“How do you … Oh.” I said.
There was silence. In it a fly buzzed on a window pane.
“He was not a type I admire,” Andrews said.
I got up. “ I see.” I felt sick, lost, out of touch.
Dwight seemed to be trying to read my expression, as if he really cared what I felt. “This is war, you know. Two can play. It’s a question of being a jump ahead of the other feller. National Hunt rules.”
“There are no rules,” Andrews said. “ He fell in a canal. Can we help that?” He offered me his cigar case.
Harshly I said, no thanks. “ I don’t see this that you’ve done—or arranged to be done—I don’t see how it will help for more than a few hours. If the man who is shadowing me is found to be dead, won’t the police arrest me at once? Or, if that is forbidden, they will just attach another detective. We can’t go on——”
“Withdrawing them from circulation,” said Andrews, “ that is the fashionable phrase is this country.”
“You can’t go on disposing of people who are put on the case. If the Italian police know all about me. there’s no cure. We have simply shown our hand …”
Major Dwight began to cough. He coughed until the veins stood out an his neck and forehead like pipe-lines. “ So far the Italian police—old man—know nothing—whatever about you.”
“Then who does?”
Andrews sat down opposite me. One of his fly buttons was undone and he fastened it. “Certain effects were found on the dead man. They indicate that he was not an Italian at all.”
“No, probably Swiss. His accent gave him away.”
“… We won’t argue. Ever heard of an address? 26, Sailer Ring, Cologne?”
I shook my head.
“Or of a certain Herr Wolfram Hacker?”
“No. Was that his name?”
“No. That was the name of the man who countersigned his secret identity warrant.”
“Who was he? I don’t follow you.”
“See, look for yourself.” Andrews took from his pocket a folded sheet of stiff and rather soiled paper.
My eyes fled over the wording to the signature at the bottom. Beside the signature was the print of a rubber stamp, like a circular postmark. Inside the perimeter of the stamp were the words: Geheime Staatspolizei.
I cannot begin to describe the effect those words had on me. A man finding himself in an enclosed space with a deadly snake. A man suddenly told he has an incurable disease. A man without hope …
I went to the window in search of air.
Dwight said: “ Don’t take it like that, old man.”
In the canal below, the boy was still baling out the gondola. The dome of a church glistened like gold in the sun.
“Of course,” Dwight said, “ precautions were taken to see that the Italian police found nothing on the body. Unless we’re unlucky his Identity won’t be established for some days. We think he was a lone wolf and nobody will own him.”
Blue smoke drifting across the window panes told me that Andrews had come up silently beside me.
“Chances are,” Dwight said, “ chances are very much that you’ll have a week free of surveillance, and that’ll be more than enough.”
“What …” I stopped and began again. “What have the Gestapo to do with me?”
“We don’t know, but we suspect.”
“You suspect someone?”
“Bonini.”
“Why?”
“For nearly a month now Bonini has been in correspondence with someone in Deutz, which is a suburb of Cologne. We think now the letters will have passed to 26, Salier Ring, which is the headquarters of the Gestapo for that division. We have never been able to get any idea of the contents.”
“You mean he’s betrayed us?”
“We think he’s betrayed you.”
“But why to Germany, when the Italian police are on his doorstep?”
Dwight came to the window, coughed into his handkerchief. “Bonini has a German wife. We thought they were completely estrangeds but maybe when he was worried over this he went to her. This is a way out of his fix, d’you see. If he laid information with the Gestapo they’d solve things in their own way without anyone else knowing of his previous little betrayals. Whereas if he went to Organizzazione Vigilanza he’d be the first to suffer—as we’ve always calculated.”
Solve things their own way. How often the German secret police had been given orders like that. And how often they had done so.
“If Bonini has betrayed me,” I said, “he is likely to have betrayed you and Andrews and Mrs Howard. There would be no point in him taking half measures.”
“Set your mind at rest about all that, old man. That’s if you’re really worried about us. Bonini has never even heard of me or Andrews and he knows nothing of Jane Howard’s connection with you. The one most likely to suffer is our go-between, the head of the credit house. We have already warned him. But this is why they have made no hostile move against you. They wanted to catch bigger fish. A single agent wasn’t enough. They hoped with a little patience they’d be able to uncover your connections. They may even vain-gloriously have thought of doing it and then presenting the case to the O.V.R.A. neatly sewn up, showing their own great superiority. That’s only a guess, but it’s the sort of thing that’s happened before.”
“Otherwise,” said Andrews, “ it would have been your body the street sweeper found floating in the Rio Palazzo, not his.”
Dwight laughed apologetically. “Well, we mustn’t look on the black side, must we. Things have not worked out too badly so far. But we did consider it only fair to you to give you the latest odds. Bonini will still be unable to refuse to take you to Milan as his secretary. He’ll reason that a Gestapo man is watching you and will take comfort in that. He’ll play his part knowing—or thinking he knows—that you’ll be picked off his back at the right moment.”
“I would think my chances of going through with this successfully are very small indeed now.”
