Another Way of Dying

Synopsis: Last night Forrester had seen the dazzling blonde and the stumpy little fat man playing roulette in Messina--and the man was losing recklessly. Next morning Forrester was awakened by a hysterical cry from the girl, who was in the next room. The fat man, Nolan, lay dead there; under the circumstances, Forrester felt obliged to soothe Inger and to interpret for her during the police investigation that followed. When the coroner finally pronounced Nolan a suicide and they were free to go, they started for Palermo in Forrester's rented Fiat.

At a lonely crossroads, Forrester picked up two Sicilian hitchhikers. It was a mistaken act of charity, as he found when one of them pulled a pistol and forced him to drive off the highway to a remote mountain hut. There they were met by the villainous Salvatore, who was under the impression that they had kidnaped the local manager for Esso and his wife to hold for ransom--the 5,000,000 live that was the asking price for slipping Salvatore's convicted nephew, Angelo, out of the Monteliana jail. When Forrester finally convinced his captors that he was not the Esso man but only the moderate-income director of a demolition firm in England, Salvatore suddenly cooked up a new scheme, an astonishing piece of madness. The ingredients were those desperate Sicilians, Forrester's explosives expertise, the jail enclosure--and it all added up to dynamite. Then, locked up in one room of the hut, the Englishman and the girl overhear a question, "Where's Margherita?" And it registers on them that there is still one more member of the gang.

As far as forrester could tell, he and Inger weren't locked in; he didn't check, nor did he re-examine the windows. There was no point. And for the time being, he wanted to be alone with Inger, unharried. He lay there thinking back, thinking forward, grappling with the sheer preposterousness of the situation, trying to get on terms with it, the endless lava flow of his thoughts occasionally spilling over into audibility.

Once he said: "It's monstrous, just bloody monstrous." And later: "This can't happen ... can't." Yet for the life of him, he couldn't see what would stop it. Salvatore had already stamped on Giuseppe's objections; Salvatore, whose eyes were sometimes filled with a fierce and chilling light. There was no chance of sowing discord. In the next room, Salvatore was warming the others to his argument, now cajoling, now with contempt. For the most part, the voices were muffled, yet their very persistence underlined the uselessness of Forrester's continuing to rack his brains. At one stage, he reverted fretfully to the possibility of raising the money after all, only to discover that the arguments he'd used held water; at best they might get it, but never in time.

He lay there, fingering his throbbing jaw. And Inger said: "Why must we be here forever? They can't make you help them." She was sitting at the end of the bed, living her version of the nightmare, nervous and impatient at one and the same time. "Without you, their hands are tied."

"I've no option."

"Why?"

Did she still suppose that Nolan could have refused? Nolan, who apparently had such a way with him. The dead became giants and others were measured against the legend.

"Because," Forrester answered with sudden spite, "they will kill us if I don't cooperate. It's as simple as that." He watched the shock of it on her face-the lips quiver, the pupils momentarily transfix. "Now d'you see? I'm sorry," he said, "but you had to know."

A new voice began to join with the others as he stood with his back turned. He went to the door and listened. "Did you have trouble? ... Ciao, Margherita.... What did you get?" The replies were brisk, the voice young. "What about you?" he heard. "What did you get?" And at once, Salvatore took over, urgently, as if to placate her: "Everything's changed, but don't alarm yourself. We'll have Angelo out--quicker, maybe." She came back at him, cutting out his explanations; he seemed to be following her along the room. There was some confused talk that Forrester couldn't catch, three or four of them speaking at once; and when Salvatore again predominated, he was being charitable. "What's done is done. Anyone could have made the mistake. But we aren't empty-handed.... Yes, in there...." Forrester could almost see his gesture. "But listen, ragazza, listen. It might be worse. He is a dynamiter.... A dynamiter, yes. We can break Monteliana open.... But we can. We can. We have been going into it. The main gate, the cell window...."

A stified sound from Inger drew Forrester back to her. "Don't," he said. "Please don't." He had no armor against tears. He moved in front of her and cupped her chin in his hands, tilting her face firmly toward his. "We'll be all right--honestly. Wait and see. We'll laugh about this one of these days.... You know, 'Visit beautiful Sicily and its friendly people.'"

• • •

It was four when Carlo opened the door. He was nothing if not resilient; his grin was fixed in place again with its awful lack of meaning.

"Ha fame?" Forrester was famished; he hadn't eaten since a light breakfast.

He went with Inger into the main room. He'd heard the scrape and clatter of plates during the past half hour and now there was bread on the table, a saucepan of soup, some figs. Salvatore was already seated.

"Here is our dynamiter, Margherita."

She was at the sink, rinsing her hands in a bucket. She acknowledged them with her eyes only, gravely, first Forrester, then Inger. So many Sicilian women wore their hair tied severely back, but hers was loose, very dark against the olive skin, and the hard life showed in her features, more even than in Salvatore's; yet she must have been barely half his age. Black blouse, gray skirt, black woolen stockings--the dress was that of any village girl.

"Margherita," Salvatore said with evident pride, "is Angelo's wife. She is also a fine cook." He indicated the empty chairs. "Come and see. Si accomodi."

Forrester sat beside Inger. He was too hungry to care about sharing the table with the rest of them, but Inger met their glances with self-conscious defiance. Carlo was on Forrester's right, Giuseppe and Luigi opposite, Salvatore at one end. They helped themselves from the saucepan, filling their bowls in turn; the thin, garlic-laced soup contained pellets of pasta and traces of stringy meat.

"Join us, Margherita," Salvatore called, tearing bread. She had filled her bowl and returned to the drain board, eating there. He paused expectantly, then shrugged, mystified. "What is wrong with us suddenly?"

"It's the Englishwoman," Carlo said out of a crammed mouth.

Forrester wheeled on him. "Cut that out." "Englishwoman" was slang for whore.

"You know too much," Carlo retorted. "And you're too touchy. If only I spoke her language...."

"You wouldn't have the nerve to tell her to her face, so don't sneak it in behind her back. She thinks you're contemptible enough as it is."

Luigi leaned forward, soup spilling from his spoon. "I speak English. Not so good, but I speak."

Surprised, Forrester looked across at him; Inger, too. "Is that so? Then you tell the signorina," Forrester said in Italian. "Translate for your brother. Carlo doesn't care, so why should you?" He couldn't seem to let go. "Go on," he needled, but Luigi shifted awkwardly. "You're all the same. Salvatore's right. And she hates your guts--all of you."

Salvatore's eyes twinkled. "How d'you like our dynamiter, Margherita? Simpatico, eh? Not a vegetable." He blew hot and cold, now friendly, now threatening.

To Forrester, Salvatore growled: "We can get explosives--all we need. There are sulphur quarries within fifteen kilometers of here."

"You'll want more than blasting powder."

"We'll get whatever's necessary--don't you worry. Your job will be to tell us what's required."

