Another Way of Dying

Conclusion of a Novel

Synopsis: The little fat man was a born loser and, after his last disastrous venture in roulette, he took poison in the night. Neal Forrester, who happened to be staying in the next hotel room in that Sicilian resort town, was left with the job of dealing with the police on behalf of Inger, the lovely and bewildered blonde companion the fat man had left behind.

En route by car to Palermo on their way home to England and Norway, Forrester and Inger were kidnaped by a sinister pair of Sicilian brothers and taken to a lonely mountain hut, where their uncle Salvatore was awaiting the brothers' delivery of a rich couple named Russell, for whom they had been mistaken. The ransom was to provide the 5,000,000 lire needed to spring nephew Angelo from the local jail. Forrester and Inger were not only the wrong couple, they weren't rich. Salvatore soon discovered, however, that Forrester was an explosives expert. If you couldn't bribe Angelo's way out of jail, you could always spring him by blowing up the main gate, Salvatore figured. Forrester was outraged by this proposed use of his expertise; but, cooled off by Salvatore's threats of the horrible things that could happen to Inger should he refuse, he finally agreed to instruct the gang in dynamiting. Under the eye of Margherita, the jailed man's pretty wife, Forrester reconnoitered. He tested the stolen explosives, prepared the fuse assembly and returned to the hut.

Inger had taken a candle into their room. Forrester went in after her and shut the door. He sat on the side of the bed and began making up the 12 plaster gelatin charges, using one and a half slabs for each. Candlelight was good enough for this but not for grafting fuse. Inger was lying down; the damp chill was rising again and soon she pulled the blanket across her legs.

Outside the window, the pines stood motionless in the strengthening starlight. One of the men left the hut and presently one came back---Luigi, relieved of his stint; his accent was less marked than any of the others. A chair scraped, a bottle clinked against glass, footsteps sounded about the room and the various voices mingled, clashed, bridged the silences on their own.

He heard Salvatore say, "Come, ragazza, you have worked enough, and tomorrow night you will need your strength. The last hours are always the longest"---and, as usual, there was that rare affection in his tone, a genuine concern, as if he knew from the past what it was to have been softened by a woman.

Forrester slid his feet under the blanket, not tired so much as weakened by everything the past two days had done to him. He lay with his hands behind his head, gazing at the mildewed ceiling in the dim yellow glow of the single candle, deliberately distracting himself from the pathways in the shadows of his mind.

"The other day," Inger spoke, "you said you had been married."

"That's right."

"Were you divorced?"

"She died in a car crash."

"I am sorry."

"Seven years ago. We were in Portugal." For some reason, Forrester felt impelled to go on; even this was a distraction. "There was no other car---it wasn't that sort of accident. Diana was driving and she misjudged her speed as we came into a corner. She braked and we skidded through the posts and over the top. Both of us were flung out as the car somersaulted. About fifty feet from the road, the hillside plunged straight down---a sheer drop. The car disappeared after the first bounce and I thought for a moment Diana had gone with it---until she called, that is. All I could see were her head and arms; she was literally clinging to the edge of the cliff. I started down and got very near ... very near. But there was a lot of loose stone and the edge kept crumbling away....Our fingers must have been within a foot of touching." He broke off for a few seconds, then added: "She was an excellent driver normally."

"You need not have told me," Inger said. "I didn't mean to ---"

"It's all right."

He wasn't one of those who found it easy to unburden himself, to expose the secret places, the lost hopes, the shattered dreams. Only twice in his life had he been overwhelmed by the need to speak of what was buried in him, and both times he had just arrived home---once from Korea and once from Portugal, once to an enthusiastic welcome, once to shocked commiserations. Home was the place where you went and they took you in; yet it was also where what he had tried to squeeze out of himself never came when it mattered. Inside, he'd been crying for help---both times, desperate to let someone share every numbing gun-flash cameo of that rearguard action, or how Diana's eyes had stared at him when her grip started to go and the slithering sound of the sliding shale as it swept her away, or Corporal Dunbar's scream, "My legs, sir! Jesus, my legs!" as the blood pumped onto the mud from the jagged stumps of his thighs. All that and more, more. Sharing it would have helped, but each attempt had been a failure. Instead, there was his father at the party and the embarrassing little speech, champagne in hand; his father on the telephone, ringing his cronies ("Yes, Neal's home. In very good shape, thanks, none the worse for wear, from the look of him."), his father alone with him and saying: "The M. C.'s a damned fine decoration. Well done, Neal. I'm proud of you." No help there, no ability to pierce the stiff-lipped barriers between them, neither then nor after Portugal and Diana's funeral, walking together between the pruned roses, their collars turned against the wind---"You did everything a man could. Neal. My God, you almost went, too. Now you've got to be practical and think of the future, only the future. There's no other way, believe me."

Salvatore coughed at the table. There were fewer of them with him now; two, at least, had gone to the other rooms, and no one went on watch after Carlo. "Bring him in," Salvatore had muttered around nine o'clock. Some minutes earlier, Forrester had heard a scratching sound at the door and guessed that they were being locked in. He accepted it without bothering to make sure; there were no options open to him and never really had been.

"What kind of place is Peter-borough?"

Inger's face was profiled by the candle glow. He said lightly: "Do you honestly want to know, or are you just filling in time?"

Salvatore belched and shoved away his chair. The sliver of light under the door angled and vanished as he passed along the room. He must have been alone, for as soon as he went, the soft splashing of the waterfall was the only sound in the silence of the night.

"Monday, Palermo," Forrester said. "Tuesday or Wednesday, Oslo and Peter-borough. Just think of that, nothing else."

She reached out and touched his face, as if in gratitude. And all at once, desire flooded him. And suddenly he was lost in the sensation of his mouth and body against hers, clumsily, painfully; it had been a long time. For a few seconds, a wordless passion possessed them; then she pushed him away, partially releasing herself to twist round and extinguish the candle on the floor beside the bed. The dark swallowed them and the room vanished. "Neal," she whispered.

The skill of her lips and, fumbling, the coolness of her breasts. A glimmer of starlight touched her spread hair and hinted at the structure of her face. She giggled like a guilty child when the rusty bedsprings creaked. And when the frenzy came, a tiny corner of Forrester's mind was prepared to stifle her cry. But there was only the smallest whimper from her. Presently she curled away, and he lay on his back, the blood-red darkness beating behind his closed eyes, his brain wonderfully at a standstill.

• • •

He was the first to go outside next morning. Pinned to their door was a scrap of paper on which was scrawled in capitals Non Disturbare. Angrily, he tore it away.

When he came back from the falls a few minutes later, Margherita had the coffee on the table. The sketch of Monteliana was smudged by the passage of hands and the movement of elbows but remained perfectly distinct. Forrester studied it; a few arrows pointed cryptically; and clear of the north wall, Salvatore had placed a cross and ringed it round, but a worthwhile interpretation was impossible.

"So eager, friend? You surprise me." Forrester looked up; Salvatore had emerged from the end room, buckling his belt. "How are the explosives? We leave here late afternoon."

"I'll have them for you by noon. And this afternoon, I can give detailed instruction to whichever one you nominate."

One by one, they all came into the big room as Salvatore downed the last of his coffee and began darkening the lines of the sketch with a new piece of charcoal, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. He continued like this for several minutes, sometimes glancing at one or the other almost as if he were deliberately provoking an opening question.

Eventually, he succeeded; from the window, Giuseppe grumbled rebelliously: "When are we to be let into the secret?"

"Sit down," Salvatore said. "Sit down and listen---all of you. You, too, Margherita. Each of you has a part to play. Listen as you have never listened before. And remember---"

"Who remains here?" Giuseppe again.

"Do you hope it will be you? Monteliana will be no place for boys."

Giuseppe flushed. "I wouldn't take that from anyone else."

"Calm yourself," Salvatore said easily. "Calm yourself and listen. Luigi stays. Luigi is the youngest."

"That is unfair," Luigi protested, hands spreading.

"You stay, and that is final."

Standing by the wall, Forrester was relieved: anyone but Giuseppe.

Salvatore bent his shoulders over the outline on the table. "Everything will depend on timing---so I begin with the timing. At dusk, we leave and travel by the back roads. By five in the morning, all must be ready---and this is why. At five, the priest will be roused at his house; at half past, entrance will be made through the side gate." He indicated the small gate in the southwest corner of the west wall. "At a quarter to six, Angelo will confess through the speaking hole in his cell door."

"Ayee," Carlo broke in uneasily, quick-witted for once. "Where is this leading?"

"Instead of the priest at the door, it will be one of us. Angelo will confess nothing, but he will learn everything." Salvatore stared at them, the pale eyes bloodshot. There was a long pause. "Are you suddenly saints? Are you all so pure?"

Giuseppe licked his lips. "I don't like it."

"You I expect not to like anything," Salvatore flared. "But listen, all of you---how else can we warn him? You know about the letter Margherita delivered. It was asking the priest to say a Mass for your mother on the anniversary of her death and for Angelo to be---"

"Monday is not the anniversary."

