From the back entrance she could look down on the sleeping rooftops of Montecapolli to the yachts and the lights in the piazza. Tomorrow Apollio expected to imprison her again on his island. Two years of it, she thought bitterly. She had tried hard enough to keep the bargain they’d made. But she was young, and the sterility of their life at Isola Filibano was too much for anyone to take. She felt a little giggle rise in her throat, an anticipation of imminent freedom. Apollio’s angry thirst for revenge would drive him to follow her and Cesare. But the world was a big place, and with the money from the scrolls, they could vanish into the freedom she’d wanted ever since she was a little girl.
She knew her way around the ruins, having spent long night hours here in Cesare’s arms. She took the back stairs to the upper floor where she could watch for Cesare’s arrival.
She did not know all of his plans; but he would be pleased with her tonight. She’d followed instructions, gotten the package from the Sentissi, then taken the local train for Sorrento. She’d been terribly surprised—even frightened—when he appeared on the train, too, slipping into the seat beside her as soon as they left the station.
“Darling,” she’d said, “I thought you were working at those silly frescoes this afternoon. What a nice surprise!”
“The foxes have to be clever at this game, cara.” Cesare’s eyes were brilliant as he took the paintings from her. “Tell me about the Sentissi.”
He listened briefly, his narrow, handsome head tilted a little. He made a small sound when she mentioned Talbott’s appearance. He looks so cruel, she thought, and for a moment she expected him to be angry again. But then he explained what he was doing on the train.
“I walked over the mountain from the monastery—so no one saw me in Montecapolli,” he had said. “They think I’m chipping away at stone and mortar up there. It was a long walk to the bus. To be a fox means to throw everybody off the scent, cara. I shall get off at Sorrento, the stop before Montecapolli. You go straight back to Apollio, understand? No one must see you with me.”
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” she objected.
“You do not need to know. I will meet you tonight, as usual. One more last night at the monastery.”
“Won’t that be dangerous? Apollio wants to sail..
“Yes. And the deal can best be closed on Isola Filibano.
So I changed the plans. We will not hide the paintings in the monastery, because I did not anticipate a few things. I’ll take the scrolls to Filibano on my boat. I’ll probably be there before you.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t meet tonight.”
His grin was hard. “You do not understand what I say about a fox? We throw the dogs off the scent. We meet as if we were going to hide the scrolls. The men after us are not fools, Francesca. They are dangerous, and we move in quicksand. And first we must see how really clever these men are.” “I’m afraid of Jack Talbott,” she had said.
“We will settle him tonight. I cannot tolerate having him on the scene. I’d hoped the Americans would take care of him in Switzerland, but he shows unexpected initiative.”
She had always been a quick thinker. “You’re setting a trap for Talbott at the monastery tonight? Cesare, we mustn’t—”
“Kill him? You worry about murder?”
“It’s different from what we started out to do.”
“You need not worry. Frannie Smith would not worry.”
She said sharply; “I’m not Frannie Smith any more.”
“Of course. I apologize. I will see you at the monastery, however. You must be there.”
She said, with a touch of bitterness, “As bait?”
“As beautiful bait,” he said, nodding.
She had not hidden when she climbed the hill, and it hadn’t been as pleasant a walk as others. She trusted Cesare. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her, and it would be good to get rid of Jack Talbott. There was something unnatural about him, and she remembered how Cesare first sent her to flirt with him when they decided to use him to steal the paintings. He had seemed big and tough, but vulnerable then, like all the other men she had used. Now he was different. Now he loomed on the horizon of her mind like some dark storm cloud moving to overtake her.
She halted at the top of the stairs. A draught of cool air swept down the vaulted corridor with its ruined doorways to the monks’ cells. She shivered suddenly. Geometric patterns of moonlight shone on the stone floor ahead. Where was Cesare? It wasn’t fair of him to stake her out like a lamb, as bait for the tiger. But she had to trust him. It was too late to turn back now.
When she passed the door to the cell where Durell and Hanson waited, she heard his swift step behind her an instant before his hand clapped hard over her mouth and stifled her cry. She knew it wasn’t Cesare. Her terror flared, and she tried to kick backward, all her gutter instincts ablaze as she struggled to free herself. Durell pulled her easily back into the cell and turned her so she could see Si Hanson.
“Take it easy, Fran. We won’t hurt you.”
Durell’s voice was a whisper, almost soundless, but quite distinct. She struggled wildly for a moment, then subsided when she recognized him from the Hotel Sentissi.
“Where is Cesare?” he whispered. She shook her head, dark hair flying. “Isn’t he here?”
She made sounds behind his hand. She tried to bite his palm, and he added, “Don’t you know Talbott is waiting for you?”
She stiffened abruptly, her eyes wide. She looked at Si Hanson, with his white hair and youthful face. She did not know who he was. But although she was afraid of Durell, she was more afraid of Jack Talbott. She made small sounds of surrender behind Durell's hand.
“Don’t scream, don’t give yourself away, understand?”
She nodded and he took his hand away; she drew a deep breath and slumped against the stone wall of the cell. She couldn’t hear anything in the ruins. She looked up at Durell’s tall, somehow ominous figure.
“Where is Jack?” she asked quietly.
“Downstairs, in the chapel. Do you know it?”
“Y-yes.”
“He’s waiting to kill you, you know.”
“Yes,” she said, stronger this time.
“Did you come here to meet Cesare?”
“You know everything. You ought to know the answer to that one, too.”
“Does he still have the scrolls?”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her voice lifted slightly, and Durell raised a hand in warning. She swallowed and was silent. She was suddenly worried about Cesare, and resented his use of her for this trap. These men were not as stupid as Cesare thought. He made a mistake, planning this thing for tonight. He hadn’t expected Durell to be here, too. It could all fall to pieces, if . . .
“Silas,” Durell said in that peculiarly silent voice. “Go down and take him.”
She saw the white-haired man start and grin and take a gun from his pocket. “You really mean it?”
“Don’t kill him. Just take him.”
“My pleasure,” Si said.
He was gone immediately, without sound. Durell, alone in the tiny room with the girl, looked at her curiously. Enough moonlight came through the narrow window to make her face clearly visible. The look in her eyes was puzzling. She seemed to be fearful, yet she smiled as if at some small, secret joke she intended to keep to herself.
“What will your friend do?” she asked.
“Take Talbott out of the picture, just for now.”
“Then you’re really after Cesare, aren’t you?”
“It’s the scrolls I want, not your boy friend.”
“You make it sound nasty—about Cesare and me. I don’t have to stand around here and . . .”
“Yes, you do. Now shut up.”
Surprisingly, she was quiet. Durell strained to hear Si Hanson’s progress down the steps to the chapel, but he couldn’t detect anything. Fran smiled, a small Mona Lisa expression. In the m
oonlight, the essential hardness of her features was softened; she looked young and lovely. She stood provocatively, one hip askew, leaning against the wall as if she were perfectly content with events. He wondered at her calmness. He was taking a chance with Talbott; he had hoped not to clash with the big man until other matters were settled first, to safeguard the Fremont group. But this couldn’t be helped.
“When is Cesare getting here?” he asked the girl.
“I don’t know.” She grinned. “I think you’re all crazy. Just because a girl has a little harmless flirtation . . .”
“Not harmless. Two people have died already, and . . .”
A small sound stopped him. He was sure their whispers couldn’t have been heard beyond the cell doorway, but the sound that came to him was sharp and distinct, a little click like a pebble dropping on the stone floor. He went to the hall and paused. The moon was gone for the moment, lost behind a drifting cloud. The vaulted corridor seemed empty, but he couldn’t be sure. He tried to decide from which direction the sound had come—from the back stairs to the kitchen area or the main steps down to the chapel. He wasn’t certain.
He took his gun and gestured to Fran to join him. She showed no reluctance. She had no wish to stay here alone in the shadows.
