In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

THIRTEEN

I OWE MY life to Jules Legrande, who shot me down in the same second that Burke killed the girl.

The A.K. assault rifle packs one and a half tons of muzzle energy when it goes off and the bullet it fires was designed by the Chinese not only to stop a charging Marine, but to lift him off his feet and deposit him a yard to the rear. Which meant that I was flat on my back when Piet Jaeger opened up with his Uzi sub machine gun.

Serafino was the only one who got off a shot from the hop as he went down, a lucky one that blew away the top of Legrande’s head as far as I could see, but I was already rolling into the cover of the fallen log on the other side of the fire.

The Uzi kicked dirt in a fountain towards me that died abruptly as the magazine emptied and I got to my feet and ran into the trees, head down.

My right arm swung uselessly, blood spurting from a hole in my shoulder. There was no pain, I was too shocked to feel any. That would come later. For the moment I had only one driving passion – to survive.

I stumbled on and behind me there were the cries of the dying, some confused shouting and then several bullets passed uncomfortably close, severing branches and twigs above my head.

The Uzi opened up again, Jaeger working it methodically from side to side, splashing a route through the undergrowth. If I stayed where I was, I had a few seconds more to live at the most and that wasn’t good enough, not with the bills I had to pay. I swung sharply to the right, forced my way through a screen of bushes and went head-first into the stream.

The icy coldness sharpened me up wonderfully. I surfaced, took a deep breath and went under. If I’d had to rely on my swimming alone I’ve had got nowhere. I found it impossible to use my right arm, but the current was fiercer than I had expected and seized me in a grip of iron, pulling me out from the shore so that when I surfaced again, I found myself in the central channel.

There was a cry from the shore and Jaeger burst through the bushes. He plunged knee-deep into the water and as he raised the Uzi and started to fire, Burke joined him. I went under again and a few moments later the water was rocked by a sudden turbulence, the breath was squeezed from my body and I was lifted bodily.

I was aware of Burke standing there, of his arm moving like a flail, the grenade curving through the air to land a yard away. It was the torrent which saved me, sucking me under into the central passage between great granite slabs so that I had already passed over the smooth apron of rock at the end of the reach and was falling into the pool twenty feet below when the grenade went off.

The water was nine or ten feet deep at that point. I touched bottom, surfaced and the current swung me across to the other side to ground gently on a shelving bank of black sand beneath a line of overhanging bushes.

In a moment I was into their shelter, still driven by that fantastic reserve of energy that is in us all and which only comes to the fore in periods of real stress and danger. I looked for the densest thicket I could find, crawled into it and lay there shivering.

I discovered that the Smith and Wesson was still with me, thanks to its spring holster, and I got it out awkwardly with my left hand and lay there waiting.

The woods were silent, I was alone in a primeval world, the undergrowth closing in on either hand. Somewhere nearby a bird called sweetly and was answered and then there was the murmur of voices. They seemed to come from another place, to have no connection with me at all and certainly I made little sense out of what was said.

The only thing I did hear clearly was the sentence. “Can you see the body?” delivered in a harsh South African accent that could only belong to Jaegar. It at least meant that they thought me dead, presumably killed by the second grenade.

Burke’s voice answered, then there was silence. Lying there on my belly I was aware of something digging into my chest and remembered Rosa’s parting gift. I unscrewed the top of the flask with my teeth and swallowed. Like liquid fire, the brandy burned its way down and exploded in a warm glow.

There was a single shot, presumably someone being finished off. I lay there and waited, my arm more painful by the minute, and thought of Burke who had tricked me. No, more than that, had beaten me all along the line. I also considered how I would settle with him. I thought of that a great deal and with variations and drank more brandy and waited.

The waiting game is the hardest one to learn, but it is the only one for a soldier if he wants to survive. Once in the Kasai, I crouched with Burke and four other men in a three-foot trench while the ground above us was raked with heavy machine gun fire. Burke told us we must school ourselves to patience, that to go now would be madness. But one by one, the others cracked, made a run for it and were chopped down. Five hours later, when darkness fell, Burke and I crawled away in perfect safety.

