by Jack Higgins
"I will honor any agreement you make," he said calmly. "Justin will have my personal draft for twenty-five thousand dollars in his pocket as a down payment. Will that satisfy this Barzini?"
"I should think so." I stood up. "I don't want Langley getting into my hair. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly." He raised his glass and smiled beautifully. "Goodnight to you, Major Grant."
I left them to it and moved back through the garden toward my own room. It started to rain, a fine spray blowing in on the wind, but enough to freshen the heavy atmosphere and to perfume the night with the scent of flowers.
I lay on the divan by the open french windows gazing out into the night and smoked a cigarette. After a while, I must have dozed because I came awake suddenly and was instantly aware of two things. That it was raining very heavily indeed and that my sister was playing the piano somewhere not too far away.
It was a Bach Prelude, scintillating, ice-cold stuff, perfectly played and perfectly in keeping with the circumstances. 1 found an old raincoat in the wardrobe, draped it over my shoulders and went out on the terrace.
Sheet lightning flickered far out to sea, thunder rumbled menacingly overhead and the rain increased into a solid drenching downpour as I moved through the garden, following the sound of the piano.
I mounted to the high terrace and approached the library where I had first seen her, but she was not there. I moved on, climbing steps to another terrace, conscious of the murmur of voices.
Shutters stood partially open to the night, a white gauze curtain billowed in the wind. When I peered inside, Dimitri Stavrou was seated on the edge of a large four-poster bed. Simone was standing in front of him and his hands were busy. I could see her face reflected in the mirror on the far wall and she looked about as wretched as any human being could. In other circumstances I might have felt sorry for her, but Hannah was my only consideration now.
I moved on through the rain, following the sound of music and mounted some marble steps to another broad terrace protected by a striped canvas sun awning from which rain dropped steadily. French windows stood open to the night, and inside Hannah sat at a grand piano.
I approached cautiously. There seemed to be no one else around and I was filled with a sudden wild hope that I might grab her and be out of there before Stavrou and his friends realized what had hit them.
And then thunder rumbled menacingly in the distance again, only it was deep down in the dog's throat this time, and the Doberman stood up beside the piano stool, stiff-legged, and eyed me coldly.
Hannah turned to stare out into the rain toward me. "Is anyone there?" she called.
Frau Kubel stepped into view and saw me at once. A hand disappeared inside her white apron and reappeared clutching an automatic with a six-inch silencer on the end. To my horror, she pointed it at the back of Hannah's skull and stared fixedly toward me, not saying a word, the same grim expression on her face.
My blood ran cold and I hastily raised both hands, palms toward her. She lowered the automatic, but still held it against her thigh, gazing toward me.
A hand tugged at my sleeve, I turned and found Langley at my elbow. "Very naughty, old stick," he whispered cheerfully. "I mean, there could have been a very nasty accident there."
"You go to hell," I said and I brushed past him and moved back through the garden to my room.
I stripped off my wet clothes and lay on the bed thinking about things, thoroughly angry with myself for being so stupid. I didn't hear her enter, but when lightning flickered out to sea, it pulled Simone out of the darkness by the window. I didn't say a word; simply stood up and walked toward her. Her dress was soaked and clung to her body like a second skin. I started to unbutton it.
"What were his orders?" I said. "Anything I wanted? Anything to keep me happy?"
"Damn you to hell!" She struck me across the face, struggling in my grasp. "Justin came and told him what happened a little while ago. She could have been killed. Your sister could have been killed. He means it, you fool. Every word of it. Don't you understand that?"
My fingers were busy with the last few buttons. I peeled the wet dress away gently and dropped it to the floor. She started to cry violently, collapsing into my arms.
"It's all right," I said, gentling her. "Everything's going to be all right."
She came to bed with me then with no further fuss and cried for a long time as she lay there in the dark in my arms, although whether for me or for herself, or for both of us, was not made plain.
