something. I couldn’t catch what, and got what was left of her coffee in his face.
To a Sicilian male, a woman is there to be used, to do what she is told. To be publically humiliated by one would be unthinkable. Several of the watching children laughed and he reached across the table in a fury and yanked her to her feet, his other hand raised to strike.
I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him round. We stared at each other for a long moment and the expression on his face was already beginning to alter as I slapped him back-handed. I didn’t say a word. His hand went to his cheek, his friend plucked at his sleeve. They walked backwards, faces blank, turned and hurried away.
Rosa joined me, buttoning her jacket. “What would you have done if they’d both had a go at you? Shot them?”
“But they didn’t,” I pointed out.
“No, you’re right, they knew better than to tangle with Mafia.”
“And how would they know that’s what they were doing?”
“Don’t play games with me. Mr. Wyatt. Have you looked in the mirror lately? There is
“For you or for him?” She raised a hand and I warded it off. “Poor Rosa. You wear nylon underwear and dresses from London and Paris and feel guilty about it. Why? Are there brothers and sisters still living in a sty like this?”
“Something like that.” She nodded. “You are very clever, aren’t you, Mr. Wyatt?”
“Stacey,” I said. “Call me Stacey. Now let’s take a walk.”
Beyond the village, we found a pleasant slope that lefted gently towards the first ridge-back, the dark line of forest beyond, then bare rock and the peak, very faint, shimmering in the heat haze.
I had brought binoculars from the car and I spread the map Cerda had given me on the ground and carefully checked certain features with reality.
“Can it be done?” she asked as I folded the map and put the binoculars into their case.
“I think so.”
“But you’re not going to tell me how?”
“I thought you only came along for the ride?”
She hit me on the shoulder with a clenched fist. “I think you are the most infuriating man I have ever met.”
“Good,” I said. “Now let’s forget everything else except how pleasant this is. We’ll spend the afternoon like carefree lovers and tell pleasant lies to each other.”
She laughed, head thrown back, but when I took her hand in mine, she let it stay there.
On the slopes we found knapweed with great yellow heads, ragwort and bee orchids and silvery-blue gentians. We walked for an hour, then lay in a hollow warmed by the sun, smoked and talked.
I was right. She had started life in a village very similar to Bellona in the province of Messina, An uncle on her mother’s side, a widower, had owned a small cafe in Palermo and his only daughter had died. He needed someone to take her place in the business and no Sicilian would dream of bringing in an outsider when there was someone suitable in the family.
She had married, at eighteen, the middle-aged owner of a similar establishment who had obliged by conveniently passing on a year later.
My impression was that Hoffer had used the place and had taken a fancy to her, but she was a little reticent about the details. The important thing was that she’d been able to make herself into what he wanted, a sophisticated woman of the world, which couldn’t have been easy, even with her guts and intelligence.
She fired a few questions at me in turn and I actually found myself answering. Nothing important, of course, and then she slipped badly.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “You’re almost human. It’s so difficult to imagine you killing as ruthlessly as you did last night.”
“So you know about that?” I said. “Who told you?”
“Why, Colonel Burke.” The answer was out before she could stop it. “I was there when he told Karl.”
“Life,” I said. “One big joke.”
I pushed her on her back and kissed her. She lay there staring up at me, her face smooth, the eyes quite blank, making no move to stop me as I unbuttoned her blouse and slipped a hand inside and cupped it around a breast. The nipple blossomed beneath my thumb and I noticed tiny beads of sweat on her brow.
I kissed them away and laughed. “There can be no doubt whatsoever that the trouser suit has been the greatest protector of a woman’s virtue since the chastity belt. Almost an impossible problem.”
“But not quite,” she said.
“No, not quite.”
I kissed her again and this time her arms slid around my neck, pulling me close. She was really very desirable, but so untrustworthy.
We came down to the village a different way on our return and I got a look into the walled garden at the rear of the wineshop from a couple of hundred feet up. A red Alfa Romeo was parked in the barn and two men were talking in the entrance. When I got the binoculars out, I discovered it was Cerda and Marco Gagini.
Rosa had walked on ahead some little way, picking wild flowers. I didn’t say anything to her, or indeed to Cerda when we returned to the wineshop. Burke was on his feet again by then, looking and acting pretty foul. I put him into the rear seat for the return trip and Rosa sat beside me.
He controlled his temper for at least a hundred yards and then exploded. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me, for Christ’s sake? What did you find?”
“Where Serafino hangs out.”
“And we can get at him?”
“I think so. Remember the mission at Lagona?”
“Where we parachuted in for the nuns?” He frowned. “That’s what you’re suggesting now?”
“It’s the only way,” I said. “Can you get the gear together?”
He nodded. “No difficulty there. I’ll have it flown in tomorrow from Crete. Look, are you sure about this?”
“I’ll give it to you word by word when we get back,” I told him. “Now why don’t you try to get some more sleep?”
He laughed sourly. “Sleep? I’ll never sleep again.”
He subsided into the corner and I swung the Fiat into the first bend and came out in a cloud of dust. When I glanced into the mirror I was smiling.
We reached Palermo just before evening and there was one more thing to be done before we returned to the villa as I reminded Burke. We called at Hoffer’s bank, presented his cheque and had it converted to a bill of exchange to be drawn upon a firm of Swiss merchant bankers I designated. We left it on deposit in the bank vault from which it could be retrieved on presentation of a key they gave us plus his signature.
Burke wasn’t pleased at all, mainly because I’d pushed him into it and he never liked that. The clerk gave me a large manilla envelope to put the bill of exchange in and I let Burke seal it which seemed to make him feel a little better. I told him he could hang on to the key and he put it carefully away in his wallet.
For some reason he still didn’t look really happy. I was rather pleased about that.
NINE