It was time he heard from Silas, he thought; he wondered
if Hanson had made the clicking sound. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent Si against someone like Jack Talbott. Si wanted very much to put Talbott on ice, and that knife could cut two ways. Maybe the FBI man had been too eager and lost his way.
He made another gesture to Francesca and she followed quickly down the back stairs to the kitchen area. The moon came out again, like a lifting curtain, and made strange shadow shapes in the vaulted chambers. Serpentine, Moorish columns supported the barrel roof. He waited for the girl to come up beside him, not relishing having her at his back.
It was ironical, he thought, that his primary concern should again be that Talbott come to no immediate harm. Maybe he would end up killing the man—but not just yet. Jack still had the insurance he’d bought with Ellen’s life. Obviously, if Fran was not surprised that Talbott was here, she was expecting Cesare to take Talbott out of the game tonight. They had their own little plans, those two; and while Durell wouldn’t care less, day after tomorrow, for Jack’s skin, he didn’t want things going awry just now.
He heard the clicking sound again.
And a soft thud, a kind of smacking noise, and a sigh. Francesca halted.
“What was that?”
“Maybe Cesare,” he suggested.
“But Cesare isn’t due yet, and he uses the back way—” She paused. “You’re a smart sonofabitch. You make me sick.”
Durell grinned in the dark. “Stay with me, even if it hurts. There’s a good chance you might get killed.”
“I’m not afraid.”
He went forward. She hesitated, then followed. From the ruined kitchens, sprayed with moonlight shafting through the broken walls, a wide corridor led through the main area of the monastery church. The high dome had fallen in long ago, and huge blocks of stone, too big for the local fishermen to haul away to construct their houses, lay in shattered heaps on the floor of the nave. Durell circled them and took shelter in the deep shadows of an arcade of fat marble columns. The arched doorway to the private chapel loomed before him.
Francesca breathed lightly in his ear. He could smell her perfume, feel the soft pressure of her body against his arm. “What is it. . . ?” she began.
And then everything came apart.
Someone began running, without heed to the noise he made, across the chapel floor. A man, Durell guessed, from the sound of the shoes on the rubbly floor. He yelled, “Hold it!” and fired high as a warning. The shot sounded deafeningly in the empty ruins. Someone yelled, and he ran forward, ignoring the girl, worried about Silas. A body careened into him out of the black shadows. He saw a wedge of a face, felt the shock of a hard shoulder against his middle, and smelled sweat and panic. Durell was thrown back against one of the thick stone columns and drove forward again. The other man was on his hands and knees. It wasn’t Si—no white hair was visible. He didn’t think it was Talbott, either. The other lunged up, a knife blade glinting in his hand. There was a small sound as the knife went past him and clinked against the stone column at his back.
Francesca screamed.
Durell caught the man with a jab in the stomach, heard the whoosh of air driven from the other’s lungs, a choked curse in Italian. The man was hurt, and tried to snake away, and Durell hit him again with the barrel of his gun and heard him stagger, his feet making erratic scraping noises on the stone. And then the roof fell in.
He did not know if it was Francesca or someone else who hit him from behind. He was aware of blinding disorientation, a slamming impact as he hit the floor. Someone stumbled into him, gave him a gratuitous kick. He tried to get up, pushing with hands and knees on the floor, aware of dismay. He had lost his gun. He yelled for Silas, and heard his voice as a low, inchoate mutter, and then, for the second time that day, everything whirled away into a dizzy circle of colored lights.
chapter fourteen
HE HAD crawled for about ten miles, it seemed, over dusty stone and cold rubble. His arm lay across someone’s chest, and that someone groaned in steady rhythm with every breath. He thought he was making the noise himself, but he wasn’t. It came from the man he had fallen across.
He pushed back and felt a stab of pain in the back of his head and then forgot it, because the other man was feeling much worse.
“Silas?” he whispered. “Si, what happened to you?”