"Esatto! You know it and Angelo knows it. Wasn't she his mother, too? Put yourself in his place. He has been waiting for something from us---a sign, a hint. We promised him, remember?" Salvatore paused, looking across at Margherita. More gently, he said: "Does it offend you, ragazza?" And when she refrained from raising her eyes to him, he began tapping his chest with both hands. "If there is a sin, it will be mine and mine alone. I am dealing with the priest. I shall be wearing his clothes. He comes and goes without restraint and so shall I. It is still dark at that hour. The morning Mass is at a quarter to seven, but there will be no Mass. Other things will have happened before Angelo is escorted to the chapel." He paused. "Very well. Now we come to the bulldozer. That surprises you, eh? The driver enters the service gate a little before seven; but tomorrow morning, Giuseppe will be inside before him. Giuseppe, you will come through the priest's gate with me and wait in the chapel enclosure." Salvatore pinpointed the place with a blackened fingernail. "At six-thirty, you climb the enclosure wall and start the bulldozer."

"And---" Giuseppe prompted.

"You don't like it, do you? Your face is as good as a second tongue."

Giuseppe, Luigi, Salvatore. That meant Carlo would place and detonate the charges: not an encouraging choice.

"You're the mechanic," Salvatore said. "That is why I chose you for this. You are the one to get the bulldozer working. If you can't, we fail. So listen. There is a towing chain on that bulldozer---you have seen it when looking into Monteliana from the cliff. You will hook it to the bars of Angelo's cell and rip them out. I have watched grilles removed during clearance work in Agrigento and they come away like dead wood from a tree."

"Grilles, maybe."

"These bars will be no different. Within two minutes of starting the (continued on page 148)Another Way(continued from page 142) bulldozer, Angelo will be out of his cell. You will have at least that amount of time before anyone raises the alarm; you are hidden from the reception block and the inner guard on the main gate and no one will immediately question the bulldozer's going into action half an hour early."

This had all the makings of a shambles, one gamble precariously balancing another: it was a house of cards of a plan.

"Then Angelo rides with you across here." Salvatore traced a confident line from the punishment block. "When you are halfway to the gates, the dynamite will be set off and you can crash through what remains of them."

"The wall at Monteliana is as high as three men," Carlo protested. "If I am to blow the gates, how will I know exactly where the bulldozer is?"

Salvatore shook his head. Straightening, he said: "You will be on top of the cliff. The sun will have risen and you will flash a hand mirror when the bulldozer is halfway to the gates. That is your job, Carlo, that and no more." He looked at Forrester. "Our friend will be outside the walls, waiting for your signal.

"You are the expert, you see," Forrester heard Salvatore saying. "The specialist. We are all incompetents, not to be relied upon---you have made that very plain. I am being wise and acting on your advice."

Forrester's voice shook. "I gave you no advice."

"It was implied. You stressed the difficulties, the technicalities."

"I can still teach someone precisely what to do. In an hour. In detail. The assembly will have been made ready, everything prepared."

"We have risks enough without taking on another."

"I am a risk." Desperately, Forrester stepped forward. "You've gone back on your word. You said you would have no interest in us alter a certain stage. I've paid enough." He could feel their eyes on him. "Ho pagato abbastanza." With the rage of the deceived, he bawled at Salvatore: "I won't do more."

"But you will. I have already warned you of the consequences."

"Warn away---and be damned. Two can play at this game." He turned, unaware that Inger had come out of their room, cannoning into her. He caught her by the elbow, meaning to retreat with her, lock themselves in, find safety of a sort---God knows. His mind was spinning.

"What's happening?" she began, startled. Giuseppe blocked the way, his flick knife like an extension of his right hand.

"Lasciami passare," Forrester gritted.

Without warning, Salvatore gripped him from behind, one arm round his throat; he must have moved like a cat. Inger let out a cry as Forrester was snatched from her.

"There are more than two. That is your misfortune, amico. Now"---to Giuseppe---"take her outside."

"No!" Forrester shouted.

"Outside," Salvatore commanded. "Who cares?" Giuseppe prodded the knife into the small of Inger's back.

"Neal. Oh, God, Neal!" She was wide-eyed as she passed Forrester.

"Stop it!" he appealed to Salvatore. "Call him off. Call him off, d'you hear?"

"You understand now?" The grip was released. "How many times do I have to tell you this is not a game?"

Coughing, Forrester leaned against the wall. Through watering eyes, he saw Inger come like a blur across the room, and he took her in his arms as if she belonged to him.

"You understand now?" Salvatore repeated.

No one was moving. Forrester said bitterly to Margherita: "Is this what you lit your candles for?" Then to Inger: "It's all right. It won't happen again. I'm going to do as they say."

"Do what?" She was trembling.

"Blow the gates for them." He wasn't able to decipher what was in her look. Relief, was it? Nothing more? A part of him wanted more. "At first I refused. It was never part of the deal. They lied to me."

Or had he deceived himself? There and then, he couldn't make sense of his thoughts. All he knew for sure was that he would never forget this place, this lousy room, the dark cynical faces of these people and what they had brought him to; and he feared what he might be brought to yet.

• • •

Forrester gazed at the outline of the lockup in a state of dismay. Technical know-how was not enough. In his mind's eye, he could picture the gates and the culvert and the distance between and the patrolling guard. He was going to be dangerously exposed, in need of all the luck there was; and if luck ran out for any single one of them, it would run out for him, too. All he could visualize was disaster.

"Afterward," he asked Salvatore woodenly, "where do I pick you up?"

"At the fork outside the town---Carlo and me. Giuseppe and Angelo came through the gate, you and Margherita---"

Forrester echoed her name in astonishment.

"You said the dynamite would need two pairs of hands. She will be your other pair." Salvatore measured him with his bloodshot stare. "It is her wish. She won't fail you, if that is what you're thinking. She is not that kind."

• • •

Twice more they covered the details, leaning over the table, pointing, gesticulating, arguing nervously. Only Margherita took no part. And Forrester soon left them; he knew enough. With a kind of heartbreak, he went into the small room and set to work on finishing the fuse assembly.

"The girl's coming with us," he told Inger. "But it could have been worse. Luigi stays with you. At least he's got a little English." Dapper, pigeon-toed Luigi, almost a boy still, the least dangerous of them all. "It won't be so bad."

The fuses were already cut to length. Forrester began fitting the detonators to the branch leads. Somehow, nothing seemed quite real again. He was years removed from the sharp end of danger, unpracticed, unprepared. In a way that he couldn't explain, he wanted Inger to fear for him; and as he bound the first leads to the main stem of instantaneous fuse, he wondered whether she really understood the situation. She seemed withdrawn, calmer again but remote, very quiet as she watched him, as if she couldn't yet grapple with the turn of events. And he wondered for a moment whether she had watched Nolan spin himself to ruin with the same lack of awareness. Yet she had been warm and fierce and generous when she gave herself; did she know no other way?

"It goes on and on," Inger said, the curious accent suggesting blame. "And every time, they ask more."

Forrester's retort was sharper than he realized. "They're warped and bitter and empty-handed, but they've got what they want out of us now."

"If the raid fails? They told you if the raid failed---"

"You mustn't talk that way." Viciously, he snapped off some binding tape. "I'll be here by nine tomorrow morning. Somehow, I'll make it."

"You wouldn't be interested in me afterward."

"You're wrong," he said. "You don't know how wrong you are. More than anything else, I want time in Palermo with you when this is finished."

He bent over the snaking assembly of fuses, trying to give all of his mind to it. The world beyond here was a different place; he could cope with its demands; nothing there would be as extreme as this. But he could see a continuing need for her when they were safe again and his present strained version of himself could be shed like a second skin. A longing like an ache mingled with the raw, prickling anxiety over what lay between and had to be accomplished first.

• • •

He had the assembly finished by 11. (continued on page 167)Another Way(continued from page 148) For once, Margherita was not at the stove or the sink; she was sitting on the steps, repairing the hem of her skirt.

Forrester went to her and said: "Unless you intend to be a passenger tonight, there are one or two things you'd better learn."

She followed him in and watched while he roughed out on the table a diagram of the main gate and the culvert. In the simplest possible terms, he then explained what had to be done, drawing in the instantaneous fuse branches that would lead to each of the six hinges. They fanned left and right in pairs, the second pair longer than the first and the third longer again, in order to reach the higher hinges: the over-all assembly had the look of a squidlike body with enormous tendrils reaching out from its head, and each tendril then split to form a kind of claw. When they got to Monteliana, Forrester told her, he would tip each of these ends with a detonator and one prefabricated charge; then, too, he would tape to the base of the central stem the short ten-second piece of safety fuse and the initiating detonators. Not before, not with the kind of roads they'd meet on the way.

"You needn't concern yourself with this," he said, "but it will take time, perhaps half an hour. I'll need you from then on, though. Salvatore says the guard circles every hour."

"There is another one who patrols inside the wall. We have not been able to check his movements, but he comes and goes from the reception block."

Forrester ran a hand over his mouth. How much more would he learn---and perhaps too late? "Are you certain about the outside guard?"

"Quite certain. We have watched him from the cliff. On several nights. He is away from the gates for about fifty minutes at a time, in front of them for ten."

"Look," he said, indicating the diagram. "The fuses will lead out of the culvert, on either side, and stretch across the ground to the bottom of the gates. They've got to be buried, covered over; otherwise, the guard will see them. They needn't go deep---a couple of centimeters will do---but it means we'll have to score the ground flanking the surfaced drive-in." It was baked weed-sown earth, as he remembered it, iron hard, probably. "There's a tire lever in the boot of the car; we'll see if it's of any use in a moment. If not, we'll find something that is....Now, tonight, covering the fuse is a job you can put your hands to. If you're correct about the guard, we'll have three quarters of an hour or so.

