The lessons of Loch Torridon were always present, thought Victor, as he stood in front of the hotel desk, his arms on the marble counter, watching the night clerk carry out his request. He had demanded a car for hire in a voice loud enough to draw attention. It was a difficult order considering the hour; vehicles were hard enough to come by during the day, much less in the middle of the night. But they could be had if the money was sufficient. Then, too, the argument at the front desk was sufficiently disagreeable to alert any observer. Also, there were the clothes he wore: dark gray trousers, boots, and a dark hunting jacket. It was not the hunting season.
There were only a few stragglers in the lobby; several businessmen making unsteady treks to their rooms after long, liquid conferences; a couple arguing over one or the other’s behavior; a nervous, rich youth signing in with a whore who waited discreetly in a chair. And a dark, swarthy man with the hard leather face of the sea, who was across the lobby in an armchair reading a magazine, seemingly oblivious to the hotel’s night scene. A Corsican, thought Victor.
It was this man who could carry the message to other Corsicans. To the Englishman named Stone.
It was simply a matter of coordinating the upcoming sequence. To make sure there was a green Fiat on the street, probably in shadows, ready to take up a discreet position when the rented car drove away. If there was no such automobile, Victor could find reasons to delay until it arrived.
No delay was necessary. The Fiat could be seen in the middle of the next block. Captain Geoffrey Stone was sure of himself. The auto was positioned in front of Fontine’s car, heading west, toward the road to Varese. To Campo di Fiori.
Barzini sat in the front with Victor. The brandy had done its work. The old man’s head kept falling to his chest.
“Sleep,” said Victor. “It’s a long drive and I’ll want you rested when we get there.”
They drove through the open gates and into the long winding entrance of Campo di Fiori. Although he was braced for it, the sight of the house filled his chest with pain; hammering seared through his temples. He approached the execution grounds. The sights and sounds of that agony returned, but he knew he could not permit them to overwhelm him. The lessons of Loch Torridon: Divided concentrations were dangerous.
He contracted the muscles of his stomach taut and stopped the car.
Barzini was awake, staring at him. The nightwatchman emerged from the thick oak doors beyond the marble steps, the beam of his flashlight examining the car and those inside. Barzini stepped out and spoke.
“I bring the son of Fontini-Cristi. He’s the padrone of this house.”
The watchman threw the beam over at Victor, who had gotten out of the car and stood by the hood. His voice was respectful. And not a little frightened.
“I am honored, padrone.”
“You may go home to Laveno,” Fontine told him. “If you don’t mind, use the north road. You probably do anyway. It’s the shortest way.”
“Much the shortest, signore. Thank you, signore.”
“There may be two friends waiting for me at the stables.
Don’t be alarmed, I asked them to drive through the north gate. If you see them, please tell them I’ll be there shortly.”
“Of course, padrone.” The nightwatchman nodded and walked rapidly down the marble steps into the drive. There was a bicycle in the shadows by the shrubbery. He mounted and pedaled off into the darkness toward the stables.
“Quickly,” said Victor, turning to Barzini. “Tell me. Are the telephones as they were? Is there still a line connecting the house with the stables?”
“Yes. In your father’s study and in the hall.”
“Good. Go in and turn on all the lights in the hall and in the dining room. Then go back to the study, keeping those lights out. Stay by a window. When I reach your friends, I’ll call you from the stables and tell you what to do. Soon the Corsicans will appear. On foot, I’m sure. Watch for small flashlights. Tell me what you see.”
“Very well. Padrone?”
“Yes?”
“I have no gun. Weapons are outlawed.”
“Take mine.” Victor reached into his belt and removed his Smith & Wesson. “I don’t think you’ll need it. Don’t fire unless your life depends on it.”
Thirty seconds later the lights in the great hall shone through the stained-glass windows above the huge entrance doors. Victor hurried along the side of the house and waited by the edge of the building. The chandeliers in the dining room were switched on. The whole north section of the house was a blaze of light, the south section in darkness.
There were still no signs of life on the road; no beams of flashlights or flares or matches. It was as it should be. Stone was a professional. When he moved it would be with extreme caution.
