Man on Fire by A. J. Quinnell Read Free Book Online Page B

million. If, on the other hand, he hires a full-time bodyguard, the premium could be reduced to three percent or thirty million lire. So he saves twenty million."
    Ettore shook his head. "But you just told me that a bodyguard costs thirty million lire a year. Where's the saving?"
    Vico smiled. "There are such people as 'premium bodyguards.' They wouldn't do much to foil a kidnapping, but they do allow a lower premium rate, and they are cheap. About seven million lire a year."
    "But Vico," said Ettore, "I don't want to insure against a kidnapping that isn't going to happen."
    But he suddenly got the drift, and Vico laughed at his change of expression.
    "Now you understand! You hire one of these cheap premium bodyguards for a few months and then fire him for incompetence or something. In the meantime, Pinta is back at school and Rika's face is saved."
    Ettore sat quietly thinking a few minutes and then asked, "Where can I locate such a man?"
    Vico smiled contentedly. "First you pay for this excellent lunch and then we go around to my office where I have the name of an agency right here in Milan."
    Ettore had known that somehow he would end up paying the bill.
    Guido turned off the Naples coast road and drove up a narrow dirt track. It led to an olive grove on the lower slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Just below the grove the hill crowned off, and the track ended on a grassy slope overlooking Naples and the sweep of the great bay. He turned off the ignition and the silence was complete. It was late evening and the sun, blood red, was edging onto the horizon.
    He had been again to see his mother, and the presence of her two sons had healed her. It would be at least another month before the symptoms reappeared. Guido had talked to Elio about Creasy's arrival three days before, and Elio had offered a possible temporary solution. Guido needed to think it out.
    The truth was that Creasy couldn't find the reason anymore to go on living. He had reached the point where he was unable to generate even slight enthusiasm for a new morning.
    The night after his arrival, he had talked to Guido in his usual reticent and disjointed way. Sentences related only by the silences in between. Long pauses to think out and frame the next words. Guido had said nothing. Just sat and nursed a drink and let his friend drag out his thoughts. The whole convoluted monologue was summed up at the end when Creasy said:
    "I just get the feeling that I've lived enough or too much-a lot happened-I'm a soldier, nothing else ever-never wanted anything else-known anything else-but I'm sick of it. Have been for the last five years or so."
    He had become embarrassed then. Expressing such feelings, even to his only friend, had been painful and out of character. Guido had stretched out a hand and touched his shoulder in a gesture of understanding.
    For Guido did understand, completely. He had gone through the same thing after Julia's death. It had been two years before he could adjust to a life without her.
    But the difference between them was fundamental. He had known a love and a happiness which had sharply defined his outlook on life. Its clarity was partly a result of its unexpectedness. He had fought and killed, drunk and whored his way around the world with hardly a passing thought about the effect he had on others. He had long assumed that the deep feelings of love, or compassion, or jealousy, or possession, were not inside him. His only feeling for any human being was for Creasy and, vaguely, his mother and brother.
    His conversion had been dramatic. After a week with his mother, the two mercenaries had gone to Malta to look up a contact from their Congo days. The contact had been recruiting for a sheikdom in the Persian Gulf, but they hadn't liked the terms or the prospects. They decided to stay on a few days and look around. They ended up on the sister island of Gozo in a small hotel in a fishing village. It had been warm and relaxing and the people friendly.
    Julia