There was no resemblance at all between the Barbaccia villa and Hoffer’s place. To start with the walls were at least two thousand years older, for like most country houses it had been built on a Roman site. They were about fifteen feet high and the villa itself was of Moorish origin and stood in the centre of a couple of acres of semi-tropical garden. Ciccio braked to a halt and sounded his horn.
The gatekeeper wasn’t armed, but then he didn’t need to be. A man appeared from the lodge behind him wrestling with two bull mastiffs of a breed common to the island since Norman times and another came out of the bushes holding a machine pistol.
The gatekeeper wore a neat khaki uniform and looked more like an insurance clerk with his moustache and steel-rimmed spectacles. There was a kind of im-passe while he and his friends stared at us and the dogs didn’t bark, which was somehow even more sinister.
I opened the door, got out and approached. ‘I’m ex-pected,’ I said. ‘You must have been told.’
‘One man, signor, not three. No car passes through these gates except the capo’s. A rule of the house.’
I produced the Walther very carefully from my pocket and there was a hollow click as the gentleman with the machine pistol cocked it. I passed the Walther through the bars, butt first.
‘My calling card. Send it to Marco-Marco Gagini. He’ll tell you who I am.’
He shrugged. ‘All right, you can come in, but the others stay outside with the car,’
Marco came round the bend of the drive on the run and slowed to a halt. He stared past me at the Mer-cedes, at Burke and Ciccio, then nodded. ‘Open the gates-let them in.’
The gatekeeper started to protest. ‘You know the rule-only house cars allowed inside.’
Marco shook him by the lapel. ‘Fool, does a man kill his own grandfather? Get out of the way.’
He wrenched the Walther from the gatekeeper’s hand, dropped it into his pocket and pushed him to-wards the lodge. The gates, it seemed, were electroni-cally controlled. They swung back with a slight whisper and Marco joined us.
I’ll ride up to the house with you.’
We got into the rear beside Burke and Ciccio drove on slowly. ‘Things have changed,’ I said to Marco. ‘Getting into Fort Knox would be easier.’
‘An electronic device runs round the top of the walls,’ he told me seriously. ‘So no one can get in that way. Usually, as you just heard, cars other than our own aren’t allowed through. We discovered an ex-plosive device in one a few years back when the capo was giving a party. If it had gone off it would have taken the villa with it.’
‘A nice way to live.’
Perhaps the irony in my voice escaped him or else he chose to ignore it. ‘There have been eight attempts on the capo’s life in the last few years. We have to be very careful. Who is this man you have brought with you?’ he added in exactly the same tone.
‘A friend of mine-Colonel Burke. He thought I might need some help.’
‘I can feel the gun in his pocket. Most uncomfort-able. Tell him it will not be needed.’
‘I know enough Italian to understand that much,’ Burke said and transferred his Browning to the other pocket.
The Mercedes halted at the bottom of a broad flight of steps that lifted to a great oaken door banded with iron which I’d always understood had had an arrow or two in it in its day.
I think that until that moment nothing had possessed any reality for me. I was home again, which was what it came down to, and it was as if some part of me- some essential part-simply didn’t want to know.
Burke followed me out and Marco told Ciccio to take the Mercedes round to the courtyard at the rear. It moved away smoothly. I turned and found my grand-father standing at the top of the steps.
He was as large as Burke and looked smaller only because his shoulders were stooped a little with age. At that time he must have been sixty-seven or eight and yet there was still colour in the long hair and carefully trimmed beard.