North from Rome (13 page)

But Brewster had noticed it, too. “Rosana—you’ll find another fiasco in the kitchen,” he said angrily, as if to prove that his voice was not thickening. “Wine makes me think. You know that. It’s food and drink.”

Rosana went, even if slowly, towards the kitchen. Tony Brewster was a man who seemed to get his own way. It was then that Lammiter understood how fully the damaged leg must have hurt the Englishman. For once, he had become dependent.

“Yes,” Brewster said, relaxing back into his chair, “I’d like
to see their faces when they hear about Evans. Rosana!—”

“Coming,” she called back.

Lammiter was watching Brewster. Once he must have been good at his job as an Intelligence officer. Then he had gone stale, worried too much, and been transferred. And now he was drinking too much cheap Chianti, brooding about “them”, who had transferred him, sobering up to get the necessary information which would damn the “spoiled brats” like Pirotta, thinking mostly of the work he had once done (“the real meat and bone”), and remembering Evans.

“So you saw Evans,” Lammiter said appeasingly. “You recognised him.”

“And he recognised me. Which explains
that!”
Brewster pointed to his leg, but he was watching Lammiter carefully. Suddenly, he held out the photograph. Lammiter had the feeling that until this very moment, Brewster hadn’t quite made up his mind to show him the snapshot. “He still looks very much like this. Just in case you run across him in Perugia.”

Lammiter started, looking at Brewster, and then at the snapshot. Evans was strolling along a London street with some park trees and a bus sharing the background. He was elegantly dressed, bowler hat in hand, light gloves folded, rolled umbrella, dark suit of conservative cut. He was the very perfect gentleman. He was tall, thin, with his head at a slight angle as if he were listening politely. (One could see how he had earned quiet popularity.) Fair hair; a prominent brow; a thin high-bridged nose; a tight-lipped mouth; not a particularly strong chin.

“That was taken five years ago by a street photographer. Very lucky picture. Caught his general attitude. Of course he
has changed a bit. His hair is now greyish, his skin has gone sallow. He is still wearing English-cut shirts and ties, though. Just won’t give them up.”

“But what do I do if—” Lammiter bit off the rest of the sentence. (He had been about to say, “What do I do if I see Evans in Perugia?” But suddenly he was wary, embarrassed by the situation he had created for himself: he had started making promises that might be impossible to keep.) “I’m not the man for this job,” he said frankly, holding out the photograph to Brewster. “It’s an emergency, obviously. Don’t waste valuable time with me. Get someone like Bunny Camden. There must be people at your own Embassy who’d like to catch up with Mr. Evans.”

“I tried that,” Brewster said, slowly, bitterly. “But I’m a drunk who’s got persecution mania and a complex about Communists, didn’t you hear? No one would see me at the Embassy—I’m an embarrassment. That’s the reason I sent Rosana to find Camden.” He took the photograph at last. “You’ll remember this face?”

“Why don’t you get the Italian police—the man with the odd name... Bevilacqua? He’s at least friendly, isn’t he?”

“I’m afraid the Italians have nothing against Evans. Except the fact that he’s using a false passport. But before we can find out enough about that, Evans will have attended a most secret meeting in Perugia and gone, as quietly as he came.” Brewster considered something, and then decided to add, “Besides, some of my informants are a little nervous if you mention a policeman. No, no Lammiter, I can’t risk frightening away future sources of information.”

“You trust them?”

“After I prove their stories,” Brewster said with a smile. “This week I heard three very interesting pieces of news, dribbled to me in a frightened whisper. First, Pirotta was to have a quiet talk, four nights ago, with a most important man. That, as I proved, was true. Secondly, a meeting was being most secretly arranged in Perugia for this important man. That may also be true. I think it is. My informant, a very careful customer, was found knifed to death two nights ago in a back street in Tivoli. A café brawl.”

“But you doubt if your man was in it?”

“It has always been a useful diversion.”

“Yes,” Lammiter agreed. “As poor old Christopher Marlowe found out. Which proves that playwrights should stick to writing plays.”

Brewster looked at him with some surprise, and then smiled. “He made a bloody good secret service man.”

“Until he got knifed in a London tavern.”

“You’re nervous?” The smile was mocking.

Lammiter grinned back. “Perhaps. Or perhaps I know I’m not a bloody good agent. Frankly, I’d be of no use to you in Perugia.”

