CHAPTER 11
Flying over Germany in twilight, Rogan
could see how the country had rebuilt itself. The rubbled cities of
1945 had sprung back with more factory smoke-stacks, taller steel
spires. But there were still ugly scabs of burned-out sections
visible from the sky, the pockmarks of war.
He was in Palermo and checked into its finest hotel
before midnight, already starting his search. He had asked the
hotel manager if he knew anyone in the city by the name of Genco
Bari. The hotel manager had shrugged and spread his arms wide.
Palermo, after all, had over 400,000 people. He could hardly be
expected to know all of them, could he, signore?
The next morning, Rogan contracted a firm of
private detectives to track down Genco Bari. He gave them a
generous retainer and promised them a large bonus if they were
successful. Then he made the rounds of those official bureaux he
thought might help him. He went to the United States consulate, the
Sicilian chief of police, the publishing office of Palermo’s
biggest newspaper. None of them knew anything of or anyone named
Genco Bari.
It seemed impossible to Rogan that his search would
not be successful. Genco Bari must be a wealthy man, a man of
substance, since he was a member of the Mafia. Then he realized
that this was the hitch. Nobody, no one at all would give him
information on a Mafia chief. In Sicily the law of omertà
ruled. Omertà, the code of silence, was an ancient tradition
of these people: Never give information of any kind to any of the
authorities. The punishment for breaking the code was swift and
sure death, and not to be risked to satisfy the mere curiosity of a
foreigner. In the face of omertà the police chief and the
firm of private detectives were helpless in their quest for
information. Or perhaps they, too, did not break the unwritten
law.
At the end of the first week, Rogan was about to
move on to Budapest when he received a surprise caller at his
hotel. It was Arthur Bailey, the Berlin-based American Intelligence
agent.
Bailey held out a protesting hand, a friendly smile
on his face. “I’m here to help,” he said. “I found out you’ve got
too much drag in Washington to be pushed around, so I might as
well. Of course I have my selfish motive, too. I want to keep you
from accidentally ruining a lot of our groundwork in setting up
information systems in Europe.”
Rogan looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment.
It was impossible to doubt the man’s sincerity and warm
friendliness. “Fine,” he said at last. “You can start off helping
me by telling me where to find Genco Bari.” He offered the lean
American a drink.
Bailey sat down, relaxed, and sipped his Scotch.
“Sure, I can tell you that,” he said. “But first you have to
promise that you’ll let me help you all the way. After Genco Bari
you’ll go after Pajerski in Budapest and then von Osteen in Munich,
or vice versa. I want you to promise to follow my advice. I don’t
want you caught. If you are, you’ll wreck Intelligence contacts
it’s taken the United States years and millions of dollars to set
up.”
Rogan didn’t smile or act particularly friendly.
“OK. Just tell me where Bari is—and make sure I get a visa for
Budapest.”
Bailey sipped his drink. “Genco Bari is living in
his walled estate just outside the village of Villalba in central
Sicily. The necessary Hungarian visas will be waiting for you in
Rome whenever you’re ready. And in Budapest I want you to contact
the Hungarian interpreter at the United States consulate. His name
is Rakol. He’ll give you all the help you need and arrange your
exit from the country. Fair enough?”
“Sure,” Rogan said. “And when I get back to Munich
do I contact you, or will you contact me?”
“I’ll contact you,” Bailey said. “Don’t worry. I’ll
be able to find you.”
Bailey finished his drink. Rogan saw him to the
elevator and Bailey said casually, “After you killed those first
four guys, that gave us enough of a lead to break your Munich
Palace of Justice case wide open. That’s how I know about Bari,
Pajerski, and von Osteen.”
Rogan smiled politely. “That’s what I figured,” he
said. “But since I found them by myself, it doesn’t matter what you
found out. Right?”
Bailey gave him an odd look, shook hands, and just
before getting into the elevator said, “Good luck.”
As Bailey knew the whereabouts of Genco Bari,
Rogan realized that everyone else must have known too—the police
chief, the private detectives, probably even the hotel manager.
Genco Bari was one of the big Mafia leaders of Sicily; his name was
no doubt known throughout the country.
He rented a car to drive the fifty-odd miles to
Villalba. It struck him that he would quite possibly never leave
this island alive, and that the last criminals would remain
unpunished. But that didn’t seem to matter so much now. As it did
not matter that he had made up his mind not to see Rosalie again.
He had arranged for her to receive money from his estate once she
had been in touch with the office. She would forget about him and
make a new life. Nothing mattered at the moment except killing
Genco Bari. And Rogan thought about that man in the Italian
uniform. The only man of the seven in the high-domed room in the
Munich Palace of Justice who had treated him with any genuine
warmth. And yet he, too, had taken part in the final
betrayal.
On that final terrible morning in the Munich
Palace of Justice, Klaus von Osteen had smiled in the shadows
behind his great desk, as Hans and Eric Freisling had urged Rogan
to change into his “freedom clothes.” Genco Bari had said nothing;
he’d merely looked at him with gentle pitying eyes. Finally he had
crossed the room and stood in front of Rogan. He had helped Rogan
knot his tie, had patted it securely inside Rogan’s jacket. He had
distracted Rogan so that Rogan had never seen Eric Freisling slip
behind him with the gun. Bari, too, had taken a hand in the final
humiliating cruelty of the execution. And it was because of Bari’s
humanity that Rogan could not forgive him. Moltke had been a
selfish, self-serving man; Karl Pfann, a brutal animal. The
Freisling brothers were evil incarnate. What they had done could be
expected, springing as it did out of their very natures. But Genco
Bari had exuded a human warmth, and his taking part in torture and
execution was a deliberate, malignant degeneracy;
unforgivable.
Now driving through the starry Sicilian night,
Rogan thought of all the years he had dreamed of his revenge. How
it had been the one thing that had kept him from dying. And when
they had thrown him on the pile of corpses stacked outside the
Munich Palace of Justice, even then when his shattered brain oozed
blood and flickered with only a tiny spark, how that tiny spark had
been kept alive by the energy of sheer hatred.
And now that he was no longer with Rosalie, now
that he planned not to see her again, his memories of his dead wife
seemed to flood back into his being. He thought, Christine,
Christine, you would have loved this starry night, the balmy air of
Sicily. You always trusted and liked everyone. You never understood
the work I was doing, not really. You never understood what would
happen to all of us if we were captured. When I heard your screams
in the Munich Palace of Justice, it was the surprise in your
screams that made them so terrifying. You could not believe that
human beings did such terrible things to their fellow human
beings.
She had been beautiful: long legs for a French
girl, with rounded thighs; a slim waist and small shy breasts that
grew bold beneath his hand; lovely soft brown hair like overflowing
silk; and charmingly serious eyes. Her lips, full and sensual, had
had the same character and honesty as he’d seen in her eyes.
What had they done to her before she died? Bari,
Pfann, Moltke, the Freislings, Pajerski, and von Osteen? How had
they made her scream so; how had they killed her? He had never
asked any of the others because they would have lied to him. Pfann
and Moltke would have made it seem less terrible; the Freisling
brothers would have invented gory details to make him suffer even
now. Only Genco Bari would tell him the truth. For some reason
Rogan was sure of this. He would finally learn how his pregnant
wife had died. He would learn what had caused those terrible
screams, the screams that the torturers had recorded and preserved
so carefully.