Partisans

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Well, welcome, welcome.’ Harrison looked at his watch. ‘Won’t be long, you said. What do you call short?’

  ‘I wanted to give George a chance to finish his story. Besides, I was detained. Much questioning. And I stopped by at my radio hut to see if you’d made off with anything during my absence. It seems not. Perhaps you mislaid the key.’

  ‘The radio hut?’ Sarina glanced at the door at the end of the room. ‘But we heard nothing. I mean –’

  ‘My radio hut is fifty metres away. No mystery. There are three radios in the camp. One for the Colonel. One for Captain Harrison. One for me. You will be assigned to the Colonel. Lorraine comes here.’

  ‘You arranged that?’

  ‘I arranged nothing. I take orders, just like anyone else. The Colonel arranged it, Lorraine’s assignation here was arranged weeks ago. There’s no secret about it. The Colonel, for reasons that may seem obscure to you but which I understand very well, prefers that Captain Harrison’s radio operator, like Captain Harrison himself, should not speak or understand Serbo-Croat. The basis of the Colonel’s security beliefs is that one should trust nobody.’

  ‘You must have a lot in common with the Colonel.’

  ‘I think that’s rather unfair, young lady.’ It was Metrovi again and he was still smiling. ‘I can confirm what the Major has said. I’m the go-between, the translator, if you like, for the Colonel and Captain Harrison. Like the major, I was partly educated in England.’ ‘Enough,’ Harrison said. ‘Let us put unworthy thoughts to one side and concentrate on more important things.’

  ‘Such as hospitality?’ George said.

  ‘Such as hospitality, as you say. Be seated, please. What is your choice, gentlemen – and ladies, of course?’

  They all told him what they wanted, all, that is, except Major Rankovi. He crossed to where Giacomo was seated and said: ‘May I ask what your name is?’

  Giacomo lifted his eyebrows in slight puzzlement, smiled and said: ‘Giacomo.’

  ‘That’s an Italian name, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Giacomo what?’

  ‘Just Giacomo.’

  ‘Just Giacomo.’ Rankovi’s voice was deep and gravelly. ‘It suits you to be mysterious?’

  ‘It suits me to mind my own business.’

  ‘What’s your rank?’

  ‘That’s my business, too.’

  ‘I’ve seen you before. Not in the army, though. Rijeka, Split, Kotor, some place like that.’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Giacomo was still smiling but the smile no longer extended to his eyes. ‘It’s a small enough world. I used to be a sailor.’

  ‘You’re a Yugoslav.’

  Giacomo, Petersen was aware, could easily have conceded the fact but he knew he wouldn’t. Rankovi was an able soldier but no psychologist.

  ‘I’m English.’

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  Petersen stepped forward and tapped Rankovi on the shoulder. ‘If I were you, Marino, I’d quit while I was ahead. Not, mind you, that I think you are ahead.’

  Rankovi turned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that you’re still intact and in one piece. Keep on like this and you’ll wake up in hospital wondering if you fell under a train. I can vouch for Giacomo. He is English. He’s got so long and so distinguished a war record that he puts any man in this room to shame. While you’ve been pottering around the mountains he’s been fighting in France and Belgium and North Africa and the Aegean and usually on assignments so dangerous that you couldn’t even begin to wonder what they were like. Look at his face, Marino. Look at it and you’ll look into the face of war.’

  Rankovi studied Giacomo closely. ‘I’m not a fool. I never questioned his qualities as a soldier. I was curious, that is all, and maybe, like the Colonel and yourself, I am not much given to trusting anyone. I did not intend to give offence.’

  ‘And I didn’t intend to take any,’ Giacomo said. His good humour had returned. ‘You’re suspicious, I’m touchy. A bad mix. Let me suggest a good mix or rather no mix at all. You never mix malt whisky with anything, do you, George? Not even water?’

  ‘Sacrilege.’

  ‘You were right on one count, Major. I am English but I was born in Yugoslavia. Let us drink to Yugoslavia.’