"How the hell do I know what will be required?"

"That is for you to find out. And this you will do tomorrow. You will take the car to Monteliana and reconnoiter."

"Don't be ridiculous," Forrester said.

"Would you prefer to decide blind, then?" Impatiently: "All right--tell me here and now what you require and save yourself a journey. But be sure you're right."

"Look," Forrester argued. "You're asking for a demolition survey. What am I expected to do? Walk round the place, openly taking measurements?--making calculations? Because that's what a survey entails. I thought you said this place is a jail?"

"A lockup. You can see it from the hill. It is laid out like a map--a model. And you can drive past the main gate."

Derision and incredulity seemed to tie Forrester's tongue. In the pause, he heard Luigi ask Inger: "Do you know America? We have an aunt in America--Syracuse, New York." Siracusa, he called it.

"You can get very close to the main gate," Salvatore insisted. "And you can study the general layout from the hill."

Forrester stared at him. "This is lunacy. One look isn't enough. God Almighty, you keep talking about explosives and the main gate and the geography of the place as if they are the be-all and the end-all of everything. If you're hoping to take someone out of there, you need a plan, a detailed, workable plan, and I need to be told what it is. Otherwise, you're heading for disaster."

Salvatore's fists were clenched on the table. "There'll be no mistakes this time, friend. In case you've forgotten, let me remind you that it wouldn't pay you to fail us. You also have everything at stake."

"What is 'M. C.'?" Luigi was asking. "It is against his name. First his name, then 'M. C.' "

"I don't know," Inger said.

Forrester dragged his mind from his rear guard with Salvatore's unreasoning obsession. "Don't know what?" He'd heard, but it hadn't registered.

Luigi asked him direct: "Is 'M. C.' a degree?"

Dismissively, without pride or interest, Forrester answered: "It's a Military Cross." And even as he spoke, he remembered how his father had argued that it ought to be on his business card: "Damn it, Neal, why not? It's a cachet and--well--it can't fail to help once in a while. You know how I mean."

Salvatore touched his arm. "Luigi has fine English, eh? He will be company for the signorina tomorrow when you go to Monteliana. She won't feel so deaf and dumb with him around." His pale eyes reflected amusement of a sort. "You see, we have your welfare at heart."

"You're so bloody clever, aren't you?"

"More than you imagine, perhaps." Salvatore drew his free hand across his lips. "If things go against you in this country, you become as clever as God allows and twice as desperate. They are a powerful combination, those two; they can remove mountains."

When he spoke in this fashion, something ferocious showed itself to Forrester. It bore the hallmark of a philosophy and a way of life that had molded these people. Corruption and deceit and indifference and death--these were the sum of Salvatore's hard, cruel knowledge of the world and the people in it. All his years, it had been so. Other things changed, oh, yes--now droves of foreigners came, for instance, and stayed in hotels and swam in the sea and drank the wine; but what did they know of the realities? Nothing.

"Nothing," he said bitterly. "Like you."

Carlo waited awhile, then said: "About the car--it will want the other number plates. It's rented, don't forget."

"When is it due back?" Salvatore asked Forrester.

"Tomorrow."

"Better put them on."

Forrester's tone was wooden. "If I'm going to Monteliana, I have to know precisely what to look for." Incredibly, it had come to this.

"Concentrate on the main gate." For the first time, Salvatore spoke as if he might admit to a plan of sorts. "And in case you should be confused by which gate is which, Margherita will ride with you in the car."

• • •

The light was already losing its brilliance. Long shadows through the pines, a resurgence of birdcalls; dark would be swift.

There was no lavatory. Giuseppe moodily accompanied Forrester when he left the hut and Margherita went with Inger, stiffly, keeping her distance as if Inger carried a contagion. When it came to a wash, Forrester walked to the falls and stripped and stood under them, the shock and force of the water only beginning to produce a glow by the time he returned inside. Behind the hut, Carlo and Luigi were at work changing the plates on the Fiat. Inger used the sink to wash in. the men withdrawing at Salvatore's insistence; it was bizarre politeness from one who threatened so much.

The sun set behind clouds, like veins in marble. As the light drained out of the air, Margherita dragged the sacking over the windows and lit candles; inside, the place seemed to shrink and the world became more remote than ever.

Forrester retreated with Inger into the barred room, taking a candle with him. When he told her what was expected of him next morning, she said: "Oh, no!"

"I won't be away long. Perhaps a few hours."

The yellow glow emphasized the bone structure of her face: her eyes looked enormous, alarm dilating their physical beauty.

"Please don't go without me."

He took her hands. "They've got me on a string this way, don't you see? They know I'll come back."

(continued on page 208)Another Way(continued from page 156)

"I don't know what to think." A shiver racked her. "I'm frightened."

"Don't be."

"Half the time I don't know what is happening, and then, when you explain things, they seem to go from bad to worse. I keep telling myself it isn't true, none of it--these people, this ... this pigsty."

Forrester nodded. "But that won't make them vanish, it won't alter anything. They'll be here in the morning and I'll have to leave you. They're going to raid Monteliana for sure.... I'm not my own master, Inger."

The candle flame leaned, then straightened, yet the air remained still. She released her hands from his and brushed her hair nervously toward her ears.

"Just as soon as I'm no further use to them, they'll be finished with us," Forrester said.

"When will that be?"

"Two, three days." He paused, wondering: God alone knew. "About tomorrow--with that young one, Luigi, you won't be as cut off as you might have been."

"Him!"

"At least you can communicate. That's better than nothing. If you want anything----"

"All I want is to go."

She sat quite motionless beside him. The blue trouser suit belonged to promenades, cafés, sun-drenched streets--anywhere but here. The blonde hair, too. Earlier, from the window, Carlo had watched her returning to the hut through the trees and whistled. Now, from the other room, Forrester heard him say: "Has the Englishwoman gone to bed?"

And someone--it might have been Giuseppe--chuckled: "Where else do Englishwomen go?"

He gazed at Inger, empty within himself. At least, he thought, ignorance spared her some of the indignities. He moved round the bed, shook out the solitary blanket and spread it over the mattress. He took off his jacket and folded it into a pillow for her. Then he kicked off his shoes and lay down. Presently, she followed suit. They lay side by side without speaking, weary from the rack of their minds. Beyond the door, the voices rambled on, now sharp, now subdued, Salvatore's uppermost, in control. The room grew chilly and there was dampness with it. Finally, Forrester had to put the blanket over them.

Far off an owl hooted, lonely but free, and the falling water slopped endlessly onto the boulders. The sound was like a drug, lulling Forrester toward sleep, yet sleep wouldn't come. Inger slept, though; suddenly, as a child might, curled up. Gradually, the main room emptied. Forrester stretched out, sharing Inger's warmth. After a while, he rolled gently off the bed and tried the door. It was locked and, as he eased himself beneath the blanket again, he realized he hadn't expected any different. Tomorrow was already a fact; tomorrow and whatever else was yet to come.

