Authors: Jack Higgins
As thunder rumbled again, she glanced towards the sky and turned to move towards the house. Luciano came into the walled garden through the arched entrance carrying a spare trenchcoat.
‘Now you see why they baptized me Salvatore,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Thank you, Mr Luciano.’
‘Carter wants us in the library in twenty minutes, just to tie up all the loose ends. The rest of the team has turned up. A Captain Savage and a Sergeant Detweiler.’
‘We'd better get moving then.’
‘No hurry.’ He lit a cigarette and carried on in Sicilian. ‘Poor Maria, I worry you, don't I? Disturb the calm order of your life. The serpent in Eden.’
‘Is that how you see yourself? As some romantic outsider?’
As they went out through the arch the rain increased in force and he pulled her under the pergola to avoid the worst of it.
‘And you?’ he said. ‘How do you see me? No, don't answer that.’ He put a finger to his lips. ‘Because whatever you think I am, that's what I'm not.’
‘True for all of us.’
‘Tell me something,’ he asked her. ‘The religious thing. How did that happen?’
‘Oh, when I first reached London I had very little money. I worked in a shop for a while and then I became ill very ill. For a while, I was in a charity ward in a hospital where some of the nurses were Sisters of Pity.’
‘So you decided that was for you? A blinding flash, God sending someone down off the mountain to tell you or what?’
She remembered so clearly that final day during Special Mass on her knees, asking Mother Superior for permission to make her perpetual profession in the Society of the Little Sisters of Pity, resolving to undertake a life of perfect chastity, obedience, poverty and service. It still made her uneasy to discuss it and yet it could not be avoided.
‘No, I think it's obvious enough now why I joined the Order. I sought refuge. I should add that I found God, Mr Luciano, but only in His own good time.’
‘And Carter turns up like something out of a bad movie, saying I've to come to take you away from all that.’
‘I suppose you're right,’ she smiled.
‘With the Devil trailing behind?’
‘Is that supposed to be you? If so, where are the horns?’
‘Oh, I don't know. We all end up the same way,’ he said, suddenly sombre. ‘The one absolute certainty, Death.’ He took her arm before she could reply. ‘Come on, let's get out of here.’
Carter was waiting in the library with Savage and Detweiler when they went in. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said and started to make the introductions. ‘Sister Maria Vaughan, Captain Savage.’
She put up a hand. ‘Plain Maria will be better in the circumstances.’
She took Savage's hand briefly and sat down, pulling off her turban as she did so, revealing dark hair cropped very closely to her skull, giving her a boyish look.
‘Christ Almighty!’ Detweiler said in a whisper.
Carter said, ‘Mr Luciano, you've already met.’
Savage nodded, Detweiler glared, and Luciano, indifferent to both of them, lounged in the window seat.
Carter said, ‘May I make one thing clear? I've been concerned with this kind of intelligence operation for some time now and as far as most of them go, the truth is that, succeed or fail, it isn't gong to make a scrap of difference to the war as a whole.’
Savage frowned, as he was bound to do at a suggestion which so put down his own war career. ‘Don't you think that's going a little far, Colonel?’
‘No I don't, but one thing is for sure. It isn't true of this present venture. If we can get into Sicily in one piece, if Mr Luciano and Maria between them make the contact we hope for, then many lives will be saved. If we fail, Patton's army will sustain thousands of needless casualties. It's as simple as that.’
There was silence. It was Savage who finally said, ‘When do we go, sir?’
‘Tomorrow night from RAF Hovington in a Lancaster bomber, straight across France and the Mediterranean to Algiers.’
‘And then?’
‘Sicily any time within four or five days after that, depending on the best conditions for the drop. One more thing,. Captain Savage. You and Detweiler will be operating in civilian clothes. You understand what that means if you fall into enemy hands?’
‘They've been shooting Ranger and Commando prisoners in uniform under the terms of Hitler's
Kommandobefehl
for two years now, sir. I can't see that it makes much difference.’
‘As long as you understand that. Now gather round the map, all of you, and I'll go over the whole thing in detail.’
