Assignment - Palermo Page 3

  Durell checked himself mentally. The man had a bumbling, if pugnacious, air of truth. “You’re Brutelli?”

  “Bruno Brutelli, that’s me. We read about you in the paper, and O’Malley said we should come around here and look you up, like he didn’t make contact back in the States. Put away the popgun, pal. I won’t hurt you.” Bruno made a swipe at Durell’s .38, like the casual flick of a bear’s paw, and the gun went spinning away into the pine needles. Durell ignored it. He didn’t want to kill the man. He slammed a fist into the other’s big belly and felt the jolt all the way up into his shoulder. The big man grinned. He reached and caught Durell’s arm and twisted it in a wrestler’s grip, and Durell, for all his strength, was lifted and slammed into the brush. The breath was jolted out of him. Astonished, he scrambled aside, expecting a boot in the ribs. But the huge man just stood there, turning slowly, enjoying himself, grinning.

  “O’Malley says you’re tough. Like he swears by you. I ain’t so sure, so now we’ll see.”

  Durell tried again. He came up with a rush, slammed a shoulder into the giant’s thighs, staggered him, and felt a hamlike hand slam down on the back of his neck, like a falling utility pole. He went down, but the other was off-balance and slipped on the pine needles. Durell dived for him. A heavy foot came up into his stomach. He dodged, and the big man rolled away, like a primeval animal struggling for safety.

  Durell knew every trick of the business, but nothing worked against this man’s enormous strength. The giant almost yanked his left arm from its socket in his rage to prove himself superior. Durell kicked him in the jaw and hurled him back. The other gave a deep, hoarse yell and scrambled about among the slippery pine needles. He had a thick shock of dark red hair. Durell caught him by his thick neck and twisted, while the huge legs kicked and thrashed. A heel caught him in the ribs and broke his grip. Instantly the big man floundered to his feet. Durell hit him with a right, then a left. The other didn’t yield an inch. Durell began to think he might have to kill him after all.

  His shoe rolled on something, and he saw that it was a branch as thick as his arm. He picked it up and moved toward the giant Brutelli. Brutelli slashed at it, broke it, and hurled the pieces away. His face was savage now. He came on with lowered head, surging through the piney shadows, his meaning plain.

  “Cool it, Cajun,” someone said.

  Durell wasn’t sure he heard the words above the long hiss of his own indrawn breath. He kept his eyes warily on the advancing giant.

  “Cajun, knock it off. We’ve been looking for you, and you made it plain where we could find you.”

  Durell paused. Brutelli had halted, too. He drew a deep breath and picked up his gun and turned about to face O’Malley.

  5

  THE FARMHOUSE stood in a small notch among the hills, about ten kilometers from the lake. It was built of stone, with a yellow-tiled roof and outbuildings that consisted of sheds and a small peaked-roof barn. Terraced fields that were silvery green with olive orchards lifted in giant steps up the mountainsides. At the far end of the valley there was a glimpse of Alpine ramparts, still crested with snow, and the train tracks from the Gotthard Tunnel arrowed down the valley beneath the farmhouse.

  The fish fins of a yellow Cadillac with German license plates protruded from the leaning sides of one of the farm sheds. The woman who had greeted them had gone to work in one of the orchards.

  “It was the best we could find,” O’Malley said. “After we got your message in the newspapers, we figured we might as well come down and scout the territory.”

  “Did you use that yellow Caddy?” Durell asked. “Sure. Why not?”

  “You have a lot to learn. You’re not dealing with punks. You’re up against the toughest professionals in the world. Kronin’s headquarters is only twenty miles from here. Did you hear what your landlady muttered when we came in?” Durell was angry. “Les americains affreux. The frightful Americans. It’s all over the canton by now about you and Bruno and Milan holing up on this farm.”

  O’Malley laughed. “We’re not worried.”

  “Well, I am.” Durell stared at the tall, straw-haired man for a moment. “Have you got a phone here?” “Look, let’s keep it cool, Sam. Maybe it’s like for old

  time’s sake, but we’ve got to clear the slate and get down to business before you call the blues.”

