by Jack Higgins
“There have been several bits of banditry in between as I recall.”
He sighed and said with obvious reluctance, “I might as well tell you. We were in for a percentage of that gold you were caught with at Râs el âyis.”
“Kan-How big a percentage?”
“Everything we had. We could have made five times its value overnight. It looked like a good proposition.”
“Nice of you to tell me.”
I wasn’t angry. It didn’t seem to be all that important any more and I was interested in the next move.
“No more wars, Sean?” I asked. “What about the Biafrans? Couldn’t they use a good commando?”
“They couldn’t pay in washers. In any case, I’ve had enough of that kind of game—we all have.”
“So Sicily is the only chance?”
It was obviously the moment he’d been waiting for—the first real opening I had given him.
“The last chance, Stacey—the last and only chance. One hundred thousand dollars plus expenses . . .”
I held up my hand. “No sales talk. Just tell me about it.”
God, but I’d come a long, long way in those six years since Mozambique. Little Stacey Wyatt telling Sean Burke what to do and he took it, that was the amazing thing.
“It’s simple enough,” he said. “Hoffer’s a widower with a stepdaughter called Joanna—Joanna Truscott.”
“American?”
“No, English and very upper-crust from what I hear. Her father was a baronet or something like that. She’s an honourable anyway, not that it means much these days. Hoffer’s had trouble with her for years. One scrape after another. Sleeping around—that kind of thing.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty.”
The Honourable Joanna Truscott sounded promising.
“She must be quite a girl.”
“I wouldn’t know—we’ve never met. Hoffer has business interests in Sicily. Something to do with the oilfields at a place called Gela. You know it?”
“It was a Greek colony. Aeschylus died there. They say he was brained by a tortoise shell dropped by a passing eagle.” He gazed at me blankly and I grinned. “I had an expensive education, Sean, remember? But never mind. What about the Truscott girl?”
“She disappeared about a month ago. Hoffer didn’t notify the police because he thought she was off on some binge or other. Then he got a ransom note from a bandit called Serafino Lentini.”
“An old Sicilian custom. How much?”
“Oh, it was modest enough. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Did he go to the police?”
Burke shook his head. “Apparently he’s spent enough time in Sicily to know that doesn’t do much good.”
“Wise man. So he paid up?”
“That’s about the size of it. Unfortunately this Serafino took the money then told him he’d decided to hang on to her for a while. He also indicated that if there was any trouble—any sign of the law being brought in—he’d send her back in pieces.”
“A Sicilian to the backbone,” I said. “Does Hoffer have any idea where he’s hanging out?”
“The general area of a mountain called Cammarata. Do you know it?”
I laughed. “The last place God made. A wilderness of sterile valleys and jagged peaks. There are caves up there that used to hide Roman slaves two thousand years ago. Believe me, if this Serafino of yours is a mountain man the police could chase him for a year up there without even seeing him and helicopters don’t do too well in that kind of country. The heat of the day does funny things to the air temperature. Too many down-draughts.”
“As bad as that?”
“Worse than you could ever imagine. The greatest bandit of them all, Giuliano, operated in the same kind of territory and they couldn’t catch him, even when they brought in a couple of army divisions.”
He nodded slowly. “Could we do it, Stacey? You and me and the heavy brigade?”
I thought about it. About the Cammarata and the heat and the lava rock and about Serafino who might already have handed the girl on to the rest of his men. When I replied, it wasn’t because the thought made me sick or angry or anything like that. From the sound of her, the Honourable Joanna might well be having the time of her life. I don’t honestly think I was even thinking of my end of the money. It was more than that—something deeper—something personal between Burke and me which I couldn’t have explained at that moment even to myself.
“Yes, I think it could be done. With me along it’s just possible.”
“Then you’ll come?”
He leaned forward eagerly, a hand on my shoulder, but I wasn’t going to be caught that easily.
“I’ll think about it.”
He didn’t smile, showed no emotion of any kind and yet tension oozed out of him like dirty water and in a second he was transformed into the man I’d always known.
“Good lad. I’ll see you later then. Back at the villa.”
I watched him climb the path and disappear. For the moment I’d had enough shooting. The sea looked inviting and I moved a little further along the beach, stripped and went in.
At that point the cliffs merged into hillside sparsely covered with grass, and wild flowers grew in profusion. I climbed half-way up and lay on my back, the sun warm on my naked flesh, staring through narrowed eyelids at a white cloud no bigger than my hand, allowing my whole body to relax, making my mind a blank, another trick hard-won from those months in prison.
The world was a blue bowl and I floated in it, drowsing in the scented grass and slept.
Waking was a return to a heavy stillness. I was aware of flowers, the grass at eye-level like a jungle, the woman watching me from a few yards away. Was it an accidental encounter or had she been sent by Burke? I wasn’t angry, but strangely calculating considering the circumstances. I watched her through slitted eyes, apparently still asleep, making no move. She stayed perhaps two or three minutes, her face quite expressionless, then went away carefully.
When she had gone, I sat up, dressed and went down to the beach again feeling rather excited. In a way, the whole thing had become a kind of game with Burke making a new move as I countered the old one.
The cards were where I had left them together with my box of ammunition and when I moved to the firing line, I had never known such power, such certainty. I drew, fired and was reloading within the second, my old self again, the Stacey from before the Hole . . . and yet not the same.
This time I fired left-handed, drawing on the cross from my waistband and knew before I checked what I would find.
Five hits . . . five hits on each card tightly grouped. I tore them into very small pieces, scattered them into the sea and went back up to the villa.
I slept during the afternoon waking just before night fell and yet I lay there without moving when Burke entered the room to check on me and softly departed.
When it was quite dark I got up, pulled on a pair of pants and ventured on to the terrace. I could hear voices near at hand, followed the sound and paused at the window of what was obviously his bedroom. He was sitting at a desk in one corner and Piet was standing beside him, his fair hair golden in the lamplight.
Burke glanced up at him and smiled—a new kind of smile, one I’d never seen before—patted his arm and said something. Piet went out like some faithful hound about his master’s business.
Burke opened a drawer, produced what looked suspiciously like a bottle of whisky, uncorked it and swallowed, which for a man who didn’t drink was quite a trick. He put the bottle back in the drawer when the door opened and the woman entered.
I got ready to leave, mainly because whatever else I am I’m no voyeur, but there was no need. He simply sat there looking very much the colonel and talked, presumably in Greek which I knew he spoke well after a couple of years in Cyprus during the Emergency.
I eased back into the shadows as she left and moved back to my room. The whole thing was certainly packed full of hu
man interest and drama and I lit a cigarette, lay on the bed and thought about it all.
The story—that was the really weak link. The story about the Honourable Joanna and the rampant Serafino. Oh, it was possible, but strangely incomplete like a Bach fugue with page three missing.
Somewhere thunder rumbled menacingly. The gods were angry perhaps? Oh, might Zeus forgive us. The old Greek tag drifted up from some dusty schoolroom to haunt me along with wine-dark seas, Achilles and his heel and cunning Odysseus.
I didn’t hear her come in, but when lightning crackled out to sea, it picked her from the night standing just inside the French window. I made no sound. When it flared again, she had come closer, the dress on the floor behind her, the ripe body a thing of light and mystery, dark hair brushing the full breasts.
In the darkness following, her hands were on me, her mouth, her flesh against mine. In one single savage movement I had her by the hair, my hand tightening cruelly.
“What did he tell you to do?” I demanded. “Anything I wanted, anything to keep me happy?”
Her body arched in pain and yet she did not struggle and when the lightning flickered again, highlighting the heavy breasts, I saw that her eyes were turned towards me and there was no fear there.
My fingers slackened in her hair and she subsided. I gently patted her face, her lips turned into the palm of my hand. So, it had come to this? Stacey the satyr—fill one half of his bed for him and keep him happy. The rest was easy. Just like my English breakfast—Burke thought of everything. Only the piano was missing and he’d probably tried hard enough to get hold of one.
I went to the French window and stood looking out at the flickering sky. Suddenly, and for no accountable reason, the whole thing struck me as really being very funny—a monstrous game for children with motive laid bare to such a degree that it was ridiculous.
Burke wanted me—needed me. In exchange I got twenty-five thousand dollars and all my more carnal needs supplied. Now what well-bred satyr could complain at that?
I nodded slowly. Right. Let it be so. I would play his game through as I had done before, but this time perhaps a rule or two of my own might be in order.
Behind me was the softest of movements and I sensed her presence there in the darkness. I reached out and pulled her close. She was still naked and shivered slightly. I could smell the mimosa, heavy and clinging on the damp air. The whole electric world waited for a sign. It came and the heavens opened, rain falling straight from sky to earth.
The freshness filled my nostrils, drowning the womanly scent of her. I left her there, moved out on the terrace and stood, face turned up to the rain, mouth half-open, laughing as I hadn’t laughed in a long, long time, ready to take on the world again and beat it at its own dark game.
FIVE
* * *
IT WAS HOLY Week when we arrived in Palermo, something which I’d completely forgotten about. We drove in the thirty-five kilometres from the aerodrome at Punta Raisi and the black Mercedes saloon which had met us bogged down in the crowded streets. It finally came to a halt in deference to a religious procession which wound its way through the crowds, an ornate Madonna rising on a catafalque high above our heads.
During the whole of the run from Crete, Burke had been moody and irritable and now he lowered the window and looked out with ill-concealed impatience.
“What’s all this?”
“A procession of the mysteries,” I told him. “This kind of thing goes on during Holy Week all over Sicily. Everything else grinds to a halt. They’re a very religious people.”
“It doesn’t seem to have rubbed off much on you,” he commented sourly.
Piet Jaeger glanced at me anxiously. How much he knew of what had been said between Burke and myself, of the hardness of the bargaining, I wasn’t sure, but the change in our relationship had been plain enough during the past three days.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Didn’t you notice the Virgin had a knife through her heart? That’s Sicily for you—the cult of death everywhere. I’d have thought I fitted in rather nicely.”