So be it. His moves would be cautious also.
Victor ran into the north road toward the stables. He kept low to the ground and alert, listening for the unusual. Stone might have opted for the north gates as his means of entry, but it was unlikely. Stone was anxious; he would move in swiftly, close behind his quarry, and seal off the exits.
“Partigiani. It’s Fontini-Cristi.” Victor walked down the bridle path at the rear of the stables. The few horses left inside were old and weary, the whinnies intermittent.
“Signore.” The whisper came from the woods to the right of the path; Fontine approached. Suddenly a flashlight beam shot out from the opposite side. From the left. And another voice spoke.
“Stay where you are! Don’t turn!”
He felt the hand of the man behind him on the small of his back, holding him steady. The flashlight moved forward over his shoulder, shining in his face, blinding him.
“It’s him,” said the voice in the darkness.
The flashlight was removed. Fontine blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to erase the residual image of the blinking light. The partigiano came out of the darkness. He was a tall man, nearly as tall as Victor, dressed in a worn American field jacket. The second man came from behind; he was much shorter than his comrade and barrel-chested.
“Why are we here?” asked the tall man. “Barzini’s old and doesn’t think clearly. We agreed to watch you, warn you … nothing else. We do this because we owe Barzini much. And for old time’s sake; the Fontini-Cristis fought against the fascists.”
“Thank you.”
“What do the Corsicans want? And this Englishman?” The second man moved to his friend’s side.
“Something they believe I have, which I don’t have.” Victor stopped. From the stables there was a soft, tired snort followed by a series of hoof thumps. The partisans heard it, too; the flashlight was extinguished.
A crack of a limb. A pebble dislodged under a footstep. Someone approached, following the same path Fontine had taken. The partisans separated; the stocky man moved forward and disappeared into the foliage. His brother did the same in the opposite direction. Victor stepped to his right and crouched off the path.
Silence. The footsteps scratching over the dry earth became clearer. Suddenly the figure was there, only inches in front of Fontine, outlined in the forest night.
And then it happened. A powerful beam of light burst out of the darkness, piercing the opposite woods; at the same instant there was the sudden, muted spit of a pistol, its noise contained by a silencer.
Victor sprang up, lashing his left arm around the throat of the man, his right surging beyond for the weapon, forcing it downward. As the man’s back arched, Victor crashed his knee into the base of the spine. The man’s breath was expunged; Fontine yanked with all his strength at the taut neck in his hammerlock. There was a snap, sickening and final. The light rolled on the path.
The tall partigiano raced out of the woods, crushing the light underfoot, his pistol in his hand. He and Victor plunged into the foliage, both silently acknowledging the fear that their ally was dead.
He was not. The bullet had only creased his arm. He lay wild-eyed in shock, his mouth open, his breathing loud. Fontine knelt beside him, tearing off the partisan’s shirt to check the wound. The man’s friend remained standing, his gun on the stable path.
“Mother of Christ! You damn fool! Why didn’t you shoot him?” The wounded partigiano winced in pain. “Another second and he would have killed me!”
“I had no weapon,” replied Victor quietly, wiping the blood from the man’s flesh.
“Not even a knife?”
“No.” Fontine bound the wound and knotted the cloth. The partigiano stared at him.
“You’ve got balls,” he said. “You could have waited out of sight. My comrade has a gun.”
“Come on, stand up. There are two other Corsi somewhere. I want them. But without gunfire.” Victor bent down and picked up the dead man’s pistol. There were four bullets in the chamber; the silencer was one of the best. He beckoned the tall partisan off the path and spoke to both. “I’m going to ask a favor of you. You can refuse me and I’ll understand.”
“What is it?” asked the larger man.
“The other two Corsicans are back there. One’s probably watching the main road, the other may be behind the house, in the gardens, there’s no way to tell. The Englishman will stay out of sight, near the house. I’m sure the Corsi won’t kill me. They’ll watch every move I make, but they will not open fire.”
“That one,” said the wounded partisan, pointing to the dead man, “did not hesitate to pull his trigger.”
