Luciano's Luck (7 page)

‘A nice turn of phrase,’ Carter said.

Luciano turned to face him. ‘If I needed girls, I rang up Polly Adler. She kept the best house in New York.’

Carter held out his silver case. ‘Have another cigarette.’

‘Okay.’ Luciano took one. ‘Now, what do you want with me?’

Carter sat down in the Warden's chair. ‘When the invasion starts, General Patton's Seventh Army is going to have the task of hacking its way through some of the worst mountains in Sicily to reach Palermo. If Mafia can be persuaded to organize a popular uprising and make the Italian Army in the Cammarata surrender without firing a shot, then thousands of American lives could be saved. If not…’

‘Look, I've done everything they asked me to do,’ Luciano said.

‘I know, but as I said, I don't think it's enough. I was in Sicily myself only a matter of weeks ago and I can tell you this. There's only one man with the muscle to achieve what we're asking and that's Antonio Luca. And he isn't coming out of hiding for anyone.’

Luciano had stopped smiling. ‘Don Antonio? You know him?’

‘Not personally. Do you?’

‘Sure I do.’ Luciano shook his head. ‘I still get the word in here. I know about him getting out of that prison in Naples and going back to Sicily. But you're wasting your time. Even if you could find him, he hates Americans. His brother went to the chair during Prohibition.’

‘I know about that but wasn't there something special about his daughter?’

‘That's right, Sophia. During the First World War while she was supposed to be at school in Rome, she joined the Red Cross as a nurse. Met an Englishman called Vaughan, an infantry lieutenant serving on the Italian front, and married him. He was killed in the last month of the war and she went back home to live with her father in Palermo. Had a daughter called Maria the following year. She was the light of Don Antonio's life.’

‘What happened?’ Carter said.

‘July 1936. The kid must have been about seventeen. Her mother borrowed her father's Ferrari one day so they could go shopping. When she put her finger on the starter, the car blew up. I guess whoever was responsible was after Don Antonio.’

‘So the mother was killed?’

‘That's right. Maria was in hospital for a while then one day she just walked out. I think maybe she'd had time to think, lying there on her back for so long.’

‘That if her grandfather hadn't been the kind of man he was, the whole thing would never have happened…’ Carter said ‘Did she ever turn up again?’

‘She wrote to him once from London to say she was well, but never wanted to see him again. She'd British nationality because of her old man. Don Antonio put people on to it, but they never managed to find her. After that, he grew more and more into himself.’

‘Would he see you?’

‘See me?’ Luciano frowned. ‘I don't get you.’

‘If you were in Sicily,’ Carter said. ‘If he knew you were there. If the word was out, would he see you?’

Luciano was genuinely astonished and it showed. ‘You're crazy. You've got to be.’

‘You're right,’ Carter said. ‘After all, look what you'd be giving up. Another twenty laps round the exercise yard tomorrow and the day after that. Thirty to fifty years, isn't that your sentence? I should say you'll be able to apply for parole around 1956 but I wouldn't count on it.’

‘Fuck you!’ Luciano said. ‘I shouldn't even be in here in the first place.’

‘All right,’ Carter said. ‘So maybe this could be a way out.’

‘Go to hell!’

Carter sat there staring at him for a moment, then he got up and went into the outer office where the Warden was sitting talking to a secretary.

Carter took a card from his wallet and passed it across. ‘Would you mind getting that number for me? It's priority one. The code word is Scorpion. That gets you through right away.’

The Warden's eyes widened as he read the card and he whistled softly. ‘I certainly will.’

Carter stood at the window, coughing over a cigarette. In spite of Luciano's attitude, every instinct told him he was on the edge of something hugely important. When the Warden finally called him, he came to the phone at once.

‘Is that you, Carter?’ the voice at the other end of the line said. ‘How goes it?’

‘Problems, Mr President,’ Carter said and started to explain.

Luciano was standing at the window looking down into the exercise yard when the door opened and Carter and the Warden entered.

Luciano said, ‘Can I go now?’ The Warden moved round the desk and sat down. ‘I'm afraid not, Mr Luciano. Colonel Carter's got a car waiting. You're being transferred to Washington under his care.’

‘Transferred?’ Luciano cried. ‘To Washington? What for?’