  “There’s a bomb in my car," Durell said tightly. “I’ve got the ignition key, but somebody may fool around with it and get hurt.” He thought, And if Colonel Mignon hears my car hit the sky right after my visit, it won’t encourage him to help.

  The three men looked at each other. Bruno shrugged. Joey Milan bit his fingernails. O’Malley laughed again. “A bomb in your heap? It wasn’t us, Sam.”

  “Maybe not. Then it was Kronin, and if he knows I’m here, he’s looking for you.”

  “No sweat. We can handle it now.”

  “I want the telephone,” Durell said.

  “We talk business first. The Feds are here, aren’t they? I can guess. Maybe that Amos Rand. That son of a bitch from the Bureau. To him I’m just a crook.” Durell said, “You’re making a mistake, Frank. I don’t like booby traps. I don’t like bystanders getting hurt. And we have no deal yet.”

  There was a smell like an animal den in the farm house parlor, with its overstaffed furniture and religious pictures and dark crucifix on the wall, its polished plank floor and carved woodwork. Through a doorway he could see the huge Brutelli in the kitchen, stirring a wooden spoon in an iron pot that boiled on the stove. Two guns in holsters hung from an old-fashioned peg rack in the hall, and a Remington leaned near the door.

  Seeing O’Malley was like seeing a ghost out of the dim past, Durell thought, from a time when the world was young and filled with wonder. O’Malley hadn’t changed much. He had the same hollow face, the thick straw hair, the reckless, challenging brown eyes, the rangy nervousness of a wire-taut body. He wore an expensive silk sport shirt, soft slacks, and English loafers. There was no doubt that he was the leader of the other two and that they gave him complete obedience.

  “First we’ll eat,” O’Malley said easily. “Bruno is fussy about his pasta. If he’d kept his mind on the wrestling mat instead of his belly, he’d have been champ.

  You’re having fettucini with white truffles. He’s a genius and he likes people to appreciate his talent.”

  “The telephone,” Durell said bluntly.

  “Bruno says eat, we eat. Just to show there are no hard feelings.”

  Of the three, Joey Milan, the ex-jockey, was the most nervous. He played solitaire on an ornate pie-crust table near the front window of the farmhouse, where he could watch the road. He was small and agile, with quick, darting eyes in a narrow, pointed face. He spoke thinly.

  “I don’t like it, Frank. He won’t play ball. You been dreaming about a guy you once knew in the bayous, but I can smell a cop and I don’t have to run four furlongs to know who’s behind me. It’s a mistake.”

  “Two gets you nine he makes a deal,” O’Malley said easily.

  “You talked Bruno and me into this,” Joey whined. “We was satisfied. But no, you had to wave the flag and break away from the field. What’s it got us? This crummy shack is the last place we’ll ever see.”

  “The Cajun will help us.”

  The jockey spat on the polished floor. “He’s a cop, and no cop never helped me.”

  O’Malley smiled at Durell. “Are you a cop now, Cajun?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I heard you work for the government.”

  “In a way.”

  “I tried to contact you in Washington. I went to the Feds. That Amos Rand—he was there then. Like he was bucking for promotion. Me, I still hurt from the lead souvenirs I got in Vietnam. Treated me like I was scum. Started digging out charges on income taxes. Taxes! And a lot of old counts. I saw the pen staring me in the face just because I wanted to do something right for a change. So it frosted, and we ran for it. But
you heard, huh, and you came after us, right?”

  Joey Milan coughed. “Frank says like you’re a spy. He says our business is your business.”

  “What are you running from?” Durell asked.

  “The Fratelli della Notte,” O’Malley said. He spoke easily, but Milan’s face twitched, and in the kitchen Bruno Brutelli grunted as if the Words were like a blow in the stomach. Briefly there was fear in the eyes of all three men.

  Durell had to use that fear. Twenty minutes had passed since he drove from the tunnel road at Colonel Mignon’s villa, and another ten was wasted already here in the farmhouse. It was too much time to lose. He turned and walked into the dark hallway of the house, looking for the telephone. It was in the room across from the old-fashioned peasant parlor in a place of honor on a long walnut table that could have graced any Madison Avenue antique dealer’s window. He picked up the phone, and O’Malley’s hand banged down on top of his.