“I don’t expect you to do any
thinking.”

“Thank you.”

“All I want you to do is to find out if Evans has actually gone to Perugia. If he turns up there, telephone me here. That’s all.”

“And you’ll get the Embassy to listen to you then?”

“Or someone,” Brewster said grimly. “At least, we’ll know that second piece of information was accurate. It will no longer be in the category of rumour. It will be a fact, proven and true.”

“But where will I look for Evans in Perugia? My God, Brewster, it’s a sizeable town.”

“I’ll tell you where you can look for him.”

“Was that the third piece of information you received?”

“You can count, I see,” Brewster said. “I’ll have a map of Perugia ready for you tonight, all the details...” He was tiring now. “Once Joe and Salvatore leave here, you and I will talk a little more. The final advice... You’ll have to rent a car. No, better still, I’ll persuade Joe to lend you his. Three hours, four at the most, and you’ll be in Perugia.”

And then, as Lammiter still looked worried, Brewster’s voice broke into anger. “You’re backing out! But you can’t. You’ll
have
to go! Just as you had to stay in Rome. When the trouble breaks, you want to try to keep as much of it away from Miss— Miss—” He looked at Rosana.

“Eleanor Halley,” she said.

“From Miss Halley as possible,” Brewster finished. Suddenly he was completely exhausted.

Lammiter said nothing. He rose. Brewster slowly put the Evans photograph back into the envelope, and the envelope into the hollowed-out book. His fingers, like his voice, were now overcareful and slow. Lammiter turned away, so that Brewster could not see the pity in his eyes: it was pathetic to see anyone as good as Brewster becoming a man with a mania. Evans, Perugia.

“What are you afraid of in Perugia?” he heard his own voice asking.

“The three-sided chess game,” Brewster said abruptly. He reached slowly for the new bottle of wine. “Go and have some dinner,” he added testily. “Put some sense into your thick head. Come back and listen. I’ll—I’ll tell you—enough to make your ears pop. And you”—he wagged a thick forefinger at the American—“can tell it some day to old Bunny. I wouldn’t have
to argue with him like this, damn you. He’s the only one who believes me the only one—” His voice had begun to drone into an undertone. “The only one,” he said, rousing himself for a brief moment. He actually put down his half-finished glass on the table, and pushed it away. It upset.

“I’ll help you to stretch out on the bed,” Lammiter said. He put an arm around the thick waist and started to heave.

“I’m all right,” Brewster said, pushing all assistance aside. “Where’s my damned crutch? Lost again.” Rosana found it where it had slipped under the table. He took it, and began moving across the room, heavily, with difficulty and considerable pain. He dropped it at the bedside, flopped down with a sigh of impatience, and eased his bandaged leg on to the mattress.

“Tomorrow,” Rosana said, “Giuseppe and I shall take you to the sisters.”

Brewster looked at Lammiter, as if defying him to laugh. “Nuns! That’s where I have to go. Hear that, Lammiter?”

“It’s safe. And quiet. And pleasant,” Rosana said. She had wiped up the spilled wine and taken away the bottle. Now she was setting a small alarm clock, and putting it within reach of the bed.

“So is here,” Brewster said, his eyes closing. “I think I’ll sleep. At last.” Brewster began to laugh, gently. “Hie me to a nunnery... This old Protestant?” His eyes closed.

“But Santayana went—” Rosana began. Lammiter motioned towards the door. The girl nodded. She looked round as if checking everything. She replaced the hollowed-out book in the pile of innocent volumes. She straightened a chair, lifted the empty glasses, and went towards the kitchen.

Lammiter looked at the man stretched out on the bed. He was already slipping into sleep. The pool of deep golden sunlight near the window had shifted on the floor, moving slowly towards the bed. The chorus of children’s voices rose into a permanent happy chatter broken by loud ecstatic shrieks. On impulse, Lammiter closed the shutter, cutting out light, muffling the sounds. “No,” Rosana whispered. “He likes to breathe.” She opened the shutters again. The man on the bed grunted gently, and let sleep drift over him, a soft grey mist of forgetfulness.

Rosana waited for Lammiter to join her in the kitchen before she opened the back door that led on to another flight of stairs.

“When does the alarm clock go off?”

