“So, it is decided,” Olivetti said, with ebullient enthusiasm. “The tecnici will go out first, in pairs, on motorcycles. Then, look, the first and second plotoni—”
His subalterns and the sergeant crowded up to follow his pointings on the map as he developed the plan in greater detail; and Ponti caught Simon’s eye and beckoned him away from the briefing.
“I imagine you would like to go back to your hotel and get some sleep, but that might be dangerous. Let me give you the key to my apartment. The Mafia will never look for you there. I will see you there after all this is over. You will have to identify the ones that we capture, and make a deposition to support the charges. The address is—”
Simon had already begun to shake his head, before he interrupted.
“There you go again, Marco, trying to kill me with kindness,” he murmured. “It makes me feel an ungrateful bum to turn you down, but I have sat through too many acts of this opera to be eased out before the grand finale. I shall come along and be ready with more of my brilliant advice in case the military needs it.”
“But you are a civilian. You do not have to expose yourself—”
“Someone should have told me that a few days ago. But now I still have those personal problems of my own which you know something about, and I want a chance to straighten them out before some trigger-happy bersagliere blasts away any hope of getting the answers. If you refuse me that little bit of fun, I might be so upset as to get an attack of amnesia, and be completely unable to identify any of your prisoners. Such things can happen to hysterical types like me.”
“Your blackmail is shameful. But I am forced to bow to it. However, I take no responsibility for your safety, or for any legal trouble you may get into.”
“You never did, did you?” said the Saint innocently.
The map-table conference broke up, and the lieutenants and the sergeant hurried out.
“Well, the operation will be rolling in eight minutes,” Olivetti said. “The Company was put on full alert as soon as you telephoned, Ponti — and since then there has been no telephoning.”
With a broad smile, he held up his huge hand and clicked a pantomime wire-cutter.
“I, too, take no chances,” he said, and looked at the Saint. “I am glad you are going with us. It will help to have someone who knows the layout of this castello.”
“He insists,” Ponti said wryly. “He is afraid that he may become hysterical if he is left alone. He has been through a lot, you know.”
“Now you try to explain that, Marco,” Simon grinned, and went out.
He was checking the gas and oil in the Bugatti when the advance scouts set out, the wasp-whine of their Guzzi motorcycles splitting the still night. They were followed by the snore of truck engines grumbling into life.
Satisfied that his borrowed behemoth was still fuelled for any kilometrage that it was likely to be called on to cover, he was buckling down the hood when a Fiat scout car skidded to a stop beside him with all four wheels locked. Major Olivetti was at the wheel. In the rear seat, a lieutenant and the radio-man braced themselves stoically, being no doubt inured to their commander’s mercurial pilotage; but in the other front bucket Ponti had his hands clamped to the dashboard with a pained expression which hinted that he might have preferred the vehicle which brought him to the camp.
“Follow my column,” Olivetti bawled, “and join me when we stop. Do you want a gun?”
He proferred his own automatic.
“Thank you; but it must be illegal for foreign civilians in this country to possess military firearms. And in any case I already have an illegal weapon obtained from the Mafia. But don’t tell your poliziotti friends.”
Ponti opened his mouth, but whatever contribution he may have had in mind was not forthcoming, at least in Simon’s hearing. For at that moment the grinning major snapped in the clutch, and the scout car vanished into the night with a jolt that could have whiplashed the necks of its occupants.
A column of trucks growled after it while Simon was winding up the Bugatti and turning it around. He fell in after the scout car that brought up the rear.
Strangely or naturally, according to which school of psychology you favor, he was not wondering how Lily was making out, but what had happened to Gina. Gina with the dark virginal eyes and the wickedly nymphic body and the young eagerness and unsureness, who was another part of the intricate house of Destamio, and who could be destroyed with it — if it had not already destroyed her first.
VII
How the fireworks went off
and Cirano turned up his nose
1
It was a slow drive. Olivetti was obviously holding their speed down in order to give the engineers the half-hour’s lead he had allowed for them. If his timing was right, they should meet the motorcycle advance guard at the exact moment scheduled for the assault.
They saw nothing of the coast or the sea, since the Major had wisely chosen to use only the interior roads that wound their way through the mountains. For the most part these roads were bad, and frequently they were terrible. Sometimes when they branched off on to an unpaved track to avoid a town, clouds of dust billowed up and swept suffocatingly over the Bugatti. Simon stopped more than once to let the worst of the dust settle, and then caught up with the column again, having no fear of losing it while there was still a trail of powdery fog to trace it by.
This dilatory progress continued until after midnight, when Simon felt they could not be much farther from the Mafia headquarters. They ground through a darkened village, then up a precipitous track that appeared to have been scratched out of the face of a cliff.
Lights flashed in the Saint’s eyes from his rear-view mirror as a car came up behind and blinked its headlights to pass. He pulled courteously over to the side, and at the same instant was possessed by a prickling presentiment of danger.
What possible reason could an ordinary car have for being on such a road at this time of night — and in enough of a desperate hurry to risk trying to pass a convoy of trucks on such a dangerous cornice? Only an errand of more than ordinarily reckless urgency. This did not ineluctably mean that the car was driven by Mafia sympathizers. But with the telephone wires cut, anyone who wanted to warn the Mafia headquarters of the approaching column would have to go by road. This road.
This reasoning went through the Saint’s head in the brief moment during which the car was overtaking him, and as soon as it was past he swung out behind it and kicked on his high beams. They blazed out like twin searchlights and impaled a long open Alfa-Romeo, not new but obviously still capable of a good turn of speed. The driver kept his eyes on the road, but the man beside him turned, shading his eyes from the glare with the turned-down brim of a black hat.
Simon sounded a warning series of blasts on his horn to attract attention, and the officer in the scout car ahead was not stupid. He waved the Alfa-Romeo back as it started to pass him, and held up a gun to show that he meant business.
The reply from the Alfa-Romeo was instantaneous. The driver accelerated, and his companion produced a pistol and began firing at the scout car. The officer ducked down, and the Alfa-Romeo went safely by, staying in the scanty lane between the trucks and the sheer drop into the valley.