• • •

Sometime in the night, Inger turned in her sleep and, sighing, put her arms round him. By then he was half asleep himself and he didn't stir; but he opened his eyes. And before he eventually went under, he was asking himself whether he was being held out of habit or from fear. If it were fear, then he also knew the need there was to be comforted, the hunger for it. He had always wanted affection, trust, to be liked and admired.

Mercifully, there were no dreams.

• • •

In the morning, there was bread on the table and a pot of sharp black coffee on the stove. This was early, with the sun angled low through the trees and the air not yet warm.

Forrester shaved with his cordless razor, then walked over to the falls and rinsed his face in the icy water; no one followed--a mark of confidence in their hold on him. Nothing had changed. When he re-entered the hut, he picked up the suitcases and took them into the room that had become for him and Inger a retreat as well as a prison. The contents of the cases were in disarray and he wondered who had pilfered what; his cash was gone, but at least his passport was there.

"What about yours?" he asked Inger.

She nodded, searching through a jumbled heap of clothing as if to distract herself with familiar things. He left her to it and went into the main room. Giuseppe sat on the table, smoking, one leg swinging, and his dead-looking eyes watched Forrester pour more coffee for himself. They were taking turns at ensuring that Forrester and Inger weren't outside together; three times now, Forrester had passed Giuseppe sitting there and endured his surly stare.

With his back turned, Forrester said: "I see you lifted my cigarettes."

"I'll take what I like, when I like."

"I'm sure you will."

Forrester sipped from the chipped enamel mug, pettiness channeling the entire weight of all he felt so bitterly--humiliation, resentment, apprehension. He was hamstrung, reduced to sniping, yet the words came against his better judgment, with a kind of self-daring. Giuseppe moved toward him down the room, provoked now, arms slightly bent.

"You want a cigarette?"

"Not from you."

"Tanto meglio. Because that's the only one you'll get"--and Giuseppe flicked the glowing stub past Forrester's face. Forrester crossed to the window and stared out. He must keep a tighter hold on his tongue; Inger could suffer; a lout like Giuseppe believed in reprisals. Through the trees, he could see Salvatore and Luigi returning from the falls, Salvatore rolling down his sleeves, Luigi finger-waving his hair as he walked. Little peacock. Salvatore pushed through the door, picking up a chunk of bread as he passed the table en route to the stove.

"Are you ready?" he asked, and Forrester shrugged. "How about you, girl?" Salvatore placed an arm round Margherita's shoulders: there was affection in his hug and the smile was genuine, even his pale eyes twinkling for a second. "Ascolti.... You have got five hours. Five hours will be plenty. It is eight now. Monteliana is about forty kilometers, so you will be able to take your time there. But don't be late back." Until then, his tone was almost conversational. "If you're even a minute overdue, we will begin to think the worst--and that is the last thing you can wish to happen."

Forrester left them to collect his jacket. Luigi was already at the door of their room, offering Inger a tattered copy of Oggi. "There are pictures," he said. "No need to know Italian."

"I have to go now," Forrester told her.

The frightened look was there at once. "Promise you will come back."

"I promise," Forrester said. "Truly ... I'll be here before one o'clock." He turned away. Giuseppe blew smoke as he passed. And to you, Forrester thought. To Salvatore, he said: "I want your guarantee that Signorina Lindeman won't be molested in my absence."

"Haven't we struck a balance, you and I? After all, Margherita will be in your charge--isn't that sufficient guarantee?" He swallowed. "What do you want? A label pinned to her--non toccare, do not touch? You worry too much, friend."

Forrester's mouth tightened. Margherita started for the door, working her arms into an old black cardigan, straightening the cheap gilt crucifix hanging from her neck. He followed grimly and Salvatore went with them.

"Don't forget, ragazza--if we're not here, make for the other place." It was the first time there had been even a hint that the hut wasn't secure. They had seemed so confident, keeping only a casual lookout, relying on instinct; yet this would be strong, animal like. Now and again, Forrester had seen them tense slightly, listening, then individually or collectively relax, something identified, dismissed.

The sound of the falls greeted them as they stepped outside and walked round to the rear. Forrester clambered into the Fiat; the engine retched and came reluctantly alive. Margherita opened the other door and got into the back.

"Five hours, remember," Salvatore said, cupping his hands.

• • •

He threaded through the pines until he found the path and followed it to the track they had come along yesterday. Only yesterday? Time had lost its measure. They turned onto the track and climbed out of the hollow. The awful barren vistas presented themselves again, silent and deserted under the bright sun. The hide-out was even more isolated than Forrester had imagined. Ahead, the skyline consisted of jagged, claret-colored peaks. He kept the driving window half closed against the dust and nursed the car over the gritty, potholed surface.

They must have covered a mile before either spoke. Then Margherita said: "I must warn you--I have a gun."

Forrester glanced sharply at her reflection trembling in the mirror. "You won't need it. I've as good as got one at my head as it is." They juddered over some rock. He laughed bitterly. "And Salvatore talked of a balance. Some balance!" Then he said: "I'll bring you back, don't kid yourself. I've no option. Just tell me where to go."

The track had made two or three more roller-coaster dips into wooded hollows; now it ran flat and almost straight, edging left, desolation to either side. Salvatore hadn't exaggerated: a battalion could search and never find them.

Some small birds scattered out of a clump of prickly pear as the Fiat lurched past. The track dog-legged between great outcrops of rock, pointing northwest. In the middle distance, he suddenly saw a truck moving across their front and telegraph poles strung out like a line of stumpy matchsticks.

"Go left again when you reach the highway," Margherita told him.

For ten minutes after that, they hardly spoke. When they got to the road and turned, the sun was behind them. Once there was a signpost, but Forrester missed the name; and twice there were villages, each huddled about a church as if in self-defense against the wild, inhospitable surroundings, each squalid and soul destroying, full of alleys and stained and peeling walls, dark doorways and alien smells, and loungers who peered from angles of shade or ragged children who ran barefoot in brief pursuit of the car's dust.

Forrester broke the silence. "What happened? Did your husband----"

Her interruption was fierce. "My husband killed nobody. Nobody. Giuseppe killed one of them. Un vigile."

Giuseppe; that one. He might have guessed.

"It was never intended," she repeated. "They tried to break into the post office at Caltanissetta, but things went wrong. It was at night. Angelo was the only one to be caught. Last week he was sentenced to twenty years."

"What was your husband's work?"

"For a time he was in a canning factory. Then there was nothing. For a year there has been nothing. Giuseppe is a mechanic, though he could never keep a job, even when there was one. Carlo has done many things, but never for long. Luigi the same; he was always being paid off."

"And Salvatore?" Forrester swerved to avoid something squashed on the road.