In Bellona, at the same moment, Vito Barbera was climbing a short wooden ladder to the coffin room above the mortuary. He opened the cupboard at the far end and felt for a hidden catch inside. The entire back, shelves and all, swung open to reveal a cubbyhole, containing a radio receiver and transmitter. He switched on the light, sat down, put on the earphones then waited patiently for the allotted hour as he did three times a week.
He straightened, suddenly excited as he started to receive a signal. He reached for a pencil and made notes. Behind him, the secret door opened and Rosa entered with coffee on a tray.
He motioned her to silence and continued to write. After a while, he took off the headphones and sat there, reading what he had written, a look of astonishment on his face.
‘Is it something important?’ she asked.
‘Carter is returning.’
‘On his own?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘No, Rosa, not on his own.’
Looking for Carter after supper, Luciano was directed to the firing range in the basement where he discovered Carter and Savage on the firing line. Detweiler was helping the armourer, an Ordnance Corps sergeant-major named Smith, to load.
Luciano stood watching, Carter took careful aim with both hands and squeezed one off, chipping the right arm of one of the replicas of a charging German at the other end.
‘Very good, sir,’ Savage told him. ‘Not if you consider that I was aiming for the heart,’ Carter said. He fired another five rounds and hit the target twice more, once in the neck and again in the arm. ‘Oh, well, I never was much good with handguns.’
‘It's a knack, sir, like anything else,’ Savage said cheerfully and fired, like Carter, doublehanded, but much more rapidly, hitting the general area of the chest in a solid group.
Detweiler said, ‘I don't recall anyone being much better at it than you, Captain.’ Carter turned to Luciano, ‘What about you?’ Luciano hefted one of the Brownings in his hand and shook his head. ‘The trouble with automatics is they can jam.’ He turned to the armourer. ‘What else you got?’
‘Webley .38, sir?’ Smith suggested.
‘Too clumsy.’
‘The only other revolver I have here at the moment is a Smith and Wesson .32 with a threeinch barrel.’
Luciano tried it in his right hand, then the left. ‘That's more like it. You got a silencer for this?’
‘Sure over here.’
Smith got one from the cupboard and screwed it into place. As he handed the weapon to Luciano, Detweiler said, ‘A popgun. You'd need to get damn close to do any good with that. But then, that's your style, isn't it?’
Luciano turned and fired twice very fast, right arm extended, both rounds hitting the heart.
There was a respectful silence. Savage said, ‘I'd say the second round was rather superfluous, Mr Luciano.’
‘I like to cover my bets,’ Luciano told him, ‘And a wounded man can always shoot back.’
Savage said to Detweiler, ‘I think we could do with a couple of fresh targets down there.’ As Detweiler obediently moved down the range, Luciano laid down the Smith and Wesson, following normal safety precautions. Detweiler replaced two of the targets and turned.
Luciano called, ‘Heh, Detweiler I Like you said, I always do my best work in close.’ He picked up the Smith and Wesson, fired twice without apparently taking aim, and shot out the eyes of the target next to Detweiler.
Detweiler cried out in alarm and ducked and Luciano started to laugh, was still laughing as he walked out.
‘They say he's killed at least twenty men personally,’ Carter observed.
‘Well, all I can say, Colonel, is that I'm damn glad he's on my side,’ Savage told him.
Maria awakened early on the following morning from a deep sleep. Pale sunshine filtered in through the curtains. She lay there for a few moments, remembering that this was the last day. Tonight, she would be on a plane for Algeria, set on a course from which there would be no turning back.
It was not that she was afraid. It was simply that nothing fitted. It was as if this was all a dream. A few days before, her world had consisted of the convent and hospital, a daily round that filled her time and life, work for the mind and for the body. Nothing that ever needed to be questioned. But now?
She got up and stood beside the bed for a moment. She had slept in the nude, something she had not done for years, always wearing the nun's linen shift of modesty.
‘A crack in the fabric already, Maria,’ she said softly, and pulled on a towelling robe.
Her room was on the ground floor and she opened the French window, looked out into the garden and moved on to the terrace. It was incredibly beautiful in the early morning sun, the trees touched with a kind of nimbus, the rooks cawing lazily to each other.
And yet she felt detached, not part of any of this at all, not really aware. It was as if she was looking at things under water in slow motion. She went down the steps without thinking about it, barefooted in the damp grass.
