Bloody Passage. Jack Higgins
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the plate, but boredom was the main problem. There was always sleep, but the cold didn’t help too much there so I tried passing the time by undertaking a kind of personal psychoanalysis.
Freud would have been proud of me. I actually made it back to my third birthday; for the first time since that happy event recalled burying a box of scarlet-coated Grenadier Guards in a cornfield at the back of my English grandfather’s Dorset farmhouse and the feeling of utter desolation at forgetting where. And the next day my father, who was a captain in the Marine Corps stationed at the American Embassy in London …
The grating clanged above my head and Langley peered in. I got to my feet and looked up at him. By my reckoning it was exactly a week since that first morning.
‘My God,’ he said. ‘Something must have crawled in and died. Hose him down.’
The jet of water which followed was cold, but really quite pleasant. It stopped after a while and Langley leaned over and lowered a rope with a loop on the end.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Up with you.’
I came up out of the darkness and found myself in some sort of vault, stone pillars supporting the roof. It was neatly whitewashed and lit by electric light and stone steps in one corner led up to a stout oak door. Two men had the other end of the rope, peas out of the same pod, dark, swarthy looking, wearing identical heavy fishermen’s sweaters, capable of most things if appearances were anything to go by.
They released the rope and one of them said to the other in Italian, ‘Mother of God, he stinks like a dung heap.’
Justin Langley came forward, Gatano at his back. His blond hair hung to his shoulders. He wore a black nylon shirt, skin tight and open at the neck. The broad belt at his waist had a round brass buckle that must have been four inches in diameter and he wore a gold chain round his neck with a bauble on the end which he twirled between his fingers.
I said, ‘You look sweet – honestly.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t, old stick.’ He sighed. ‘It brings out the worst in me.’
He nodded to Gatano who moved forward, a look of what might be termed eager anticipation on his face. When he was close enough he put a fist into my belly. As I doubled over, he hooked his foot under the chain between my ankles and pulled me down.
Langley said sharply, ‘Don’t mark his face!’
I wasn’t sure whether Gatano had heard him or not for he was obviously enjoying himself. He put his boot into me, not very scientifically, three or four times, grunting with effort and then Langley said, ‘All right, that’s enough!’ and pulled him off.
They put the hose on me again and the two Italians picked me up between them and we followed Langley and Gatano up the stone steps. Gatano opened the door and we went out into bright morning sunshine.
I was beginning to function again, well below par, but enough to get by for the moment. We had emerged into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by stone walls. There was a gate at the far end and on the right, steps up to ramparts.
I negotiated them with some difficulty because of the leg irons, but the view was worth it. Massive cliffs, a calm blue sea shimmering in the heat haze, and above us at an even higher level, a citadel standing in a garden.
There was the scent of wisteria and I could smell almond trees as we passed through an iron gate into a semi-tropical paradise. There was the sound of water everywhere, splashing in fountains, gurgling in the conduits as it dropped from terrace to terrace between the palm trees.
We climbed a final flight of steps and emerged on to a broad terrace at a point where the ramparts came together like the prow of a ship. The view was really quite astonishing. There was a table beneath an awning, white linen cloth, silverware, a couple of bottles of wine in a bucket, a waiter in a neatly starched coat at the ready, napkin folded over one arm.
His master stood at the ramparts, an immensely fat man in a white linen suit, long, dark hair flecked with silver. When he turned I saw that he had a walking stick in each hand and leaned heavily on both of them.
It was a strange face, dark, hooded eyes that seemed to look through and beyond you. A brutal, rather sensual mouth and overall a kind of total arrogance. And it was a familiar face, that was the most disturbing thing of all, yet for the life of me I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him before.
He examined me for a long moment, those strange, brooding eyes giving nothing away, then he shuffled across to the table and eased himself down into a wicker chair. He nodded to the waiter who took one of the bottles from the bucket and filled a glass. I was immediately aware of the distinctive aroma of anis.
‘Your health, Major Grant,’ he toasted me.
He had a deep bass voice, totally American, nothing of Europe in it at all. I said, ‘You want to watch it. Too much of that stuff in the heat of the day can freeze your liver. I’ve seen it put strong men on their backs for a week.’
Langley started to say something, but my fat friend waved him down with one hand. He stared at me intently, a frown on his face, then smiled. ‘By God, you know where you are, sir. Confess it!’
‘I think so.’
He slapped his thigh in high good humour and turned to Langley. ‘Didn’t I tell you I’d picked the right man?’
Langley twirled the golden bauble between his fingers. ‘He has a big mouth, I’ll give you that.’
The fat man turned his attention back to me and leaned forward, hands folded over the handle of one of his walking sticks. ‘Come, sir, don’t let me down.’
‘All right.’ I shrugged. ‘The architecture of this fortress for a start. Walls are Norman, probably twelfth century. Most of the rest is Moorish. Then there’s the garden. Papyrus by the main pool, another Arab innovation, and the wine you’re drinking. Zibibbo from the island of Pantellaria. I can smell the anis.’
‘Which all adds up to?’
‘Sicily.’ I squinted up at the sun. ‘Somewhere on the southern coast.’
‘Southeast,’ he said. ‘Capo Passero to be exact.’ He shook his head solemnly, sipped a little of his wine and said to Langley, ‘Remarkable is it not, what the trained mind is capable of?’
Langley looked sullen, picked up a wineglass and held it out to the waiter who filled it for him. The fat man chuckled. ‘Justin is not impressed, Major Grant, but then he likes to be first in the field always. It comes of having been educated at Eton.’
‘You mean the reformatory?’ I said. ‘In Northern Nebraska?’ I shook my head. ‘Poor kid, I don’t suppose he ever really stood a chance.’
Strangely enough Langley reacted to that one with apparent indifference, but his fat friend rocked with laughter. ‘I like that. Yes, I really like that.’ He wiped tears from his eyes with a large white pocket handkerchief. ‘You know who I am, Major Grant?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Stavrou, sir. Dimitri Stavrou.’ He expected a reaction and seeing it in my face, grinned slyly. ‘You know me now, I think?’
‘I should,’ I said. ‘Your picture was on enough front pages nine or ten months ago when they deported you from the States.’
‘An affront to justice.’ He seemed angry for the moment, though whether this was genuine or assumed, it was impossible to say. ‘Although I was born in Cyprus, I lived in America for forty years of my life, Major Grant. I had legitimate business interests.’
‘Like gambling, drugs, prostitution?’ I said. ‘Front man for the Syndicate or the Mafia or whatever they call themselves these days, wasn’t that it?’
There was a hot spark of anger behind those dark eyes. ‘The pot, sir, calling the kettle black, isn’t that how the English would put it?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘The