Partisans

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Job’s comforter,’ Petersen said. He looked at the bill the innkeeper had brought, handed over some notes, waved away the proffered change and said: ‘Do you think we could buy some blankets from you?’

  ‘Blankets?’ The innkeeper frowned in some puzzlement: it was, after all, an unusual request.

  ‘Blankets. We’ve a long way to go, there’s no heating in our transport and the afternoon and evening are going to be very cold.’

  ‘There will be no problem.’ The innkeeper disappeared and was back literally within a minute with an armful of heavy coloured woollen blankets which he deposited on a nearby empty table. ‘Those will be sufficient?’

  ‘More than sufficient. Most kind of you.’ Petersen produced money. ‘How much, please?’

  ‘Blankets?’ The innkeeper lifted his hands in protest. ‘I am not a shopkeeper. I do not charge for blankets.’

  ‘But you must. I insist. Blankets cost money.’

  ‘Please.’ The truckdriver had left his table and approached them. ‘I shall be passing back this way tomorrow. I shall bring them with me.’

  Petersen thanked them and so it was arranged. Alex, followed by the von Karajans, helped the innkeeper carry the blankets out to the truck. Petersen and George lingered briefly in the porch, closing both the inner and outer doors.

  ‘You really are the most fearful liar, George,’ Petersen said admiringly. ‘Cunning. Devious. I’ve said it before, I don’t think I’d care to be interrogated by you. You ask a question and whether people say yes, no or nothing at all you still get your answer.’

  ‘When you’ve spent twenty-five of the best years of your life dealing with dim-witted students – ’ George shrugged as if there were no more to say.

  ‘I’m not a dim-witted student but I still wouldn’t care for it. You have formed an opinion about our young friends?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘So have I. I’ve also formed another opinion about them and that is that while Michael is no intellectual giant, the girl could bear watching. I think she could be clever.’

  ‘I’ve often observed this with brother and sister, especially when they’re twins. I share your opinion. Lovely and clever.’

  Petersen smiled. ‘A dangerous combination?’

  ‘Not if she’s nice. I’ve no reason to think she’s not nice.’

  ‘You’re just middle-aged and susceptible. The innkeeper?’

  ‘Apprehensive and unhappy. He doesn’t look like a man who should be apprehensive and unhappy, he looks a big tough character who would be perfectly at home throwing big tough drunks out of his inn. Also, he seemed caught off-balance when you offered to pay for the meal. One got the unmistakable impression that there are some travellers who do not pay for their meals. Also his refusal to accept money for the blankets was out of character. Out of character for an Italian, I mean, for I’ve never known of an Italian who wasn’t ready, eager rather, to make a deal on some basis or other. Peter, my friend, wouldn’t even you be slightly nervous if you worked for, or were forced to work for the German SS?’

  ‘Colonel Lunz casts a long shadow. The waiter?’

  ‘The Gestapo have fallen in my estimation. When they send in an espionage agent in the guise of a waiter they should at least give him some training in the rudiments of table-waiting. I felt positively embarrassed for him.’ George paused, then went on: ‘You were talking about King Peter a few minutes ago.’

  ‘You introduced that subject.’

  ‘That’s irrelevant and don’t hedge. As a departmental head in the university I was regarded – and rightly – as being a man of culture. Prince Paul was nothing if not a man of culture although his interests lay more in the world of art than in philology. Never mind. We met quite a few times, either in the university or at royal functions in the city. More to the point, I saw Prince Peter – as he was then – two or three times. He didn’t have a limp in those days.’

  ‘He still doesn’t.’

  George looked at him then nodded slowly. ‘And you called me devious.’

  Petersen opened the outer door and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We live in devious times, George.’

  The second half of the trip was an improvement on the first but just marginally. Cocooned, as they were, to the ears in heavy blankets, the von Karajans were no longer subject to involuntary bouts of shivering and teeth-chattering but otherwise looked no happier and were no more communicative than they had been in the morning, which meant that they were both totally miserable and silent. They didn’t even speak when George, shouting to make himself heard above the fearful mechanical din, offered them brandy to relieve their sufferings. Sarina shuddered and Michael shook his head. They may have been wise for what George was offering them was no French cognac but his own near-lethal form of slivovitz, his native plum brandy.

