"They lead over there," said Galluzzo, pointing to the rock face. As he was saying this, he suddenly stopped, mouth agape.
"Jesus God!" said Montalbano.
How had they managed not to see it before? There was a huge boulder placed in an odd position, with shoots of withered grass sticking out from behind. As Galluzzo was calling to his mates, the inspector ran towards the boulder, grabbed a tuft of sword grass and tugged hard. He almost fell backward: the clump had no roots. It had merely been stuck there with bunches of sorghum to camouflage the entrance to the cave.
9
The boulder was a great stone slab, roughly rectangular in shape, that appeared to be of a piece with the rock around it and rested on a sort of giant step, also rock. At a glance Montalbano determined that it was roughly six feet tall and about four and a half feet wide: moving it by hand was out of the question. And yet there had to be a way. Halfway up its right side, about four inches from the edge, was a perfectly natural- looking hole.
If this was an actual wooden door, the inspector reasoned, that opening would be at the right height for inserting a doorknob.
He took a pen out of his pocket and stuck it in the hole. The pen fit all the way inside, but when Montalbano was about to put it back in his pocket, he noticed that the pen had soiled his hand. He looked at his fingers, then smelled them.
"That's grease," he said to Fazio, the only person remaining beside him.
The other policemen had taken shelter in the shade.
Gallo had found a clump of sheeps sorrel and offered some to the others.
"Suck the stalk," he said, "it's delicious and quenches your thirst."
Montalbano thought of the only possible solution.
"Do we have a steel cable?"
"Sure do, inside the Jeep."
"All right, then pull the car up here as close as you can."
As Fazio was walking away, the inspector, now convinced he'd found the proper expedient for moving the big slab, looked at the surrounding landscape with different eyes. If this was indeed the place that Tano the Greek had revealed to him on his deathbed, there must be some spot nearby from which one could keep it under surveillance. The area seemed deserted and remote; one would never have imagined that right behind the bluff, a few hundred yards away, was the highway with all its traffic. Not far from there, on a rise of dry, rocky terrain, was a minuscule cottage, a cube consisting of a single room. He called for some binoculars. The little structures wooden door, which was closed, looked solid. Next to the door, at the height of a man's head, was a small window without shutters, protected by two crisscrossing iron bars. The cottage appeared uninhabited, and it was the only possible observation point in the vicinity. All the other houses were too far away. Still doubtful, he called to Galluzzo.
"Go have a look at that little house. Do what you can to open the door, but don't break it in. Be careful, we may need to use it. See if there are any recent signs of life inside, if anyone's been living there in the last few days. But leave everything exactly as it was, as if youd never been there."
The Jeep had meanwhile backed almost all the way up to the base of the boulder. The inspector took the end of the steel cable, inserted it easily into the hole and started pushing it inside. This required little effort, for the cable slid into the boulder as if following a well-greased, unobstructed groove. In fact, a few seconds later, the cable end popped out on the other side of the slab, looking like the head of a snake.
"Take this end," Montalbano told Fazio, "affix it to the Jeep, put the car in gear and pull away, but very, very gently."
As the Jeep began to move, so did the boulder, its right side starting to come detached from the rock face as if turning on invisible hinges.
"Open sesame . . ." Germanurmured in amazement, recalling the childrens formula that magically served to open all doors.
...
"I assure you, Commissioner, that stone slab was turned into a door by a superb master craftsman. Just imagine, the iron hinges were totally invisible from the outside. Reclosing the door was as easy as opening it. We went in with flashlights. Inside, the cave was very carefully and intelligently fitted out. They'd made a floor, for example, out of a dozen or so puncheons nailed together and set down on the bare earth."
"What's a puncheon?"
"I can't think of the proper word. Let's just say they're very thick planks. They built a floor to keep the crates of weapons from coming into direct contact with the damp ground. The walls are covered with lighter boards. The whole inside of the cave is a sort of giant wooden box without a top. They obviously worked a long time on it."
"What about the weapons?"
"A veritable arsenal. About thirty machine guns and sub-machine guns, a hundred or so pistols and revolvers, two bazookas, thousands of ammunition rounds, cases of every kind of explosive, from TNT to Semtex. And a large quantity of police and carabinieri uniforms, bulletproof vests, and various other things. All in perfect order, with each item wrapped in cellophane."
"We've really dealt them a serious blow, eh?"
"Absolutely. Tano avenged himself well, just enough to avoid looking like a traitor or repenter. I want you to know that I didn't sequester the weapons; I left them in the cave. I've arranged for my men to stand guard, in two shifts, round the clock. They're in an uninhabited cottage a few hundred yards away from the arms depot."
"You're hoping someone will come for supplies?"
"That's the idea."
"Good, I agree with that. We'll wait a week, keep everything under close watch, and if nothing happens, we'll go ahead with the seizure. Ah, Montalbano, do you remember my dinner invitation for day after tomorrow?"
"How could I forget?"
"I'm afraid well have to postpone it a few days. My wife has the flu..."
...
There was no need to wait a week. The third day after they had discovered the weapons, Catarella, having completed his midnight-to-midday shift on guard, went to report to Montalbano, asleep on his feet. The inspector had asked them all to do the same as soon as they went off duty.
"Any news?"
"Nothing, Chief. All peacefulness and quietude."
"Good. Actually, bad. Go get some sleep."
"Uh, wait. Now that I put my head to it, there was something, nothing, really, I just thought I'd tell you more out of consciousness than duty, but it's nothing."
"What kind of nothing?"
"A tourist came by."
"Explain a little better, Cat."
"It looked to be around twenty-one hundred hours in the morning."
"If it was morning, it was nine, Cat."
"Whatever you say. Then right then and there I heard the roar of a motorcycle. So I grabbed the binoculars around my neck and precautiously looked out the window for confirmation. The motorcycle was red."
"The color is of no importance. Then what?"
"Then a tourist of the male sex descended from off said motorcycle."
"What made you think he was a tourist?"
"He was wearing a camera around his neck, a really big camera, so big it looked like a cannon."
"Must have been a telephoto lens."
"Yes sir, that it was. Then he started taking telephotos."
"Of what?"
"Everything, Chief, everything. The countryside, the Crasticeddru, even the location I was located in."
"Did he get close to the Crasticeddru?"
"Never, sir. But when he climbed back on his motorcycle to leave, he waved at me with his hands."
"He saw you?"
"No. I stayed inside the whole time. But as I was saying, once he started up, he waved good-bye to the little house."
...
"Commissioner? I've got some news, and it's not good. Looks like they somehow got wind of our discovery and sent somebody on reconnaissance to confirm."