Jack Higgins – In the Hour Before Midnight

‘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.’

The Honourable Joanna Truscott sounded promis-ing.

‘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 Sera-fino 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 think-ing 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 mo-ment 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.

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