Finally she fell asleep, her head on my chest, and I lay there holding her, watching the lightning flicker on the horizon, trying to decide in my own mind just exactly how I intended to kill Dimitri Stavrou when the time came.
4
Rain on the Dead
The Cessna was moored to a couple of buoys in the horseshoe bay at the foot of the cliffs beneath the villa. It was reached by a winding dirt road and Moro took me down there in a Landrover just before nine.
It was a poor sort of day, heavy gray clouds dropping in over the cliffs, mist rolling off the sea, pushing rain before it. Bonetti waited at the wheel of a speedboat moored beside the stone jetty, the engine already ticking over and Justin Langley stood on the edge, smoking a cigarette and looking out to sea. He turned as I approached, a slightly theatrical figure in his fur-lined boots and old flying jacket.
As I got out of the Landrover I said, "I just bet you've got a shoulder holster inside that thing, too. What are we playing this morning? Dawn Patrol?"
He smiled good-humoredly. "Now don't be like that, old stick. After all, you are in my hands, so to speak."
"Well, don't forget I'm precious cargo." I looked out at the mist rolling in through the entrance. "What about the weather?"
"The weather?" He squinted up into the rain. "Well, that's something that's always with us, isn't it? Like death. Now if you would kindly get into the boat, maybe we could get started. I've a little business myself in Palermo I'd like to fit in if there's time."
"I just bet you have," I said. "What is he--blond or brunette?"
That languid smile of his was wiped clean and for a moment there was murder in the eyes. Stupid of me under the circumstances, but it was done now. I brushed past him and went down the steps to the speedboat. He followed me, cast off, and Bonetti took us out to the Cessna.
When we reached her, I scrambled out first onto the nearest float, climbed into the cabin and buckled myself into the passenger seat. There was a moment's delay before Langley followed me. The speedboat sheered off and he went through the usual routine check and started the engine. Everything sounded fine.
He turned and smiled. "All right, old stick?"
"I don't see why not," I said, although I suppose I should have known better.
"Good," he said and started to taxi downwind slowly, leaning out of the window, peering into the mist.
And then quite suddenly, he gave it everything it had, and we were away, lifting far too soon. The nose dropped, but he'd enough sense not to pull back on the stick until he had the power.
We roared across the harbor no more than twenty feet above the water straight into that wall of mist and then the engine note deepened and he started to climb at just the right moment.
We came up out of the mist through dirty white cloud, rain rattling against the windscreen. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and stuck it in his mouth.
"Beautiful," I said, clenching my hands to stop their trembling. "Nice and fast and showy. And one of these days you're going to kill yourself doing it."
He laughed out loud. "Well, you must admit it's fun trying."
We came up through the clouds into clear air, he stamped on the right rudder and swung slowly north, turning inland.
As for me, I turned up the collar of my trenchcoat, another item thoughtfully provided as part of my general wardrobe, closed my eyes and pretended to sleep and after a while, did just that.
Not too far out of Palermo on the coast r
oad to Messina you come to the beaches of Romagnolo, a favorite weekend spot for city dwellers, only not today. It had been dirty weather all the way, heavy rain had cleared the beaches and there was a whole lot more of that nasty, gray mist rolling in off the water.
It didn't seem to bother Langley in the slightest. He simply sat there at the controls whistling softly between his teeth until a few miles along the coast from Romagnolo he said suddenly, "Going down, and I'd hang on if I were you. Could be a trifle bumpy."
It must have qualified for the understatement of the year. We skimmed the shoulder of a mountain, narrowly avoiding some sort of baroque palace and plunged into a wide bay beyond as the first gray strands curled along the tips of the wings. A final burst of power to level out in the descent and we dropped into calm water with a splash.
Mist closed in around us and Langley said cheerfully, "All right, old stick?"
"One of life's great experiences," I assured him.