“These Corsi know me by sight. He could see you weren’t me.”
The strategy was clean. Victor was the bait; he would walk openly down to the circular drive and turn into the gardens at the rear of the house. The partisans were to follow him, staying out of sight in the trees. If Fontine was right, a Corsican would be seen. And taken. Or killed silently. It did not matter; these Corsi murdered Italians.
The strategy would then be repeated on the main entrance road, the partisans crossing diagonally far behind the embankment, meeting him at a juncture a quarter of a mile away. Somewhere between the circular drive and the gates, the third and last Corsican would be stationed.
The positions were logical, and Stone was nothing if not a logical man. And thorough. He would seal off the exits.
“You don’t have to do this for me,” said Victor. “I’ll pay generously, but I understand—.”
“Keep your money,” interrupted the wounded man, looking first at his comrade. “You didn’t have to do what you did for me.”
“There’s a telephone in the stables. I must talk with Barzini. Then start down the road.”
The surmise was confirmed. Stone had covered both roads and the gardens. And the remaining Corsicans were taken, their lives ended with partisan knives.
They met at the stables. Fontine was sure that Stone had been watching him from the embankment. The quarry was walking the killing ground; the return was painful. Loch Torridon had taught them both to anticipate reactions. It was a weapon.
“Where’s your car?” Victor asked the partigiani.
“Outside the north gate,” replied the tall one.
“You have my thanks. Get your friend to a doctor. Barzini will know where I can send a more concrete form of gratitude.”
“You want the Englishman for yourself?”
“There’ll be no trouble. He’s a man with one hand, without his Corsi. Barzini and I know what to do. Get to a doctor.”
“Good-bye, signore,” said the tall man. “Our debts are canceled. To old Barzini. To you, perhaps. The Fontini-Cristis were good to this land once.”
“Many thanks.”
The partisans nodded a last time and made their way swiftly up the road into the darkness toward the north gate. Fontine went down the path and let himself into the stables through a side door. He walked by the stalls, past the horses and Barzini’s small bedroom, into the tack room. He found a wooden box and began filling it with braces and bits and musty, framed citations from the walls. He crossed to the telephone by the door and pushed a button beneath it.
“All is well, old friend.”
“Thank God.”
“What about the Englishman?”
“He’s waiting across the drive, in the high grass. On the embankment. The same—” Barzini stopped.
“I understand. I’m starting out now. You know what to do. Remember, at the door speak slowly, clearly. The Englishman hasn’t spoken Italian in recent years.”
“Old men talk louder than they must,” said Barzini, humor in his voice. “Because we hear poorly, so must everyone else.”
Fontine replaced the phone and checked the pistol the partisans had left him; it had been taken from a dead Corsican. He unscrewed the silencer and put the weapon in his pocket. He picked up the box and went out the tack room door.
He walked slowly down the road to the circular drive opposite the embankment. In front of the steps, in the spill of light from the windows, he paused, giving his arms a moment of rest, conveying the fact that the box was heavier than its size might indicate.
He continued up the steps to the large oak doors. He then did the most natural thing that came to him: he kicked at the right door.
In seconds the door was opened by Barzini. Their exchange was simple, without strain. The old man spoke clearly.
“You’re sure I can’t bring you something, padrone? A pot of tea, coffee?”
“No, thank you, old friend. Get some sleep. We have a lot to do in the morning.”
“Very well. The horses will eat early today.” Barzini walked past Victor to the steps and down into the circular drive. He turned left toward the stables.
Victor stood in the great hall; everything was as it had been. The Germans knew when not to mar a thing of beauty. He turned into the darkened south section, into the enormous drawing room toward the doors of his father’s study. As he walked through the familiar space, he felt pains of anguish in his chest and the catching of breath in his throat.
He went into his father’s study, Savarone’s sanctum sanctorum. Instinctively, he turned right in the darkness; the huge desk was where it had always been. He put the box down and turned on the green-shaded lamp he remembered; it was the same lamp. Nothing had changed.
