by Gavin Lyall
Ranklin said: “Christ!” Then: “It’s gone.”
O’Gilroy reversed the turn and saw the fluttering spark getting smaller against the dark pasture. Then stop, almost vanish, and flare up again.
“Right.” He snapped off the ignition and tilted the aeroplane down, keeping the speed – the tune from the wires – high, and weaving gently, like a man moving his head to judge the distance, watching the angle between the flame and the horizon close and close . . . Back on the stick, and the wires hummed lower, too much, stick forward again, and back, forward—
“Brace yeself,” he warned. “May not be me best—”
They hit.
* * *
The wrought-iron gates of the villa had been left open, and they slipped through, past a small old car that O’Gilroy didn’t recognise, and through shrubs and dwarf cypresses around to the back of the house, away from the lights. By then, Ranklin appreciated the problem: Palladio had believed in high, airy ground-floor rooms, so the bedrooms were a long way up. And up plain stucco’d walls with no foot- and hand-holds, except the drainpipes added in later years. These were tucked within the corners where the portico joined the main wall, and from the portico roof you could reach small windows on either side.
“Tis me own bedroom up there,” O’Gilroy whispered. “Almost legal, ye might say.”
“Can you do it?”
“Like enough.” He grasped the pipe: it was fat and solid. “Surely.”
They went softly across the terrace to the french windows. Inside was a short, doorless corridor into the main hall; at the opposite side of the villa, a similar corridor led to the front door. The hall was lit, and there was occasional movement.
After a couple of minutes, O’Gilroy whispered: “I see two of them.”
“Yes.” Ranklin thought he recognised the man from the taxi at the Ritz, Silvio. He didn’t know the second man, actually Jankovic, but wasn’t surprised that there were two. You could hardly hold captive a house full of servants single-handed. “I can’t see either of the women.”
“Be sitting down . . . That’s Mrs Finn, to the right, wearing blue.”
“Thank God.” They backed away along the terrace.
“Captain,” O’Gilroy said, “if’n no harm’s come to Mrs Finn yet, I’m thinking she’s safe until Falcone gets back anyhow. So why’nt we stop him on the road? – he’ll mebbe have a gun. And now we know there’s two of them . . .”
“All right.” They started back around the house. “Will you know his car?”
“Seems he’s got dozens. Won’t be small, anyhow.”
“Then we’ll stop everything.”
But there was nothing to stop. A farm cart plodded past, going the other way, then they just stood and began to shiver in the pre-dawn air.
After a while, Ranklin said: “I want to be quite clear what we’re doing. We’re going into that house only because Corinna’s there, no other reason. And I think we can get her out more safely than the Carabiniere – the police.”
“Surely we can.”
“And if you go inside, you’ll be closest to her.”
“I will that,” O’Gilroy said evenly.
“I just wanted to be sure.” After another while, he said: “I’d rather like to take one of those men alive and confessing who sent them. It was a police captain in Trieste and I’d like to see him disgraced, dismissed – for purely professional reasons.”
Far down the road, headlights flickered between the trees. O’Gilroy said: “Jest professional reasons.”
“That’s right. So that I can go back there some day.”
Now they could hear the hum of a powerful motor moving at a decorous speed. “Even with two guns, it’ll be trouble enough taking these fellers dead, never mind alive. Which d’ye want most, Captain: the women safe or taking prisoners?”
There was a pause. Then Ranklin nodded. “All right. We forget about prisoners.” They stepped out and waved their hands.
The car was the high Pullman-bodied one with tasselled curtains that had brought O’Gilroy from the station, and Matteo was driving it. He drew up gently, recognising O’Gilroy – and then a rear door opened and Dagner stepped out.
Ranklin was astounded. And so must Dagner have been, only he had recognised them in the car’s headlights and had time to choose his expression and voice. He was brisk: “Captain – I thought you’d still be in Trieste. And O’Gilroy. Does this mean a problem?”
Ranklin, still dazed, just managed to be polite. “Major . . . What on earth are you doing here?”