"Salvatore is a carpenter. Or was." Angrily, as if she regretted having been drawn out, Margherita said: "What does it matter? Can a man stop eating if there is no work? Does he allow his family to starve? He is driven to risk more and more--it happens everywhere, all the while, as God knows to His regret."

"And now you are about to risk another big mistake--trying to break your husband out of Monteliana on the strength of my knowing something about explosives. It's madness, sheer madness--surely you can see that?"

"Once he gets to Ucciardone prison, we can never hope to touch him. It is like a fortress. Angelo has twenty years. Twenty--and for what?"

"A man died, didn't he? In my country, Angelo would be guilty."

"Your country is no concern of mine. And the law isn't the same as justice. I can tell you what happened to----"

Forrester cut across her: "Where's the justice in what's happening to me and Signorina Lindeman? Jesus Christ! Of all the stinking things." He moved a hand dismissively. "Please, not that."

"You don't understand. How could you understand? You have never been under pressure before. You don't understand what it does to people, what it drives them to." In the mirror, Forrester could see the molding movements of her hands. "Listen--you will return to the hut; you said so yourself. And I know you will--even though I shall leave you for a while when we get to Monteliana. Why do I know? Because of that person. You could abandon her, yet you will not. You could inform the police, yet you dare not. So what will you do? Go back. She expects it of you and you demand it of yourself. So it is with Angelo and me, and with Salvatore and the others. We are under pressure, like you; but with us, the pressure has been continuous and it began a long time ago." She tossed her head. "We are not what we are from choice. Salvatore is a good man, I tell you.

"Look at the land here," she said. "What can it give? What hope is there? Even where it is better and there is work in the villages, a man has the rich at his throat--the rich or the mafiosi. ... If we were either of those, would Angelo be where he is now?"

"The other question is, would the policeman be dead?"

She caught his reflected glance but said nothing for a while. Presently, though, she leaned forward, pointing. "Left again at the turn beyond the windmill."

Twenty-two kilometers showed on the clock and three successive lefts had turned them roughly south. The sun streamed at them broadside on. Now they were running close under the lee of precipitous slopes with high serrated ridges and motionless cascades of loose stone overhanging the road. Imperceptibly, as the heat began to bounce, the eastward distances were shading to a hazy violet band that fused earth and sky. They passed another village perched on the brink of a ravine; farther on, there were caves cut into the tilted strata of rock, some of them with crude doors and one with washing strung on a dead fig tree jutting grotesquely above its entrance. The road twisted endlessly, the scene varying, yet its harshness growing monotonous. No coach party ever came this way.

Forrester lost count of the changes of direction. They were minor roads, not always paved. He remembered a long, arched bridge across a river, a man walking with a coffin roped to a mule, one place name that registered--Villalba, an entire complex of terraced cultivation that seemed to have failed and a vertically corrugated hillside blanched white in the gullies by 1,000,000 years of sudden torrential downpours.

In silence Margherita watched the scene wheel and twist past. "They say God had lost interest by the time He was finished elsewhere."

Forrester drove on. Forty kilometers, Salvatore had said, so Monteliana couldn't be far now; his watch showed 12 minutes past 9.

"Say you brought this off, say you managed to get Angelo out--what then? There will be a hue and cry. You can't hide forever."

"We'll go away to the mainland. Salvatore knows someone who will get us across."

• • •

At 9:20, he saw a signpost to Monteliana; three kilometers. They were in a trough at the time, climbing fast. Sometimes the gradients were so steep that they seemed to be heading for the sky.

"A kilometer from here, the road will divide," Margherita said. "You must take the upper road. The lower one leads into the town."

They made a couple of sweeping zigzag turns that brought them out of the trough. Now, suddenly, there was another of those startling drops to the left, birds circling below them. Just as suddenly, on the right, the hillside leveled off. The road junction presented itself with Margherita saying, "Destra, a destra," and they shied away from the brink and accelerated across a narrow plateau waist high with scrub and clotted with tamarisks. They passed a couple of hooded carts, their drivers asleep, and from one of them a child waved, cautious even in its innocence. For what could have been the thousandth time that day, Forrester shifted through the gears. Perhaps half a mile blurred by, the road flanked by broken dry-stone walls.

"This will do."

Forrester braked and turned off between a gap in the nearside wall, scrub and yellow flowering weeds brushing underneath the Fiat. He cut the engine and followed Margherita out, puzzled. There was nothing here except a worn stone plinth that bore the broken base of a statue and on which someone had placed a bundle of flowers.

He went with her. They walked for about 200 yards, Forrester trailing. The ground was uneven, and not until the last few strides did he realize they were approaching a cliff edge. Margherita stopped abruptly and crouched, beckoning him.

"There," she said, nodding as he came forward. "Guardi laggiù. Look down. That is Monteliana."

• • •

The view astonished him. The town was 300 or 400 feet below, filling a huge shelf on the hillside; and beyond it, lower yet, was the floor of a broad valley, smudged and indistinct in the heat. Monteliana itself seemed to vibrate in the glare. At first glance, it looked for all the world like a collection of toy bricks, saffron and white and mauve, orderly at the center, more and more confused toward the perimeter, but all tight-packed and everything stunted by the height and angle. Forrester could distinguish a square, a tree-lined avenue from which narrow streets branched like ribs, a blue-domed church, a severe four-storied building at about ten o'clock that was enclosed and stood a little apart from the town's limits.

Margherita noticed where his gaze was hesitating. "That's the chest clinic. The lockup is this way--right, well to the right.... Farther, here, here, almost beneath us."

Then Forrester saw it. For a moment, it seemed so close that he felt he could almost reach down and touch it. Salvatore was absolutely correct; the place was displayed like a model. He was lying flat, propped on his elbows, and he moved slightly forward, staring over for silent minutes on end.

The lockup was well clear of the town, isolated on the farthest extremity of level ground. The outer wall made an exact square: it was difficult at such range to tell how high it was or how thick. Forrester's eyes followed it along--first the side nearest him; there was a gate about a third of the distance from the left-hand corner, a big, double-doored gate spanned by a sandstone archway; the entire wall was of sandstone, Forrester reckoned. This side faced north and the gate was served by a road that led in from the town. The east wall also had a gate, about two thirds along from the same corner and, like the other, it was covered by an arch; an unpaved track served this one separately. The south wall was unbroken, running close to where the hillside fell sheer away; but there was a small gate near the southwest corner of the west wall, narrow, wall high but with no arch.

Because of its arch, Forrester could barely see the main gate. He craned over a little more. The road linking with Monteliana went on past the gate and ended in a turning circle, presumably at some kind of viewpoint into the valley below; the tarmac was blackened with tire streaks, but there were no cars in evidence. And there was no one about, which worried him: even a little activity would have been a comfort against his going down there and prowling around.