Luciano had also awakened early. He was sitting at the window of his bedroom in pyjamas, smoking the first cigarette of the day as she crossed the lawn and entered the wood. He stood up, frowning slightly, watching her go, then tossed his cigarette out of the window, turned and started to dress quickly.
She advanced through the wood, still caught in that dreamlike state and the sound of the rooks seemed to fade and there was the most profound silence she had ever known. She came out on to a long jetty beside an ornamental lake and stood there looking across the water.
Suddenly, a voice said quite distinctly:
Having nothing, yet possessing everything.
It was her voice which had spoken, she broke through to reality again, aware of the rooks in the beech trees above her head, the smell of the damp grass, the golden glory of the morning.
‘So this is what it's like!’ she thought. ‘Total certainty.’
She had never felt so much at one with everything, so much a part of the whole. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to slip out of her robe and wade into the cold water of the lake. She turned on her back and floated there in the lily pads, face up to the sun, eyes closed.
Luciano, walking along the path through the wood, paused, aware of Detweiler crouched behind a tree where the path dipped down towards the lake. He went forward quietly until he was close enough to see the object of the sergeant's attention, Maria Vaughan floating in the waterlilies below.
‘Heh, Detweiler!’ Luciano whispered softly, and when the sergeant turned, lifted a knee into his face, sending him over on to his back.
Detweiler rolled over once, then was on his feet and moving in fast. Luciano's hand came up clutching the ivory Madonna, there was a click and the needlepoint drew blood under Detweiler's chin.
Luciano said, ‘Now hear this and hear good because I only say it once. If I catch you anywhere near her again, they'll find you in a ditch with a very personal part of your anatomy stuffed into your mouth. An old Sicilian custom.’
Detweiler glared, an expression that was a compound of fear and hatred on his face. ‘Damn you to hell, you Guinea bastard!’ he said hoarsely, took a step back, turned and walked away.
Luciano folded the knife and replaced it in his hip pocket. ‘Heh, pretty one!’ he called in Sicilian. ‘You decent?’
‘Mr Luciano,’ she called back. ‘Please stay where you are.’
He took his time over lighting a cigarette and finally went down the path to find her on the jetty, tying her robe.
‘You're crazy,’ he said. ‘You know that?’
Her smile was enchanting. ‘I've never felt so hungry.’
‘Then we'll get back and have some breakfast.’
She shook her head. ‘Not possible just yet. There's a little Catholic church in the village. I'm going to early morning mass. What about you?’
‘Do I look as if I would?’
‘It's possible for anyone to end up on their knees, even Lucky Luciano.’
He laughed, ‘Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll walk you down to the church, wait for you outside. How about that?’
‘It's a start.’
They went up the path together. A small wind blowing across the lake brought with it the dark wet smell of rotting leaves. She paused, smiling.
‘Isn't it wonderful? Doesn't a day like this make you feel good to be alive?’
She ran up the path, lifting the skirts of her robe and Luciano watched her go, cold in spite of the sun as if someone somewhere had stepped on his grave. Reverting to his Sicilian childhood, he instinctively formed two fingers and a thumb into the ancient sign to ward off the Evil One and went after her.
The Avro Lancaster was the most successful Allied bomber of the Second World War. Its exploits included the sinking of the German pocket battleship,
Tirpitz.
Only three weeks previously, Lancasters of 617 Squadron had carried out one of the most daring raids of the war, breaching the Ruhr Dams and flooding the most important industrial area in Germany.
It was shortly after nine o'clock that evening when Lancaster
SSugar
lifted off the main runway at RAF Hovingham and joined on the tail end of a stream of heavy bombers from stations all over the Midlands and East England.
By the time they converged over the North Sea, they comprised a force of over six hundred in a tailback a hundred miles long. The target was the docks at Genoa, all the way across France and the Alps, except for
S-Sugar
which, at an appropriate point, would leave the mainstream and change course for North Africa.
It was bitterly cold in the cramped interior and the noise from the four great piston engines was almost intolerable. Carter's party had been issued with heavy flying suits and sleeping bags and they huddled together in the body of the plane.