Jack Higgins · 1981 · thriller
Jack Higgins's 1981 thriller. On the eve of the Sicily landings, American intelligence takes a gangster out of a New York prison cell and drops him into the mountains of his birth - because the one man who can deliver the Mafia, and with it the island, is Lucky Luciano. The mission is to reach a capo in the hills before the invasion begins.
- 1New York
In 1943 the US Navy has already been dealing quietly with the New York waterfront mob, and now wants more: Lucky Luciano is taken out of prison to be flown to the Mediterranean and used as a key to his own island.
- 2Algiers
At Allied headquarters in Algiers the operation is put together - a small team, a night drop, and a gangster in his fifties who has not been back to Sicily since he was a boy and is not obviously an asset in the field.
- 3Villalba
They come down in the mountains near Villalba to reach Don Calogero, the capo whose word runs through the interior - and the negotiation is conducted on terms that have nothing to do with the war and everything to do with respect.
- 4Palermo
The invasion lands, and the interior opens in front of it faster than anyone planned for - and the debt incurred in the mountains is one that will be collected in Sicily and New York for the next thirty years.