In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

FOUR

IN FACE-TO-FACE COMBAT, any soldier in his right mind would rather have a good rifle in his hands than a pistol any day of the week. In spite of what they say in the Westerns, a normal handgun isn’t much use beyond fifty yards and most people would miss a barn door at ten paces.

Having said that, there’s no doubt that with someone who knows what he’s about, there’s nothing to equal a good handgun for close quarters work.

I used to favour a Browning P35 automatic which is standard issue in the British Army these days, mainly because it gave me thirteen shots without having to reload, but automatics have certain snags to them. Lots of bits and pieces that can go wrong and no professional gunman I’ve ever met would use one from choice.

In an ambush at Kimpala, I had a Simba bearing down on me like an express train, a three-foot panga ready in his right hand. I shot him once then the pin fell on a dud round. It doesn’t happen all that often and in a revolver, the cylinder would have kept on turning, but this was an automatic. The Browning jammed tight and my friend, doped up to the eyeballs, kept right on coming.

We spent an interesting couple of minutes on the ground and the memory stayed with me for some time afterwards. From then on I was strictly a revolver man. Only five rounds if you leave one chamber empty for safety, but completely dependable.

When I got down to the beach, it was calm and still, the sea like a blue-green mirror, the sun so strong that the rocks were too hot to touch and light bounced back from the white sand, dazzling the eye and objects blurred, became indistinct.

I took off my jacket and loaded the Smith and Wesson carefully with five rounds then hefted it first in my left hand, then in my right. Already the old alchemy was beginning to work. Heat burned its way through the thin soles of my shoes, scoured my back, became a part of me as this gun was a part, the butt fitting easily to my hand. Nothing special about it, no custom-built grip or shaved trigger. A first-rate, factory-made deadly weapon, just like Stacey Wyatt.

I took out the pack of cards, lined five of them up in a thin crack on the edge of a lump of basalt and marked out fifteen paces. There had been a time when I could draw and hit a playing card five times at that distance inside half a second, but a lot had happened in between. I dropped into a crouch, drew and fired, arm extended, gun chest-high. The echoes died flatly away across the oily sea. I reloaded at once and went forward.

Two hits out of five. Even if the other three rounds hadn’t been too far off target it still wasn’t good enough. I returned to the firing line, adopted the conventional target stance, gun at eye level, and fired at each card in turn, taking my time.

I got all five as I had expected, put up fresh cards and tried again. I still stayed with the target stance, but this time emptied the gun fairly rapidly.

Once more a hit on each card. I was ready to go back to square one again. I put up more cards, turned and found Burke at the bottom of the path. He stood there watching, anonymous in his dark glasses, and I turned on the firing line, drew and fired, and five shots so close together that they sounded like one continuous roll. As I reloaded, he went forward and got the card. Four hits – three close together, one at twelve o’clock. A whisker higher and it would have missed altogether.

“A little time, Stacey,” he said. “That’s all you need.”

He held out his hand and I gave him the Smith and Wesson. He tried the balance for a moment, then pivoted and fired using his own rather peculiar stance, right foot so far forward that his left knee almost touched the ground, gun straight out in front of him.

He had five hits, three close together, the other two straying towards the right hand edge. I showed him the card without comment. He nodded gravely, no visible satisfaction on his face.

“Not bad. Not bad at all. A tendency to kick to the right a little. Maybe you could lighten the trigger.”

“All right, you’ve made your point.” I started to reload. “Why didn’t you bring the heavy brigade with you?”

“Piet and Legrande?” He shook his head. “This is between you and me, Stacey – no one else.”

“A special relationship, is that what you’re trying to say? Just like America and England.”

He didn’t exactly boil over, but there was anger there, pulsating just beneath the surface of things.

“All right, so I got out a little later than I’d intended. Have you any idea how much organizing it took? What it cost?”

