In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

by Jack Higgins

  “Is it so bad for a mother to have hopes for her son?” He smiled up at the portrait again. “She used to say everybody had a talent for something.”

  “What was yours?”

  The words were out before I could bite them back and instantly regretted. His head swung sharply, the chin tilted, but there was no eruption. He took a fresh cigar from a silver box and sank into a wing back chair beside the fire.

  “A brandy, Stacey, for both of us. You look like a man who drinks now. Then we talk.”

  I moved to the cabinet on the other side of the room where the crystal goblets and decanter stood on a silver tray.

  “I read about you, boy, a couple of years back.”

  “Oh yes.” I was surprised, but tried not to show it.

  “A French magazine – Paris Match. They did a feature on mercenaries in the Congo – mainly about your friend, but you were there standing just behind him. It said you were a captain.”

  “That’s right.”

  I carefully poured the brandy and he went on. “Then there was a report in one of the Rome newspapers about how you were all chased out with your tails between your legs.”

  I refused to be drawn. “That would be about two years ago now.”

  “What have you been up to since?”

  “This and that.” I went towards him, a goblet in each hand. “As a matter of fact I’m just out of prison. The Egyptian variety. Nothing like as pleasant as the Ucciardone in Palermo or doesn’t the Mafia control it any more?”

  The ebony stick stabbed out, sweeping back my coat, exposing the Smith and Wesson in its holster. “So, Marco was right and I wouldn’t believe him. This is what you have become, eh? Sicario – hired killer. My grandson.”

  Strange the anger in his voice, the disgust, but then no real mafioso ever thought of himself as a criminal. Everything was for the cause, for the Society.

  I handed him his brandy. “Am I worse than you? In any way am I worse than you?”

  “When I kill, it is in hot blood,” he said. “A man dies because he is against me – against Mafia.”

  “And you think that sufficient reason?”

  He shrugged. “I believe it to be so. It has always been so.” The stick came up and touched my chest. “But you, Stacey, what do you kill for? Money?”

  “Not just money,” I said. “Lots of money.”

  Which wasn’t true. I knew it and I think he did also.

  “I can give you money. All you need.”

  “That’s just what you did for a great many years.”

  “And you left.”

  “And I left.”

  He nodded gravely. “I had a letter from some lawyers in the States just over a year ago. They were trying to trace you. Your grandfather – old Wyatt – had second thoughts on his death bed. There is provision for you in the will – a large sum.”

  I wasn’t even angry. “They can give it back to the Indians.”

  “You won’t touch it?”

  “Would I walk on my mother’s grave?” I was getting more like a Sicilian every minute.

  He seemed well pleased. “I am glad to see you have some honour left in you. Now you will tell me why you are here. I do not flatter myself that you returned to Sicily to see me.”

  I crossed the room and poured another brandy. “Bread and butter work – nothing to interest you.”

  The stick hammered on the floor. “I asked you a question, boy, you will answer.”

  “All right. If it will make you feel any better. Burke and I have been hired by a man named Hoffer.”

  “Karl Hoffer?” He frowned slightly.

  “That’s the man. Austrian, but speaks English like an American. Has interests in the oilfield at Gela.”

  “I know what his interests are. What does he want you to do?”

  “I thought Mafia knew everything,” I said. “His stepdaughter was kidnapped some weeks ago by a bandit called Serafino Lentini. He’s holding her in the Cammarata and won’t send her back in spite of the fact that Hoffer paid up like a soldier.”

  “And you are going to get her back, is that it? You and your friend think you can go into the Cammarata and bring her out with you again?” He laughed, that strange, harsh laugh, head thrown back. “Stacey – Stacey. And I thought you’d grown up.”

  I very carefully smashed my crystal goblet into the fire, and started for the door. His voice, when he called my name, had all the iron of hell in it. I turned, a twelve-year-old schoolboy again caught in the orange grove before harvest. “That was seventeenth-century Florentine. Does it make you feel any better?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

  There was nothing more I could say. Unexpectedly he smiled. “This Serafino Lentini – you are kin on your grandmother’s side. Third cousins.”

  “You know him then?”

  “I haven’t seen him for many years. A wild boy – he shot a policeman when he was eighteen and took to the maquis. When they caught him, they gave him a hard time. You’ve heard of the cassetta?”

  In the good old days under Mussolini it had been frequently employed by the police when extorting confessions from the more difficult prisoners. A kind of wooden box, a frame to which a man could be strapped and worked on at leisure. It was supposed to be forbidden now, but whether it was or not was anyone’s guess.

  “What did they do to him?”

  “The usual things – the hot iron, which left him blind in one eye and they crushed his testicles – took away his manhood.”

  Burke should be listening to this. “Does nothing change?” I said.

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “And watch Hoffer. He is a hard man.”

  “Millionaires usually are. That’s how they get there.” I buttoned my jacket. “It’s time I was going. A long day tomorrow.”

  “You are going to the Cammarata?”

  I nodded. “With Burke. Just for a drive. Tourists having a look round. I want to see the lie of the land. I thought we’d try Bellona.”

