Bloody Passage (1999)

by Jack Higgins

  Freud would have been proud of me. I actually made it back to my third birthday; for the first time since that happy event recalled burying a box of scarlet-coated Grenadier Guards in a cornfield at the back of my English grandfather's Dorset farmhouse and the feeling of utter desolation at forgetting where. And the next day my father, who was a captain in the Marine Corps stationed at the American Embassy in London ...

  The grating clanged above my head and Langley peered in. I got to my feet and looked up at him. By my reckoning it was exactly a week since that first morning.

  "My God," he said. "Something must have crawled in and died. Hose him down."

  The jet of water which followed was cold, but really quite pleasant. It stopped after a while and Langley leaned over and lowered a rope with a loop on the end.

  "All right," he said. "Up with you."

  I came up out of the darkness and found myself in some sort of vault, stone pillars supporting the roof. It was neatly whitewashed and lit by electric light and stone steps in one corner led up to a stout oak door. Two men had the other end of the rope, peas out of the same pod, dark, swarthy looking, wearing identical heavy fishermen's sweaters, capable of most things if appearances were anything to go by.

  They released the rope and one of them said to the other in Italian, "Mother of God, he stinks like a dung heap."

  Justin Langley came forward, Gatano at his back. His blond hair hung to his shoulders. He wore a black nylon shirt, skin tight and open at the neck. The broad belt at his waist had a round brass buckle that must have been four inches in diameter and he wore a gold chain round his neck with a bauble on the end which he twirled between his fingers.

  I said, "You look sweet--honestly."

  "I wish you wouldn't, old stick." He sighed. "It brings out the worst in me."

  He nodded to Gatano who moved forward, a look of what might be termed eager anticipation on his face. When he was close enough he put a fist into my belly. As I doubled over, he hooked his foot under the chain between my ankles and pulled me down.

  Langley said sharply, "Don't mark his face!"

  I wasn't sure whether Gatano had heard him or not for he was obviously enjoying himself. He put his boot into me, not very scientifically, three or four times, grunting with effort and then Langley said, "All right, that's enough!" and pulled him off.

  They put the hose on me again and the two Italians picked me up between them and we followed Langley and Gatano up the stone steps. Gatano opened the door and we went out into bright morning sunshine.

  I was beginning to function again, well below par, but enough to get by for the moment. We had emerged into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by stone walls. There was a gate at the far end and on the right, steps up to ramparts.

  I negotiated them with some difficulty because of the leg irons, but the view was worth it. Massive cliffs, a calm blue sea shimmering in the heat haze, and above us at an even higher level, a citadel standing in a garden.

  There was the scent of wisteria and I could smell almond trees as we passed through an iron gate into a semitropical paradise. There was the sound of water everywhere, splashing in fountains, gurgling in the conduits as it dropped from terrace to terrace between the palm trees.

  We climbed a final flight of steps and emerged on to a broad terrace at a point where the ramparts came together like the prow of a ship. The view was really quite astonishing. There was a table beneath an awning, white linen cloth, silverware, a couple of bottles of wine in a bucket, a waiter in a neatly starched coat at the ready, napkin folded over one arm.

  His master stood at the ramparts, an immensely fat man in a white linen suit, long, dark hair flecked with silver. When he turned I saw that he had a walking stick in each hand and leaned heavily on both of them.

  It was a strange face, dark, hooded eyes that seemed to look through and beyond you. A brutal, rather sensual mouth and overall a kind of total arrogance. And it was a familiar face, that was the most disturbing thing of all, yet for the life of me I couldn't remember where I'd seen him before.

  He examined me for a long moment, those strange, brooding eyes giving nothing away, then he shuffled across to the table and eased himself down into a wicker chair. He nodded to the waiter who took one of the bottles from the bucket and filled a glass. I was immediately aware of the distinctive aroma of anis.

  "Your health, Major Grant," he toasted me.

