Bloody Passage (1999)

by Jack Higgins

  Angelo was about to finish the rest of his whisky. Instead he paused and eyed me speculatively. "You were in Nam? What outfit?"

  "Special Services Executive," I told him.

  "Jesus!" He turned to Barzini. "That's the military branch of the Mafia. You're in bad company, Aldo."

  "Angelo was in the Green Berets," Barzini said. "I always understood they cut a neat throat, isn't that so, Oliver?"

  "So they say." I lit a cigarette and said to Angelo, "A long way from the Mekon."

  "Don't rub it in, friend," he said. "I did a drag act in a troop show when I was in a Saigon military hospital, just for laughs. It was supposed to be a one-night stand and here I am, three years later, the toast of Europe." He shook his head. "No, Aldo, I'll do your second show for you, but after that, you'll never see me in skirts again."

  He tossed back the rest of his whisky and Barzini picked up the bottle and poured him another. "That's a pity, Angelo, because I've got a new contract for you and the terms are really quite excellent."

  "They always are," Angelo told him sourly.

  "Twenty thousand dollars," Barzini said. "Only one performance required."

  Angelo grinned. "You've got to be joking. What do I have to do? Kill somebody?"

  "Very probably."

  There was a longish silence. Angelo stopped smiling, glanced at Langley and me and back to Barzini. "This is for real?"

  "Of course."

  Angelo said rapidly in Italian, "Who are these guys? What goes on?"

  "A waste of time," Barzini replied. "They both speak Italian."

  "Look, we're not asking you to rob a bank," I put in. "Just help get someone out of a Libyan prison."

  Angelo jumped up and made a cutting gesture with one hand. He nodded towards Barzini. "Him I trust, you two I don't know. Outside."

  I responded to Barzini's slight nod by opening the door and leading the way out. Langley was annoyed and showed it. "If I had my way ..."

  "Which you don't," I said. "So your opinion's of no interest."

  He walked away angrily and I leaned against the wall beside the door and waited, listening to the murmur of voices inside. I don't think it even occurred to me that Angelo would say no, and not just because of my faith in Barzini's powers of persuasion. The boy was ripe for change, it was as simple as that. Like me, he'd been in the Hole for too long. It was unlikely that he'd turn down any kind of a chance to break out.

  The door opened suddenly and Barzini said, "Come in."

  Angelo was standing by the dressing table and he was still not wearing the wig. There was a moment's silence and then he raised his glass. "I must be crazy, but here's to crime."

  An enormous feeling of relief surged through me, but before I could say anything Barzini glanced at his watch. "We'll have to be moving if we're to get to the other side of Misilmeri on time." He turned to Angelo, "Meet us at my place in the Via San Marco when you've done your second show."

  "Nothing doing," Angelo told him. "I've got a date with a very willing lady."

  "She'll have to wait."

  "But can I, that's the point?"

  Langley said, "I suppose it all depends what you're trying to prove."

  Angelo looked him over and the eyes beneath the fringed lashes were cold. "I don't have to prove a thing, friend. What's your story?" Langley took a step toward him and Barzini grabbed him by the arm, opened the door and shoved him outside. "Around midnight then," he said to Angelo. "We'll expect you."

  He closed the door and I turned to Langley, who was standing against the wall, hands thrust deep into his pockets, feet apart. I said, "You're along for the ride, that's all, so keep your mouth shut. Open it again like that and I'll close it for you personally."

  And once again he did the unexpected thing by smiling sweetly. "Why, thanks, old stick, I'll try and remember that. I really will."

  He turned and walked out and we followed.

  We left the yellow Alfa Romeo parked conspicuously outside the funeral premises on the Via San Marco and left by the rear entrance. Barzini led us briskly through a maze of narrow streets and we finally emerged at the back of the central station where Langley's chauffeur was waiting in the Mercedes. We got in quickly and he drove away.

  "Do you think that's enough?" I said.

  "That yellow Alfa of mine is one of the best known cars in Palermo. Someone could be watching. They all know my relationship to Nino. Not that the Mafia would try anything with me personally, you understand. They know better. But they want the boy." He shrugged, apparently quite unconcerned. "We'll have to see."

  It was still raining and there wasn't much traffic on the Agrigento road. Just the occasional group of peasants coming into Palermo early to secure a good pitch for tomorrow's market. Old women in long skirts and shawls, baskets on their heads, strange, medieval figures, walking behind heavily laden donkeys. Nothing changed, it seemed, and I felt unaccountably depressed.

  The streets of Misilmeri were clear, but the wineshop seemed to be doing a good enough trade, people sitting inside out of the rain. There had been lights behind us for some time and Barzini leaned forward and told the driver to slow. A cattle truck pulled out to pass us and moved on into the night.

  "Good!" He relaxed and sat back again. "We're almost there. Are you armed?"

  I shook my head. "No."

  "Try this for size." He handed me a Smith and Wesson .38 Special and turned to Langley.

  "Everything in perfect working order, old stick," Langley said. "Are we expecting trouble?"

  "I always do," Barzini told him. "That's why I'm still around."

  He leaned over to give the driver further instructions and a moment later we turned into a dirt road and started to climb through a forest of pine trees.

  The trattoria was at the top of the hill in the trees, a typical back-country inn, a poor sort of place surrounded by crumbling walls. We drove in through an archway. From the looks of things there had once been a formal garden here, but it had obviously been allowed to run wild over the years and crowded in on the house.

  We stopped in a small courtyard at the bottom of steps leading up to a terrace. The door stood wide open, light flooding out. Someone was playing the guitar and I don't mean striking the odd chord or two. The fingerwork was really quite exceptional.

  Langley said in genuine astonishment, "My God, isn't that Bach?"

  "The Fugue in G minor," Barzini said. "Originally composed for the lute and transcribed for the guitar into A minor. A favorite of the great Segovia." He listened for a moment and nodded. "He's improving."

  The playing stopped as we went up the steps, Barzini leading the way into a large, square room with a beamed ceiling. There were two or three rough wooden tables with benches and a zinc-topped bar with a guitar on it.

  The innkeeper, a bent old man in a soiled white apron was serving wine to a couple of men sitting in the far corner, rough looking specimens, typical of the younger men still to be found in the back country. Features brutalized and coarsened by a life of toil, shabby patched clothing, broken boots, cloth caps. They wore bandoliers around their waists. One of them had a shot gun across his knees, the other had his on the bench close to hand. They could have been gamekeepers off one of the big country estates, but I didn't think it likely.

  Langley took up position by the door, a hand in his pocket. I followed Barzini to the bar and leaned against it casually, facing them. They stared at us woodenly and for a moment there was only the silence and then the old man shuffled forward and dusted a table with a dirty cloth.

  "Your pleasure, signores?"

  Barzini picked up the guitar, tuned the E string slightly and started to play the Bach Fugue. It was really quite incredible. If what we had just heard was good, then this was brilliant by any standards. Even the two hard boys in the corner sat up and took notice.

  Barzini stopped playing and called, "How many times do I have to tell you, Nino? The fourth finger, not the third on that run. With you, it's li
ke putting your foot on the brake each time."

  He moved in through the door at the side of the bar, a slight, wiry young man in a patched corduroy suit and leather leggings, a carbine over his shoulder, finger on the trigger. The face beneath the cloth cap was recklessly handsome in spite of the week-old stubble of beard.

  "Heh, Uncle Aldo," he said. "What kept you?"

  Barzini opened his arms, Nino put the rifle down on top of the bar and they embraced.

  "God, but you stink like a pig, boy." Barzini shoved him away. "Thank God your dear mother isn't alive to see you now."

  "What do you expect?" Nino shrugged. "I've been living like one for weeks."

  The innkeeper brought a bottle of wine and glasses. Barzini said as he filled them, "That's all over now. I've come to take you out. I need you."

  Nino paused, glass in hand. "You mean you've patched things up with them?"

  "Unfortunately no, but I've got work for you."

  "Not the business? Not that?" Nino groaned. "You know I can't stand all those corpses."

