Jack Higgins: Luciano’s Luck

No time for that, not now for he was aware of the sound of vehicles approaching on the road, very fast. He went lurching down the steps, picked up the bicycle and hurriedly retraced his steps through the garden to the rear gate.

He reached the shelter of the pine trees below the villa, turned in time to see a truck and two kubelwagens appear on the main road above him. Carter didn’t wait to see what would happen, simply pushed on through the trees until he came to the woodcutter’s track that ran all the way down through the forest to Bellona. Just enough light to see by if he was lucky. He flung a leg over the broken leather saddle of the old bicycle and rode away.

There wasn’t a great deal to remember of that ride. The trees crowding in on either side, deepening the evening gloom, the rush of the heavy rain. It was rather like being on the kind of monumental drunk where, afterwards, only occasional images surface.

He opened his eyes to find himself lying on his back, the rain falling on his upturned face, in a ditch on the edge of the village, the bicycle beside him.

The pain of the gunshot wound was intense now, worse than he would have believed possible. There was no sign of the shotgun and he forced himself to his feet and stumbled along the track through the swiftly falling darkness.

The smell of wood smoke hung on the damp air and a dog barked hollowly in the distance, but otherwise there was no sign of life except for the occasional light in a window. And yet there were people up there, watching from behind the shutters, waiting.

He made it across the main square, pausing at the fountain in the centre to put his head under the jet of cold water that gushed from the mouth and nostrils of a bronze dryad, continued past the church and turned into a narrow side street. There was an entrance to a courtyard a few houses along, barred by an oaken gate, a blue lamp above it. The sign painted on the wall in ornate black letters read Vito Barbera – Mortician.

A small judas gate stood next to the main door. Carter leaned against it and pulled the bell chain. There was silence for a while and he held on to the grille with one hand, staring up at the rain falling in a silver spray through the lamplight. A footstep sounded inside and the grille opened.

Barbera said, ‘What is it?’

‘Me, Vito.’

‘Harry, is that you?’ Barbera said, this time in the kind of English that came straight from the Bronx. ‘Thank God. I thought they must have lifted you.’

He opened the judas gate and Carter stepped inside. ‘A damn near-run thing, Vito, just like Waterloo,’ he said and fainted.

Carter surfaced slowly and found himself looking up at a cracked plaster ceiling. It was very cold and there was a heavy, medicinal smell to everything that he soon recognized as formaldehyde. He was lying on one of the tables in the mortuary preparation room, his neck pillowed on a wooden block, his stomach and chest expertly bandaged.

He turned his head and found Barbera, wearing a long rubber apron, working on the corpse of an old man at the next table. Carter pushed himself up.

Barbera said cheerfully, ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. He shot you twice. The one in the side went straight through, but the second is somewhere in the left lung. You’ll need a top surgeon.’

‘Thanks a million,’ Carter said. ‘That really does make me feel a whole lot better.’

On the trolley beside Barbera were the tools of the embalmer’s trade laid out neatly on a white cloth: forceps, scalpels, surgical needles, artery tubes and a glass jar containing a couple of gallons of embalming fluid.

There was a look of faint surprise on the corpse’s face that many people show in death, jaw dropped, mouth gaping as if in astonishment that this could be happening. Barbera took a long curved needle and passed it from behind the lower lip, up through the nasal septum and down again so that when he tightened the thread and tied it off, the jaw was lifted.

‘So you raise people from the dead, too?’ Carter eased himself off the table. ‘I always knew you were a man of parts.’

Barbera smiled, a small, intense-looking man of fifty whose tangled iron-grey beard appeared strangely at odds with the Bronx accent.

‘You fucking English, Harry! I mean, when are you going to learn? The days of Empire are over. What were you trying to do up there, win the war on your own?’

‘Something like that.’

The door opened and a young girl entered. Sixteen or seventeen, no more. Small, dark-haired with a ripe, full body that strained at the seams of the old cotton dress. She had a wide mouth, dark brown eyes in a face of considerable character and yet there was the impression of one who had seen too much of life at its worst too early.

She carried a tray containing an old brass coffee pot, brown sugar and glasses. There was also a bottle of cognac – Courvoisier.

Barbera carried on working. ‘Rosa, this is Major Carter. My niece, arrived from Palermo since you were last here.’

‘Rosa,’ Carter said.

She poured coffee and handed it to him without a word.

Barbera said, ‘Good girl. Now go back to the gate and watch the square. Anything – anything at all, you let me know.’

She went out and Carter poured himself a brandy, sipping it slowly for the pain in his lung was so intense that he could hardly breathe. ‘I never knew you had a niece. How old is she?’

‘Oh, a hundred and fifty, or sixteen. Take your pick. Her father was my youngest brother. Killed in an auto accident in ’thirty-seven in Naples. I lost sight of his wife. She died of consumption in Palermo three years ago.’

‘And Rosa?’

‘I only heard about her two months ago through Mafia friends in Palermo. She’s been a street whore since she was thirteen. I figured it was time she came home.’

‘You still think of this place as home after Tenth Avenue?’

‘Oh, sure, no regrets. Something Rosa can’t understand. New York is still the promised land to her, whereas to me, it was somewhere to leave.’

He was working cream into the old man’s face now, touching the cheeks with rouge.

Carter said, ‘What about the Contessa?’

‘The Gestapo took her to Palermo.’

‘Bad for you if they break her.’

‘Not possible.’ Barbera shook his head. ‘A friend passed her a cyanide capsule in the women’s prison yesterday afternoon.’

Carter took a long, shuddering breath to steady his nerves. ‘I was hoping she’d have news for me of Luca.’

Barbera paused and glanced at him in some surprise. ‘You waste your time. No one has news of Luca because that is the way he wants it.’

‘Mafia again?’

‘Yes, my friend, Mafia again and you would do well to remember that. What are your plans?’

‘I was supposed to go to Agrigento tonight. I’m due to put to sea with a tuna boat out of Porto Stefano at midnight.’

‘Submarine pick-up?’

‘That’s it.’

Barbera frowned thoughtfully. ‘I don’t see how, Harry, not tonight. The roads will be crawling with Krauts. Maybe tomorrow.’ He gestured to the corpse. ‘I’ve got to take the old boy here down to Agrigento anyway.’

Before Carter could reply, the door burst open and Rosa looked in. They are here in the square. Many Germans.’ Barbera moved to the window and parted the curtain slightly. Carter struggled up with difficulty and limped to join him. Several vehicles had pulled up in the square, kubelwagens and troop carriers and two armoured cars. Soldiers had gathered in a semi-circle and were being addressed from the back of a field car by an officer.

Carter said, ‘SS paratroopers. Where in the hell did they come from?’

‘The mainland last month. Specially selected by Kesselring to clear the mountains of partisans. The one doing the talking is their commanding officer, Major Koenig. He’s good. They call him the Hunter in the Cammarata.’