepared. He’d obviously had a bad shaking, but he made light of it as we unpacked.

  The supply bags held the commando rucksacks containing food and water, our weapons and extra ammunition, and when they were empty, went into a convenient crevasse together with the parachutes.

  We squatted in the shelter of the rocks and Burke passed round a flask of brandy. I took a long pull and found myself smiling, grateful to be alive, two feet on solid earth again as the warmth spread through me.

  “There’s no point in hanging about,” he said. “Straight up to the top from here. We’ve got to get over and into those trees while it’s still dark.”

  Which didn’t give us long because dawn was officially at ten past four and we moved out at once in single file. I took the lead because, in theory at least, I knew more about the terrain than anyone else and followed a route which took us straight up the side of the waterfall.

  It was a marvellous night, the moon almost full, a tracer or two of cloud aroused, stars glittering everywhere. The mountains marched into the distance, ridge after ridge of them, and far to the east moonlight glittered on Etna’s snowy peak.

  The valleys were dark, but four thousand feet below and a couple of miles to the right in the general direction of Bellona, a single light gleamed. I wondered if it could be Cerda sitting up and wondering how we were making out, for nothing was more certain than that my grandfather would have kept him fully informed.

  A good actor, Cerda, one had to admit that. Even the gun behind his back had all been part of the show. He had behaved in a way it was reasonable to suppose I would expect him
to – very clever. His one flaw had been his apparent ignorance of the presence of Joanna Truscott in the mountains. Hardly likely in a man who knew everything else there was to know about Serafino.

  Still, an excellent performance with Marco keeping out of the way in the back room. You really couldn’t trust anyone in this affair, or so it seemed to me then.

  It was just after three when we made the summit and I dropped into a hollow between rocks and waited for the others. I was tired and I suppose the truth was that I wasn’t really fit enough for this kind of game yet. On the other hand, the others didn’t look too good either, Legrande particularly, and Burke seemed to be having difficulty with his breathing.

  He passed the brandy round again, probably as an excuse to have one himself. “So far so good. We’ve got just under an hour to get down a thousand feet or so. If we can do that I think we’ll have it made.”

  He nodded to me. “All right, Stacey.”

  So I was still leading the way. I stood up and moved out, more conscious than ever that he was at the back of me.

  It wasn’t easy going at all. The ground was rough and treacherous and with the moon almost down, the light on that side of the mountain was very bad indeed. In places there were great aprons of shale that were as treacherous underfoot as ice, sliding like water at the slightest movement.

  I paused after half an hour on a small plateau and waited for them. In the east, there was already a perceptible lightening of the sky on the rim of the world and I knew we were not going to make it unless the going changed completely.

  Piet arrived first, seemingly in excellent shape and then Legrande who slumped to the ground and looked pretty tired to me. Burke brought up the rear and I noticed again that his breathing wasn’t good.

  “What have we stopped for?” he demanded.

  I shrugged. “I thought we could all do with a breather.”

  “To hell with that. We’ll never make it at this rate.”

  He sounded good and angry and I cut him off with a quick gesture. “Okay – you’re the boss.”

  I started down again, pushing myself hard, taking a chance or two on occasion, at one point sliding a good hundred feet on a great wave of shale that seemed as if it would never stop moving. Not that it did any good. In the grey light of dawn, we were still three hundred feet up from the first scattering of trees.

  I’ve never felt so naked in my life as when I led the way down that final stretch of bare hillside. It was exactly twenty minutes to five when I reached the outer belt of trees.

  ELEVEN

  AS THE GREYNESS spread among the trees, we crouched in a circle and had something to eat. Burke seemed fine when sitting down and his breathing was normal again. But Legrande looked his age and more, the lines on his face etched knife deep. He was getting old, that was the trouble; too old for this sort of caper.

  Even Piet looked tired and cold crouched there with the mist curling from the damp ground. The heavy brigade, that’s what we’d always called Legrande and him. There had been occasions when the sight of those two arriving shoulder to shoulder, smashing their way through with the force of a runaway train, had been enough to make you stand up and cheer, but not any more. Times changed and people changed with them – that was life and the pattern of things.

  I shivered slightly. I did not like this kind of grey dawning. It reminded me of too many similar ones and a lot of good men gone. I lit a cigarette which tasted foul, but I persisted and Burke moved over and unfolded his copy of the map.

  “We can’t be more than five hundred feet above this shepherd’s hut where he’s supposed to be hanging out. It might be an idea if you made a quick reconnaissance. We’ll wait here. I’ll give you three-quarters of an hour.” He added in a low voice, “I think Legrande could do with the rest. He looks shot to me.”

  I got to my feet. “I think you’ve got a point there. I’ll see you later.”

  I moved down through the trees. On the rockier slopes they were cork-oak and holly-oak, but then I entered a belt of beech and pine and the going became a lot easier.

