Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [70]
I stared at him in astonishment and then some sort of light began to dawn. Simone said, "What's he talking about, Oliver?"
I'd pushed the Stechkin into my belt earlier. When I took it out Wyatt flinched, expecting the worst. Instead, I turned it butt first and put it into his hand.
"There's the safety catch," I said. "All right? Now I'll make a bargain with you. I'll tell you my side then you tell me yours. I've an idea we're both in for a surprise."
He fingered the Stechkin, a frown on his face, then said slowly, "Fair enough."
I said, "You were in Viet Nam?"
"That's right--paratroops, only don't start waving any flags."
"So was I for a while, among other things. I had a reputation for being able to get people out of places. People like you. Later, in civilian life, I made quite a living out of it."
"I get it. My stepfather hired you?"
"Not exactly. He tried to, but I'd decided to retire from the game. I wasn't interested."
"So how did he persuade you to change your mind?"
I told him in a few crisp, uncomplicated sentences. When I finished his face was bleak. "Typical of the bastard," he said. "The kind of nastiness he's been famous for all his life."
I said, "Al Capone must have loved him."
"I know one person who didn't. My mother. He treated her like a dog, Mr. Grant, for years. Used her only to further his own ends. She lived in total terror of him until the day she died. Trembled at the sound of his voice."
"But he told me he loved her," Simone said. "That was why he wanted you out of Ras Kanai. He looked upon it as some sort of sacred duty."
Wyatt laughed again. "He really does get better and better. When I got back from Nam I returned to Yale for a while, but it wasn't my scene anymore. You know how it is? I bummed around the Mediterranean for a while and then got mixed up with some Libyan students who didn't like the Quadhafi regime. The rest, as they say, is history."
"And your stepfather, he tried to get you released?" Barzini asked.
"Oh, sure." Wyatt was getting angry now. "But not because he wanted to do me any favor. That man wouldn't have sent flowers to my funeral. He hated my guts because I'd told him where he stood in my book on several occasions, some of them public. He only became interested in my welfare after my mother's death."
"I don't follow," I said.
"It's really quite simple. Like one of those big insurance policies, I'm worth more dead than alive, at least as far as my stepfather is concerned. You see, when he ran into trouble in the States and was deported, my mother was still left with her rights because she was American-born. So, he put everything in her name, and I mean everything. From a financial point of view a very lucrative thing to do under the circumstances. No risk to it, after all. As I've said, she was terrified of him. When he snapped his fingers she'd crawl."
"Heh, I'm beginning to see a little light here," Barzini cut in. "She decided to get her own back."
"That's it. She had cancer. She knew she was going so she had a will drawn up privately leaving the whole thing to me. Unfortunately, under the trust laws, I don't inherit till my twenty-fifth birthday and that isn't until next year."
"And if you die before then?" Simone said.
"Everything legally reverts to Dimitri--no problems." He chuckled. "God, but I'd have liked to have been there when the lawyers told him what she'd done. They say he was like a madman for three days."
"How long ago was this?" I said.
"About nine months."
I said to Simone, "And you knew nothing about this?"
"Not a word, I swear it," she said. "I was only with him for six months, remember."
Wyatt carried on. "He tried to get me to go and see him, made all sorts of promises, but I wasn't having any. Then somebody took a shot at me one night. I was still at Yale then. I figured there was a contract out on me and started running."
"Which was why you came to the Mediterranean? To hide?"