He'd brought a pencil and paper--it was the bill from the Capua--from the car's glove pocket, and now he started on a rough sketch. There were five separate buildings within the lockup's walls and he plotted them in outline, Margherita watching. They were all single-story, irregularly spaced, and gravel paths joined one to another across bare ground the color of terra cotta.

"What's the small building by the main gate?"

"Reception block. The big one to the left is the detention block."

"How about bottom right?"

"That is the punishment block." Her tone was matter-of-fact. "Angelo's is the end window on the left."

Binoculars would have helped on the detail. A bulldozer was at work nearby, leveling a mound close to the wall. There was no other sign of movement anywhere within the lockup.

Forrester switched diagonally across the compound. "By the southeast gate--what's that?"

"Offices. And the gate is the service gate." She knew the layout like the back of her hand.

"And over there--top right--is that a chapel?"

"Yes." It was screened from the rest of the compound by a low wall; some of the harshness was redeemed by a few flower beds and a paved walk. "The small gate in the corner is for the priest and there is another--see?--in the inner wall."

"That's all I want to see," he said to Margherita.

She nodded. They got to their feet and withdrew, crouching for the first few yards. As she got into the car, she said: "Now we must go into the town. I will show you where to drop me. After that, you must continue on to the turning point alone. Salvatore said don't stop, whatever you do, or make more than one run."

They were into Monteliana after two or three tortuous minutes. Suddenly, as the hill shelf opened up, the town built itself around them; everything narrowed and buildings began to cut out the sun. Passers-by stepped onto sidewalks to let them jolt by on the cobbles, and there were tight streets to either side with laundry strung from balconies--Forrester guessed they'd already entered the avenue he'd seen from the hill. The pale-blue dome of the church was showing.

Margherita touched him on the shoulder. "Put me down here. You will pick me up opposite in fifteen minutes." He braked obediently. She had a letter in her hand. She got out and turned almost furtively, making a pretense of examining a shoe mender's window. Forrester pulled away at once.

Close to it was a tatty avenue, a seedy, sluggish vista, coated with a bloom of dust, many of the houses windowless, Neapolitan bassi style. The avenue ended at a T junction. Then a road ran for about 200 yards until the built-up outskirts quickly came to an end. At last he came to a gap of empty scrub and the lockup beyond.

The road ran absolutely level and in line with the rock face from the rim of which they had looked down. Forrester slowed and opened both windows. He wished to God there was someone else in the vicinity. He was almost there now. A shallow ditch lay between road and wall and the wall was sandstone, massive, about 18 feet high. With a slight shock, he then saw a uniformed man sitting on a chair in a bar of shade cast by the arch over the main gate--he hadn't spotted him from above. The man yawned, eying him with boredom. With an effort, Forrester lifted a hand in casual greeting, which was acknowledged. As he drew level, the road split to turn across a culvert toward the gate. Iron-frame doors, wood planking, crisscrossed bands of studded iron strip, each door about 18 feet high by 10 feet wide--and already he was almost past. Two hinges on the pillars? He couldn't tell and he couldn't look back. Christ, what a way to make a survey.

He held his near crawl, gazing about him as befitted a visitor's curiosity. At the turning circle, he stopped and got out, stared blindly over the viewing balustrade with affected casualness. He could hear the snarl of the bulldozer inside the wall. After what he hoped seemed long enough for the man on the chair, he went back to the car and started on the return. And then he had an immense stroke of luck. He was halfway to the gate when the doors began to be opened from the inside; the man on duty rose to his feet and helped swing them outward. A dark sedan was nosing through. Forrester slowed, ostensibly to let it precede him, but his eyes were elsewhere. Three hinges, bolted into recesses behind the sandstone pillars; he could see them perfectly. Strap hinges, the tapering straps reaching perhaps two feet across the wood. And each door was, say, five inches thick, 800 to 900 pounds' weight--guesswork again, but good enough, of no great importance. It could have been worse, a hell of a sight worse. And he'd got enough to go on.

• • •

Margherita was waiting opposite the shoe mender's. She was into the car without his bringing it to a standstill.

A few miles out of town, he drew onto the side and added some details on the reverse of the Capua's bill. "Never trust your memory." Rice, the demolitions foreman at Peterborough, had this as his golden rule; and, recalling it, Forrester imagined his father's horror if he knew the purpose and circumstances of the sketch.

When he drove on again, he was expecting more mazelike directions from Margherita, but she kept him to the main highway. It wasn't 11 when they left Monteliana, so there was ample time in hand. An occasional signpost gave the distances to both Caltanissetta and Enna, and the realized they were completing a circle. There was other traffic for company, mainly trucks. Once, four carabinieri in an overtaking Alfa Romeo ran level with them for several seconds, but Forrester's sense of isolation remained. He was a puppet; even in a crowd, he would have been tied to Salvatore's strings. At Serradifalco, he pulled into a filling station and took on 40 liters of petrol. Agip--so easily, at the outset, he could have said Agip instead of Esso. He resented having to ask Margherita for the money, his money, but indignities were something he was learning to swallow.

In a wayside village a little farther on, she asked him to stop in the square and she left him alone while she shopped in a flyblown store. His money again. She came back laden and dumped the stuff into the car, then left him a second time to cross the square and enter a church. There were those, he supposed, who could kneel and pray that such an enterprise would succeed, lighting a candle in token of their family's need or their own good name, believing as they did so that God, in His charity, would understand.

When Margherita returned, she must have noted something scornful in his face. "Are prayers so wrong?" she said tartly.

He shrugged. "It depends on the prayer."

"I prayed for success."

"And if your prayers end in murder? What then?"

"No one will be killed."

"Are you telling me that Salvatore's bluffing?"

She didn't answer.

• • •

They passed through Caltanissetta well before noon. As they dipped, then climbed away, the landscape became more wooded and the views were stupendous, but he was virtually oblivious of them. Only when Etna's white cone briefly showed itself all of 30 miles away did it loose in him a pang of longing so strong that it bordered on grief.

Enna came and went, a mountain town that reared briefly around them. From there on, he knew what he was looking for--the fork where Carlo and Giuseppe had trapped them. A different road, another day, another hour--so easily they might have been spared all this. Where, the wondered dully, were the Russells now?

A few minutes later, he made the turn, then took the track that led through the lawless wilderness to the hut. Stones crunched and spat beneath them as he drove in and out of three successive hollows. Then the dirt path was waiting for them, baked so hard that no tire tracks showed from his previous use of it; and the pines hid all trace of the hut's existence.

Margherita stopped him when they were well short of it. She went forward alone until he lost sight of her in the trees, but she soon reappeared and signaled him on. He drove past her into the clearing and behind the hut, hating the sight of Salvatore as he came out and the sound of his deep voice as he greeted Margherita and the sight of the others and the sound of the water on the boulders as he cut the engine. Nothing had changed; nothing could change now.