  He had a deep bass voice, totally American, nothing of Europe in it at all. I said, "You want to watch it. Too much of that stuff in the heat of the day can freeze your liver. I've seen it put strong men on their backs for a week."

  Langley started to say something, but my fat friend waved him down with one hand. He stared at me intently, a frown on his face, then smiled. "By God, you know where you are, sir. Confess it!"

  "I think so."

  He slapped his thigh in high good humor and turned to Langley. "Didn't I tell you I'd picked the right man?"

  Langley twirled the golden bauble between his fingers. "He has a big mouth, I'll give you that."

  The fat man turned his attention back to me and leaned forward, hands folded over the handle of one of his walking sticks. "Come, sir, don't let me down."

  "All right." I shrugged. "The architecture of this fortress for a start. Walls are Norman, probably twelfth century. Most of the rest is Moorish. Then there's the garden. Papyrus by the main pool, another Arab innovation, and the wine you're drinking. Zibibbo from the island of Pantellaria. I can smell the anis."

  "Which all adds up to?"

  "Sicily." I squinted up at the sun. "Somewhere on the southern coast."

  "Southeast," he said. "Capo Passero to be exact." He shook his head solemnly, sipped a little of his wine and said to Langley, "Remarkable is it not, what the trained mind is capable of?"

  Langley looked sullen, picked up a wineglass and held it out to the waiter who filled it for him. The fat man chuckled. "Justin is not impressed, Major Grant, but then he likes to be first in the field always. It comes of having been educated at Eton."

  "You mean the reformatory?" I said. "In Northern Nebraska?" I shook my head. "Poor kid, I don't suppose he ever really stood a chance."

  Strangely enough Langley reacted to that one with apparent indifference, but his fat friend rocked with laughter. "I like that. Yes, I really like that." He wiped tears from his eyes with a large white pocket handkerchief. "You know who I am, Major Grant?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Stavrou, sir. Dimitri Stavrou." He expected a reaction and seeing it in my face, grinned slyly. "You know me now, I think?"

  "I should," I said. "Your picture was on enough front pages nine or ten months ago when they deported you from the States."

  "An affront to justice." He seemed angry for the moment, though whether this was genuine or assumed, it was impossible to say. "Although I was born in Cyprus, I lived in America for forty years of my life, Major Grant. I had legitimate business interests."

  "Like gambling, drugs, prostitution?" I said. "Front man for the Syndicate or the Mafia or whatever they call themselves these days, wasn't that it?"

  There was a hot spark of anger behind those dark eyes. "The pot, sir, calling the kettle black, isn't that how the English would put it?" He snapped his fingers. "The file, Justin, there's a good boy."

  There was a briefcase leaning against the back of Stavrou's cane chair. Langley opened it, took out a buff colored folder and laid it on the table in front of him.

  Stavrou put a hand on it. "Oliver Berkley Grant. In detail."

  "What, warts and all?" I said.

  "I must know it by heart by now." He pushed it away ostentatiously and closed his eyes. "Father, colonel in the Marine Corps, killed in action in Korea in 1951. Mother English. You were educated at an English public school, Winchester. That was to please her, then West Point. You first went to war the year your father was killed. By the end of the Korean conflict you had collected a D.S.C. and Silver Star and a wou
nd which put you in hospital for nine months. It was the last time you fought in any conventional sense as a soldier."

  Most of this had been delivered in a rather flat monotone at some speed and now, he opened his eyes. "How am I doing?"

  "Now I know where I've seen you before," I said. "Gypsy Rose. You had a tent two summers ago on the boardwalk at Atlantic City."

  He was not provoked in the slightest. "For the next seven years, Special Services Executive, Major Grant. Military Intelligence. You became especially expert at getting people out of places. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco the Cubans got their hands on an American colonel named Hurwitz. They intended to stage a show trial that would expose America to the world and then on the night of..." He hesitated. "The 31st October, am I right? You landed with half a dozen special service troops and spirited Hurwitz away from an apparently impregnable fortress."

