Free In the Hour Before Midnight by Jack Higgins Page A

less than twenty thousand inhabitants. You won’t find me a place in the world of comparable size that can match that.”
    â€œBut why?” he said. “I just don’t get it.”
    â€œPeople play games of one sort or another all the time, haven’t you ever noticed that?”
    â€œI don’t follow you.”
    I could have told him that he’d been playing soldiers all his life—even in the Congo—but there would have been no point. He wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about and I’d have offended him needlessly.
    â€œLet me put it this way. In the suburbs of Los Angeles or London, the struggle to keep abreast of the next man, the cut and thrust of business, or even an affair with someone else’s wife, adds that little touch of drama to life that everyone needs.”
    â€œAnd what does that prove?”
    â€œNothing in particular. In Sicily, it’s an older game, that’s all, and rather more savage. The ritual of vendetta —an eye for an eye, neither more nor less. And the rules may seem a little barbaric to outsiders. We kiss the wounds of our dead, touch our lips to the blood and say: In this way may I drink the blood of the one who killed you.”
    Even thinking of it touched something inside me—a coldness like a snake uncoiling.
    â€œYou said we,” Burke observed. “You include yourself in?”
    I stared out into the distance where an early cruise ship passed beyond the headland, a blaze of lights, a world of its own. I thought of school in London at St. Paul’s of Wyatt’s Landing, of Harvard and laughed.
    â€œIn any village in Sicily if I spoke my grandfather’s name and declared my relationship, there would be men who would kiss my hand. You’re in another world here, Sean. Try to get that into your head.”
    But I don’t think he believed me—not then. It all seemed too improbable. Belief would come later.
    Â 
    There was no resemblance at all between the Barbaccia villa and Hoffer’s place. To start with the walls were at least two thousand years older, for like most country houses it had been built on the Roman site. They were about fifteen feet high and the villa itself was of Moorish origin and stood in the centre of a couple of acres of semi-tropical garden. Ciccio braked to a halt and sounded his horn.
    The gatekeeper wasn’t armed, but then he didn’t need to be. A man appeared from the lodge behind him wrestling with two bull mastiffs of a breed common to the island since Norman times and another came out of the bushes holding a machine pistol.
    The gatekeeper wore a neat khaki uniform and looked more like an insurance clerk with his moustache and steel-rimmed spectacles. There was a kind of impasse while he and his friends stared at us and the dogs didn’t bark, which was somehow even more sinister.
    I opened the door, got out and approached. “I’m expected,” I said. “You must have been told.”
    â€œOne man, signor, not three. No car passesthrough these gates except the capo ’s. A rule of the house.”
    I produced the Walther very carefully from my pocket and there was a hollow click as the gentleman with the machine pistol cocked it. I passed the Walther through the bars, butt first.
    â€œMy calling card. Send it to Marco—Marco Gagini. He’ll tell you who I am.”
    He shrugged. “All right, you can come in, but the others stay outside with the car.”
    Marco came round the bend of the drive on the run and slowed to a halt. He stared past me at the Mercedes, at Burke and Ciccio, then nodded. “Open the gates—let them in.”
    The gatekeeper started to protest. “You know the rule—only house cars allowed inside.”
    Marco shook him by the lapel. “Fool, does a man kill his own grandfather? Get out of the way.”
    He wrenched the Walther from the gatekeeper’s hand, dropped it into