Bloody Passage (v5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

table and eased himself down into a wicker chair. He nodded to the waiter who took one of the bottles from the bucket and filled a glass. I was immediately aware of the distinctive aroma of anis.
    "Your health, Major Grant," he toasted me.
    He had a deep bass voice, totally American, nothing of Europe in it at all. I said, "You want to watch it. Too much of that stuff in the heat of the day can freeze your liver. I've seen it put strong men on their backs for a week."
    Langley started to say something, but my fat friend waved him down with one hand. He stared at me intently, a frown on his face, then smiled. "By God, you know where you are, sir. Confess it!"
    "I think so."
    He slapped his thigh in high good humor and turned to Langley. "Didn't I tell you I'd picked the right man?"
    Langley twirled the golden bauble between his fingers. "He has a big mouth, I'll give you that."
    The fat man turned his attention back to me and leaned forward, hands folded over the handle of one of his walking sticks. "Come, sir, don't let me down."
    "All right." I shrugged. "The architecture of this fortress for a start. Walls are Norman, probably twelfth century. Most of the rest is Moorish. Then there's the garden. Papyrus by the main pool, another Arab innovation, and the wine you're drinking. Zibibbo from the island of Pantellaria. I can smell the anis."
    "Which all adds up to?"
    "Sicily." I squinted up at the sun. "Somewhere on the southern coast."
    "Southeast," he said. "Capo Passero to be exact." He shook his head solemnly, sipped a little of his wine and said to Langley, "Remarkable is it not, what the trained mind is capable of?"
    Langley looked sullen, picked up a wineglass and held it out to the waiter who filled it for him. The fat man chuckled. "Justin is not impressed, Major Grant, but then he likes to be first in the field always. It comes of having been educated at Eton."
    "You mean the reformatory?" I said. "In Northern Nebraska?" I shook my head. "Poor kid, I don't suppose he ever really stood a chance."
    Strangely enough Langley reacted to that one with apparent indifference, but his fat friend rocked with laughter. "I like that. Yes, I really like that." He wiped tears from his eyes with a large white pocket handkerchief. "You know who I am, Major Grant?"
    "I don't think so."
    "Stavrou, sir. Dimitri Stavrou." He expected a reaction and seeing it in my face, grinned slyly. "You know me now, I think?"
    "I should," I said. "Your picture was on enough front pages nine or ten months ago when they deported you from the States."
    "An affront to justice." He seemed angry for the moment, though whether this was genuine or assumed, it was impossible to say. "Although I was born in Cyprus, I lived in America for forty years of my life, Major Grant. I had legitimate business interests."
    "Like gambling, drugs, prostitution?" I said. "Front man for the Syndicate or the Mafia or whatever they call themselves these days, wasn't that it?"
    There was a hot spark of anger behind those dark eyes. "The pot, sir, calling the kettle black, isn't that how the English would put it?" He snapped his fingers. "The file, Justin, there's a good boy."
    There was a briefcase leaning against the back of Stavrou's cane chair. Langley opened it, took out a buff colored folder and laid it on the table in front of him.
    Stavrou put a hand on it. "Oliver Berkley Grant. In detail."
    "What, warts and all?" I said.
    "I must know it by heart by now." He pushed it away ostentatiously and closed his eyes. "Father, colonel in the Marine Corps, killed in action in Korea in 1951. Mother English. You were educated at an English public school, Winchester. That was to please her, then West Point. You first went to war the year your father was killed. By the end of the Korean conflict you had collected a D.S.C. and Silver Star and a wound which put you in hospital for nine months. It was the last time you fought in any conventional sense as a soldier."
    Most of this had been