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After a moment, Nola finally spoke: “It didn’t.”
“What didn’t?” Canidy said.
“It didn’t,” Nola repeated.
“You mean the villa did not explode?” Canidy said.
Nola shrugged.
“There was only one blast that night,” he explained, then softly added, “the one from the boat with the gas.”
Jesus! Canidy considered that for a moment.
Well, there could be any number of reasons for that.
Maybe Rossi’s men at the villa got cold feet after the cargo ship exploded.
Maybe they bungled the C-2 charges. Plastic explosive is mostly foolproof—but not completely.
Or maybe the charges were discovered by that Nazi sonofabitch, that SS Sturmbannführer Whatshisname.
Who the hell knows?
“What would be the fastest method of getting news from Sicily?” Canidy asked.
“There should be another of our fishing boats arriving in the next day—”
“In the next day?”
“—or two. It’s the one I met off of Marsala, when we took on these cases”—he motioned at the boxes stacked about the cabin—“before it continued fishing. And then there’s another boat a day or two after that.”
Canidy shook his head.
“Not good enough,” he said. “That’s if they got out of Palermo unharmed. And if they did, then if they didn’t break down between here and there. And if not that, then if they didn’t get waylaid by some goddamn Kraut gunboat on patrol.”
He sighed loudly.
“We don’t have the time to wait on so many ifs. We need the intel now.”
Nola shrugged.
Canidy looked him directly in the eyes.
“I’m going to ask you something, Frank,” he said, “and I want you to think about it before replying. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I need someone to be my eyes and ears in Palermo, someone who is connected and can help me collect information on the Nazis—specifically, their use of the nerve gas and yellow fever. Would you—”
“Yes!”
“I said to think before replying. You don’t even know what I want you to do. Because should you be caught, you will be killed.”
Nola was silent a long moment, during which time he looked deeply into Canidy’s eyes.
“Okay,” he then said. “I have thought about it. And this is what I have thought: Sicily is my home and those people are my family. They are already dying. God willing, I will do what it is that you need, and what I cannot do I will find someone who can.”
Canidy nodded slowly.
