It sounded like the sort of remark he’d spent a lot of careful work on beforehand, a characteristic of the Irish that didn’t just start with Oscar Wilde.
“I get it,” I said. “This is dust and ashes morning.”
He carried straight on as if I hadn’t said a word. “Life has a habit of catching up on all of us sooner or later, I suppose. You wake up one morning and suddenly for the first time ever, you want to know what it’s all about. When you’re on the margin of things like me, it’s probably too late anyway.”
“It’s always too late to ask that kind of question,” I said. “From the day you’re born.”
I was aware of a certain irritation. I didn’t want this sort of conversation and yet here I was in midstream in spite of the faint suspicion I’d had for a while now, where Burke was concerned, that somehow I was being conned, caught in a spider’s web of Irish humbug served up by a talent that wouldn’t have disgraced the Abbey Theatre.
He glanced at me and there was urgency in his voice when he said, “What about you, Stacey? What do you believe in? Really believe in with all your guts?”
I didn’t even have to think any more, not after the Hole. “I shared a cell in Cairo with an old man called Malik.”
“What was he in for?”
“Some kind of political thing. I never did find out. They took him away in the end. He was a Buddhist – a Zen Buddhist. Knew by heart every word Bodidharma ever said. It kept us going for three months.”
“You mean he converted you?” There was a frown on his face. I suppose he must have thought I was going to tell him I couldn’t indulge in violence any more.
I shook my head. “Let’s say he helped shape my philosophy. Me, I’m a doubter. I don’t believe in anything or anybody. Once you believe in something you immediately invite someone else to disagree. From then on you’re in trouble.”
I don’t think he’d heard a word I’d been saying or perhaps he just didn’t understand. “It’s a point of view.”
“Which gets us precisely nowhere.” I flicked what was left of my cigarette into the water. “Just how bad are things?”
“About as rough as they could be.”
Not only the villa belonged to Herr Hoffer. It seemed the Cessna was also his and he’d provided the cash that had gone into the operation that had got me out of Fuad.
“Do you own anything besides the clothes you stand up in?” I asked.
“That’s all we came out of the Congo with,” he pointed out, “or do I need to remind you?”
“There have been several bits of banditry in between as I recall.”
He sighed and said with obvious reluctance, “I might as well tell you. We were in for a percentage of that gold you were caught with at Ras el ayis.”
“ Kan -How big a percentage?”
“Everything we had. We could have made five times its value overnight. It looked like a good proposition.”
“Nice of you to tell me.”
I wasn’t angry. It didn’t seem to be all that important any more and I was interested in the next move.
“No more wars, Sean?” I asked. “What about the Biafrans? Couldn’t they use a good commando?”
“They couldn’t pay in washers. In any case, I’ve had enough of that kind of game – we all have.”
“So Sicily is the only chance?”
It was obviously the moment he’d been waiting for – the first real opening I had given him.
“The last chance, Stacey – the last and only chance. One hundred thousand dollars plus expenses…”
I held up my hand. “No sales talk. Just tell me about it.”
God, but I’d come a long, long way in those six years since Mozambique. Little Stacey Wyatt telling Sean Burke what to do and he took it, that was the amazing thing.
“It’s simple enough,” he said. “Hoffer’s a widower with a stepdaughter called Joanna – Joanna Truscott.”
“American?”
“No, English and very upper-crust from what I hear. Her father was a baronet or something like that. She’s an honourable anyway, not that it means much these days. Hoffer’s had trouble with her for years. One scrape after another. Sleeping around – that kind of thing.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty.”
“She must be quite a girl.”
“I wouldn’t know – we’ve never met. Hoffer has business interests in Sicily. Something to do with the oilfields at a place called Gela. You know it?”
“It was a Greek colony. Aeschylus died there. They say he was brained by a tortoise shell dropped by a passing eagle.” He gazed at me blankly and I grinned. “I had an expensive education, Sean, remember? But never mind. What about the Truscott girl?”
“She disappeared about a month ago. Hoffer didn’t notify the police because he thought she was off on some binge or other. Then he got a ransom note from a bandit called Serafino Lentini.”
“An old Sicilian custom. How much?”
“Oh, it was modest enough. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Did he go to the police?”
Burke shook his head. “Apparently he’s spent enough time in Sicily to know that doesn’t do much good.”
“Wise man. So he paid up?”
“That’s about the size of it. Unfortunately this Serafino took the money then told him he’d decided to hang on to her for a while. He also indicated that if there was any trouble – any sign of the law being brought in – he’d send her back in pieces.”
“A Sicilian to the backbone,” I said. “Does Hoffer have any idea where he’s hanging out?”
“The general area of a mountain called Cammarata. Do you know it?”
I laughed. “The last place God made. A wilderness of sterile valleys and jagged peaks. There are caves up there that used to hide Roman slaves two thousand years ago. Believe me, if this Serafino of yours is a mountain man the police could chase him for a year up there without even seeing him and helicopters don’t do too well in that kind of country. The heat of the day does funny things to the air temperature. Too many down-draughts.”
“As bad as that?”
“Worse than you could ever imagine. The greatest bandit of them all, Giuliano, operated in the same kind of territory and they couldn’t catch him, even when they brought in a couple of army divisions.”
He nodded slowly. “Could we do it, Stacey? You and me and the heavy brigade?”
I thought about it. About the Cammarata and the heat and the lava rock and about Serafino who might already have handed the girl on to the rest of his men. When I replied, it wasn’t because the thought made me sick or angry or anything like that. From the sound of her, the Honourable Joanna might well be having the time of her life. I don’t honestly think I was even thinking of my end of the money. It was more than that – something deeper – something personal between Burke and me which I couldn’t have explained at that moment even to myself.
“Yes, I think it could be done. With me along it’s just possible.”
“Then you’ll come?”
He leaned forward eagerly, a hand on my shoulder, but I wasn’t going to be caught that easily.
“I’ll think about it.”
He didn’t smile, showed no emotion of any kind and yet tension oozed out of him like dirty water and in a second he was transformed into the man I’d always known.
“Good lad. I’ll see you later then. Back at the villa.”
I watched him climb the path and disappear. For the moment I’d had enough shooting. The sea looked inviting and I moved a little further along the beach, stripped and went in.
At that point the cliffs merged into hillside sparsely covered with grass, and wild flowers grew in profusion. I climbed half-way up and lay on my back, the sun warm on my naked flesh, staring through narrowed eyelids at a white cloud no bigger than my hand, allowing my whole body to relax, making my mind a blank, another trick hard-won from those months in prison.
The world was a blue bowl and I floated in it, drowsing in the scented grass and slept.