My shoulder had stopped bleeding – I think because of my immersion in the ice-cold waters of the stream – and the hole where the bullet had entered had closed into two rather obscene purple lips. And it had gone straight through, thank God, which I discovered when I probed about gingerly with the tips of the fingers of my left hand. The edges of the exit hole seemed to have come together also and although I had obviously lost blood, there was no immediate need to bandage myself up.

I gave it an hour and then started to work my way cautiously through the trees to the top of the apron. I could see the hut, the smoke from the fire, but there was no sign of life.

There was a movement in the bushes over on my right and I crouched, waiting, and then one of the donkeys appeared. A kite called harshly, swooped over the clearing and soared again. He finally went down and perched on the roof of the hut, something he’d never had done if a human had been anywhere around.

That decided me. I stood up and moved cautiously towards the clearing. When I got close, the kite flapped away and left me alone with the dead.

The first body I came to was Legrande’s, although he was barely recognisable and was minus his camouflaged jump suit which they’d presumably taken off him because it would have excited comment.

Serafino and his three friends lay so close together that the sprawling limbs actually touched each other. In death, Serafino smiled savagely, teeth bared and I judged him to have been shot seven or eight times. The others were in a similar position except for Joe Ricco who had obviously turned to run and had taken his dose in the back.

I could see it all now quite clearly. The girl had been right. Hoffer had intended death and had planned it with Burke’s connivance. Now he would go to the police, reluctantly tell his story of the kidnapping, of the ransom payment that had failed to secure the girl’s return. And the police would have to go through the motions, would lay on their ritual search of the area, as they had done so many times before, expecting Serafino to stay one step ahead as usual, only this time it would be different. This time when they started at the usual place, they would find this butcher’s shop, aftermath, as the girl had suggested to me earlier, of a fight between rival gangs.

They’d light a few candles in the cathedral in Palermo, Hoffer’s friends would commiserate and he’d wipe away a tear with one hand while he was signing the papers that gave him two and a half million with the other.

The girl sprawled partially on one side and when I turned her over, I sucked in my breath. Her face was a mask of blood, flies settling already. I had seen death in all its obscene variations often enough and yet I sat back on my heels, feeling suddenly faint, overwhelmed by the pity of it all, the tragedy of what had happened to this young girl.

I thought of Burke – of how he had fooled me – fooled me right up until the end, taking Jaeger along with him, even poor, ageing Legrande, presumably on the promise of a larger reward than had ever been suggested to me. Quite a performance when you thought of it. Then something snapped inside and I found myself cursing him wildly out loud.

I think I became wholly Sicilian, the rage boiling over in a torrent of hate. In this way may I drink the blood of the one who killed you. Someone had spoken the ancient formula aloud. I gently touched her face, her blood stained my fingers. I raised them to my mouth. It was at that moment that she gave a low moan and stirred.

No one could have been blamed for believing her to be dead, so terrible was her appearance. She owed her life to the quantity of blood which had poured down from the wound, covering the face and turning it into a hideous death mask.

The fire was almost out, but the water in the old iron kettle was still warm. I carried it across in my left hand and poured half of it over her face, washing most of the blood away instantly. She moaned, her head moved to one side, then back again.

I crouched, got out my handkerchief which was soaking wet and gently sponged the rest of the blood away. The bullet had gouged a furrow in the flesh, starting just above the right temple and continuing along the side of the skull. It was still bleeding, but not a great deal and the bone showed through.

I had the usual combat medical pack in a side pouch on the right leg and I got it out. The waterproof cover came off in my teeth and exposed the contents – two field dressings and three morphine ampoules in a small plastic box.

I jabbed two of the ampoules into her arm one after the other. She was going to need all the help she could get in the next few hours, because getting her out of here was going to be rough.

I hesitated over the third ampoule, debating whether to use it on myself, but decided against it in the end. I would need all my wits about me and it was a reasonable assumption that the very real pain I was beginning to feel in my shoulder would keep me up to the mark.

I raised her to a sitting position, got a knee behind her and allowed her to sag back against it. There was three feet of bandage on each end of the field dressing and by the time I got it all wound round her head the morphine had done its work. All strain left her face and when I eased her on to her back, she looked calm and relaxed. Only her extreme paleness indicated that something was wrong.

After transferring my holster from my right hip to my left, I managed to bandage my shoulder with the other field dressing rather imperfectly. Then I took the sling from Serafino’s M.I. and buckled it about my waist in such a way that my right arm was strapped firmly against my side.

