‘Which is another way of saying I like to play the game,’ I said. ‘And a savage, bloody little game it is, but it’s all I’ve got. That and Burke.’
I stood up and moved to the edge of the terrace and he said softly, ‘You don’t like him?’
‘It goes deeper than that. Everything I am, he made, people keep telling me that and I’m tired of hearing it.’ I turned to face him. ‘He taught me that if you’re going to kill it may as well be from the back as the front, that there’s no difference. But he’s wrong.’
I desperately wanted him to understand, more than I had ever wanted anything. He sat there looking at me gravely. ‘Without the rules, it’s nothing-no sense to any of it. With them, there’s still something to hang on to.’
He nodded, a slight smile on his face. ‘Something else you brought out of this Hole of yours, Stacey?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Then it was worth it.’ He took out a cigar. ‘Now go back to the piano like a good boy and play me your mother’s favourite piece again.’
The music was absolute perfection and brought her back to me like a living presence. All the sadness of life, all its beauty, caught in an exquisite moment that seemed to go on for ever. When I finished, there were tears on my face.
When I got back, Hoffer had returned and there was some sort of council of war going on in the lounge. Burke looked completely different. He’d shaved and wore a khaki shirt with epaulets which gave him a cer-tain military air.
But the change went deeper. There was a briskness about him, an authority I had not seen since my return. When I went in, he glanced up from the map and said calmly, ‘Ah, there you are, Stacey. I’ve just been going over things with Mr. Hoffer.’
Piet stood in the background, a wad of sticking plaster moulding his left ear, Legrande beside him. The South African simply didn’t look at me as I went to the table.
‘This is one hell of a good idea,’ Hoffer said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Colonel Burke tells me it’s pri-marily your suggestion.’
Burke’s voice was flat and colourless as he cut in.
‘The trouble is getting to Serafino before he realises we’re in the area. His camp, as we understand it, is about four thousand five hundred feet up on the eastern slopes of the mountain. The idea is that we make a night drop on to a plateau about a thousand feet below the summit on the western side.’
‘Then you cross over and catch him with his pants down?’
Hoffer’s choice of phrase was unfortunate under the circumstances, but Burke nodded. ‘We should get over the summit at least by dawn. On the other side there’s a forest belt about a thousand feet down. Oak, birch, some pine, I understand. Once we reach that we’ll have plenty of cover on the final stretch.’
Hoffer seemed genuinely excited as he examined the map. ‘You know something? For the first time I really believe there’s a chance. Let’s all have a drink on it.’
‘Another time if you don’t mind,’ I said. ‘I could do with an early night. It’s been a long day.’
He was pleasant enough about it and as no one pressed me to stay, I left them and went up to my room. Not that I could sleep when I did go to bed. I lay there with the french windows open because of the heat and after a while it started to shower. It was round about that time that Rosa arrived.
She took off the silk kimono she was wearing. ‘Look, no trouser suit.’
When she got in beside me, she was shivering, though from desire or cold was uncertain and whether she was there for herself or Hoffer didn’t really seem to matter. It was nice, lying there in the darkness holding her in the hollow of my arm, listening to the rain, even when she fell asleep on me!
TEN
As I found out later, Burke didn’t go to bed. Instead, he flew to Crete in the Cessna to pick up a few things we were going to need and was back just before eleven on Saturday morning.