Assignment Sorrento Siren

by Unknown Author

  “I want to talk to you,” she said abruptly. “I don’t care if my husband is waiting for me. Let him wait. I’ve been wondering about Cesare leaving me in that damned place, not at all worrying about me. . .”

  “Well, these Italians are impetuous lovers,” he said. “In and out, quick, buona sera and ciao. Good evening and so long. Do you feel all right?”

  "I feel awful. Can I go to your hotel and have a drink? A little brandy would help. Or bourbon.”

  “We’ll make it bourbon,” Durell said.

  He chose the darkened side streets around the piazza to reach the hotel. The Imperiale’s music was lively, and everybody was out front on the terrace, watching the parties on the moored yachts in the basin. There was even some swimming, off the black beach nearby.

  Durell gave Francesca the number and key to his room and went into the bar and bought a fifth of bourbon and started up the stairway with it. Someone spoke his name and he paused and turned and looked down at Anton Pacek.

  The Czech wore a white suit this time, and Durell wondered aloud if the life of the Western bourgeois imperialists might finally be wearing the man down. But Pacek did not respond to his remark. The man’s face was a slab of stone.

  “You look as if you had some difficulties this evening, Mr. Durell.”

  “And you look out of place, Pacek. The bull in the china shop. The suit doesn’t become you.”

  “You are flippant. But you failed tonight, eh?”

  “That depends on what I was after,” Durell said.

  Pacek said flatly, “You do not have the Dwan Scrolls.” “Neither do you.”

  “But I shall get them.”

  “We’ll toss for them—when they come to light.”

  “I merely suggest again—it would be better if you forgot this affair and went to Rome or Paris. I could provide a reasonable amount of evidence as a cover for your superiors. And any amount of money you wish to name, Durell.”

  “Go to hell,” Durell said, and walked up the steps and out of the man’s sight.

  The sound of running water in the tiled shower greeted him. Francesca’s tom frock lay on the bed, her shoes had been kicked to the edge of the carpet, her stockings hung over the back of a gilt Renaissance chair. Durell put down the bottle of bourbon and walked into the bathroom. Francesca took this moment to turn off the water and step out from behind the curtain.

  “Aphrodite rising from the sea,” he murmured.

  She didn’t mind. “Bernardo has been teaching me mythology, so thanks. I just couldn’t stand all that dust and grime on me. You don’t mind my making myself at home here?”

  He looked at her pink, glowing body. “My pleasure.”

  “You like me?” she asked, smiling. Her underlip was wet and glistening. Her eyes were brilliant, slanted at the corners. She put her hands under her breasts. “I think we can get along very well, don’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure. What would Cesare say?”

  “That’s what I want to talk about. I’m mad at him. He just left me there in all that dirt and didn’t even bother to fine out if I was dead or alive.”

  “He was in quite a hurry to leave.”

  “Yes, but Jack might have killed me!” she snapped. “Anc Cesare didn’t give a damn.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to make Talbott hold still while Cesare took care of him?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You were to hold Jack up while Cesare stuck a knife ii him? But Cesare got the wrong man, he stuck poor Silas. And Jack is still hiding in the hills, looking for you. You double crossed him, and he hasn’t forgiven any part of that.”

  Francesca shivered. “Oh, God, I’m afraid of him. I’ve neve: been afraid of any man before.”

  “Let’s crack the bourbon,” Durell suggested. “You need help—and maybe I’ll give it to you. Get your clothes on, though we haven’t time for fun and games, Frannie. And I want to keep my mind on business. Neither am I a convenient outlet for you to get some imagined revenge on Cesare for leaving you in the lurch as he did. So get dressed.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  He poured bourbon in water glasses for both of them downed his, poured another, and watched her sip at the liquor Her eyes were big and frightened. She was in no hurry to get her clothes on. She wrapped herself in a towel he tossed to her and concentrated on her glass.