"The next problem will be the upper hinges. They're too high to reach, unless you climb to them, but I doubt if there are any easy footholds." He'd thought of getting to them by inserting himself between the pivot end of the gate and the recessed angle of wall, forcing himself up like a rock-climber in a chimney, with knees and shoulders wedging him in position. But with help, there was a better way, quicker and quieter. "So, for the top hinge in each gate, you can stand on my shoulders."

Carlo had come to listen. "Mind how he holds your legs," he grinned at Margherita.

"Lasciami sola! Go away and practice with your bit of glass."

"Phweee," Carlo said, raising his hands as if to ward off a blow. "You should hear yourself---dynamiter."

Carlo was tense, despite the show of teeth; they all were, keeping clear of one another---Giuseppe cleaning the shotgun at the other end of the room, Salvatore somewhere outside, Luigi at the door, where Inger was. "You want to play checkers, signorina? Pass the time? I will beat you today, you see....No? Sure?" The sense of unreality swept Forrester again and, with it, there was something like a momentary touch of fear, a tightening in the belly and the thighs.

"Come," he said to Margherita. "I'll show you how to lay a charge."

• • •

At five, Salvatore called everyone together and held what passed for a final briefing session. Forrester didn't wait for him to finish. He started loading the explosives into the car. Very carefully, he coiled the fuse assembly and wrapped it in a blanket that he had obtained from Margherita. The gelatin slabs he packed into their original rope-handled box; unarmed, they were harmless enough, no matter how much jolting they received. Spare detonators and a fresh roll of tape he carried on his person. The wrapped assembly fitted comfortably into the boot and the box of explosives he loaded separately, wedging it on the floor in front of the driver's seat.

It was soon done. When he went back in, Margherita was clearing the table for a meal. They ate soup, bread and cheese, in silence. The dusk was thickening, but they sat there in the gloom. Only when they had finished did Margherita drag the sacking across the windows.

When the time came, Forrester whispered to Inger, "Wish me luck." He couldn't bring himself to say more. There was a feeling like lead in his heart. His smile, he knew, was a failure. He squeezed her on both arms, then turned away; and as he walked to the door, he remembered he had first seen that lost look on her face when Nolan had abandoned her and left her to fend for herself.

He clattered down the sagging steps into the dark blue of the evening. Luigi followed them out, nervous, trying to joke. Salvatore got in beside Forrester; Carlo, Giuseppe and Margherita, into the rear. The doors slammed. Forrester switched the headlights on and fired the engine.

"Ciao," Luigi was calling, tapping the glass. "Safe and sound."

Then Carlo, winding the window down: "Look after the Englishwoman."

Forrester turned the Fiat in the clearing, the tires not gripping well in the yielding ground, pine needles spitting out behind them. The door of the hut was shut as they rocked slowly by, and Forrester threaded through the trees, dismayed for Inger as never before and filled with a sense of deprivation that seemed to choke his mind.

• • •

There was no moon, only the stars. Twenty past six and they were pricking through. The landscape was even more forbidding in the silvered darkness, even more lonely. When they eventually struck the highway that lay across their front, Forrester made his turn without prompting. He drove with dipped beams, not fast, taking no risks; and two or three times they were overtaken, once by a low-slung Lancia that snorted past and away.

The villages Forrester remembered: they loomed up out of the night and trapped them for a while in their narrow slots of streets. Figures silhouetted in lighted doorways, a few shadowy people on the pavements, singly or in pairs, and the same hot, ancient smells that seemed to reek of decay.

Then the dog-legging began, the endless changes of direction through the wilderness. For perhaps 20 minutes, almost the only words spoken came from Salvatore---"Alla destra....Alla sinistra....Dritto, dritto." He sat forward, hunched, watching the road as it bucked and twisted into the swinging beam of the headlights. The hills reared up and fell sheer away; the warm night air came licking in through the vents.

A T-junction lay ahead; vaguely, Forrester recalled it. He swung right, onto a paved surface; and all at once, his heart missed a beat. A truck was askew across the road, half in the ditch, and someone flashed a torch at them in warning.

"Carabiniere," Salvatore hissed. "Keep moving."

Forrester cut the headlights and nosed forward. The torch kept flashing at them. "It's a breakdown."

"Merda!"---Giuseppe.

Half blinded, Forrester shielded his eyes. All this in moments. They drew level with the carabiniere, who stepped aside, waving them on. He bent forward, looking in at them as they went past. Then they were clear, drawing away, and everyone started jabbering at once, gesticulating with relief. All except Forrester; he hadn't these safety valves; but the sweat seemed to chill on his skin as his pulse thudded.

"You should have blessed him, Salvatore," Carlo laughed, high pitched. "You are the priest."

And Salvatore erupted: "Enough of that!"

Forrester glanced at him hurriedly, seeing him in profile---the hooked nose, the crinkled hair. There were other fears---sins as well as crimes. But to each his own. Forrester drove on. An animal's eyes glowed in the headlights and he dabbed the brake; God, he was jumpy.

A few kilometers more showed on the clock. His eyes and arms ached from the concentration. Seven twenty-five. A car passed in the other direction, one of the few they'd met. "Watch out for the sign," Salvatore said.

A minute later, it showed in the lights, as if in obedience to his will: Monteliana---3 KM. Then the zigzags met them, plunging them into and raising them out of a trough, the road finally leveling off, the drop to one side, the narrow plateau appearing on the right.

"Fermi, fermi. Now, Carlo, out."

Carlo opened the nearside door and dropped stiffly onto the shoulder. His face looked star-green in the dimness.

Margherita pulled the door to. Forrester headed past the fork and along the road that curved down to where Monteliana lay on the hill shelf at the base of the cliff. Halfway down, four men walked toward them in file, wheeling bicycles, and their stares seemed to imply knowledge.

"Slowly into the town," Salvatore said. The lights of the place came at them as if a curtain were being drawn aside; a sprinkling first and then the main concentration, topped by the illuminated dome of the church. They were into the fringes, wasteland scattered with single-story buildings and clumps of prickly pear, hoardings and rubble. Salvatore delayed, exercising his authority, before saying: "Here." Forrester braked.

"Do what you have to do," Salvatore said as a parting shot, "and you will have no regrets. If it should enter your head to abandon us and drive to the hut alone, I warn you it will do you and the woman no good. Luigi has been told. Either we return there together or you carry a written message from me. Which will happen I shall decide tomorrow."

Standing on the edge of the road with Giuseppe beside him in his cloth cap, Salvatore seemed to have shrunk. Forrester glared one last time at these awful allies, who had bungled and lost once before.

• • •

Music blared from a bar in the main street. A Franciscan friar flapped in sandals along the pavement. Forrester nosed the Fiat carefully through the evening strollers who spilled onto the carriageway. In the small square, a crowd watched a puppet show and lovers sat in pairs on the public benches. Sunday night: normality was everywhere. He drove on through and out of the center of things, on the alert for uniforms. He made the two remembered turns, right and left, and the town began to break up again as the road to the lockup ran parallel to the rising cliff face.

He was hard under the cliff, perhaps 50 yards from the strip of road, when he braked and switched off. As the engine died, the silence came flooding in, unnerving, more intense than he could remember, no waterfall, nothing except the stillness and the continuing sensation of movement after the drive.

He lifted the box of explosives after him and put it on the ground; pocketed the car keys. Action eased the grip on his nerves. As quietly as he could, he pushed the door to. Then he went to the boot, pulled the blanket away and removed the fuse assembly and the tire lever. The dirt-streaked white Fiat looked dreadfully conspicuous, the windscreen's pale reflection a giveaway, and he made an effort to camouflage it. He scavenged round with Margherita until they found a couple of sheets of rusted corrugated iron, and these they propped across the front of the bonnet and partially along one side; the coarse blanket, spread out and weighted down, covered most of the glass.

They kept close to the cliff and staggered over the rough ground. As they reached the crest, the lockup became visible, its great sandstone walls grayish under the stars. Two hundred yards. They must have taken five minutes to reach halfway. Every few paces, Forrester paused, searching for a sign of the guard, but in vain. Once, Margherita kicked against a stone and it dislodged others, freezing them between strides until the rattling ended.

They covered perhaps 30 yards more. They were slightly less exposed than if they'd been out in the open, yet they were casting pale shadows; the stars were strong and there wasn't a sign of a cloud. Obliquely, the main gates were edging into view now. Just ahead, there was a very slight concave depression in the base of the cliff; and when they reached it, Forrester indicated to Margherita to go to ground. He laid the weighty fuse assembly flat, then sat down, back to the rock.

Something throbbed in the distance, faint to begin with, growing louder. A plane? Yes. Presently, Forrester saw it, not too high, a fixed pattern of lights plowing through the quivering sky, slow-wheeling toward Palermo, he reckoned. And he thought, with an immense envy, of the people up there, imagining them with their final duty-free drinks, their traveler's checks and lire, their cameras and baggage. Whoever they were, they were his kind, Inger's kind, and nothing as nightmarish as this would happen to them.

Six minutes past eight. He could feel his heart beating against his drawn-up knees.

• • •

A dry cough was the first indication of the guard's arrival. Margherita nudged Forrester and pointed to the far corner of the lockup wall, near the observation point. Forrester soon picked him out; he patrolled clockwise, then. The guard ambled along the length of the wall and each gritty step on the gravel traveled as if amplified by the silence. He took his time, certainly. As he neared the gates, he coughed again, then cursed quietly. At that range---60, 70 yards, say---he seemed to lack menace. But when he reached the gates, he stopped and pulled a chair from an angle in the wall, grunted and sat down. And, as he did so, Forrester saw that he unslung a rifle from his shoulder.