Emerging stiffly from the car, he saw Inger running toward him. "Thank God you've come back. Oh, thank God." And, impulsively, his arms were round her. "It was a lifetime," she said. Forrester stepped back, sliding his hands from her shoulders to join hers. It was like a shot in the arm to his morale to see her relief.

Salvatore came stalking into view. "Welcome back, my friend. Benvenuto." He was all smiles. "It was easy, eh? Nothing to it? And you got what you went for?"

"I reckon so, yes." Forrester walked with Inger to the hut; she still held him by the hand.

"You see?" Salvatore was saying alongside. "We kept our side of the bargain. She has come to no harm."

It was cooler inside the hut; the place seemed more cheerless, more resonant than at any time before. In charcoal, someone had drawn a checkerboard on the table, and Luigi, who was cleaning a sawed-off shotgun, explained: "I played with her." They had used coins as pieces. "She is good," Luigi said. "She won"--and he almost emulated Carlo's grin.

Forrester led Inger into their room, half closing the door. She smiled, standing close, her gaze very direct, and something moved in him. He kissed her on the forehead. The long fair hair, the soft coloring, the tanned skin--he had come to know them just as he had grown protective toward her and had seen how indispensable he had become.

"I won't leave you again, Inger. In any case, I think the worst is over as far as we're concerned. There's one more thing they want from me, and then----" He gestured.

Salvatore elbowed the door open. "Very touching," he said, eying them. "But you went to Monteliana for a more important reason than this. Don't push your luck, friend. I'm waiting."

As Forrester entered the main room, Margherita brushed by, laden up to her chin. Giuseppe followed and Carlo and Luigi went after them hungrily: "Cosi va bene! Un altro miracolo!" Salvatore, on the other hand, didn't spare her so much as a glance.

"What about the gate?" Salvatore asked impatiently, following him.

"No problem. Given the right materials, that is. Technically, it's child's play. But you're going to have the Devil's own job to get near it and place the charges."

Salvatore hooked his thumbs behind his belt. "That's a worry we can come to. Right now, I want to know what the boys have to get from the sulphur quarries."

"I made some calculations." Forrester pulled back a chair and drew out the sketch on the Capua bill. "Which way d'you want the thing to fall--inward or outward?"

"Outward." From Salvatore's tone, Forrester guessed he hadn't considered this before.

"How about blast? Blast's a factor, if Angelo is going to be anywhere near." He paused. "Isn't it about time you told me how you hope to bring this off?"

"You will hear later," Salvatore said tartly. "We have a saying--'the less a man knows until he has to, the better his chances.' "

"And we have a saying--'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' How far will Angelo be from the gates when you blow them? I've got to know that when I make up the charges."

Salvatore raised his shoulders. "Thirty meters?" he conceded. He peered down at Forrester's rough outline. "What is needed from the quarries? That is the important question. I want the boys moving soon. Make a list." He tore a page from the copy of Oggi where a boxed advertisement left white margins. "Write it there."

"Buitoni Protein Baby Pasta," the advertisement read, "Specially Prepared for Children." And Forrester wrote a child's list of explosives alongside. Ideally, he would have requested a dynamo-type exploder, an ohmmeter, electric detonators, hand crimper--all these and more, besides the basic requirement of blasting gelatin. But even if such items were available from quarry sources, it would be asking far too much of amateurs to know how to handle them when the time came. The wisest course was to use manual ignition and rely on safety fuse, detonating fuse, plain detonators and blasting-gelatin cartridges. It was the most reliable way in the circumstances, provided the junctions were properly grafted and the charges correctly positioned. He could ensure the first by prefabricating the assembly himself; as to placing, this would need to be explained in detail and demonstrated on a mock-up.

Salvatore called Luigi away from the others and together they studied the list. Forrester added a few points of guidance for Luigi's benefit. Safety fuse was black, detonating fuse almost certainly orange, possibly orange-and-white striped; both came in coils and were likely to be packed in metal canisters. Nonelectric detonators would be clearly marked as such, wax-paper wrapped in wooden boxes. The cartridges of blasting gelatin would also be boldly identified on the wrapper; plaster gelatin--in small slabs weighing about 100 grams each--was an alternative.

"And if there are none of these?" Luigi frowned, his face clouding under the weight of so much information.

"Then Angelo stays where he is--it's as simple as that."

The wrong fuse, the wrong detonator, some crude primary blasting explosive--any or all of these would be equivalent to nothing at all.

"Carlo," Salvatore signaled vigorously. "Venga presto a vedere"--and Carlo came at once, munching an apple from Margherita's supplies.

He read the list quickly through, then nodded. "OK. When do we start?"

For once, his grin offended Salvatore.

"Give your mind to it, boy," he growled. "We can't afford another of your mistakes. And be careful with the car; no madness with it."

They went then, Salvatore following them out. The keys were in the car. "Ciao, Margherita," Carlo called, and Luigi turned in the doorway, addressing Inger: "Goodbye, lady."

Forrester said to her: "From the way they set about it, you'd think they were going shopping." The car lurched past the windows with a parting bleep-bleep of the horn as Salvatore came up the outer steps.

"Isn't the place guarded?" Forrester asked.

"An old man only. Today is Saturday."

"What will happen to him?"

"Nothing bad. Old men frighten easily."

"But he'll report the raid."

"Not until Monday morning. Until then, my friend, he'll be tied up in his store--safe and sound. He'll come to no harm. And on Monday, when they find him, he can report all he wishes. Angelo will be away then. It will be over. For you. too."

Tomorrow night, then. Salvatore was like a miser with what he divulged, but this was more than just another dark hint: Sunday night.

Forrester told Inger: "We'll be in Palermo by noon on Monday." He took her outside. No one objected, but Giuseppe shouted at them to stay close and squatted in the doorway, cradling the shotgun, wearing a greasy cloth cap. Now and again, he muttered threateningly.

"You'll be telling this tale to your kids and your grandchildren----"

She shook her head. "When this is over, I want only to forget. I shall tell no one. No one--ever. How could I? I do not tell people of my nightmares. And besides, it would cause trouble--for you most of all."

"I was only joking," he said.

They were sitting with their backs against one of the pines in front of the hut. Forrester spilled the pine needles through his fingers. Very early on, he had thought in terms of escape, of getting to a gun, say, of tricking one of them and breaking away with Inger in the car. But now it seemed quite hopeless that any moment of opportunity should appear. Aloud to Inger, he tried to sort out the real possibilities. They would need the car on Sunday night--that was obvious. Three of them, probably. Margherita and possibly Giuseppe would keep guard at the hut; one of the men, anyhow. The others would drive to Monteliana with the fuse assembly and the made-up charges. How they would effect Angelo's escape was still a mystery; there was more to springing a prisoner from Monteliana than blowing the main gate. But, assuming Angelo got clear, Forrester reckoned they would return to the hut, collect the two others, then vanish, make for the other place. And Monday would have come.