“Travelling as the Senator’s personal physician.” Behind him, Ranklin could see the bulky shape of Falcone sitting very upright on the back seat. Matteo took the opportunity to get in and fuss, re-arranging the rug and making soothing comments. Dagner lowered his voice. “And taking an excuse to get out into the field again, making sure this operation goes ahead smoothly. What do you have to report?”
Ranklin had quite a choice, including the question of the Bureau being left leaderless eight hundred miles away, but restrained himself to: “There’s a fair selection, but most immediately, a couple of assassins are waiting for the Senator at his villa, with his wife and Mrs Finn as hostages. Have you got a gun with you?”
Dagner paused. Then: “No. No, I’m afraid . . . I gather it’s unlawful in Italy.”
But Falcone had been overhearing. “Signora Falcone, is she safe?”
“I wouldn’t say safe, but I think she’s unharmed. Have you got—?”
“Yes, yes, it is in my luggage. But you must be very careful . . .”
It was the Browning Ranklin had seen before, just like O’Gilroy’s, and he instinctively passed it to him. Falcone added: “There are many guns in the villa, but . . .”
Ranklin could guess at a whole cabinet of shotguns and hunting rifles, but in a downstairs room they couldn’t reach. “Well, it’s a start. Back to plan A.”
“What’s that?” Dagner asked.
“We think we can get hold of another pistol and do a bit of outflanking if O’Gilroy can get up to a bedroom window.”
“Sounds rather complicated.” He was taking charge now. “We ought to think this out—”
“Major, we’ve been thinking it out, and reconnoitring the house, for half an hour. We must get somebody inside before we do anything else, or the women . . .” He shrugged. “The ground-floor rooms all open onto the hall, that means O’Gilroy getting in through the bedroom floor, so he may as well look for a second gun while he’s at it. Or just call the Carabinieri and let them handle it all.”
He risked nothing by suggesting that; he knew Falcone wouldn’t want it, or the explanations it would lead to.
And turn it down he did, but added: “But you must be sure you save Signora Falcone.”
Ranklin didn’t answer him. “Then we’d better get going while it’s still dark enough.”
“Fine,” Dagner said. “I’d like to see how you two work. If you can fit me into your plan, fine. If not, I’ll keep out of your way.”
Ranklin made a face he was glad Dagner couldn’t see. He knew senior officers who promised to do just what they were told. Then he started rethinking.
Despite his height, once they were inside the gates Dagner showed all his Khyber cunning, moving like the shadow of a snake through the tangled garden and up onto the back terrace. Artillery training didn’t involve creepy-crawling and Ranklin felt distinctly bovine, lumbering behind him.
Then, with the eastern sky definitely turning grey, they watched O’Gilroy, barefoot and coatless, clamber up the drainpipe. He climbed without haste or scrabbling, sometimes walking his feet up the walls on either side, sometimes using joints on the pipe. A few flakes of white paint fluttered down.
“Has he done this before?” Dagner whispered.
“Shouldn’t wonder.”
O’Gilroy vanished over the portico roof, and there was a slight creak as a shutter was eased back. A minute or so later, a faint glimmer s
howed behind the shutters of the next room along, Corinna’s, and Ranklin could visualise what O’Gilroy was facing: without a maid, Corinna’s bedroom would look like an anarchist outrage in a dress shop.
That was indeed how it struck O’Gilroy. He tried one handbag – too light – another that was empty, then started shuffling under heaps of clothing, some of which embarrassed him and some he just didn’t understand. And then, in plain sight on a chest of drawers, he saw a third bag. It felt heavy enough, but he still had to sift its contents before coming up with a Colt Navy-calibre pocket pistol. He thumbed it to half-cock, spun the cylinder, and saw all five were loaded.
This might, he thought, be going to work.
He packed the gun back into the bag, well wrapped in clothing, then opened a window and shutter – they all seemed to creak – and dropped it into Ranklin’s arms, then saw him and Dagner move back around the corner.
In no hurry now, he waited, looking at the greying sky, at the steely glint on the river. It would, he thought wistfully, have been a fine day for a flight to Trieste, and he might never get to handle an aeroplane like the Oriole again. He took a breath of morning air, checked the Browning and moved towards the light switch and the door. This, after all, was the work he knew best.