  Barzini turned to me in disgust. "You see what I mean about the youth of today? He doesn't mind killing them just so long as he doesn't have to look at the bodies afterward." He cuffed Nino, knocking his cap off. "Ingrate. This is my friend, Major Grant. You're going to help us get someone out of prison." He patted his cheek. "If you're a good boy there might be a little money in it for you."

  Nino picked up his cap. "What do I have to do?"

  "Climb a cliff face by night," I said. "A hundred and fifty feet high."

  He grinned. "Now that I like. That very definitely sounds a better proposition than this." He emptied his glass and tossed it behind the bar. "Let's go then."

  "Always you forget your obligations." Barzini shook his head. "These boys of yours--they've looked after you?"

  "My mother couldn't have done more."

  Barzini crossed to the two bravos at the corner table. Money changed hands and he came back. "Right, let's get moving."

  It was still raining hard, swishing down through the trees in the garden as we moved out on to the terrace and started down the steps to the Mercedes, Barzini leading the way.

  The driver got out to open the rear door and on the other side of the path, to one side, there was a trembling as if a small wind had pushed through the bushes and a rifle barrel appeared.

  God knows who he was after, presumably Nino, although I didn't bother to ask. I sent Barzini sprawling with a kick in the back, drew the Smith and Wesson and fired three times, one of those instant reflex actions, the product of a good many years of hard living.

  A man fell out of the bushes and lay on his face. Everyone went down and as I crouched Barzini said softly, "There'll be another."

  I dodged round the back of the Mercedes and jumped into the bushes, tripping over a branch in the process and going down hard. I started to roll, every instinct telling me I'd made a bad mistake, and tried to get up.

  In the same instant, a man stepped from behind a tree, a machine pistol in his hand. He wore a dark raincoat and broad-rimmed felt hat so that I couldn't see much of his face, which was a pity because I'd always wondered what Death looked like, and then the hat jumped into the air as a bullet drilled a hole between his eyes. Another shattered his jaw. He bounced from the tree and fell on his face in the long grass.

  When I turned, Langley was standing at the top of the steps, perfectly balanced, feet apart, holding the Walther PPK in both hands. He lowered it slowly as I came forward.

  "You might thank me, old stick," he said calmly.

  "Why should I? You didn't do it for me," I said.

  "Good point."

  He slipped the Walther into his coat pocket as the two characters from inside the inn joined Nino and Barzini in examining the bodies.

  Barzini came back to the Mercedes. "I know one of them, Cerda. He's a Mafia gun. The other's new to me. Nino's friends will put them under the sod after we've gone." He shook his head and said grimly, "God, but that was close."

  "All right in the end," I said.

  "Thanks to you."

  "And Langley," I reminded him.

  "That's right." He turned to Langley and he wasn't smiling when he said, "I can see I'm going to have to watch you after all."

  "Anything else I can do to help, just call," Langley said and got into the Mercedes beside the driver.

  Barzini called to Nino who joined us in the rear. We drove back down the track. As we turned on to the main road, Barzini said, "They must have been in that cattle truck that passed us outside Misilmeri. Cunning bastards." He sighed. "I'm getting old."

  "Aren't we all?" I said. "Five years ago I'd have taken both of them. Tonight, I'd have died if it hadn't been for Langley."

  It was a sobering thought.

  It was just before midnight when we got back to Via San Marco. When we went into the entrance hall the old reception clerk appeared from his tiny room looking like some pale ghost in the guttering candlelight.

  "A gentleman to see you, Signor Barzini," he said. "I put him in your office."

  "Doesn't he ever go home?" I asked as we moved on.

  Barzini shrugged. "Why should he? He likes it here."

  He opened a mahogany door at the end of the corridor and led the way into his office. It was a beautiful room, the walls panelled in rosewood, wall-to-wall carpeting on the floor to deaden all sound. A handsome young man in a rather dashing white raincoat and tweed cap was sitting with his feet on the desk smoking what was presumably one of Barzini's best cigars.

  He stood up. "What in the hell kept you? I told you, Aldo--I've got a date."

