Leslie Charteris - Vendetta for the Saint

“Piacere! I have heard of you, Signor Templar, and I am glad to have you on our side. Over here I have maps of all Sicily, on the largest scale. Can you show me on them where we have to go?”

“I think so,” said the Saint, and bent over the table.

The lieutenant who had brought them from the gate, together with another lieutenant and a sergeant who were already in the hut, joined Olivetti and Ponti around the map and watched intently while Simon traced his way over the contours from the junction on the coast where he had caught the bus to Cefalù, back up the dry river bed to the village and up over the mountain ridge to the other valley and the combination of remembered landmarks which enabled him to pinpoint the site of the eyrie from which he had escaped.

“This road is unpaved,” he said, running a fingernail along the route down from the house. “I haven’t been on this upper stretch, but their car came down it at speed with no trouble. I don’t know anything about this other road marked along the top of the cliff.”

Olivetti studied the terrain with professional minuteness.

“On either road, there is a risk that they may have outposts who would give warning of the approach of a force like ours. You mentioned descending this cliff in the dark. Could we send men up that way?”

“Even Alpine troops, I think, would need to use pitons, and the hammering would make too much noise. I came down that way because I had to, and some of it was just dropping and sliding and hoping for the best.”

“I could deploy my men from these points and let them make it on foot, but then I could not guarantee they would be ready to close in before dawn.”

“I know there is no logical reason why this convocation should panic and pack up in the middle of the night,” Ponti said, “but I must admit that each hour that we leave the trap open will make me more afraid of finding it empty when we close it.”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked the Saint.

“Of course. You are the only one of us who has already seen this area in daylight.”

“And I think it would be a commando’s nightmare. On the other hand, if you got there and found that the birds had flown, I should feel sillier than anyone. So I think we should try for speed rather than stealth. Of course, I would try to cut all the telephone lines in the area — and apologize to the telephone company afterwards, otherwise some Mafia sympathizer among the operators would certainly send out a warning. But after that, I would move in as fast as possible, and hang the uproar. I take it your company is mechanized, maggiore?”

“Si. That is, we have no tanks, but we have trucks and troop carriers.”

Simon pointed to the two roads to the Mafia hideout.

“Then if you split them into two units, and send one up by this road and one by this, timed to meet at the top — once they start, they themselves will be blocking the only roads that the mobsters could escape by, if they still are up there. However, if they find themselves cornered like that, the jokers might decide to fight rather than surrender. Are you prepared to go as far as a shooting war?”

“I should welcome it!” Olivetti bellowed, and struck the flimsy trestle table a great blow with his fist that threatened the support of its legs. “If Ponti has the authority—”

“That is quite a point,” Simon admitted, turning to the detective. “Can you justify launching an offensive like this?”

Ponti showed his teeth in a vulpine grin.

“I can if you are not deceiving me, and unless you let me down. In which case I would do worse to you than I promised Niccolo. But on your testimony I have plenty to charge them with — assault, kidnaping, attempted murder. Then there is a very legalistic charge involving criminal intentions, which an assembly of persons of bad repute can be assumed to be plotting, in certain circumstances. But best of all would be if one of them does fire a shot at us — then we need no more excuses.”

“So, it is decided,” Olivetti said, with ebullient enthusiasm. “The tecnici will go out first, in pairs, on motorcycles. Then, look, the first and second plotoni —”

His subalterns and the sergeant crowded up to follow his pointings on the map as he developed the plan in greater detail; and Ponti caught Simon’s eye and beckoned him away from the briefing.

“I imagine you would like to go back to your hotel and get some sleep, but that might be dangerous. Let me give you the key to my apartment. The Mafia will never look for you there. I will see you there after all this is over. You will have to identify the ones that we capture, and make a deposition to support the charges. The address is—”

Simon had already begun to shake his head, before he interrupted.

“There you go again, Marco, trying to kill me with kindness,” he murmured. “It makes me feel an ungrateful bum to turn you down, but I have sat through too many acts of this opera to be eased out before the grand finale. I shall come along and be ready with more of my brilliant advice in case the military needs it.”

“But you are a civilian. You do not have to expose yourself—”

“Someone should have told me that a few days ago. But now I still have those personal problems of my own which you know something about, and I want a chance to straighten them out before some trigger-happy bersagliere blasts away any hope of getting the answers. If you refuse me that little bit of fun, I might be so upset as to get an attack of amnesia, and be completely unable to identify any of your prisoners. Such things can happen to hysterical types like me.”

“Your blackmail is shameful. But I am forced to bow to it. However, I take no responsibility for your safety, or for any legal trouble you may get into.”

“You never did, did you?” said the Saint innocently.

The map-table conference broke up, and the lieutenants and the sergeant hurried out.

“Well, the operation will be rolling in eight minutes,” Olivetti said. “The Company was put on full alert as soon as you telephoned, Ponti — and since then there has been no telephoning.”

With a broad smile, he held up his huge hand and clicked a pantomime wire-cutter.

“I, too, take no chances,” he said, and looked at the Saint. “I am glad you are going with us. It will help to have someone who knows the layout of this castello.”

“He insists,” Ponti said wryly. “He is afraid that he may become hysterical if he is left alone. He has been through a lot, you know.”

“Now you try to explain that, Marco,” Simon grinned, and went out.

He was checking the gas and oil in the Bugatti when the advance scouts set out, the wasp-whine of their Guzzi motorcycles splitting the still night. They were followed by the snore of truck engines grumbling into life.

Satisfied that his borrowed behemoth was still fuelled for any kilometrage that it was likely to be called on to cover, he was buckling down the hood when a Fiat scout car skidded to a stop beside him with all four wheels locked. Major Olivetti was at the wheel. In the rear seat, a lieutenant and the radio-man braced themselves stoically, being no doubt inured to their commander’s mercurial pilotage; but in the other front bucket Ponti had his hands clamped to the dashboard with a pained expression which hinted that he might have preferred the vehicle which brought him to the camp.

“Follow my column,” Olivetti bawled, “and join me when we stop. Do you want a gun?”

He proferred his own automatic.

“Thank you; but it must be illegal for foreign civilians in this country to possess military firearms. And in any case I already have an illegal weapon obtained from the Mafia. But don’t tell your poliziotti friends.”