Audley shook his head. “Don’t kid yourself. Montuori’s nobody’s fool. When he gets to thinking about this he’ll work it out right the way through.”
“Maybe. But I’ve an idea it’s Ruelle he wants more than anything else, the way Rat face tightened up at the mention of him.”
“Rat face?”
“Sorry—Boselli. He sounded nervous when he spoke of him, like he was scared. Which I don’t wonder at if the Bastard still has his touch after all these years… But you say he’s a gun too—?”
“That’s right.”
“But a new one? New to you?”
“I don’t know him.”
The Mediterranean had once been Audley’s stamping ground, and his encyclopaedic memory was much admired. So Rat face must be either very new or very special, or both.
“You know he’s a gun, though?” Richardson persisted.
Audley shrugged. “Two of the PS guards here were talking about him below the terrace—I didn’t encourage them to think I knew Italian, and they were careless…”
“Yes?”
“It seems they knew the man who was killed at Ostia—the PS man. But apparently it was Boselli who got the killer. One shot straight through the heart at twenty metres. Whatever he looks like that makes him a pro, I’d say.”
Richardson nodded thoughtfully in agreement: that sort of practice ruled out amateurs, sure enough. Which meant he had been dead wrong about Signor Pietro Boselli, because fussy little men didn’t use one shot at twenty metres. And if he’d been nervous it would not have been with fear, but with a craftsman’s excitement at the prospect of demonstrating his special aptitude again.
He shivered at the magnitude of his error of judgement, which was all the more unpardonable when he set this new information in perspective: if Montuori wanted Ruelle so badly he would naturally put one of his best men on the job. Also, Boselli was one good reason why Audley had been so intractably determined to get away again. So long as he was with them there’d be precious little chance of holding out on the Italians.
“Well, we’ll have to make the best of him for the time being,” said Richardson philosophically. “And at least he’ll have an eye cocked for Ruelle.”
“True.” Audley still didn’t sound unduly worried about the Bastard—a little surprisingly in view of his Ostian experience, Richardson thought.
“You know he operated in these parts in the old days?”
“Ruelle? I thought Latium was his province?”
A flicker of interest now.
“Not to start with. He led a partisan group up Avellino way in ‘43.”
“Indeed?” The flicker brightened, steadied. “Well, that might account for it—“
“For what?”
“Eh?” Audley looked at him. “Oh—I mean it might account for the presence of old Peter Korbel.”
“For Korbel?”
“The art of deserting and surviving—Korbel could write a book about that, and it would take the form of an autobiography.” Audley grunted. “You know where he came from?”
“He was born in the Ukraine. The Germans captured him in ‘41 —he came to England as a DP after the war, I thought?”
“Yes and no.” Audley regarded him donnishly over his spectacles. “He started from the Ukraine right enough, but he came to us the long way round—via Italy.”
He paused smugly. “Jack Butler did a rundown on him a few weeks ago, as a matter of fact, after that business of ours in Cumbria… More out of curiosity than necessity, really, because everyone thinks they know everything about Korbel, and none of it matters anyway. But Jack has a more orderly mind than most—he likes to be sure.
“According to him Korbel deserted to the Wehrmacht, he wasn’t captured. Told ‘em he was a Volga German and made his story stick— or stick well enough for them to recruit him and ship him off to the Italian front. The whole world was fighting here anyway, so he’d fit in whatever he was.”
That was true enough, reflected Richardson. The armies which had descended on poor old Italy had been absurdly polyglot. On the Allied side there had been everything from Maoris and Red Indians to Berbers and Japanese Americans, and the ex-Red Army men fighting under the German banner had even included two bewildered Tibetans who strayed across their Himalayan frontier accidentally years before. He himself was a living testimony of that racial confusion, with an Amalfitan mother and a father from Tunbridge Wells.
“Butler reckons he’d aimed to join the winning side, but when he got this far he realised he’d miscalculated. So in ‘43 he mustered out again—and became a Ukranian again too—and joined up with us after the Salerno breakout.”
Again Audley paused. But the drift of his information was clear enough: Korbel had been here in Campania, changing allegiance again, at the exact moment when Ruelle had started operations—Richardson frowned as the curious contradictions in this coincidence began to occur to him. Even if Korbel and Ruelle had known each other all those years ago their connection now was still very odd indeed. If the Russians had, for reasons which were still totally obscure, decided to investigate Audley’s Italian mission, then it would not have been Korbel’s job to start things moving—and even if it had, he would never have called on a bloody-minded old has-been like Ruelle to undertake the job.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed, because the Russians hadn’t even recruited Korbel until the mid-fifties —and by then the Italian Communists had already dumped Ruelle. “David—“ he tried to sound half-jocular, “—you wouldn’t be putting me on, would you?”
“Putting you on?” Audley looked at him questioningly. “About Korbel?”
“About Korbel getting through to his old pal Ruelle.”
