In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

by Jack Higgins

  Any professional gunman is faced with two kinds of killing. The first is in hot blood, an instant heat generated by a particular situation, usually in defence of his own life or his employer’s.

  The second is a different proposition altogether, a cool calculating business where the situation is carefully assessed, the risks worked out in advance. But even that isn’t enough. The mental preparation is just as important, the winding-up of the whole personality like a clock spring so that when the moment comes there is an instant readiness to kill.

  In the final analysis, that’s what separates the real professional from the rest of the field. A willingness to kill without the slightest hesitation, something most people can never hope to do.

  But I could. Stacey Wyatt could. Had done it enough times before, would do it tonight and probably again. Strange how the thought, the possibility of my own death, never occurred to me, just as it never occurs to the professional criminal that he might get caught on his next job.

  I slowed and paused briefly because of traffic congestion where the bridge crosses the Fiume Oreto on the Messina road. My face was hot, probably a fever starting, and I put my head out into the rain. It was cool and refreshing, and then a strange thing happened. For a brief moment, for an instant in time, the sounds of the traffic faded, all sounds in fact except for the rain swishing through the trees on the other side of the road and it was like nothing I’d ever known before and the scent of the wistaria in the garden of the house beyond filled the night, unbearable in its sweetness.

  It was a fragile moment, broken by a peremptory horn behind and I drove on, pulled back into some kind of reality. But was that true? Who was I? What in the hell was all this about? What was I doing here?

  When I ran from Sicily at my mother’s death, I ran from a lot of things. From pain, I suppose, and out of revulsion at the cruelty of life. And from my grandfather whom I loved deeply and who now stood revealed as a monster who battened on the misery of the poor and ordered death with the certainty of God.

  But in running from Barbaccia’s grandson, I was also fleeing from the boy the Wyatts of Wyatt’s Landing had refused to accept. I was running from the Stacey Wyatt life and circumstances had made me.

  And I had a chance to find myself – my own true self – me and no one else. For a time it had worked, had gone well. I had made it to Mozambique and Lourenco Marques, could have made it further and arrived at some kind of destination under my own steam, knowing myself as far as anyone can hope to or at least knowing what I could do on my own.

  But for me there had been the “Lights of Lisbon.” I had met Sean Burke, had become another kind of Stacey Wyatt and that was very much that until the Hole. I suppose most men have their “Lights of Lisbon,” but only a few know the Hole. Well, I had come to know it well, had been in filth and darkness, had survived, had found another Stacey Wyatt, someone I’d never known before who asked questions – asked questions about a lot of things.

  My return to Sicily had been not only inevitable, but essential, I saw that now. I had to see again that incredible figure, so much a part of my youth, Vito Barbaccia, Lord of Life and Death, capo mafia in all Sicily, my grandfather, who kept telling me I was mafioso just like him only better and who, in my heart I knew, already saw me at the head of the Council table when he was gone.

  But he was wrong. I wasn’t the man Burke had created, the hired killer posing as a soldier and I wasn’t my grandfather’s version either. To hell with both of them.

  Who was I then? I had gone into the mountains, eyes open, knowing the situation was not what it seemed, with some vague notion of beating Burke at his own game, whatever that game was. I had lost, but so had he. Beat him now I had to, on his terms and on his own ground if ever I was to be free. However bloody that encounter might prove, however savage the prospect, it could not be evaded. I had stood in his shadow too long.

  A fierce anger flooded through me then and as I swept round the next bend and found myself in the final stretch, Hoffer’s villa floodlit in the night three hundred yards up the road, a kind of madness took possession of me. I put my foot down hard and took the Alfa into the night with a burst of power, the engine howling like a wolf.

  The guard saw me coming, but by the time he realised my intention, there was nothing to be done. He started to unsling his automatic rifle, thought better of it and jumped for his life as the Alfa ripped the bronze gates from their hinges and continued up the drive.