“Salvadore said a quarter to eleven, but I set it for half-past ten. I thought I’d give Tony time to awake thoroughly. He must let us in.” She closed the door carefully behind them, and shook it gently to test the automatic lock.

Lammiter suddenly remembered something else. “Didn’t you lock the other door after Salvatore and I arrived?”

She nodded, made a gesture for silence, and listened.

He lowered his voice. “But I saw Salvatore locking it...”

She looked at him and smiled. “Testing it. He doesn’t trust women.” Then she motioned to him, and they began to descend the narrow staircase. In this house, the back had become the front: on this kitchen staircase, the light was warm and sun-filled; people lived behind these doors, breathed this air,
flavoured it generously with the meals they cooked and ate. But at this moment, these flats seemed all deserted. There were no voices, no scolding, no laughter. Two doors even stood open, showing walls needing plaster and paint, too many random pipes, a crush of wooden chairs round littered tables.

“Where is everyone?”

“Taking the air in the Piazza. It is the evening ritual.” For a moment she hesitated, glanced back up the staircase, frowned. But she went on, without saying something she wanted to say.

Wasn’t it safe to talk here? Lammiter wondered, as they descended the worn stairs. Safer than the Piazza. He glanced at his watch. It was after seven o’clock. Only an hour since Brewster had begun to take him into his confidence. An hour was a long time in some ways, short in others. In an hour, you could smoke half a dozen cigarettes, or read a newspaper, or write a letter, or just sit and dream. You could travel four miles on foot, sixty in a car, a hundred in a light plane. You could make a friend (or an enemy) who might last you fifty years. And in one hour, you could make decisions that would change the entire course of your life.

Rosana put her hand on his arm as they reached the last short flight of stairs, so that he halted, too. She looked up towards Brewster’s door. She was still troubled.

“He will be all right,” Lammiter said encouragingly. “A little sleep, and he will be biting all our heads off with his usual gusto.”

She smiled. Then quickly she leaned over the worn balustrade, its eighteenth-century carvings of conch shells and triumphant Tritons partly washed away by a sea of passing hands. She decided it was indeed safe enough: the entrance, just below them,
was quite empty. She faced him. She looked extremely unhappy. She said, “He
is
only a journalist.”

“What?” He stared at her. “You mean Brewster wasn’t sent here officially on any mission?”

She shook her head.

“He wasn’t transferred to this job?” Kicked downstairs was the way Brewster had described it.

Again she shook her head.

“Was he kicked out entirely? Why? Drunk?”

“Oh no! Not then!”

“For making mistakes?” Such as letting Evans slip away from England.

“Tony says that he made only one mistake.” She halted, listening. Reassured, she hurried on. “After Evans had escaped, Tony kept searching for the man who had warned Evans. The man who had helped to place him when he began his career, and promote him into the right department. For there
has
to be such a man.”

“Yes,” Lammiter said slowly, “there has to be such a man.” It was a disquieting thought. “Did Brewster find him?”

“Tony says he must have been close, very close, to finding him. For suddenly—for no reason he or any of his friends could understand—he was given quite another problem to solve.”

Lammiter couldn’t see Brewster taking that lying down, not that old Protestant upstairs. “So he made several biting remarks and lost his job altogether?” Then he frowned, wondering if secret service agents ever did get discharged. If they were of no more use, what happened to them? Given less and less important work, until they were so bored they just faded away? In more ruthless countries, they fell out of trains.

“He didn’t complain, make any protests. I wish he had. I think it was then that he began to—began to drink more than he should.” She looked anxiously at Lammiter: “You see how it is?”

“I see,” he said gently. He was a little touched by the way she had tried to make him understand about Tony Brewster. He watched her eyes. “You believe all this?”

“But of course! Tony does not lie.”

Yet it was only Brewster’s word... “People could say that he brooded too much over his disappointment—exaggerated the situation.”

“That’s what the Communists did say. It spread around. In the end, even most of his friends stopped believing him. So he threw up everything, took a journalist’s job, and came to Rome. He used to be a journalist long ago—before the war.”

“Tell me one thing. What did he mean by ‘three-sided chess’? Wasn’t that what he said?”

“It’s his theory that the Middle East and the West and Russia are all playing a chess game. Russia is standing to one side, supervising the moves. Tony says ‘jogging the pieces’. Making the other take certain moves that are bound to cause counter-moves—and
always
trouble.”