Vendetta for the Saint. (23 page)

A shaved moment later, the car slashed around
the bend and screeched to a rubber-rending stop
just beyond the place where the Saint had
crossed.
It was so close that
spurted gravel rattled against
the wall and the dust floated over his
head. If he
had been a fraction slower he
would have been caught on the road; ten seconds slower in his
breakneck run and he would have been trapped in
the groves above, which the
mafiosi
were
now in
vading.

Rising up with infinite wariness until he
could
look over the
wall near him, he saw four of them
clambering
over the higher wall to spread out
through
the trees. The chauffeur who had
navigated the projectile descent of the
cliff road
still sat at the wheel of the big
car, and not much
farther was the
broad sweat-stained back of Al
Destamio
himself, shouting orders to his advance
pack of hoodlums. Everyone was actively oriented
to the upward angles, apparently fully convinced
that at that point they must have well
outdistanced
the Saint and need not
bother to look for him
below them.

The temptation to counter-attack from the rear
was almost overwhelming, and if it had been only
a matter of Destamio or his driver the Saint would
have probably failed nobly to resist
it. But the two
together, spaced as
far apart as they were, con
stituted
just too much risk that any hitch in the tak
ing out of the first might give the second a chance
to raise an alarm that would reverse all the
conve
nient preconceptions of the
squad that expected the
Saint to
fall into their arms from above. Reluctantly, he decided that this was a case
where commonsensical considerations should outweigh the
superficial allures of grandstand glory.

He turned away, rather sadly remembering
more
juvenile days
when he would have chosen other
wise,
and melted silently down through the
vineyard where he had landed.

He
could count on a brief respite while the
searchers above vainly combed the upper
slopes
where they
seemed to think they had cornered him. With that preconceived idea, it would
take them
between half
an hour and an hour to convince
themselves
that he had gone past them and not
crawled into
some undiscovered hole. Then the
word would
have to be passed to headquarters, and
a
more widespread search would have to be or
ganized. This would be a blanket operation that
would enlist the entire Mafia and all their sympa
thisers, who possibly comprised most of the
island’s population. Every man’s hand would be
against him; but he would know where he stood
with any man.

The
thought was briefly invigorating as he in
creased his pace. Staying out of the hot clutches of
the Mafia might be the most difficult
accomplishment of his checkered career; but if he could sur
vive that cliche he might be able to outlast any
thing.

One stairwayed vineyard led down to another
as his giant strides carried him through them towards
the valley town. The
contadini
of the
outskirts were
already
awake and scratching at their tiny allot
ments with medieval mattocks. They seemed to
no
tice Simon only disinterestedly as he passed, as
if
their tenure under the very shadow of the
Mafia
allowed them only to observe
when specifically
called upon to do
so. The sight of a hurrying man
in a
torn shirt coming from the direction of the
Mafia mansion evoked no response but hastily
averted eyes: they would remember his passage if
the correct parties inquired later, but right now
they would neither hinder nor help.

Simon dismissed them as ciphers in this desper
ate game, and made no stop or detour on their account
until he reached the first outlying buildings
of the town, where he paused briefly to do what
little he could
to make himself slightly more pres
entable.

One shirt-sleeve was unrepairable, split up al
most to the shoulder. Ripping off the cuff,
he
used it as a band on which
to roll up the remains of
the
sleeve. When he rolled up the other sleeve to
match, the torn one was hardly noticeable. He
brushed the dirt from his hands, dusted his
slacks
as best he could, and combed
his hair with his fin
gers—wincing
slightly when they touched the knot
above
his occiput, and making another mental en
try in the ledger that would
have to be balanced
with Al Destamio’s
account when they came to a
final
settlement. With that, he was as ready to go
on as he would ever be.

The nameless town which he had to enter was
already coming to life, since like any microcosm
of
the south it moved more
quickly in the cool of the
morning
in order to doze better during the in
cinerating afternoon. Before finally entering a narrow alley that would
surely lead to the main street,
Simon
checked backwards to see that his trail was
still free of pursuers, and was rewarded
with an un
expected and
arresting sight. His downward path
had widened his visual scope, and now he could see
not only his recently deserted prison on the
over
hanging cliff
but also a more distant mountain ris
ing beyond and dwarfing it, a summit from which
a think plume of smoke coiled lazily
upwards.

Even the most superficial student of
geological
grandeurs could
have recognized the symptoms of
a
dormant volcano; and since there is only one such
on the island of Sicily, at the same time the
highest
in Europe and
one of the largest in the world, Si
mon knew that he must be looking at Mount Etna.
And aside from any casual vulcanological
interest, it performed the important function of telling him exactly where he
was.

