Jack Higgins – In the Hour Before Midnight

‘Soon enough.’ Burke found time to smile at Piet and squeezed his arm. ‘Bring us some coffee, there’s a good lad, and we’ll get down to business.’

Piet went out on the double and Burke took his chair, put the tray with its bottles and glasses on the floor and looked up at me. ‘All right, Stacey, let’s have it’

I unfolded the map Cerda had given me and spread it across the table. First of all I went through my con-versation with the mafioso mayor, then indicated where he thought Serafino to be. Piet returned with one of the houseboys and coffee on a tray round about then. It only took me a couple of minutes to give them a description of the terrain, ending with my own solu-tion to the problem.

Legrande looked glum. Having served with a colonial parachute regiment in Indo-China, and later, Algeria, he’d as much experience of that kind of thing as Burke and probably more.

‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘A night drop into country like that is asking for it. All we need is for one of us to break a leg and we’re in real trouble.’

‘It’s the only way,’ I said. ‘Otherwise we might as well pack our bags and go home.’

‘Stacey’s right,’ Burke said briskly. ‘We’ve no choice. Now, let’s get down to the details.’

I stood up. ‘You’ll have to manage without me. I’m going out.’

He looked at me with a frown. ‘Don’t be absurd. We’ve got to get this thing organised.’

‘That’s your job. You’re supposed to be in charge. I spent a long, hot afternoon sorting the situation out for you while you lay flat on your back tanked up to the ears.’

I found myself leaning on the table, caught in our first public confrontation. It was as if Piet and Le-grande weren’t there-as if we were quite alone. There was a slight puzzled frown on his face, something close to pain in his eyes.

He wanted to ask me why, I knew that. Instead, he said quietly, ‘All right, Stacey, if that’s the way you want it.’

He went back to examining the map and I straightened. Legrande looked completely mystified, but Piet’s face was white and angry. I ignored them both and went out.

I showered, then pulled on my old bathrobe and went back into the bedroom, towelling my hair. At that precise moment, the door opened and Piet Jaeger came in.

He slammed it shut and glared at me. ‘What in the hell are you playing at? You shamed him in front of all of us, the man who’s done more for you than anyone else in the world.’

‘I’ll tell you what he did for me,’ I said. ‘He taught me three things. To shoot my enemy from cover in-stead of face to face, to kill, not to wound, and that a bullet in the back is to be preferred to one from the front. Quite an education. Oh, there have been one or two other items in between, but those are the salient features.’

‘You owe him everything.’ Piet was almost beside himself. ‘He saved you twice. We said no walking wounded at Lagona, but when the chips were down and you got it in the leg, what did he do?’

‘So he made them carry me out. I’d love to know why.’

‘You rotten bastard.’ His South African accent had noticeably thickened. ‘He’s worth three of you any day of the week. You aren’t fit to walk in his shadow.’

In a way I was sorry for him. I suppose a lot of his anger came down to plain jealousy. He loved Burke, I realised that now, and had probably always suffered me in silence. I had been with Burke from the begin-ning and he was right-by all the rules I should have been given a bullet in the head, the mercenary law to save me from falling into the hands of the Simbas alive. But Burke had ordered them to carry me out. For Piet that must have been about as easy to take as a lump of glass in the gut.

‘Go on, get out of it,’ I said. ‘Go and smooth his wrinkled brow or whatever you do together in the night watches.’

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