Partisans

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Mercurial, you’d say?’

  ‘That’s the word. Seems to know you pretty well. Has she known you long?’

  ‘She does and she has.’ Petersen spoke with some feeling. ‘Twenty-six years, three months and some days. The day she was born. My cousin. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Curiosity. I was beginning to wonder if you knew everyone in the valley. Well, on with the inquisition. Incidentally, I would like to say that I’m honoured to be the prime suspect and/or the chosen villain.’

  ‘You’re neither a suspect nor villain. Wrong casting. If you wanted, say, to dispose of George or Alex or myself, or get your hands on something you thought we had, you’d use a heavy instrument. Surreptitious phone calls or secret tip-offs are not in your nature. Deviousness is not part of your stock-in-trade.’

  ‘Well, thank you. It’s a disappointment, though. I take it you want to ask some questions?

  ‘If I may.’

  ‘About myself, of course. Fire away. No, don’t fire away. Let me give you my curriculum vitae. Behind me lies a blameless existence. My life is an open book.

  ‘You’re right, I’m Montenegrin. Vladimir was my given name. I prefer Giacomo. In England they called me “Johnny”. I still prefer Giacomo.’

  ‘You lived in England?’

  ‘I am English. Sounds confusing, but not really. Before the war I was a second officer in the Merchant Navy – the Yugoslav one, I mean. I met a beautiful Canadian girl in Southampton so I left the ship.’ He said it as if it had been the most natural thing in the world to do and Petersen could readily understand that for him it had been. ‘There was a little difficulty at first at staying on in England but I’d found an excellent and very understanding boss who was working on a diving contract for the Government and who was one experienced diver short. I’d qualified as a diver before joining the merchant marine. By and by I got married –’

  ‘Same girl?’

  ‘Same girl. I became naturalized in August 1939 and joined the services on the outbreak of war the following month. Because I had a master’s ocean-going ticket and was a qualified diver who could have been handy at things like sticking limpet mines on to warships in enemy harbours and was a natural for the Navy, it was inevitable, I suppose, that they put me into the infantry. I went to Europe, came back by Dunkirk, then went out to the Middle East.’

  ‘And you’ve been in those parts ever since. No home leave?’

  ‘No home leave.’

  ‘So you haven’t seen your wife in two years. Family?’

  ‘Twin girls. One still-born. The other died at six months. Polio.’ Giacomo’s tone was matter-of-fact, almost casual. ‘In the early summer of ’41, my wife was killed in a Luftwaffe attack on Portsmouth.’

  Petersen nodded and said nothing. There was nothing to say. One wondered why a man like Giacomo smiled so much but one did not wonder long.

  ‘I was with the Eighth Army. Long-Range Desert Group. Then some genius finally discovered that I was really a sailor and not a soldier and I joined Jellicoe’s Special Boat Service in the Aegean.’ Both those hazardous services called for volunteers, Petersen knew: it was pointless to ask Giacomo why he had volunteered. ‘Then the same genius found out some more about me, that I was a Yugoslav, and I was called back to Cairo to escort Lorraine to her destination.’

  ‘And what happens when you’ve delivered her to her destination?’

  ‘When you’ve delivered her, you mean. Responsibility over, from here on I just sit back and relax and go along for the ride. They thought I was the best man for the job but they weren’t to know I was going to have the good luck to meet up with you.’ Giacomo poured some more wine, leaned back in his chair and smiled broadly. ‘I haven’t a single cousin in the whole of Bosnia.’

  ‘If it’s luck, I hope it holds. My question, Giacomo.’

  ‘Of course. Afterwards. I’d happily turn back now, conscience clear, but I’ve got to get a receipt or something from this fellow Mihajlovi. I think they want me to take up diving again. Not hard to guess why – must have been the same genius who found out that I was an ex-sailor. As Michael said in that mountain inn, it’s a funny old world. I spent over three years fighting the Germans and in a couple of weeks I’ll be doing the same thing. This interlude, where I’m more or less fighting with the Germans – although I don’t expect I’ll ever see a German in Yugoslavia – I don’t like one little bit.’

  ‘You heard what George said to Michael. No point in rehashing it. A very brief interlude, Giacomo. You bid your charge a tearful farewell, trying not to smile, then heigh-ho for the Aegean.’

  ‘Trying not to smile?’ He considered the contents of his glass. ‘Well, perhaps. Yes and no. If this is a funny old world, she’s a funny young girl in a funny old war. Mercurial – like your cousin. Temperamental. Patrician-looking young lady but sadly deficient in patrician sang-froid. Cool, aloof, even remote at one moment, she can be friendly, even affectionate, the next.’

  ‘The affectionate bit has escaped me so far.’

  ‘A certain lack of rapport between you two has not escaped me either. She can be sweet and bad-tempered at the same time which is no small achievement. Most un-English. I suppose you know she’s English. You seem to know quite a bit about her.’

  ‘I know she’s English because George told me so. He also told me you were from Montenegro.’

  ‘Ah! Our professor of languages.’

  ‘Remarkable linguist with a remarkable ear. He could probably give you your home address.’

  ‘She tells me you know this Captain Harrison she’s going to work for?’

  ‘I know him well.’

  ‘So does she. Used to work for him before. Peacetime. Rome. He was the manager of the Italian branch of an English ball-bearing company. She was his secretary. That’s where she learned to speak Italian. She seems to like him a lot.’

  ‘She seems to like men a lot. Period. You haven’t fallen into her clutches yet, Giacomo?’

  ‘No.’ Again the broad smile. ‘But I’m working on it.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’ Petersen stood. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ He crossed to where Sarina was sitting. ‘I’d like to talk to you. Alone. I know that sounds ominous, but it isn’t, really.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘That’s a silly question. If I want to talk to you privately I don’t talk publicly.’

  She rose and Michael did the same. He said: ‘You’re not going to talk to her without me.’

  George sighed, rose wearily to his feet, crossed to where Michael was standing, put his two ham-like hands on the young man’s shoulders and sat him in his chair as easily as he would have done a little child.

  ‘Michael, you’re only a private soldier. If you were in the American army you’d be a private soldier, second class. I’m a Regimental Sergeant-Major. Temporary, mind you, but effective. I don’t see why the Major should have to be bothered with you. I don’t see why I should have to be bothered with you. Why should you bother us? You’re not a boy any more.’ He reached behind him, picked up a glass of Maraschino from the table and handed it to Michael, who took it sulkily but did not drink. ‘If Sarina’s kidnapped, we’ll all know who did it.’

  Petersen took the girl up to her room. He left the door ajar, looked around but not with the air of one expecting to find anything and sniffed the air. Sarina looked at him coldly and spoke the same way.

  ‘What are you looking for? What are you sniffing for? Everything you do, everything you say is unpleasant, nasty, overbearing, superior, humiliating –’

  ‘Oh, come on. I’m your guardian angel. You don’t talk to your guardian angel that way.’

  ‘Guardian angel! You also tell lies. You were telling lies in the dining-room. You still think I sent a radio message.’

  ‘I don’t and didn’t. You’re far too nice for anything underhand like that.’ She looked at him warily then almost in startlement as he put his hands lightly on her shoulders, but did not try to flinch away.
‘You’re quick, you’re intelligent-unlike your brother but that’s not his fault – and I’ve no doubt you can or could be devious because your face doesn’t show much. Except for the one thing that would disqualify you from espionage. You’re too transparently honest.’

  ‘That’s a kind of left-handed compliment,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Left or right, it’s true.’ He dropped to his knees, felt under the foot of the rather ill-fitting door, stood, extracted the key from the inside of the lock and examined it. ‘You locked your door last night?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What did you do with the key?’

  ‘I left it in the lock. Half-turned. That way a person with a duplicate key or a master can’t push your key through or on to a paper that’s been pushed under the door. They taught us that in Cairo.’

  ‘Spare me. Your instructor was probably a ten-year-old schoolboy. See those two tiny bright indentations on either side of the stem of the key?’ She nodded. ‘Made by an instrument much prized by the better-class burglar who’s too sophisticated to batter doors open with a sledge-hammer. A pair of very slender pincers with tips of either Carborundum or titanium stainless steel. Turn any key in a lock. You had a visitor during the night.’