To
visualize a map of Sicily, as the Saint did, you
might think of a piece of pie about to be
kicked by
the toe of a
boot, which is the shape of the Italian
peninsula. The resemblance is only in
outline, and
should not lead to any symbolic
inferences. The
top side of this pie-wedge
is fairly straight and runs almost due east and west. The volcano of Etna is
situated in the upper eastern corner of the
triangle.
Since the Saint was looking
towards it, and the sun was rising behind it, the most rudimentary geo
graphical
acumen or even the basic training of a
boy
scout would have been enough to tell him
that the road downhill from the unknown town he was entering must run
north to join the coastal
highway
somewhere between Messina and
Palermo.
To some exigent critics this deduction
might
still have seemed to fall far short of pinpoint
ing a position, but to Simon Templar it provided a
fix from which he would have cheerfully set a
course
to Mars.

As he reached the central square of the town,
he
had a clear view of the
valley road that bisected it
and
wandered on down to the now occulted sea.
That trail of patched macadam, he knew, was
a
siren’s lure that beckoned
only to his death.
Though it
looked open, it would be the first avenue
to be watched, closed, or booby-trapped. The
Mafia might not be overly concerned with
Destamio’s personal problems, but they would
be
ruthlessly jealous of their
own prerogatives, which the Saint had affronted with insulting levity. There
fore all their resources, spread like a
spider cancer
through the entire community, would
be devoted
to the simple objective of
cutting him down. And
the main
thoroughfares would be the first and most
obvious avenues for them to
cover.

Across
the square, in front of the town’s princi
pal and possibly only hotel, an assortment of
early-
rising
tourists were loading their luggage and their young into various cars. Two
families of beaming
Bavarians, complete with
lederhosen
and beer
bellies, obviously travelling
together in identical
beetle-nosed
Volkswagens; a middle-aged French
man
with his dependable Peugeot and a chic chick
who somehow looked a most unconvincing wife;
and an oversized station wagon whose superfluous
fins and garbage-can-lid rear lights would have re
vealed its transatlantic origin long before the
red
and black identification of the
American forces in
Europe could have
been deciphered on its dusty
license
plate. The gaudy pseudo-Hawaiian shirt
worn
like a pregnancy smock outside the tired
slacks of its proprietor was no disguise for a certain
pugnacity of jaw and steeliness of eye which stamp
a professional sergeant in peace or war.

Simon’s spirits rose another notch. With such
a
type, opportunity might
not be exactly pounding at
his
door, but at least he could hear it tap.

He waited till the last suitcase had been
jammed
into the
truck-sized rear deck, and the last squall
ing brat trapped and stowed amidships, and then
he approached the near-side window just as
the driver was settling in and turning on the
engine.

“I
hate to make like a hitch-hiker,” he said, with
just the right blend of fellow-American
camaraderie combined with undertones of a
war
time commission, “but
could you drop me off a
couple
of miles down the valley? I had to bring my
car in to be fixed at the garage here, and it
won’t be
done till this evening.”

While the sergeant hesitated momentarily,
from
the ingrained
suspicion of all professional ser
geants,
his wife moved over to make room on the
front seat.

“Sure,” she said, making up his
mind for him
like any good
American wife. “No trouble at all.”

The Saint got in, and they pulled away. By
this time, he figured that Destamio and the first pursuit
squad might be debating the possibility that
they
had not after
all headed him where they stopped on
the road.

“What you doin’ around here?”
asked the ser
geant sociably, after a time.

“Spending a vacation with some
cousins,” Si
mon
answered casually, knowing that his black
hair and tanned complexion would
superficially
support a
fictional Italian ancestry. “They’ve got a
farm down the road a piece. First time I’ve ever
been here—my folks emigrated before I was
born.”

“Where
you from, then?”

“New
York.”

A trite choice, but one where he knew he
could
not be caught
out on any topographical details,
and big enough not to lead into any aquaintance
pitfalls of the “Do you know Joe Blow?” pattern.

“We’re from Dallas, Texas. We don’t get
out
much into the
suburbs.”

It was astonishingly easy, and might have
tempted anyone to parlay his luck as far as
the ride
could be
stretched. But the Saint had attained his
present age mainly because he was not just
anyone.
Very shortly,
his pursuers would extend their
search
into the town, where they would soon find some loafer in the square who had
seen a man an
swering to
Simon’s description getting into an un
mistakable American car. With the speed of a cou
ple of telephone calls, the word would be flashed
ahead to confreres along the littoral, and before
the station wagon even reached the coast the highway
in both directions would be alive with eyes that
would never let it out of their sight. From that
mo
ment there would be nowhere he
could leave the
car without the
probability of being observed and
followed,
while to stay in it would risk an un
thinkable
involvement of its innocent occupants in
any splashy attempts at his own
destruction.