  ‘A toast no man could quarrel with,’ Rankovi said. There were no handshakes, no protestations of eternal friendship. It was, at best, a truce. Rankovi, no actor, still had his reservations about Giacomo.

  Petersen, for his part, had none.

  Considerably later in the evening an understandably much more relaxed and mellowed atmosphere had descended upon the company. Some of them had paid a brief visit to a mess four hundred metres distant for an evening meal. Sarina and Lorraine had pointblank – and as it turned out, wisely – refused to brave the near blizzard that was now sweeping by outside. Michael, inevitably, had elected to remain with them and Giacomo, after a quick exchange of glances with Petersen, had announced that he was not hungry. Giacomo did not have to have it spelt out to him that, even among his own people, Petersen was suspicious of practically everybody in sight.

  Compared to Josip Pijade’s midday offerings, the meal was a gastro nomic disaster. It was no fault of the etnik cooks – as elsewhere through that ravaged country, food was at a premium and fine food almost wholly unobtainable. Still, it was a sad come-down from the flesh-pots of Italy and Mostar and even George could manage no more than two platefuls of the fatty mutton and beans which constituted the main and only course of the evening. They had left as soon as decency permitted.

  Back in Harrison’s radio hut their relative sufferings were soon forgotten.

  ‘There’s no place like home,’ Harrison announced to nobody in particular. Although it would have been unfair to call him inebriated, it would have been fair to pass the opinion that he wasn’t stone cold sober either.

  He bent an appreciative gaze on the glass in his hand. ‘Nectar emboldens me. George has given me a very comprehensive account of your activities over the past two weeks. He has not, however, told me why you went to Rome in the first place.

  Nor did you seek to enlighten me on your return.’

  ‘That’s because I didn’t know myself.’

  Harrison nodded sagely. ‘That makes sense. You go all the way to Rome and back and you don’t know why.’

  ‘I was just carrying a message. I didn’t know the contents.’

  ‘Is one permitted to ask if you know the contents now?’

  ‘One is permitted. I do.’

  ‘Ah! Is one further permitted to know the contents?’

  ‘In your own language, Jamie, I don’t know whether I’m permitted or not. All I can say is that this is purely a military matter. Strictly, I am not a military man, a commander of troops. I’m an espionage agent. Espionage agents don’t wage battles. We’re far too clever for that. Or cowardly.’

  Harrison looked at Metrovi and Rankovi in turn. ‘You’re military men. If I’m to believe half you tell me, you wage battles.’

  Metrovi smiled. ‘We’re not as clever as Peter.’

  ‘You know the contents of the message?’

  ‘Of course. Peter’s discretion does him credit but it’s not really necessary. Within a couple of days the news will be common knowledge throughout the camp. We – the Germans, Italians, ourselves and the Ustaša – are to launch an all-out offensive against the Partisans. We shall annihilate Titoland. The Germans have given the name of the attack “Operation Weiss”: the Partisans will doubtless call it the Fourth Offensive.’

  Harrison seemed unimpressed. He said, doubtfully: ‘That means, of course, that you’ve made three other offensives already. Those didn’t get you very far, did they?’

  Metrovi was unruffled. ‘I know it’s easy to say, but this time really will be different. They’re cornered. They’re trapped. They’ve no way out, no place left to go. They haven’t a single plane, fighter or bomber. We have squadrons upon squadrons. They h
aven’t a tank, not even a single effective anti-aircraft gun. At the most, they have fifteen thousand men, most of them starving, weak, sick and untrained. We have almost a hundred thousand men, well-trained and fit. And Tito’s final weakness, his Achilles’ heel, you might say, is his lack of mobility: he is known to have at least three thousand wounded men on his hands. It will be no contest. I don’t say I look forward to it, but it will be a massacre. Are you a betting man, James?’

  ‘Not against odds like that, I’m not. Like Peter here, I lay no claim to being a military man – I never even saw a uniform until three years ago – but if the action is so imminent why are you drinking wine at your leisured ease instead of being hunched over your war maps, sticking flags in here, flags in there, drawing up your battle plans or whatever you’re supposed to be doing in cases like this?’