  “Now tell me about the scrolls,” Durell said. “What i Cesare going to do with them? You gave them to him after yoi left the Sentissi in Naples, didn’t you?”

  “You’re so smart—yes, I did.”

  “He has them now?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Who is he going to sell them to?”

  “My husband,” she said.

  “You’re lying, Fran.”

  “No, he’s making a deal with Bernardo, all right.”

  “Your husband is an honorable man.”

  “Not when it comes to his art collection.” She sneered. “And I’m not going to help you any more. I just decided. You’re trying to take advantage of me because I’m sore at Cesare right now, but maybe Cesare knew you’d take care of me, anyway, and you’d get me out of there. And he wanted to stay after Jack. That’s why he left the monastery.”

  “Fran, Cesare doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die,” Durell said. “You know he’s using you to finish whatever job Bruno Bellaria began on Count Apollio.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she snapped.

  “You know about the feud between the Bellarias and the Apollios, don’t you?”

  “That’s old, old stuff. Nobody believes in that kind of thing any more.”

  “Just the same, something seems to have happened during or after the war to bring it back to life again,” Durell insisted. “Your husband apparently used his political power to step on the Bellaria brothers, and Bruno retaliated somehow in a way that none of these people have forgotten. It must have been something pretty horrible. Don’t you know what it was?”

  She stood there, smiling at him secretively.

  Durell said impatiently: “You ought to face facts, Fran, before somebody blows the whistle on you.”

  “It won’t be you,” she retorted. “I’m not scared any more. You can’t do anything to me, anyway. You won’t call the local cops, and if you did, it wouldn’t do any good. I’m the Countess di Apollio, you know, and that’s a name that cuts pretty deep around here.”

  “Fran, I want your help. Is Cesare going to Filibano?” He paused. “You’re going with your husband, aren’t you?”

  She stood up, let the towel fall deliberately, and walked nakedly away from him. Durell considered her smooth flanks and undulating bottom and wondered about the count’s apparent tolerance in allowing another man to possess her.

  Deirdre chose that moment to walk into the room.

  There was an awkward pause; then Francesca laughed. “My, our Mr. Durell is a busy man. But it’s all right, honey,” she said to Deirdre. “Believe it or not, it was strictly business— and not the sort of business you think.”

  Deirdre arched a perfect, inquisitorial eyebrow at Durell, and he shrugged, wondering if he could explain it to her. Francesca held her frock over her head and wriggled into it, slipped on her shoes, and looked around for her handbag. Deirdre gave it to her, smiling with sweet venom.

  “Sorry you have to rush off, darling. But have no regrets about Sam. We’ll see you on Isola Filibano.”

  “Honey, if you can make out better than me,” Fran said thinly, “you’re welcome to him.”

  She slammed the door on her way out.

  Durell poured himself another drink.

  Deirdre said quietly, “Oh, you are an oaf!”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You look as if somebody beat you up again.”

  “Somebody did. Si Hanson is in the local hospital.”

  “Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I’m not sorry I interrupted the way you were questioning that little tart,
but I’m sorry you were beaten and Si was hurt. Will he be all right?”

  “In time. He’s more disappointed than hurt. Dee, I need your help. Please don’t act like a child.”

  “Like a jealous woman, you mean.” Deirdre paused. “ I can’t help it, Sam. For all these years you keep telling me to stay out of your business, it’s too dangerous for me, you can’t tell me anything. Now suddenly you need my help. Why should I give it to you, darling? Will it change anything between us? Will it make you come back to the States with me and liv like everybody else?”

  “No,” he said truthfully.

  She sighed and looked unhappy. “All right, what do you want me to do?”

  “Time is running out, Dee. I’ve had a long day and long night, and there’s less than forty hours left before th whole thing dies in my hands. I don’t want some good people I know in Eastern Europe to die, either. I have to get to Isola Filibano now. Count Apollio is going there, but I can get an invitation from him. Now you’re going with Dor Angelo, right? So I want you to get me aboard with your movie crowd, at once.”

