The Saint allowed himself half a minute to be sure it was out of sight, and to let the heaving of his lungs subside. Then he climbed the bank to the road above.
His decision not to try to help himself to the scooter had vindicated itself even more promptly than he had anticipated.
But now, through a gap in the hills ahead, he could see the benign blue Mediterranean less than a mile away.
It was only a question of whether he could reach it before the hunters turned around and overtook him again.
VI
How the Saint enjoyed another reunion
and Marco Ponti introduced reinforcements
1
Simon knew how far he had come from where he had abandoned the cart, and could figure how long it would take the second automobile to climb to that spot. In his mind’s eye, as he ran, he saw the car braking, the examination of the sleeping scooterist, the reviving and questioning of the peasant. In that way he kept a sort of theoretical clock on the progress of developments behind him against which he could continuously measure his chances of reaching the coast before the pursuit turned their car around — in itself a substantially time-consuming maneuver on that narrow road — and set off to overtake him. And his spirits rose with every stride as his glimpses of the sea came closer and the picture in his mind was still not frantically ominous.
Even in his athletic prime he would have had to leave the four-minute mile to the specialists, but on a downhill course and under the spur of life preservation he thought he could come close. And on the highway there would be buses and trucks, and beside it the coastal railway as well...
Every run of bad cards must have a break, however brief, as every gambler knows; and as the Saint reached the main road at last, and his visualization of the most imminent menace still had the warriors up the hill only now looking for a place to turn their oversize chariot, it seemed to him that his turn was veritably setting in. For less than a hundred yards away on his right, a heavily laden autobus was grinding noisily towards him, with the inspiring name PALERMO on the front to indicate its destination.
There were no other vehicles in sight at this moment, and no surly characters with artillery in their pockets to bar his way. The next steps towards escape only had to be taken across the highway, and called for no additional effort beyond flagging down the driver.
Brakes protested, and the bus lurched to a stop. Simon climbed in, the door slammed behind him, and he was on his way again.
But as he paid his fare, he felt that his arrival was causing a minor stir among the passengers. It was a local bus, and the riders seemed to consist mostly of regional habitants and their produce, progeny, and purchases. Perhaps that was the cause of their interest: the Saint was a stranger and obviously a different type, and for lack of anything better to do they would study and speculate about him. Yet there seemed to be an undercurrent of tension running counter to this simple bucolic curiosity. Unless he was excessively self-conscious, he felt as if the other passengers were allowing him far more room than they gave each other. In fact, he had a distinct impression that they were moving as far away from him as the packed conditions would allow.
Considering the aromas of garlic and honest sweat which pervaded the interior in multiple combinations with other less readily recognizable perfumes, it was somewhat disturbing to speculate on what exotic odor he might be diffusing about which even the best Sicilian wouldn’t tell him. Perhaps he was being unduly sensitive; but the events of that day and the previous night would have undermined anyone’s confidence in his popularity or social magnetism.
He tried his most innocent and endearing smile on one of the women nearest to him, who was staring into his face with a fixed intensity which suggested either extreme myopia or partial hypnosis, and she crossed herself hurriedly and squirmed back into the engulfing crowd with a look of startled panic.
He hadn’t been imagining things. Someone had already identified him, and the whispered word had been passed around.
The fact could be read now in the tense lines of their bodies, their petrified immobility or nervous fidgeting, and the way their eyes fastened on him and then slid away when he looked in their direction. The Saint’s description had clearly been circulated throughout the entire district, with promises of reward for finding and/or threats of punishment for hiding him, and in every crowd there was likely to be one who had heard it.
There didn’t seem to be any Mafia hirelings on the bus itself, or they would already have gone into action; but he could expect no allies either. None of these people might actively try to attack him, nor would they give him any aid or comfort. Even if they were not sympathizers with the Mafia, they had been terrorized for so long that they would do exactly what the organization had ordered.
The bus ground protestingly up the grades and clattered recklessly down the alternating slopes that made up for them, obedient to the latent death-wish of the normal Italian driver; and with each kilometer the suspense drew tauter, but not from the inherent uncertainties of Sicilian public transportation.
Sometimes the conveyance stopped to pick up new travellers or to let others off; and Simon did not need extrasensory perception to know that as soon as telephones could be reached the wires would be humming with reports of his sighting.
And at each stop there was a rearrangement of seating and standing room, until there were only men around him, uneasy but grim. He wondered how much longer it would be before one of them might be tempted to try for a medal, and he moved his hand to rest it near the butt of the gun under his shirt.
If the pressure seemed to be creeping too close to an explosion point he would have to get off before Palermo. It might be a wise precaution in any case. He had no idea how long the full trip would take, but it would certainly be long enough for a welcoming delegation to muster at the terminus. The equation of survival that had to be solved required a blind guess at the unknown length of time he could stay with the bus to gain the maximum escape mileage, before warnings telephoned ahead would have a reception committee assembled and waiting for him at the next stop.
He had been keeping most of his attention on the other riders, who had packed themselves closer to suffocation in their desire to keep beyond contamination range of him, but he had been careful to reserve some portion of his awareness for the outside world through which they travelled. He was not concerned with noting all the spots of scenic interest, but with observing any other vehicles whose occupants might evince unusual interest in the one he rode in. And now his circumspection suddenly paid off. A large American sedan pulled around from behind the bus with a screaming horn, as if to pass it, and then simply stayed level with it, while swarthy faces carefully scanned the interior.
Trying not to make any sharp conspicuous movement, Simon edged farther towards the opposite side, bending his knees and slumping his spine to diminish his height, and trying to keep the heads of other passengers between the parallel car and the smallest segment of his face which would let him keep an eye on it and its occupants.
It was a good try, but there was a typically neutralist consensus against it. As his fellow travellers also became aware of the car keeping alongside, they separated and shrank away, either as a pharisaic way of pointing him out without pointing, or to remove themselves from the line of fire if there was to be any shooting. Either way, the result was disastrously the same. A lane opened up across the bus, with passengers trampling each other’s corns on both sides but leaving a clear space between Simon and the windows. Even the seated riders found themselves suddenly irked by the burden on their buttocks, and got up to join the sardine pack of standees.