  Metrovi laughed. ‘Three excellent reasons. First, the offensive is not imminent – it’s two weeks away yet. Second, all the plans have already been drawn up and all the troops are already in position or will be in a few days. Third, the main assault takes place at Biha, where the Partisan forces are at present centred, and that’s over two hundred kilometres north-west of here. We’re not taking part in that: we’re staying just where we are in case the Partisans are so foolish, or optimistic or suicidal to try to break out to the south-east: stopping them from crossing the Neretva, in the remote possibility of a few stragglers getting as far as here, would be only a formality.’ He paused and gazed at a darkened window. ‘There may well be a fourth possibility. If the weather worsens, or even continues like this, the best laid plans of the High Command could well go wrong. A postponement would be inevitable. Nobody’s going to be moving around the mountains in those impossible weather conditions for days to come, that’s for sure. Days might well become weeks.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Harrison said. ‘One sees why you face the future with a certain resigned fortitude. On the basis of what you say the chances are good that you won’t even become involved at all. For myself, I hope your prognosis is correct – as I’ve said I’m no man of war and I’ve become quite attached to these rather comfortable quarters. And do you, Peter, expect to hibernate along with us?’

  ‘No. If the Colonel has nothing for me in the morning – and he gave no indication tonight that he would have – then I shall be on my way the following morning. Provided, of course, that we’re not up to our ears in snowdrifts.’

  ‘Whither away, if one is –’

  ‘Permitted to ask? Yes. A certain Italian intelligence officer is taking an undue amount of interest in me. He’s trying either to discredit me or hamper me in my operations. Has tried, I should say. I would like to find out why.’

  Metrovi said: ‘In what way has he tried, Peter?’

  ‘He and a gang of his thugs held us up in a Mostar hotel in the early hours of this morning. Looking for something, I suppose. Whether they found it or not I don’t know. Shortly before that, on the boat coming from Italy, some of his minions tried to carry out a night attack on us. They failed, but not for the want of trying, for they were carrying syringes and lethal drugs which they were more than prepared to use.’

  ‘Goodness me.’ Harrison looked suitably appalled. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was all quite painless, really,’ George said with satisfaction. ‘We welded them up in a cabin on the boat. Last heard of they were still there.’

  Harrison looked reproachfully at George. ‘Missed this out in your stirring account of your activities, didn’t you?’

  ‘Discretion, discretion.’

  ‘This Italian intelligence officer,’ Metrovi said, ‘is, of course an ally. With some allies, as we know, you don’t need enemies. When you meet up with this ally what are you going to do? Question him or kill him?’ The Major seemed to regard that as a very natural query.

  ‘Kill him?’ Sarina looked and was shocked. ‘That nice man. Kill him! I thought you rather liked him.’

  ‘Liked him? He’s reasonable, personable, smiling, open-faced, has a firm handshake and looks you straight in the eye – anyone can tell at once that he’s a member of the criminal classes. He was prepared to kill me, by proxy, mind you, through his hatchet-man Alessandro – which, if anything, makes it an even more heinous intention on his part – so why shouldn’t I be prepared to pre-empt him? But I won’t, at least not right away. I just want to ask him a few questions.’

  ‘But – but you might not even be able to find him.’

  ‘I’ll find him.’

  ‘And if he refuses to answer?’

  ‘He’ll answer.’ There was the same chilling certainty in the voice. She touched her lips with the back of her hand and fell silent. Metrovi, his face thoughtful, said: ‘You’re not the man to ask questions unless you’re pretty certain of the answers in advance. You’re after confirmation of something. Could you not have obtained this confirmation at the hotel you mentioned?’

  ‘Certainly. But I didn’t want the place littered with corpses, not all of which might have been theirs. I’d promised to deliver this lot intact first. Everything in its due turn. Confirmation? I want confirmation of why Italy is planning to pull out of this war. That they want out I don’t for a moment doubt. Their people never wanted this war. Their army, navy and air force never wanted it. Remember when Wavell’s army in North Africa overwhelmed the Italians? There was a picture taken just after the last battle, a picture that was to become world-famous. It showed about a thousand Italian prisoners being marched off to their barbed wire cages escorted by three British soldiers. The sun was so hot that the soldiers had given their rifles to three of the prisoners to carry. That about sums up the Italian attitude to the war.

