Towing the baffled but obedient Lily beside him, he stopped at the first clothing store they came to and bought a knitted T-shirt in horizontal blue and white stripes and a pair of cheap sandals. He changed into them quickly in the next convenient alley, discarding his former soiled shirt and scuffed shoes in the nearest trash barrel. A little farther on, at a cubicle of tourist superfluities overflowing on to the sidewalk, he acquired a pair of sunglasses and a huge garish straw bag which he gave Lily to carry.
Only a block from the approaching vista of blue Mediterranean, he made a last stop at a well-stocked salumeria, where an apparently unsuspicious proprietor was delighted to wrap bountiful packages of cheese, ham, sausage, artichoke hearts and ripe olives, together with a loaf of crusty bread and a flagon of the sturdy purple Corvo that would agreeably moisten their passage. These were all stowed in the capacious sack with which he had thoughtfully provided Lily.
“What is all this for?” she queried plaintively.
“For either of us who gets hungry. It might be late before we get a proper dinner.”
None of the shopkeepers he had patronized seemed to have been alerted; or perhaps Destamio’s grapevine had been too busy trying to block the more obvious exits, so far, to diffuse itself over the general prospect. At any rate, they reached the beach without any alarming signals registering on Simon Templar’s ultrasensitive antennae, looking like any other tourist couple among the clutter of humanity that was reclining or romping according to age and temperament.
Once among them, he made himself even more typical and less memorable by peeling off his T-shirt, putting it with the sandals in the catchall bag, and rolling his trousers up to the knee. His bronzed torso matched the most common tint of the other vacationers; and even if his musculature was considerably more striking than the average, it was not outstandingly different from that of any weight-lifting beach boy. There was nothing much else about him for anyone to notice or describe.
Lily was a little more difficult to camouflage, but he made her roll her sweater up above her midriff until it was almost a brassiere, and unbutton her skirt to bare the maximum length of thigh as she walked barefoot like himself, with her shoes joining the other discards in the big bag. She had already tied up her dazzlingly bleached hair in a scarf, at his suggestion, while he was changing his shirt.
So they completed their crossing of the beach as reasonable facsimiles of any two commonplace holiday-makers, hand in hand, to the water’s edge where there were drawn up some of the Mediterranean’s most popular pleasure craft, those companionable catamarans made just for a couple to sit in side by side and pedal themselves lazily around with the aid of the paddle-wheel housed between the pontoons. Practically, however, they can be propelled faster and much more effortlessly than the ordinary rowboat, and are far more seaworthy and comfortable in moderately messy weather; and in fact it was the guide book’s mention of this littoral attraction which had led him there.
The concessionaire came to meet them as they arrived, beaming with mercenary optimism.
“Che bellissimo giorno, signore! And a beautiful afternoon for a ride in a moscone. This is the best time of day!”
“It is late,” Simon said dubiously. Any appearance of urgency or eagerness might kindle suspicion if there were already a spark for it to fan, and in any case would be sharply remembered later. “There will not be much more sun.”
“It is only the middle of the afternoon!” protested the operator, waving his arms to the heavens for witness. “And when the sun is going down, it is nice and cool. Besides, I will make you a special price.”
“How much?”
There followed the inevitable formality of bargaining, and a price was finally agreed on to cover the remaining duration of daylight. Simon paid it in advance.
“In case we are a little late,” he said with an elaborate wink, “you will not have to wait for us.”
The man grinned in broad fraternity.
“Capita! Grazie! E buona sorte!”
Simon handed Lily into her seat, and helped the proprietor push the paddle-cat into the water before he hopped nimbly aboard and took the tiller, turning their twin prows westward as he began to pedal in unison with her.
It was all he could do to refrain from laughing out loud. Behind him, the town would be swarming with Destamio’s minions: he formed a whimsical picture of them pouring in from all directions until they outnumbered both natives and tourists. The railroad station was probably infested with them by now, and likewise the bus depot; unless Destamio’s car had hit the bus harder than it sounded, he could have organized coverage of every outlying road and even footpath, and even the little port might not have been overlooked; but Simon was joyfully prepared to bet his life that he had hit on the one possible exit that a serious-minded creep like the former Dino Cartelli would never think of until it was too late. It had become a truly Saintly escape, outrageous in its originality — and now spiked with a bonus that he would not have tried to incorporate in his dizziest dream.
“Isn’t Catania the other way?” she said after a while.
“You’re brilliant,” he assured her reverently. “This is the way to Palermo. The moscone merchant has to see us going this way. All the clues should keep pointing to Palermo. Only you and I know where we’re really going.”
When they were far enough out for their features not to be recognizable to the naked eye, but not so far that it would look as if they were setting out on a major voyage, he held a course parallel with the coast, searching the shore line for a special kind of topography that would lend itself to what he had in mind. It was not too long before he found it: a tiny cove floored with a half-moon of sand, not much wider than the length of a moscone, walled around with sheer cliffs rising twenty feet or more, and flanked by massive falls of rock so as to be almost inaccessible except from the sea. It was at least a mile from the nearest public beach.
Simon steered towards it, appreciating its advantages more and more as it came closer, and kept on pedalling until the pontoons grounded gently on the sand. He jumped off and held Lily’s hand to balance her as she walked along a pontoon to step off daintily without wetting her feet; then he hauled the boat higher to secure it from being dislodged by the gently lapping wavelets, off-loaded the bulging bag, and sat down with it above the high-water mark.
Lily stared down at him in blank befuddlement.
“You’re not going to stay here?”
“Only until after sunset. Then we can double back past Cefalù again and keep heading towards Catania. We’ll pedal far enough to get well outside any cordon that Al may have thrown around here, and slip ashore somewhere in the dark.” He patted the sand beside him invitingly. “Meanwhile, it’s nice and shady here, and we’ve got everything we need to ward off death by thirst or starvation. Why not enjoy it?”
She sat down, slowly, while the Saint uncorked the wine, which he had kept well wrapped in the bottom of the bag for insulation from the sun and warmth, and poured some into the small plastic tumblers which the negoziante had efficiently added to his bill.
“I guess we’re in this together now, Lily,” said the Saint. “I’ll get us out of it, though. Just stick with me. I can’t help feeling responsible, in a way, for the trouble between you and Al, but I’ll try to make up for it.”