Eight twelve. The guard lit a cigarette. They sat watching, not moving, and they could see the red glow fade and brighten and the smoke swirl in the still air. Every minute seemed to stretch elastically into distortions of time. Now and again, the guard muttered to himself. At 8:20, he flipped the cigarette end toward the culvert. At 8:23, he got up and pushed the chair into the angle of the wall. Then he opened a slot in the wicket door in the right-hand gate, poked his head inside and called, in a bored voice that suggested he'd done it a million times before: "Leaving now." Was he speaking to the other guard---or to someone on duty in the reception block?

Eight twenty-five. The guard slung his rifle and proceeded on his round. He'd turned into view at nine minutes past, and now he reached the near corner at exactly 8:27: they would therefore be exposed to him for anything up to 20 minutes at a stretch, 20 minutes in every hour.

Forrester uncoiled the fuse assembly and spread it out; from end to end, it stretched all of 50 feet. The detonators were in his shirt pockets, wrapped in handkerchiefs, and he put these on the ground also, together with the binding tape. Then he opened the box and removed the first of the 12 made-up charges. Margherita watched him intently. With expert care, he began arming the fuse ends---a detonator first, crimping it with his teeth until the open end bit into the fuse, then inserting the detonator into the explosive, sandwiching it between the double slabs, finally taping it firmly into position. The starlight was wonderfully strong; too strong.

• • •

The guard reappeared at precisely five past nine. So his tour took less than an hour; he wasn't as like clockwork as Margherita had made out. But his ritual was much the same---the leisurely approach, the break to rest his feet, the cigarette. He was younger than Forrester had supposed; he sang quietly to himself as he lolled on the chair, and it wasn't an old voice. This time, instead of opening the slot in the wicket door, he twice rapped the rifle butt against the gate and called: "Going round." All in all, he remained in view for 21 minutes.

Reluctantly, Forrester got to his feet. He couldn't reasonably delay anymore. The fuse assembly was completely armed, ready, but he wouldn't move it until later. The culvert had to be inspected first, and it was up to him to do it. "You stay here," he said.

He took the tire lever from her. Instinctively, he crouched as he went forward. The stunted bushes dotting the hard, stony soil were no more than knee-high. He covered the 50-yard distance at a walk, skipping into the dwarfed ghost of his shadow, eyes darting left and right. The ditch was deceptively deep and he staggered down its bank to the open end of the culvert, the gates hardly more than 20 feet away, the walls towering. It was a brick culvert, square shaped, wide enough to take them both but silted, partially blocked with dead thorn wood and heaps of detritus, a faint glimmer showing through from the other end.

He squirmed in and the tire lever struck against the brickwork with a hard, ringing sound. It was pitch black inside: something springy brushed his face and he clawed it away. He could just about crouch on hands and knees under the low roof. Moss-covered sides, dried slush and muck beneath him. As a refuge, it would serve, but the air was foul and for a few claustrophobic seconds he struggled for breath. With difficulty, he managed to turn himself round, so that he faced outward; the small noises as he did so seemed to megaphone past him into the open.

Looking back under his right armpit, he could see a bush partly screening the other end. All to the good. He groped about, fingers like antennas, trying to establish shape and substance, clearing the culvert of everything loose that might rattle and betray them; it was going to be a tight fit with Margherita in there as well.

He scrambled out of the ditch, tiptoed across the road and headed through the scrub, and with every step, his nerves were braced for a shout from behind, a challenge. He came along the base of the cliff to where Margherita was and squatted beside her, breathing hard, his face glistening.

Then Forrester began looping the assembly into manageable size, careful not to disturb the junctions or tangle the leads. The dark of the culvert was no place for repairs or involved unraveling. With the charges taped on, it was considerably heavier and more unwieldy than before.

Once again, he looked at his watch; they had just about long enough before the guard's return. He lifted the end where the charges were bundled and Margherita took the other. "Ready?" he whispered.

She nodded. They went side by side, cradling the assembly between them, moving slower than when Forrester had been alone. A tiny part of his mind registered the fact that a flock of small clouds had gathered low in the southwest, but this was only a fleeting, almost unconscious distraction. He was back in a no man's land where stealth and tension were the measure. They reached the road without incident. He thought they were going to be all right then; but as they made for the ditch, they heard the guard's dry cough and for one awful moment Forrester almost panicked.

They all but lost their balance in the frantic stumble down the slope to the culvert. Anyone on the alert inside the gates could hardly have missed the disturbance. Whether the guard had turned the corner, Forrester didn't know, and he wasn't waiting to check. Crouching, he hissed: "Get in! Get in!"

Margherita didn't need telling; she disappeared headfirst, dragging the assembly after her. As soon as her legs vanished, Forrester followed, sculling on his elbows, the two of them creating an almost continuous resonance. Her feet struck him in the face and he bit his lip to seal the grunt of pain. But he was in, desperately sliding the last of the fuse alongside---or trying to. Suddenly, it went taut in his hands and wouldn't move.

Stuck, the charges caught on something.

He started to swivel round, contorting himself in the narrow tunnel, hoping to release them; but the guard coughed again, from along the wall now, and Forrester knew it could be fatal to move another inch. And he dared not tug the fuse any more, in case he damaged the connections. Peering through the blood-beat in his eyes, he could just discern the darkish bundle of charges protruding into the starlit ditch.

The guard's footsteps crunched on the path below the wall. "Where is he?" he wanted to ask; Margherita could probably see him. Then, as if she read his mind, he felt the pressure of a shoe against his neck. Close, very close, a stone's throw. In despair, he made one more furtive attempt to free the charges, twisting until he thought the muscles in his back would snap, reaching as far as he possibly could, but in vain.

"Ayee," they heard the guard sigh, and the sound funneled in to them. Footsteps, the scrape of the chair being shifted, an unintelligible mutter, another cough, then the strike of a match. They lay motionless.

At last the guard moved again. Yawning, he stood up. And all at once, a shower of sparks cascaded over Forrester's end of the culvert, dying as they drifted down to the explosives. The guard swore quietly and walked forward, his footsteps vibrating through the brickwork. Immediately above them, he stopped, heeling out the lighted cigarette stub; and it was beyond Forrester's understanding how it was that he didn't notice the dull glint of the aluminum detonators jutting from the charges or the charges themselves.

A rough, grating sound, and the butt was swept over into the ditch. Then, after an age, the footsteps retreated. Thump, thump on the gate. "On my way."

And relief broke through Forrester like a dam bursting, dribbles of sweat salting his lips.

• • •

He edged to the culvert's entrance and released the charges: they were caught behind tufts of weed, but the junctions were intact, as far as he could tell.

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness; no longer was he groping. He brought the thick central stem of the assembly to the center of the culvert and began fanning the leads left and right, six to one side, six to the other, moving them with great care. It was enormously difficult, the space too cramped, the leads too long. But eventually he was satisfied.

"This way," he breathed to Margherita. "Don't ever use that side---the bush there's good camouflage."

She followed him, bringing the tire lever, crossing herself as she emerged. They crouched in the ditch, the massive iron-studded gates seeming to rise sheer above them, the wicket door like a trap that could spring them to disaster. To test the ground, he took the lever and showed her where to score a shallow trench up the side of the ditch---half an inch or so deep, half an inch wide.

He left her and crept out of the ditch. Twelve to fourteen feet separated him from the gates---four to five strides---yet it must have taken him all of a minute to reach them. He kept to the rough shoulder beside the tarmac strip, transferring his weight from leg to leg with the caution of someone moving on thin ice.

The gates were set slightly back from the end pillars of the wall and the chair the guard used stood in the recess on the right. Forrester slid into the one on the left and began to examine the heavy strap hinges; with relief, he saw that they presented no unexpected difficulties. Through the narrow gap between wall and gate, he could just make out the squat shape of the reception block: it was about ten yards away. A light glowed in the end window, but there was no sign of occupation; nor could Forrester see or hear anything of the guard who was said to patrol the lockup grounds. Inside, everything was deathly quiet; but twice behind him, Margherita struck stone; and to him, the tiny sound seemed enormous, making him wince with alarm.

He studied the hinges once more, professionally satisfied that he hadn't underestimated the weight of explosive; they were old and rusted and would shear through without trouble. This was a gamble that could be---and had been---calculated. But the long-drawn business of placing the charges and burying the fuses could not; and then, in the last resort, the success of the demolition was going to hang on whether the guard was observant enough to notice either what was taped to the hinges or the fuses branching up the recessed sections of the wall.

Forrester sidled clear and stepped back, searching the sky beyond the sandstone arch for the clouds he had seen an hour ago, willing them to thicken, drift, kill the telltale brightness. There was time yet, though not too much; he couldn't delay beyond one o'clock, and already it was nearing eleven. He went on his toes to the ditch and hurried down. Margherita was bent like a reaper at the other end of the culvert.

"The guard's due back in a matter of minutes," he whispered. "According to you, he's relieved at midnight. So, to be on the safe side, we won't move until the new man has made his first circuit. The new one may have a different routine."

"But that means we must wait here for two hours!" Margherita's whisper was aggressive. "No. It is madness." Small echoes of her voice seemed to snap in the culvert.

"You are all alike," Forrester answered. "None of you knows how to wait. Just think, if you can't afford a little patience right now, Angelo will have to be patient in prison many years." He waited and at last she sighed and settled back quietly. It was his only lever of control and he hoped he wouldn't have to use it too often.