The sun was really beginning to get through the clouds now and when I checked my watch I saw that it was only just coming up to seven A.M. I got out my copy of the map which, due to a nylon backing, was still in one piece in spite of its soaking, and had a look at the situation.

Hoffer had said he would be waiting at a certain map reference on the Bellona road from noon on which I saw no reason to doubt. Even if he didn’t actually turn up in person, someone was certain to be waiting there with transport. With only themselves to worry about, Burke and Piet Jaeger would make excellent time, spurred on no doubt by the thought of a good job well done. In fact it was more than likely that they would reach the rendezvous with time to spare.

In my case I had no option but to make for Bellona and I couldn’t see myself doing it in less than six or seven hours and there was always the possibility that my limbs might give out on me on the way, my body refusing to keep going.

I shivered slightly as the sun touched me, conscious for the first time of how wet I was. I got Rosa’s flask out and drank a little more brandy. Joanna Truscott lay still and quiet, her arms neatly arranged on either side. She might have been sculpted from marble and resting on top of her own tomb for all the life she showed.

If I left her and pushed myself hard, I might make it to Bellona in five or six hours, always supposing I didn’t collapse on the way. Even for a man as efficient as Cerda, it would take an hour or so to get together a rescue party and the return trip back up into the high country would take even longer.

It came down to this then. If I left her, she would lie here alone for fifteen to sixteen hours at the very least and probably longer. By then she could be dead, which was something I had no intention of allowing to happen. She was going to live and I wanted to be there to see Hoffer’s face when he found out.

The animals, which earlier had grazed so peacefully, had disappeared, obviously stampeded by the noise of the shooting. There were some bridles hanging by the door. I took one a little way into the woods and finally found a couple of goats and one of the donkeys nibbling a bush together. The donkey allowed me to get the bridle on him with no fuss and I led him back to the clearing and tethered him by the hut.

The animal had obviously been kept to carry in supplies for Serafino and his men which meant there must be a pack saddle somewhere. I found two inside the hut, both of the same distinctive local pattern, made of wood and leather with a great V-shaped wooden trough in which sacks could be carried.

The brandy had gone to my head, and for the moment the pain in my shoulder seemed to have receded a little. I dragged one of the saddles out and managed to heave it on to the donkey’s back at the third attempt. God knows what would have happened if the animal had had a temper or turned awkward at all, but it stood there placidly nibbling at the ground as I tightened the girth.

Getting Joanna Truscott up was much more difficult, but after a struggle, I managed to get her on to her knees and knelt in front of her myself, allowing her to fall across my left shoulder. I deposited her on her back in the wooden trough, and none too gently, but she made no sound and lay there, face turned to heaven, her legs dangling on either side of the donkey’s rump. I got a blanket from the hut and covered her as well as I could and then tied her into position with a length of old rope.

When I was finished, I was sweating. I sat down and felt for my cigarettes automatically. A wad of sodden paper stained with yellow was all that remained and I crossed to the bodies and found a packet in Ricco’s breast pocket, a popular local brand, cheap and nasty, but better than nothing. I smoked one through, had another swallow of Rosa’s brandy, then I wrapped the end of the donkey’s bridle firmly around my left hand and moved out.

Buddhists believe that if the individual practises meditation long enough, he may eventually discover his true self and enter into that state of bliss that eventually leads to Nirvana. At the very least, a kind of withdrawal into the inner self is possible so that the external world fades and time, in its accepted sense, ceases to exist.

The old Jew I had shared a cell with in Cairo had instructed me in the necessary techniques, had saved my life in effect, for I had only survived the Hole because of it. On many occasions I had withdrawn from the world, floated in warm darkness, had surfaced to find a day, two days – even three – had passed and I was still alive.

Stumbling through the wilderness that was Monte Cammarata that morning, something very similar happened. Time ceased to exist, the stones, the sterile valleys and barren hillsides merged with the sky like a picture out of focus and I moved blindly on.

I was conscious of nothing. One moment I was stumbling along in front of the donkey, the next a voice said quite plainly: “There are two kinds of people in the world. Pianos and piano players.”

