The President’s Daughter

‘I heard what he said,’ Hannah told him. ‘My Italian is as good as yours.’

Dillon turned to Riley. ‘Thanks, Dermot.’

‘Nothing to it,’ Riley said. ‘Just like the old days.’

‘You move quick, signore,’ Luigi said.

‘Oh, he does that all right,’ Hannah said, as she drank her coffee. ‘Boot and fist, that’s our Dillon, and you should see him with a gun.’

Dillon smiled amiably. ‘You have a way with the words, girl dear. Now drink up and let’s be moving.’

As they moved down towards the south coast, things changed, the landscape became softer.

‘During the war, the Americans came through here on their way through the Cammarata to Palermo. The Italian soldiers fled after receiving a Mafia directive to support the Americans against the Germans,’ Luigi told them.

‘And why would they do that?’ Dillon asked.

‘The Americans released from jail in New York the great Mafia don, Lucky Luciano.’

‘Another gangster,’ Hannah said.

‘Perhaps, signorina, but he got the job done and the people believed in him. He went back to prison in America, but was released in 1946. On the pardon, it said: For services to his country.’

‘And you believe in such fantasy?’ she asked.

‘During the campaign, my own father saw him in the village of Corleone.’

Dillon laughed out loud. ‘Now that’s a showstopper if ever I heard one.’

As the landscape softened, there were flowers everywhere, on the slopes knapweed with yellow heads, bee orchids, ragwort and gentians.

‘So beautiful,’ Hannah sighed. ‘Yet centuries of violence and killing. Such a pity.’

‘I know,’ Dillon said. ‘Just like the Bible. As for me, I’m just passing through.’

He closed his eyes and Riley glanced at him and it was the plane all over again and he felt as guilty as hell. But there was nothing he could do after all. Salinas soon, and it would all be over. Some comfort in that.

Marie de Brissac surfaced in a kind of instant moment, one second nothing, dark as the grave, the next pale evening light. The first thing she was aware of was that she felt fine in herself, no headache, no heaviness, and that seemed strange.

She was lying on a large four-poster bed in a room with a vaulted ceiling and panelled walls of dark oak. There was oaken furniture, heavy and old, and a tapestry on the far wall with some sort of medieval scene on it. What seemed to be the outer door was also oak and studded with iron bands. There was another door beside the bed itself.

There was a large window, barred, of course, a table and three chairs beside it. The man who had called himself David Braun sat there reading a book. He glanced up.

‘Ah, there you are. How do you feel?’

‘Fine.’ She sat up. ‘Where am I?’

‘Oh, in another country, that’s all you need to know. I’ll get you some coffee, or tea if you prefer it.’

‘No, coffee would be fine, strong, black and two sugars.’

‘I shan’t be long. Look around.’

He opened the door and went out and she heard a key turn in the lock. She got up, crossed to the other door, opened it and found herself in a large old-fashioned bathroom. The toilet, basin and bath with a stand-in shower looked straight out of the nineteenth century, but on the shelf beside the wash basin there was a range of toiletries. Soaps, shampoos, talcum powder, deodorants, a selection of sanitary napkins. There was even an electric hairdryer, combs and hairbrushes, and it occurred to her that all this had very probably been procured for her.

Her belief was further reinforced by her discovery on the desk in the bedroom of a carton of Gitanes, her favourite cigarettes, and a couple of plastic lighters. She opened a pack, took a cigarette and lit it, then went to the window and peered out through the bars.

The building, whatever it was, was situated on the edge of a cliff. There was a bay below with an old jetty, a speedboat moored there. Beyond that was only a very blue sea, the light fading as dusk fell. The key turned in the door behind her, it opened and Braun entered carrying a tray.

‘So, you’ve settled in?’

‘You could call it that. When do I get some answers?’

‘My boss will be along in a few minutes. It’s up to him.’ He poured coffee for her.

She picked up the book he had been reading. It was in English, an edition of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. ‘You like poetry?’ she asked.

‘I like Eliot.’ He misquoted: ‘In our end is our beginning and all that. He says so much so simply.’ He walked to the door and paused. ‘He won’t want you to see his face, so don’t be alarmed.’

He went out and she finished her coffee, poured a second cup and lit another cigarette. She paced up and down for a while, trying to make sense of it all, but the truth was that there wasn’t any sense to it. Behind her, the key rattled in the lock and as she turned, the door opened.

David Braun came in and stood to one side, and it was the man following him who shocked her. He seemed about six feet tall, with good shoulders, and wore a black jump suit. What had shocked her was the black knitted ski-mask he wore, through which his eyes seemed to glitter. All in all, as sinister-looking a creature as she had ever seen in her life.

His voice, when he spoke, was good Boston American. ‘A pleasure, Countess, and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.’

‘My God, you’re American, and I thought you were Israelis when I heard Hebrew spoken.’

‘My dear Countess, half the men in Israel speak English with an American accent. That’s where most of us received our education. Best in the world.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘A matter of opinion.’

‘Yes, I was forgetting. You went to Oxford and the University of Paris.’

‘You’re well informed.’

‘I know everything about you, Countess – everything. No secrets.’

‘And I know nothing about you. Your name, for example.’

She could see his teeth through the slit for his mouth and it was as if he smiled. ‘Judas,’ he said. ‘Call me Judas.’

‘Very biblical,’ she said, ‘but, alas, an unfortunate connotation.’

‘Oh, yes, I know what you mean, Judas betraying Christ in the Garden.’ He shrugged. ‘But there were sound political reasons. Judas Iscariot was a Zealot. He wanted his country free of the Romans.’

‘And you?’

‘I just want my country free of everybody.’