• • •

The guard reached the gate soon after 11; Forrester didn't check the exact time. They lay doubled up in the culvert, listening to every move he made, every sound he uttered. The air seemed more stifling, more dust-laden, as the minutes crawled by, and Forrester dreaded that he would sneeze or reflexively clear his throat. He tried to calm himself by letting his thoughts go free, away from here and the pulsing beat of his heart's measurement of time.

Had Carlo had them under observation from the cliff top? What were the others doing? and Inger? ... Most of all, Inger.

A faint swishing suddenly reached his ears. Mystified, he looked down the ditch and, to his horror, he saw a dog loping along its bank. He caught Margherita by the arm and drew her close, lips pressed into her hair, mouthing the warning. "Cane."

A bitch, skin and bone, like a greyhound, teats swinging. Jesus, if it came to the culvert....As if mesmerized, Forrester watched it sniff hungrily about among the weeds, pause, urinate and move nearer. Then the guard saved them.

"Go away! Hey! Hey! Off with you!"

The bitch halted, ears flattened. There was a scraping noise by the gates, as if the guard had jumped to his feet. A stone clipped into the ground. The bitch spun round and scurried away, bounded over the ditch and vanished. "Yaaah," the guard growled, settling back onto his chair. "Filth, you."

Relief seesawed down through Forrester again; under the skin, his flesh tingled. Their luck was holding. He touched Margherita, conveying that the danger had passed. Long, spun-out minutes elapsed. When he shifted his weight from one bent arm to the other, the elbow seemed to crack like a pistol shot. The guard was in no hurry to get going. And when, at last, he chose to dispense with the chair, he didn't stray far from the gates. He patrolled the front wall only, back and forth a couple of times, cap askew, yawning frequently, covered all the way by either Forrester or Margherita, according to which side of the gates he was on. Toward 12, Forrester saw the leading edge of packed cloud beginning imperceptibly to push northward above the lockup wall and he stared up at it in thankfulness. It was coming at the right time, but when it had spread over and the worst of the light had gone, the worry would be that the cloud wouldn't last. The starshine had reached a peak now; he could make out details of the guard's shabby uniform and the narrow, lopsided features.

At midnight sharp, the wicket door opened. They heard the bolt pulled, the door creak and someone step through.

"Ciao, Silvio," the newcomer said without enthusiasm. "How's it gone?" Older, this one; gruff.

"As usual."

"Cheer up. It's a living." The door creaked to and the bolt was rammed home. Without waiting, the new guard set off on patrol, clockwise again, his pace a shade quicker than the other's. Forrester followed him with his eyes---short, fat, with a sailor's roll. And at last, he and Margherita could relax, stretch their numbed limbs, speak.

"In an hour, or as soon after as possible, we tackle the right-hand set of hinges. You can complete the channel all the way to the recess in the wall, lay the leads in and bury them. By the time you've done that, I'll be ready for your help on the top hinge. We'll need to work fast. There ought to be some cloud cover, which will help, but twenty to twenty-five minutes should be about long enough."

He crawled into the ditch with the tire lever. The pinkish sky glow over the town had dimmed a little, but the mottled clouds hardly seemed to have shifted. For a second or two before clambering out of the ditch, Forrester was tempted by the comparative nearness of the car, the keys in his pocket. Margherita was powerless; she wasn't armed. But Luigi was; and whether he could cope with him, surprise him at the hut, was really all that stood between his breaking away---and had from the start. Salvatore had foreseen this gap in his hold on him and had warned Luigi, purposely left him the shotgun.

For a long moment, the choice swung like a pendulum, before Forrester turned and made his way cautiously across the tarmac strip to the ditch at the culvert's other end. Better the risks you knew; at least they carried what passed for a guarantee.

• • •

The light began to thicken not long before the new guard completed his first tour. They heard his gritty approach from the far corner of the wall at three minutes after the hour; he was more of a schedule keeper. When he reached the gates, he made use of the chair, but only briefly: he was soon on his feet again, circling aimlessly, idly kicking at stones, as if he found moving about lessened the inevitable tedium.

Even from inside the culvert, Forrester could perceive that the clouds were hazing the moon at last. Not too early; the luck was lasting like a dream. So far....All the way, for Christ's sake, all the way.

The chair was pushed aside. One fifteen....Now the worst was coming. The guard shuffled off, head and shoulders rolling as he passed along the wall. Forrester waited until he had turned the corner.

"Yes?"---almost inaudibly.

"Yes," he answered thickly. "Come on."

He crept immediately to the far side of the culvert, where the bush was, and pulled out the right-hand leads of the fuse assembly. They came freely, like well-coiled cord, the main lead a single stem of fuse that branched into six only over the last quarter of its length. He backed up the bank and then went sideway toward the gates, stepping as if his feet pained him. It was decidedly darker, the clouds like ice floes. He moved the guard's chair, eased into the wall recess and squinted through the gap, getting a direct view of the lighted window in the reception block; it framed a shirt-sleeved man reading a newspaper. Roughly, Forrester measured the fuse branches against the distance between hinges and found he'd estimated well; not too little, only a shade too much. Glancing round, he then saw that Margherita was first scraping a guideline across the level ground and the path the guard used.

For hours, the binding tape had pressed against Forrester's left thigh. Now he crouched in the recess and started taping the two lowest charges. The straps of the hinges joined as they left the wood, angling sharply from back and front of the gate, narrowing down, metal to metal. The light seemed to be going all the time, but he could just about see; and in any case, he was skilled enough to have done this blindfolded. The charges fitted snugly against the hinge and there was an adequate gap to put his hands through when stringing the tape round. Again and again, he lifted his eyes nervously to the lighted window; it was half open; and when the man turned the newspaper, the rustle sounded crisp and clear. In places, Margherita was having to chip gently at the ground and the noise, small though it was, undermined Forrester's hard-held control. Was he deaf in there?

He straightened: the middle hinge he could manage standing, reaching up. He guided the second pair of fuse branches up the wall by way of fissures between the worn sandstone blocks, doing his best to hide their presence. The black tape and the chocolate-brown slabs merged well with the rusted metal---at least while the clouds dulled everything down---but the fuses would be there for anyone with eyes to see. At dawn, too.

The first of the second two charges was in position when the man on duty tossed the paper aside, stood up and came to the window. For an appalled moment, Forrester believed the funzionario had heard something; lips parted, stock-still, he squinted through the gap. But the man pulled the window to and shut it, as if the night air was now too sharp for him. For Forrester, there was no such chill; a sweaty fever seemed to be on him. He sucked in air and taped the other charge into position on the reverse side of the hinge, separating them by about half an inch to produce a shearing effect, fingers shaking as he ran the tape over.

Margherita had worked to within a yard or so of him. One thirty-five....He left the last two charges dangling and edged out of the recess to give her room, everything in him urging her to hurry, and every strike on stone, every granular crunch as she moved, made him want to tear the lever from her and complete the job himself.

At last, she finished. In dumb show, he instructed her to prop the lever against the wall and climb onto his shoulders. The chair wouldn't give him the necessary height. He stooped to receive her, hauling her up until her feet straddled his neck. Awkwardly, using the wall to keep balanced, he sidled into the recess and passed up the tape, then the first of the remaining leads, relying on her now, wishing he could repeat his instructions, yet not daring to, eying the man in the window ten bare yards away, Margherita's legs against his ears, partially blocking his hearing.

He seemed to bear her weight for an impossibly long time before she kicked him gently on the shoulder to indicate that she needed the second charge. He passed it up and waited, fretting the minutes through. Quarter to? Ten to? Come on, his mind said. Come on. ... Then she kicked him again and, bending, reached down with the tape. He backed out of the recess and leaned, so that she could scramble off his back.

Forrester gazed up at the charges she had placed; they looked all right. Here and there, he was again able to bend a fuse lead into a wall crevice, but some were at impossible angles, so he licked his fingers, ran the wet along the leads and showered them with dust scooped from the recess, doing this repeatedly, masticating spittle onto his tongue, transferring the taste of the explosive to his mouth until he could bear it no more.

Gently, he lifted the chair back into the recess. For the last time, he tiptoed away from the right-hand gate. The man in the window was drinking from an enamel mug. Margherita had by now channeled two thirds of the way to the ditch. Forrester picked up the tire lever and moved behind her, treading the repacked earth a shade firmer. When she reached the ditch, he went past her and roughly buried the fuse into the shallow cut, not so carefully here, where weeds and an uneven surface made natural camouflage.

Once again, they went back into the culvert, where his heart hammered as if it were in an echo chamber and the bittersweet stench from his hands made him want to retch. Seven minutes to two. They'd taken longer than he had bargained for; but now that it was done, it seemed like a miracle that they should have got away with it without a hitch.

"That was good, eh?" There was something like elation in Margherita's voice. "All right?"

"All right, yes." Forrester swallowed, mouth dry, sweat running in greasy streams. "Now there's just one more time."

• • •

Again, they waited for the guard. There had been so much waiting, and there was plenty still to come; but from now on, there was a difference. From now on, with hourly regularity, they had to trust in the guard's blindness, instinctive and otherwise, to the fact that something might be wrong.

He was round at five minutes after two. There must be other stopping points, Forrester decided; if this one kept to his rolling pace for three quarters of an hour, he would circle the lockup at least twice.