  A fox broke cover, giving me so much of a fright that I almost ended his days for him which would have been fatal for all of us, but there was plenty of wildlife on the mountain besides Serafino and his boys. Wildcats and martens and the odd wolf, although they all tended to run the opposite way at the first smell of a man.

  I made good progress now and broke into a trot, my rifle at the trail, sliding down the occasional slope on my backside, and within fifteen minutes of leaving the others, I had descended a good three hundred feet.

  There was a freshwater stream over on my right. I worked my way across, lay on my belly and splashed water on my face. It seemed as good a route down as any and it was more than likely that any shepherd building a hut would place it as close to water as possible, especially when you considered what it was like in this country during the summer.

  It was the voice I heard first, a kind of smothered gasp that was cut off sharply. I paused, dropping to one knee. There was silence, then a vigorous splashing and another sharp cry.

  I had seen the Honourable Joanna Truscott twice in my life, both times on photos which Hoffer had shown us. In one she had been dressed for skiing, in the other for a garden party at Buckingham Palace. It was difficult to accept that the girl I watched now from the bushes, floundering naked in a hollow among the trees where the stream had formed a small pool, was the same.

  Her hair was tied back into a kind of eighteenth-century queue and her face, neck and arms were gypsy-brown from the sun. The rest of her was milk white and boyish, the breasts almost nonexistent, although the hips could only have belonged to a woman.

  She scrambled out and rubbed herself down with an old blanket. I didn’t bother looking away. For one thing she didn’t know I was there and for another, there was something rather sexless about her. Strange how some women can set one aflame with all the fury of a petrol-soaked bonfire in an instant and others have no effect whatsoever.

  She pulled on a pair of old trousers that had definitely seen better days, a man’s shirt, green woolen sweater with holes in the elbows and bound a red scarf around her head, knotting it under her chin.

  As she sat down to pull on a pair of Spanish fell boots, I stepped out of the trees and said cheerfully, “Good morning.”

  She was a tough one all right. “And good morning to you,” she replied calmly and started to get up.

  “No need to be alarmed,” I said rather unnecessarily. “My name is Wyatt – Stacey Wyatt. I’m from your stepfather, Karl Hoffer. I’ve three friends waiting for me now up the mountains. We’ve come to get you out.”

  God, what a fool I was. She was on her own and unguarded, obviously free to roam at will. Why on earth that didn’t strike me at once, I’ll never know. It had been a strenuous night – perhaps I was tired.

  “What am I expected to do – stand up and cheer?” she said coolly in that beautifully clipped, upper-crust English voice. “How did he tell you to dispose of me? Gun, knife or blunt instrument?”

  I stared at her in astonishment and at the same time, some kind of light started to dawn. She had turned away from me slightly. When I got the front view again, she was holding an old Beretta automatic pistol in her right hand and looked as if she knew exactly what to do with it.

  “Would you mind going into rather more detail,” I told her. “I’m afraid I’m not with you.”

  “Why don’t you pull the other one,” she suggested crisply.

  I was still holding the A.K. at the trail. I dropped it at my feet and put the Uzi beside it. “Look, no hands.”

  She wasn’t impressed. “What about the thing in the holster?”

  I removed the Smith and Wesson, laid it down, then walked back three paces, squatted against a holly-oak and took out my cigarettes.

  “Like one?”

  She shook her head. “I want to live to a ripe old age.”

  “If you think it’s worth it.” I
lit one myself. “Now I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen and then you can shoot me – if you still want to.”

  “We’ll see,” she said calmly. “Only make it quick. I haven’t had any breakfast.”

  So I told her in a few brief sentences and when I was finished, her expression hadn’t altered in the slightest. “Let me get this straight. My stepfather told you I was abducted by Serafino Lentini and held to ransom. That he paid up, but that Serafino decided to have his own wicked way with me after all and kept the money into the bargain?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “A lie, Mr. Wyatt, from beginning to end.”

  “I thought so.”

  She showed her surprise. “I don’t understand.”

  “I happen to know that because of injuries sustained under police interrogation some years ago, Serafino Lentini isn’t physically capable of taking that kind of interest in any woman.”

  “But if you knew that, if you realised there was something phoney about my stepfather’s story from the beginning, why did you come?”

  “I’ve always been insatiably curious.” I grinned. “The money was good and he made you sound rather interesting. Tell me, did you really sleep with the chauffeur when you were fourteen?”

  I certainly cracked that iron composure of hers with that one. Her eyes widened, she gasped and what I can only describe as a virginal flush tinged her cheeks.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s obvious now that he has an unusually inventive streak.”

  “You want the facts? I’ll give them to you.” She wasn’t pointing the Beretta at me any longer and she looked mad. “As they say about life insurance, I’m worth more dead than alive. My mother left me everything in trust with my stepfather as executor. Something of a mistake on her part. I’m twenty-one in another three weeks and get personal control of the whole thing. If I die before then Hoffer gets the lot. Two and a half million sterling.”