Andrews put his fat hand on my arm. “Small chances sometimes lead to great successes, doctor. It is how one takes them. Now … we’ve made two changes of plan to try to help you. We shall both be in Milan at the time of the conference to try to see you through to the straight safely, as Dwight would say. We shall go up to Milan on an early train tomorrow. There shouldn’t be any danger in your being unprotected to-night. That’s the first change. The second is that, once the conference is over you will no longer return to Venice with Bonini for the sake of appearances but will leave Italy at the earliest possible moment and by a new route. Dwight will see to all that. You remember the address we gave you where you would go if things went wrong?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Manuel Lorenzo. Lorenzo e Societa, Via Monte Rosa, II, off Corso Vittorio Emmanuele.”
“Good. Well, go there in any case now—as soon as the conference is over.”
“What of Bonini?”
“That,” said Andrews, “we will leave until you are safely gone.” He looked down at his fingers and whistled a bar or two of Giovinezza. “Youth, youth, thou lovely thing, time of Springtime’s blossoming. Fascismo brings the promise of Freedom for the people.”
“There’s no place for revenge in this business,” Dwight said impatiently. “Bonini we shall use or discard as suits us best. By the way, old man, there is one other thing …”
“Yes?”
“Did they give you anything in London before you left, to take if you were captured and things got too bad?”
“No.”
“I’m surprised. Well look; this pencil: take this. The bit of indiarubber at the end; it’s not indiarubber. If they take it off you, they’ll always give it back to you if you say there’s a message wound round the lead. Just bite it. That’s all.”
“Thank you,” I said grimly.
“Don’t worry, old man. We don’t expect anything of the sort. But it’s a precaution. If we were all
caught it would hobble British activity in this area for some time.”
“It’s fortunate,” I said, “ that the Gestapo did not kidnap me right off and try to persuade me to tell them what I already know.”
Dwight shook his head. “They’re not playing on their own ground. And besides—as an agent, I know—it’s far better to make a big haul at the first grab. Let it be known, even for an hour or so, that one fish is caught, and the others fairly melt into the background. Fast. It’s surprising how fast one can move when one’s life is at stake.”
Shortly after this I left. My knees still felt as if all the bones had melted. I did not walk home as I would have done normally but toot a gondola. I felt as short of breath as if I had been climbing a cathedral tower.
The knowledge that one is receiving the attentions of the Geheime Staatspolizei (foreign branch) has been known to have that effect on many other people. But not a lot of them have lived long enough to record it.
Chapter Nine
I caught the 12.30 train to Milan.
I had had a short interview with Captain Bonini, who looked as handsome and as hostile as ever; but little came from it except curt instructions as to my duties in Milan and how I must prepare for his arrival to-morrow.
On the train all sorts of questions that I had not put to Andrews and Dwight crowded into my head. If the Gestapo lost a man, were they not likely to break their undertaking with Bonini and infonn O. V.R.A. about me at once? If Bonini had been in touch direct with Gestapo headquarters, was it not also likely that he was in touch with the man they had sent to tail me? Then he would know of his disappearance almost immediately. Even worse, did any organisation, certainly any of the known abilities of the Gestapo, send down one man to keep track of a suspect? Were there not almost certain to be two? How otherwise could a permanent watch be kept?
I could picture Dwight and Andrews, before I came this morning, discussing the risks and how best I could be bolstered into going on with the suicidal mission. “Well, Andrews,” Dwight would say, “he was a hundred-to-one runner anyhow. Probabilities are, he’ll fall now at the very first fence. Why not scratch him, get him out of the country while there’s still a few hours to spare?” “No,” Andrews would say, “we’ve got to push him through on the off chance, there’s no one else to take his place, and anyway’s he’s expendable. He’s half Kraut.”
It was noticeable to-day that Dwight had done almost all the talking. At first I had thought that Andrews with some Celtic sixth sense had perceived my sudden interest in Jane. Now I thought otherwise: it was simply that he had made the decision to go ahead and virtually send me to my death, so he had delegated the task of persuading me to Major Dwight.
The train was very crowded, even for Italy, and I had already closely studied everyone in the compartment, wondering if any of them received their instructions from Cologne.
I also had time to wonder what my father would have said if he could see me now. He had believed that all killing was morally wrong and that the worst crime to be committed under any circumstances was the taking of life. I had imbibed these ideas early, yet had never completely accepted them. As a scientist I had found the logic of them faulty. Yet deep down some part of them still stuck, and it was a curiously uncomfortable feeling that the big German in the check suit with the turned-down velour hat had been dose to death on my behalf. I had been specially asked to take a long walk in order to lure him into a dark by-way of the city. This was somehow more personal than fifty people killed in an air-raid. I felt I had had a hand in it, as if I had helped to strike the blow. That he would have done the same to me without the slightest compunction still did not absolve me from responsibility.