"You sound so sure," Inger said.

"I am," Forrester lied. The pine needles spilled soundlessly. "We're only useful to them up to a point."

But he was far from sure. Salvatore was unpredictable the explosives Carlo and Luigi returned with might be totally inadequate, Monteliana could be a disaster. They would be on the high wire until the very end. And yet, to encourage her, he said, "I'm sure."

Forrester, if he were honest with himself, knew that almost every futile act of defiance on his part had been because of her, the blustering and the verbal rebellion largely because of her, drawn out of him because her very defenselessness asked for some show of strength; it was expected of him for no reason other than that he was a man. Nolan, and whoever had preceded Nolan, and the others before that, all would have known this aspect of her; her kind of man provided, smoothed the way, made everything possible. And a man had to be dependent upon himself--which was something he had never been. The more he gave, the more he needed support, the reward of flattery. It had always been so with him and now it was again. The future was something he couldn't contemplate with any assurance; but looking at Inger, he felt the bond between them strengthen. The mobile eyes, the delicate neck, the long trousered legs, the pressure of her fingers on his--he told himself there might be joy between them yet. If ... if.... And again he began to fret inwardly about Monteliana and the razor's edge that led to Monday and their freedom.

• • •

Carlo and Luigi returned within two hours. The white car came flicking through the pines without warning and swung in a wide circle across the clearing before coming to rest behind the hut. Forrester rose to his feet simultaneously with Salvatore clattering down the steps.

"Yes?" Salvatore called as the car doors swung open. "Yes?"

"Nothing to it." This was Carlo, gesturing dismissively. "We have enough to blow the sky away."

"It's all right, I think," Luigi said. He had a small box of detonators in each hand. Paloni--Forrester didn't know the company; Paloni, Brindisi.

"No trouble with the old man?"

"No--though he had a dog. Carlo shot it." Luigi paused, half expecting abuse. "It would have barked night and day, otherwise."

Forrester joined them at the boot. Carlo opened it with the flourish of someone who believed he had made amends, and they peered in. Safety fuse, instantaneous fuse--several uncased coils of each caught Forrester's eye immediately; both were marked with handwritten stock tags. Carlo lifted them out.

"This is how they were on the racks. It was easy. The old man checked the list for us. And wet his trousers." He laughed.

Underneath were three boxes, each with rope handles. A Paloni product again--plaster gelatin. It wasn't Forrester's first choice, but he reckoned it would do; a high velocity of detonation was required and the Nobel equivalent he was familiar with ensured this.

"What you wanted?" Salvatore asked sidelong. Forrester had never seen him so anxious as now. "You can manage with this?"

"I'd say so, yes." Forrester lifted out one of the boxes: Carlo was right--they'd brought at least double the required quantity. He lugged the box into the hut and the rest followed, carrying the others. Within a few minutes, every thing was on the table.

"Tape?" Forrester queried, complet-thing was on the table.

"Here," Luigi said, and dragged a roll from his hip pocket. He also produced a few loose guncotton primers. "The watchman said he might need them."

"You mean you discussed it with him?" Salvatore flared. "You told him what this was for?"

"I said we were cutting metal."

"Ah," Salvatore grunted, relieved.

Carlo grinned his empty smile. "Do you think we are completely stupid?"

"Yes," Salvatore retorted harshly and raised a bent arm at him. "Zitto!" Then, to Forrester, "It is all yours, amico. Now you will want to make preparations, eh?"

"Not until I know what's in your mind. I won't be able to finish the assembly until sometime tomorrow. For instance, I must know when you will start for Monteliana. I should know where you plan to place your people at the prison and what your timing is."

Salvatore moved his feet restlessly. "In the morning, I shall tell you everything. For the present, it is best that only one should know." The others were gathered round the table, fingering the lengths of fuse and the boxes of plaster gelatin, unworried, indifferent to what they seemed to accept as some ancient tribal rule: trust nobody.

Forrester saw no choice for himself. He drew a long, slow breath and said, "All right. Listen carefully. I am going to tell you what must be done.

"There are six hinges on the two gates. That means twelve separate explosive charges. I can put those together now. For the demolition to be effective, they will have to be detonated at one and the same time. This is quite easily arranged by connecting each charge to a central stem of fuse and running it back to the ignition point. As far as I could see, there are only two likely places for this to be--in the ditch between the road and the wall or in the culvert under the approach to the gate itself."

"Which do you recommend?"

"One is as good as the other."

"What about the guard on the gate?"

In astonishment, Forrester said: "D'you mean there's a guard? At night?"

"He patrols. He circles the place every hour. For fifty minutes at a time, the gate is unattended."

Forrester stared at Salvatore. A new hazard had been introduced; all the leads would have to be camouflaged, hidden--on the gate, across the ground. Placing the charges was enough responsibility for a novice without this. In any case, because of the guard, the ditch was out of the question.

"It will have to be the culvert, then. But I don't envy the person who takes it on. He'll need two pairs of hands. Will it be you?"

"No," Salvatore said without hesitation.

"Who, then? He'll need to be shown how to set the charges on the hinges; he'll want to know about fuse speeds----"

"Tomorrow."

Forrester shrugged. The swarthy faces, the unimaginative minds; had they really grasped the extent of their unprepared-ness? Rice, his demolitions foreman, would have wept. He picked up a spoon from the table and prized the lid off one of the boxes; the explosive was in rather smaller slabs than the Nobel variety but well packed and waterproof wrapped. He extracted one and peeled the double wrapping off, looking for signs of deterioration--sweating, in particular. But there was none--a very slight natural glistening but no more. The familiar pungent, sickly smell seemed to cling to his nostrils; too long with it and invariably it gave him a headache.

"I'll have to test this," he told Salvatore. And when Salvatore frowned, he said: "I need to know its strength."

"You mean you will make an explosion?"

"Two--perhaps three."

Salvatore was uneasy. "Couldn't this wait?" It was rare for him to be on the defensive. "That kind of noise carries. Why not do your testing tomorrow? We shall be quitting here then."

Forrester shook his head. "Until I know the quality and performance of the stuff. I can't make a move. Take your choice. D'you want to bring this off or don't you?"

Salvatore pursed his lips, grunting while he considered. "All right, then," he said at length, his eyes full of suspicion. "But no tricks."

"I want a very sharp knife. Or a razor blade, if you have one," Forrester said quietly.

There was a click and something flashed across him, thudding into the tabletop only inches from his hands: Giuseppe's knife. Giuseppe smiled with surly venom. "Sharp enough?"

• • •

Forrester cut a wrist-to-elbow length of safety fuse and then another piece three times as long. They watched each move as if they were entranced by a street-corner magician. The fuse was single core with a black-varnish finish, admirable for dry conditions. He took both lengths outside and lighted them separately, timing them by the second hand of his watch. As he had expected, the burning speed was about two feet a minute.