The gallery itself was dark, but light seeped up from the below. O’Gilroy crawled to the balustrade and peeked cautiously through. Corinna, sprawled but tense, was on a chaise-longue, and when he moved a little further along, he could see Signora Falcone in an armchair next to her. Grouped together, easy to watch. He saw one man immediately, wearing a black suit and pacing slowly, puffing on a cigarette. A pistol dangled from his other hand. But that was all.
O’Gilroy tried to estimate the distance. The gallery itself was a good twenty-five feet high, and the slant made that a range of up to forty feet. Long for a pistol, and the light from table and standing lamps was very blotchy, but he could use the balustrade as a rest when the time came.
Then the man stopped pacing and spoke to someone out of sight beneath that side of the gallery. O’Gilroy waited, then moved round a corner of the gallery to his right, almost in line with the front door and bringing the second man into sight. He was sitting in a hard-backed chair with a shotgun across his knees. If that thing went off . . . But O’Gilroy couldn’t choose his target; he was to cope with whoever didn’t go to the front door.
It was silly how your mouth got dry, waiting for action. Every time.
As at the back, the front of the villa was a terrace under the high portico reached by flights of steps at either end. Only these were well lit from electric lamps on the house walls. Staying against the wall, Ranklin sidled along and stationed himself to the right of the tall double front doors, still against the wall. Dagner came up from the opposite end. They waited.
Ranklin tried to concentrate on what was about to happen yet have no preconception about what the enemy might do. It was best to think of them that way, as the anonymous ‘enemy’ of his soldiering days, just targets without feelings or loved ones. And they might want Falcone to get inside the house, or rush out to kill him before he could escape. Or – most likely of all – do something Ranklin hadn’t thought of.
He cocked the hammer of Corinna’s Colt, wishing he’d thought to unload it and test the trigger-pull earlier. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have picked a gun that caused so much smoke and had only five shots, but O’Gilroy needed the better weapon. Ranklin just hoped that, if they forced a servant to open the door, he was dressed as one and wouldn’t cause the waste of surprise, time and a bullet. And bad luck for himself, of course.
He waited on, feeling his mouth dry up.
Then, with a growl and crunching of gravel, the car swung in through the gates and Matteo tooted the horn as instructed. Then he scuttled out of the far side to leave the car between himself and the house. That was his own idea, and Ranklin didn’t blame him for it. The front doors clicked and began to open, and Dagner, following orders perfectly, stepped forward to show himself in the light, hands visible and empty.
Ranklin couldn’t see who opened the doors, but heard a quavering voice ask: “Che cosa volete, signore?”
But before Dagner could answer, there was a shout from inside the house, a gunshot sounded followed by the boom of the shotgun, and another shot.
O’Gilroy had heard the car as soon as those below did. It prompted a flurry of Italian and arm-waving which suggested an uncertainty about which of the gunmen was in charge. But the one with the pistol – Silvio – seemed to win. He strode towards the front door while the one with the shotgun went to guard the seated women. Signora Falcone made a move to stand, but the shotgun waved her down, and the three of them stabilised into a tableau. O’Gilroy rested the pistol on the balustrade, wrapped his left hand around his right, and aimed at the foreshortened figure below. One squeeze and it – Jankovic had become an ‘it’ – would fold like a puppet, backbone cut through. But not quite yet.
An elderly servant appeared from the service stairs, buttoning a livery jacket. Silvio herded him towards the front door, out of sight, and there was a long-stretched moment of silence. Perhaps Signora Falcone heard something O’Gilroy couldn’t, or perhaps she just snapped: she jumped up, screamed, and ran for the front. Jankovic took a step but didn’t fire, perhaps fearing he would scare Falcone away.
She might have counted on that, but O’Gilroy couldn’t. He fired as Jankovic moved, and missed. Jankovic whirled round and jerked a trigger at the likeliest source of the shot, the french windows. O’Gilroy heard glass crash as he steadied and fired again.
The shots seemed to blow the servant out of the front door like a cork, but it was Silvio charging out from behind to reach Falcone. Instead of jumping aside, Dagner tried to grab him. Silvio slashed at him with the pistol but they hung together, grappling. Ranklin yelled, Silvio half turned to see and Ranklin took a stride forward and fired from no more than a couple of feet. He saw Silvio jerk backwards before the black-powder smoke blotted him out. Ranklin ducked as he recocked, seeing Silvio’s feet and firing somewhere above them, vaguely hoping he wouldn’t hit Dagner. The feet vanished.