As he stared back at Audley the sheer copper-bottomed absurdity of it mushroomed: not just the idea of Korbel suggesting the recruitment of Ruelle, but of the London KGB resident listening to him, getting through to Moscow Centre … and then Centre calling up the Rome resident—damn it, the thing required simultaneous brain storms in London, Moscow and Rome: it was like piling the improbable on the unlikely, all on a foundation of the incredible—and no one should know that better than David Audley himself: perhaps that was the strangest thing of all.
Richardson was glad he hadn’t sounded too serious. It left him room for a touch of stupidity.
“Well, it’s one hell of a coincidence, David.” He grinned. “And the Russians don’t go much on the old boys’ network, either, surely?”
“Old boys’ network?” Audley blinked. “No, they don’t… in fact there’s probably nothing in it—“
And that touch left Audley room to wriggle out. Which he was promptly doing.
“—You’re quite right, Peter. But either way it doesn’t matter, because we can leave Korbel to Sir Frederick and Ruelle to General Montuori, anyway. They don’t concern us, thank God.”
If there was one sure thing now, thought Richardson, it was that Korbel and Ruelle concerned him very much indeed.
“We concentrate on Narva, you mean.”
Two sure things, rather: Audley still knew one hell of a lot more about Korbel and Ruelle than he was admitting.
“Right.” Audley bobbed his head in agreement.
“And ‘we’ means me, David.”
“Right.”
“And Boselli comes along for the ride.”
Shrug. “If that’s the way you must have it.”
“It’s the only possible way.”
Audley raised both his hands, fingers spread, in acceptance. “So— we all go to see Narva. Right!”
And thirdly and sadly: ex-friend David was one big ruddy liar.
XIII
AT LEAST THE General’s new instructions made things easy—that was one good thing: all he had to do was to make sure the Englishmen didn’t make a run for it, which under the circumstances of the General’s conversation with Sir Frederick Clinton they were most unlikely to attempt.
Nor was it t
he only good thing, by any means. One had to beware of optimism, particularly as Villari had not yet regained consciousness after his operation. But there was hope even there, for if he survived his memory might well be vague about that last split second: the farther the whole episode receded into the past in Boselli’s own mind the more vague the truth became and the more he felt disposed to believe what was now the official story. That was the way history was formed after all—by the acceptance of what people wanted to believe.
The important thing was that the General was pleased with him so far. Admittedly, some of that approbation was founded on his edited account of the interview with Richardson, whom he had represented as shrewd and tough and unco-operative, but from whom he had none the less extracted useful information about Narva and the political implications of his industrial espionage activities.
Privately Boselli was convinced that Richardson was by no means as formidable as he had suggested, but that like all the native inhabitants of these parts he was merely untrustworthy and overweeningly sure of himself—and his English blood had merely reinforced those defects of character.
The man Audley was a very different proposition. He had watched the fellow during dinner and had gained very little enlightenment beyond the confirmation of what had been recorded in the dossier: that superficial appearances were deceptive, and that behind the bulkiness of the athlete running to seed—that had been Villari’s assessment—there lurked the sort of intellectual he instinctively feared.
Yet Audley was undeniably nervous, where Richardson was smooth and relaxed. While both had been noticeably careful with the wine, the older man had merely picked at his food while the younger had gorged himself, scorning Boselli’s warning that the local seafood sometimes tested foreign stomachs with the boast that his was the least foreign stomach at the table. Indeed, the two seemed to draw away from each other during the meal, the pure Englishman becoming more English, more monosyllabic, and the half-Englishman becoming increasingly Italian.
Boselli had been so fascinated with his study of them that he had forgotten his own hunger, and now as they snaked along the coast road its pangs were already gnawing at his delicate stomach. However, in the circumstances this was probably just as well, for though lack of food had never sharpened his wits—that was a lie spread by the satisfied to appease the starving—too much of it invariably dulled them. Moreover, on this particular journey he would have had difficulty keeping any respectable quantity of food in its proper place, for the road was carved out of the side of the cliff along a tortuous coastline and the police driver seemed desperate to impress his passengers with his skill: on every hairpin bend the black emptiness of the seaward edge was hideously close.
“How much farther?” The big Englishman lapsed into his native tongue, then quickly corrected himself into Italian by repeating the question.
“We must be nearly there now.” Richardson swung round in the front seat and Boselli picked up the garlic on his breath once more. “That was Praiano we just passed—“
They had all seemed identical, the little towns and villages through which they had come in the darkness, with the same people, the same houses and the same scenes momentarily illuminated. But for Richardson every place was distinguished by some anecdote, or restaurant, or person (usually a girl, but often enough a blood relative). And most of what he said was now coloured with the conviction that his mother’s native Amalfi was superior in every respect to the rest of Italy.
“—met this guy Mac—MacLaren, MacSomething—I can’t remember, but he came because he’d read we’d got St. Andrew’s body in the cathedral—“
Boselli’s headache had gone, dissolved by the General’s approval, but the flashing lights and the motion of the car made it hard to think constructively.
“—and he suffered from piles, only being an idiot he thought they were boils—“
The continuous narrative confused him, as perhaps it was intended to. It reminded him again that they were lying, despite their apparent frankness when he had returned to the terrace.