  Some twelve kilometres from Pescara they bore right off the Route 5 near Chieti, reaching the Adriatic coast road at Francavilla as a premature dusk was falling – premature, because of gathering banks of dark grey cloud which Alex, inevitably, said could only presage heavy snow. The coastal road, Route 16 was an improvement over the Apennines road – it could hardly have failed to be otherwise – and the relatively comfortable though still cacophonous ride to Termoli took no more than two hours. Wartime Termoli, on a winter’s night, was no place to inspire a rhapsody in the heart of the poet or composer: the only feelings it could reasonably expect to give rise to were gloom and depression. It was grey, bleak, bare, grimy and seemingly uninhabited except for a very few half-heartedly blacked-out premises which were presumably cafés or taverns. The port area itself, however, was an improvement on Rome: here was no blackout, just a dimout which probably didn’t vary appreciably from the normal. As the truck stopped along a wharf-side there was more than enough light from the shaded yellow overhead lamps to distinguish the lines of the craft alongside the wharf, their transport to Yugoslavia.

  That it was a motor torpedo boat was beyond question. Its vintage was uncertain. What was certain was that it had been in the wars. It had sustained considerable, though not incapacitating, damage to both hull and superstructure. No attempt had been made at repair: no-one had even thought it worthwhile to repaint the numerous dents and scars that pockmarked its side. It carried no torpedoes, for the sufficient reason that the torpedo tubes had been removed; nor had it depth-charges, for even the depth-charge racks had been removed. The only armament, if such it could be called, that it carried was a pair of insignificant little guns, single-barrelled, one mounted for’ard of the bridge, the other on the poop. They looked suspiciously like Hotchkiss repeaters, one of the most notoriously inaccurate weapons ever to find its mistaken way into naval service.

  A tall man in a vaguely naval uniform was standing on the wharf-side at the head of the MTB’s gangway. He wore a peaked badgeless naval cap which shaded his face but could not conceal his marked stoop and splendid snow-white Buffalo Bill beard. He raised his hand in half-greeting, half-salute as Petersen, the others following close behind, approached him.

  ‘Good evening. My name is Pietro. You must be the Major we are expecting.’

  ‘Good evening and yes.’

  ‘And four companions, one a lady. Good. You are welcome aboard. I will send someone for your luggage. In the meantime, it is the commanding officer’s wish that you see him as soon as you arrive.’

  They followed him below and into a compartment that could have been the captain’s cabin, a chart-room, an officers’ mess-room and was probably all three: space is at a premium on MTBs. The captain was seated at his desk, writing, as Pietro entered without benefit of knocking. He swung round in his swivel-chair which was firmly bolted to the deck as Pietro stood to one side and said: ‘Your latest guests, Carlos. The Major and the four friends we were promised.’

  ‘Come in, come in, come in. Thank you, Pietro. Send that young ruffian along, will you?’

  ‘When he’s finished loading the luggage?’

  ‘That’
ll do.’ Pietro left. The captain was a broad-shouldered young man with thick curling black hair, a deep tan, very white teeth, a warm smile and warm brown eyes. He said: ‘I’m Lieutenant Giancarlo Tremino. Call me Carlos. Nearly everyone else does. No discipline left in the Navy.’ He shook his head and indicated his white polo neck jersey and grey flannel trousers. ‘Why wear uniform? No-one pays any attention to it anyway.’ He extended his hand – his left hand – to Petersen. ‘Major, you are very welcome. I cannot offer you Queen Mary type accommodation – peacetime accommodation, that is – but we have a very few small cabins, washing and toilet facilities, lots of wine and can guarantee safe transit to Ploe. The guarantee is based on the fact that we have been to the Dalmatian coast many times and haven’t been sunk yet. Always a first time, of course, but I prefer to dwell on happier things.’

  ‘You are very kind,’ Petersen said. ‘If it’s to be first name terms, then mine is Peter.’ He introduced the other four, each by their first name. Carlos acknowledged each introduction with a handshake and smile but made no attempt to rise. He was quick to explain this seeming discourtesy and quite unembarrassed about doing so.