  ‘Given a cause that is close to their hearts, the Italians can fight as gallantly as any people on earth. This cause is not close to their hearts – it couldn’t be further away from it. This is Germany’s war and they don’t like fighting Germany’s war because, basically, they don’t like the Germans. It has been repeatedly claimed, both by the Italians and the British that the Italians are, at bottom, pro-British. The truth is, of course, that they’re just pro-Italian.

  ‘No-one is more acutely aware of this than the Italian high command. But there’s more to it of course than just patriotism. There’s no lack of first-class minds in the Italian high command and it’s my belief that they are convinced, even at this early stage, that the Germans are going to lose the war.’ Petersen looked round the room. ‘It may not be your belief, it may not be my belief, but that’s irrelevant. What matters is that I’m convinced it is their belief and that they are even now figuring out a way to arrive at an accommodation – for want of a better word – with the British and Americans. This accommodation, of course, would take the form of a full-scale surrender but, of course, it would be nothing of the sort. It would involve full-scale cooperation upon the part of the Italians with every aspect of the British and American forces just short of the front-line engagement of their troops in the front line.’

  ‘You seem very sure about this, Peter,’ Metrovi said. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because I have access to sources and information that none of you has. I am in constant touch with both Italian and German forces in this country and, as you know, I’m a frequent visitor to Italy and have talked to literally hundreds of Italians there, both military men and civilians. I am neither literally deaf nor figuratively dumb. I know, for instance, that Italian Intelligence and German Intelligence are barely on civil speaking terms with each other and most certainly do not trust each other round the nearest corner in the street.

  ‘General Granelli, Head of Italian Intelligence and Cipriano’s boss – Cipriano is this Intelligence Major I was talking about – is an evil and warped character but out-and-out brilliant. He knows the situation and the options as well as anyone and is in no doubt that the Germans are going to go down in dust and flames and has no intention of joining them there. He’s also pretty certain that I know quite well what
the true situation is and that if I start voicing my doubts – my convictions, rather – out loud I could be a positive danger to him. I think he’s been twice on the point of having me eliminated and has twice changed his mind at the last minute. I know there’s going to be a third time which is one reason why I want to get out of here – before Cipriano or some other comes, in the guise of a loyal ally, naturally, and arranges for an accident to happen to me. But the main reason, of course, for my departure is to get to their link-man before he gets to me.’

  ‘Link-man? Link-man?’ Harrison shook his head in bafflement. ‘You speak in riddles, Peter.’

  ‘A riddle with a childishly easy answer. If the Germans go down who else is going to go down with them?’

  ‘Ah-ha!’

  ‘As you’ve just said, ah-ha. All those who have fought with them, that’s who. Including us. If you were General Granelli and with Granelli’s keen eye to the future, which of the opposing forces in Yugoslavia would you back?’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Harrison sounded slightly stunned. He looked around the room. The others, if not quite stunned, looked for the most part deeply pensive, not least Rankovi and Metrovi. ‘What you are saying is that Granelli and this Major Cipriano are working hand-in-hand with the Partisans and that Cipriano is the master double-agent?’

  Petersen rubbed his chin with his hand, glanced briefly at Harrison, sighed, poured himself some more red wine and did not deign to answer.

  Petersen’s radio shack did not begin to compare in magnificence with Harrison’s, which they had left only a few moments previously, a premature departure arising directly from the conversational hiatus that had ensued immediately after Harrison’s last words, a lacuna that went on and on and on. Harrison and the two etnik officers were sunk in profound reverie, Sarina and Lorraine, by their expressions not by words, had made it clear that their aversion to Petersen had not only returned but was in fuller flood than ever and Alex and Michael, as ever, had nothing to say. Those two master conversationalists, George and Giacomo, had battled bravely but only briefly on. It was a lost cause.