“—and there he was, squatting over a mirror on the floor, trying to put a hot poultice on his—“
Boselli tried to shut out the end of the tale, doubly grateful that he had not eaten too much at dinner. Whatever happened he had been the one to see the reason for their smokescreen of co-operation, anyway, and it was up to the General now to trace that missing piece in the jigsaw.
“—married his nurse in the hospital. And I was his best man.” Richardson’s voice cracked with the memory. “So you could say it all came right in the end—“
The car was slowing down at last.
“The Castel di Ruggiero, signori,” said the driver. “Please hold tight.”
He brought the car first through a full right angle to the left, directly over the cliff edge so it seemed to Boselli, and then, almost in its own length, through another right angle, until they were parallel to the coast road again, but facing the way they had come. Only now the car was tilted alarmingly downwards.
“That bastard,” said Richardson.
Boselli, who had been trying to brace himself against the angle of descent, jerked back, striking his head against the side of the car.
“I wouldn’t have called him that,” murmured Audley. “A great man by any standards, I’d say he was.”
“A bastard by any standards, you mean.”
“Who—?” Boselli began, bewildered, only to be cut off instantly by Audley.
“Ah, but that’s because of what he did to Amalfi, so you’re biased. He was the greatest ruler of his time—the greatest ruler of the greatest kingdom. God help us, we could do with a few King Rogers today,” Audley grunted. Then, turning to Boselli he continued more courteously: “King Roger II of Sicily, signore—he conquered all this coast and half the central Mediterranean in the twelfth century.”
Boselli had made the mental adjustment one second earlier, but too late to forestall the explanation. It was humiliating to be informed about one’s own history by a foreigner, though their sudden shedding of eight hundred years to argue about a dead king on the very threshold of Eugenio Narva’s house was utterly inexplicable to him at the same time.
The car stopped suddenly in its descent as a figure looked up in the headlights. A powerful flashlight ranged over them, pausing at each face.
“Carry on!” A voice outside commanded.
“So Narva takes precautions,” murmured Richardson. “And we’re expected, too.”
“We are expected,” said Boselli primly. “But the precautions are ours, signore. There has been a guard here ever since we learned of Signor Narva’s—involvement. For his protection, of course, you understand.”
“Against Ruelle?” Richardson nodded. “That’s why they let us come halfway down the cliff, eh? They’d just love him to come calling, wouldn’t they!”
Boselli shrugged off the observation, deciding that he too could show his coolness. He addressed Audley: “I had forgotten for a moment that you are an authority on the Middle Ages, professore. And on the Middle East, too—and did not King Roger use many Arab soldiers in his conquests?”
“Ruddy Normans would use the devil himself if it suited them,” said Richardson hotly, as though that old conquest of his beloved Amalfi had happened the week before.
“That’s your Catholic upbringing doing your thinking for you, young Peter,” replied Audley patronisingly. “The Norman kings of Sicily practised religious toleration in these parts somewhat before it became fashionable—if it ever has.”
Boselli’s feeling of unreality was now complete: it was as though they were deliberately playing some game of their own, talking about anything but the matter in hand, in order to confuse him.
He dredged into the cloudy memories of his own historical education, which had mostly been at the hands of an aged priest whose views of King Roger, as he now recalled, had exactly coincided with those of Richardson, though perhaps for very different reason
s: it had been that wicked Norman, surely, who had not only opposed the policies of the great St. Bernard, but had also driven an entire Papal army to muddy death in the Garigliano and had taken the Holy Father himself prisoner. He was saved by the car’s sudden emergence through a great bank of oleanders into a brightly lit forecourt. The twisting drive down the cliff in the darkness, coupled with the historical argument which had risen between the Englishmen like a summer storm, had served to disorientate him. He opened the car door quickly and hopped out on to the pavement gratefully.
As he did so the iron-shod doors in the blank stone wall beneath the lights opened with a clang, framing a white-coated manservant beyond whom Boselli could see a fountain playing in a green-fringed courtyard, like something out of the Arabian Nights.
“Signore.” The servant bowed deferentially to Audley. Boselli hurried round the car to take charge.
“I am Signor Boselli,” he snapped. “Signor Narva is expecting me.”
The servant eyed him coolly, then inclined his head forward in what was little better than a nod.
“Signore—signori—if you will please follow me.”
They passed under the arched doorway, through a short passage and into the courtyard Boselli had glimpsed earlier. Cascades of bright flowers tumbled down the walls out of the night sky, half obscuring the gaps between the slender columns on three sides of the square. The jet of the fountain in its centre sprang from a shell held aloft in the hands of a beautiful bronze nyrtjph whose breasts glistened wetly through the sparkling droplets of water. It was deliciously cool, almost cold, and Boselli had the impression that it would always be cool here, even on the hottest and brightest day.
This was what wealth was all about, this privacy, this secret elegance designed to sustain no one but its master. The opulence of the scene pressed down on him, overawing him against his will, for although he was here as the representative of the State, with theoretical powers far beyond that of any individual, he had too often seen the way wealth and influence, wielded with more single-minded determination than the servant of some distant bureaucratic agency would dare to exert, could nullify those powers.
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