Satisfied, he walked around to the back of the hut, where he'd noticed some scrap metal scattered among the kitchen rubbish. Salvatore followed him. Forrester kicked about in the weeds and pine needles--a rusted petrol can, some wire, a holed bucket; none of it was of any use. Then he stumbled over a piece of iron bar; from the look of it, he guessed it was a spare from the bars used on the bedroom window. Half inch by three inch, about four feet long. He carried it back into the hut and set about making up a simple test charge.

The plaster gelatin was in 100-gram slabs. Four, therefore--if his rapid conversion was correct--would give him as near to a pound as made no odds. He took two of them out of the box, peeled off the wrappers and loosely taped them together; except for the clinging smell, it was like handling gritty brown plasticine. Again, every move he made was watched in silence. Then he cut a 12-inch length of safety fuse and six feet of instantaneous, cutting them square across the stem. The knife edge was razor sharp. He worked steadily, without hesitation, sure of himself. ("You're wasted behind that desk of yours," Rice had once told him. "You ought to be showing the apprentices how it really should be done." But long ago that, long ago. His fingers lacked practice.)

Now and again he spoke, explaining like an instructor to raw recruits. "This explosive is fairly pliable, as you see...." One of them had to know. "Instantaneous fuse is what the name implies; it detonates at around six thousand meters a second. The explosive and the fuses are perfectly safe to handle; naked detonators, though, must be treated with respect."

The aluminum detonators were in cardboard tubes, upright in their box. Forrester tipped one out, fitted it over an end of the striped instantaneous fuse and crimped the neck carefully with his teeth. (No apprentice would have been encouraged to do that.) He capped the safety fuse with a second detonator, which he then taped along the instantaneous near its open end, leaving an inch or so overlap. "Bring the bar," he said to no one in particular, picked up the fuse assembly and the double slab of explosive and turned to go outside. As he left the table, he saw Carlo raising a cigarette to his lips.

"Jesus Christ!" He knocked it flying. "Don't you ever listen?"

Carlo flushed angrily. "It wasn't alight."

"Sciocchezze! Any moment and it would have been." Forrester glared, no bravado now. "Take chances with this stuff and you pay for it."

He walked outside, shaken. They'd never bring it off; they weren't disciplined enough: fearlessness and lack of imagination were no substitute. He went over to the waterfall, the others trailing, Luigi carrying the iron bar. Salvatore covered Forrester with the shotgun, as if to prevent the explosive somehow being turned into a weapon against them.

"No tricks," he warned again. "Don't be clever."

"If you use that thing, it will be your funeral, too."

Forrester took the bar from Luigi and wedged it horizontally between two of the mossy boulders. Then he opened up the slabs of explosive, about to sandwich the end detonator halfway in. "Get clear now."

As everyone withdrew, he inserted the detonator and molded the explosive carefully round it, then taped the charge tight to the upper side of the bar about one third along its length. Going back to the others, he said: "Now I'll have a cigarette."

Luigi gave him one, flicking a brass lighter under his nose. Forrester walked forward again, bent down, blew on the cigarette tip and applied it to the safety fuse. As it caught and began its slow, spitting run, he turned and retreated, not hurrying, 30 seconds in hand.

Without tamping, 200 grams might prove a shade too little; there were so many factors. He halted beside Giuseppe and waited, sheltered by the boulders; and, as usual, the final seconds dragged until the detonation cracked like a giant whip. Dust erupted in an inverted cone as the air shook concussively, fraying the cord of falling water, raining needles out of the nearest pines. In the momentary quiet that followed, Forrester seemed to hear the echo chasing away into the distances. With his ears singing, he rounded the boulders and returned to where he had jammed the bar. It had ruptured straight across, absolutely clean. He picked the two pieces up, more than satisfied.

"Good, eh?" Salvatore said, visibly impressed. There were fanlike scorch marks on one of the boulders and the enclosed space had an acrid stench.

Forrester nodded thoughtfully.

"So you need experiment no more."

"Once more."

"No. If you hope to bring the carabinieri running, amico----"

Without a word, Forrester went into the hut and brought out three slabs of plaster gelatin. He sliced one of them in half and cut another length of safety fuse. He capped it with a detonator, binding this to a pair of instantaneous fuses. Salvatore watched every move, suspicious but offering no interference. He seemed to accept the fact that the weapon had passed to Forrester for the moment.

"If I do not make this test, I won't know enough about exploding the gates," Forrester said slowly. "If I do not show you how to blow the gates properly, Angelo may be dead tomorrow. I don't wish to gamble with my life and Signorina Lindeman's. You do not wish to gamble with Angelo's. Now watch how I tape these two charges against the bar, one on top and one underneath, with a half-inch gap between them. That will make the bar shear...."

Salvatore shrugged, conceding temporarily. Then, as if to minimize Forrester's importance, he said, "All right, if it helps you to do your little part. The rest of the plan is perfection."

"Perhaps Angelo will never know how perfect it was. Perhaps they will never tell him in Ucciardone prison."

Suddenly defensive, Salvatore said, "Angelo knows everything. That letter Margherita took to Monteliana was for the priest. The priest will not realize what it means, but Angelo will."

Somehow, scoring this minor point cheered Forrester. And the second explosion--a gray blast among the rocks that flattened the waterfall sideways against the bluff--was another small satisfaction. The bar had been severed less cleanly, but it had been severed.

There were no more words at dinner. The mood was much like the stodgy lasagna Margherita had prepared. Only Carlo, in his avid study of Inger, raised his eyes from his plate. It was a fingering, inquisitive gaze, like that of the police officer in Taormina. It had lust but, more than that, a doomed longing for the world where blondes swept past in cars, sunned themselves beside pools, danced in the cool of the night where the bands were, where the money was. A world with no Carlos in it.

After the meal, Margherita cleared the table and Salvatore began to draw a sketch of the lockup in charcoal on the tabletop. Forrester went outside and began the laborious job of putting the fuse assembly together. He had not finished when the sun--no more than a red smear on the western sky now--left him in twilight. He went inside and found Salvatore still studying his outline, tapping his fingers.

Without looking up, Salvatore said, "These games with dynamite are a small thing. Caution drains the guts out of a man. When the time comes, it is only bravery that counts. I remember when we raided the post office at Caltanissetta, we----"

"--made a botch of it," Forrester finished. "I'm not surprised. You are all piss and wind, Salvatore."

Salvatore grabbed him by the arm, colorless with rage, his face inches away from Forrester's. "Do you know what I wish I could do? I wish I could wrap you up in all your neatly prepared explosives. It would make me happy to light the fuse.

"But"--gradually relaxing the grip--"I am not a foreigner. I am Siciliano. Therefore, a man of honor. You are lucky I do not forget, so far...."

This is the second installment of a new novel by Francis Clifford. The conclusion will appear next month.