on my own.
But for me there had been the “Lights of Lisbon.” I had met Sean Burke, had become another kind of Stacey Wyatt and that was very much that until the Hole. I suppose most men have their “Lights of Lisbon,” but only a few know the Hole. Well, I had come to know it well, had been in filth and darkness, had survived, had found another Stacey Wyatt, someone I’d never known before who asked questions – asked questions about a lot of things.
My return to Sicily had been not only inevitable, but essential, I saw that now. I had to see again that incredible figure, so much a part of my youth, Vito Barbaccia, Lord of Life and Death,
But he was wrong. I wasn’t the man Burke had created, the hired killer posing as a soldier and I wasn’t my grandfather’s version either. To hell with both of them.
Who was I then? I had gone into the mountains, eyes open, knowing the situation was not what it seemed, with some vague notion of beating Burke at his own game, whatever that game was. I had lost, but so had he. Beat him now I had to, on his terms and on his own ground if ever I was to be free. However bloody that encounter might prove, however savage the prospect, it could not be evaded. I had stood in his shadow too long.
A fierce anger flooded through me then and as I swept round the next bend and found myself in the final stretch, Hoffer’s villa floodlit in the night three hundred yards up the road, a kind of madness took possession of me. I put my foot down hard and took the Alfa into the night with a burst of power, the engine howling like a wolf.
The guard saw me coming, but by the time he realised my intention, there was nothing to be done. He started to unsling his automatic rifle, thought better of it and jumped for his life as the Alfa ripped the bronze gates from their hinges and continued up the drive.
What happened next was very much the fortunes of war, the unexpected that decides who wins or loses. A Lambretta came round the bend of the drive, slowly, because the rider had obviously only just started. I braked instinctively, swung the wheel over with my one hand and slid broadside into the shrubbery in a wave of gravel.
The Lambretta too had skidded as the rider braked desperately, spinning in a circle so that the machine halted pointing the way it had come. It was one of the houseboys dressed in his best, obviously ready for an evening on the town. As I scrambled out of the Alfa, the Smith and Wesson ready in my left hand, I caught a glimpse of his white, terrified face and then he gunned the engine and roared out of sight, back towards the villa.
I could have had him with no trouble, but this wasn’t his affair and I let him go, even though it meant he would arouse the house, that Burke and Jaeger would know who it was. Perhaps the truth is that I wanted them to know. I didn’t get time to consider, because a couple of bullets pumped into the Alfa as the gate guard arrived and I ran for cover.
My right arm was hurting like hell, but the pain sharpened me, made me come alive again. It was raining harder now and I crouched in the bushes and waited as I had waited in other places, other jungles than this, for the slightest rustle, the breaking of a twig.
By some process of association the Lagona operation came back to me, when we had parachuted in and brought out the nuns from their beleagured mission. It had been a bad time, the beginning of the rains and thick bush all the way. And then I remembered, for some strange reason, that Burke had wanted to go in by armoured convoy. I’d been the one who suggested the drop and he’d objected because we would have no vehicles to come out in. But I had pointed out that we would have surprise on our side on our way back, fighting our way through them before they’d realised we’d even been in.
And in the end, he had agreed, as he always did, and at the first briefing it had somehow become his own idea. How many times had that happened? How many times right through to the Cammarata?
It had been staring me in the face for years and I had not seen it before, blinded by my belief in the man and I was aware of a strange release of tension, almost as if I had been set free from something, a kind of fierce joy surging through me.
I shot him through the upper part of his right arm, he cried out and spun round, dropping his rifle. We faced each other in the rain, the statue of some Greek goddess behind him watching blindly. There was no fear in his eyes. Perhaps Hoffer had made a better bargain than he knew.
“If you want to live, talk,” I told him. “What happened to Signorina Solazzo?”
“She’s been locked in her room all day.”
“And Ciccio? Is Ciccio with her?”
“He has been.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s nothing to do with me. She has the room with the gold door on the second floor.” He gripped his arm tightly to arrest the flow of blood. “Ciccio told me you and the Frenchman were dead.”
“He was wrong, wasn’t he? The others are here?”
“Somewhere about.”
I nodded. “Hoffer is dead. Barbaccia caught up with him at last. Go now – what happens has nothing to do with you.”
He faded into the bushes as a rifle cracked, the unmistakable thud of an A.K., and a bullet chipped a piece out of the Greek statue’s head. As I went to one knee, someone dropped back out of sight behind the retaining wall up there in the Moorish roof garden.
I called softly, “It’s me, Sean – Stacey. I’m coming up.”
There was no reply, but the floodlights which dotted the garden were dowsed suddenly. I don’t know whose bright idea that was, but it suited me perfectly. I moved out at once through the welcome darkness, scrambled over the low wall of the ground floor terrace and went into the lounge through the open French window.
The hall was a place of shadows dimly lit by a single lamp, but I had to keep moving for speed in attack is the only hope of success against odds.
I went up the stairs like a wraith, close to the wall, moved along the corridor past my own room and went up to the second floor.
There was no sound. I paused in the shadows by the golden door and thought about it for a moment. The next door along the landing was faced with leather and opened to my touch. From the look of it, it had been Hoffer’s and the usual sliding glass doors opened to the terrace on the other side.
I went back into the corridor, flattened myself against the wall and said softly, “Rosa – are you there?”
Her voice was clear and sharp. “Run, Stacey! Run!” There was the sound of a blow and three bullets splintered the door.
I went through Hoffer’s room on tip-toe, moved along the terrace and peered in. Rosa was lying on the floor wearing a housecoat. Ciccio was over by the door with his back to me. He was bare-footed, wore pants and a singlet and held a gun in his right hand.
Rosa started to get up as Ciccio opened the door cautiously. I stepped into the room, shot him through the hand as he started to turn. He yelled, the gun jumping out on to the landing and disappearing over the edge.
Rosa had been weeping and her face was badly bruised, and her right shoulder – I noticed that as the housecoat slid down to her waist, exposing the upper part of her body, her naked breasts. She covered herself mechanically, an expression of wonder on her face.
“Stacey – Stacey, it is you. They said you were dead.”
She flung her arms about my neck and held on tight. I didn’t take my eyes off Ciccio for a moment.
“No, I’m not dead,” I said. “But Hoffer is – Mafia justice.”
“Thank God,” she said fiercely. “I wanted to warn you, Stacey, last night after I left your room. I wanted to go back. You were right – I was afraid. Afraid for many reasons, but Hoffer was suspicious. He beat me, then gave me to this – this animal.”
Ciccio stepped back and I took her forward through the shadows to where light filtered in from the landing. The bruises on her face were worse than I had realised and something moved like fire in my belly.
“He’s had his way with you?”
She didn’t attempt to pretend. Her head went back and there was still pride there. “He has my marks on him