  I was shaken now, rocked straight back on my heel, because what he was giving out was classified information at the highest level.

  "You must be on good terms with the President."

  "A brilliant operation which made you famous in the Pentagon, at least in a discreet way and one you repeated seven or eight times over the ensuing years. Cuba once again. Cambodia, twice in Vietnam and then Albania. An American U2 pilot named Murphy was to be put on trial as a spy. You got him out of the top state security prison in Tirana."

  "It's just a knack," I said. "Something my old grannie taught me when I was in short pants."

  "And now we come to August, 1966," he said. "Sylvia Gray, a seventeen-year-old student from Boston, daughter of a friend of your grandfather. An impulsive young lady who went to Prague with a group of other students during the Czechoslovakian revolt and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a Russian soldier. She shot him in the back three times."

  "That's right," I said. "He was trying to rape a fourteen-year-old girl at the time."

  "You went to your superiors and asked permission to get the girl out and they refused."

  Strange that I could feel the same impotent rage so many years later.

  "So you went anyway, entered Czechoslovakia illegally and with the help of an underground organization broke the girl out of jail and got her safely home after a rather public gun fight on the Austria-Czech border."

  "You seem to know it all."

  "But I do. Everything. A General Court Martial, all highly secret, but just as nasty. They stripped you bare and dumped you in disgrace, well and truly on your ass, if you'll excuse such an uncouth expression."

  And now I was worried because he really had got too close for comfort and I waited for the axe to fall.

  "Which left you in one hell of a fix because you had responsibilities. The year your father was killed, your mother died in childbirth leaving a little girl, your sister, Hannah. Twenty years your junior. A grave responsibility. Your maternal grandmother raised her in London. You provided for both of them. More than essential in view of the fact that your sister is totally blind, but then, her musical gifts make up for that to some extent. She studies piano at the Royal College of Music, I understand."

  "All right," I said. "It's been fun, really it has, only let's get to the point."

  "You tried writing thrillers, which brought you only a modest return, and then you were approached in London by an ex-British Intelligence officer who knew something of your background. There was a man in prison in Birmingham, one of a number who had robbed a train of several million pounds, most of which had never been recovered. With only a thirty-year sentence to look forward to, he was happy to pay fifty thousand pounds into a Swiss bank account to anyone who could get him out and you couldn't resist the challenge, could you, Major Grant?"

  "I wish you wouldn't keep calling me that," I said. "Under the circumstances it's almost obscene."

  "After that, you never looked back. A reasonably constant demand for the services of someone with your very special talents. When you retired last year you had over four hundred thousand pounds in your Geneva account. Would you like the number, by the way?"

  There was a longish pause as if he actually expected an answer. I glanced at Langley who smiled beautifully. "You're really quite a card, aren't you, old stick?"

  "So there you were," Stavrou said, "with all the money in the world, or so it seemed, so that when someone approached you three months ago and offered you one hundred thousand dollars to get a young American named Stephen Wyatt out of a penal colony in Libya where he was recently sentenced to life imprisonment, you refused."

  There was a long pause and then the whole thing suddenly clicked into place. "You?" I said.

  "Stephen Wyatt is my stepson, Major Grant," he told me softly. "My dead wife's son. A stupid, misguided boy who dropped out of Yale after war service with the Paratroops in Vietnam, came out to the Mediterranean and got mixed up with some counter revolutionary organization in Libya aimed at overthrowing Colonel Quadhafi."

  "And they gave him life?" I said.

  "Exactly. I want him out."

  My anger was like a fuse slow-burning. I said, "Are you telling me this whole thing was a set-up from the beginning? The guy in the marsh at Cape de Gata with his Lee Enfield, for instance?"

  "Now he did get a little over enthusiastic," Stavrou said. "All he was supposed to do was rattle you. Leave you a little worried, but he went too far."

  "And bit off more than he could chew."

  "An impressive performance, major, I must say. He was actually supposed to be resting, isn't that the term theatricals use? A young man who'd had a considerable success as a sniper in Ulster with the Provisional IRA."