The FBI man moved and sighed with relief. His arm and left side were dark with blood, and another matting of blood darkened Hanson’s brush of white hair. “I’m glad you’re alive, Cajun. He hit you with a piece of stone.”
“Who did?”
“I think it was Talbott. But I’m not sure.”
“You didn’t get to him first?”
“He wasn’t here. Somebody came in the other way, while I was still scouting. He stuck a knife in me.”
“How bad is it?”
Silas Hanson grunted. “Nothing fatal—I hope. I’ve lost some blood, though. Still dripping. Slashed along the ribs and nicked my arm. I’m sorry, Cajun. I guess it was this Cesare fellow.” “Could be. And your head?”
Si touched his scalp in surprise. “Hell, I didn’t even feel that one. I’ve got a turkey egg there, all right.”
“You didn’t see the other man clearly?”
“No. Listen, what about the girl? Is she all right?” “Francesca? She must be long gone.”
“Like hell. Look at her, over there.”
Durell turned slowly. She lay in a pool of moonlight on the chapel floor, her dark hair a flood of raven against the stone, her skirts hiked up over her hips. He walked over to her, a little unsteady on his own feet, but not worrying about any noise he now made. Cesare had outsmarted them, he thought grimly. But he hadn’t taken Talbott out of the play, thanks to his being here with Silas. He could chalk up damned little else to the credit side. The paintings were still missing. And Talbott was still in the hills around Montecapolli.
He knelt beside Fran and saw that she was just coming to. Her eyes flickered as he touched her cheek and she gave a little moan and then tried to shrink and scramble away from him.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You were knocked out.”
“I’m not—I don’t know what happened,” she said thickly. “Oh, God, my head. And my dress is ruined.”
“Cesare left you in the lurch, that’s what happened.”
She sat bolt upright, staring. If she was at all concerned about her semi-nudity, she paid no attention to it. “Ah, you cops are all such liars!”
“It’s true. He’s gone. Cesare didn’t bother to help you. You and he were trying to booby-trap Talbott, right? To get him off your heels?”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “My head ach
es.”
“Get on your feet, Fran. We’re moving out of here.”
“Not with you. I can make it alone.”
“You either come along, or I send for Apollio to take you
home. That might be awkward, trying to explain to your husband just what you were doing here.”
She breathed thin hatred. “Oh, you are a bastard.”
“Give me a hand with my friend,” he said.
Silas was able to walk. For the first few minutes, it was a case of the lame leading the halt, Durell thought. The girl was no help, being concerned only with her headache and the damage to her dress. Silas paused when they stood outside in the fresh wind that blew in from the Bay of Sorrento.
“You need a doctor,” Durell said.
“I can patch myself up,” Hanson insisted. “Just a scratch, that’s all it is. It looks worse than it is.”
“And it will feel worse by tomorrow. You’re bound to stiffen up. There’s a little clinic I noticed in town. I’ll drop you off there. Tell them you slipped and fell.”
“On a knife?” Hanson asked wryly.
“Just stick to that, and they’ll assume it was one of the local fishermen and won’t press you to make formal charges.” “Are you putting me out of this, Cajun?”
“I’m sorry,” Durell said. “I have to.”
The way down the mountain seemed a lot longer than when they had come up, and several times Silas grudgingly asked for a moment to rest. The girl stuck close to Durell’s side. She was strangely silent, a hint of anger evident in her face as she scanned the night around them. Durell could guess what she was thinking, and hoped to make use of it as soon as he took care of Si.
It was decided it would be best if Hanson made his way to the clinic alone, for the last block or two. It was still before midnight, and Montecapolli’s bars and cafes were bright and crowded. A dance band was playing on the Imperiale’s terrace. Lights still shone in the clinic windows. Once Durell saw the clinic doors close after Hanson, he returned to where Francesca stood in the street. Her dress was smudged with dust and cobwebs and torn along one hem, but she still managed to look part wanton and part countess. Her mouth was sullen. She still thought about something she didn’t like to think about.
Assignment - Sorrento Siren Page 12