  ‘Somebody took my radio?’

  ‘Somebody sure enough used it. Could have been here.’

  ‘That’s impossible. Certainly, I was tired last night but I’m not a heavy sleeper.’

  ‘Maybe you were last night. How did you feel when you woke up this morning – when you were woken, I mean?’

  ‘Well.’ She hesitated. ‘I felt a bit sick, really. But I thought I was perhaps over-tired and hadn’t had enough sleep or I was scared – I’m not a great big coward but I’m not all that brave either and it was the first time anyone had ever pointed a gun at me – or perhaps I just wasn’t used to the strange food.’

  ‘You felt dopey, in other words.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You probably were doped. I don’t suggest flannel-foot crept stealthily in and applied a chloroform pad or anything of the kind, for the smell of that lingers for hours. Some gas that was injected through the keyhole from a nozzled canister that may well have come from the chemist’s joker shop where Alessandro buys his toys. In any event, I can promise you that you won’t be disturbed again tonight. And you rest easy in the knowledge that you’re not on anyone’s black list. Not judged, not condemned, not even suspected. You might at least have the grace to say that I’m not such an awful monster as you thought.’

  She smiled faintly. ‘Maybe you’re not even a monster at all.’

  ‘You’re going to sleep, now?’ She nodded so he said goodnight and closed the door behind him.

  Almost an hour elapsed before Petersen, George and Josip were left together in the dining-room. The others had been in no hurry to depart. The night’s events had not been conducive to an immediately renewed slumber and, besides, they were secure in the knowledge that there would be no early morning start.

  George, who had returned to his red wine, was making steady inroads on his current uncounted bottle, looked and spoke as if he had been on mineral water all the time. There was, unfortunately, not the same lack of evidence about his cigar-smoking: an evilsmelling blue haze filled the upper half of the room.

  ‘Your friend, Major Cipriano, didn’t over-stay his welcome,’ Josip said.

  ‘He’s no friend of mine,’ Petersen said. ‘Never seen him before. Appearances mean nothing but he seems a reasonable enough character. For an intelligence agent, that is. Have you known him long?’

  ‘He has been here twice. As a bona-fide traveller. He’s no friend. Thanking me for my help was just an attempt to divert suspicion from whoever tipped him off. A feeble attempt, he must have known it would fail but probably the best he could think up at the time. What was his object in coming here?’

  ‘No mystery about that. Both the Germans and Italians are suspicious of me. I have a message to deliver to the leader of the etniks. On the boat coming across from Italy one of his agents, an unpleasant character called Alessandro, tried to get this message from me. He wanted to see if it was the same as a copy he was carrying. He failed, so Cipriano got worried and came across to Ploe. He was tipped off as to our whereabouts, came up here – almost certainly by light plane – and, when we were herded down here, went through our possessions, steamed open the envelope containing my message, found that it was unchanged and resealed it. Exit Cipriano, baffled but satisfied – for the moment anyway.’

  George said: ‘Sarina?’

  ‘Someone got into her room in the early hours of this morning. That was after she had been doped. Her radio was used to call up Cipriano. Sarina says she trusts me now. I don’t believe her.’

  ‘It is as always,’ George said mournfully. ‘Every man’s – and woman’s – hands are against us.’

  ‘Doped?’ Josip was incredulous. ‘In my hotel? How can anyone be doped in my hotel?’

  ‘How can anyone be doped anywhere?’

  ‘Who was this villain?’

  ‘Villainess. Lorraine.’

  ‘Lorraine! That beautiful girl?’

  ‘Maybe her mind is not as beautiful as the rest of her.’

  ‘Sarina. Now Lorraine.’ George shook his head sadly. ‘The monstrous regiment of women.’

  Josip said: ‘But how do you know?’

  ‘Simple arithmetic. Elimination. Lorraine went for a walk tonight and returned very hurriedly. She didn’t go for the walk’s sake. She went for something else. Information. You went with her, Josip. Do you recall her doing or saying anything odd?’

  ‘She didn’t do anything. Just walked. And she said very little.’

  ‘That should make it easy to remember.’