  What happened next was very much the fortunes of war, the unexpected that decides who wins or loses. A Lambretta came round the bend of the drive, slowly, because the rider had obviously only just started. I braked instinctively, swung the wheel over with my one hand and slid broadside into the shrubbery in a wave of gravel.

  The Lambretta too had skidded as the rider braked desperately, spinning in a circle so that the machine halted pointing the way it had come. It was one of the houseboys dressed in his best, obviously ready for an evening on the town. As I scrambled out of the Alfa, the Smith and Wesson ready in my left hand, I caught a glimpse of his white, terrified face and then he gunned the engine and roared out of sight, back towards the villa.

  I could have had him with no trouble, but this wasn’t his affair and I let him go, even though it meant he would arouse the house, that Burke and Jaeger would know who it was. Perhaps the truth is that I wanted them to know. I didn’t get time to consider, because a couple of bullets pumped into the Alfa as the gate guard arrived and I ran for cover.

  My right arm was hurting like hell, but the pain sharpened me, made me come alive again. It was raining harder now and I crouched in the bushes and waited as I had waited in other places, other jungles than this, for the slightest rustle, the breaking of a twig.

  By some process of association the Lagona operation came back to me, when we had parachuted in and brought out the nuns from their beleagured mission. It had been a bad time, the beginning of the rains and thick bush all the way. And then I remembered, for some strange reason, that Burke had wanted to go in by armoured convoy. I’d been the one who suggested the drop and he’d objected because we would have no vehicles to come out in. But I had pointed out that we would have surprise on our side on our way back, fighting our way through them before they’d realised we’d even been in.

  And in the end, he had agreed, as he always did, and at the first briefing it had somehow become his own idea. How many times had that happened? How many times right through to the Cammarata?

  It had been staring me in the face for years and I had not seen it before, blinded by my belief in the man and I was aware of a strange release of tension, almost as if I had been set free from something, a kind of fierce joy surging through me.

  I am Stacey Wyatt and no one else. That thought echoed in my head as a twig snapped. Several things happened. Somewhere in the night a voice called up on the roof and I picked up a stone and tossed it into the bushes. My friend of the gate was no bargain whatever Hoffer had paid him. He jumped out of the shrubbery and fired several times where my stone had landed.

  I shot him through the upper part of his right arm, he cried out and spun round, dropping his rifle. We faced each other in the rain, the statue of some Greek goddess behind him watching blindly. There was no fear in his eyes. Perhaps Hoffer had made a better bargain than he knew.

  “If you want to live, talk,” I told him. “What happened to Signorina Solazzo?”

  “She’s been locked in her room all day.”

  “And Ciccio? Is Ciccio with her?”

  “He has been.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s nothing to do with me. She has the room with the gold door on the second floor.” He gripped his arm tightly to arrest the flow of blood. “Ciccio told me you and the Frenchman were dead.”

  “He was wrong, wasn’t he? The others are here?”

  “Somewhere about.”

  I nodded. “Hoffer is dead. Barbaccia caught up with him at last. Go now – what happens has nothing to
do with you.”

  He faded into the bushes as a rifle cracked, the unmistakable thud of an A.K., and a bullet chipped a piece out of the Greek statue’s head. As I went to one knee, someone dropped back out of sight behind the retaining wall up there in the Moorish roof garden.

  I called softly, “It’s me, Sean – Stacey. I’m coming up.”

  There was no reply, but the floodlights which dotted the garden were dowsed suddenly. I don’t know whose bright idea that was, but it suited me perfectly. I moved out at once through the welcome darkness, scrambled over the low wall of the ground floor terrace and went into the lounge through the open French window.

  The hall was a place of shadows dimly lit by a single lamp, but I had to keep moving for speed in attack is the only hope of success against odds.

  I went up the stairs like a wraith, close to the wall, moved along the corridor past my own room and went up to the second floor.

  There was no sound. I paused in the shadows by the golden door and thought about it for a moment. The next door along the landing was faced with leather and opened to my touch. From the look of it, it had been Hoffer’s and the usual sliding glass doors opened to the terrace on the other side.

  I went back into the corridor, flattened myself against the wall and said softly, “Rosa – are you there?”

  Her voice was clear and sharp. “Run, Stacey! Run!” There was the sound of a blow and three bullets splintered the door.

  I went through Hoffer’s room on tip-toe, moved along the terrace and peered in. Rosa was lying on the floor wearing a housecoat. Ciccio was over by the door with his back to me. He was bare-footed, wore pants and a singlet and held a gun in his right hand.

  Rosa started to get up as Ciccio opened the door cautiously. I stepped into the room, shot him through the hand as he started to turn. He yelled, the gun jumping out on to the landing and disappearing over the edge.

  Rosa had been weeping and her face was badly bruised, and her right shoulder – I noticed that as the housecoat slid down to her waist, exposing the upper part of her body, her naked breasts. She covered herself mechanically, an expression of wonder on her face.

  “Stacey – Stacey, it is you. They said you were dead.”

  She flung her arms about my neck and held on tight. I didn’t take my eyes off Ciccio for a moment.

  “No, I’m not dead,” I said. “But Hoffer is – Mafia justice.”

  “Thank God,” she said fiercely. “I wanted to warn you, Stacey, last night after I left your room. I wanted to go back. You were right – I was afraid. Afraid for many reasons, but Hoffer was suspicious. He beat me, then gave me to this – this animal.”

  Ciccio stepped back and I took her forward through the shadows to where light filtered in from the landing. The bruises on her face were worse than I had realised and something moved like fire in my belly.

  “He’s had his way with you?”

  She didn’t attempt to pretend. Her head went back and there was still pride there. “He has my marks on him also.”

  I turned and at the sight of my face Ciccio went back quickly, still clutching his bloody hand. “Please, signore.” He forced a fake man-to-man smile. “This woman is a whore from the back streets of Palermo. Everyone knows what she was before Signore Hoffer took her in.”

  He smiled again eagerly, his back to the stairs, and rage boiled like lava inside me. “You find it funny? You like a joke? Then laugh this off.”

  I kicked him in the crotch with all my strength. He screamed as he doubled over and my right knee lifted into his face sending him back down the stairs. He rolled over twice and crashed to the floor below. He lay there for a moment and then incredibly, got to his feet and lurched out of sight dangling what looked like a broken arm.

  I turned to Rosa. “The day you start feeling shamed about your past just let me know. I’ll let you have a few choice items from my own that should make you feel about as soiled as a Vestal Virgin by comparison. I’m going to leave you now. Burke’s waiting for me upstairs in the roof garden.”

  “No, Stacey, there are two of them. They will kill you.”

  “I don’t think so. On the other hand anything’s possible in this life.” I took out my wallet and handed it to her. “If it goes wrong, whatever you find in there should help you along the way more than a little. Now get dressed and wait for me downstairs in one of the cars.”

  I started to turn and she caught me, held me to her yet did not kiss me. She said nothing, but her face was eloquent enough. When I pulled gently away she did not try to stop me.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE DOOR AT the top of the stairs stood open, the garden was floodlit again, a place of wonder and delight, sweetly perfumed in the rain.

  I paused to one side of the door and considered the situation for a while, then moved along the landing, tried another door and found myself in a study of sorts.

  The room was in darkness, the inevitable glass doors that formed the other side standing open. Which way would he expect me to come, that was the thing. I stood there in the darkness, drained of all emotion, suddenly tired, caught by some strange fatalism that seemed to say it didn’t really matter – nothing mattered. We were on our predestined course, Burke and I. What would be, must be.

  I went out through the glass doors in three quick strides and dropped into the green jungle of the garden.

  His voice sounded clearly. “Over here, Stacey, I know you’re there.”

  “You and me, Sean?” I called. “No one else?”

  “As ever was, Stacey boy.” The more Irish he sounded the less I trusted him. “Piet isn’t here. He went up to the airstrip with our baggage. We’re getting out tonight.”