He stood there, waiting, I think for some gesture from me and when it didn’t come, turned abruptly and walked to the water’s edge. He picked up a stone, pitched it away from him half-heartedly, then slumped down on a rock and sat there gazing into the distance looking strangely dejected. For the first time since I’d known him he seemed his age.

I holstered the Smith and Wesson and squatted beside him. I offered him a cigarette without a word and he refused with a small and peculiarly characteristic gesture of one hand as if brushing something away from him.

“What’s happened, Sean?” I said. “You’re different.”

He moved the sunglasses, ran a hand over his face and smiled faintly, looking out to sea. “When I was your age, Stacey, the future held a kind of infinite promise. Now I’m forty-eight and it’s all somewhere behind me.”

It sounded like the sort of remark he’d spent a lot of careful work on beforehand, a characteristic of the Irish that didn’t just start with Oscar Wilde.

“I get it,” I said. “This is dust and ashes morning.”

He carried straight on as if I hadn’t said a word. “Life has a habit of catching up on all of us sooner or later, I suppose. You wake up one morning and suddenly for the first time ever, you want to know what it’s all about. When you’re on the margin of things like me, it’s probably too late anyway.”

“It’s always too late to ask that kind of question,” I said. “From the day you’re born.”

I was aware of a certain irritation. I didn’t want this sort of conversation and yet here I was in midstream in spite of the faint suspicion I’d had for a while now, where Burke was concerned, that somehow I was being conned, caught in a spider’s web of Irish humbug served up by a talent that wouldn’t have disgraced the Abbey Theatre.

He glanced at me and there was urgency in his voice when he said, “What about you, Stacey? What do you believe in? Really believe in with all your guts?”

I didn’t even have to think any more, not after the Hole. “I shared a cell in Cairo with an old man called Malik.”

“What was he in for?”

“Some kind of political thing. I never did find out. They took him away in the end. He was a Buddhist – a Zen Buddhist. Knew by heart every word Bodidharma ever said. It kept us going for three months.”

“You mean he converted you?” There was a frown on his face. I suppose he must have thought I was going to tell him I couldn’t indulge in violence any more.

I shook my head. “Let’s say he helped shape my philosophy. Me, I’m a doubter. I don’t believe in anything or anybody. Once you believe in something you immediately invite someone else to disagree. From then on you’re in trouble.”

I don’t think he’d heard a word I’d been saying or perhaps he just didn’t understand. “It’s a point of view.”

“Which gets us precisely nowhere.” I flicked what was left of my cigarette into the water. “Just how bad are things?”

“About as rough as they could be.”

Not only the villa belonged to Herr Hoffer. It seemed the Cessna was also his and he’d provided the cash that had gone into the operation that had got me out of Fuad.

“Do you own anything besides the clothes you stand up in?” I asked.

“That’s all we came out of the Congo with,” he pointed out, “or do I need to remind you?”

“There have been several bits of banditry in between as I recall.”

He sighed and said with obvious reluctance, “I might as well tell you. We were in for a percentage of that gold you were caught with at Râs el âyis.”

“ Kan -How big a percentage?”

“Everything we had. We could have made five times its value overnight. It looked like a good proposition.”

“Nice of you to tell me.”

I wasn’t angry. It didn’t seem to be all that important any more and I was interested in the next move.

“No more wars, Sean?” I asked. “What about the Biafrans? Couldn’t they use a good commando?”

“They couldn’t pay in washers. In any case, I’ve had enough of that kind of game – we all have.”

“So Sicily is the only chance?”

It was obviously the moment he’d been waiting for – the first real opening I had given him.

“The last chance, Stacey – the last and only chance. One hundred thousand dollars plus expenses…”

I held up my hand. “No sales talk. Just tell me about it.”

God, but I’d come a long, long way in those six years since Mozambique. Little Stacey Wyatt telling Sean Burke what to do and he took it, that was the amazing thing.

“It’s simple enough,” he said. “Hoffer’s a widower with a stepdaughter called Joanna – Joanna Truscott.”

“American?”

