Jack Higgins - In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

“Is it so bad for a mother to have hopes for her son?” He smiled up at the portrait again. “She used to say everybody had a talent for something.”

“What was yours?”

The words were out before I could bite them back and instantly regretted. His head swung sharply, the chin tilted, but there was no eruption. He took a fresh cigar from a silver box and sank into a wing back chair beside the fire.

“A brandy, Stacey, for both of us. You look like a man who drinks now. Then we talk.”

I moved to the cabinet on the other side of the room where the crystal goblets and decanter stood on a silver tray.

“I read about you, boy, a couple of years back.”

“Oh yes.” I was surprised, but tried not to show it.

“A French magazine – Paris Match . They did a feature on mercenaries in the Congo – mainly about your friend, but you were there standing just behind him. It said you were a captain.”

“That’s right.”

I carefully poured the brandy and he went on. “Then there was a report in one of the Rome newspapers about how you were all chased out with your tails between your legs.”

I refused to be drawn. “That would be about two years ago now.”

“What have you been up to since?”

“This and that.” I went towards him, a goblet in each hand. “As a matter of fact I’m just out of prison. The Egyptian variety. Nothing like as pleasant as the Ucciardone in Palermo or doesn’t the Mafia control it any more?”

The ebony stick stabbed out, sweeping back my coat, exposing the Smith and Wesson in its holster. “So, Marco was right and I wouldn’t believe him. This is what you have become, eh? Sicario – hired killer. My grandson.”

Strange the anger in his voice, the disgust, but then no real mafioso ever thought of himself as a criminal. Everything was for the cause, for the Society.

I handed him his brandy. “Am I worse than you? In any way am I worse than you?”

“When I kill, it is in hot blood,” he said. “A man dies because he is against me – against Mafia.”

“And you think that sufficient reason?”

He shrugged. “I believe it to be so. It has always been so.” The stick came up and touched my chest. “But you, Stacey, what do you kill for? Money?”

“Not just money,” I said. “Lots of money.”

Which wasn’t true. I knew it and I think he did also.

“I can give you money. All you need.”

“That’s just what you did for a great many years.”

“And you left.”

“And I left.”

He nodded gravely. “I had a letter from some lawyers in the States just over a year ago. They were trying to trace you. Your grandfather – old Wyatt – had second thoughts on his death bed. There is provision for you in the will – a large sum.”

I wasn’t even angry. “They can give it back to the Indians.”

“You won’t touch it?”

“Would I walk on my mother’s grave?” I was getting more like a Sicilian every minute.

He seemed well pleased. “I am glad to see you have some honour left in you. Now you will tell me why you are here. I do not flatter myself that you returned to Sicily to see me.”

I crossed the room and poured another brandy. “Bread and butter work – nothing to interest you.”

The stick hammered on the floor. “I asked you a question, boy, you will answer.”

“All right. If it will make you feel any better. Burke and I have been hired by a man named Hoffer.”

“Karl Hoffer?” He frowned slightly.

“That’s the man. Austrian, but speaks English like an American. Has interests in the oilfield at Gela.”

“I know what his interests are. What does he want you to do?”

“I thought Mafia knew everything,” I said. “His stepdaughter was kidnapped some weeks ago by a bandit called Serafino Lentini. He’s holding her in the Cammarata and won’t send her back in spite of the fact that Hoffer paid up like a soldier.”

“And you are going to get her back, is that it? You and your friend think you can go into the Cammarata and bring her out with you again?” He laughed, that strange, harsh laugh, head thrown back. “Stacey – Stacey. And I thought you’d grown up.”

I very carefully smashed my crystal goblet into the fire, and started for the door. His voice, when he called my name, had all the iron of hell in it. I turned, a twelve-year-old schoolboy again caught in the orange grove before harvest. “That was seventeenth-century Florentine. Does it make you feel any better?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

There was nothing more I could say. Unexpectedly he smiled. “This Serafino Lentini – you are kin on your grandmother’s side. Third cousins.”

“You know him then?”

“I haven’t seen him for many years. A wild boy – he shot a policeman when he was eighteen and took to the maquis . When they caught him, they gave him a hard time. You’ve heard of the cassetta ?”

In the good old days under Mussolini it had been frequently employed by the police when extorting confessions from the more difficult prisoners. A kind of wooden box, a frame to which a man could be strapped and worked on at leisure. It was supposed to be forbidden now, but whether it was or not was anyone’s guess.

“What did they do to him?”

“The usual things – the hot iron, which left him blind in one eye and they crushed his testicles – took away his manhood.”

Burke should be listening to this . “Does nothing change?” I said.

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “And watch Hoffer. He is a hard man.”

“Millionaires usually are. That’s how they get there.” I buttoned my jacket. “It’s time I was going. A long day tomorrow.”

“You are going to the Cammarata?”

I nodded. “With Burke. Just for a drive. Tourists having a look round. I want to see the lie of the land. I thought we’d try Bellona.”

“The man who owns the wineshop is the mayor. His name is Cerda – Danielo Cerda.” He took his blue silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it out. “Show him this and tell him you are from me. He will help you in any way he can. He is one of my people.”

I folded the handkerchief and put it in my pocket. “I thought Serafino didn’t like Mafia?”

“He doesn’t,” he said tranquilly, reached for my hand and pulled himself up. “Now we shall join the others. I must talk with this Colonel Burke of yours. He interests me.”

Burke and Marco were sitting together in the salon, an exquisite room which my grandfather had kept to the original Moorish design. The floor was of black and white ceramic tiles and the ceiling was blue, vivid against stark white walls. Beyond a wonderful carved screen, another relic of Saracen days, was the terrace and the gardens.

I could hear water gurgling in the old conduits, splashing from the numerous fountains. In other days it had been said that whoever held the meagre water supplies of the island held Sicily and Mafia had done just that.

They were talking behind me and I heard Burke say in his terrible Italian, “You must be very proud of your garden, Signor Barbaccia.”

“The best in Sicily,” my grandfather told him. “Come, I will show you.”

Marco stayed to finish his drink and I followed them out on to the terrace. The sky was clear again, each star a jewel and the lush, semi-tropical vegetation pressed in on the house.

I could smell the orange grove although I couldn’t see it, the almond trees. Palms swayed gently in the slight breeze, their branches dark feathers against the stars. And everywhere the gurgle of water. My grandfather pointed out the papyrus by the pool, another Arab innovation, and suggested a short walk before we left.