  “No, Sam.”

  O’Malley’s pale brown eyes had changed. They were no longer glowing or amused. They looked ferocious. Milan and Brutelli each had a gun in hand.

  “I’m worried about that bomb in my car,” Durell said.

  “We didn’t put it there.”

  “All the more reason to worry.”

  Durell twisted the telephone from O’Malley’s grip and began to dial. The other man backed away a step. Milan made a thin sighing sound. Durell dialed Colonel Mignon’s number.

  “Who are you calling?” O’Malley whispered.

  “A friend. Where I left the car.”

  “Is he in your line of work?”

  “He’s retired. An old man. Blind. He can help us if he wants to. He promised he would. But if my car gets splashed into his house, he may change his mind.”

  “All right. So long as it isn’t the Feds. I won’t deal with them. Not after the shafting I got from Rand.”

  The cold light faded from O’Malley’s eyes. Mignon’s telephone began to ring. Durell knew he was in great danger. O’Malley lived in a shadow world that paralleled his own, a world of quick and amoral decisions. He couldn’t count on boyhood friendship to keep the man’s trigger finger loose. But he had to establish command at once, right now.

  “Be careful,” O’Malley said.

  Durell nodded and listened to the phone ring, far away in Mignon’s villa.

  It rang and rang. There was no answer. Inside the farmhouse everyone was silent. After the tenth ring he hung up.

  O’Malley’s face was pale, the skin stretched tightly over his cheekbones. “So forget it, Sam.”

  “You don’t forget a live bomb. I’ll have to call Rand.” Durell saw O’Malley’s eyes grow cold again. “I have to work with him.”

  “You’re pushing me, Sam. I told you, I’ve got a thing about the Bureau. I’m willing to make a deal with you, but not with that arrogant bastard—”

  “The deal is still with me,” Durell said. “My word on it. You’ll have to take it. And I haven’t even begun to push.”

  He began to dial again. The three men watched him. For a moment Durell wasn’t sure of O’Malley. The man was as suspicious as a cornered jungle cat. Perhaps O’Malley had a right to be, he thought, considering Amos’ pompous manners.

  He and Amos Rand had checked into a hotel late last night in Paradiso, with a view of Monte San Salvatore looming behind them. The lights of the funicular made a string of bright beads against the starry sky. Amos was recently divorced and given to a wandering eye. He had spent a term of service once for the Bureau as liaison man in the Berne Embassy, handling internal security, and because of his foreign service and acquaintance with O’Malley’s search for Durell, Rand had been assigned to cooperate, although their relationship was ambiguous because of the Bureau’s determination to assert its command. Amos was chunky and outwardly amiable, and looked upon the European trip more as a jaunt to renew old acquaintances with the diplomatic secretarial corps than as a job that might entail danger and sudden death.

  The telephone in the Paradiso hotel rang five times.

  O’Malley bit his lip. Durell felt his nerves string tight as it rang once more^—and then it was answered. A girl’s light voice giggled in his ear and said, “Hello? Who is it, lover?”

  The words were a slow Southern drawl, thick and sultry. Durell looked across the room at O’Malley, who was scowling. He spoke with care. “I want to talk to Amos Rand.”

  Another giggle. “He’s taking a shower. Are you his partner?”

  “This is Durell. Get him out of there. And what are you doing in that room?”

  “Why, this is Ginny, Sam. Don’t you-all remember me? Ginny Jackson. From the Economic Mission.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Amos phoned and just asked me to come down, the darling.”

  “Just like that?”

  “You don’t have to act so mad about it, Sam.”

  “Get me Amos.”

  She giggled again. “A pleasure, suh.”

  Durell pinched his nostrils, waiting, wished for a cigarette, remembered he had quit smoking, regretted it, and thought of Ginny-with-the-bleached-yellow-hair. She was the niece of a Washington congressman, given a sinecure post at Geneva to get her out of an embarrassing escapade last year. A sexpot with a figure that vibrated provocatively with every move she made. He recalled vaguely that Ginny Jackson had been one of the reasons for Amos Rand’s divorce. She was a brainless, lush piece of femininity, and somehow he knew she was standing there stark naked, pink and white, perhaps dripping from the same shower Amos was enjoying—

  “Sam?”