They heard him drag the chair forward and subside, the thump of his rifle butt. Five times now, they had strained and listened, deciphering the meaning of sounds; but, as always, the silences prickled the nerves. Was he sniffing, having caught the very slightest whiff of the explosive? Hardly---and yet....Staring at the ground between his feet, curious about some loose soil? God alone knew. They could only wait and hope, afraid to stir, willing him to get up and mooch away again. Had Margherita known what it would be like? Not once had she faltered.

At 2:15, the guard sighed and lifted his rifle---they heard the slap of the sling. Then he rose and shoved the chair back into the recess. If he were going to notice anything, it could be then; but no. Unlike his colleague, he didn't signal his departure by banging the gate. Watching, Forrester dimly saw him move along the top of the bank: thank God for the clouds; the night was all shadow now. One more time....

He gave the guard a minute, then wriggled into the open and dragged the other half of the assembly after him, paying it out as he climbed the bank. They had a pattern to follow, a successful drill; but this time, he found it harder---harder because he was clumsy, harder because he seemed to have depleted himself already, harder because he couldn't observe the man in the window and use him as a partial safety gauge. In every way more jittery, less efficient, more prey to speculation. And slower, every error time consuming.

Twice, he botched taping the bottom charges. Once, the tape dropped from his fingers, and only by reaching through at arm's stretch did he retrieve it from the other side of the gate. And at one point, Margherita jarred the tire lever so heavily against rock that fear clutched at his throat. He managed the middle hinge better, though still like a novice, vital minutes slipping away. A crossed lead, an insecure detonator....They were cutting it desperately fine. Margherita had finished gouging the channel well before he was ready for her and so she started burying the fuse, covering it loosely with her hands, then treading it down. She was into the ditch when he signaled her.

Almost three....Frantically, he hauled her onto his shoulders and edged into the recess. They could still make it. A few minutes more. The tape and one of the charges handed up. Hurry, hurry, for Christ's sake....

And then, with a stab of terror that seemed to disintegrate his mind, Forrester heard the guard on the path only yards away.

All control went in the first elemental rush of panic. He started to twist clear, about to run, meaning to run, but Margherita prevented him---not only her weight on his shoulders but the hissed command.

"Don't move!"

Suddenly, in contrast, he was petrified, his brain numb. Crunch, crunch, on the stony path. There had been no warning. Forrester's insides seemed to be dribbling away, his legs trembling, Margherita motionless above him. Together, they leaned into the dark within the dark, faces to the corner. The guard sauntered to a standstill when he was level with the gates, broke wind, then dragged the chair from the other recess. It was beyond belief that he hadn't seen them. He was terribly close; they could hear his rasped breathing, the dry sound of his hands being rubbed together, the small pressure creaks of the chair as his weight was shifted.

Time seemed to have run to a stop for Forrester. As if in a coma, he remained motionless, muscles quivering in legs and arms but the rest of him still frozen, scarcely conscious of Margherita's weight and the bite of her heels into his shoulders. Eyes shut, taking air through the mouth, pulse like a pile driver.

"A lot of fools," the guard complained, abruptly giving vent to some private, grievance. "They should have known."

The suddenness of his voice raised the hairs on Forrester's neck. Sweat stung his eyes when he opened them. Dimly, the remaining charge dangled in front of him on its length of fuse. Simultaneously, time started to pick up again, his mind beginning to clear. Margherita's legs had his head in a vise and he couldn't shift it, couldn't risk a slight turning motion to look round. With heightened awareness, he heard a blob of sweat plop onto his shoe, then another. He tensed for some reaction from the guard, but nothing happened---no scuffling of feet that could follow a searching sidelong glance, no alarmed snatching for the rifle.

"Camillo," the man muttered, "you bastard, you....Bastardo," he repeated with relish.

Margherita remained like a statue. How long? Five minutes? And how much longer? It couldn't last. Forrester gritted his teeth. For a drawn-out moment, the starlight seemed to swell, as if coming again, but the dark held steady. On and on, not a movement from them, wire taut, the charge close to Forrester's face bouncing in and out of focus with every beat of his heart. Far off, a dog was barking somewhere. The smell of the explosive hung in the recess. Behind him, the chair creaked and creaked again. More leaking drips of sweat. His thoughts were going frantically in all directions at once. Thank God she'd buried the fuses: it would have ended already but for that....

Silence, time crawling by. Dust in the mouth, nerves pricking needle points of ice and fire. And something rising slowly within him like a bubble in oil, something unidentified, waiting to surface as soon as the tension snapped. Either way.

The guard whistled softly to himself, feet tapping a gritty rhythm. Another minute, another lifetime. Then, as suddenly as he had arrived, he decided to go. He got up and dragged the chair back to its usual place. Forrester cringed: now it would come, now. Shapes in the far recess, shadows among shadows---the man must see....But with disbelief, he heard the guard sling his rifle, cross the tarmac strip and start along the path beyond the end pillar of the wall.

A shudder surged through Forrester from head to toe, but neither he nor Margherita moved. They continued to wait for an unnecessarily long time after the guard had gone. Presently, though, Forrester felt Margherita reaching down for the last charge and he passed it up.

Relief was so intense that he was close to vomiting. In a daze, when Margherita had taped the charge and clambered off his back, he trained the leads into the wall crevices, wet them and powdered them with dust. By the time he turned to retreat, she had already re-trod any telltale blemishes where the fuses were entrenched and was waiting for him in the ditch.

"Mother of God," she said solemnly, but nothing more; not then.

• • •

Diana....Unseeing, Forrester stared along the ditch toward the sleeping town. When the shale started shifting under his feet as he reached for her, there had been another selfsame moment, an instant of utter terror, making him draw back. Vividly, the scene overlaid his vision. Reaching for her, their fingers separated only by inches, gasping "Hold on! Hold on!" And then the loss of a foothold, the cold gust of fear and the cowardly pulling away from inches to feet, ankle-deep in the sliding surface of the hill, the shale spilling out over the cliff and Diana's eyes never leaving his. Hopelessly trying again, outstretched, fingers almost touching, only to see her swept suddenly into the ravine.

He clenched his hands, bewildered. His mind teemed with mocking images of himself, all bluff and bravado, ignorant of the flaw, the weakness now exposed like pus hidden from him by the scars and the healed memories.

• • •

With an effort, Forrester screwed his mind to meet the coming crisis. Ten to five. "At five, I deal with the priest. At five-thirty, Giuseppe and I enter the lockup by the chapel gate"---Salvatore's words had the ring of something recalled after waking. Salvatore, Giuseppe, Carlo, Luigi....

Forrester stretched himself as best he could. An hour and a half more. Away in the town, the cocks were beginning to crow in the false dawn.

The first glimmer of light would test the camouflage, but chance must take its course. The guard had only one more turn to make before Forrester got the signal from the cliff. The main risks were elsewhere now. Already, the raid was under way---5:40; Salvatore and Giuseppe would be inside. They must have got to the chapel gate round by the south wall; there had been no sign of anyone along this side, no sound except the guard's, only the night and the dawn slowly forming as the clouds thinned.

"Listen," Forrester told Margherita. "The instantaneous fuse could burst our eardrums in a confined space like this. We'll have a ten-second delay after ignition, exactly ten. The guard will have moved away by six-thirty, but we'll still have to keep under cover until the very last. So be ready to run for it the moment I ignite---up the bank and toward the cliff."

In the dimness of the culvert, he saw her nod.

Quarter to six. Angelo ostensibly confessing; Salvatore at the cell door, acting out his sin. No noise within the walls, no commotion: the house of cards hadn't collapsed yet....Quietly, Forrester shifted position, easing his cramped limbs. In Monteliana, a bell began to clang.

Every time Forrester peered at his watch, it hardly seemed to have moved on. An age passed before they heard the guard traipse round the far corner. Three minutes after six....The darkness was draining rapidly, colors seeping back. They heard the guard yawn as he sat down; idly, he began pitching pebbles at a rusty can a few feet along the ditch on Margherita's side. Once, he hit it and grunted approval.

A little more light, a little more color---browns, gray-greens and yellows, a fiery sliver of pink low in the east. Still no hint of a disturbance within the walls. Salvatore should be clear, Giuseppe biding his time in the chapel enclosure, Carlo ready on the cliff top, Angelo....Six twelve....

The guard continued with his game for another minute or two, then yawned again, rose and dragged the chair into the recess. If something were to catch his eye, it would be now; but no. He shuffled along the path, rolling as he went, and blearily, Forrester watched him go.

"Can you see Carlo?"

Margherita wriggled to the culvert's rim and looked out and up. "No," she said at last. Her calmness could only be a kind of fatalism.

Six twenty....Day was shaping in earnest, pink turning to scarlet, an arc of sun rising above the town. Forrester took a crumpled cigarette from the pack and put it between his teeth, drew out a match. Wait a bit.

"A few minutes, now. Keep a watch on the cliff top. We'll hear the bulldozer first, but keep watching for Carlo's signal, all the same." Giuseppe over the wall? Carlo would know; he alone could see. Cupping his hands, Forrester lit the cigarette, extinguished the match and flicked it into the ditch.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for---"

Something: a hard metallic thud. Forrester stiffened. Then another, followed by a rattling, dragging sound. He drew on the cigarette; it shook in his lips. Clatter, clatter, and the bulldozer's engine suddenly roared.

They could hear it trundling parallel with the wall, moving farther away from them. The noise seemed to distort as it shuddered into the culvert. It diminished fractionally, as if the engine was idling. The hooks going on? Gear trouble? Giuseppe challenged? All this in the mind. Then, all at once, a guttural snarl and a continuous clanking sound rising together to a crescendo---second after second after second of it, until, with a tearing, snapping crash, something broke and they knew that the bars had ripped away.