Burke had said that to me sitting at a zinc-topped bar in Mawanza. I was drinking warm beer because the electricity supply had been cut and the ice box behind the bar wasn’t working, and he was at his eternal coffee, the only thing he would drink in those days. We were half-way through that first contract in Katanga, had lost half our men and were going to lose most of the rest before it was over.

Sitting there at the bar, a machine pistol at my elbow, my face staring back at me from a bullet-scarred mirror, the situation had all the ingredients to hand of every Hollywood adventure film ever made. I remember there was gunfire in the streets, the thud of mortar bombs, and now and again, the steady rattle of a heavy machine gun as they tried to clear snipers from the government offices across the square.

By all the rules and because I was not quite twenty years of age, it should have been romantic and adventurous, just like an old Bogart movie. It wasn’t. I was sick of killing, sick of the brutality, the total inhumanity of it all.

I was at the end of my tether, ready to go straight over the edge and Burke had sensed it instinctively.

He’d started to talk, quietly and calmly. He was enormously persuasive in those days or perhaps it was just that I wanted to believe that he was. For me then, remember, there had to be no flaw in him.

Before he was finished, he had me believing we were on a kind of holy crusade to save the black man from the consequences of his own folly.

“Always remember, Stacey boy, there are two kinds of people in this world. The pianos and the piano players.”

An unnecessarily complicated metaphor to suggest that there were those who let it happen and those who did something about it, but at the time I had believed him. In any case, the local police turned against us late that evening and I was too busy trying to save my skin during the week that followed to have time for anything else.

Now, standing there on the mountainside, those words floated up from the past to haunt me, and remembering the incident so clearly I realised, with a kind of wonder, that he hadn’t given a damn about me personally; it had been himself he was thinking about as it had always been. He had to straighten me out to his way of thinking because he needed me. Because I had become as essential to him as a gun in his hand. A first-rate deadly weapon. That’s what I was – all I had ever been.

I plodded on, the donkey trailing behind, my brain still filled with the past, which meant Burke. His relationship with Piet Jaeger had obviously been different in kind and he had certainly never put a foot wrong that way with me, presumably because his instincts had warned him off.

As I have said, in the beginning he barely tolerated my need for women and my propensity for hard liquor. Now, looking back and remembering how his attitude had changed to a kind of good-humoured acceptance where those things were concerned, I wondered to what extent he had come to realise that their existence made it much easier for him to mould me to his purpose.

Who was I, then, Stacey Wyatt or Sean Burke’s creature? No! To hell with that. I was myself alone, another kind of piano player, a man who played for himself and no one else.

We had been on the move now for the best part of four hours and when I stopped to check on the girl’s condition she looked exactly the same, but she was still breathing, the only important thing.

For myself, I had moved past pain, floated beyond it as I had done so many times in the Hole. My shoulder existed only as a dull ache, I had forgotten that I had a right arm at all and when the sun clouded over and heavy raindrops spattered the rocks about me, I stumbled on quite cheerfully, Stacey Wyatt, the great survivor.

In late spring or early summer when the first real heat begins, violent thunderstorms are common in the Sicilian high country, and occasionally a drenching downpour settles firmly over the mountains for half a day or more.

I think, looking back on it, that it was the rain which saved us. Some people are rainwalkers by nature – it gives them a shot in the arm just to be abroad and feel it beating down on them. I’ve always been one of that happy band, so the rainstorm which broke over the Cammarata that morning gave me a psychological lift to start with. But there was more to it than that. Suddenly the earth came alive. I was no longer moving through a dead world, there was a freshness to everything.

Perhaps I had become a little delirious, because I found myself singing the famous old marching song of the Foreign Legion that Legrande had taught me a couple of centuries before when we were still brothers, before corruption had set in.

The rain was hammering down now and I went over a rise that blocked the end of a small valley, looked down through the grey curtain and saw Bellona beside the white smear that was the road.

I laughed out loud and shouted to the sky. “I’ll have you now, Burke. By God, I’ll have you now.”

I turned to reach for the donkey’s bridle and found that Joanna’s head had moved to one side, that her eyes were open. She stared blankly at me for a long moment and then, with infinite slowness, smiled.

I couldn’t speak, simply touched her gently on the cheek, took the bridle and stumbled down the hillside, tears of a kind mingling with the rain on my face.