  It was only when he spoke that it became apparent that this was Angelo Carter. The change was really quite incredible. He just wasn't recognizable.

  "All right, all right!" Barzini said. "She can wait for another half hour, can't she?" He took off his coat and turned to me. "Okay, Oliver, you've got the floor. What do we need?"

  "For a start, a good fast boat," I said. "Something that'll do twenty-five or thirty knots with no trouble like the one you used to use on the Albanian run."

  "The Palmyra." He smiled. "Right here in Palermo harbor. No problem there. What else?"

  "This man Zingari I told you about. He operates out of Zabia, which is about fifteen miles from the prison. He tells me there's a little fishing village called Gela halfway between them. Half a dozen houses, an old stone pier, and a couple of tunny boats. We'll use it as a base."

  "You'll need a front," Langley said.

  I nodded. "That's where you come in. I want a permit to allow archaeological diving in that bay which you'll probably have to get from the Libyan Embassy in Rome. Stavrou will have to pull a few strings. I shouldn't imagine it's beyond him."

  "What are we supposed to be looking for?" Angelo asked.

  "A Roman wreck," I said. "That should sound well enough. The whole area's stiff with them anyway."

  "Which means diving equipment," Barzini said. "No trouble there. There's plenty on board Palmyra now."

  "More than that. I want three or four Roman wine jars. You know the sort of thing. Typical amphorae that have been lying on the seabed for sixteen or seventeen hundred years. Preferably encrusted with seashells. I hear the fishermen bring them up in their trawl nets off Marsala all the time."

  "They're even selling them in the antique shops now to tourists," Barzini said.

  "We'll also need Libyan army uniforms and they get their hardware from Russia these days which means AK assault rifles." He started to smile and I said, "Yes, I know, by a strange coincidence you just happen to have a warehouse full of them. Where are they bound for--Belfast or Bahrein?"

  Langley said, "When do you intend to go?"

  "If we miss this coming Friday, we'll have to wait another week," I said. "And that could be fatal. It's Monday now. Could we get together what we need and have the boat down at Capo Passero by Wednesday morning?"

  "I don't see why not," Barzini said.
/>   I said to Langley, "Which means that weather permitting, we could be in Gela Thursday night."

  "Always supposing everything goes according to plan," he said.

  I shrugged. "That's what makes life exciting. You'd better get back to Stavrou first thing in the morning. Fill him in on all this and get Zingari on the first flight out to Tripoli and tell him to be waiting at Gela Thursday night."

  "What about you?"

  "I've got things to do here. I'll be down with the boat."

  I think he was going to argue, but Angelo cut in impatiently. "Can I go now?"

  "Okay, okay," Barzini said. "Go and knock hell out of her, but be back here at eight or I'll have your ears."

  Angelo departed. Nino, incredibly, was snoring in a chair in the corner. Barzini threw up his hands in despair. "I ask you, what can you do with them." His face brightened as if at a sudden thought. "Heh, I got something that might interest you, Oliver. A new gun. I'll show you."

  He took out a key on the end of his watchchain and unlocked a small door in the corner. He switched on a light and we followed him down some wooden steps to a long whitewashed corridor.

  He flicked another switch illuminating a row of targets at the far end each representing a charging soldier of indeterminate nationality, then opened a drawer in a table by the wall and took out a tin box. Whatever was stencilled on it was in Russian.

  "A Stechkin," he said. "A true machine pistol. Best I've seen since the Mauser. Better than the Browning in every department. You can actually fire this baby on fully automatic if you want to."

  As I opened the box, Langley moved to join me. The Stechkin was in a wooden holster and when I took it out I saw that it was similar to the Browning in appearance at least.

  "Five inch barrel, twenty round magazine," Barzini said. "A hell of a lot of gun, especially if you use the wooden holster as a stock. They tell me a good shot can consistently hit a man-size target at up to a hundred and fifty yards."

  "Now there's a challenge, if you like," Langley said. "May I, old stick?"

  He hefted the Stechkin first in his right then in his left and finally tried it both hands together.