‘Let's just say for the good of your health,’ the Warden said. ‘They've got one of the best chest clinics in the country in Washington and we've been worried about that cough of yours for some time now.’

Luciano turned to Carter. ‘You'll have to do better than this, Professor.’

Carter smiled. ‘Oh, I intend to, Mr Luciano. You can count on it.’

It was late evening as the Packard turned along Constitution Avenue and moved towards the White House. Carter and Luciano were seated together in the rear and Luciano wound down the windows and looked out at the lights of Washington.

‘I hear it's impossible to get a hotel bed in this town these days, is that true?’

‘Not if you know the right people.’

The Packard turned in at the White House and delivered them to the West Basement entrance where Carter presented his pass to the Secret Service agents on duty.

Luciano wore a dark felt slouch hat and a trenchcoat over a grey tweed suit, clothes he had selected for himself from the prisoners’ stock at Great Meadow. He stood there, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, obviously amused by the proceedings.

‘Is this for real, Professor? I mean, you wouldn't kid a guy,’ he asked as they waited.

‘No, Mr Luciano,’ Carter told him. ‘It's real enough.’

An aide appeared, a young Marine lieutenant in razorsharp uniform. ‘Colonel Carter? If you'd come this way the President will see you now.’

When they entered the Oval Office, the room was in half-darkness, the only light the table lamp on the massive desk, an array of service flags behind it. President Roosevelt was seated in his wheelchair at the desk working on some papers, the inevitable long cigaretteholder jutting from his mouth.

He looked up at Carter and smiled. ‘Colonel Carter, how are you?’

‘Fine, Mr President.’

The President nodded to the young Marine. ‘If I need you, I'll call.’

The door closed quietly. There was silence for a moment while the President fitted a fresh cigarette into the holder. He lit it carefully, then finally acknowledged Luciano's existence.

‘So you're Luciano?’

‘That's what they tell me.’

‘I hear from Colonel Carter you've been giving him trouble.’

‘Now that, Mr President, depends entirely on your point of view,’ Luciano said. ‘I'm sitting in my cell last year when your people come and ask to see me about doing something about Nazi saboteurs on the docks after they burned the
Normandie,
so I arrange things with the unions. Then they come again the other month asking for help in Sicily. Again, I do what I can. And for what? I mean, what in the hell is there in it for me except another thirty years in the Pen? And then this guy turns up with some crazy idea I'm going to Sicily with him and put my head on the block, and you think
I'm
giving
him
trouble?’

The President leaned back and said softly, ‘I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Luciano. I'm going to give you a chance to be an American again.’

‘By going to Sicily with the Professor here?’ Luciano said. ‘Why should I? What's in it for me?’

The President said, ‘A bullet in the head if the Nazis catch you.’

‘And if they don't? I mean, if his whole crazy idea works, what happens then?’

‘Oh, I suppose you could take to those Sicilian mountains and be a fugitive for the rest of your life. On the other hand, you could go back to that cell of yours and take your chances. I'm sure the parole board would be suitably impressed.’

‘You wouldn't care to guarantee that?’

Roosevelt said, ‘You can go now, I've got work to do.’

Luciano stood there, staring at him, glanced at Carter, then spread his hands wide in a very Italian gesture, turned and walked out.

The President said, ‘Anything more I can do, Colonel?’

Carter took a folded piece of paper from his wallet and passed it across. ‘If you could ask Intelligence to trace that person for me, Mr President, preferably before I leave, it would be helpful.’

‘I'll see to it,’ the President said.

‘Mr President.’

Carter turned and followed Luciano, who was already on his way out. The Marine lieutenant said, ‘I'll only be a moment, Colonel,’ and went into the Oval Office.

Luciano was smiling again. Carter said, ‘Well?’

‘Well, what?’ Luciano said. ‘He didn't exactly leave me any choice, did he?’ He grinned. ‘I'll say one thing for that old man. He's got balls.’

‘It's been said before.’

‘But he didn't promise me a thing.’

‘Not on paper. On the other hand, if you can't trust Franklyn Delano Roosevelt, who can you trust?’

‘All right. You've made your point. So what happens now?’

‘We're flying out just after midnight. Scotland first stop. A place called Prestwick. Direct flight to Algeria from there.’

‘That gives us five hours to kill.’