I opened the window beside me and peered out as we taxied forward. The tip of a floating pontoon suddenly pushed out of the mist; Langley cut the engine and we drifted in. As I got the door open and stepped across with the line Langley handed me, a man in a black oilskin and stocking cap appeared from the mist. He had a dark saturnine face and badly needed a shave. Rather incongruously he was carrying an umbrella which he handed to me, relieving me in turn of the line.
I stood holding the umbrella in the pouring rain, wondering what in the hell was keeping Langley and then he scrambled out of the cabin and I saw that he had changed out of his flying kit and was now wearing suede boots and a navy blue nylon raincoat.
"Right, off we go, old stick," he said, completely ignoring the man in the black oilskin and we started along the swaying pontoon through the torrential rain, both sheltering under the umbrella. The baroque palace I had glimpsed from the air loomed out of the mist up there on the side of the mountain.
"Another of Stavrou's weekend places?" I asked.
"Don't be bitter, old stick," Langley said. "It just isn't you."
We crossed a shingle beach to a black Mercedes limousine parked at the end of a narrow asphalt road. As we approached, a uniformed chauffeur emerged and opened the rear door. He took the umbrella as we got in.
He slid behind the wheel and waited. Langley pulled down a flap at the bottom of the dividing screen, took out a bottle and a couple of glasses into each of which he poured a generous measure of an excellent brandy.
He toasted me. "You took that rather well, old stick. You know for an American, you're not half bad. Very strange." He poured himself another one. "On the other hand, you did go to Winchester, didn't you? I suppose that explains it."
To which there could really be no answer and before I could even try, he said casually, "Where to?"
"I thought you were supposed to keep out of my hair?"
"But I will, old stick. Honestly." He even managed to look hurt as he took a foolscap envelope from his inside pocket. "On the other hand, considering what's inside this I should have thought your friend Barzini would be enchanted to make my acquaintance."
I decided to play along with him for the time being, mainly because I'd been expecting something like this anyway. I said, "All right, Via San Marco. It's off the Via Roma near the central railway station and tell him to go through the Piazza Pretoria."
He gave the order over the intercom in Italian and as the Mercedes moved away I, too, helped myself to more brandy. We drove up from the beach, passing the palace or whatever the hell it was supposed to be, at some distance and turned out through some large ironwork gates onto the main Messina-Palermo coast road.
Langley lit a cigarette. "This Barzini, what's so good about him?"
"For a start he's sixty-three years of age," I said. "An advantage when I consider the younger generation."
He refused to be thrown. "In other words, he's a survivor."
I hesitated for a moment and then continued. "That file you had on me, it mentioned a job I did in Albania a few years ago."
"When you pulled the U2 pilot out of the prison in Tirana?"
"There was a little more to it than that. Aldo Barzini was an underwater saboteur with the Italian Navy during the war."
Langley looked interested. "Human torpedoes and so on?"
I nodded. "He sank two British destroyers in Port Said back in 1942. When I met him, he was smuggling cigarettes, penicillin, stuff like that, making regular runs from Brindisi to Albania. He was hired to give me and my team a way out. In the original plan he was supposed to wait two nights in a cove on the Albanian coast about thirty miles from Tirana. Then he got a coded message on his radio telling him we'd been sold out. Ordering him to make a run for it."
"And did he?"
"No, he landed, stole a car and made straight for a farm about fifteen miles inland that he knew we were using as a rendezvous. Arrived about ten minutes in front of the Sigurmi. That's the Albanian secret police. They could have given the Gestapo pointers, believe me."
"So you got out?"
"Only just and only because of Barzini."
"Quite a man," Langley said. "What does he do now, besides bury people?"
"Plays the best guitar I've heard in my life. Sells guns to the Israelis, guns to the Arabs. For all I know he's even running them in for the IRA. A citizen of the world, or so he keeps telling me. No favorites. The one thing he won't touch is drugs. He had a nephew on heroin who died rather unpleasantly."
"A sentimentalist into the bargain. Now there's an interesting combination."