“No, English and very upper-crust from what I hear. Her father was a baronet or something like that. She’s an honourable anyway, not that it means much these days. Hoffer’s had trouble with her for years. One scrape after another. Sleeping around – that kind of thing.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty.”

The Honourable Joanna Truscott sounded promising.

“She must be quite a girl.”

“I wouldn’t know – we’ve never met. Hoffer has business interests in Sicily. Something to do with the oilfields at a place called Gela. You know it?”

“It was a Greek colony. Aeschylus died there. They say he was brained by a tortoise shell dropped by a passing eagle.” He gazed at me blankly and I grinned. “I had an expensive education, Sean, remember? But never mind. What about the Truscott girl?”

“She disappeared about a month ago. Hoffer didn’t notify the police because he thought she was off on some binge or other. Then he got a ransom note from a bandit called Serafino Lentini.”

“An old Sicilian custom. How much?”

“Oh, it was modest enough. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“Did he go to the police?”

Burke shook his head. “Apparently he’s spent enough time in Sicily to know that doesn’t do much good.”

“Wise man. So he paid up?”

“That’s about the size of it. Unfortunately this Serafino took the money then told him he’d decided to hang on to her for a while. He also indicated that if there was any trouble – any sign of the law being brought in – he’d send her back in pieces.”

“A Sicilian to the backbone,” I said. “Does Hoffer have any idea where he’s hanging out?”

“The general area of a mountain called Cammarata. Do you know it?”

I laughed. “The last place God made. A wilderness of sterile valleys and jagged peaks. There are caves up there that used to hide Roman slaves two thousand years ago. Believe me, if this Serafino of yours is a mountain man the police could chase him for a year up there without even seeing him and helicopters don’t do too well in that kind of country. The heat of the day does funny things to the air temperature. Too many down-draughts.”

“As bad as that?”

“Worse than you could ever imagine. The greatest bandit of them all, Giuliano, operated in the same kind of territory and they couldn’t catch him, even when they brought in a couple of army divisions.”

He nodded slowly. “Could we do it, Stacey? You and me and the heavy brigade?”

I thought about it. About the Cammarata and the heat and the lava rock and about Serafino who might already have handed the girl on to the rest of his men. When I replied, it wasn’t because the thought made me sick or angry or anything like that. From the sound of her, the Honourable Joanna might well be having the time of her life. I don’t honestly think I was even thinking of my end of the money. It was more than that – something deeper – something personal between Burke and me which I couldn’t have explained at that moment even to myself.

“Yes, I think it could be done. With me along it’s just possible.”

“Then you’ll come?”

He leaned forward eagerly, a hand on my shoulder, but I wasn’t going to be caught that easily.

“I’ll think about it.”

He didn’t smile, showed no emotion of any kind and yet tension oozed out of him like dirty water and in a second he was transformed into the man I’d always known.

“Good lad. I’ll see you later then. Back at the villa.”

I watched him climb the path and disappear. For the moment I’d had enough shooting. The sea looked inviting and I moved a little further along the beach, stripped and went in.

At that point the cliffs merged into hillside sparsely covered with grass, and wild flowers grew in profusion. I climbed half-way up and lay on my back, the sun warm on my naked flesh, staring through narrowed eyelids at a white cloud no bigger than my hand, allowing my whole body to relax, making my mind a blank, another trick hard-won from those months in prison.

The world was a blue bowl and I floated in it, drowsing in the scented grass and slept.

Waking was a return to a heavy stillness. I was aware of flowers, the grass at eye-level like a jungle, the woman watching me from a few yards away. Was it an accidental encounter or had she been sent by Burke? I wasn’t angry, but strangely calculating considering the circumstances. I watched her through slitted eyes, apparently still asleep, making no move. She stayed perhaps two or three minutes, her face quite expressionless, then went away carefully.

When she had gone, I sat up, dressed and went down to the beach again feeling rather excited. In a way, the whole thing had become a kind of game with Burke making a new move as I countered the old one.