  ‘I apologize for remaining seated. I’m not really ill-mannered or lazy or averse to physical exertion.’ He moved his right arm and, for the first time, brought his glove-sheathed right hand into view. He bent and tapped his right hand against his right leg, about halfway between knee and ankle. The unmistakable sound of hollow metal meeting hollow metal made the onlookers wince. He straightened and tapped the tips of his left fingers against the back of his right glove. The sound was against unmistakable although different – flesh meeting metal. ‘Those metal appliances take some getting used to.’ Carlos was almost apologetic. ‘Unnecessary movement – well, any movement – causes discomfort and who likes discomfort? I am not the noblest Roman of them all.’

  Sarina gnawed her lower lip. Michael tried to look as if he weren’t shocked but was. The other three, with eighteen months of vicious and bitter warfare in the Yugoslav mountains behind them, predictably showed no reaction. Petersen said: ‘Right hand, right leg. That’s quite a handicap.’

  ‘Just the right foot really – blown off at the ankle. Handicap? Have you heard of the English fighter pilot who got both legs destroyed? Did he shout for a bath-chair? He shouted to get back into the cockpit of his Spitfire or whatever. He did, too. Handicap!’

  ‘I know of him. Most people do. How did you come by those two – um – trifling scratches?’

  ‘Perfidious Albion,’ Carlos said cheerfully. ‘Nasty, horrible British. Never trust them. To think they used to be my best friends before the war – sailed with them in the Adriatic and the Channel, raced against them at Cowes – well, never mind. We were in the Aegean going, as the lawyers say, about our lawful occasions and bothering no-one. Dawn, lots of heavy mist about when suddenly, less than two kilometres away, this great big British warship appeared through a gap in the mist.’

  Carlos paused, perhaps for effect, and Petersen said mildly: ‘It was my understanding that the British never risked their capital ships north of Crete.’

  ‘Size, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It was, in fact, a very small frigate, but to us, you understand, it looked like a battleship. We weren’t ready for them but they were ready for us – they had their guns already trained on us. No fault of ours – we had four men, not counting myself, on lookout: they must have had radar, we had none. Their first two shells struck the water only a few metres from our port side and exploded on contact: didn’t do our hull much good, I can tell you. Two other light shells, about a kilo each, I should think – pom-poms, the British call them – scored direct hits. One penetrated the engine-room and put an engine out of action – I regret to say it’s still out of action but we can get by without it – and the other came into the wheelhouse.’

  ‘A kilo of explosives going off in a confined space is not very nice,’ Petersen said. ‘You were not alone?’

  ‘Two others. They were not as lucky as I was. Then I had more luck – we ran into a fog bank.’ Carlos shrugged. ‘That’s all. The past is past.’

  A knock came at the door. A very young sailor entered, stood at attention, saluted and said: ‘You sent for me, Captain.’

  ‘Indeed. We have guests, Pietro. Tired, thirsty guests.’

  ‘Right away, Captain.’ The boy saluted and left.

  Petersen said: ‘What’s all this you were saying about no discipline?’

  Carlos smiled: ‘Give him time. He’s been with us for only a month.’

  George looked puzzled. ‘He is a truant from school, no?’

  ‘He’s older than he looks. Well, at least three months older.’

  ‘Quite an age span you have aboard,’ Petersen said. ‘The elder Pietro. He can’t be a day under seventy.’

  ‘He’s a great number of days over seventy.’ Carlos laughed. The world seemed to be a source of constant amusement to him. ‘A socalled captain with only two out of four functioning limbs. A beardless youth. An old age pensioner. What a crew. Just wait till you see the rest of them.’

  Petersen said: ‘The past is past, you say. Accepted. One may ask a question about the present?’ Carlos nodded. ‘Why haven’t you been retired, invalided out of the Navy or at very least given some sort of shore job? Why are you still on active service?’