  Deirdre stared. “Is that the help you want from me? That' all? To get to Isola Filibano?”

  “I could probably rent a plane. . .

  “Not for Isola Filibano. There isn’t enough level land on that rock for a fly to come down on. But I can manage with Dom Angelo, Sam. I’ll take you to him right now. Deidre’s gray eyes glinted wickedly, and her smile was wry. “Dom Angelo will do anything for me, darling.”

  “Why?” Durell asked.

  “He wants to marry me. And right now I feel like taking him up on his offer.”

  chapter fifteen

  AT TEN o’clock the next morning, Durell stood at the rail of Dom Angelo’s schooner, moored in a tiny cove at the foot of Isola Filibano’s dark, soaring mass. The morning was clear and blue, as only mornings in spring and autumn can be in the Tyrrhenian. The sun was warm. He stood beside Dom Angelo himself, although he wasn’t sure Angelo remembered his casual invitation to join the party last night.

  Deirdre had kept her promise. They had checked out of the Imperiale and gone down to the dock to join the party on the boats. It took only a few moments to assure that there was room for him on the schooner. The fat, bald man with the big black moustache was too busy watching the models to do more than nod a casual assent.

  Knowing that Deirdre was in a forward cabin with the models, he had slept easily, with two dour photographers from Rome to share the stateroom. He hadn’t seen her yet this morning. Some of the passengers had gone ashore, to walk their hangovers gingerly up paths and terraces to the villas that sparkled like cubes of sugar in the hot sunlight.

  Isola Filibano was a small island, about four miles long and only a mile in breadth. At the main harbor there was a small fishing village folded into the convolutions of the rugged coast. Durell could see the fishing boats offshore, and several others that had come into the port just before their own arrival. He wondered if Jack Talbott had bribed passage on one of them. And he didn’t forget Pacek’s remarkable ability to turn up everywhere, either.

  “That boat there,” Durell pointed. “It’s the only private craft in the village harbor, except for Count Apollio’s.”

  “Ah, that one.” Dom Angelo patted his perspired forehead. He wore shorts and a bright yellow silk shirt and Moroccan sandals. “It belongs to Cesare Bellaria, a bright and handsome young man. With the Bellarias, we have no difficulty. But Apollio—he is a terror. He tries to buy us out, he sets dogs upon us if we set one foot beyond the property we bought, he brings lawsuits against us. A most uncooperative gentleman.”

  “And rich,” Durell said drily.

  “He owns the island—every stone, house, fisherman and wife and child, every dog and goat—except this little piece here that I and my friends were fortunate to secure as a place in which to rest.”

  “Nobody seems to be resting much,” Durell observed “Ah, but public relations are the breath of life to th motion picture industry, signor. We tie in the fashion sho with the release of my latest picture, you see. And the young ladies are charming.”

  Durell looked at them, the mannikins and starlets in theit bikinis, sunning themselves on porous rock or swimming in the limpid cove around the boats moored beneath the villas. Some of the photographers had wandered into the village in search of local color and were already returned, rebuffed by a hostile population. They were compensated for their disappointment by Dom Angelo’s young ladies.

  “Signor.” Dom Angelo sighed. “You look at the Bellaria boat? You know young Cesare?”

  “I think we met last night.”

  “He is a good friend of Apollio’s countess. But a tragedy will end that affair, I am sure.”

  “I’ve heard that there were three Bellaria brothers, but all I hear about is Cesare,” Durell probed. “Do the other still live here and carry on their vendetta with Apollio?”

  “Ah, the vendetta! A delicious story! I would have a scrip written, but one would not dare—the count is quick with hi lawsuits, eh? The Bellarias still own a scrap of headland however—over there, beyond the village. I walked there once to look for a locale for a scene I was shooting, but there is no hospitality on this island. We were ordered back by Bruno—a wild and dangerous man. A pity, because the eldest brother Rafael, seems quite pleasant.”