  Which was a lie. Had to be because whatever else Hoffer had paid him, there was the bearer bond for fifty thousand dollars in that bank vault in Palermo and as today was Sunday he couldn’t possibly have collected it on his return. He wasn’t going to leave that.

  But trapped by that strange fatalism, I decided to play his game and stepped out through the ferns into a narrow path between vines. He stood at the end on the terrace beyond a wrought iron table, his hands behind his back.

  “What are you holding there, Sean?” I called.

  “Nothing, Stacey, don’t you believe me?”

  “After the mountain – after Cammarata?”

  Both hands came into view empty. “I’m sorry about that, but I knew you’d never stand still for killing the girl.” He shook his head and there was a kind of admiration in his voice. “But you, Stacey – you. Christ, you are indestructible. I thought you in pieces.”

  “You’re losing your touch, Sean – old age,” I said. “If you’re interested, you didn’t do much of a job on the girl either. She’s doing fine. Hoffer’s the one who’s in trouble. Explaining himself to the devil about now, I should think.”

  That got through to him and the slight smile left his face. “You’re a bloody swine, Sean,” I said. “You always were only I never saw it before. Nothing on earth could excuse what you did up there on the mountain. You and Hoffer should get on fine when you next meet.”

  “You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood, Stacey, after all we’ve been through together.”

  He spread his arms wide. “That’s just the way I intend to do it,” I told him and Rosa screamed from the doorway behind me.

  I swung, dropped on my face, pain tearing at my right shoulder as Piet Jaeger jumped from the vines no more than seven or eight feet away.

  For some odd reason the weapon he clutched in both hands was a lupara which had presumably belonged to one of Hoffer’s men; just the thing for assassination at close-quarters.

  I shot him three times, two bullets catching him in the heart, the third in the throat as he went down, dropping the lupara. I turned, the Smith and Wesson ready, and looked into the Browning, rigid in Burke’s hand.

  “Stuck it in my belt at the rear,” he explained. “Who’s slipping now?”

  “Aren’t you going
to shed a tear for lover boy?” I asked.

  His face went very still. “You bastard, I’ve wanted you like this for a long time.”

  “But you needed me, didn’t you?” I said. “I only discovered that tonight. You only had them carry me out when I was wounded on the Lagona job because I was essential to you. Without me you were nothing.” I laughed harshly. “The great Sean Burke. That’s a joke. Every move you ever made, every plan, originated in my head. Without me you were nothing and I thought you were some kind of god. You wouldn’t even have got into the Cammarata without me or come within ten miles of Serafino and the girl.”

  “You poor bloody fool,” he said. “You think I needed you for the Cammarata job? You think that’s why I brought you out of Egypt instead of leaving you to rot?”

  “You’ve got a better story?”

  “Try this.” He savoured every word as he spoke. “Hoffer wanted Vito Barbaccia’s head, but getting at him was impossible until he hired me and I remembered my old friend Stacey Wyatt in the Hole at Fuad. The problem was getting into the Barbaccia villa – all visitors’ cars left outside the gate, but would that apply to Barbaccia’s grandson? It was worth a try.”

  I stared up at him and he laughed out loud, the only time I’d known him to do it. “The two gunmen at the villa that night – they were in the boot of the car. That’s how they got in. My idea, Stacey, just like Troy and the wooden horse. Worth bringing you out of Fuad for and it nearly worked.”

  How true it all was I had no means of knowing, but it seemed unlikely that it would have been the only reason for bringing me out of Fuad. No, he had needed me for Cammarata, however much he tried to deny it to himself now. On the other hand I had certainly mentioned my grandfather to him in the distant past and a name which meant nothing to him then would have assumed a new importance when first heard from Hoffer.

  So, he had used me again. Ironic that in this case I was also the one who had foiled him, but I now understood why he had been so quick to shoot the boy with the lupara that night in the garden. The only way of guaranteeing a still tongue.