  ‘Well, she said it was odd that I didn’t have the name of the hotel outside. I told her I hadn’t yet got around to putting it up and that it was the Hotel Eden. She also said it was funny that there were no streets signs up, so I gave her the name of the street. Ah! So she got the name and address, no?’

  ‘Yes.’ Petersen rose. ‘Bed. I trust you’re not going to stay here for the remainder of the night, George.’

  ‘Certainly not.’ George fetched a fresh bottle from behind the bar. ‘But we academics must have our moments for meditation.’

  At noon that day, Petersen and his six companions had still not left the Hotel Eden. Instead, they were just sitting down to a lunch which Josip had insisted they have, a meal that was to prove to be on a par with the dinner they had had the previous evening. But there was one vacant seat.

  Josip said: ‘Where is the Professor?’

  ‘George,’ Petersen said, ‘is indisposed. In bed. Acute stomach pains. He thinks it must have been something he had to eat last night.’

  ‘Something he had to eat!’ Josip was indignant. ‘He had exactly the same to eat as anyone else last night – except, of course, a great deal more of it – and nobody else is stricken. My food, indeed! I know what ails the Professor. When I came down early this morning, just about two hours after you went to bed, the Professor was still here, still, as he said, meditating.’

  ‘That might help to account for it.’

  That might have accounted for it but it didn’t account for George’s appearance some ten minutes after the meal had commenced. He tried to smile wanly but he didn’t look wan.

  ‘Sorry to be late. The Major will have told you I was unwell. However, the cramps have eased a little and I thought I might try a little something. To settle the stomach, you understand.’

  By one o’clock George’s stomach seemed to have settled in a most remarkable fashion. In the fifty minutes that had intervened since his joining the company he had consumed twice as much as anyone else and effortlessly disposed of two large bottles of wine.

  ‘Congratulations are in order, George,’ Giacomo said. ‘One moment at death’s door and now – well, an incredible performance.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Ge
orge said modestly. ‘In many ways, I am an incredible man.’

  Petersen sat on the bed in George’s room. ‘Well?’

  ‘Satisfactory. In one way, not well. There were two items that one would not have looked for in such an aristocratic young lady’s luggage. One was a very small leather case with a few highly professional burglarious tools. The other was a small metal box with some sachets inside, the sachets containing a liquid. When squeezed, the liquid turned into a gas. I sniffed only a very tiny amount. An anaesthetic of some kind, that’s certain. The interesting thing is that this little box, though smaller than Alessandro’s, was made of and lined with the same materials. What do we do with this young charmer?’

  ‘Leave her be. She’s not dangerous. If she were, she wouldn’t have made so amateurish a mistake.’

  ‘You said you knew the identity of the miscreant. She’s going to wonder why you haven’t disclosed it.’

  ‘Let her wonder. What’s she going to do about it?’

  ‘There’s that,’ George said. ‘There’s that.’

  SIX

  It was snowing heavily and the temperature was below freezing when Petersen drove the stolen Italian truck out of Mostar shortly after two o’clock that afternoon. The two girls beside him were silent and withdrawn, a circumstance that affected Petersen not at all. Relaxed and untroubled, he drove as unhurriedly as a man with all the time in the world and, after passing unhindered through a check-point at Potoci, slowed down even more, an action dictated not by any change of mood but by the nature of the road. It was narrow, twisting and broken-surfaced and urgently in need of the attentions of road repair gangs who had not passed that way for a long time: more importantly, they had begun to climb, and climb quite steeply, as the Neretva valley narrowed precipitously on either side of the river which sank further and further below the tortuous road until there was an almost sheer drop of several hundred feet to the foaming river that lay beneath them. Given the unstable nature of the road, the fact that there were no crash-barriers or restraining walls to prevent their sliding off the slippery road and the fact that the river itself increasingly disappeared in the thickening snowsqualls, it was not a route to lighten the hearts of those of an imaginative or nervous disposition. Judging by the handclenching and highly apprehensive expression of Petersen’s two front-seat companions, they clearly came well within that category. Petersen had neither comfort nor cheer to offer them, not through any callous indifference but because on the evidence of their own eyes they wouldn’t have believed a word he said anyway.