  Durell studied the headland Dom Angelo pointed out and then saw the bulk of a huge house perched on its highest point above the village. Turning, he stared up at the dizzy volcaniic heights of the main peak. Sunlight flashed from a number of windows in what he already knew to be Apollio’s palazzo. He made up his mind on his next step, excused himself, and went below to breakfast with Deirdre.

  There were no taxis, no autos of any kind on Isola Filibano The village power plant was a large diesel engine located in an old German blockhouse dating back to World War II and its irregular pulsing came now and then on the errant wind that blew from the sea. The island was pock-marked with sulphur springs, and wisps of steam were visible against the craggy slopes of the mountain. The volcano that formed the island had not erupted since the sixteenth century, but earthquakes and tremors were still almost an annual affair.

  It was like moving two hundred years into the past, Durell thought, as he walked into the village. He had waited until after lunch for his first chance to leave his host, and another hour after that because Deirdre insisted he stay to watch the first photographic setups for the models. There were half a dozen villas in the colony, and everyone had been assigned to bedrooms ashore with a kind of slapdash abandon that created some strange bedfellows. It looked like a wild weekend party for Dom Angelo.

  There was no trace of Talbott or Pacek, and Cesare did not appear to join the crowd on the beach. Durell borrowed field glasses from Dom Angelo and studied the huge pink palazzo on the mountain. There were medieval walls and square towers and big iron gates, including the ever-present blazon of Apollio arms. He detected only an occasional dim movement of a servant in the courtyard up there.

  The harsh Mediterranean sunlight made it impossible to move about unobserved. He had several ideas for action, but he confined himself to patience until most of the members of the villa colony fell into an exhausted siesta after lunch, and the sounds of festivity died to a muted hum in the heat of the afternoon.

  A stony path led along the craggy shore for a mile into the village. The sea thundered at the base of the porous cliffs and eddied in emerald swirls and secret pools between the miniature headlands. He met no one on the path, saw nothing alive except two goats and an old tethered horse cropping dispiritedly at the low-growing brush. There were some terraced olive groves outside the village and a few level patches where truck gardens were established. Most of the village men were gone to sea for the day. Durell wandered through traditionally narrow streets with cut-stone paving, wondering how many eyes watched his progress from behind the yellow and blue shutters. In the piazza, a few fishermen’s wives in black gave him s
tartled looks and muttered, “Buon giorno,” but when he started to speak, they turned their heads and hurried away.

  The bar in the square was closed. A priest came out of the small Romanesque church that faced the sea and walked with black robes kicking dust across the stones. Durell decided against trying to question the man. He went down to the beach.

  Apollio’s yacht was a sixty-foot, diesel-powered beauty moored behind the old stone mole like a gull, gleaming with polished brass and dark mahogany. Cesare’s boat, appropriately tied up on the opposite side of the little harbor, was an old and battered auxiliary sailer. A crewman was polishing brass on the Apollio vessel; Cesare’s thirty-footer looked deserted, drowned in reflected sunlight from the harbor water, Durell walked along the beach and out on the stone pier to look it over more closely.

  Nobody seemed to be aboard. An air of slovenly maintenance marked Cesare Bellaria as no natural sailor. The high cabin amidships needed paint; the canvas on fore and main mast was old and patched, carelessly furled. He went to the low doorway aft, ducked his head and stepped in.

  The air in the cabin was twenty degrees hotter than out on deck and felt dead and musty. He searched quickly, considering the unmade bunk, opening all the compartment drawers checking the chart cabinet. The forward, smaller cabin was crammed with old coils of line, sails, broken blocks. He went through it all, nevertheless. The engine was an old four cylinder Gray, rusty and needing attention. The engine-room itself was a tiny cubby with a small skylight of frosted glass One of the panes was broken. He went aft and searched the transom cubby.

  He spent twenty minutes altogether in searching the dilapidated boat, enduring the stifling heat below-decks. The scroll were not here.