He sat down in his father’s chair and removed the pistol from his pocket. He placed it on the desk, behind the wooden box, concealing it from the front.
The waiting had begun. And for the second time his life was in Barzini’s hands. He could not imagine a firmer grip. For Barzini would not reach the stables. He would walk up the stable road and enter the woods, doubling back into the gardens, to the rear of the house. He would let himself in through one of the patio doors, and wait for the Englishman to come.
Stone was trapped.
The minutes dragged on. Absently, Fontine opened the drawers of his father’s desk. He found sheets of Wehrmacht stationery, and methodically he placed them sheet by sheet in separate piles, a game of solitaire with huge blank playing cards.
He waited.
At first, he did not hear any sound. Instead, he felt the presence. It was unmistakable, filling the air between himself and the intruder. Then the creak of a floorboard pierced the silence, followed by two distant footsteps, bold, unconcealed; Fontine’s hand moved toward the gun.
Suddenly, out of the dark space, a light-colored object came flying through the shadows toward him, at him! Victor recoiled as the object came into focus, trailing rivulets of blood in the air. There was a harsh slap—flesh against wood—and the horrible thing made contact with the top of the desk and rolled obscenely under the spill of the lamp.
Fontine expelled his breath in an instant of total revulsion.
The object was a hand. A severed right hand cut crudely above the wrist. The fingers were old and withered and clawlike in spastic contraction, the tendons iced at the instant of primitive surgery.
It was the hand of Guido Barzini. Thrown by a maniac who had lost his own on a pier in Celle Ligure.
Victor shot up from the chair, suppressing the revulsion that welled up beside him, stabbing for the gun.
“Don’t touch that! You do, you’re dead!” Stone’s words were spat out in English. He crouched in the shadows across the room, behind a high-backed armchair.
Victor withdrew his hand. He had to force himself to think. To survive. “You killed him.”
“They’ll find him in the woods. It’s odd I found him there, isn’t it?”
Fontine stood motionless, accepting the awful news, suspending emotion. “Odder still,” said Victor quietly, “that your Corsican didn’t.”
Stone’s eyes reacted; only a flicker of recognition, but the reaction was there. “The walk you took. I wondered.” The Englishman nodded his head. “Yes, you could have done that. You could have taken them out.”
“I didn’t. Others did.”
“Sorry, Fontini. That doesn’t wash.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because if there were others, you wouldn’t use an old man for the last job; that’s stupid. You’re an arrogant son of a bitch, but you’re not stupid. We’re alone, all right. Just you and me and that box. Christ! It must have been in one hell of a hole. Enough people looked for it.”
“Then you made your deal with Donatti?”
“He thinks so. Strange, isn’t it? You took everything from me. I crawled out of Liverpool and made my way up, and you took it all away on a fucking guinea pier five years ago. Now I’ve got it all back and then some. I may hold the, biggest auction anyone’s ever heard of.”
“For what? Old hunt prizes? Faded citations?”
Stone snapped the hammer of his weapon into firing position. His black glove slapped the back of the chair, his eyes bore through the shadows. “Don’t make jokes!”
“No jokes. I’m not stupid, remember? And you’re not in any position to pull that trigger. You’ve only got one chance to deliver the contents of that vault. If you don’t, another order of execution can easily be issued. Those powerful men who hired you five years ago don’t like embarrassing speculations.”
“Shut up! Stop it!” Furiously, Stone raised the clawlike glove above the chair and smashed it down. “Those tactics won’t work on me, you guinea bastard! I used them before you ever heard of Loch Torridon.”
“Loch Torridon was based on error. Miscalculation! Mismanagement! That was its premise. Remember?” Fontine took a step backward, pushing the chair with his legs, extending his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “Come on. Look for yourself. You wouldn’t kill me before you saw what the bullet cost you.”
“Move back! Farther!” Stone came around the chair, his immobile right hand stretched out directly in front of him like a protruding lance. His left hand held the weapon with the cocked hammer; the slightest squeeze of the trigger and the pin would spring forward, exploding the shell.
