Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [34]
I put one on the wall in front of her and took the other chair. "Well?" I said.
She turned her head slowly to look at me. Her face was as calm, as enigmatic as usual, but there was something in the eyes. Some kind of personal hurt.
She said, with a kind of anger, "What do you expect me to do?"
"I don't expect you to do anything."
She picked up the gin and tonic, swallowed about half of it, then sat staring down into the glass, holding it in both hands. When she spoke it was obviously with great difficulty.
"Your sister--she's a nice person."
"I would have thought I'd made that plain enough to you a long time ago."
Somewhere not too far away, Hannah started to play. Ravel--Pavane on the death of an Infanta. Infinitely beautiful in the still heat of the garden, touching something deep inside. Life itself, perhaps at the very center of things.
She was crying now, slow, heavy tears, and when she spoke her voice was hoarse and broken. "I suppose what I'm really trying to say is that I'm sorry."
"Who for? Me, Hannah, or yourself?"
It was brutal enough, I suppose, but she took it well. Strange, but I was almost proud of her when she tilted her chin bravely and looked me straight in the face.
"All right, Oliver, I deserved that, but I'm not going to crawl. I've crawled enough in my time." She stood up. "I hear Justin is going with you."
"That's right."
"Watch him--there's more to this thing than you think."
Which didn't exactly surprise me. I said, "What, for instance?"
She certainly put on a good show of distress and uncertainty. "I don't know, I really don't, but there's something. I just wanted you to know that."
"All right," I said. "You've told me."
And now she was angry again, much more the old Simone I'd known and loved. The glass went sailing over the wall into space. "You bastard," she said, turned and walked rapidly away.
I sat there finishing my drink and thinking about what she'd said, and Barzini appeared. "Langley said I'd find you up here. Heh, I just passed a very angry young woman. When I asked her if I was on the right track for you she told me to go to hell."
"It's not one of her good days." I went back inside to the bedroom and started to dress.
Barzini leaned in the doorway. "Stavrou wants us to have lunch with him. Afterwards he'd like to look over the Palmyra."
"He can wait," I said. "I've more important things on my mind. The way things have turned out, Langley's going to be breathing down our necks from now on and I want a chance to talk to Nino and Angelo Carter alone while there's still time."
"And just how do we do that?"
I grinned. "Just stick with me. To the pure in heart all things are possible."
I moved out on to the terrace, Barzini at my heels, and took one of the back paths down through the garden, avoiding the high terrace where Stavrou was waiting.
The Landrover was standing in the courtyard, the gate was open and no one appeared to be around. Barzini scrambled into the passenger seat and I got behind the wheel. As we moved out through the gateway, Bonetti ran out of the garage shouting, but by then it was too late.
I drove very rapidly down the dirt road and pulled up on the jetty beside Palmyra. Nino and Angelo were lounging in the stern smoking and talking. Gatano was sitting in the prow, the sub-machine gun across his knees.
He stood up, scowling, as I jumped down on deck followed by Barzini. "Heh, what is this? Where's Mr. Langley?"
"Oh, he'll be along," I said. "Any minute now."
I crowded straight into him before he knew what was happening, close enough to get a grip on his shirt, turned my thigh in a simple hip throw that bounced him against the rail. He hung precariously for a moment and then went over, sub-machine gun and all.
We left him floundering and joined Nino and Angelo who were sitting up and taking notice. I squatted in front of them and Barzini said, "You haven't got long. Langley's coming."
I glanced up