  ‘Active service?’ Carlos laughed again. ‘Highly inactive service. The moment we run into anything resembling action I hand in my commission. You saw the two light guns we have mounted fore and aft? It was just pride that made me keep them there. They’ll never be used for either attack or defence for the perfectly adequate reason that neither works. This is a very undemanding assignment and I do have one modest qualification for it. I was born and brought up in Pescara where my father had a yacht – more than one. I spent my boyhood and the ridiculously long university vacations sailing. Around the Mediterranean and Europe for part of the time but mainly off the Yugoslav coast. The Adriatic coast of Italy is dull and uninteresting, with not an island worth mentioning between Bari and Venice: the thousand and one Dalmatian islands are a paradise for the cruising yachtsman. I know them better than I know the streets of Pescara or Termoli. The Admiralty finds this useful.’

  ‘On a black night?’ Petersen said. ‘No lighthouses, no lit buoys, no land-based navigational aids?’

  ‘If I required those I wouldn’t be much use to the Admiralty, would I? Ah! Help is at hand.’

  It took young Pietro an heroic effort not to stagger under the weight of his burden, a vertically-sided, flat-bottomed wicker basket holding the far from humble nucleus of a small but well-stocked bar. In addition to spirits, wines and liqueurs, Pietro had even gone to the length of providing a soda syphon and a small ice-bucket.

  ‘Pietro hasn’t yet graduated to bar-tender and I’ve no intention of leaving this chair,’ Carlos said. ‘Help yourselves, please. Thank you, Pietro. Ask our two passengers to join us at their convenience.’ The boy saluted and left. ‘Two other Yugoslav-bound passengers. I don’t know their business as I don’t know yours. You don’t know theirs and they don’t know yours. Ships that pass in the night. But such ships exchange recognition signals. Courtesy of the high seas.’

  Petersen gestured at the basket from which George was already helping the von Karajans to orange juice. ‘Another courtesy of the high seas. Lessens the rigours of total war, I must say.’

  ‘My feeling exactly. No thanks, I may say, to our Admiralty who are as stingy as Admiralties the world over. Some of the supplies come from my father’s wine cellars – they would have your threestar sommeliers in raptures, I can tell you – some are gifts from foreign friends.’

  ‘Kruškovac.’ George touched a bottle. ‘Grappa. Pelinkovac. Stara Šljivovica. Two excellent vintages from the Neretva delta. Your foreign friends. All from Yugoslavia. Our hospitable and considerate young friend, Pietro. Clairvoyant? He thinks we go to Yugoslavia? Or has he been informed?’

&n
bsp; ‘Suspicion, one would suppose, is part of your stock-in-trade. I don’t know what Pietro thinks. I don’t even know if he can think. He hasn’t been informed. He knows.’ Carlos sighed. ‘The romance and glamour of the cloak-and-dagger, sealed-orders missions are not, I’m afraid, for us. Search Termoli and you might find a person who is deaf, dumb and blind, although I much doubt it. If you did, he or she would be the only person in Termoli who doesn’t know that the Colombo – that’s the name of this crippled greyhound – plies a regular and so far highly dependable ferry-service to the Yugoslav coast. If it’s any consolation, I’m the only person who knows where we’re going. Unless, of course, one of you has talked.’ He poured himself a small scotch. ‘Your health, gentlemen. And yours, young lady.’

  ‘We don’t talk much about such things, but about other things I’m afraid I talk too much.’ George sounded sad but at once refuted himself. ‘University, eh? Some kind of marine school?’

  ‘Some kind of medical school.’

  ‘Medical school.’ With the air of a man treating himself for shock George poured some more grappa. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a doctor.’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything. But I have a paper that says so.’

  Petersen waved a hand. ‘Then why this?’

  ‘Well you might ask.’ Momentarily, Carlos sounded as sad as George had done. ‘The Italian Navy. Any navy. Take a highly skilled mechanic, obvious material for an equally highly skilled engineroom-artificer. What does he become? A cook. A cordon bleu chef? A gunner.’ He waved his hand much as Petersen had done. ‘So, in their all-knowing wisdom, they gave me this. Dr Tremino, ferryman, first class. Considering the state of the ferry, make that second class. Come in, come in.’ A knock had come on the door.