  "And everything since? The Hole, for example?"

  "You're surely familiar with brainwashing techniques, particularly as practiced by the Chinese? Pavlovian in concept. First of all it is necessary to bring about the complete alienation of the individual, destroy his confidence in any kind of order or pattern to his life. Degrade him if at all possible."

  Langley said, with a grin, "We certainly did a good job of that, old stick, credit where credit's due."

  I gave him some old-fashioned Anglo Saxon, tried to reach him and tripped over my chains. Stavrou said, "I wished to show you that I hold you in the hollow of my hand, my friend. That was the sole purpose of the exercise. There is nowhere you can run. Nowhere you can be certain of safety. No single person you can trust."

  "You go to hell," I said.

  He smiled patiently. "I'll prove it to you. The final and ultimate truth." He reached for a small handbell and rang it.

  A moment later, Simone Delmas came through a gate in the wall and stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, her face calm, untroubled. She wore a silk mini dress in olive green open at the throat.

  "Is she not lovely, Major Grant?"

  She leaned down to kiss him, he slipped a hand under the edge of the skirt, stroking her thigh, and opened the file.

  "August 10th, Subject returned from Almeria with Miss Delmas at ten-thirty. They made love on the terrace. Four-thirty, subject returned from swimming with Miss Delmas. They made love on the terrace. Do you want me to go on? We do have some rather excellent film also." He smiled up at Simone, his hand steadily stroking the thigh. "She does enjoy this kind of thing so."

  By then, of course, nothing was even halfway funny anymore. I said, "You're wasting your time. I won't play."

  "Oh, but I think you will." He levered himself to his feet. "If you'll be kind enough to follow me, I'll show you why."

  It was going to be good, it had to be and I shuffled after him, giving Simone a wide berth, and they all followed. We passed through the garden to the far end. Someone somewhere was playing the piano, a piece I recognized for once, April from a little suite by Tchaikowsky called The Seasons. My throat went dry and I think I was already ahead of him as we paused by the barred window in the end wall.

  "Your sister, Major Grant," he said calmly, "who you imagine to be in London at this very moment pursuing her studies.
Take a look inside."

  And she was there, of course, as I had known she must be, sitting at a grand piano in the center of what was obviously the library.

  She was a small, quiet girl with a generous mouth, high cheekbones, black hair parted in the center and tied back tightly. Only a slightly vacant look in the dark eyes hinted at her condition.

  I didn't see her very often, mainly because I had a vague superstitious feeling that in some way she might be tainted by what I had become. By the life I led, and I loved her too much for that. I'd contented myself over the years by providing for her every need and leaving her to my grandmother's care, safe and secure in her own small world in the house in St. John's Wood.

  I'd last seen her at the Festival Hall in London nine months previously playing the final movement of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto in a Royal College of Music student's concert. There was the same look of total concentration on her face now.

  The far door opened and a woman entered, a black and tan Doberman at her side. The animal crossed to Hannah, who stopped playing for a moment to fondle it.

  "Amazing," Stavrou said. "Usually Frau Kubel is the only one who can even get near the beast."

  Langley said, "His favorite trick is pulling people's arms off. I'd advise you to remember that, old stick."

  Frau Kubel looked about sixty with a grim, bleak face, hair drawn back tightly into a bun. She wore a black bombazine dress and white apron and her legs were slightly bowed. If she'd ever been in a concentration camp it could only have been as a guard.

  She said something to Hannah who stood up. Frau Kubel took her arm and they walked to the door and went out.

  I said slowly, "How did you get her here?"

  "She's supposed to be spending a holiday with you. It was easy enough to arrange. A phone call to your grandmother with a message from you. She saw the girl off at Heathrow and when she landed at Palermo yesterday, Justin at his most charming was there to greet her with a tale of your having been delayed." He smiled gravely. "You get the picture now, sir?"

  The anger, the black, killing rage rose inside me like a living thing, but I fought to control it. "I think so."