Read Online Bloody Passage (v5) by Jack Higgins - Free Book Online Page B

uniformed man sitting at a desk inside stood to greet him.
    "These gentlemen and I have business to discuss, Guido," he said. "Go and have something to eat. Take an hour."
    Guido saluted and made himself scarce and Barzini closed the door after him. Langley gazed down through the glass window in fascinated horror at the rows of corpses below.
    "You like it?" Barzini said. "You want I should find a place for you? We call it the Waiting Hall. You'd be surprised how many people have a pathological fear of being buried alive. They like to be certain, so we leave them here for a while. Notice the cord running into each coffin. One end connected to a bell, the other to a ring on the corpse's finger. The slightest movement and a bell sounds up here. That's why we have an attendant day and night."
    There was a moment's silence when he finished and then, quite distinctly, one of the bells above his head tinkled.
    "Good God Almighty!" Langley exclaimed, genuine horror on his face, and his hand dipped inside his coat and came out holding a Walther PPK.
    Barzini laughed harshly. "And just what do you think you're going to do with that?" he demanded and pushed it aside with the back of his hand.
    He opened the door and went down the steps quickly. We watched him cross to a coffin and examine a corpse. The bell tinkled faintly again, he turned and came back.
    "Nothing to worry about. Those warning bells are so sensitive that the least movement of the corpse sets them going."
    Langley's forehead was beaded with sweat and his eyes were wild. "Does it ever happen for real?" he whispered.
    "Twice last year. A middle-aged woman sat up in her shroud in the middle of the night and started screaming." Langley's eyes almost started from his head and Barzini patted his cheek and grinned delightedly. "See, Oliver, he isn't so tough after all."
    He sat on the edge of the desk and pushed another of those lousy Egyptian cheroots into his mouth. "Let's have it. How do we do this job?"
    "All right," I said. "Getting there is no problem. We can go in by boat with the kind of front that would be acceptable to anybody."
    "And the prison?"
    "Something else again."
    I described it in detail and when I'd finished, he frowned. "It sounds like Fort Knox to me. And you say you've got a way in?"
    "I think so. The cliffs on the seaward side are about one hundred and fifty feet high. Supposedly impregnable. Because of that they never have more than two guards on the ramparts."
    "Are you trying to say you think they could be climbed?"
    "If someone on the ramparts was in place to throw down a line at the right moment and pull up a climbing rope. And I'll need a number two. Preferably the sort of guy who's at home on a rock face."
    "But you've still got to get somebody inside to be on the ramparts at the right time," Langley said. "I mean, it's just not on. They don't even let civilians into the bloody place to work."
    "Oh, yes, they do," I turned to Barzini. "Every Friday night a local operator named Zingari, who's now working for us, sends in a couple of truckloads of women to amuse the troops, special dispensation of Colonel Masmoudi who always has first choice and never fails to pick less than two according to Zingari."
    Barzini seemed amused. "And you're suggesting that your inside operator should be a woman? Someone who would gain access by passing herself off as a whore?"
    "No great trick in that. Zingari, as I said, is working for us and he told me himself he's always having to bring fresh girls in from Tripoli."
    Langley laughed wildly. "For God's sake, Grant, you're living in cloud cuckoo land. Do you realize what you're asking for? A woman able to pass as a whore, willing to act as one if the going gets rough, capable of disposing of two armed sentries on the north wall."
    I said, "It would take an exceptional woman, I grant you, but it's the only way, believe me. The one flaw in their security. The only one."
    Barzini laughed harshly. "I like it and it's just