Forrester had the short stub of safety fuse in one hand, the cigarette in the other. A hoarse voice could be heard through the clanking din, urgent, like a bark, and another joined in from near the gates.

"Now!" Margherita called. "Now!"

He applied the cigarette, watched the fuse spit alight. Then, like her, he was out, scrambling up the bank as if pursued, head down, running, the confused roar increasing behind them.

Seven ... eight ... nine....

First a whipcrack, then a concussive crunch, almost inseparable: the air bounced and discolored. Across the road, Forrester spun in his tracks. Lines of earth spouted where the fuses were buried and a curdled mass of ocherous smoke bulged and swelled and soared; as if in slow motion, he watched one of the gates slowly topple forward and smack down. His head was singing, but he thought he heard a shot.

"Angelo!" Margherita cried, fists raised as if in supplication to the dust. "Angelo!"

And obediently he came, he and Giuseppe, the bulldozer bursting into the open, sluing as it clipped a wall pillar and met the flattened gate, losing direction, missing the culvert and pitching into the ditch, both men leaping clear, up and sprinting.

Forrester began to move, head turned like someone waiting to receive a relay baton. A jacketless guard was on the wall, rifle leveled; others were emerging from the thinning dust---three, four.

All running now, Angelo and Giuseppe gaining, almost abreast. In rapid succession, two shots rang out and Angelo stumbled, fell to his knees. Instinctively, Forrester sprang to him, got a shoulder under his armpit and, with Giuseppe, lifted, ran again, Angelo's legs like a rag doll's---a small man, slight, fierce-looking, with blood bubbling from his mouth. Scared. Forrester took all this in. Margherita ahead of them, stopped, aghast. Another shot, sobbing off rock. Everything overlapping in a kind of dementia. A hundred yards to the car, some guards in pursuit and Giuseppe suddenly turning, pistol drawn, and firing again and again.

The pursuit faltered, scattering, going down. Margherita had reached the car and was opening the doors. Angelo coughed, belching blood. Almost there, Margherita coming with arms outstretched and grief such as Forrester had never seen---"Jesus, oh, Jesus." Staggering through muck, they pitched Angelo into the back seat, Giuseppe and Margherita clambering over him. Forrester flung himself behind the wheel, switched on, slammed into gear. With doors flapping, the car crashed out of its covering screen of rusted metal. Over the rough ground, the wheel jarring Forrester's hands, lurching diagonally toward the road, moaning in the back and Giuseppe swearing, winding the window down and leaning out to fire.

Bullets chipped the tarmac in front of them as the car skidded onto the road. Forrester drove like a man possessed, accelerating down the long, straight approach to Monteliana.

"Angelo, speak to me....Angelo...."

• • •

Through the town, people scattering from the cobbles, everything juddering past in a blur. Through the town and out. throttle and brake and horn, out the other side to where the road curled in a ledge along the hillside. In the mirror, Forrester could see they had stripped the smock from Angelo, exposing a gaping exit wound in his chest. Feverishly, Giuseppe was ripping his own shirt, Margherita cradling Angelo's head, blood everywhere.

Coming up to the fork. Goats on the road, bounding clear, a scarecrowlike figure waving a stick. And the mind in tatters. Then Salvatore waiting, Carlo, too, the car screeching to a standstill, bonnet dipped, dust showering over. And their faces as they climbed exultantly into the front and discovered what had happened.

All the voices in the world seemed to be concentrated in the Fiat---a babel of dismay, disbelief, anger, conflict.

"How? How?"

"We were halfway---"

"Through the shoulder....Madonna, perde sangue!"

"Can he speak?"

"Try and stop that blood. Ayee---"

Forrester drove on. foot down. "Where to. for Christ's sake?" No one heard. "Where to?" he shouted.

"Get off the highway"---Giuseppe, stanching the wound with strips of shirt. "There'll be roadblocks."

"He wants a doctor. He'll die other-wise.

"Keep your advice." White wedges in the corners of Salvatore's veined eyes. "Drive and shut up."

The clash of voices never stopped. Still only the one corkscrewing road. Then, suddenly, Salvatore ordered: "Take the track to the left." And Forrester spun the wheel, slowing as he jolted onto an earthen surface that ran between lentil fields. Going northeast. In the mirror, Angelo's face was ashen: he'd never live, doctor or no.

Open scrubland studded with rock. No track, nothing. Hills to the south and wooded country to the north of them. Seven forty-five, only seven forty-five....Forrester worked his way across the empty scrub, bearing northeast at Salvatore's urging. By eight, they came to a narrow road, turned right and followed it for perhaps a mile, until Salvatore said: "Left, now. Into the trees."

A stream glinted through the foliage: Forrester ran the car down to its bank. Reeds and grasses, willows and dappled light. He cut the engine and watched the others lift Angelo and carry him close to the bright water's edge. He stood apart from them and somehow apart from himself, incapable of emotion, and watched them do what they could for Angelo---cupping water to his lips, bathing the wound, wiping his face. The boy lay with his head in Margherita's lap. unaware, it seemed, of their mercies; and only the blood staining the makeshift bandages and occasionally coughing weakly from his mouth pointed to his being alive.

Even so, Forrester touched Salvatore on the elbow. "A doctor might save him." he ventured again. "A doctor, a hospital."

And Salvatore met his gaze as before, as if across a gulf. "Save him for what?" he said.

All the lines in his face were etched deeper. There was a pause, no hatred in it as so often before, no contempt. Salvatore rubbed his eyes with tattooed hands, like someone waking, salt rings showing under his armpits where the sweat had dried. "Go and tell Luigi to come. He will know where."

Angelo coughed again, a gargling sound that made Salvatore swing his head.

"Luigi will want more than my word. You said so yourself."

Salvatore grunted and dug behind his heavy belt into a pocket. He drew out a much-folded square of paper and handed it to Forrester. "You remember everything."

Forrester started to turn away. Then, to his surprise, Salvatore added: "Thank you, friend....Bravo."

• • •

He walked through the willows to the car and drove away: his legs weren't too steady. It was unbelievable to be free of duress, but there was still danger. A white Fiat, himself disheveled, unshaven. blood on his sleeves, blood on the rear seat: if he'd had sense, he should have done something about the blood. Eight twenty....The hunt would be on, check points established round the compass. As the crow flies, he reckoned he was about halfway between Monteliana and the hut, but exactly where, he had no idea. There had been no signposts in the fields and scrub. Now he was driving east, the road deserted, his trust in its narrowness; they'd hardly block everything, and perhaps not as far out as this.

He drove as fast as he dared, lifting the dust, exploding birds out of wayside bushes and trees. Farm buildings sometimes standing back from the road, a yoked mule circling a well, a few people tending patches of crops; vaguely he noticed. The hills to the south retreated as he was led more and more to the northeast, but others rose up ahead and before long, he was having to use the gears. He must have covered five or six miles by the time he met a major road: Vallelunga 14 kms., s. Caterina 18 kms. He found the map in the glove compartment and studied it, then crossed the highway and continued into the hills. Once, he pulled onto the side and unfolded Salvatore's note. All well, he read. Let them go and hurry over. Until then---S. It must have been written the evening before, while the dream still held.

In the mirror, his face was haggard, blotched with grime. He drove on, recalling with an intensity of feeling Inger's voice, her eyes, her walk, the promise of her smile that could be released at last like a renewal of life. Another part of his mind remained on the lookout for a cruising police car or the dwindling possibility of a check point, but there was never anything to cause him qualms. Presently, a signpost indicated a place off to the right that he couldn't discover on the map and he ignored it: ahead, and to the north, the land was beginning to take on a familiar desolation. Exactly at nine o'clock, he was turning onto the track that led to the hut.

• • •

The sound of the falls greeted him first: window down, he steered through the pines and the semaphore blink of the sunlight. Well before the hut was in view, he started using the horn; and as he nosed the Fiat into the clearing, Luigi came clattering down the steps with the shotgun, calling: "Yes? Yes?" Thumb hopefully up.

"Out, yes. It all worked." Inger appeared in the door and Forrester felt a surge in his heart. Stiffly, he swung his legs and pushed himself from the car, arm lifted in greeting.

"Why the blood?" Suspiciously, Luigi stared. "What happened?" He pointed at Forrester's sleeve.

"I cut myself." As if in proof, Forrester showed his torn hands. "There was glass in the culvert. Glass and wire." He moved toward the hut, fumbling for the note, Inger's eyes on him. He could have sworn Luigi was wearing one of his shirts, but he couldn't have cared less. "Here," he said. "Salvatore gave me this."

He left Luigi to read it and quickened his stride, saying: "Inger, Inger---are you all right?" He took the steps in one and kissed her clumsily. "Really all right?"

The nervous smile. "Of course."

Luigi whistled, finished reading the note, and his face brightened. All was well....He stood in the clearing and looked at them both. "So---it's over. It's goodbye. There's no time to lose. Some girl you've got there."

Forrester tightened his arm round Inger's waist. He grinned wearily, rubbing his beard stubble.

"Some girl."

Forrester's mind prickled. Luigi started on his way, making for the mossy boulders and the pines beyond. On the edge of the clearing, he turned and called to Inger in that waiter's English of his: "Goodbye, beautiful miss."

Forrester let his arm fall. Uncertainty thickened his voice. "What did he mean?"

Inger shrugged. "That is the way he talks." She separated from him and moved inside the hut. "His English is worse even than mine. All the time it has been the same."