"You could say that. As a matter of record, the man who ran the drug scene in the town where the boy lived was found on a hook in the local slaughter house. Somebody'd cut his throat."
"My God, but that's beautiful." For once, there was sincere admiration in Langley's voice.
We turned into the Piazza Pretoria and I rapped on the partition quickly. As the Mercedes braked to a halt, I got out and walked across to the incredible baroque fountains, surrounded by water nymphs, tritons, and the lesser gods.
Langley joined me, holding the umbrella against the pouring rain. "What's the attraction?"
"This," I said. "I've always had a weakness for it. It's so incredibly vulgar. Just like life--a bad joke. I'm going to walk the rest of the way. It isn't far."
I crossed the square without a backward glance. I suppose he must have turned back to tell the driver to follow because I'd almost reached the other side before he caught up with me.
The rain was torrential now, bouncing from the cobbles and he held the umbrella over both of us. "And what in the hell are we supposed to be doing now?" he asked amiably.
"Walking in the rain," I told him. "I've always liked walking in the rain, ever since I was a kid."
"And keeping out the world," he said. "I know the feeling."
I was surprised, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, disturbed to find that we might actually have something in common. I tried not to show it.
"But life isn't like that, is it?" I shrugged. "Like I said, just a bad joke."
I felt unaccountably depressed and I think the feeling must have touched him also. Certainly he didn't attempt to make any further conversation. We passed the beautiful old church of Santa Caterina, turned into the Via Roma and walked toward the central station.
The Via San Marco was a narrow cobbled street, old eighteenth-century houses five or six stories high towering up on either side. It was a quiet place, somehow cut off from the noise of city traffic. About halfway along, an old-fashioned horse-drawn hearse waited at the curb, draped in black crepe, black plumes on the horses' heads wilting in the rain. The driver wore a caped greatcoat and a top hat, banded with more black crepe, the tails hanging down over his neck. It was the kind of thing you still saw in Sicily and probably nowhere else on earth.
Four men in green baize aprons manhandled an ornate coffin with gilt handles out of a doorway and into the hearse. One of them closed the glass door and crossed hims
elf. The driver flicked his whip and the horses moved away, plumes nodding.
The sign over the door was discreet and simple. Aldo Barzini --Undertaker. Gold leaf on a black background. The Mercedes pulled into the curb and we got out and passed inside.
The hall was panelled in mahogany and lit by candles. There was an image of the Virgin in an alcove on the right, grave, unsmiling, and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers and incense. Strangely unpleasant, that smell, as if it were trying to hide something.
I rang a small brass handbell that stood on a table. It echoed faintly and almost immediately, a tiny, desiccated man in an old-fashioned dark suit and winged collar, appeared noiselessly from a door to the right.
He adjusted his spectacles and blinked nervously. "Signors! How may I be of service?"
I said in my best Italian, "I'm looking for Signor Barzini. A personal matter. We're old friends."
He shrugged helplessly. "What can I say, signor, you've just missed him. Each week at this time he takes flowers to his nephew's grave at the Capuchin cemetery on Monte Pellegrino."
"How long will he be?"
"Who knows, signor. An hour, maybe two. Perhaps you gentlemen would care to wait."
"For God's sake, not that, old stick," Langley said hurriedly. "I don't think I could stand the smell."
I expressed my thanks to the old man, told him we'd be back, and we got out quickly.
The cemetery was deserted in the rain, but a yellow Alfa Romeo was parked in the outer courtyard, a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. He had the face of a good middleweight fighter and he glanced up casually as Langley and I got out of the Mercedes, then returned to his magazine.
"Is he Barzini's man?" Langley asked me as we moved through the entrance into the cloisters.
"I don't know. I've never seen him before."
An Arab fountain lifted into the air, trying to beat the rain at its own game and failed. We moved on through another archway and found ourselves in the cemetery itself. It was not very large and was ringed by cypress trees, the whole area crowded with fantastic monuments, ornate gothic shrines, and family vaults in marble and bronze.