He smiled reluctantly. “You could be right at that.”
I turned to Piet. “You’ll love it. It’s one hell of a place. On All Saints’ Day the children are given presents from the dead. The graves are probably the best kept in the world.”
Piet grinned, obviously relieved, but Legrande who was sitting beside the driver was hot and tired, his eyes tinged with yellow which didn’t look too good. Maybe one of the several fevers he’d picked up in that Viet prison camp after Dien Bien Phu was about to plague him.
“What is this, a conducted tour?” he demanded.
I ignored him and leaned out of the window as the Mercedes pushed its way through the crowd. The girls were a little more fashionably dressed than when I had last been here and so were the younger men, but I could smell incense and candle grease, hear voices chanting beyond the square. The crowd parted and the penitents appeared looking remarkably like the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in pointed hoods and long white robes.
No, nothing had changed—not down there beneath the surface where it counted.
About seven miles out of Palermo on the coast road to Messina you come to the beaches of Romagnolo, a favourite spot for city-dwellers at weekends. Hoffer’s villa was a couple of miles further on. It didn’t look more than a year or two old and had obviously been specially designed to fit into the hillside site, rising above us on three different levels with what looked like a Moorish garden crowning the highest roof.
The whole was surrounded by a high wall and we had to wait to be identified at the gates by a guard who carried an automatic rifle slung from one shoulder.
“Why the private army?” I asked Burke.
“Hoffer’s a rich man. Since this business with the girl he’s been getting worried. Maybe they’ll have a go at him next.”
Which seemed reasonable enough. Kidnapping was, after all, one of Sicily’s oldest industries and in any case, I’d been to parties at houses in Bel Air where the gatekeeper was armed. Sicily wasn’t the only society where the rich got neurotic about the prospect of someone trying to take it away from them.
On the other hand, Hoffer certainly seemed to cover all his bets. Even our driver, a burly Norman-Sicilian with ginger hair, was wearing a shoulder holster, a fact which his tight-fitting chauffeur’s uniform made rather too obvious.
There was a scent of wistaria in the air and I could see the purple blooms in profusion on the other side of the drive. It was all very lush, very Mediterranean with palm trees carefully placed to make every vista please and yet its very harmony was vaguely unsettling. Things were a little too perfect, a design on paper, product of some expert mind, planned to produce results in the shortest possible time. An instant garden.
The Mercedes braked in a gravelled circle in front of the entrance and a couple of houseboys came down in a hurry to get the bags. As they went back up the steps a woman appeared in the porch and looked down at us languidly.
She was small, dark haired and with the kind of body that can only be described as ripe. She was Sicilian to the backbone, twenty-two or three by my judgement, although she looked older as southern women often do. She was wearing black leather riding pants, a white silk knotted at her waist and a Cordoban hat.
“And who might that be?” Piet demanded.
“Hoffer’s girl friend. I’ll see what the situation is.”
Burke went up the steps and they held a brief, whispered conversation that died as I joined them.
“Hoffer isn’t here at the moment,” Burke told me. “Had to go to Gela on business last night, but he’s due back later on this afternoon. I’d like you to meet Signoria Rosa Solazzo. Rosa, my good friend Stacey Wyatt.”
Her English was excellent. She held my hand briefly, but didn’t remove her sunglasses. “A pleasure, Mr. Wyatt. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
Which might have been true or could have been merely conven
tional politeness. Hoffer didn’t sound like the sort who needed any confidante and from the look of her, it seemed more likely that he kept her around solely to help him through those long night watches.
She turned to Burke. “Rooms are arranged for you. The servants will take you up. I suppose you’d like to shower and change so I’ll order the meal for an hour from now.”
She left and we followed the houseboys through a large cool hall where everything seemed to swim in green and gold and up a short flight of stairs to the second tier of the building.
Piet and Legrande shared, but Burke and I were honoured with separate rooms. Mine was long and narrow, one wall consisting of sliding glass doors opening to a balcony overlooking the garden. The furniture was English and in excellent taste, the carpet so thick that it deadened all sound and when I tried the other door I found my own bathroom.
The houseboy put my bag on the bed and left and I went and turned on the shower. When I came back into the bedroom, Burke was standing by the window.
He managed a smile. “The rich full life, eh?”
“Something like that. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have a shower.”
He was obviously eager to please and moved to the door at once. “A good idea. I’ll see you downstairs in an hour.”
But I had other plans. I gave myself about a minute and a half under an ice-cold needlespray and changed, pulling on a clean shirt and a lightweight suit in blue tropical worsted. A pair of gold-framed sunglasses completed the outfit.
I hesitated over the Smith and Wesson, but this was Sicily after all. I clipped the holster to my belt on the right-hand side, left the room quickly and went downstairs.
There seemed to be no one about and I paused on top of the steps outside the front door. The Mercedes was still there, the driver going over the windscreen with a wash leather.
Rosa Solazzo said from behind, “You are going somewhere, Mr. Wyatt?”
I turned and said cheerfully, “Yes, into Palermo if that’s all right with you.”