Blundering through the smoke, Ranklin rammed one of the columns at the edge of the terrace and realised Silvio had gone over. He lay sprawled on the lamplit gravel below, winded, wounded and empty-handed, but squirming slowly.
“Get down there and . . .” Ranklin ordered, but Dagner was on his knees, looking surprised and fingering his head where Silvio had hit him. “Oh blast it!” – because Silvio’s pistol was down there, too, and he might recover enough to find it and – “Oh damn!”
So he carefully shot the enemy dead as he would a twitching wounded rabbit. Then rushed for the house and Corinna. He still had two shots left.
O’Gilroy’s pistol had jammed after the second shot. He knew he had hit Jankovic, seen him stagger, but he still had the shotgun and one unfired barrel. As O’Gilroy wrenched at the pistol’s slide, Corinna swung to her feet.
“Stay still ye stupid—!” O’Gilroy screamed. She probably didn’t even hear; people don’t hear things at such moments. But Jankovic heard, raised his head and the gun – as Corinna smashed a table lamp on his head.
Then she seemed to freeze in place, just stood there watching Jankovic pitch forward and skid on the polished floor, piling up a fur rug with his head. The slide of the automatic slammed free, Corinna was clear of the line and O’Gilroy had an easy target.
Ranklin had been delayed by colliding with Signora Falcone in the doorway. He never knew that when he appeared, just a running figure in the patchy light, O’Gilroy had switched aim to him and taken the first pressure on the trigger. Then he switched back to Jankovic and shot him dead.
The sound of the shot faded, leaving just the smell of gunfire. Ranklin reached Corinna and grabbed her arm; it was like trying to pivot a statue.
“Are you all right?”
“I guess so . . .” She seemed dazed. Then suddenly she sagged.
“Sit down.”
“Hell, I’ve been sitting all night . . .” But then she slumped onto a sofa. “Is it really all right? Really?”
He sat beside her, clutching her hands. “Yes, yes, all right.”
“I knew you’d come . . . No, I didn’t see how you could, but I believed you would. You and Conall, you’re the only ones in the world who could . . .” She freed a hand to gesture at the room, its broken glass, bullet scars, its corpse. “Are they both . . . ?”
“Both dead, yes.”
She gave a shiver and was silent for a few moments, then: “I wanted them dead, but . . . We made you kill them, didn’t we?” She stared at him as if they’d never met before. “How can you stand it? All this killing people? You don’t show anything!” She looked up at O’Gilroy, who was making a slow business of counting his unfired cartridges. “Neither of you!”
“You’re not supposed to show it,” Ranklin said.
“But you must – Oh God!” She jumped up and fled up the stairs. Ranklin stood, looking after her hesitantly. There was a burst of chatter by the front door; servants were bringing in Falcone in a wheelchair.
O’Gilroy replaced the automatic’s magazine with a loud snap.
“You don‘t show anything,” Ranklin said, “and you don’t feel anything.”
O’Gilroy smiled faintly. “Is that an order, Captain?”
“I suppose it is.”
33
The rising sun threw long shadows from the pillars of the back portico and the cypresses beyond, there was coffee on the terrace table and the air was fresh but with an underlying warmth. In all, a perfect Italian autumn day if you could ignore the shattered french windows, a few bullet-holes and two bodies stowed somewhere back in the house. And Ranklin had no trouble ignoring them; they were strictly Falcone’s problem. He took another gulp of coffee.
Signora Falcone was also back there, placating the servants, who had been shut up in their basement rooms, and sending out breakfast in dribs and drabs. D’Annunzio had been locked in his room and probably asleep until the shooting started. They had caught a glimpse of him in a vivid bathrobe, demanding explanations; now, presumably, he was getting properly dressed. Falcone himself sat at the table in his wheelchair, still with a rug over his knees, looking pale and serious. But then, he had problems. Ranklin put some smoked ham on a piece of bread.