“The bastard.” Burke threw threw the pebbles he was holding into the water viciously. “Neither do I.”
The main thing which had worried me was now explained and I was conscious of a definite easing of tension and a sudden rush of affection for Burke, coupled with a kind of guilt because I had even admitted the possibility that he was capable of such an act.
He produced his packet of cigarettes for the second time. It was empty and he threw it into the stream. I gave him one of mine and when he lit it, I saw that his hands were shaking. He stared out across the water.
“God, what a fool I’ve been. I knew there was something phoney about the whole thing. From the beginning I knew that, and yet I still let it all happen.”
“Why, Sean?” I asked.
“Oh, the money was good and it was the only offer I was likely to get.” He shrugged. “You change when you get old, you’ll find that out. You grab at straws, take the wrong chances, look the other way when you shouldn’t, because all of a sudden, the years are rolling by and you’ve had it.”
He choked suddenly on a mouthful of smoke and doubled over, struggling for breath. While it lasted, it was anything but pleasant. I got an arm around him and he leaned hard on me as he coughed up half his lungs.
After a while, he managed to get his breath and smiled wanly. “Okay now.” He slapped his chest. “I’m afraid the old lungs aren’t what they used to be.”
And in that, there was the answer to many things.
“How bad is it?”
He tried to smile and failed. “Bad enough.”
And then he told me. Not, as I was beginning to believe, cancer, but something as bad. Some rare disease in which a fungus-like growth spreads like a poisonous weed to choke him. There was no cure and drugs could only halt what was an inevitable decline.
To say that I felt guilty at the general way in which I had misjudged him would be an understatement. I was sick to my stomach. There was no excuse. I should have realised from my knowledge of the man that there had to be some logical explanation for his unlikely behaviour.
I came up with the most banal sentence in the world. “I’m sorry, Sean.”
He smiled and slapped me on the shoulder. “Never mind that now, Stacey boy. What’s to be done, that’s the thing.”
I told him about Joanna Truscott’s offer. “I don’t know what she has in mind, but nobody would lose by it, and I’d like to put one over on Hoffer.”
So would I, he said with some passion. “I’ll put it to Piet and Legrande.”
They tood together in a huddle, talking, and I realised again how tired Legrande looked as they moved to join me. “That’s it then,” Burke said. “We’ve got half our money in advance anyway. Now we’ll see if we can make the bastard sweat a little.”
He seemed to swallow suddenly and stopped dead so that, for a moment, I thought he was having another attack, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
“My God,” he said. “We’re all forgetting something – something absolutely bloody perfect. Hoffer will be waiting with our transport on the Bellona road from noon on.”
“You think we could give him a nasty surprise?”
He smiled slightly, that smile of his that was not really a smile at all, looking completely his old self again, a thoroughly dangerous man.
“We can have a damn good try, but we’re wasting time talking. We’d better join up with the others as quickly as we can and sort out some sort of plan.”
We moved out fast in single file with me in the lead. I felt full of energy, strong enough to take on anything, a weight lifted from my body and brain. As for Burke, however unfortunate his condition, there was relief in it for me as an explanation of the inexplicable change in conduct I had found in him.
I paused on the edge of the clearing, perhaps thirty yards away from the hut. Our approach had obviously been noted and there was no one in sight. I waited for the others to join me and told Burke I would go down alone to pave the way. The brothers Vivaldi and Joe Ricco had looked capable of anything and I didn’t want any unfortunate misunderstandings at this stage.
I called out to Serafino as I ploughed down the slope through the undergrowth, hands above my head. When I was half-way across the clearing, the door opened and he peered out cautiously, holding my assault rifle ready.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Everything is fine.”
Joanna Truscott appeared at his shoulder, her face uncertain. “You’ve managed to persuade them?”
“Better than that. Hoffer’s going to show up himself this afternoon on the Bellona road to pick us up. Could be he’ll get one hell of a surprise.”
I’d spoken in Italian and Serafino’s face lit up. “Heh, I like that. I could cut the bastard’s throat personally. Okay, Stacey Wyatt, call your friends down.”
He whistled sharply and the Vivaldi brothers and Joe Ricco appeared from different places on the edge of the clearing. Serafino grinned apologetically. “I never like to take chances.”
I waved Burke and the other two down and the girl moved to my side. “You’re certain my stepfather will be there himself?”
“That’s what the man said.” Burke was half-way down to the clearing now, the others just behind him and I grinned and gave Joanna Truscott a little push towards him. “Well, here she is, Sean. The purpose of the exercise.”
And in a single, terrible moment I recognised the expression on his face, had seen it too many times before, but by then it was too late. The rifle snapped to his shoulder and he shot her through the head.
THIRTEEN
I OWE MY life to Jules Legrande, who shot me down in the same second that Burke killed the girl.
The A.K. assault rifle packs one and a half tons of muzzle energy when it goes off and the bullet it fires was designed by the Chinese not only to stop a charging Marine, but to lift him off his feet and deposit him a yard to the rear. Which meant that I was flat on my back when Piet Jaeger opened up with his Uzi sub machine gun.
Serafino was the only one who got off a shot from the hop as he went down, a lucky one that blew away the top of Legrande’s head as far as I could see, but I was already rolling into the cover of the fallen log on the other side of the fire.
The Uzi kicked dirt in a fountain towards me that died abruptly as the magazine emptied and I got to my feet and ran into the trees, head down.
My right arm swung uselessly, blood spurting from a hole in my shoulder. There was no pain, I was too shocked to feel any. That would come later. For the moment I had only one driving passion – to survive.
I stumbled on and behind me there were the cries of the dying, some confused shouting and then several bullets passed uncomfortably close, severing branches and twigs above my head.
The Uzi opened up again, Jaeger working it methodically from side to side, splashing a route through the undergrowth. If I stayed where I was, I had a few seconds more to live at the most and that wasn’t good enough, not with the bills I had to pay. I swung sharply to the right, forced my way through a screen of bushes and went head-first into the stream.
The icy coldness sharpened me up wonderfully. I surfaced, took a deep breath and went under. If I’d had to rely on my swimming alone I’ve had got nowhere. I found it impossible to use my right arm, but the current was fiercer than I had expected and seized me in a grip of iron, pulling me out from the shore so that when I surfaced again, I found myself in the central channel.
There was a cry from the shore and Jaeger burst through the bushes. He plunged knee-deep into the water and as he raised the Uzi and started to fire, Burke joined him. I went under again and a few moments later the water was rocked by a sudden turbulence, the breath was squeezed from my body and I was lifted bodily.
I was aware of Burke standing there, of his arm moving like a flail, the grenade curving through the air to land a yard away. It was the torrent which saved me, sucking me under into the central passage between great granite
