The Mafia Emblem
Page 32
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Ben thought that Donna seemed somewhat distracted when she dropped him outside the Porto Ercolano. As usual, she had driven the ten miles from Naples like a maniac, following a route of her own invention which seemed to consist mainly of a variety of bumpy, dusty side-roads. Just when Ben thought they were completely lost, they came round a corner and screamed to a halt beside the entrance kiosk. He noticed also that she only spared him a light peck on the cheek as she leaned across to open the door for him. Perhaps she was still upset about last night. However he grinned when he remembered how forgiving she had been this morning after the shower.
“Ring me when you want to be picked up. Take care, honey.” And she was off in her usual cloud of dust almost before he had time to close the door.
Women were strange things, Ben reflected. One minute they were all over you and the next they treated you as if you’d got the plague.
He looked round the open area in front of the gates, taking in the several sales kiosks. The day was hot and bright. So the first thing he did was buy a lightweight hat with a green eye-shield. It didn’t go very well with his third new outfit in the last two days, but at least it stopped him having a headache. Then he paid his admission fee and another ten euros for a map and guide in English.
“Attach yourself to a group of sight-seers,” Donna had said. “One man walking round on his own sticks out like a sore thumb.”
Ben wasn’t sure how Donna knew about things like that. There seemed to be a lot of surprising sides to her personality. He admitted that he wondered how on earth she kept turning up when he was in trouble. Did she have some sort of private radar system? He didn’t have an answer to that, so he shrugged to himself and leaned against the wall outside the Villa of Mysteries. He decided he would study his map and wait for a suitable group of tourists to come along.
Five minutes later a party of Germans straggled by. They seemed on none-too-friendly terms with each other. A few overweight ladies trailed along behind the guide, pink with perspiration as they tried to make conversation. The rest strolled individually or in small groups, sometimes chatting among themselves. Ben thought it odd that so many of them insisted on wearing dark suits and carrying plastic mackintoshes - even in this heat. They obviously couldn’t have looked out of their hotel bedroom windows before they started out that morning.
Nobody seemed to notice when he tagged along with them as they made their way up the Street of Tombs, where the monuments still contrived to look grim and forbidding, even in the flattening heat of the Italian afternoon. They arrived at the Forum a little before two. Since then Ben had done one complete circuit of the huge square with the uncaring Germans. When they trudged off in the direction of the Stabian Baths, he transferred his allegiance to a large crowd of Japanese, most of whom seemed to be dressed in a similar way to himself. All he had to do was sag a little at the knees to be perfectly disguised.
But how long was this going to go on for? By now he was definitely getting fed up. He looked again at his watch as he stood on the edge of the group by the foot of the steps leading up to the Temple of Jupiter. It was five to three. Where the hell had Francesca got to?
The Forum was a big place and there were several hundred people scattered around it at the moment. He decided to carefully survey each segment of the square to see whether he could pick her out. So he stepped up onto the surround of one of the column plinths in order to get an extra bit of height. His eyes worked their way methodically down the left-hand side in the dancing heat. Then they swept across the far end and started up the colonnade on the right.
Suddenly he saw something which made him stiffen. Standing by one of the columns near the far corner was a man he thought he recognized. In fact he was almost sure it was the hood who had tried to knife him in Naples two days before. With a sick feeling in his stomach he looked again more carefully at the other corners of the Forum. Sure enough he spotted one of the gangsters almost opposite him half-way down the square. He’d missed the man on his previous search.
After another careful look around he finally located the third man near the corner to his right. The bloke was no more than fifteen yards away. They seemed to have placed themselves at vantage points where they could watch the crowd. Ben acknowledged that he may have begun to develop a persecution complex, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were looking for him. In fact it seemed incredible that none of them had spotted him so far.
If he had been sensible and remained with his group of Japanese when they moved away from the Forum, it is likely that Ben would have escaped detection altogether. However his nerves were on edge by now. He was convinced that Francesca wasn’t coming and was beginning to wonder whether she had lured him here to draw him into a trap. He felt alone and under threat. He wanted to get away as quickly as possible.
Cursing the girl for landing him with this problem, he bent and checked his map. He wanted to get out of Pompeii by the nearest exit which led away from his three pursuers. He decided that his best route would be to make for the Porta Nola. Just outside the gate was a station on the Circumvesuviana (the small gauge railway which ran round the bay from Naples to Sorrento). From there he would be able to get a train back to the city. Francesca would have to come and find him at the hotel if she still wished to.
Thus set on a course of action, Ben decided to creep away from the Japanese group as quickly as he could, while at the same time keeping an eye open for the other three characters. However, just as he got to the corner of the square, disaster struck.
His mistake was to pay too much attention to the three gangsters and not enough to his own route. Suddenly his foot caught the corner of the stall of one of the souvenir sellers. Before he could take avoiding action, he had knocked the post away from the remainder of the structure. It may have been a particularly rickety stall or he may just have been unlucky, but his horrified gaze saw the whole stall sway and crash to the ground, spilling cheap souvenirs everywhere. The next second he was assaulted by a large Italian matron roaring for revenge. He stepped back, tripped over something behind him, and fell flat on his back. His hat flew off as he landed.
Although he immediately jumped to his feet and apologised and tried to placate the woman, the damage was done. A crowd started to gather. People seemed to be pouring torrents of abuse on him in various foreign languages from all sides. As he looked round, he saw that the nearest of the toughs was already walking purposefully towards him. Ben decided that now was the time to get out.