It was more than the phrase; there was the manner of it, the parting look Forrester had intercepted. Oh, God, he thought. No....No.

"Neal." Now Inger came back. "Neal, you're tired. Was it bad for you? Where are you cut?"

Checkerboard drawn askew on the table, empty glasses, the remains of a candle. Forrester looked past Inger into the room that had been theirs and saw the rumpled blankets on the bed.

"Was he in there?"

She was silent, motionless. He strode closer and stared in. For seconds on end he stared, before something broke and he wheeled on her. "He was, wasn't he? That blatant little bastard was with you."

She didn't flinch from his raw-eyed challenge. "Yes," she said.

"You whore," he stormed. "You bloody whore."

He made for the door, wanting to get out, out, anywhere. He shouldered past Inger into the open and she followed as far as the steps, shouting after him. "I'm not! I'm not!"

He didn't listen, yet he heard, and the irony seemed like a final insult.

"I needed somebody. I always need somebody. Neal, Neal ... I'm not like you. I can't manage on my own. I'm afraid on my own."

• • •

Forrester found himself by the boulders. He felt sick. A kind of madness pounded inside his skull. Misty spray drifted over him from the skein of falling water, but he was unaware of it, unaware of everything except an enormous bitter hurt that seemed to possess him totally.

In dismayed protest, his thoughts flitted about for somewhere to settle, something to hold them steady, but in vain. Bitch, they hammered. Bitch---like a futile punctuation mark scattered through a pattern of images that reached all the way back to the casino at Messina and from there to the Capua and the kidnap on the road and this hut and that room and the raid and his own terror and the hope that had come from it because of her---all this disjointed, feverish, with one clear picture as he saw the parallel between his journey here and that of Luigi's to the rendezvous with the others and what he would find when he arrived.

Gradually, the confusion went out of him; his mind hardened, anger in sole charge. He turned from the boulders and crossed the clearing to the hut. Inger was sitting on the steps. She moved her hands when he approached, as if in appeal, but he went on by, avoiding her look.

The old number plates had been thrown at the back of the hut amid other rubbish: he retrieved them, returned to the car and extracted the tool kit. There was refuge of sorts in action. It took him 20 minutes to change the plates and Inger stayed away from him. When he next passed her to get the plastic bucket from the drain board, she was smoking a cigarette, but she made no attempt to speak. Three times he filled the bucket from the falls, twice to shower the car and once to wash the rear seat, using the blanket for that and then to wipe the car roughly over. Then he traced his steps for the final time to the falls and washed himself, standing naked under the bluntness of the water until at last he was clean.

Back in the hut, he shaved, after which he dressed, folded the soiled clothes and packed them away, slipped his passport into a hip pocket and turned to leave---coldly, mind made up, the decision taken.

"You, too---eh?"---Nolan, at the casino, out of his depth and desperate but afraid to let it show. And Forrester thought with fury: not quite. Almost, but not quite. At least I didn't finish up dead.

But there were other ways of dying.

He came to the door with his two cases and descended the rickety steps. Only then did Inger rise, touching him, her voice suddenly querulous with alarm.

"What are you doing? Where are you going? Neal."

He shook her off. The sun burned through his shirt. He opened the offside door and chucked the cases onto the back seat.

"Neal....For God's sake!"

Tight-lipped, he slid behind the wheel and slammed the door. Inger started beating her knuckles against the window, crying. Without a word or a glance, Forrester switched on, dropped into gear and drove away.

• • •

He turned right when he got to the track. As if he'd planned in advance, he already knew which route he would take: to Palermo was perhaps 70 miles. His eyes ached and he reached for his sunglasses. In and out of the hollows, then across the stark moon surface, where no one ever seemed to come.

"Non toccare"; Salvatore's words beat around in his brain.

What had she shouted? "I needed somebody. I always need somebody...." What about me? Is that all I was---somebody? Just somebody? Another Luigi? Luigi---that pigeon-toed little sod. Forrester spat his disgust through the window. A time would come when he could reason, but it wasn't now. Bitch. The self-centered spin of his mind stopped only once. God, he should have known. If that's the way you are, he thought, couldn't you have waited? At least couldn't you have done that?

She'll manage. She'll thumb a lift when she reaches the highway. The world was full of men.

Further wayside information---Paler-mo, 85 kms....Another snaking stretch. And Forrester's mind and heart still burning, still vicious. Then, as the car topped a slight rise, he saw something that shriveled his mood into a hard knot of dread, bringing him sharply to his senses.

A double row of tar barrels blocked the road, an army truck behind them, soldiers, an officer astride the crown of the camber, reaching for his pistol as Forrester slammed on the brakes and the car screamed to a standstill.

Two of the soldiers ran forward belligerently. "Out," the officer ordered curtly in the sudden silence. He jerked the pistol sideway, as if he were tapping something. "Out."

Forrester obeyed without hesitation. One of the men was already at the boot, the other opening a rear door, poking about inside. The officer came closer, studying the number plates; he was young and whippet thin, with quick, darting eyes. Forrester's fear was entirely cerebral: it wasn't a physical thing; yet this was how it always began. At last he could measure himself, even as he stood there, scared. There would be no running from this. "Yes?" he said shakily.

"Your car?"

"No, rented."

Until then, the officer must have assumed Forrester was a compatriot. But the white 1800 Fiat weighed with him more.

"Nationality?"

"British."

"Your passport, per favore."

Forrester drew it from his pocket. The "please" was a hopeful indication; but if they decided to search the luggage, his chances would be stone dead.

The officer holstered his pistol, then turned the passport's pages with deliberation. His cap's black-leather chin strap hung loosely round his pointed jaw.

"There is a police stamp here." Echoes of Salvatore. He twisted the passport upside down. "Taormina."

"A man committed suicide in a hotel room next to mine. I was asked to go to the police post to make a statement."

A frown. "This was six days ago."

"That's right." Sidelong, he could see the soldier had dumped the two cases in the road and was probing under the seat, which he'd lifted. With an effort, Forrester fought down the urge to bluster.

"And today your route has been---"

"Through Leonforte."

"Thank you, signore." The passport was handed back, but the luggage was still in the road. "Have you seen another white Fiat, by any chance?" Forrester shook his head.

One of the soldiers reported: "Nothing in the car, tenente. What about the cases?"

"Put them back in," the officer said, and a spasm of relief visibly plucked Forrester's mouth. He tried to smile politely; an innocent visitor.

"What's this all about, anyway?"

"There has been some trouble to the south. Wild men, bandits. They blew the gates off the lockup at Monteliana and a prisoner escaped. They were using a car like this---hence our thoroughness, signore, for which you must forgive me."

"Prego." Forrester sat in the car and pulled the door to. "D'you think you'll get them?"

"For certain," the officer said. "Not here, maybe, but somewhere. It is only a question of time. One of the men was wounded. Wild men, signore."

• • •

Forrester had covered half a mile or so before the giddiness and the reaction came. He pulled abruptly onto the side and switched off, crossed his arms on the wheel and let his head sink down.

Instinctively, he understood, head on arms and silence all around, the scene by the water's edge beneath the willows swimming in the darkness of his mind. "We are not what we are from choice...."Maybe. But they knew what they were; there were no veneers, no doubts about the make-up of their natures or the limits to which they could go without breaking. And in their grief and bitterness, there was acceptance of the cost. It had always been so and would be again, even when they were run to earth: four days with them had taught him that. Famished, hunted, dying, alive and pathetic---they would take it as they would have taken triumph and the fulfillment of the dream, because this was life, all part of life, and they fought life with themselves and not with some version that they were not.

He had done that. Forrester raised his head. Time and again, the latent flaw in him unrecognized, smothered by events. Even when Inger had said: "Don't expect too much....Trouble comes of expecting too much," he hadn't understood. Behind the façade he presented to the world, a tiny fretful part of him distorted his judgment, turning its need, its frailty under pressure, into the belief and vanity that he, too, was indispensable.

He listened to his thoughts. He was the odd man out. Inger had no delusions about herself, either. "I'm not like you....I'm afraid on my own." She would survive. She knew what she was and she took what she could, like a child. But did that notion really justify him? In his mind, the scales of decision balanced a moment, then slowly altered.

• • •

The officer at the check point seemed to think he had returned to report a sighting. "What is it, then?"

"I left my camera in Leonforte. In a bar there."

A sympathetic cluck of the tongue. They rolled die barrels away to let the car through. "Arrivederci," the officer said, as if to imply that they would be meeting again. But already Forrester had decided against that. There were other roads: when he found her, if he found her, he would head north and make for the coast---Cefalù, Termini....

Thirty minutes after acknowledging the officer's parting wave, Forrester reached the track. And there, a good quarter of a mile along it, he saw Inger. The blue trouser suit stood out against the bare, bleached, desolate expanses: she was lugging her two cases, and even at that range, he could tell that she limped.

And he felt nothing. Nothing---either way.

He ran the car toward her until he found a suitable place to make a three-point turn. Then he waited, watching in the mirror as she covered the last 50 yards or so, leaning over to open the offside door as she approached. Without so much as a glance at him, she limped level, pushed the cases ahead of her and got in. Not a word between them. Her face was stern, beaded with sweat as she slid off her shoes and leaned back, closing her eyes. And Forrester bumped slowly across the rough ground until they reached the road, then swung left. Nicosia, Cefalù, Termini....

"As far as your consul," he said.

This is the conclusion of a new novel by Francis Clifford.