Perhaps it was only time before these sentimental elements were finally purged away. Logically, why should one not feel exultation at this turning of the tables, at this deliberate destruction of a man who represented a body responsible for the greatest number of murders in civilised history? Every other terrorism that had existed was milk and water to this. Compared to it, the Spanish Inquisition had been as lethal as little children playing shop. It was a change at least to be in the company of someone who played the same game. In Austria there had never been any appeal against the Gestapo, never any court of redress, never any real danger to them. I should be glad for what had happened, even if the mental acceptance of it was a step towards de-civilisation. The world had long since outstripped me on this path.
The Hotel Colleoni in Milan is in the Viale Vittorio Veneto overlooking the public gardens. As my taxi drew up at the door a squadron of three-engined Caproni aircraft roared low overhead. The taxi driver looked up querulously and said: “ Will they never leave us in peace and quiet?”
Later I learned that British bombers had been over last night; but the driver’s complaint seemed directed against war and aeroplanes in general.
The reserved rooms were on the first floor with balconies out on the gardens. The other room would be occupied by Captain Bonini to-morrow.
By the time I had settled in it was dark, but I caught a tram as far as the Scala Theatre and walked round the centre of the town and dined at Biffis. I had already located Lorenzo and Co. in the Via Monte Rosa, a good class dress shop with a department for men; and it was some comfort to know exactly where my bolt-hole was.
I did not go into the main restaurant but ate the meal at one of the tables in the arcade. I had come to this place for the sake of being with company, but while drinking a liqueur afterwards I saw Forni, the manager of the Hôtel du Sud, where I had been accustomed to stay, pass near the table. I rose quickly and paid the bill and left, suddenly anxious to change the half dark of the arcade for the blackout of the streets.
But even the streets were not dark. A full moon was rising mistily after a perfect day. It made a pale corona of light silhouetting the hundred and thirty spires of the great marble and granite cathedral. Considering it was not late there were few people about.
I decided to walk back to the hotel.
It was no distance, a kilometre or so, and would have been a pleasant walk if only, half way, I had not become certain I was being followed.
Nerves, of course. Nerves can do so much. It is like trying to convince oneself that the half-felt pain is not there at all. Footsteps on the shadowy half-lit pavements. Why not? Other people lived here. This was not a town of the dead.
Are there some footsteps connected with me and some footsteps unconnected? (After all it is simply that the pain has been in that place before, even though that was before the operation.)
The single-decker trams clanged past, and once I almost climbed aboard at a stop. But I was playing a game in which one could not afford to be stampeded. It was now a matter of pride. One can be stiff-necked, whether Austrian or English. Plod on. Keep your nerve.
I thought how beautiful Venice would look in the growing moonlight, and wondered about Jane Howard. Already I had thought so much of our meeting and of our last parting that there did not seem to be any true emotion left; every bit had been squeezed dry. I needed to see her again to renew even my memory.
I came to a stop and bent over a shoe-lace. Somewhere behind me footsteps stopped also.
So it was true, the worst had happened. The dead man had not been alone in Venice. When his compatriot did not turn up the second man would have reported him as missing to some secret Polizeihauptwachtmeister higher up, who would telephone instructions that I should be picked up in Milan as I left the train. What more simple?
My throat was thick and dry as I straightened up, glanced casually behind, walked on. At the last corner a group of three men were talking. They had not been there when I passed.
I lengthened my stride. A hundred metres to the first of the blocks of modem flats at the corner of the square from which opened the Viale Vittorio Veneto. Five minutes to the hotel. If they were so disposed they could pick me up in that time, or, if they felt like it, with a rifle pick me off. My back already felt the sharp pain.
Across the square. If they were going to move it would have to be now. Another tram. In the moonlit sky three searchlights came secretly into existence, moved backwards and forwards among the faint stars. The great moon showed suddenly like as eye between the blocks of flats. Women were chattering here. Almost safety.
As I reached the hotel the three searchlights winked one by one and disappeared.
I entered and went straight upstairs. My bedroom was undisturbed.
Before getting into bed I slid the bolt across the door, switched off the light, parted the curtains to look out. There was the square-built figure of a man standing near the entrance to the hotel waiting for a tram. But I saw three trams draw up and he did not board them.
Chapter Ten
I woke with the rumble of trams still in nay ears. It was pitch dark in the room because the blackout was drawn, and the thick curtains made the room heavy with warmth. Having gone to sleep uneasily I was immediately and sharply awake wondering if the sound was inside the room. But all was quiet now.
Not a tram: too heavy for that. Thunder, probably; one of those sharp electric storms that brew over Milan. There was a flicker of light through the curtain arid I got up to make sure. Half way to the window I heard the drone of an aeroplane.
I stepped out on to the balcony.
The sky was alive with searchlights, moving, probing, flicking here and there. In the distance was the great orange glow of fire. It was the flashes of the anti-aircraft guns I had seen, and perhaps it was this noise that had wakened me. Over all the moon, now fully risen, and shrunk in size, flooded the earth with its cold light. The man who had been waiting for the tram was no longer there. It was two o’clock.
Somewhere overhead, presumably, were men who spoke my mother’s tongue, who had flown seven hundred miles to make this attack and, if fortunate, would fly the same distance back again.
Night Journey Page 7
