Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [22]
He shrugged helplessly. "What can I say, signor, you've just missed him. Each week at this time he takes flowers to his nephew's grave at the Capuchin cemetery on Monte Pellegrino."
"How long will he be?"
"Who knows, signor. An hour, maybe two. Perhaps you gentlemen would care to wait."
"For God's sake, not that, old stick," Langley said hurriedly. "I don't think I could stand the smell."
I expressed my thanks to the old man, told him we'd be back, and we got out quickly.
The cemetery was deserted in the rain, but a yellow Alfa Romeo was parked in the outer courtyard, a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. He had the face of a good middleweight fighter and he glanced up casually as Langley and I got out of the Mercedes, then returned to his magazine.
"Is he Barzini's man?" Langley asked me as we moved through the entrance into the cloisters.
"I don't know. I've never seen him before."
An Arab fountain lifted into the air, trying to beat the rain at its own game and failed. We moved on through another archway and found ourselves in the cemetery itself. It was not very large and was ringed by cypress trees, the whole area crowded with fantastic monuments, ornate gothic shrines, and family vaults in marble and bronze.
We found him with no trouble, standing in front of a black marble tomb with bronze eternity doors. He was wearing a white Burberry trenchcoat and rain hat, which didn't surprise me. Buying all his clothes in England was one of his affectations.
I said to Langley, "You stay here," and started forward and in the same moment the chauffeur, whom I'd last seen sitting behind the wheel of the Alfa, stepped from behind a tomb on my right holding a Sterling sub-machine gun in both hands.
Barzini swung round and I raised my hands and called in English, "It's me, Aldo. Oliver Grant."
He smiled instantly. "Oliver, baby, what's new?"
He spoke English with a strong American accent, relic of a boyhood spent in New York where his parents had emigrated for a time and laced with strange, anachronistic slang like something out of a pulp magazine of the thirties.
He said to the chauffeur, "It's all right, Luigi. Back to the car."
The chauffeur moved away and when he was close enough, Barzini gave me the full embrace including a smacking kiss on each cheek to show I was considered family.
He held me away from him and I could feel the strength in those hands. "You're looking good, boy. Where've you been keeping yourself?"
"Here and there," I said. "You don't look any older. You must keep a portrait in the attic or something." He frowned in puzzlement and I added hastily, "An English joke."
He thumped his chest and grinned. "I'm fine. Never been better. Different girl every night."
He roared with laughter and took out a cheap Egyptian cheroot. It was really quite amazing. He just didn't seem to age. Although there was a silver hair or two in the sweeping moustache, the face was tanned and healthy and the teeth were as bad as ever. Some things never changed.
He glanced over my shoulder at Langley. "Who's your friend?"
"No friend, Aldo," I said. "I'm in trouble. Bad trouble."
His face went very still and the gray eyes suddenly had the same sort of shine that you get when light gleams on the edge of a cut throat razor. "And you came to me, boy? That's good. I like that. Tell me about it."
He gave me one of those vile Egyptian cheroots of his and we sat on the edge of a tomb and I told him the whole story. As I talked, he kept eyeing Langley who waited at the end of the path twenty or thirty yards away, sheltering under the umbrella.
When I was finished he said softly, "And this is one of them, this bastard here?"
I nodded.
He said, "I know of this Stavrou. A big man with Mafia in the States, but not anymore. Why don't you let me get a few friends together and we'll all go down to Capo Passero and break his skull."
"It wouldn't work," I said. "My sister's on borrowed time now. I've got to go through with it. It's the only way."
"It's possible, then?"
"I think