Victor did as he was commanded, his eyes riveted on the pistol. His moment would come; it had to come or there was nothing.
The Englishman approached the desk, each step the movement of a man filled with loathing and wariness, prepared to destroy at the split second of imbalance. He took his eyes from Fontine and stared at the top of the desk. At the severed, mutilated hand of Guido Barzini. At the box. At the pile of debris inside the box.
“No,” he whispered. “No!”
The moment came: the shock of revelation was in Stone’s eyes. It would not come again.
Victor sprang forward over the desk, his long arms plunging for the weapon; it had wavered with only a heartbeat, but that was all he could hope for.
The explosion was deafening, but Fontine’s grip had deflected the shot. Only inches, but it was enough. The bullet shattered the top of the desk, hurling splinters of wood everywhere. Victor held Stone’s wrist, wrenching with all the power he possessed, feeling and not feeling the blows delivered to his face and neck by the hard gloved hand. Stone brought his right knee up, pummeling Fontine’s groin and stomach; the pistol would not be dislodged. The Englishman screamed and went into a paroxysm of frenzy. He would not, could not be bested by strength alone.
Victor did the only thing left for him. For an instant he stopped all movement, then yanked Stone’s wrist forward as if jamming the pistol into his own stomach. As the gun was about to touch the cloth of his jacket, he suddenly twisted his body and Stone’s wrist, inverting the weapon, and shoved it with his full weight upward.
The explosion came. For a second Fontine was blinded, his flesh ice cold with fireburn, and for that instant he believed he had been killed.
Until he felt the body of Geoffrey Stone collapse, pulling him downward to the floor.
He opened his eyes. The bullet had entered the flesh beneath Stone’s jaw, its trajectory upward, through the skull, ripping open the top of Stone’s head.
And next to the mass of blood and tissue was the severed hand of Guido Barzini.
He carried Barzini’s body out of the woods and to the stables. He placed the mutilated corpse on the bed and covered it with a sheet. He stood over the body, for how long he would never remember, trying to understand pain and terror and love.
Campo di Fiori was still. For him its secret was buried, never to be known. The mystery of Salonika was a confidence Savarone had not shared. And the son of Savarone would no longer dwell on it. Let others do so, if they cared to. Let Teague take care of the rest. He was finished.
He walked down the north road from the stables to the drive in front of the house and climbed into the rented car. It was dawn. The orange summer sun broke over the Italian countryside. He took one last look at the home of his childhood and started the ignition.
The trees rushed by, the foliage became a blur of green and orange and yellow and white. He looked at the speedometer. Over eighty. Eighty-four kilometers an hour on the twisting entrance road cut out of the forest. He should brake the speed, he knew that. It was foolhardy, if not dangerous. Yet his foot would not obey his mind.
Oh, God! He had to get away!
There was a long hairpin curve that preceded the gate. In the old days—years ago—it was the custom to blow one’s horn when one approached the curve. There was no cause to do so now; and he was relieved to find his foot relaxing its pressure on the pedal. Instinct was intact. Still, he took the curve at fifty, the tires screeching as he came out of the turn and headed for the gates. Automatically, on the straightaway, he accelerated. He would whip past the gateposts and swing out the road for Varese. Then Milan.
Then London!
He was not sure when he saw it. Them. His mind had wandered, his eyes on the immediate ground in front of the hood. He only knew that he slammed the brakes with such force he was thrown against the steering wheel, his head inches from the windshield. The car swerved, the the tires screamed, dust billowed up from the wheels, and the automobile skidded diagonally through the gates, stopping only feet from the two black limousines that had converged out of nowhere, blocking the road beyond the stone posts.
His body was jolted back against the seat; the whole car shook in its sudden, violent arrest. Stunned, it took Fontine several seconds to shake off the effects of the near collision. He blinked his eyes, quickly regaining focus. His fury was suspended in astonishment at what he saw.
Standing in front of the two limousines were five men in black suits and white clerical collars. They stared impassively at him. Then the rear door of the limousine on the right opened and a sixth man got out. He was a man of about sixty, in the black robes of the church.
With a shock of white in his hair.