Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [28]
I shook my head. "No."
"Try this for size." He handed me a Smith and Wesson .38 Special and turned to Langley.
"Everything in perfect working order, old stick," Langley said. "Are we expecting trouble?"
"I always do," Barzini told him. "That's why I'm still around."
He leaned over to give the driver further instructions and a moment later we turned into a dirt road and started to climb through a forest of pine trees.
The trattoria was at the top of the hill in the trees, a typical back-country inn, a poor sort of place surrounded by crumbling walls. We drove in through an archway. From the looks of things there had once been a formal garden here, but it had obviously been allowed to run wild over the years and crowded in on the house.
We stopped in a small courtyard at the bottom of steps leading up to a terrace. The door stood wide open, light flooding out. Someone was playing the guitar and I don't mean striking the odd chord or two. The fingerwork was really quite exceptional.
Langley said in genuine astonishment, "My God, isn't that Bach?"
"The Fugue in G minor," Barzini said. "Originally composed for the lute and transcribed for the guitar into A minor. A favorite of the great Segovia." He listened for a moment and nodded. "He's improving."
The playing stopped as we went up the steps, Barzini leading the way into a large, square room with a beamed ceiling. There were two or three rough wooden tables with benches and a zinc-topped bar with a guitar on it.
The innkeeper, a bent old man in a soiled white apron was serving wine to a couple of men sitting in the far corner, rough looking specimens, typical of the younger men still to be found in the back country. Features brutalized and coarsened by a life of toil, shabby patched clothing, broken boots, cloth caps. They wore bandoliers around their waists. One of them had a shot gun across his knees, the other had his on the bench close to hand. They could have been gamekeepers off one of the big country estates, but I didn't think it likely.
Langley took up position by the door, a hand in his pocket. I followed Barzini to the bar and leaned against it casually, facing them. They stared at us woodenly and for a moment there was only the silence and then the old man shuffled forward and dusted a table with a dirty cloth.
"Your pleasure, signores?"
Barzini picked up the guitar, tuned the E string slightly and started to play the Bach Fugue. It was really quite incredible. If what we had just heard was good, then this was brilliant by any standards. Even the two hard boys in the corner sat up and took notice.
Barzini stopped playing and called, "How many times do I have to tell you, Nino? The fourth finger, not the third on that run. With you, it's like putting your foot on the brake each time."
He moved in through the door at the side of the bar, a slight, wiry young man in a patched corduroy suit and leather leggings, a carbine over his shoulder, finger on the trigger. The face beneath the cloth cap was recklessly handsome in spite of the week-old stubble of beard.
"Heh, Uncle Aldo," he said. "What kept you?"
Barzini opened his arms, Nino put the rifle down on top of the bar and they embraced.
"God, but you stink like a pig, boy." Barzini shoved him away. "Thank God your dear mother isn't alive to see you now."
"What do you expect?" Nino shrugged. "I've been living like one for weeks."
The innkeeper brought a bottle of wine and glasses. Barzini said as he filled them, "That's all over now. I've come to take you out. I need you."
Nino paused, glass in hand. "You mean you've patched things up with them?"
"Unfortunately no, but I've got work for you."
"Not the business? Not that?" Nino groaned. "You know I can't stand all those corpses."
Barzini turned to me in disgust. "You see what I mean about the youth of today? He doesn't mind killing them just so long as he doesn't have to look at the bodies afterward." He cuffed Nino, knocking his cap off. "Ingrate. This is my friend, Major Grant.