The cards were where I had left them together with my box of ammunition and when I moved to the firing line, I had never known such power, such certainty. I drew, fired and was reloading within the second, my old self again, the Stacey from before the Hole… and yet not the same.

This time I fired left-handed, drawing on the cross from my waistband and knew before I checked what I would find.

Five hits… five hits on each card tightly grouped. I tore them into very small pieces, scattered them into the sea and went back up to the villa.

I slept during the afternoon waking just before night fell and yet I lay there without moving when Burke entered the room to check on me and softly departed.

When it was quite dark I got up, pulled on a pair of pants and ventured on to the terrace. I could hear voices near at hand, followed the sound and paused at the window of what was obviously his bedroom. He was sitting at a desk in one corner and Piet was standing beside him, his fair hair golden in the lamplight.

Burke glanced up at him and smiled – a new kind of smile, one I’d never seen before – patted his arm and said something. Piet went out like some faithful hound about his master’s business.

Burke opened a drawer, produced what looked suspiciously like a bottle of whisky, uncorked it and swallowed, which for a man who didn’t drink was quite a trick. He put the bottle back in the drawer when the door opened and the woman entered.

I got ready to leave, mainly because whatever else I am I’m no voyeur, but there was no need. He simply sat there looking very much the colonel and talked, presumably in Greek which I knew he spoke well after a couple of years in Cyprus during the Emergency.

I eased back into the shadows as she left and moved back to my room. The whole thing was certainly packed full of human interest and drama and I lit a cigarette, lay on the bed and thought about it all.

The story – that was the really weak link. The story about the Honourable Joanna and the rampant Serafino. Oh, it was possible, but strangely incomplete like a Bach fugue with page three missing.

Somewhere thunder rumbled menacingly. The gods were angry perhaps? Oh, might Zeus forgive us. The old Greek tag drifted up from some dusty schoolroom to haunt me along with wine-dark seas, Achilles and his heel and cunning Odysseus.

I didn’t hear her come in, but when lightning crackled out to sea, it picked her from the night standing just inside the French window. I made no sound. When it flared again, she had come closer, the dress on the floor behind her, the ripe body a thing of light and mystery, dark hair brushing the full breasts.

In the darkness following, her hands were on me, her mouth, her flesh against mine. In one single savage movement I had her by the hair, my hand tightening cruelly.

“What did he tell you to do?” I demanded. “Anything I wanted, anything to keep me happy?”

Her body arched in pain and yet she did not struggle and when the lightning flickered again, highlighting the heavy breasts, I saw that her eyes were turned towards me and there was no fear there.

My fingers slackened in her hair and she subsided. I gently patted her face, her lips turned into the palm of my hand. So, it had come to this? Stacey the satyr – fill one half of his bed for him and keep him happy. The rest was easy. Just like my English breakfast – Burke thought of everything. Only the piano was missing and he’d probably tried hard enough to get hold of one.

I went to the French window and stood looking out at the flickering sky. Suddenly, and for no accountable reason, the whole thing struck me as really being very funny – a monstrous game for children with motive laid bare to such a degree that it was ridiculous.

Burke wanted me – needed me. In exchange I got twenty-five thousand dollars and all my more carnal needs supplied. Now what well-bred satyr could complain at that?

I nodded slowly. Right. Let it be so. I would play his game through as I had done before, but this time perhaps a rule or two of my own might be in order.

Behind me was the softest of movements and I sensed her presence there in the darkness. I reached out and pulled her close. She was still naked and shivered slightly. I could smell the mimosa, heavy and clinging on the damp air. The whole electric world waited for a sign. It came and the heavens opened, rain falling straight from sky to earth.

The freshness filled my nostrils, drowning the womanly scent of her. I left her there, moved out on the terrace and stood, face turned up to the rain, mouth half-open, laughing as I hadn’t laughed in a long, long time, ready to take on the world again and beat it at its own dark game.