Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [30]
He stood up. "What in the hell kept you? I told you, Aldo--I've got a date."
It was only when he spoke that it became apparent that this was Angelo Carter. The change was really quite incredible. He just wasn't recognizable.
"All right, all right!" Barzini said. "She can wait for another half hour, can't she?" He took off his coat and turned to me. "Okay, Oliver, you've got the floor. What do we need?"
"For a start, a good fast boat," I said. "Something that'll do twenty-five or thirty knots with no trouble like the one you used to use on the Albanian run."
"The Palmyra." He smiled. "Right here in Palermo harbor. No problem there. What else?"
"This man Zingari I told you about. He operates out of Zabia, which is about fifteen miles from the prison. He tells me there's a little fishing village called Gela halfway between them. Half a dozen houses, an old stone pier, and a couple of tunny boats. We'll use it as a base."
"You'll need a front," Langley said.
I nodded. "That's where you come in. I want a permit to allow archaeological diving in that bay which you'll probably have to get from the Libyan Embassy in Rome. Stavrou will have to pull a few strings. I shouldn't imagine it's beyond him."
"What are we supposed to be looking for?" Angelo asked.
"A Roman wreck," I said. "That should sound well enough. The whole area's stiff with them anyway."
"Which means diving equipment," Barzini said. "No trouble there. There's plenty on board Palmyra now."
"More than that. I want three or four Roman wine jars. You know the sort of thing. Typical amphorae that have been lying on the seabed for sixteen or seventeen hundred years. Preferably encrusted with seashells. I hear the fishermen bring them up in their trawl nets off Marsala all the time."
"They're even selling them in the antique shops now to tourists," Barzini said.
"We'll also need Libyan army uniforms and they get their hardware from Russia these days which means AK assault rifles." He started to smile and I said, "Yes, I know, by a strange coincidence you just happen to have a warehouse full of them. Where are they bound for--Belfast or Bahrein?"
Langley said, "When do you intend to go?"
"If we miss this coming Friday, we'll have to wait another week," I said. "And that could be fatal. It's Monday now. Could we get together what we need and have the boat down at Capo Passero by Wednesday morning?"
"I don't see why not," Barzini said.
I said to Langley, "Which means that weather permitting, we could be in Gela Thursday night."
"Always supposing everything goes according to plan," he said.
I shrugged. "That's what makes life exciting. You'd better get back to Stavrou first thing in the morning. Fill him in on all this and get Zingari on the first flight out to Tripoli and tell him to be waiting at Gela Thursday night."
"What about you?"
"I've got things to do here. I'll be down with the boat."
I think he was going to argue, but Angelo cut in impatiently. "Can I go now?"
"Okay, okay," Barzini said. "Go and knock hell out of her, but be back here at eight or I'll have your ears."
Angelo departed. Nino, incredibly, was snoring in a chair in the corner. Barzini threw up his hands in despair. "I ask you, what can you do with them." His face brightened as if at a sudden thought. "Heh, I got something that might interest you, Oliver. A new gun. I'll show you."
He took out a key on the end of his watchchain and unlocked a small door in the corner. He switched on a light and we followed him down some wooden steps to a long whitewashed corridor.
He flicked another switch illuminating a row of targets at the far end each representing a charging soldier of indeterminate nationality, then opened a drawer in a table by the wall and took out a tin box. Whatever was stencilled on it was in Russian.
"A Stechkin," he said. "A true machine pistol. Best I've seen since the Mauser. Better than the Browning in every department. You