  “Amos, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Take it easy, Cajun.”

  “Get Ginny out of that place.”

  “It’s all right. Ginny’s okay.” Amos’ voice was slightly slurred, and Durell wondered how much he had been drinking with the girl. “How did you make out with Colonel Mignon?”

  “How much did you tell that brainless chippy?” Durell asked tightly.

  “Look, I just gave her a ring and told her I was back in the country, and so she came down, is all.”

  “You gave her the name of our hotel?”

  “Well, she asked me—we’re old friends—”

  “You’re a fool,” Durell said.

  “Now, just because I was relaxing a bit—” Amos had just enough liquor in him to be pugnacious. “Leave my, private life out of it, huh? Tell me about Mignon.” “The colonel’s promised to get information on the outfit we’re checking. By tonight. But something else came up.” Durell saw O’Malley stir and lift his gun slightly and he didn’t know if O’Malley was warning him to be careful or not. His irritation at Amos could blur his judgment, he decided, and he checked himself, speaking quickly, to describe the bomb in the Caravelle parked outside Mignon’s villa. He asked Amos to get to work to defuse it at once.

  “Who set it?” Rand asked. His voice was a bit more sober when Durell finished.

  “Persons unknown. Kronin has a hatchet man named Dugalef, whose specialty is booby traps. A pro assassin. You read his dossier, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Durell heard Ginny Jackson complaining in the background. He went on. “If you can help it, don’t disturb the colonel. Just defuse the car. He won’t have the data he promised until evening. And send Ginny back to Geneva.”

  “What did the old man promise you?”

  “Names and data on the top echelon people in the outfit we’re after. If anybody knows, Mignon can get it. Do you want me to spell it out for broadcast?”

  “All right, all right. I’ll get after your car pronto, boss. Don’t get sore.”

  Durell decided not to tell Rand about finding O’Malley. “Don’t get careless,” he said, and hung up.

  6

  O’MALLEY said bitterly, “That Rand. He didn’t believe me, gave me the brush, treated me like a criminal. And I’m just back from playing jungle games with the Viet-cong. It’s no deal, with him in it. I’m pulling out” “A
nd where will you go?”

  “Plenty of places.”

  “Is any place in the world safe from the Fratelli della Notte? The way it’s being run now?”

  “I’ll find a spot.”

  “They’ll kill you,” Durell warned. “All three of you. They can’t afford to let you live. You know too much. You haven’t given me a thing yet, but they’ll pay any price for you. You can’t hide forever.”

  It was two hours later. The sun had gone down behind the mountains of the Ticino, and long shafts of sullen light poured through the silent valleys of the lake country. There was a sultry feeling to the air, a breathless heat, as if they were about to have an early season thunderstorm.

  Amos Rand hadn’t called back.

  Durell had so far gathered only the primary outline of O’Malley’s story. O’Malley was reluctant to commit himself.

  The trio had run for their lives. In the beginning, from Nevada, they had tried to go west to the Coast; but the desert road was blocked. The airports were watched; the railroads, covered. They turned east and drove to St. Louis. The hunters were only an hour behind them.

  “I spoke too freely,” O’Malley admitted. “I asked too many questions about what was going on. I had a chip on my shoulder, coming back from Vietnam. I smelled something pretty rotten in the outfit. Up to then the syndicate did its usual business. But everything was changed. So I guess I asked too many questions, and they decided they couldn’t trust me any more.”

  O’Malley was a clever man. He lived in the world as if it were a jungle, and his agility saved them twice when their pursuers closed in. Bruno, big and dumb and strong, had an unshaken loyalty toward O’Malley. Joey Milan was more fearful; but he had talents O’Malley needed and he could be bullied and browbeaten along the way.

  “Like we’re dead men,” Joey had whined.

  They were three shadows in flight, and each man knew his own transiency. Every door was closed to them. Old friends did not recognize them. They needed help, and there was no help anywhere.