  “The man who owns the wineshop is the mayor. His name is Cerda – Danielo Cerda.” He took his blue silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it out. “Show him this and tell him you are from me. He will help you in any way he can. He is one of my people.”

  I folded the handkerchief and put it in my pocket. “I thought Serafino didn’t like Mafia?”

  “He doesn’t,” he said tranquilly, reached for my hand and pulled himself up. “Now we shall join the others. I must talk with this Colonel Burke of yours. He interests me.”

  Burke and Marco were sitting together in the salon, an exquisite room which my grandfather had kept to the original Moorish design. The floor was of black and white ceramic tiles and the ceiling was blue, vivid against stark white walls. Beyond a wonderful carved screen, another relic of Saracen days, was the terrace and the gardens.

  I could hear water gurgling in the old conduits, splashing from the numerous fountains. In other days it had been said that whoever held the meagre water supplies of the island held Sicily and Mafia had done just that.

  They were talking behind me and I heard Burke say in his terrible Italian, “You must be very proud of your garden, Signor Barbaccia.”

  “The best in Sicily,” my grandfather told him. “Come, I will show you.”

  Marco stayed to finish his drink and I followed them out on to the terrace. The sky was clear again, each star a jewel and the lush, semi-tropical vegetation pressed in on the house.

  I could smell the orange grove although I couldn’t see it, the almond trees. Palms swayed gently in the slight breeze, their branches dark feathers against the stars. And everywhere the gurgle of water. My grandfather pointed out the papyrus by the pool, another Arab innovation, and suggested a short walk before we left.

  He moved towards the steps leading down to the garden. Burke paused to light a cigarette and then everything happened at once.

  Some instinct, product perhaps of the years of hard living, sent a w
ave of coldness through me and I froze, ready to jump like some jungle animal sensing an unseen presence.

  Below the steps five yards on the other side of the gravel path, the leaves trembled and a gun barrel poked through. My grandfather was already on his way down. I sent him sprawling with a stiff left arm, drew and fired three times. A machine pistol jumped into the air, there was a kind of choking cough and a man fell out of the bushes and rolled on to his back.

  I dropped to one knee beside my grandfather. “Are you all right?”

  “There will be another,” he said calmly.

  “Hear that, Sean?” I called.

  “I’ll cover you,” came the reply in a voice like ice-water. “Roust him out.”

  Marco came through the French windows in a hurry, the Walther in his hand and a shotgun blasted from the bushes over to my right, too far away to do any damage. You have to be close with those things. Marco dropped from view and I took a running jump into the greenery.

  I landed badly, rolled over twice and came up about six feet away from number two. He was clutching a sawn-off shotgun in both hands, the lupara, traditional weapon used in a Mafia ritual killing.

  I took one hell of a chance, simply because it seemed like a good idea to keep him in one piece to talk, and fired as I came up, catching him in the left arm. He screamed and dropped the lupara. Not that it did much good. As he straightened and backed away, Burke shot him between the eyes from the terrace.

  He looked about seventeen, a boy trying to make a name for himself, to gain respect – the kind Mafia often used for this kind of work. The other was a different breed, a real pro from the look of him, with hard, bitter eyes fixed in death.

  My grandfather pushed the jacket aside with his stick and said to Marco. “You told me he could use a gun. Look at that.”

  I’d shot him three times in the heart, the holes covering no more than the width of two fingers between them. There was very little blood. I could hear the mastiffs barking and the guards arrived as I reloaded and slipped the Smith and Wesson back into its holster.

  “How did they get in?”

  The old man frowned and turned to Marco. “How about that? You told me this place was impregnable.”

  Marco motioned to the guards without a word and they went off in a hurry, dogs and all. I stirred the man on the ground with my foot.

  “So, they’re still trying?”

  “Not for much longer,” he said grimly. “I can assure you. All bills will be paid. I owe it to your mother.”

  I was shaken, but I turned to Burke. “That’s Mafia for you. Just one big happy family. Will there be any trouble over these two?”

  My grandfather shook his head. “I’ll have the police come and take them away.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “But of course. It would, however, be wiser if you were to leave before they get here.”

  He called to Marco, who was rooting around out there in the garden somewhere, to send the Mercedes round, then took me by the arm and walked a little way off.

  “If you could play the piano like you can shoot, Stacey…”

  “A shame, isn’t it?” I said. “But my mother was right about one thing. We all have a talent for something.”

  He sighed. “Go with God, boy. Come and see me when you get back from the Cammarata, eh?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “I’ll expect you.” He turned and held out his hand. “Colonel, my thanks.”

  Later, after we had passed through the gates, Burke lit another cigarette and when the match flared I saw sweat on his face. I wondered if he had been afraid, but that didn’t seem possible.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  At first I thought I wasn’t going to get a reply and then it came, delivered with some bitterness. “Christ knows what they did to you in that place you were in, but it must have been bad.”