‘No problem,’ Carter said. ‘I've booked a hotel room.’

The Marine lieutenant returned and led the way back along the corridor to the West Basement entrance.

Luciano said, ‘Yes, I can believe that, Professor. With your kind of influence I can believe anything.’

As the Flying Fortress gained height, climbing out over the Atlantic, the New England coastline falling away, Carter made himself as comfortable as possible in the sleeping bag the Quartermaster had given him. Beside him, Luciano was having the same problem.

‘One thing's for sure, they didn't intend these things to carry passengers.’

Carter took an envelope from his pocket and passed it across. ‘Your name is now Frank Orsini. You're a field operative in the Office of Strategic Services with the rank of captain. Everything you need to back that up is in the envelope.’

‘Christmas in June,’ Luciano said.

He took the Madonna from one of his pockets, jumped the blade and sliced open the envelope.

Carter said, ‘Where on earth did that come from?’

‘With the clothes, from good old Great Meadow.’ Luciano smiled. ‘You can get most things in there, Professor. Let's just say it was a parting gift from a friend.’

A sergeant radio-operator appeared and crouched down beside Carter, holding a signal. ‘Colonel Carter, this came through for you just as we were leaving. Plain language. I hope it makes sense, sir.’

Carter glanced at it and smiled. ‘Perfect sense, sergeant.’

The boy moved away and Luciano said, ‘You seem pleased.’

‘You could say that. An interesting fact about this war, Mr Luciano, is that the British are actually more thoroughly documented than the Germans. Every man, woman and child has to have a National Identity Card. Remember the piece of paper I gave the President? It was a request for our Intelligence people in London to see if they could run down Maria Vaughan. It didn't take them long.’

He passed the signal and Luciano's eyes widened. ‘Sister Maria Vaughan. Convent of the Little Sisters of Pity, Liverpool. Holy Mother of God.’

‘Careful,’ Carter told him as he took the signal back. ‘You almost crossed yourself.’

‘Little Sisters of Pity. That's a new one on me.’

‘It's a nursing order.’

‘Liverpool. Isn't that a port?’

‘On the north west coast of England. Lancashire.’

‘You intend to go see her?’

‘Yes, I would say that's a distinct possibility.’

‘Everything's click-click with you,’ Luciano said. ‘I bet you're one hell of a chess player. But no emotion. You ever love anybody, Professor? I mean really love?’

Carter nodded. ‘Oh, yes, very definitely.’

‘When was this?’

‘About a thousand years ago when I was sixteen. Farmer's daughter in Norfolk where we used to go for family holidays. I can see her now, running over the sand dunes in a cotton frock.’

‘What happened?’

‘She died during the influenza epidemic just after the war. Now me, I ran away from school and joined an infantry battalion just before my seventeenth birthday. I thought it was a romantic thing to do.’

‘That figures,’ Luciano said, but he was no longer smiling.

‘We started the big push in 1918 with a battalion of 752 men. Within three months, we were down to seventy-three. I couldn't get killed and she had to die of bloody influenza.’

Luciano said calmly, ‘So you never married?’

‘Yes, my second cousin, Olive, in 1923.’

‘You loved her?’

‘She was a childhood friend and she loved me.’

‘You got children?’

‘No, she had the worst kind of miscarriage very early on.’

‘You going to see her when we get in?’

Carter shook his head. ‘Not possible. She died of cancer in ’thirty-eight.’

Luciano nodded. ‘So, the war came just in time for you.’

Carter gazed at him blankly. ‘You think so?’

‘Don't you?’ Luciano tipped the slouch hat over his eyes, folded his arms and slept.

6

It was raining hard in Liverpool the following night when JU88 pathfinders made their first strike on the Liverpool Docks. At the General Infirmary, Sister Maria Vaughan had been due to go off duty at seven, but there was a severe shortage of experienced theatre nurses and at the last moment, she had been asked to assist Professor Tankerley with a postmortem in the mortuary. It was not a duty she cared for, but it had to be done.

In the preparation room, she quickly pulled a fresh white gown over her habit and adjusted her cowl, checking herself in the mirror. She was twenty-three and slightly built with a grave, steady face. One of those plain faces that, for some reason, most people found themselves looking at twice. Only the eyes betrayed her, full of a kind of restless searching that showed that any visible repose had to be fought for.