  He was at last facing the fact that I had changed – really changed, which suited me perfectly. I sat there looking out to sea, thinking, not of what had just happened at the villa, but of Karl Hoffer and the Honourable Joanna and Serafino Lentini, the great lover who desired her so much that he insisted on keeping her just for himself. Serafino, who had lost his manhood, according to my grandfather, under police torture was incapable of the physical act of love.

  Now why had Vito Barbaccia, capo mafia, arch schemer, gone out of his way to tell me that?

  EIGHT

  HOFFER WAS AS good as his word and provided a Fiat saloon for the reconnaissance trip. He also threw in Rosa Solazzo for good measure. His argument was that being a woman she would provide good cover and strengthen our story, but I suspected she was there to look after his interests as much as anything.

  The final meeting on the following morning was a hurried one. He was flying to Catania on business in the Cessna and wanted to be away early so that he could be back that evening to hear what I thought about the situation on our return.

  No mention was made of the shooting match at the villa, something else I found interesting. On the way back Burke had asked me to keep it to myself and seemed to think that it might upset a respectable businessman like Hoffer to be associated with that kind of violence. But Ciccio had been there and must have heard the shooting at the very least, although he had been his usual phlegmatic self on the way back. I found it hard to believe that he hadn’t passed news of the disturbance on.

  The route we followed was one normally taken by tourists driving across the island to Agrigento, certainly those in search of spectacular scenery. I did the driving as originally planned, Burke sat beside me and Rosa Solazzo had the rear seat to herself.

  She looked very attractive in a navy-blue trouser suit cut on rather mannish lines, off-set by a more than feminine ruffled blouse in white nylon. A red silk scarf bound round her head peasant-fashion completed the outfit, plus, of course, the ever present sunglasses.

  She didn’t attempt to make conversation, but read a magazine. When I stopped at the village of Misilmeri about ten miles out to buy cigarettes and asked if she wanted anything, her only reply was a shake of the head.

  Obviously her presence limited conversation between Burke and myself, but in any case, he didn’t seem much in the mood and slouched back in his seat, sombre and brooding as if carrying the weight of the world and there was that slight tremble in his hands again.

  For the first time I found myself wondering whether he was up to what lay ahead. On the other hand, he’d shown no signs of having slowed down any during the affair at the villa. The shot which had killed the boy with the lupara had been a difficult one and yet he had been right on the button. Having said that, early warning signs of some kind of deterioration showed clearly and they didn’t look good. For the time being I pushed it out of my mind and concentrated on enjoying the trip.

  It was almost the end of spring harvest, orange groves ripening in the warm air and flowers everywhere. Red poppies, anemones and, in some places, blue iris spread like a carpet into the distance. Another week and the iron hand of summer would grasp the land by the throat and squeeze it dry, leaving in the high country a wilderness of thirst, a gaunt North African land of rock and sand and lava.

  The further we moved away from Palermo into the heart of things, the more I realised how little it had changed. Out here one didn’t see the three-wheeler Lambrettas and Vespas so common in the farming area immediately adjacent to Palermo. Here, one moved through a mediaeval landscape, through poverty of a kind to be found in few places in Europe.

  We passed an old peasant riding a donkey, a little further on a line of gaunt women, baskets on their heads, dressed in fust black as if mourning their very existence, skirts trailing in the dust, who turned brown, seamed faces to watch us pass, old before their time.

  And the villages seemed just the same, most of the houses windowless, the door the only source of light and air, opening into a dark cavern that housed, in many cases, pigs and goats as well as people.

&
nbsp; And in the villages, mainly women, old men and thin, hungry looking children, living out their lives against a dying landscape.

  In one such place, I stopped outside a small trattoria and we sat at a rough wooden table in the shade and the proprietor, an old, old man with white hair, brought a bottle of passito, ice-cold from the bottom of his well.

  It was about eleven o’clock, but already very warm and when a ring of solemn-faced children surrounded us we could smell the sourness of their unwashed bodies.

  “Don’t they have any men around here?” Burke demanded.

  He looked tired and was sweating a lot, great damp patches soaking his shirt beneath each arm. “Most of them have emigrated,” I told him. “I’ve heard it said that in some provinces, eighty-five per cent of the population is made up of women and children.”

  He looked disgusted and wiped sweat from his forehead. “What a bloody country.”

  Rosa Solazzo had disappeared into the back to find whatever passed for a toilet in those parts and rejoined us in time to hear his comment. She obviously didn’t approve.

  “This is one of the poorest areas in Europe, Colonel Burke. In summer it has the same climate as North Africa, the land is barely cultivated and what water there is, is controlled by the Mafia. These people are born without hope. What else can they do, but try and get out?”

  Not that she had a hope in hell of making him understand. The people she was speaking of were her people – she was one of them, had probably started life in just such a place as this.

  Burke laughed with a kind of contempt. “You seem to be doing all right, anyway.”

  She pushed her way through the children and got into the Fiat. I emptied my glass and shook my head as Burke poured himself another. “I wouldn’t if I were you. Strong stuff, passito.”

  That was enough, of course, to make him fill the glass to the brim. I left him there and got behind the wheel again. I found my cigarettes and offered one to Rosa.

  “I’m sorry about that. He doesn’t understand.”